Creationism - National Center for Science Education

millennialism which has been a mainstay of twentieth-century fundamentalism, claiming
that it results in a pessimistic and fatalistic outlook on earthly existence. Post-mills
believe that Christianity will triumph over the world, and that Christians will take over,
eventually ushering in the Millennium through their successful efforts at reconstructing
society. Rejecting the dispensational view that the Old Testament “dispensation” or
covenant no longer applies to mankind, Reconstructionists believe that Old Testament
law is still valid: their reconstructed Christian society will be a strict Old Testament
theocracy. They stress that biblical principles must be applied to government and to all
other fields, including science, and they urge Christians to “take dominion” over mankind
as well as over the earth, and reconquer the world for Christ. The titles of many
Reconstructionist books indicate this aggressive Dominion optimism and activism: J.
Marcellus Kik’s An Eschatology of Victory (1971), David Chilton’s Paradise Restored:
An Eschatology of Dominion (1985), John Jefferson Davis’s Christ’s Victorious
Kingdom: Postmillennialism Reconsidered (1986), Robert Thoburn’s The Christian and
Politics (1984), Gary North’s Unconditional Surrender: God’s Program for Victory
(1981).
Reconstructionists accuse pre-mills of passivity and fatalism; of abandoning hope
that the world can be wholly converted and of waiting instead for the return of Christ and
the Rapture; of relying on scare tactics for superficial conversions—getting people to
accept Jesus simply in order to escape Hell; of only caring about counting souls
nominally saved, and of not being concerned with building a truly Christian society
because of their belief that the world will reject Christ in these End Times before He
comes in person to initiate the Millennium over this fallen world. They charge that the
pre-mill attitude is ineffective for promoting critical concerns, including creationism.
Pre-mills in turn accuse the post-mills, and other advocates of “Dominion
Theology,” of embracing New Age occultism and similar humanistic temptations of
Satan; of emphasizing worldly success and materialism rather than spiritual values; and
of being susceptible to materialistic heresies such as “Prosperity Gospel” and “Christian”
psychology. The theological rivalry between these rival camps is often fierce. For
example, Constance Cumbey, author of the popular Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow
(1983), an expose of the New Age movement claiming that it is derived from the same
occult sources as Nazism, wrote a sequel called A Planned Deception: The Staging of a
New Age “Messiah” (1985), in which she accused Pat Robertson of promoting New Age
occultism and counterfeit miracles inspired by Satan, and of promoting the heresy of
seeking to “usher in Christ’s reign right here on earth.” Dave Hunt, co-author of the
influential book The Seduction of Christianity (1985), is likewise engaged in a bitter feud
against post-mills. He argues that Dominion Theology, with its stress on gaining worldly
power and wealth, is a Trojan Horse opening the gates to New Age beliefs, occultism and
other Satanic counterfeits.
The Reconstructionists are outraged by such accusations (though they admit that
some Christians have foolishly adopted unbiblical New Age techniques). They reply that
Hunt has mistaken the optimistic post-mill eschatology, and its belief that it will
reconquer the world for Christ, for New Age doctrines. (And they strenuously insist that
this post-mill optimism has no relation to evolutionism, as the pre-mills charge.)
Reconstructionists blame occultism and paranormal phenomena (which they fervently
believe in) squarely on humanistic evolution, which, they argue, denies the very basis of