Premillennialism

Premillennialism encompasses several distinct views unified by the conviction that Christ’s return will initiate an intermediate stage in which he reigns fully over the present, sin-cursed form of the cosmos[1]. However, premillennialists diverge significantly on how Christ’s return relates to the tribulation and the rapture.

Core Premillennial Framework

Premillennialists differ among themselves about whether Jesus Christ’s first advent inaugurated God’s kingdom, with many earlier dispensationalists emphasizing that Israel rejected Jesus’s offer of the kingdom, while others more recently have embraced inaugurated eschatology where Jesus already brought God’s kingdom in his first advent, although the fullness of that reign is not yet realized[1]. Typically, but not necessarily, this intermediate reign involves a literal one thousand years that fulfills Old Testament promises to Israel and corresponds to Revelation 20[1].

Variations on Tribulation Timing

The major distinctions center on when believers experience the tribulation. The posttribulational view sees the rapture as part of Christ’s return when he comes to inaugurate the millennium, so the rapture happens after the “tribulation,” and God preserves Christians through this distress rather than removing them from the earth[1]. The midtribulational view sees the rapture taking believers away before God’s wrath comes at the middle of the tribulation period, treating biblical passages with “time, times, and half a time” as dividing the tribulation into two three-and-a-half-year halves, with believers enduring some earthly suffering before God removes them[1]. The pretribulational view sees Christian believers being kept away from and out of God’s wrath, so believers are raptured before the tribulation begins because the entire period contains God’s wrath[1]. The prewrath view positions the rapture right before the portion of the tribulation in which God actively pours out wrath at the unfolding of the very last days, agreeing that God’s people will not remain on earth during the direct outpouring of divine wrath, with only the last part of the tribulation containing this wrath[1].

Historic Premillennialism

Historic premillennialists believe that Christ will return to the earth to establish a 1000-year reign of righteousness followed by the new heaven and new earth, with the next event in God’s prophetic plan being the return of Christ which could be at any time, understanding tribulation to describe the suffering state of the church rather than a future 7-year period[2].

[1] Daniel J. Treier, Introducing Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2019), 346–348.
[2] Glenn R. Kreider, “Eschatology,” in The Harvest Handbook of Bible Prophecy, ed. Ed Hindson, Mark Hitchcock, and Tim LaHaye (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2020), 110.