Charles Grandison Finney on the millennium & Christ's return

Postmillennial — the gospel triumphs before Christ returns

THE POSITION

The millennium is something the church's faithfulness in revival can bring, and bring soon. Had the whole church gone to work ten years earlier, he says, "there would not now have been an impenitent sinner in the land. The millennium would have fully come in the United States before this day." That is the shape of the third stance: the gospel triumphs before Christ returns. The lecture does not discuss the timing of the return itself, so the state is a lean.

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ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Law student turned revivalist of the Second Great Awakening, licensed and ordained by a Presbyterian presbytery in 1824, later professor of theology and president at Oberlin College. His Lectures on Revivals of Religion argued that a revival is the right use of means and not a miracle. His Systematic Theology built a doctrine of salvation on moral government and on the sinner's natural ability, and denied original sin as a sinful nature, imputed righteousness, and that the atonement paid what sinners owed. This entry rests on that Systematic Theology (1878 edition), the Revival Lectures, one chapter of the Memoirs, three Oberlin Evangelist pieces and one letter.