June 3, 2026 Show with William Shishko on “Brave New World Revisited: A Postmillennial Perspective”

The Radio Program Begins and the Guest Introduction

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this third day of June, 2026.

Thanks to all of you who were praying for traveling mercies for me. As many of you may remember, I took a trip to Long Island last Thursday because last Saturday was the 30th anniversary of Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, and I was honored that they invited me to attend this event and even doubly honored that they provided seating for me at the same table with my dear friend, Pastor Rich Jensen, the founding pastor of Hope Reform Baptist.

I had a wonderful time. One of the highlights was seeing again after a number of years of not seeing him, my very first pastor, Mike Gaydosh. Mike Gaydosh, my very first under-shepherd as a born-again believer.

He baptized me and nurtured me and discipled me in the faith and became and still is one of my closest friends on earth. I also want to thank all of you out there who made it financially possible for me to be able to go on this trip.

I'm glad to be safely home and conducting my first live program since I left. I'm delighted to have as my guest, a returning guest here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of my dearest friends for decades going back to the late 1980s, William Shishko, founding pastor of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comac, Long Island, New York, now serving as evangelist for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church's Presbytery of Connecticut and Southern New York.

Today, we're going to be addressing Brave New World Revisited, a Postmillennial Perspective. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Bill Shishko.

Hey, Chris, great being back with you. You were on my turf when I was away for the conference about which I'm speaking. Sorry our paths didn't cross then, but I'm glad you had a blessed time on what I call that gospel-needy area of Long Island.

Yes, indeed.

I know that you are not currently pastoring there any longer, but you did found The Haven, the OPC Church in Comac, Long Island. Why don't you tell us something about that congregation?

Look, Chris, it's been a delight. I'm in my 74th year right now, praise the Lord. When I read that God gives us three score years in 10, 70, and if by reason of strength, 80, I realize I'm on the downhill side of things.

But it has been a delight that both my wife and I have been able to serve here on Long Island since 1981. Most of those years, almost 36 of them at Franklin Square in Nassau County. And then a brief stint as what was called a regional home missionary working with a number of churches.

And then it was, oh my, 2018. I was asked if I would consider doing a church plant in Suffolk County, which is the eastern most of the two counties that compose Long Island. And that was interesting. Gathered a group of people that wanted a faithful church, and I was quite surprised.

They wanted me to be their pastor. They called me in, what was it, 2020? I think it was 2021. And I said, well, I'll give you a few years, four, God willing. And the Lord not only blessed, very greatly blessed those four years.

We were able to get the facility in Comac, New York, right on the Veterans Highway. The Lord provided an intern who subsequently was called as my associate pastor and is now the pastor of The Haven, Pastor David Rios.

And my work is for another day, but my work actually has a fair amount to do with bringing local church ministries to inmates. It's something that The Haven got involved with years back. So it's an interesting time.

I'm very thankful. I love, I am a local church fan, second to none. But I have to admit, Chris, after all the years being in the fray of local church life, I'm kind of glad to be above the fray, so to speak, and working with ministers and being part of the development, actually, of local church ministry to churches, to correctional facilities.

So it's an interesting time in my life. And over the years, my how many years, Chris, has it been? We've known you. You still remain 39.

Well, it was definitely in the late 80s. And I first met you when you were a visiting preacher at Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, Long Island, where I was saved. And I could still remember having a wonderful conversation with you after your sermon.

And our friendship really blossomed pretty much immediately. And we've been in regular contact ever since. I attended quite a number of conferences that you hosted at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square and have many fond memories of that.

And just delighted to call you my brother and friend after all these decades.

Well, the feeling is very mutual, Chris. We love both. My wife and I love you. And we love your commitment to the doctrines of grace and fidelity to the final authority of the Word of God.

Keep on keeping on. Thank you, brother. And please send my love to Margaret and to all the other saints that I know over at the Haven, because I know some of them just as long as I've known you. Yeah.

If anybody wants more information about the Haven in Comac, Long Island, go to thehavenli .org. Well, as I've said on this program a number of times, that I am an optimistic amillennialist. There are many people who listen to this program who think that I have become a postmillennialist because I have so many postmillennialists on the program.

I just happen to have always had close friendships with postmillennialists of all kinds, whether historic postmill or theonomic, partial preterist postmill, the whole gambit, but have never moved totally in that direction.

But I have always been puzzled that there are some premillennialists and amillennialists who have a hard time smiling when you tell them about your friendships with postmillennialists. I don't understand that.

But please explain this clever title that you have come up with, Brave New World Revisited, a Postmillennial Perspective.

I call an optimistic amillennialist a postmillennialist without convictions. Well, you know, Chris, I get the same response. We'll talk about that a little bit later, and it befuddles me. But let me kind of give a background so people know where I'm coming from.

Oh, my. Months ago, I was asked to do a conference in Virginia for a group of, I'll call them career singles. They are post-college graduate singles. And I wanted to address the issue of the kind of prevailing pessimism about the decline of our culture today.

And so I coined the title Brave New World Revisited, a Postmillennial Perspective. And at the conference, I dealt with a message. One was what I call a dystopian view, the negative view that people usually have about our culture.

The second message, and we'll spend time on this, a postmillennial perspective. The next two sessions dealt particularly with the question, are we scrolling ourselves to death? That is the use of cell phones.

And then what about AI, artificial intelligence? And I ended with a message on the Sons of Issachar based on First Chronicles 1232. The Sons of Issachar understood the times what Israel ought to do. So it's really designed to counteract the pessimism that's common.

I said at the conclusion, the first session after getting done the dystopian view, you've got basically three common responses. One is people just get pessimistic. The world is going to hell in a handbasket kind of a thing.

The other, sometimes called the Benedict option, is just retreating from the culture. Or the third is just kind of c 'est la vie. It's kind of a war, kind of Calvinism, just whatever will be will be. And I emphasize that none of those really is a biblical response and there's a better way.

And that's when I got to really what was the teaser for the conference, a post-millennial perspective. And your listeners know there's three basic ways you look at what are called the end times. So technically the end times, the whole period from Christ's coming to his return.

In those three ways, one is a premillennial view and then there's variations on that theme. And all of these, incidentally, really relate to this text in the thousand years referred to only twice in the Bible and both in Revelation 20.

Premillennial says that Christ comes before that thousand year period. And then there's the very popular spin on that called dispensational premillennialism, which I frankly regard out of the box biblically.

But classic premillennialism is Christ comes before that thousand year period. Amillennialism says that usually that thousand year period is a figurative reference, which is something I agree with, and that Christ comes after.

There is no literal thousand year period, but Christ comes after it. And there's variations on that theme. For want of a better phrase, I think most would say that that thousand year period is the whole period that we know of as the gospel age.

And then a postmillennial perspective, which would be mine, well, any postmillennial perspective is that Christ returns after that thousand year period. Some do believe, I guess they're still around, that there is going to be kind of a literal thousand year golden age on the earth.

I don't hold that. Postmillennialists I know of don't hold that. But that Christ is going to return after that thousand year period in Revelation 20, regardless of how you define it.

The Millennium, the Gospel Age, and the Conversion of Jews and Gentiles

Now, what in your understanding of the millennium is actually going on? What makes it a special period of time? Yeah. Yeah.

I like the book by John Jefferson Davis, who was, I think he's retired now, a professor at Gordon Conwell Seminary, Christ's Victorious Kingdom, Postmillennialism Reconsidered.

I've interviewed him in the past on that book, actually. Yeah.

Yeah. It's very helpful. I think personally, I think he's a little bit muddled when it comes to Revelation 20. But I've made a few notifications of his kind of five points, so to speak, of postmillennialism that he gives on pages 10 and 11 in his book.

And this would define where I'm coming from. One, through the preaching of the gospel and dramatic outpourings of the Holy Spirit, Christian missions and evangelism will obtain remarkable successes, and the church will enjoy an, I would say, unprecedented period of numerical expansion and spiritual vitality.

Again, I'm modifying Davis a little bit. Number two, these periods of spiritual prosperity are understood as the millennium, as he puts it, is understood as, again, my way of expressing it, the entire period from Christ's ascension until his resurrection, and it is to be characterized by periods of increasing peace and economic well-being in the world as a result of the growing influence of Christian truth.

Number three, the gospel age, he says millennium, but I would say the gospel age will also be characterized by, I would say, the future conversion of large numbers of ethnic Jews to the Christian faith, Romans 11, 25, and 26.

And I would add that I think that is a difference than most amillennial views. Most postmillennialists do believe there will be the conversion of a large number of ethnic Jews. That's not equal to the nation of Israel we see today, the Christian faith.

Number four, at the end of the period between Christ's ascension and his return, there will be a brief period of apostasy and sharp conflict between Christian and evil forces, Revelation 27 to 10. Again, not all postmillennialists hold to that, the ones I know of do.

And finally, and simultaneously, there will occur the visible return of Christ, the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked, the final judgment, and the revelation of the new heavens and the new earth.

So I think there, again, that's John Jefferson Davis with some shishko modifications, but that's where I'm coming from.

And the period that you're speaking of where there are mass conversion of Jews, which I happen to agree with, by the way, I'm assuming that it's not only Jews that are coming in greater numbers, in your view, but Jew and Gentile alike in great numbers.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the Romans 9 to 11 dynamic. And a standard amillennial view is, and there's variations on this, is that when Paul says in Romans 11, 36, or Romans 11, so then shall all Israel be saved, they translate that in that way, which you can translate it as that as God is converting the full number of elect Gentiles, he's also converting the full number of elect Jews.

It comes in the way of the conversion of Gentiles. And that's true. I don't dispute that. The problem is, I see it, is when you read Romans 9 through 11 as a whole, which we're supposed to do, that view comes with a resounding thud.

The fact that God's going to save his elect, Paul's dealing with what's the future of the Jews? Again, not as a nation. The nation of Israel should never be confused with Jews as the scriptures speak of them, certainly the Jews there.

But we're talking about ethnic Israel. We're talking about people who are Jewish by, and can find it many ways, some kind of connection with the past. But Paul, as I see it, he's speaking of a great number of Jews coming in, and in that way, a great number of Gentiles as well.

It's a fascinating dynamic. Yes, and it reveals that in spite of claims to the controversy by dispensationalists, and not all dispensationalists, but many dispensationalists and Messianic Jews, unfortunately slander you and I as being anti-Semitic because we do not have a pre-millennial and pre-tribulational understanding of eschatology.

But the bizarre thing is, is what you just described, and I just agreed with you on this, so the great hope for the Jews in the future is a much more wonderful hope for the Jews than the dispensationalists have, who believe two-thirds of the Jews will be destroyed, annihilated in Israel.

Yeah, a great point for another program. And people need to keep in mind that a strict dispensational view, and as you point out, there's variations on that theme. And incidentally, classic dispensationalism really isn't today.

Dispensationalism has been leavened more by covenant theology. You see that in the works of Al Mohler, for example, and Tom Schreiner and others. But the old classic idea that God has two parallel tracks for the conversion of people, one for the Gentiles and one for the Jews, I mean, I want to be careful how I speak about this, but you're bordering on heresy there.

There's one way by which Jews and Gentiles are converted, and that's through Christ. So it is thankfully that very wooden and weird way of reading the Scriptures is, I think, gradually being dissolved by far better theology.

Responding to Postmillennialism, Preterism, and the Dangers of Pessimism

Well, we've already got some questions come in before I even announced the email address. We have Paul in either Tama or Tama, Iowa. I don't know how to pronounce that, T-A-M-A, Iowa. And Paul says, greet Pastor Shishko for me as an historic post-millennialist writing a book on the subject.

Is William a preteristic post-mill brother or a historic post-mill brother?

Well, I'm not sure what he means by historic because there's different variations. The full preterist view that says that Christ came back in AD 70 period is, in my opinion, is heretical. I think, though, I think most, I'm just going to go on a limb here.

I think most on-mill and post-mill theologians realize there is a big significance to AD 70. That was the Christ came in judgment, and that is the way you describe his coming, as the Bible does. He came in judgment cataclysmically ending the old covenant economy.

And that cataclysmic is exactly what it was. That's called semi-preterism. R .C. Sproul came to that view and others as well. So I would be there with a semi, if you want to call it, or partial preterist view.

Historic post-mill, I mean, there are some that believe there'd be a literal thousand-year golden age on the earth. I don't believe that. Although, in fairness to Brother Paul, if you go back in the 19th century, pretty much across the board, at least Presbyterian theologians, if you're looking at the Hodges or you're looking at Warfield, they were post-millennial of the variety that I'm speaking about and probably that Paul would hold.

And what's even more interesting is millennial views in the history of the church have tended to reflect time periods. There was something called Heliasm, which was a millennial view that became relatively common in the early church as the Roman Empire declined.

Premillennialism, or Heliasm, as it's put there, which means a thousand, tends to be more identified with those who focus on the decline of a culture. The 19th century was a time of great progress and a time of great missions, although the kind of post-millennialism that I'm talking about and that they were speaking about is not evolutionary progress or the social gospel, but it is a belief that missions are going to predominate.

And there is no doubt that with the rise of American entrepreneurism in the 19th century, let alone the abundance of finances, missions just flowered, especially from the United States. And that became a boon to post-millennialism.

And that post-millennial view was pretty common up until World War I. World War I, there's no way, Chris, we can overstate the pessimism that came into the view of the world once World War I was done, and nobody really had won.

This was supposed to be the war that made the world safe for democracy, and it didn't. It was really the war that paved the way for the Second World War. And that brought about a very definite pessimism that I think impelled so-called dispensational premillennialism and a lot of premillennialism and put post-millennialism in the background.

OK, we have Norman in Brightwaters, Long Island, New York. And Norman says, how do you respond to critics of post-millennialism who claim it is the result of the growing liberalism of the 19th century and even compare it to a subsequent product of Darwinianism because things keep getting better and better and better?

Yeah, well, even as John Jefferson Davis points out and as I do, in no way are we speaking about a Darwinian evolutionary view. I mean, which is basically based on survival of the fittest. There is a certain micro-evolutionary view, a lot of changes within species and certain development that comes.

But I'm not even talking about that. In fact, we're not even talking about an unchecked period of so-called progress. I don't think the United States is in a period of particular progress with respect to the gospel at all.

We are—one of the dynamics that we're dealing with, we don't take seriously enough, is that our nation is—we use the word post-Christian, but really we're dealing with apostasy in our land. And the dynamics of apostasy are different than the dynamics of paganism.

But anyway, to answer Norman's question as best as I can, we're not speaking about an evolutionary view. We're not speaking about a social gospel view. We're not speaking about everybody becoming Christians.

There's—regardless of what camp people are in within Protestantism, or back to that matter within Christianity, there is profession of Christianity in some way and possession of it. We're not saying that even necessarily that the majority of the world will possess true Christianity.

But the Christian faith will in one way or another affect all of the nations of the earth. We can spin that out a little bit later. I think that is a distinctive of post-millennialism that would not be as dominant among amillennialists.

I don't think, Chris, you would be in this category. But post-millennialists tend to speak more, in my opinion, than amillennialists do about the effects of the gospel in the world. It's fascinating to me in Matthew 4 and verses 30 through 32, where you have the kingdom of God like leaven.

I mean, it's kind of the classic text about post-millennialism, right? You've got the gospel like yeast here in a positive sense that's going to influence the whole world. Well, the whole world is not a loaf of bread.

I should say the whole world, not yeast. But then the next story about the mustard seed becoming a tree that filled the earth and the birds of the air find shelter in it. And I think post-millennialists are quicker to emphasize there are benefits of the gospel that come to a culture that are not equal to saving benefits, whether you call them common grace or common goodness.

But quite frankly, we wouldn't have the world we have without them. I'll give you many, many examples. When the gospel comes and it all influences people, they become generous and they help out other people.

That was regarded as a weakness by later paganism, interestingly, not so by the Romans in the early Republic. But pagans, and for that matter, modern followers of Ian Rand, for example, they think of charities as a sign of giving generously as a sign of weakness.

Really?

Oh, yeah. She was like the mother of libertarianism, wasn't she?

Yeah, in many ways. But she was an objectivist. She was an atheist. And depending on what you're reading by her, I think she's a fascinating writer. She can take 10 pages to do what you ought to do in one.

Her treatments are fascinating. But yeah, she would look down on charities. But again, I won't overgeneralize. It's been years since I've read much of Ian Rand. Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche, a non-Christian.

You know, man and Superman. You don't want to help out the poor, let them die off. Whereas Christians, it's exactly the opposite. And that took tremendous benefit to the world. Yes.

I was just going to say Hinduism is the same flaw in that people who are starving and who are disease-ridden and crippled deserve to be so, according to the Hindu religion.

Yeah. Well, of course, they've also got the caste where you stay in. Thank God. There's another example how the gospel breaks down caste and really unleashes the gifts of different people. And I think Tom, oh, come on, what's the last name?

The book Dominion. Tom, oh my, what's the last name? But he, that's a fascinating book. A Brit, he maybe has become a Christian since he wrote that, wrote that a number of years ago. But he emphasizes those things as he was trying to dispute the truth of the Christian faith.

Tom Holland, he realized cultures have changed because of the gospel. The Reformation is the great example of this. I mean, the mushrooming of emphasis on education, medicine, and there you see how it affected science and so on.

So, again, that's kind of far afield. But I think post-millennialists are far more willing to put that out there and emphasize it as benefits of the gospel than many amillennialists are, or I think in some cases more concerned with evangelism in kind of a narrow way and making disciples in a narrow way.

And we have to go to our first commercial break. If anybody else wants to join us with a question of your own, submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

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Differing Postmillennial Positions and Questions About Eschatological Tone

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Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com to place your order. Welcome back, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Pastor Bill Shishko, the founding pastor of the Haven Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comac, Long Island, New York, and today he is currently serving as the evangelist for the OPC Presbytery of Connecticut and Southern New York.

And we have quite an interesting theme of our program today. The Brave New World Revisited a Post-Millennial Perspective. If you have a question for Pastor Bill, please submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, and give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

And we have Tyler in Danbury, Connecticut. And Tyler wants you to explain the difference between regular post-millennialism and theonomic reconstructionist post-millennialism. Oops, sorry about that, brother.

I thought I took you off mute.

There we are. Yeah, I appreciate part of this question, and I feel a little bit like in New York. They said that in the New York City area, if you ask five New Yorkers for directions, you'll get eight different ways to go.

It's a little bit like this with when you're talking about millennial views, especially post-millennialism. I think, first of all, for Tyler, reconstruction views tend to put a lot of emphasis on the application of the Old Testament law to a culture.

And that would grow out of the late Dr. Greg Bonson's material on theonomy. I know you've had Joe Moorcraft on your show many times, and Dr. Moorcraft's approach would be that. It tends to put the focus on that.

Incidentally, I don't have a real problem, frankly, with a lot of that. I don't think when we're talking about historic post-millennialism, the focus is on, if I could put it this way, the ethical standards for what will happen in a culture when the gospel influences it.

That, I think, is a different question, and I think it's a very important question. The standard post-millennial view really puts its focus on the preaching of the gospel, the growth of the church, the making disciples of all people.

And by disciples, these are people who want to bring every single thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And I think where the Reconstructionist post-millennialist view would come, assuming people don't make that their main emphasis, would be someone, for example, who is converted.

He or she is a legislator in a state or the federal government and is asking questions about how his or her Christian faith would apply in jurisprudence or in legislation or even, for that matter, in judicial decision.

That's where I would see the so-called Reconstructionist post-millennialism as having an influence, impact. I frankly have found the material by Dr. Bonson, by the late Dr. Rushduni, often—not always, but often—to be very, very helpful.

And even Dr. Bonson, later in his life, in my opinion, had kind of a chastened theonomy where he would even say, he said to me, I put the focus on making a disciple. If we ever get around to dealing with theonomy, we'll deal with it.

That's kind of the post-millennialism that I'm talking about.

Okay, we have Coral in J. Maine. And Coral says, I have encountered two opposite problems with people in regarding eschatology. On the one hand, you have people who are overly militant and sectarian about their views, often discounting you even as a brother in Christ or slandering with you with a label such as liberal if you don't agree with their pre-millennial, pre-tribulational view.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who haven't, even after decades of Christian life, landed on any particular view and have a ho-hum idea of eschatology, even using the old saying, I'm a pan-millennialist that will all pan out in the end.

How do you respond to either of those?

Yeah, well, I very much appreciate Coral's question. The only thing I'd say, I've only seen two groups. The great line is, the millennium is that golden age of peace about which all Christians fight. That's a great line.

It's sad, but it's true. Yeah, and I echo what Coral says. As far as this people haven't settled on anything, that's what I was getting at the first night of the conference when it came to C 'est la vie.

Whatever's going to happen is going to happen. And that's really fatalism. It's not even Calvinism. Calvinism is not fatalism. But you want to be optimistic. Classic illustration in this, and that's really, Chris, where I'm coming from in all this.

In one sense, if the people want a little classical premill view or omnill view or postmill view, the long as they put the focus on the gospel, not on Reconstruction, but the focus on the gospel and making disciples.

And so long as they're optimistic, really optimistic about what they believe the gospel is going to do, then I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time dealing with what their eschatology is. That's the issue.

And my illustration is this. I want to say, and I could think of a text of him, but please find even one text that is pessimistic about the progress of the gospel. Now, the one that comes to mind is when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

And I don't want to go into parsing that one right now. I think the least you can say is most postmillennialists believe there will be a period of apostasy before Christ returns. And in fact, and I want to get to Coral's good question moment, that point about apostasy is a profound proof of a postmillennial view.

Because you can't have an apostasy if there's not a prevailing profession of some sort of the Christian faith. It may be just that a person is identified with Christ by baptism. But the fact that there's an apostasy that comes first is, I'll use the phrase, prima facie, on the face of it, there's a strong argument for postmillennialism.

But the militancy in it, please, the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. When will we begin to learn that? And what I do believe is very much out of bounds is when people accuse you of being liberal or heterodox, if you don't hold in particular a dispensational premillennial view of the Bible, that's bearing, just to be real blunt, that is bearing false witness against your neighbor.

It is imposing on the scriptures a view you would not get from just reading the scriptures. And it is also making accusations about a person's belief regarding the visible bodily return of Christ. That's the issue.

Do you believe in the visible bodily return of Christ at the last day? Premillennialists believe that. Postmillennialists believe that. Amillennialists believe that. Most liberals don't believe that. But we've got to be very, very careful not to bear false witness against our neighbor.

I hope that somewhat helps, Coral, but I share his concern.

Yes. And let's see here. We have another listener. I was just looking at it. Listener Joel from Waitley, Massachusetts. And Joel says, I know one of the arguments that those with pessimistic eschatology have with postmillennialism is they will quote 2 Timothy 3 .13, but evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.