Eternal life resides in Jesus and in Him alone. No one else! This is true now and will also be the case after Jesus removes His true church from the earth.
In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
What do people need the most? The answer remains the same as it’s always been: A clear understanding of the Gospel. By this I mean that people need Jesus, not the one that so many today create in their mind but but the One revealed on the pages of Scripture.
Amillennialism dominated the church during the dark ages and persisted long after the Reformation. The reason for this rests with three factors that fueled this teaching for well over a thousand years and remain in place today, at least to some degree.
It’s vital to our faith that we understand the errant foundation of amillennialism so we can recognize the error and defend the integrity of Scripture when others seek to lead us astray.
Why do we believe that the rapture will happen before the tribulation? There are a number of signposts in Scripture that point us in the direction of which I will write about in the coming weeks. I will start with premillennialism.
Premillennialism is the belief in the thousand year reign of Jesus before the eternal state (see Rev. 20:1-10). Those who hold to this position believe in a literal seven year tribulation after which Jesus returns to earth to setup His kingdom and rule over the nations from Jerusalem.
Before the time of Augustine in the fifth century, premillennialism dominated the early church. Most of the early church fathers voiced a strong belief in a future one thousand year reign of Jesus.
Although on the surface it might seem to be an insignificant change, amillennialism profoundly changed the church in the centuries after Augustine. It altered the church’s view of Scripture, as well as of prophecy, and the negative impact of Augustine’s doctrine of future things continues to this day.
