WHY A PREMILLENNIALIST WILL NEVER HURT YOU

It's almost 100%. Take a look at the repressive regimes in the 20th century that killed millions and millions of its own people and unknowable numbers of others and you'll find they all had one thing in common. They based themselves on building a Utopia on earth.

A SOCIETY SO GREAT EVERYBODY WANTS OUT

Hitler dreamed of a wonderful world that would come when he eliminated all Jews, so to the gas chambers they must go.  Over in China, Mao wasn't dreaming of Jeannie with the light brown hair, but of an ultimate communist society which necessitated his destruction of the culture, economy, and the lives of an entire nation through repression and starvation. Those idyllic dreamers, Lenin and Stalin in Russia, murdered millions to bring about their communist heaven on earth.

How did that work out? The communists had to build a thick, tall, concrete wall in Berlin to keep people in their dream society. Their wall worked out so well that people dug tunnels to go under it and got shot trying to get over it.

People fleeing communist Cuba are so desperate, they unhinge doors, put them on inner tubes, and try to sail/float 90 miles through shark-filled waters to get to freedom in Florida. Sharky waters are preferable to the Utopias run by masterminds who are doing what they think is good for us.

There were those in the 20th century who told of these monster molders of their Utopias. Solzhenitsyn wrote of his being forced into the camps only because he disagreed with the government. He wasn't the only one. Communism can't exist among a free people, so those who say, "No way, Lenin," have to be coerced, beaten, bludgeoned, incarcerated, or liquidated.

Utopian schemes come and fail, one after another; the human race never learns that such plans produce a village run by power hungry psychopaths like Charles Manson.

BUT THIS TIME, IT'LL WORK

"This time, the plan will work," we think. "We'll assemble the brightest and the best who'll be able to plan our way into the Utopia of the New Frontier," we thought in the 1960's. But how well did the 60's go?

In his inaugural address in 1961, President Kennedy said his famous line (unfortunately lifted from someone else who never got the credit), "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Few noticed that it was a statement which made the state the entity to be obeyed. That line is the dream of every dictator, ancient and modern. As Milton Freeman said:

"The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron – the citizen, the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny.  The organismic, “what you can do for your country” implies that government is the master or deity – the citizen, the servant or votary."

After the inauguration, the Kennedy administration brought in "the Whiz Kids," mostly Ivy League academics who were supposed to be so smart that they could solve every problem through government legislation, plans, agencies, and brilliant bureaucrats, thereby leading America to bliss.

One author writes: "The title referred to Kennedy’s “whiz kids”—leaders of industry and academia brought into the Kennedy administration—whom Halberstam characterized as arrogantly insisting on 'brilliant policies that defied common sense' in Vietnam, often against the advice of career U.S. Department of State employees."

How did Kennedy's Yalies and the Harvards do on their messianic mission? The batting average of the brilliant didn't equal Frank Sinatra's weight.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson called America to build his personal Utopia, calling it, "The Great Society," along with something called, "The War on Poverty," which would, he promised, end poverty in America.

"Behind the Great Society was a great idea: to lift America’s poor out of poverty, government should now take care of all their basic needs. By giving the poor welfare, subsidized food, public housing and free medical care, government will end poverty in America," so wrote Patrick J. Buchanan in 2005.

Did The Great Society produce a great society? Buchanan says we have only to look at New Orleans and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for the answer: "No sooner had Katrina passed by and the 17th Street levee broke, than hundreds of young men who should have taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the women with babies to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and rape. The New Orleans police, their numbers cut by deserters who left their posts to look after their families, engaged in running gun battles all day long to stay alive and protect people. . . After trillions of tax dollars for welfare, food stamps, public housing, job training and education have poured out since 1965, poverty remains pandemic. But today, when the police vanish, the community disappears and men take to the streets to prey on women and the weak."

Buchanan asks a good question, "In 1940, hundreds of British fishermen and yachtsmen sailed back and forth daily under fire across a turbulent 23-mile Channel to rescue 300,000 soldiers from Dunkirk. How do we explain . . .  that a tenth that number of Americans could not be reached in four days from across a stagnant pond?"

Every four years we go through a weary round of campaign speeches in which both political parties promise, but never deliver Utopia to the hungry and the poor in exchange for their votes. If all the promises of Utopia of all the candidates were bricks laid end to end, they would reach to Pluto and beyond. Every four years, they tell us, Utopia is just one election away. But Utopia is like tomorrow; it never comes. Yawn.

Millions murdered, starved, beaten, imprisoned, all in pursuit of the elusive Utopia. To sail to Utopia, one must sail on a sea of blood, says Jonah Goldberg. Shattered utopian promises leave millions more disillusioned and defeated, human wrecks of their misguided faith.

AT LEAST HE GETS AN "A" FOR EFFORT

Fallen man has long searched for and tried to build Utopia east of Eden, looking for a place apart from God where there is no right and no wrong, a place he can make it up as he goes along. The Tower of Babel comes to mind, just one example. Then there's the long-lived legend of Eldorado, about which The National Geographic said,

"Through the centuries, this passion gave rise to the enduring tale of a city of gold. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans believed that somewhere in the New World there was a place of immense wealth known as Eldorado. Their searches for this treasure wasted countless lives, drove at least one man to suicide, and put another man under the executioner's ax."

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem about looking for Eldorado:

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"


The poem has a great rhythm and is easy to memorize. (If I memorized it and recited in high school, anybody can.) The knight begins his search with high optimism--he journeys long, singing a song. But the older he gets, the more the realization comes: there "is no spot of ground that looks like Eldorado." Finally a "pilgrim shadow" tells the now-old knight the location of Eldorado; it's "over the mountains of the moon, down in the Valley of Shadow." The knight has learned that there is no Eldorado on this earth. A wasted life. A bitter lesson.

THE PREMILLENNIALIST 

The poem's conclusion is the conclusion of the premillennialist, and that's why the premillennialist will never hurt you. He knows that Utopia awaits the Second Coming of the King, Jesus Christ. Until then, the premillennialist knows that "the poor you will always have with you" (Jn. 12:8). No promise and no party will ever make the truth of that statement go away.

The premillennialist gets his name from the fact that he knows that the golden age of Christ's kingdom on earth will not be brought in by the Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Whigs, No-Nothings, Fascists, Socialists, or any other political or man-made group. The premillenialist goes even farther than that--he knows the church won't bring or build the kingdom either.

The premillennialist gets his name from the fact that Christ's coming will be "pre-the inauguration of the millennium," Christ's thousand year reign on the earth (Rev. 20).

Therefore, the premilleniaist will never hurt you with schemes, force, social engineering, shaming, political ploys, or murderous rampages to build the kingdom.

He awaits the coming of Christ.
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Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak, available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

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duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org

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