Doctrine
Christ’s return, the resurrection, and the judgment.
About 3 minutes to read
Eschatology
Start with what every Reformed believer confesses. It is more than most people expect, and it is enough to live and die on.
Christ is reigning now, seated at the right hand of the Father, with all authority in heaven and on earth. He will return bodily, visibly, personally. The dead will be raised bodily, the righteous and the wicked alike. There will be a final judgment, real and just, and the wicked will be punished forever. Those in Christ will be acquitted openly and welcomed. Then come the new heavens and the new earth, where righteousness dwells and God himself lives with his people.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
Revelation 21:4 (KJV)
From here on, faithful men differ. The question is how the thousand years of Revelation 20 relates to the present age and to Christ’s return. Three historic answers have been held by confessional Reformed Christians.
The thousand years is the whole present age between Christ’s first and second comings. Satan is bound from deceiving the nations so the gospel can go out, the souls of the departed reign with Christ now, and the kingdom advances through the Word while the world stays a mix of wheat and weeds. Christ returns once, and judgment and the new creation follow immediately.
The same gospel that saves one sinner will, in God’s time, bring an age of widespread blessing, when the nations are discipled in great numbers and Christ’s rule is honored broadly on earth before he returns. That age is the fruit of ordinary preaching and the Spirit’s power, not a separate dispensation. Christ returns at the close of it to judge and to make all things new.
Christ returns first, and a real reign on earth follows his coming. The church passes through tribulation and is not removed from it. This view is ancient, and it is not built on a separation between Israel and the church.
The man who writes this site is amillennial, and he holds the first view above. He holds it as his own reading of Scripture and not as a test of fellowship. These are matters where brothers who confess the same Christ and the same Confession have differed in peace for centuries, and they should keep differing in peace.
Two cautions, though. Do not treat dispensational premillennialism, with its sharp split between Israel and the church and its secret rapture, as the Reformed position. It is not, and it came late. And do not let curiosity about the end replace readiness for it. The last things were given to make you holy and to comfort you while you wait.