Postmillennialism from the character of God
This is a somewhat niche one but something I’ve been thinking about after reading “Gentle and Lowly” by Dane Ortlund. There is a chapter in said book discussing what some have termed the “natural” and “strange” works of God. Mercy being the natural, and judgement the strange work. Even Puritans like Jonathan Edwards, the same man who wrote and preached the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, used these terms. Those terms specifically come from Lamentations 3:33-
For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.
From Jeremiah 32:41-
Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul.
And then from Isaiah 28:21-
For the Lord shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act.
Taking these together, Thomas Goodwin said in his work The Riches of God’s Love towards His Elect:
“My brethren, though God is just, yet his mercy may be in some respect to be more natural to him than all acts of justice itself that God doth shew, I mean vindicative justice; in them there is a satisfaction to an attribute, in that he meets and is even with sinners; yet notwithstanding there is a kind of violence done to himself in it, the Scripture so expresseth it; there is something in it that is contrary to him. […] But when he comes to shew mercy, to manifest that it is his nature and disposition, it is said that he doth it with his whole heart; there is nothing at all in him that is against it, the act itself pleaseth him for itself, there is no reluctancy in him. Therefore, in Lam. 3:33, when he speaks of punishing, he saith, 'He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.' But when he comes to speak of shewing mercy, he saith he doth do it 'with his whole heart, and with his whole soul;' so the expression is, Jer. 32:41. And therefore acts of justice, you know, are called opus alienum, his 'strange work,' and his 'strange act,' in Isa. 28:21. But when he comes to shew mercy, he rejoices over them, to do them good, with his whole heart, and with his whole soul; as it is in that Jer. 32:41.”
This blew my mind when I first read it, I’ve been spinning around in my head for days now. This is the kind of insight that has the power to change someone’s relationship with God. Now before anyone comes for me, I am not denying the classical Western understanding of divine simplicity. And I don’t have any reason to suspect that Goodwin or Edwards did either. Everything God is, He is absolutely. All of God’s attributes work together in perfect harmony in everything He does. Yes and amen. To say any one of God’s attributes is above another would be false. And yet, we have to be honest with the way the Bible describes God. And so we walk a fine edge. God is absolutely and completely everything that He is, and yet there does seem to be a mysterious sense in which mercy comes more naturally to Him than judgement. And all of that preface leads into my main topic: postmillennialism.
For those of you who don’t know (and I will assume that’s most people reading this) I will give a brief summary of the position. Postmillennialism is a belief about eschatology, or the last things; the “end times” in common parlance. Oversimplifying a lot, it is a belief that ultimately the world will be evangelized successfully and by the return of Jesus the world will be majority Christian. I know to most people that is going to sound weird, given the prevailing beliefs on eschatology in evangelicalism, but it is a belief I believe is backed up by Scripture. I also want to say that this post will not be an in-depth defense of postmillennialism; there are, I believe exegetical arguments to be made for my stance, but that is not what I am providing here. If there is interest, I could provide those in a future post.
My focus here is tying these two threads together and giving the reader something to chew on. If mercy is indeed God’s “natural work” then wouldn’t it make sense for more people to end up in heaven than hell? That by the end of all things, the number of the saved would far outnumber the damned? That so many people would be saved that we could confidently say that the world was saved? This also harmonizes with statements like John 3:17 and 1 John 2:2, where Jesus is said to have come to save the world and to have been the propitiation, not for our sins only, “but also for the sins of the whole world”. If God loves mercy with all His heart and soul, if He does not desire the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23, 33:11) I think it only makes sense that the world will indeed be saved in the course of history. John saw an uncountable number of people from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue in heaven (Revelation 7:9). How many is that? Billions? Trillions? More?? Of course, there isn’t an answer given except that it is uncountable. That is the extent of God’s mercy. May we come to know on a deeper and deeper level, the love and grace and mercy of God.