Mike Bickle discusses historic premillennialism and the concept of a victorious church, emphasizing the importance of understanding different end-time views to strengthen the church's mission. He highlights that the church is called to walk in unity, intimacy, and maturity, preparing for the second coming of Christ by embodying New Testament values. Bickle contrasts this view with others, stressing that a biblical understanding of the end times influences how believers live and engage with society. He encourages the church to actively participate in transforming various societal spheres while maintaining a posture of prayer and reliance on God's grace.

Turn to chapter 5, which is page 99. Father, we thank you for the grace of God this morning. We ask you for supernatural help to hear and receive from your word. We bless you in the name of Jesus. This morning we're going to talk about historic premillennialism and the Victorious Church. I want to describe what it is and what it isn't. And then to give a contrast of it to other views of the end times. I believe that this is the biblical view of the end times. But I think it's important to be familiar with the other popular views that are being proclaimed in the body of Christ worldwide. So this session will be very conceptual. So you'll engage your brain more than your heart in this session. But it's important to know this so that when people challenge you, you don't get confused and just give up on this whole subject. We will have a time for question and answer on these subjects. Just to remind you, we're covering 14 one-hour sessions of teaching. And then three one-hour question and answer times. So that's 17 sessions total. So today at noon we're going to have our first question and answer time. We will video it and we'll include it in the series for those that are watching this by video. Paragraph A. The view that IHOP holds about the end times is historic premillennialism with a post-tribulational view. Yet with one very important addition. The victorious praying church. Everyone who teaches historic premillennialism does not necessarily teach a historic praying church. I mean they don't teach a victorious praying church is what I meant to say. Two verses that you want to be very familiar with are Ephesians 5 and Revelation 19. Jesus is going to present the church glorious or victorious and filled with glory. I don't believe that this only means that the church is going to be victorious or victorious and filled with glory. I don't believe that the church will have glory because they have resurrected bodies after the rapture. It certainly includes that. But I believe that natural history is going to conclude with a church in the nations walking in the glory of God. That is more clear in Revelation 19 verse 7. The church will make herself ready by her responsiveness of wholeheartedness to the grace of God. She doesn't make herself ready after the rapture. This is her response to the grace of God before the second coming of Christ. So John emphasizes this dramatic response of the church worldwide before the second coming of Christ. Because we include the element of the victorious church, we sometimes refer to our end times view as apostolic premillennialism. And we use the word apostolic to speak of New Testament lifestyle, not the office of the apostle. But the church will have the vision, the values, the victory and lifestyle of the New Testament church. And that's what we mean by apostolic. So when I'm asked, I normally tell people historic premillennialism, but then they automatically don't think of a victorious church. So I say historic premillennialism with the apostolic church or the New Testament church values. And I will define these terms more fully as we go through this session. Paragraph B, apostolic Christianity is the same as New Testament Christianity. It's the church that walks in unity and intimacy and maturity. This is what Paul said, he gave some as apostles, he gave some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers, and their responsibility is to equip the saints. But notice where the saints are going to go in their walk with God. That the ministries of the church will not cease until something happens. There's three things that must happen before the ministries of the church have completed their tasks. That the church will walk in unity. The church will walk in the knowledge of the Son of God or the knowledge of Jesus. And the church will walk in maturity. Top of page 100. Now when Paul says the knowledge of the Son of God, it's talking about experiential knowledge of Jesus, connection to Jesus. He's not talking about the church becoming born again, they're already born again. They already have the introductory knowledge of who Jesus is or they would not be in the church. So when Paul says that the ministries will function until the church has the knowledge of God, that's talking about intimacy with God. When he said the church will walk as a mature man, that's maturity in the gifts of the Spirit, maturity in the fruit of the Spirit, and maturity in the wisdom of God. And so the vision that I see in the Bible for the church is unity, intimacy, maturity. Roman numeral two. What is apostolic Christianity or New Testament Christianity? Because this is where the Holy Spirit is bringing the church in this hour. And I believe the church will walk in all of these issues before the Lord returns. They're walking them in a great degree before the Lord returns. And this really matters, I mean, this is really related to what your end-time theology is. And I'll tie this together in a few moments as to why this matters in our study of the end times. Apostolic Christianity, it's Jesus centered. It speaks of allegiance to Jesus to proclaim his supremacy, his glory, and his worth. It is church centered. Jesus is building his church locally in university. It is wholehearted. It's a church that will walk in holiness and walk in discipleship in the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle. Before the Lord returns, the Holy Spirit will restore the first commandment to first place in the church. The first commandment is you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart. The bride will be ready as she fully loves Jesus with all of her heart. The church will, paragraph D, the church will walk in supernatural power. The church will operate in a life of prayer and intimacy with God. It possesses a missionary spirit that's focused on winning the harvest but also impacting every sphere of society with the kingdom of God. It embraces persecution. It engages in God's purpose for Israel. And it's free from the wrath of God as it goes through the tribulation. It's important to say that because many draw back on the subject of the church and the tribulation by saying but the church doesn't go through the wrath of God. And that's that's true. Paragraph three or roman number three. Roman number three. Now just a quick review from our last session on the Millennial Kingdom. And then we're going to talk about the different views of the Millennial Kingdom. My guess is you know leaders in the body of Christ that hold these three different views. And I believe that you need a biblical and a clear answer to the opposing arguments against what I believe is the biblical view. Paragraph A. The Millennial Kingdom is a thousand year period in which Jesus rules the whole world in righteousness. Paragraph B. The kingdom of God will be openly manifested in every area of society worldwide. Page 102. Now why does it matter what your view is on the end times? Why are we putting the effort in to understand what the bible says and to understand what the other popular views are? Because ideas have very dramatic consequences in our lifestyle. What people believe about the end times greatly affects the way they live today whether they know it or not. It affects their ministry focus. Their prayer life. Their lifestyle. A biblical view of the end times will strengthen the church in the hour to come. But a wrong view of the end times will actually hinder the maturity and development of the church in the days to come. Paragraph B. People often accept one of three extreme wrong views. These are three extremes that are wrong. Number one, many ministries are too negative. They say the antichrist is going to have power over everything. Why bother? Let's just not worry about that. So they draw back from wanting to impact society with the kingdom of God. They focus on evangelism, yes. They even focus on people walking in holy lives. But they have no vision to bring the kingdom of God into the area of media and government and education and marketplace in those areas of society. Why should we emphasize that? The devil's going to, the antichrist is going to run all of those areas anyway, so they draw back. The second extreme is being too positive. They believe that all of society is going to be transformed. Glory to God. I mean, before the Lord return, so they say glory to God. They're overly positive. They go beyond what the scripture says. They ignore what the bible says about the coming pressures that are very real. They ignore what the bible says about Jesus needing to be here before the transformation is substantial and complete worldwide. I know a few ministries like this. They don't want to hear about the trouble coming because everything's going to get better. They want to be positive. But their hope filled desire, which is good, needs to be tempered by what the bible says. We want to be loyal to what the bible says, not just be positive. We must resist exaggerated human optimism that goes beyond the bible. We must resist a man-pleasing spirit just wanting everybody happy with our good news. Everything's going to get better, and then the people all cheer. No trouble is coming. There is no antichrist. There are no end time judgments. There isn't a shaking of the nations of the earth. Things are just going to get better. Bless God, I believe the word is what they say. But there's a big trouble with that over a positive view. That hinders the church and leaves them unprepared. The third view is they're too vague. And most people fit in that category. It's impossible to know what the bible says anyway about the end times. Why bother with it? Things will just take care of themselves. I'm not going to really prepare or think much about this. And I believe that that's also a negative response. Because though things will pan out and take care of themselves, But the issue is, how will you do and how will you respond when these events happen? They will only go well spiritually for the people that are prepared and understand what's happening in that hour. The top of page 103. Three main approaches to end time prophecy. These are three terms that most of you know, but if you don't, you need to learn these three terms. They're very simple terms. Pre-millennialism, Post-millennialism, And all-millennialism. Those are the three most popular views of the end times throughout church history. Pre-millennialism, I believe, is the biblical view that Jesus returns pre- or before the millennium. He comes before the millennium in order to establish it. This is the only view that interprets end time prophecy in a literal face value way. And I believe it's important to interpret end time prophecy in its plain meaning, not to make it all symbolic and just kind of explain it away. Again, when in time prophecy it makes it clear that it's symbolic on a specific point, then we do make that symbolic. But unless the Bible itself indicates that point is symbolic, we take it in its plain sense, its literal sense. Post-millennialism means that Jesus returns post or after the millennium is already over. This group believes we're in the millennium right now. And when Jesus comes at the second coming, it's post, it's after the millennium is over. They teach that the church is going to Christianize the whole world before Jesus returns. The things will get better and better and better, and then finally Jesus comes when everything is fully Christianized worldwide. That view was very popular in the 1800s around the whole world. But today, there's only a few people who believe that. But it was the most popular view worldwide in the 1800s. And then the third view is amillennialism. And the letter A, aw, means no. This group believes there's no millennium. It's only a symbolic, figurative idea. It speaks of having spiritual victory in our heart over sin. That's what the millennium really is. And that's a simplified definition, of course. And many scholars believe are all millennialists. They think that the end-time prophecy being literal is so extreme, you really can't believe those things are going to happen. And they limit the kingdom of God on the earth in this age mostly to victory over sin in the believer's heart. But each one of these three views, they have strengths and they have weaknesses. And I believe the biblical view is to take the strengths from each one of these positions. Roman numeral 6, the strength of amillennialism. It focuses on the spiritual triumph of the church over sin and over the devil in this age. In that regard, I tell the amillennialists, that's awesome! And this handout has very simple, brief descriptions. And there's much more to say than I have room to say in each one of my presentations of these three views. And there's always some exceptions to every one of these main kind of ways of thinking. So my goal isn't to give a comprehensive overview, but just to give you a general idea of the trend of these three views. The weakness of amillennialism or just a couple of the weaknesses, they don't interpret end-time prophecy as literal. Now, a few might, but the vast majority don't. That means the 150 chapters I've been talking about that have end-times as their main focus, it's all just symbolic and figurative. That's a lot of Bible passages to dismiss as simply figurative and symbolic. So that is a great weakness in my opinion. The second great weakness is replacement theology. And what that means they take the promises that God gave Israel and they replace Israel with the church. When God gave a promise to Israel, they say, no, that promise has now been transferred to the church. But interesting, they almost never put the warnings and the judgments on Israel over to the church, only the promises. So they pick the good things, but they just ignore the bad things that God said to Israel. So most all-millennialists do not believe in a millennium, an antichrist, a tribulation, they don't believe in any of that. As literal things that will happen in the future. Now, there's a few all-millennialists that would believe in an antichrist and a great tribulation, but the most don't. Paragraph C. Most all-millennialists have a preterist view of the end times. What does a preterist view mean? It means that all of these prophecies or the vast majority of these prophecies were fulfilled somewhere in the past. That's what preterism in the past. Paragraph D. They don't believe in a great tribulation. It already happened in the past, in 70 AD. They don't believe in a literal antichrist. He already came. He was one of the, you know, they have many theories of who it was, like Nero, the Caesar of Rome, or some person like that in history. They don't interpret the book of Revelation in a futuristic literal way. It's mostly a spiritual poem describing a spiritual conflict in our hearts. They don't take it as a futurist, but as more of a spiritual poem that it happens victory in our heart over sin. So, the strength of amillennialism, victory over sin. That's good. The weakness, they make the end-time prophecies symbolic, so basically they're not important to anything happening in the future. And they dismiss God's purpose with the nation of Israel. Again, there's some exceptions. Some amillennialists would not agree with that 100%. Roman numeral 7. Postmillennial view of the kingdom. The strength of this view is their zeal for the cultural mandate. And the cultural mandate means working to establish the kingdom of God in every sphere of society. The weakness of this view is very similar to all millennialism. They believe the end-time prophecies are just symbolic or figurative. They embrace replacement theology. They replace the church in Israel with the church. Paragraph C. Most postmillennialists are preterists. They believe that the events in the book of Revelation already happened back in 70 A.D. Page 105. Postmillennialism is an overly optimistic eschatology or view of the end times. The term eschatology just means study of the end times. Now, postmillennialism was the most popular view in the 1800s. And many of the leaders in the body of Christ thought things would just get better and better and better. But then in the 1900s when two world wars happened, and society was getting worse, not better, a postmillennialism fell out of favor and most people backed away and said, maybe that's just a wrong view. But there are still scholars who really hold to this very strong view today. Again, this is a very simplistic overview. There's much more to say about these different views. Romans 8. Now the premillennial view. This is what IHOP teaches. This is what we're teaching in this conference. But there's two very different approaches to premillennialism. IHOP teaches one of them very strongly but does not teach the other. And people who do not understand the end times, they blur them together and they think they're the same thing. There is historic premillennialism and then there's dispensational premillennialism. Now historic premillennialism, paragraph B, that is what I'm teaching in this particular conference. This teaches the post-tribulation rapture that Jesus returns post or after the tribulation. It has a literal interpretation of end time prophecy and it honors God's purpose for the nation of Israel. But there's another view of premillennialism that's very popular. It's called dispensational premillennialism. That's very popular around the world today. It teaches a pre-tribulation rapture that the church is raptured and then the tribulation happens. It honors, it takes end time prophecy literal which I think is very good and it honors God's purpose for the nation of Israel. However, many involved in dispensational premillennialism they do not emphasize that the church is to reach out to transform society or to impact the different spheres of society. Many dispensationalists, they do not believe in the operation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and they see the church raptured before the great harvest where the gospel is preached to every nation of the earth. Paragraph D, page 106 Dispensational premillennialism is a new theology that began in the 1830s. It is a theological system that was never taught before in history until about 150 years ago. The early church fathers taught historic premillennialism. That was the primary view of the apostolic fathers in the early centuries. It's called dispensational because it teaches that God relates to his people in seven different dispensations through history. Or a dispensation would be seven dispensations would be seven seasons or seven periods of history. In paragraph E, I give three different approaches to dispensational premillennialism. Because they are changing their views little by little over the decades. Page 107 Let's look at this, let's just go through it again. The strength of this view is they have a literal interpretation of end-time prophecy. And they embrace God's purpose for the nation of Israel. The weakness of this view is the pre-tribulation rapture that they do not emphasize the church is to reach out and impact and transform the different areas of society. Most of them don't believe that the gifts of the spirit operate for today. They believe the church will be gone before the gospel is preached in all the nations of the earth. They say the Jews will do that, the church isn't responsible for that. Many are very active in evangelism, but they see that the great harvest in all nations comes afterwards, after we're gone. They see two different applications of the new covenant, one for Israel and one for the church. Two different ways, two different covenants for salvation. Okay, down to paragraph D. I believe that dispensational premillennialism is an overly pessimistic eschatology. That because things are only going to get worse and worse, why even impact society? It's all going to go bad anyway. And the common response is escapism, that they draw back and say, well, we can't fix things in the nation anyway, just let the Antichrist have it, he's going to get it anyway. And we're going to be raptured any minute anyway, so we might not even be here, so why should we involve ourselves with such focus and dedication and sacrifice? Now, in fairness, there would be some dispensational premillennial teachers that would not believe that. They would be very aggressive and very active in reaching society. But very common in this camp across the world is escapism, fatalism, defeatism. Some compare the church's mandate like being on a life raft out in the ocean. They should rescue drowning people from death by preaching salvation. They should seek to rescue people by preaching salvation. But they abdicate the responsibility to bring the kingdom to change society. They abdicate the kingdom responsibility to reach out to society to change it. You don't abdicate means to just ignore it. Thank you. Page 108. Another analogy with dispensational premillennialism is that they would say why polish the brass on a sinking ship? It's sinking anyway. Why put the energy to change the nation because the nation is going to go bad anyway. If the ship is sinking why should we spend our time polishing the brass? It's going down anyway. Now again there are a number of dispensational premillennial churches that are very active in soul winning. In wanting to bring the gospel of the kingdom into every area of society. But in the last 150 years what I've described is typical of the majority that have held this view in the last 150 years. Or maybe 180 years because that's as long as this view existed. It didn't exist before that. Roman numeral 10. Historic premillennialism. This view takes the literal interpretation of end time prophecy. That is a strength. It is preparing for future pressure. It's preparing for future persecution. And I mean preparing spiritually and in their understanding. I don't mean that they're storing up guns and saving water. That's not what I mean. They're actually preparing for the future. Because they believe they will be here. In the time of pressure. They see their responsibility to stand with Israel and to provoke Israel to jealousy. I believe that one of the main ways that Israel will be provoked to jealousy is by the church standing with her. That when we stand with Israel in a time of trouble it will cause them to listen to the truth about Jesus that we tell them. Though I believe historic premillennialism is the most biblical of the three views. Usually there's a big deficiency. They don't see the church getting stronger and stronger but just the church kind of holding on tight just a small remnant holding on to the end. They don't emphasize the victorious church or the bridal paradigm or the great harvest being successful. Again, there are exceptions. Some historic premillennialists would say that. But the majority see the church kind of holding on with a small remnant till the end. Paragraph C, IHOP's view is historic premillennialism with a post-tribulational view but with a victorious praying church. Typically, the victorious praying church you have to add that on to historic premillennialism because it typically is not understood as part of that view of the end times. Page 109 So let's look at this real quick. Historic premillennialism with victory. And again, we call it sometimes we call it apostolic premillennialism. That's not a biblical term. It's a description of historic premillennialism with victory. With an emphasis on the end time prayer movement and the bridal paradigm, the Bride of Christ view of the kingdom. And it emphasizes the value of the apostolic or the New Testament lifestyle, sermon on the mount, sacrifice, persecution, holiness, humility. Paragraph B. The strength of this view is it combines the biblical strengths of post-millennialism and all-millennialism. While taking in time prophecy literally, and calling the church to victory and calling the church to wholeheartedness. Just to summarize how we started this session, the Victorious Church will walk in unity, intimacy, and maturity in the greatest revival in history. It will be a praying church. And it will be used to bring in the great harvest and it will impact society in various places. We will not change most of society but we will change some of it. We don't know how much. We cannot just abdicate or forget our responsibility to society because we know we will not fully transform until the Lord returns. But we will make righteous advancements in the area of media, the area of education, the area of politics. In the area of technology, in the area of commerce and marketplace. God's raising up people in the marketplace. He's giving them prophetic understanding and supernatural favor to break forth in the marketplace with His power. Many educational systems are going in the way of darkness but it's time for the church to raise up godly educational systems. Of course that's happened some through history but we need to give more time and energy to these kinds of things. Because though there's great darkness increasing, God's favor will be upon these types of outreach into society. Paragraph D, it will be a church that walks wholeheartedly. This is a very important part of our end time view is the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle. And this lifestyle must be energized by encountering Jesus in intimacy the bridegroom God. As well as encountering the tenderness of the father's heart. Intimacy with God would be the tenderness of the father and the deep affection and love of the bridegroom. Paragraph E, we'll end with this that an apostolic church is a relevant church. I've already made this point a number of times but just to say it simply one more time that if we establish righteousness in some of the laws in our nation if there's righteousness in economic policies and righteousness in the area of abortion and areas like this in some places that righteousness will last right till the Lord returns those righteous policies. And if a nation outlaws abortion and outlaws human trafficking and outlaws oppression, economic oppression the Lord won't have to change that law when He comes back in that nation. So our efforts do matter right now. We're not just polishing brass on a sinking ship. The nations aren't all sinking. We can make change that will enhance people's lives now and also change that will even last into the age to come in some cases. Believers want to see the region they live in to be free of abortion free of oppression free of abuse of people. So it's important that we put energy in that but we need the right view of the end times or we will think it's a waste of our time. Amen. Good. We're going to take about a 10 minute break.