Pre, Mid, Or Post?
These words are shorthand for: pretribulation, midtribulation, posttribulation and they all refer to when the rapture is supposed to occur. But to understand these terms you need a little background.
The Millennium
In Revelation 20:1-3, 7-8, it states: "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were ended. After that he must be loosed for a little while. . . . And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth."
The period of a thousand years, the writer tells us, is the reign of Christ, and the thousand-year period is popularly called the millennium. The millennium is a harbinger of the end of the world, and Revelation 20 is interpreted in three ways by conservative Protestants. The three schools of thought are called postmillennialism, amillennialism, and premillennialism. Let's take a look at them.
Postmillenialism
According to Loraine Boettner in his book The Millennium, postmillennialism is "that view of last things which holds that the kingdom of God is now being extended in the world through the preaching of the Gospel and the saving work of the Holy Spirit, that the world eventually is to be Christianized, and that the return of Christ will occur at the close of a long period of righteousness and peace, commonly called the millennium."
This view was popular with Protestants in the nineteenth century, when Progress was expected even in religion and before the horrors of the twentieth century were tasted. Today few hold to it, except such groups as Christian Reconstructionists, who consciously work for a "Christian America" in a sense that even the early Puritans hardly dreamed about.
Commentators point out that postmillennialism is to be distinguished from the view of theological and secular liberals who envision social betterment and even the Kingdom of God coming through purely natural, rather than supernatural, means. Postmillenialists argue that the gospel will be spread and the world will be Christianized purely God's supernatural power by the Holy Spirit. Man is incapable of building a paradise for himself, postmillenialists insist; the paradise will only come about by God's grace.
Postmillennialists also typically say that the millennium spoken of in Revelation 20 should be understood figuratively and that the phrase "a thousand years" refers not to a fixed period of ten centuries, but to an indefinitely long time. The number 1000 is used in Revelation 20 to indicate a very long period of time. For example, Psalm 50:10 speaks of God's sovereign rulership of all that is and tells us that God owns "the cattle on a thousand hills." This, of course, is not meant to be taken literally. In reality, God owns all cattle everywhere in the world, and there are a lot more than a thousand hills in the world, just as there are a lot more cattle in the world than could fit on a thousand hills.
At the end of the Millenium will come the Second Coming, the general resurrection of the dead, and the last judgment.
Amillenialism
Next is the amillennial or nonmillennial view, which interprets Revelation 20 symbolically and sees the millennium not as an earthly golden age in which the world will be totally Christianized, but as the present period of Christ's rule through his Church on earth.. Amillennialists don't believe in an earthly golden age but in the coexistence of good and evil on earth until the end. The golden age of the millennium is instead the heavenly reign of Christ with the saints, in which the Church on earth participates in some degree, though not in the glorious way it will at the Second Coming.
The state of tension that exists on earth between the righteous and the wicked will be resolved only by Christ's return at the end of time. Amillenialists follow Augustine and see the reign of Christ existing now in heaven and in the Church and in Christians, and they argue that an understanding of the millennium as an earthly golden age is incorrect.
To explain their view of the millennium, amillenialists point to the fact that the thrones of the saints who reign with Christ during the millennium appear to be set in heaven (Rev. 20:4; cf. 4:4, 11:16) and that the text nowhere states that Christ is on earth during this reign with the saints.
They explain that, although the world will never be fully Christianized, the millennium does have effects on earth in that Satan is bound in such a way that he cannot deceive the nations by hindering the preaching of the gospel (Rev. 20:3). They point out that Jesus spoke of the necessity of "binding the strong man" (Satan) in order to plunder his house by rescuing people from his grip (Matt. 12:29-30). Thus, when the disciples returned from a tour of preaching the gospel, rejoicing at how demons were subject to them, Jesus declared, "I saw Satan fall like lightning" (Luke 10:18). Thus for the gospel to move forward at all in the world, it is necessary for Satan to be bound in one sense, even if he may still be active in attacking individuals (1 Peter 5:8)
Premillenialism
Third on the list is premillennialism, which is currently the most popular among Fundamentalists and Evangelicals (though a century ago amillenialism was). Most of the books written about the End Times are written from a premillennial perspective. (Hal Lindsey, author of Late Great Planet Earth, is probably the best-known writer in this category.)
Like postmillenialists, premillenialists believe that the thousand years is an earthly golden age during which the world will be thoroughly Christianized. Unlike postmillenialists, they believe that it will occur after the Second Coming rather than before, so that Christ reigns physically on earth during the millennium. They believe that the Final Judgment will occur only after the millennium is over (which many, though not all of them, interpret to be an exactly one thousand year period).
The Rapture
One doctrine premillenialists often give a great deal attention to is the doctrine of the "rapture." According to this doctrine, when Christ returns all of the elect who have died will be raised and transformed into a glorious state, along with the living elect, and then be caught up to be with Christ. The key text referring to the rapture is 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, which states: "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord."
The tricky thing about the rapture, and the point which premillenialists spend endless hours debating, is when it will occur. Premillenialists hold, as do virtually all Christians (except certain postmillenialists) that the Second Coming will be preceded by a time of great trouble and persecution of God's people (2 Thess. 2:1-4). This period is often called the Tribulation. Until a hundred and sixty years ago, all Christians agreed that the rapture (even though it was not called that at the time) would occur immediately before the Second Coming, at the close of the period of persecution. This position is today called the "post-tribulational" view because it says the rapture will come after the Tribulation.
But in the 1830s, a Scottish visionary, who belonged to a sect known as the Irvingites, claimed while in a trance that the rapture or gathering to be with Christ would occur before the period of persecution. This position, now known as the "pre-tribulational" view, was embraced by John Nelson Darby, one of the early leaders of a Fundamentalist movement which became known as Dispensationalism. Darby's pre-tribulational view of the rapture was then picked up by a man named C. I. Scofield, who taught the view in the footnotes of his Scofield Reference Bible, which was widely distributed in England and America. Many Protestants who read the Scofield Bible uncritically accepted what its footnotes said and adopted the pre-tribulational view, even though no Christian had heard of it in the previous 1800 years of Church history.
Eventually, a third position developed, known as the "mid-tribulational" view, which claims that the rapture will occur during the middle of the Tribulation. Finally, a fourth view developed which claims that there will not be a single rapture where all believers are gathered to Christ, but that there will be a series of mini-raptures that occur at different times with respect to the Tribulation.This confusion of views has led to countless books, tracts, and debates among premillenialists about when the rapture will occur, and caused the movement to split into bitterly opposed camps.
What's Your Position?
Extracted From Are You Pre, Mid, Or Post? Catholic Answers, “Are You Pre, Mid, Or Post?” (San Diego: Catholic Answers, 1996).
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