# 1

In an earlier post I started this series responding to Sam Storms’ Gospel Coalition post on why he changed his mind about the millennium (from premillennial to amillennial).  In that post, I dealt with some introductory things.  Starting with this post, I will make one post each for the six reasons he gives to allegedly prove that premillennialism is untenable.  Hopefully in a friendly way I can make some assertions that help to defend the premillennial understanding of the end times.

The first reason that Sam gives is that if you are a premillennialist, “you must necessarily believe that physical death will continue to exist beyond the time of Christ’s second coming.”  He goes on to couple that statement with the words “death is defeated and swallowed up in victory at the parousia.”  Sam’s post is just giving general statements and not the detailed arguments that will naturally be present when his book Kingdom Come is released soon.  However, I would like to take a stab at responding to the general statement here.

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Introduction

With this post I am beginning a series of seven posts giving response to the testimony and basic argumentation of amillennialist Sam Storm.  Storm, whom I have never met to my knowledge, took advantage of the opportunity that the Gospel Coalition website gave to post testimonies of evangelicals who had changed their minds about some doctrine.  His well written summary gave some testimonial information about his experience as a student at Dallas Seminary 1973-77,  his wrestling with tenets of dispensational premillennialism (especially the pre-trib rapture), and six essential arguments showing biblical information that he insists cannot be handled within a dispensational framework.  I had intended to respond when I first saw the article by Storm a couple of months ago, but I came down with an illness and then my heavy travel schedule for Baptist Bible Seminary in February moved it off my table for a while.  It is spring break now, so I am picking it back up.  In doing so, I want to treat Storm with respect and hope he will do the same for me.  I have no basis by which to judge him as something other than a fine brother in Christ, who simply disagrees with the position that I hold.  However, our differences do matter for theology and ministry in the churches.  I will use his first name below to highlight friendship in Christ in spite of our differences.

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