Session 1: God’s Plans for the Future

According to the Old Testament prophets, the Jewish Messiah was supposed to rule Israel and the whole world and set up a messianic kingdom on this earth. The world would be characterized by peace, justice, righteousness, and prosperity. The messianic kingdom would be an age of righteous humanity in an Edenic paradise. But Jesus Christ was rejected, crucified, resurrected, and then he ascended to heaven. And the world remains characterized by strife, war, injustice,
unrighteousness, and systemic poverty. Where then is the messianic kingdom?

Before the fall, the world was the Son of God’s righteous kingdom on earth. That is because the Genesis creation was created through him, by him, and for him. But when Adam and Eve sinned, they allowed Satan into the world and it became his regime, or his dominion. Does the Son of God ever get his kingdom back? As Christians, do we ever return to the garden of Eden? Is there a literal 1,000-year restoration before the eternal kingdom? Or do we simply go to heaven when Christ returns to gather his people?

Conservative theologians cannot agree on whether or not Christ rules the world during the millennium before his saints inherit eternal life in the age to come. In this lecture series, I will take the strengths from each of the current views on eschatology and integrates them into an alternative framework for understanding God’s endgame. This view is called postrestorationalism—Christ returns after a literal 1,000-year restoration of this Genesis creation to rapture the saints and take them to the Father’s imperishable kingdom of heaven.