In Reply to: Re: Sweet dreams, George posted by George on November 16, 2002 at 02:35:06:
One thing that has become apparent to me in studying history is that, in spite of what we are told, the world is becoming BETTER, not worse, and the Church, with all that is obviously wrong with it, is healthier today than it ever has been.
Still, historical premillennialism (what we believed in the Family and what is suggested in the Didache), along with dispensational premillennialism ("Left Behind"/pre-trib) and amillennialism, all teach that God will have to intervene and bring things to a close, because the Gospel will have failed in its transforming work. Only postmillennialism (which I believe) offers an eschatology of victory and sees the preaching and demostration of the Gospel as bringing about the eventual restoration of God's fallen creation.
The improvements we see are all the result of the Christian Gospel (however poorly represented), or at least Judeo-Christian notions of fairness and consideration for the downtrodden. The concepts of personal worth and of individual destiny grew out of a Jewish understanding of all people being made in the image and likeness of God. In other cultures, the only ones who could have any reasonable hope of anything good coming their way were those in positions of power.
All the great liberation movements found their ground in the Bible. The movement for the abolition of slavery, the prison reform movement, the antiwar movement, the civil rights and women's rights movements, the movements of indigenous and dispossessed peoples of the earth, the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, the Solidarity movement in Poland, the free speech and prodemocracy movements in South Korea, China and the Philippines. These movements and their heroes have all employed the language of the Bible. In my opinion, there is every reason to hold out great hope for the future of planet earth in response to the Gospel.