The Death of Man's Hope
World War 1 and Post-Millennialism - Part 1
They called it the Great War—over 20 nations from Europe, Africa, Asia and North America were involved in the thunderous fighting. Human history had never experienced a war with that level of engagement. From your perspective as a Vertical Thought reader, most of the over 65 million troops deployed in the battle were your age—late teens to early 30s. Tragically, most of the 8.5 million soldiers who died in the war were the older teenagers and young adults of their day!
World War 1 (WW1) was a nasty time. It was only surpassed by World War 2 in the 1940s. But both will pale compared to the final, global conflict immediately prior to Jesus Christ’s second coming. Prophetically, that war is called the Great Tribulation since it will be a time of deadly trouble “…such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21). The chances are great that you will live to see the final of these three, horrendous world wars!
“Bad” Bible prophecy
Eerily, WW1 also serves as the tombstone for a then popular, utopian doctrine of many traditional, Christian churches. They misread Bible prophecy and thought the human condition would only get better throughout the 20th and 21st centuries and beyond. They envisioned 1000 years of Christian-based, world peace—and at its end Jesus would return to earth. For all practical purposes, World War 1 exploded that well-meaning, but biblically misinterpreted human desire for a glorious, future of world peace. WW1 was the death of man’s millennial hope.
You can be glad it was too—because man’s hope for world peace is nothing compared to God’s incredible hope and plan for mankind! Understanding what the Bible actually says makes all the difference.
What is the “Millennium”?
Mille+ annum are the Latin words for 1000 years, hence millennium. In the Bible God reveals a millennial plan for fixing mankind’s broken, sinful, war torn history. Intrinsic to that plan is the Kingdom of God—much ignored and misunderstood by traditional Christianity or any other religion in the world. However, the biblical Millennium is the time when Jesus Christ will rule all nations as the Kingdom of God on earth.
The Millennium is defined by this passage in the book of Revelation: “And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:4, emphasis added).
Christianity has had three separate lines of thinking or doctrinal positions on the Millennium. One is true and two are misunderstandings.
- Pre-millennium– the belief that Jesus Christ will return to earth at the beginning (“pre”) of the 1000 years to rule all nations in peace for the entire ten centuries. This doctrine reflects God’s great hope for humankind—which we’ll explore in the final part in this millennial article series.
- Amillennium– that’s the Latin way of saying “NO millennium” which reflects the fact that most of today’s Christianity rejects any notion of Christ’s direct intervention in world affairs. What a hopeless shame!
- Post-millennium– the idea that the world would get more and more civilized with the spread of traditional Christianity until by man’s best efforts world peace would ensue for 1000 years and at the end (“post”) of that time Christ would return to earth.
In the sense of humanity’s quest for world peace, post-millennial thinking was man’s hope—not God’s. It’s also calledpost-millennialism and is largely a dead doctrine of modern Christianity—thanks largely to WW1.
Most people know something about the Great War, but the average person likely knows precious little or nothing about the biblical Millennium. Whatever your current awareness, the connection of WW1 with the true Millennium will open your eyes to what God is and isn’t planning for the earth and all its inhabitants—you and your family included!
The back story: 19th century civilization
Post-millennial thinking, largely within Protestant churches, began about 1700 with the writings of English theologian Dr. Daniel Whitby (1638-1725) who authored “A Treatise on the True Millennium.” Although the word “true” in his title needs to be challenged, his teaching captured the religious imagination of many in the 18th and 19th centuries.
He believed that the passage in Revelation 20 spoke of human, Christian history marching forward, converting the masses to Christ and bringing supreme, religious peace to the world for a thousand years before Christ returned. However, Whitby’s millennium was not limited to only 1000 years, but like a rubber band it could potentially stretch for multiple thousands of years.
An important, religious historian addressed the impact of Dr. Whitby’s post-millennial writings: “His views of the millennium would probably have never been perpetuated if they had not been so well keyed to the times. The rising tide of intellectual freedom, science, and philosophy, coupled with humanism, had enlarged the concept of human progress and painted a bright picture of the future. Whitby’s view of a coming golden age for the church was just what the people wanted to hear. It fitted the thinking of the times” (The Millennial Kingdom, Dr. John E. Walvoord, Chancellor of the Dallas Theological Seminary, 1959, p. 22)
An age of revolutionary thinking
Dr. Whitby’s post-millennial writings came during the Age of Enlightenment (1650 – 1800) when Europe was the center of much of the world’s progressive thinking. Beginning with the Protestant Reformation (1517 onward) the continent had broken loose from the religious and academic confines of Roman Catholic domination. Finally, scientists could discover things without fear of excommunication or being burned at the stake. Philosophers could more freely think (unfortunately not necessarily guided by God’s Word). The Industrial Revolution was increasing the physical comfort and relative affluence of even the common man. Revolutionary thinking spawned the great representative republic of America. Concepts of personal freedom and responsibility took root and flourished.
Colonial powers like England, Holland, France, Belgium and Portugal began to amass growing empires. Religious teachers travelled and preached to the “less-civilized” (as they viewed them) populations in distant Africa, Asia, Australia and North and South America. The whole world was becoming Christian-civilized on what was considered a massive scale.
War was winding down
After the near-world-war scale of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800’s the nineteenth century gradually settled into a measure of relative peace. That is, it appeared more peaceful provided you overlook the Crimean War (1850s), the American Civil War (1860s) and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 which forged the modern German nation, and various colonial wars in the 1890s. But the case could be made by the late 1800s that the world was relatively more peaceful than it had been for some time.
All that progress, preaching and peace seemed to fit Whitby’s theory of post-millennialism. It captured the imagination of many Protestant thinkers. To them, it looked like man was perfectible and could be tamed by their Christian teaching even without Christ’s dramatic, apocalyptic intervention. Thus the 20th century dawned with virtual “liberty and justice for all.” The human millennium appeared well underway. Many preachers waxed eloquent about the post-millennial attributes and that every day in every way, the world was getting better and better!
Man’s hope for a church-age of world peace and harmony was alive in the second decade of the 1900s. Then, under the thundering guns of August 1914 that vision began to die. It died in the muddy trenches on the front line. It died in massed infantry charges against machine gun barrages. It died gasping in the clouds of poisonous gas bombs. And it died under the incessant and massive artillery bombardments, day after day, week after week, month after month for four long years of World War 1—which was in fact the death of man’s post-millennial hope.
Even so millennial doctrines remained an important topic as Christianity formed its next worldview. Remember though, that in sorting out your view of what’s happening in the world, actually understanding true Bible prophecy makes all the difference!
