Optimistic Eschatology

A lot of other Post Millennial Partial Preterists are really invested in branding our eschatology as more Optimistic than any other, especially Premillennialism.

All Christians have an ultimately Optimistic worldview, we all believe Jesus wins in the end, in fact I’d dare say Optimism is an inherently Christian invention.  In my view how Optimistic a Christian is has more to do with Soteriology than Eschatology.  I believe in Universal Salvation and that is objectively the most Optimistic Soteriology, a Premillennial Futurist who agrees with me on that shares my Optimism more than a fellow Post Millennial who’s an infernalist or annihilationist.

The gist of the idea that Partial Preterist Postmillennialism is the most Optimistic Eschatology is believing that there is no inherent expectation that things will from where we are now get worse before they get better, that could happen but it’s not Biblically required to.

But that really depends on where exactly in Revelation Chapter 20 you think we currently are.

The first 6 verses are what definitely all Post Millennial Partial Preterists believe has already happened.  But a belief that nothing Bad has to happen between now and the Parousia would require believing even verse 10 is already in the past, or at least verse 9. 

I still favor a fairly literal interpretation of what a Thousand Years means, even though some of how I view other details of this same chapter can be considered less than strictly literal.  So if we entered the Millennium at any point in the first 1024 years of the Gregorian Calendar then verse 7 has already happened.  And currently the latest point I have considered for starting the Millennium in during the reign of Heraclius in the first half of the 7th Century.  But I’ve also considered as early as the Crisis of the Third Century and am preparing to consider even a Second Century model. 

It is tempting in that context to look at the Turks and/or Mongols of the late middle ages as Gog and Magog.  But as someone who’s a Revivalist not Reconstructionist I prefer not to look at the conflict in view here in Ethno-National terms. 

I view the Camp of the Saints and Beloved City as all Separatist Congregational Polity Christians not a specific Geographical Location.  While my Baptism of The Beast view has me viewing High Church Christianity as the Beast and False Prophet currently in the Lake of Fire.

So basically whether or not verses 8-10 have fully already happened I am undecided on.  But when trying to favor the most Optimistic view possible I tend to view real world evidence of the loosing of Satan as the rise of modern Capitalism which is Atheistic in Nature.  But I've also bene speculating on a connection between all this and a Historicist reading of II Thessalonians 2.

There is nothing Unoptimistic about being prepared for bad things to come.  As the last episode of the English Dub of Futari Wa Pretty Cure said "The Night is Darkest just before The Dawn".