From the verdant gardens of Genesis 1, the mountains of Ararat in Genesis 9, the plains of Shinar in Genesis 11, to the lands of Canaan where God showered His patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah) with these promises of a future filled with unending blessings, God has been demonstrating His unwavering faithfulness to His promises throughout all generations.

Introduction
If you have been with us over the last 8 weeks, we have been attempting to summarize what a failed eschatology looks like. From the hyper-defeatism of dispensationalism and premillennialism to the subtle apathy for cultural engagement that seeps in through amillennialism and the Radical Two Kingdoms, we have been attempting to show that a wrong view of eschatology will have an impact on how you live in the world. Because let’s face it, if you believe that we lose down here (As John MacArthur famously said), we will not work down here. If we believe the rapture is always moments away, then why waste your time doing the long work of making disciples and transforming culture? If we believe that all of our energy and effort should go into spiritual activities (the Kingdom of God) and that this work does not overlap with the physical world (The Kingdom of Man), then why engage at all? Why obey Jesus’ command to be salt and light in the world if the only aspect we will ever see redeemed is spiritual? Better to spend your time converting souls for a Gnostic utopia than Biblically discipling nations to live with Jesus in the New Heavens and New Earth.
While each of the views we have covered so far has minimal overlap, two things they do have in common are that they are entirely wrong about eschatology and that they have throttled down the church so that she has become a passive-sickly agent in this world. In this series, we have been looking to change that.
And that brings us to our topic for today. How is Postmillennialism the correct view of eschatology? What does it mean? What implications will it have on my life? Can it be demonstrated convincingly from the Scripture?
To that end, let us begin by defining Postmillennialism, and then we will spend the majority of our time today showcasing this view in the pages of Genesis.
What Is Postmillennialism?
Unlike the smorgasbord of major depressive eschatologies, Postmillennialism uniquely grapples with the unstoppable power of God, the awesome glory of Jesus’ Gospel, and how the earth will come under the Lordship of Christ the King before this rodeo is over. Instead of presenting Jesus’ great commission as an absolute failure, Postmillennialism takes seriously how the Gospel will change hearts, the church will disciple societies and nations (Matthew 28:19), and because Satan is bound (Matthew 12:29; Revelation 20:2), and the principalities and powers have been disarmed (Colossians 2:15), Jesus will win back the world and will bring it under His Father’s rule (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).
Central to this perspective is the understanding of what eschatology is. Eschatology is not the poorly written conclusion or the explosive plane crash of an otherwise glorious trip. Eschatology is concerned with how everything that was lost in the first Adam will be restored under the Lordship of the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Eschatology is not the final chapter where everything falls apart; it is the story of how everything comes back together in Jesus. This distinction is crucial.
With that in mind, Postmillennialism acknowledges that everything that fell in the first creation will be healed and restored by Jesus in His new creation, the Kingdom. To clarify, we are saying that this New Creation kingdom began when He ascended into heaven and will not be finished until everything is restored when He makes “His blessings flow far as the curse is found” (Joy to the World; Isaac Watts, 1719).
The postmillennial conviction is that God will do this by filling the world with worshipers who will worship Him in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23-24). Why? Because that is the end for which God designed the world (Genesis 1:28). At the heart of postmillennial thinking is the idea that God is going to redeem all that was lost in Adam, that He will fill the fallen world with worshippers in garden spaces, where He will bring the Kingdom of God across a globe that was under the tyranny of the devil. He will do that through the preaching of the Gospel, the making of disciples, and through the life-changing work of the Holy Spirit. As Christians, we know Christ never fails at anything He sets about to do. Thus, because Christ has endeavored to bring the world under His rule, He will not stop until He has been successful everywhere the curse is found.
According to the postmillennialist, this process of worldwide Kingdom expansion began when Jesus ascended into heaven and sat on His throne to rule, inaugurating a period known as the “Millennium” (Revelation 20), which is not a chronological term but symbolic of this growing epoch when righteousness, peace, and the acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty become pervasive realities. This era will be marked by an unprecedented increase in the number of worshipers who live out and celebrate the truth of God’s Word, culminating in a world saturated with adorations and praise for Yahweh, our King.
Unlike escapist or pessimistic eschatologies, Postmillennialism sees the future as a canvas for God’s redemptive work, transforming not just individuals but whole families, cultures, and nations. This view does not naively ignore the presence of sin and misery in the world but instead acknowledges a substantial decrease in its power and influence by the Risen Lord Jesus. Through this global transformation, which will happen slowly over many generations, the world will experience a foretaste of heaven as more and more people come to know God, are filled with His Spirit, and begin living out Christ-like behaviors and attitudes on earth.
Knowing this, the postmillennial vision compels Christians to engage actively in the world, driven by the certainty that their labor in the Lord is not in vain. Believers are called to spread the aroma of Christ in every sphere of life, laboring in hamlets, highways, high rises, downtowns, white houses, and empires that must be transformed into communities of worshipers before the Lord returns. This eschatological outlook infuses our daily living with purpose and direction, motivating us to partake in the divine mission of filling the earth with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
In sum, Postmillennialism is God’s plan, in Christ, by the power of the Spirit, to fill the world with faithful worshippers. It is not just an eschatological viewpoint but a Biblical vision of the hope and redemption God promised to bring back into this fallen world. It is the only view that shows how everything lost in Adam will be found in the second Adam, Jesus Christ. It opens our eyes to the incredible successes of Christ in church history. It frees us to view the future optimistically even as we labor hard in the present. And in my opinion, it is the only view that accounts for what the Bible promises will happen in Jesus’ Kingdom.
So, with that, let us look at a positive and Biblical case for the doctrine of Postmillennialism from the book of Genesis.
Postmillennialism According To Genesis
A World Filled with Worshippers by Design
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”Genesis 1:28
To construct a Biblical eschatology, we must begin where the Bible begins. In the first chapter of Genesis, we see God’s plans and purposes for the world. A world made out of nothing. A world constructed without sin. A world in perfect conformity to the will of the Father, such that everything we behold in Genesis 1 pleases Him and is called very good by Him. If there was ever a way to discern the kind of world God would want, we must look no further than the one He made.
In Genesis 1, after constructing heavenly space and earthly space, God made man with a unique and glorious purpose. After filling the cosmos to the brim with lights to rule the day and night, and after filling the skies with all kinds of birds and winged creatures, and after filling the oceans with teeming fish and sea monsters, and after filling the earth with every kind of animal and creeping thing, God also proposed to fill every square inch of this earth with humans, who would worship Him, and would spread His dominion and would rule over His creation to the glory of God. But, instead of beginning, as He did with a fixed and completed assortment of stars or with a fully multiplied ocean overflowing with sea beasts, God decided to begin with just two human bodies, made in His image, made to worship Him, both male and female, with the commission of using those two bodies to fill the four corners of this earth with their offspring (Genesis 1:28). To say that a different way, God Himself multiplied the galaxies and stars, as well as the winged and scaly beasts, but invited humans (the only creature God did this with) to partner with Him in their multiplication. This means God made human beings to become a multiplied species that filled the earth, but He allowed us to participate in our multiplication through monogamous covenant marriage.
Thus, we see the kind of world God wanted to make was a world filled with human worshippers, and by God’s grace, God invited humans to partner with Him in accomplishing that vision. This tells us all we need to know about God’s intention for the world. He created two sexual creatures to be bound in heterosexual covenant monogamy, to propagate the knowledge of God across the face of the earth through child rearing and family worship. This worshiping, fruitful, and multiplying family is what God called very good in Genesis 1, and this is what was so very bad about the fall in Genesis 3.
When sin entered the world, things fell. And by “fell,” I do not mean like a vase falling off a shelf, although as a metaphor that is not far off. What I mean is that everything God designed became broken. It no longer functioned in the way it was intended. And by everything, I mean everything. The earth fell. The land fell. Masculinity, femininity, marriage, and sex all fell. Moral reasoning, spiritual discernment, worship, creativity, and the ability to comprehend the knowledge of God all resoundingly fell. But what did not fall and was not broken was God’s intention to fill the world with worshiping people. This is where Postmillennialism is unique among the eschatological systems.
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When Jesus says to us, Because I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you (John 15:19), he is NOT saying that Christians are universally hated by NON-CHRISTIANS. We are hated by the City of Man—by the ruler of this world, by the system of rebellion, humanism, and sin that both pulls on our heart strings to lure us and seeks to attack and destroy us. The average non-Christian is lost, hurting, and open to the love of Christ, like the woman at the well of Samaria.

A.  Reason #1. God’s very first command in the whole Bible to humans is Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth (Gen 1:28). As image bearers of God, Adam and Eve are created to be kings and queens over earth. They are to discover and unleash the potential God has put into planet earth, causing the earth and those humans God placed on the earth to flourish. They were to build culture; they were to turn the untamed garden into a beautiful, garden city. Out of love for God—allegiance to him—they were to rule over this process as his vice-regents, shaping that culture to please Him, according to the moral law of God written on their heart. God’s moral will on earth was to be done as it is in heaven. This command to the first humans was never abrogated by Jesus. Jesus did not undo this command but built upon it.
B. Reason #2. The second reason cultural withdrawal is wrong is that it is based on a misunderstanding of the term, world, in Scripture. Here is the background behind this term. When Adam and Eve joined Satan’s alliance to rebel against the High King, they unleashed the power of Satan, sin, and death upon kingdom earth. Adam and Eve’s kingdom has now become a realm where two loves, two allegiances compete. The great theologian, Augustine, describes human existence since the fall as two kingdoms existing side by side, which he likens to cities. He says, Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self (City of God.) The biblical term for this “earthly city” is the world.
This is very confusing because world can mean, “the earth with its inhabitants and all things upon it.” Scripture often uses “world” with this meaning, e.g. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the  world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God (Ps 90:2). But Webster also tells us world can mean, “the concerns of the earth and its affairs as distinguished from heaven and the life to come.” So, “the world” can refer to a system of thinking, a way of life that contrasts to the way of life in heaven. In other words, the term, world is used in Scripture BOTH for the sphere of human life on earth where the clash of two kingdoms takes place and as a synonym for one of the two kingdoms, i.e. the kingdom of darkness, i.e. the City of Man, the attitudes and perspective of sin—to a way of life shaped by the love of self to the contempt of God in contrast to a way of life shaped by the love of God, to the contempt of self.
This second definition of world as contrasting with the righteous life of heaven is the meaning of the world in John 15:19: Because I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. In this verse, the term, world, DOES NOT REFER TO OUR CURRENT CULTURE but to the kingdom of darkness at work in the culture. Again, the world does NOT refer to the non-Christians around me or the Internet, but the system of thinking—the worldview, the values of the lost world, the thinking and behavior that contrast to the righteous way of life in heaven. Here are some examples of this frequent use of the term, world, in the NT.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience (Eph 2:1).
He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23).
Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out (John 12:31).
But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Gal 6:4)
You once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2).
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:27).
We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19).

Withdrawal from the culture is wrong because it is based on a misunderstanding of the term, world. We are to turn our backs on the enticement and values of the fallen world but not on the sphere of human existence where this battle is taking place (culture) or on those being harmed by Satan and sin’s attacks.
C. Reason #3.  Jesus reaffirmed God’s command to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 to shape culture, subduing the earth in a way that pleases the High King when he calls his followers to make disciples of the nations. The Great Commission begins with the words, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”   After sin entered the world, humans only have the power to fulfill this creation calling in the power of Christ, the Second Adam who at the cross redeemed Adam’s kingdom from its slavery to Satan Sin, and Death. In fact, Jesus taught his followers that recovering and pursuing this calling is their highest priority. He commanded “seek first the kingdom of God and his rightness-for-creation” (which is what the term righteousness means). We are called to seek the rule of Christ’s moral law in every sphere of life—starting with our own hearts, and accomplishing Christ’s agenda in our heart attitudes, marriages, families, workplaces, neighborhoods, and nation.
We do this, however, not by military conquest, i.e. forcing that law on citizens (which is called theonomy). Christianity’s view of kingdom expansion is the opposite of radical Islam’s pursuit of the Caliphate, which practices jihad in slaughtering religious opponents and forcing Sharia Law on those who survive. Rather, Jesus repudiated the use of force, saying My kingdom is not of this world, and teaching that his kingdom grows not through political coercion but through Christians’ influence in the culture as salt, light, and leaven which spreads over the earth. Tuesday’s election is an opportunity for us to demonstrate that influence through voting, although our calling to shape culture in a fallen world goes way beyond voting.
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For me, class, family, opportunity, or wealth did not bestow upon me “White Privilege.”  No, my “White privilege” came as a gift and blessing from God, my heavenly Father, whose guidance I followed throughout life.  I wear my “White Privilege” as a badge of honor!

“White Privilege,” a negative accusation against White Americans, is among the latest and perhaps most poignant and trendy of bywords to describe the Caucasian race.  Regardless of the fact it dismisses multitudes of impoverished Whites across the nation or even the globe, it is quite popularly used.  I’m certain they would hardly feel “privileged.”  For Christians though, privilege isn’t necessarily a status in life; it’s a blessing related to some of God’s precious gifts to us, and such gifts are given universally regardless of race.
One has to admit that, yes, many Whites have been and are privileged.  But isn’t that true of many in all races?  Isn’t privilege, according to the world’s definition, related to class, family, opportunity, and wealth?  I grew up in a low middle-class family.  We weren’t impoverished, but we were far from comfortable or on easy street.  My parents’ struggles were incredible at times.  However, I am compelled to think back on my life and recognize a “White Privilege” perspective that may not be appreciated or enjoyed by all.  As a White Christian, that “White Privilege” relates directly to people of other races.  Here is the story of my “White Privilege.”
As a child raised in Sunday school, I sang “Jesus loves the little children of the world.  Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.”  Despite my surrounding community, this six- or seven-year-old believed all colors were loved by God, and she should love them too.  Learning that song was my first “White Privilege.”  My church supported a Black orphanage.  Our youth group frequently went and played with the Black orphaned children.  That was my second “White Privilege.”
In high school, I belonged to a student group called Inter-Group Relations.  As White students, we met with a Black high school’s students to discuss racial issues amicably together.  Another “White Privilege.”
Attending a Christian college in Columbia, South Carolina, a Chinese student from Hong Kong asked me to be her roommate my sophomore year.  I accepted her invitation.  Ting Lan Lam was remarkably gifted musically, exceptionally intelligent, and highly disciplined.  I loved and admired her.  Another “White Privilege.”
While still attending college, I taught a Black children’s Bible club in a very poor Black woman’s home.  A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling to give light.  I loved those children.  Add another “White Privilege.”
As a junior in college, I taught Sunday school classes to both White and Black female inmates in the county jail.  In the mid-1960s, they were still segregated from one another.  Once, I went to visit a Black female inmate to speak with her alone at her request.  She wished to share with me her life.  As much as I taught them, I learned much and cared for them.  That too was an added “White Privilege.”
Eventually, I studied French and Arabic at Paul Valéry University in Montpellier, France while living with a French family.   My classmates were from around the world, especially Eastern Europe and the Middle East.  I entered into friendly relationships with those students and the French professor. Once again, a “White Privilege.”
While living and studying in France, my colleagues were from England, Austria, Australia, Germany, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, The Netherlands, and Zanzibar.  They were European, Middle Eastern, and African.  An added “White Privilege” for me.
I was sent to Tunis, Tunisia in North Africa to study Arabic and begin ministry among that population.  Besides Arab, Black, and Jewish Tunisians, I became friends with Black Africans from Togo and Senegal.  I invited them into my home for hospitality, a meal and games.  I also worshiped with them.  What a “White Privilege” for me that was.  Perhaps the most precious of “White Privileges” there was to be given the Arabic name Basma, which means “She who smiles” or “smiling face,” by Tunisian girls.  I treasure that name!
Being transferred to Marseille, France, I served at the École Radio Biblique (Radio School of the Bible) where Arabic radio programs, Arabic and French Bible correspondence courses, and Christian newspapers were produced.  We represented 17 different nationalities and diverse races—African, Asian, European, and Middle Eastern.  A tremendous “White Privilege,” indeed!
Returning to the States, my career of almost 24 years in a Black-majority school district provided and sealed many friendships with African Americans.  What I consider a culmination of “White Privilege.” 
My “White Privilege” guilt is definitely immense, but I don’t regret it.  I feel no shame!  In fact, I celebrate and rejoice in it feeling greatly blessed.  That “Privilege” allowed me to grow and learn, and to become close friends with so many beautiful people of all races.
For me, class, family, opportunity, or wealth did not bestow upon me “White Privilege.”  No, my “White privilege” came as a gift and blessing from God, my heavenly Father, whose guidance I followed throughout life.  I wear my “White Privilege” as a badge of honor!
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
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