The term “amillennial” derives from a (which means “no”) and mille (“thousand”) and annum (which means “years”). The amillennial view denies a literal thousand year reign of Christ on earth or even any millennial-type conditions dominating on earth in the pre-consummation order.
Amillennialists hold that Christ established his kingdom in the first century as a spiritual-redemptive reality. The Church is the focal point of Christ’s redemptive kingdom. It will grow and win many converts to Christ and serve as his witness to the world. The present age is the “millennium,” which is a symbolic value picturing a long period of time. However, Christ’s kingdom will never achieve a majority status in the world and will eventually decline into apostasy as history collapses into the chaos of the great tribulation, opening the door to the Antichrist. Christ will then return to destroy his enemies, resurrect the dead, judge all men, and establish the eternal order.
Thus, this view is pessimistic. As Cornelis Venema expresses it: “amillennialists believe that the biblical descriptions of the inter-advental period suggests that the world’s opposition to Christ and the gospel will endure, even becoming more intense as the present period of history draws to a close.”1 Contemporary defenses of amillennialism can be found in the following books:
Kim Riddlebarger, A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003).
Cornelis P. Venema, The Promise of the Future (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000).
1 Cornelis Venema, The Promise of the Future (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 239; cp. 141, 156, 242.