As a good Amillennialist, I believe that the gospel age (or, church age) was inaugurated at the cross. The kingdom of God is here. We are in the millennium now and it ends with the second coming of the Lord Jesus. Good and evil will continue together until the Lord returns. When he comes, the saints will be caught up with him, the world will be destroyed, and then the New Creation.

As I judge it, this means sometimes good will be in the ascendancy while sometimes evil might appear to have the stranglehold. Empires will rise and fall, governments may do much good or may do significant ill, suffering and persecution may come intensely at times and less forcefully at others, on and on. We are liable to find that some things are on an uptick at exactly the same time as other things are on the downturn. A generation later these things may be turned on their head. Such will it be until the Lord Jesus returns.

It is Premillennialists who will generally see everything as getting worse. It is quite interesting how the Premillennial view predominates in fundamentalism. It certainly suits a negative, defensive worldview. Engagement with the world either become pointless, because everything is getting worse so why bother, or takes on something closer to a batten down the hatches approach, assuming the world is getting worse but we might as well do our best to stymy its worst effects.

Amillennialism should avoid the utter negativity of the Premillennialist. The gospel age is here and so, minimally as the church grows, some things will get better. Not just spiritually as the church has an impact on individuals as the gospel makes inroads and creates new disciples, but also culturally as those disciples then have a positive and beneficial impact on the culture just as they live out their Christian lives under the gospel. At the same time, prior to the Lord’s return, evil continues in the world too and will continue to grow in its own way. Sometimes the church will be in the ascendancy, sometimes it will not. Sometimes the beneficial impact of believers on the culture will tell, sometimes it is the ungodly impact of unbelievers that will hold sway. Sometimes God’s common grace will mean unbelievers serve the good, sometimes God’s restraining hand will be removed and all manner of evil will run rampant. These things are not steady upward or downward trajectories, but – whilst not exactly cyclical – sometime on a uptick or a downturn.

This seems to allow for a realistic view of the world as we find it. Things will not get exponentially better until Jesus returns, nor will they necessarily get exponentially worse either. Both will continue, sometimes one appearing to be doing better than the other, sometimes one area doing better than another, and ever it shall be thus until the Lord comes again.

I say all this because we can often fall into a woe is me mindset. Everything is getting worse, things just suck, and that’s how God said it’s going to be. Let’s just suck it up, grin and bear it, and pray that the Lord would come quickly. Two things seem worth pointing out.

First, these things are very often quite Western centric. We see things getting worse in the West but have little eye on the Majority World. Europe may be on a downturn, but what about Latin America or the Middle East or East Asia? What if they’re on an uptick that we are ignoring? We can, in effect, be little Englanders seeing everything getting worse at home and yet ignoring what the Lord is doing in vast swathes of the world. We can be so localised that we do the same by judging matters through the lens of our locality or even our own local church with little to no thought on what the Lord is doing well beyond us. Things may be better than we think if we care to broaden our horizons.

Second, even at home, there are issues of goodness on the uptick and matters of evil on the downturn. Consider the UK’s specific approach to how we treat disabled people. No doubt we are far from perfect here, but I would be surprised if any honest observer suggested we treat disabled people worse today than we did 100 years ago. Likewise, think of our current approach to child protection compared to even 40 years ago. Again, by no means perfect, but no honest observer would suggest that our care for children’s safety is worse today than it was in the 1970s. These are just two examples amongst many of good on an upturn and evil on the downturn. At the same time, we can’t ignore there are clearly issues that work the other way too. From a Christian point of view, it is difficult to deny that the British approach to sex and sexuality has largely taken a nosedive. The historical evidence (both recent and longer term) is that every era has things apparently better and things apparently worse, some things on an uptick and others on a downturn. Such shall it ever be.

The sum total of this, it seems to me, is that we neither need to despair and fall into despondency nor maintain the unbridled joy of the unrealistic optimist. We can look at the world, nation, church or culture and always find good mixed in with the bad. There will always be things to be happy about and things less pleasing. We can rejoice when good is in the ascendancy and we can take comfort that what is evil will not always or necessarily be like this, even if the Lord tarries (and certainly not if he doesn’t!). Sometimes things get better, sometimes things get worse, but the Lord remains sovereign and continues to build his church until he returns and makes all things new.