Orthodox Reflections

By Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America

Bad Theology leads to bad actions which often produce horrific tragedies.  We could give many examples of this from the horrific slaughter of the wars of the Protestant Reformation, to ‘Christian’ Zionism’s endless cycle of Middle Eastern Wars, to the human carnage caused by Liberation Theology in the Global South. Heresies have consequences. While all heresies are bad, one towers above most others in terms of its broad appeal, history of mass murder, and potential to end all human life as we know it. Let us consider Millennialism, a sort of foundational heresy for many of the others currently causing havoc in our world.

The heresy of Millennialism or Chiliasm (from the Greek) is a belief that a Messianic Age will be established on Earth prior to the Last Judgment and the future permanent state of eternity. A Kingdom of God on Earth. A perfect age. No sorrow. No suffering. No death. Christianity and Judaism have both produced messianic movements with such beliefs (though differing in the details such as the identity of the Messiah).

American Millennialism is split into two broad traditions. Premillennialism is the belief that Jesus’ Second Coming starts the Millennium.  Postmillennialism, by contrast, teaches that Jesus will come after the Millennium has been started by an inspired mankind.

Of the two, historically speaking, Postmillennialism has been the most destructive. Why? Postmillennialists are not just patiently waiting for a messiah to show up and found a perfect kingdom. They are out there actively trying to build that kingdom for themselves. Postmillennialism, therefore, naturally goes hand-in-hand with Millenarianism or Millenarism:

Millenarianism is the belief that a religious, social, political, scientific / technological, or some other movement can, and will, succeed in carrying out a complete and fundamental transformation of society into a state of perfection. There are Christian, Jewish, and secular versions of this belief, and a whole of nuance.

Postmillennialism usually focuses on progressive and gradualist changes. Through material and spiritual progress, things will get better all the time until we reach the Kingdom of God on Earth.  The term “Postmillennialism” is often paired with the term “Progressive.” The broad teachings are:

• People will actively work to improve society and remove suffering
• Christ will return after humans create a kingdom worthy of him
• The kingdom will last for a thousand years or indefinitely
• The kingdom will be achieved through divine guidance and a divine plan

Postmillennialism arrived in North America with the so-called ‘Pilgrims’ in Massachusetts. For the Puritans, “Millennialism” meant living a strictly religious life following God’s laws meticulously. They hoped to create a new society that perfectly reflected God’s will, and would be a  precursor to the Millennial Kingdom described in the Bible. This was a serious religious endeavor, and one which they meant very much to serve as an example of righteousness for all mankind. That is the origin of the “city upon a hill” comment by John Winthrop.

Early on, the idea of the “city upon a hill” shifted from the Massachusetts Bay colony towards the United States as a whole. Both secular and religious strains of Millennialism in the 18th Century expressed a belief that the American Revolution was a necessary step toward the Millennium.

John Smith, a historian at Texas A&M University, wrote:

The millennialism of the revolutionary era was essentially divided between the secular variety and the post-millennial variety. Many of the Founders believed that they were—in Thomas Paine’s language—beginning the world anew with the Revolution, while the more religious believed that the War for Independence might herald the Millennium preceding Christ’s return. . . . The Founders who believed that their actions would spark the Millennium didn’t think that it would unfold literally, as predicted in the New Testament.

Revolutionary America was preparing the way for Christ’s return, building the perfect Enlightenment State, or maybe both. Many Americans of subsequent generations continued to see their nation as an instrument of God for the enlightenment of the world. A leading Presbyterian minister of the 1840s, Samuel H. Cox, told an English audience that “in America, the state of society is without parallel in universal history.…I really believe that God has got America within anchorage, and that upon that arena, He intends to display his prodigies for the millennium.”

Lincoln echoed this grandiose view of America as a model for the world when he delivered a message to Congress one month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation. In that speech, Lincoln remarked, “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” Lincoln’s turn of phrase has since been quoted repeatedly by subsequent generations of American politicians.

American Postmillennialism gave rise to the original Karens, the spiritual, and often physical, descendants of the original Puritans. In an essay entitled “The Yankee Problem in America”, Clyde Wilson described them thusly:

“that peculiar ethnic group descended from New Englanders, who can easily be recognized by their arrogance, hypocrisy, greed, lack of congeniality, and penchant for ordering other people around . . . . they are the chosen saints whose mission is to make America and the world, into the perfection of their own image. . . . Yankee temperament, it should be noted, makes a neat fit with the Stalinism that was brought into the Deep North by later immigrants.

 

anything that stood in the way of American perfection must be eradicated . . . liquor, tobacco, the Catholic Church, the Masonic Order, meat-eating, marriage”

Economist Murray Rothbard described Yankees in his essay, “Just War”:

The North’s driving force, the ‘Yankees’ – that ethnocultural group who either lived in New England or migrated from there to upstate New York, northern and eastern Ohio, northern Indiana, and northern Illinois – had been swept by . . . a fanatical and emotional neo-Puritanism driven by a fervent ‘postmillennialism’ which held that as a precondition of the Second Advent of Jesus Christ, man must set up a thousand-year-Kingdom of God on Earth. The Kingdom is to be a perfect society. In order to be perfect, of course, this Kingdom must be free of sin . . . . If you didn’t stamp out sin by force you yourself would not be saved.

Long before there was public welfare, WOKE, DEI, and bossy public health officials, there was already a growing nanny state championed by Postmillennialist extremists bent on perfecting not only America, but also the entire world. No amount of force or compulsion is out of the question when pursuing such a holy mission. Unfortunately for Americans who wish to live peaceful and free lives, Postmillennialism has now practically merged with American patriotism. To be a proud American is to support murderous wars both abroad and at home (war on drugs, war on terror, war on antisemitism, war on Mexican cartels, war on COVID, war on WOKE, etc.) along with stifling levels of social control over all aspects of our lives.

The situation has gotten so dire, that America no longer has a ‘Yankee Problem.’

America has become a ‘Yankee problem’. We are the global Karen out to teach the entire world how to live. 

Still trying to stamp out sin and promote righteousness, though the definitions of both have changed greatly since the Massachusetts Bay colony days. Hopefully we get out of this business altogether, instead of just redirecting the funding towards some other set of influence-buying projects. 

American Postmillennialism might have started as a religious movement, but it didn’t stay that way. Progressive Postmillennialists became increasingly enamored of science. They endorsed Evolution, as the story of continuous progress towards greater and greater perfection fit neatly with their preferred social narrative. This caused them to abandon the Genesis account of Creation, and over time, more and more of the rest of the scriptures. Eventually a large number of them lost all supernatural faith entirely, becoming merely ‘progressives’ as opposed to ‘Progressive Postmillennialists’. But, if anything, the urge to perfect society through any means necessary grew even stronger in them. Once Christ was no longer part of their progressive faith, their ‘social gospel’ quickly morphed into highly-coercive ‘socialism’.

This is not a phenomenon confined to America. Many secular movements have been heavily influenced by Postmillennialism. Richard Landes, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, wrote:

Utopian and scientific traditions and radical democratic movements such as the French Revolution, radical socialism, and Marxism, as well as Nazism and, in a modified form, Zionism, can all be seen as secular millennial movements. In a sense, totalitarianism may have resulted from millennial movements that seized power, failed in their millennial hopes, and therefore “forced” the perfection of mankind.

The word totalitarian is often misused and misunderstood. Totalitarian is not the same as authoritarian. An authoritarian regime is not democratically elected and is not directly accountable to the people it governs. A totalitarian regime actively seeks to control every single aspect of your life: how you think, what you say, how you spend your leisure time, what you spend money on, what vices you can have, what sins you can commit. Authoritarian regimes, which are usually uninfected by the Postmillennial virus, are frequently way less intrusive on the daily lives of the populations they rule than are our modern, Western democracies. It turns out that if ruling elites give a population the illusion of choice and a sense of historic purpose, they can pretty much do anything they want.

Before leaving the topic of Postmillennialism, let us explore a subset of Millennialism called “Catastrophic Millennialism”. This is the belief that the current social order must be destroyed to make way for a new, perfect one. Unlike the Postmillennialists we have discussed before, who believe gradual social / scientific change will make all things new, Catastrophic Millennialists believe radical changes to society are only possible after a major cataclysm or other transformative event.

Among those who believe this are people, some of great wealth and power, who are actively trying to bring such a cataclysm about. Their philosophy is called “Accelerationism”:

Accelerationism is a range of revolutionary and reactionary ideas in left-wing and right-wing ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations, otherwise referred to as “acceleration.” It has been regarded as an ideological spectrum divided into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants, both of which support the dramatic change of capitalism and its structures as well as the conditions for a technological singularity, a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible.

There really are people out there who want to burn the whole world down, so that they can ‘build back better’. Leveraging COVID and the War in Ukraine to wreck global economies and societies are examples of Accelerationism. The people doing the accelerating seem to have only a vague idea of the world they hope to build to replace the current one. Not having a plan for what comes after isn’t stopping them, however. It makes one nostalgic for old-fashioned, plain vanilla anarchists.

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Up till now, we have been focused on Postmillennialism as it has been the source of so much horror when compared to Premillennialism. Historically, the vast majority of Premillennialists have not been political. In their view, only the messiah could found the Millennial Kingdom. Therefore, Premillennialists largely focused on their own salvation and on preaching the Gospel to the lost. Unfortunately, the rise of Dispensationalism, with its belief in the ‘Rapture’, radically changed that.

Dispensationalism is a 19th Century heresy that is a dominant belief system among Evangelicals. Dispensationalists believe we are living in the End Times, and that we are watching Biblical prophecy fulfilled before our very eyes: founding of modern Israel in 1948, capture of Jerusalem by the Israeli army in the Six-Day War of 1967, the establishment of the US embassy in Jerusalem, etc. According to Dispensationalists, only two major things are left to accomplish.  The first is to rebuild a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount where the Al-Aqsa mosque currently stands. The second is for Israel to have full control over all of Palestine, and maybe even substantially more territory currently belonging to neighboring countries.

What we have seen, over the past few decades, is that there is a very short distance between ‘watching Biblical prophecies unfold’ and actively trying to fulfill them. We can look at America’s wars in the Middle East, our military support of Israel, the ongoing support for ethnically cleansing Gaza and the West Bank (now increasingly referred to as ‘Judea’ and ‘Samaria’ to bolster the case for total Jewish ownership), the acceptance of Israeli occupation of Syrian territory, and the drive to build a new Jewish temple as all actions supported by Dispensationalists in hopes of bringing about the Millennial Kingdom. These actions are especially dangerous given that the current government of Israel is controlled by Jewish Millennialists, who are themselves attempting to fulfill the conditions necessary for their own Messiah to show up.

According to Dispensationalists, when all prophecies have been fulfilled, the ‘Rapture’ will occur in which all the ‘saved’ Christians will be magically removed from the Earth. Then comes a time of ‘Great Tribulation’ in which the Antichrist emerges, upending the entire world, leading to the true Second Coming of Christ and the inauguration of the Millennial Kingdom based in Jerusalem. Complete, as it were, with a rebuilt Jewish Temple in which animal sacrifices will once again occur:

At the end of the Tribulation, Jesus Christ will return to earth in all His glory. He will establish His Kingdom and throne in Jerusalem and begin His thousand-year reign. A glorious Millennial Temple will be constructed, far surpassing the Temples built by Solomon, Zerubbabel, and Herod. Through the Prophet Ezekiel, the Lord said that this Temple will be “the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel forever” (Ezek. 43:7). The Lord will be there.

 

Ezekiel chapters 40 to 48 clearly state that sacrifices will be offered in this magnificent Temple—a multitude of sacrifices.

One is compelled to note that all of the actions being taken to bring about the ‘Rapture’, or the advent of the Jewish Messianic Kingdom from the Israeli standpoint, are also steps the Orthodox Church teaches are necessary to bring about the reign of the Antichrist.

Orthodox priest Fr. Boris Molchanoff explains:

‘According to the teaching of the holy Fathers, the Devil, raising up Antichrist, will strive to vest his advent with all the signs of the coming of the Son of God on earth . . . .  As the Lord was pleased to reveal Himself to all men as the Messiah in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem and its temple, so also will the Antichrist reveal himself as the false messiah of the Jews, the monarch of the whole world, in the triumphal ceremony of his entrance into Jerusalem and his enthronement in the temple which, by that time, will have been restored’ (Antichrist, St. John of Kronstadt Press, Liberty, Tenn., p. 3).  St. Ephraim the Syrian (+4^th century) says that he will ‘valu[e] the Jewish people in particular’ (p. 5).

 

The initial phase of this plan [of the Antichrist to attain worldwide power] will be the achieving of popularity among the Jews.  The Antichrist will put forth every effort to induce the Jews to acknowledge him as their promised messiah.  He will be successful in establishing a Jewish realm and will undertake also the restoration of the Temple of Solomon, realizing a dream the Jews have cherished for thousands of years.  Then, “compelled by the people, he shall be proclaimed king.  And the Jewish people shall love him much, and he shall reach Jerusalem and raise up their Temple” (Lenten Triodion, loc. cit.) (Antichrist, p. 6).

There will, of course, be no ‘Rapture’ as it is a fantasy first dreamed up in the 19th Century. The Dispensationalists will be trapped in the Hell on Earth they helped create. Right along with the rest of us.

At this point, both flavors of millennialism are equally dangerous. Postmillennialism is still trying to build a perfect society through coercion, either step-by-step or by wrecking everything catastrophically to clear the way. Dispensationalists are trying violently to fulfill ‘Biblical’ prophecies to cause the ‘Rapture’ so that a chain of events is put in motion leading to the Millennial Kingdom.

Both types of Millennialism are heavily represented in the Trump Administration. Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is a Dispensational Premillennialist. He is at the forefront of supporting Israeli ethnic cleansing and territorial expansion. Huckabee would be fully in support of a regional war in the Middle East, no matter how catastrophic for America, as he would see that as yet another step towards the ‘Rapture’. Huckabee is just one of many such Dispensationalist fanatics in the Trump administration.

On the Postmillennial side, many of Trump’s closest advisors are tech billionaires, such as Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk, who routinely gush over the perfectibility of society through technology.  In Andreesen’s ‘The Techno-Optimist Manifesto’, we find the following predications for the future of mankind:

We believe this is the story of the material development of our civilization; this is why we are not still living in mud huts, eking out a meager survival and waiting for nature to kill us.

 

We believe this is why our descendants will live in the stars.

 

We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.

 

Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.

 

We believe that out of all of these people will come scientists, technologists, artists, and visionaries beyond our wildest dreams.

In technology we trust. We can solve any problem! The future will be perfect, just do what we billionaire advisors to Donald Trump tell you! By the way, we have ways of making you comply!

No way that kind of attitude can go badly, right?

Unfortunately, Trump speaks very much along the same lines with his boundless confidence in America’s future of world-leading technological development. According to Trump, we are entering a Golden Age that will even see us colonize the stars. Trump’s hubristic, Postmillennial rhetoric sets off more than a few alarm bells. Here is a part of Trump’s vision from his inauguration address:

Above all, my message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor and the vitality of history’s greatest civilization. So, as we liberate our nation, we will lead it to new heights of victory and success. We will not be deterred. . . . The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons. And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.

An AI-produced vision of a Trumpian Utopia in what was once Gaza.

Conclusion: An Unacceptable Heresy

Millennialism, which many Americans imbibe with their mother’s milk, is the epitome of bad theology leading to bad outcomes. All versions of Millennialism are heresies that belong in the dustbin of history. According to Orthodox Christianity, as we affirm each time we recite the Nicene Creed, Christ’s Kingdom will not last a literal 1,000 years. Christ’s Kingdom will be eternal:

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.

According to the Orthodox Faith, Christ’s Return marks the end of this world and ushers in eternity. The 1,000 year reign referred to in Revelations, which Millennialists believe is still to come, is actually the age of the Church in which we are living in now. As explained by Fr. Michael Pomazansky:

If it was at one time possible to express chiliastic ideas as private opinions, this was only until the Ecumenical Church expressed its judgment about this. But when the Second Ecumenical Council (381), in condemning all the errors of the heretic Apollinarius, condemned also his teaching of the thousand-year reign of Christ and introduced into the very Symbol of Faith the words concerning Christ: And His Kingdom will have no end—it became no longer permissible at all for an Orthodox Christian to hold these opinions (One of the leading Fathers of the early Church who combated the heresy of chiliasm was Blessed Augustine; see his discussion of this in The City of God, 20, 7-9, pp. 718-728. He connects the “binding” of the devil for a thousand years (Apoc. 20:2) with the “binding” of the “strong man” in Mark 3:27 (see also John 12:31, the words of Christ just before His Passion: Now shall the prince of this world be cast out, and states that “the binding of the devil is his being prevented from the exercise of his whole power to seduce men.” Orthodox Christians who have experienced the life of grace in the Church can well understand what Protestants cannot: that the “thousand years” (the whole period) of Christ’s reign with His saints and the limited power of the devil is now.

This world is forever fallen and will never be made perfect. Human beings, as we are now, will also never be perfected. No matter how much technology Elon Musk implants in our brains, we humans will still suffer, age, and die. No society will ever build an Earthly utopia. All of our plans will always fall short of perfection. The world as we know it, with all its hardships and trials, will endure until Christ’s Second Coming puts an end to it. This understanding keeps men humble, governments limited, development plans reasonable, and our focus on God where it belongs. For the sake of all our souls and lives, it is time to repudiate and bury all forms Millennialism once and for all.