One of the things I’ve learned after embracing postmillennial eschatology, is that people often accuse us of promoting a health and wealth gospel. Because we take seriously God’s promises to the Patriarchs, that He will bless their offspring (fulfilled in the gospel, in us), that somehow becomes the Prosperity Gospel. I also very much like the word flourish, which comes from the world of classical education, but I like it nonetheless. As a verb, these definitions from a Freespoke search are helpful:
To thrive or grow well: The barley flourished in the warm weather.
To prosper or fare well: The cooperation flourished as the customers rushed into the business.
To be in a period of greatest influence: His writing flourished before the war.
This flourishing is what I believe the gospel means to God’s people post ascension of Jesus to the right hand of God. Before getting to why I and postmillennialists believe God actually wants to bless us and wants us to flourish, I’ll give my two inspirations for this post.
One is a post I wrote on Twitter/X asking this question: Does God Want His People to Flourish? To Bless Us? Christians, how would you answer that?
In one interaction, someone said he didn’t know where I was coming from, and that it sounds like I was promoting a Prosperity Gospel. Let me state this clearly so there can be no misunderstanding: Postmillennialism is not, or does not, promote a prosperity or health and wealth gospel. Rightly understood it never has. I will get to rightly understood below because it is crucial if we’re to have productive conversations on the topic. That is, if someone wants the conversation. Like the gospel, I never push where there is zero interest. I cast the lure into the water, and if someone even nibbles on it, we’re off!
I also had another thought related to my questions. How would a Jewish person answer that question, secular or religious? Here’s how—by saying that’s the stupidest question ever! To Jews, material and spiritual prosperity go hand in hand. Here is one among many reasons why, from Deuteronomy 8:18:
But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.
Wealth was a sign of God’s covenant blessings to His people. This Jewish understanding is perfectly encapsulated in the disciples’ response to how Jesus dealt with the rich young ruler. When he told them how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, they were shocked and asked something we never would today: “Who then can be saved?” From this side of Christian history their question makes no sense to us unless we understand first century Judaism. Because of monasticism, poverty came to be seen as a spiritual virtue, and wealth a spiritual hindrance. Neither of those things are true. Poor people are just as tempted to idolatry and putting their trust in anything but God as are wealthy people.
What Does it Mean that God Blesses Us?
This question has been on my mind since I embraced postmillennialism in August 2022.
God clearly intended to bless his people as is clear from his promises to Abraham about blessing the nations through him. He says to Abram in Genesis 12 God he will make him a great nation and that all peoples on earth will be blessed through him. In Genesis 17 the Lord declared that in Abraham’s offspring “shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” because he obeyed His voice. We know that offspring, or seed as Paul says, is Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s long awaited Messiah.
The gospel was the fulfillment of those promises, and through it God is extending his blessings to the entire earth.
This is a deeply significant question that merits careful consideration before we answer too blithely as if we know what God’s blessings mean. I would submit many of us do not. Postmillennialists are misunderstood when talking about God wanting to bless us because Christians understand God’s blessings too narrowly. I’ll tell you what it does not mean: perfect, wonderful circumstances where everything is peace and light and prosperity. It can most assuredly be those things because every single human being wants them. God grants them at times, and we are to be grateful for and rejoice in God’s bounty in them, but they are not the full extent of God’s blessings.
Blessing is also found in suffering, in the challenges and struggles of life. By sinful human nature we all think blessing is when the rushing river of life is flowing ever onward toward what we think we want. But we have no idea what we really need, what will truly bless us in God’s economy. In the wisdom of Mick Jagger, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. Any old dead fish can float downstream, but it’s the struggle against the current of life’s rapids that creates true spiritual strength, as Paul says in Romans 5, “that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
True prosperity, the “prosperity gospel” of postmillennialism, is that which considers all of the gritty reality in life post-fall, but believes the goal is to overcome the works of the devil, to push back the fall as far as the curse is found. This is rooted deeply in the dominion and cultural mandates that God gave Adam and Eve; where they failed, Jesus succeeded, and we, his body, his church though the gospel are now fulfilling those mandates in our everyday lives in every area of life.
The Purpose of Our Lives is to Glorify God
There are many passages we could explore to make the point of God’s purpose in blessing His people, but one worthy of mention is in Isaiah 26:
7 The path of the righteous is level;
you, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth.
8 Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws,
we wait for you;
your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts.
The second part of verse 9 has been ringing in my head for years, but I didn’t tie it to what comes immediately before. In salvation, God transforms our hearts from sinful God-hating stone to spiritually God adoring flesh. As we grow in faith, our hearts increasingly burst with a desire that He might be glorified and declared among the nations. It’s like having the prettiest girl or most handsome guy in school, you want everybody to know about it.
One of the reasons God hates sin so much is that when we engage in it, through attitudes or deeds, omission or commission, it destroys us. Rebellion against God’s word, His law, and His created order is a recipe for destruction, in small ways and large, obvious and subtle. In the first part of verse 9 Isaiah is telling us that obedience to God’s laws is the means to transforming us from self-glorying to God-glorying. Augustine and Luther defined sin as incurvatus en se, being curved in ourselves. Righteousness by contrast is being absorbed in who God is. J.I. Packer in his wonderful little book, The Plan of God, puts it this way:
Like God Himself, the godly man is supremely jealous that God, and God only, should be honored. Indeed this jealousy is part of the image of God in which he has been renewed. There is now a doxology written on his heart, and he is never so truly himself as when he is praising God for the glorious things that He has done already and pleading with Him to glorify Himself yet further.
There are two ways we can practically turn our hearts into instruments of continual doxology. One is to spend daily time in Scripture and prayer. Committing to doing that around 2012 changed the course of my spiritual life. The other is obedience to God’s law-word, at least as best I can. The corollary to this commitment to obedience is a commitment to daily repentance for continual sin in my life. Perfection is impossible; thus we confess and trust his Holy Spirit to guide us in the process of continual sanctification. The gospel is both justification and sanctification because to us, Jesus is both (I Cor. 1:30).
This commitment to obedience to God transforms our affections so that we want nothing more than to obey and please him because we know he wants nothing more than to bless us in our obedience. That’s what Isaiah is saying, as we walk in the way of his laws we can wait for him to make our way smooth knowing that may very well not be in this life. Often it is not smooth at all, and for some it is positively horrific. Does that mean God is not blessing those he’s called to suffering? Of course not! Look at the life of the Apostle Paul who knew suffering. You can see in detail some of that suffering in 2 Corinthians 11. He also said he knew what it is to “be content whatever the circumstances” (Phil. 4). He continues:
12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
He also said that we are to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” God blesses us to the degree we give thanks in all circumstances because in gratitude for his goodness and love we bring glory to Him.
We Live in a Cause and Effect Universe
Having said that, we also live in a cause and effect universe. Certain inputs have certain outputs, and we can have a reasonable expectation of what those results will be. We don’t plant apple seeds expecting corn. That is why Isaiah can say the path of the righteous is level, and that God makes the make the way of the righteous smooth. Right living just makes life easier. Read Proverbs if you don’t believe me. This passage in Jeremiah 17 is one of the many confirmations of this biblical fact:
5 Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
Two different ways of life, two different orientations, lead to two different results. There is a connection between sowing and reaping, as Paul says, “whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully” (2 Cor. 6:9). That passage is in reference to giving, but it’s a creational fact of existence. Paul uses this imagery three times in Galatians, and in one verse says this:
For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
I used to over spiritualize verses referring to “eternal life,” thinking that obviously means heaven, our next life, but that’s only part of the story. I believe everything we do has ripples flowing into eternity, but now I believe we are living eternal life, God’s life, here and now. Thus Jesus’ teaching us to pray that God’s kingdom, a kingdom of eternal life, His life, would come to earth as it is in heaven.
This kingdom living obviously has spiritual, intangible, personal consequences, as Paul says, the kingdom of God is a matter “of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). In other words right living by God’s grace leads to peace and joy, but right living should also lead to material prosperity, as I quoted Moses above. I shouldn’t have to say there is nothing wrong with material prosperity. Proverbs is clear about the differences between the lazy and the industrious man. King David tells us that wealth and honor come from the Lord specifically because He is “the ruler of all things” (I Chron. 29:10-13). And I could go on.
Does this guarantee anything? Of course not, but the issue is a reasonable expectation of results in our lives, and God says we can have that, both spiritually and materially. We can’t guarantee anything in life, and are in control of nothing, but we can do the best we can, and trust God with the results.
This highlights the non sequitur Christians commit when they claim postmillennialism is a Prosperity Gospel. Because some people suffer, that means God doesn’t want us to prosper, or flourish, or that suffering means He is not blessing. That simply doesn’t follow. He tells us, rather, “The blessing of the Lord that makes rich, and He adds no sorrow with it” (Prov. 10:22). I will end with a quote from James 1:
25 But the one who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
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