Clarifying Christian Contradictions

If you pay any attention to the Christian world, you may have noticed that there are some people who teach that the world is ending soon and that your focus should be on personal growth --- yours and other people’s --- and that it is pointless to make this a better world since it’s all about to be destroyed anyway, but there are some whose focus is on social works --- trying to improve the here and now of people’s lives. Why such a variance in the application of the same book?

The teaching generally is that there will be a long period of peace on the earth, which, based on Revelation 20, is thought by many to be a thousand years. During this period, Christ will reign over all the earth. Some people are pre-millennial. This means that they believe that Christ is returning prior to that period. It will take him to clean up this mess and make the world right. Our job is to get ready for that. Others are post-millennials. They (and I think this is the larger body of people) teach that he is returning after that period. There will be long period of peace on earth, and then Christ shall return. The peace will have happened because the reign of Christ is in the human heart. Obviously a person’s belief on this matter makes a difference to their conduct.

Pre-millennialism was the predominant view for the first three centuries after Christ’s death. Augustine opted for post-millennialism, and from his perspective, that made sense: Christianity was flourishing, peace was spreading. Eventually it became clear that either Christ wasn’t returning after a thousand years of that, or that the thousand years had not begun when it was thought to have started.

By thinking that Christ is invisibly working in man to create some utopian era, people have been susceptible to delusive teachings that particular political movements are the means for this to happen. Witness the example of Hitler’s Third Reich. This was how the thousand years of peace would happen.

It is possible to be a pre-millennialist and want to contribute to social good. The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is full of admonition to help the poor, widows, and orphans. Jesus said “The poor you always have with you.” Many pre-millennialists think he meant that you can’t do anything to fix that problem. I think he meant that we have lots of opportunity to help them. People who believe that Christ is living in them, should reflect his behavior and help the disadvantaged. Sometimes, particularly in a crisis, this means a bandage of immediate supply of the necessities. Other times, in the absence of crisis, it means enabling people to have options that they can choose to get themselves out of their mess, through skills development and other education.