Retractions: The Millennium:
Why it Matters and Why it Does Not
In my earlier posts, I wrote about
how and why I do not believe in a rapture.
The reason I did this was because of all the baggage associated with the
doctrine of the rapture. I believe that Jesus
will physically return to earth, the dead will be raised, there will be a final
judgement, and there will be a new heavens and a new earth. What is missing from this is the belief that
between Jesus second coming and the final judgement is that there will be 1,000
years in which Christ will physically reign on earth as king. This 1,000 year reign is commonly referred to
as the millennial reign of Christ of simply the millennium is something I once
espoused and now no longer do.
I once was a solidly
pretribulational literal millennium future for ethnic Israel type of guy. The last part of this system to fall was my
belief in a literal/physical millennial reign on earth. When everything else faded, I found great
comfort in the historic premillennial view espoused by George Ladd. However, I abandoned this as well when
confronted with the text of Scripture and how it has been interpreted by the
Church through the ages.
The millennium is a fairly difficult
thing to wrestle with. The biblical
support for belief in the millennium is derived from the 20th
chapter of Revelation. The actual text
of Revelation 20 does not limit Christ’s reign to a time period of 1,000 years.
The millennium can only be understood to
refer to a physical 1,000 year reign on earth, when Revelation 20 is read in
light of certain other Old Testament prophetic works. The interpretation of a 1,000 year physical
reign upon earth is then dependent upon one’s understanding of how Old
Testament prophecies and promises will be fulfilled.
The millennium is important because
it is a result of how one understands the Bible and also how one understands
the working of God with His creation.
Therefore someone who believes in premillennial coming of Christ will
understand the millennium to be the time when God will fulfill all the promises
of land and such from the Old Testament to ethnic Israel. Others would still hold to a physical reign
of Christ on earth, but would understand the OT promises to refer to the Church
and not ethnic Israel. Then there is
what is termed the post millennial view in which the Church will bring about
the millennium prior to the coming of Christ through the spread of the Gospel
and the advance of the Church bringing peace and tranquility to the earth. There is also the amillennial view which
understands the millennium as primarily a spiritual event. This view can be divided between the
understanding that the millennium is a current reality and those who would
posit the millennium is a metaphor for the reign of Christ with His saints in
the New Heavens and the New Earth.
There are many complexities that
need to be addressed when considering how to understand the millennium. The millennium is only mentioned in one
passage in the book of Revelation. There
can be some difficulty in rightly interpreting something that is only mentioned
once in Scripture. This difficulty is
compounded if that one passage occurs in Revelation and all the more so if it
involves a number. The reason for this
is that Revelation is a work that is filled with symbols and symbolism, of
which numbers are often used in symbolic ways.
Further complicating this situation are the various theories about how
one should read Revelation (predominantly in the past, mix of
past/present/future, or predominately in the future). These factors can be quite dissuasive for
those attempting to consider eschatology.
Indeed, part of the reason this post took so long was my own process of
wading through these issues.
The Biblical
Evidence
The really fun part is the biblical
support for the millennium. In
Revelation 20, the phrase “a thousand years” occurs five times.[1] Yet none of these occurrences refers to Jesus
reigning for a thousand years. Satan is
bound for a thousand years (20:2). The
souls of those beheaded on account of Christ come to life and reign with Christ
for a thousand years (20:4, 6). The rest
of the dead do not come to life until after the thousand years (20:5). After the thousand years, Satan is released
from prison (20:7). From this, we see
that beheaded martyrs reign with Christ for one thousand years, but this does
not necessitate the interpretation that Christ will reign on earth for 1,000
years. Indeed, the textual support for
this reading is rather thin and requires reading these verses within a larger
interpretive framework to arrive at a millennial view. This what the early Christians did who
affirmed a millennial view. They argued
that the seven days of creation were symbolic of the history of the world and
that after 6,000 years, 1,000 years of Sabbath rest would follow with the
righteous being raised to bodies that would eat, drink, and beget children
(click here for my earlier
post on this topic). In a similar
manner, most who hold to a millennium at the present would also do so in part
because they expect the promises of land made in the Old Testament to be
fulfilled in a literal manner to ethnic Israel (to see my view of this consult
my earlier post here).
Exegetical
descriptions from Revelation 20
Exegetically speaking, the
millennium is set forth as a time when the devil has been bound and (a possibly
select group of) martyrs reign with Christ.
The text does not explicitly affirm that Christ’s kingdom will last for
one thousand years. This is important
because it means that the idea of a physical 1,000 year reign of Christ on
earth is derived by implication and not direct assertion.
Also I saw the souls of those who
had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its image
and had not received its mark on
their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a
thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life
until the thousand years were ended.
This is the first resurrection (Revelation 20:4-5).
Reading
the text literally, the only saints who come to life and reign with Christ
while the devil is bound are those who have been beheaded as martyrs. Again, reading this at face value, this means
that martyrs who died by means other than beheading do not partake of this
millennial reign. This subset of beheaded martyrs also
experience something very unique. They
are the only ones (we are explicitly told) who experience the first
resurrection.
This level of a literalistic reading
cannot find support in any of the Church Fathers (amillennial or premillennial),
and does not make the most sense out of the text of Revelation. In Revelation 6:10-12, we read about the
martyrs under the throne calling out for vengeance. This group of martyrs is in no way
circumscribed by their mode of death like the martyrs in Revelation 20
are. These two groups of martyrs share
great similarity. They were killed:
“because of the word of God and the testimony” (6:9) and “because of their
testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God” (20:4). However, there are many more details in
Revelation 20 that are lacking from the martyrs in Revelation 6. Indeed, the patristic consensus is that those
who come to life with Christ are not only the martyrs, but all the righteous. Therefore, the two groups of martyrs are
understood to be the same group of martyrs and that they represent the whole
number of the saints who come to life in the millennium.
Perhaps one of the most interesting
portions of Revelation 20 is how it speaks about both a first death and a first
resurrection as well as a second death and a second resurrection. The first death is not explicitly identified
for the rather obvious reason that we are all familiar with the definition of
physical death. John is kind enough to
identify the second death: “This is the second death, the lake of fire”
(Revelation 20:14). The second death then
takes place after the final judgement.
The interesting part comes when
trying to understand what is meant by the first and the second resurrections: “They
came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. 5 The rest of the dead did not
come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first
resurrection. 6 Blessed and
holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second
death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they
will reign with him for a thousand years” (20:4-6).
The second resurrection is
implicitly defined as the universal resurrection before the final
judgement. The difficulty is then in how
we understand the first resurrection. Irenaeus
and Tertullian both argued that the discussion of two resurrections pointed to
an order of how the righteous were raised in the millennium. The greater the deeds of a Christian, the
sooner one would be raised from the dead to enter into the millennial reign. Needless to say, this view required a
physical millennial reign and fell out of favor with the premillennial view.
The key to understanding the “first
resurrection” is the description of those who experience this first
resurrection, “Over such the second death has not power.” This means that those who experience this
resurrection will not be subject to the second death which awaits those whose
names were not found in the Book of Life.
Some have sought to posit that this first resurrection is baptism on the
basis of Romans 6:5 “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His
death, certainly we also shall be in
the likeness of His resurrection”;
and 2nd Timothy 2:11-12: “This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, We shall also live with Him. If we endure, we shall also
reign with Him.” There is some validity to this position. Augustine understands this “first
resurrection” is applied to the Church militant, because they reign with Christ
in His kingdom at the present, and to the Church triumphant, because they are
commemorated at the altar at each Eucharist service. In saying this, Augustine is relying upon
lengthy exegesis of multiple passages (of which a summary would take around a
page) and the practices of the Church to form his interpretation. To the vast majority of Protestants, the
commemoration of the deceased has never been experienced in a liturgy. Despite its absence from current Protestant
worship, it was a universal practice in the early Church in the time of
Augustine and likely had been since the 100’s. In so doing this, Augustine implicitly
affirms the idea that the first resurrection is baptism with his understanding
that only the baptized elect are reigning with Christ.
Christ’s reign
limited to 1,000 years
What is utterly lacking from
Revelation 20 is the idea that Christ’s reign is in any way limited to a one
thousand year time period. If anything,
the reign of the saints and the binding of satan are the only two things
limited to a one thousand year period of time.
Indeed, there are exegetical reasons to affirm that Christ’s reign does
not end. This can be seen in a couple of
passages:
“And in the
days of those kings the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never
be destroyed: and his kingdom shall not be left to another people, but it shall beat to pieces
and grind to powder all kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever (Daniel 2:44).
“And
He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be
no end” (Luke 1:33).
The interpretation that Christ’s
kingdom will have no end is the creedally preserved interpretation. The Nicene Creed concludes with the
statement: “His kingdom shall have no end.”
The problem regarding the millennium is that the support for the view
that Christ will reign for one thousand years on earth and then that kingdom
will end with the end of this earth is not explicitly stated in the texts of
Scripture whereas the affirmation that Christ’s Kingdom will have no end is
clearly affirmed and understood to be the definitive interpretation of this
issue.
An argument for
the millennium
The strongest biblical argument for
the millennial view is the description of how Satan is bound for 1,000
years. This is a commonsensical
argument: It does not appear as though Satan
is presently bound. Therefore, the
millennium is still yet to come. However,
this view of the binding of Satan does not quite with what Jesus had to say
about his ministry and the interpretation of the early Christians.
There is a passage in all three
synoptic Gospels (Matthew 12, Mark 3, and Luke 11) in which Jesus spoke about
how he had bound Satan. Jesus cast out a
demon and the Pharisees
said, “This fellow does not
cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.” But Jesus knew
their thoughts, and said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and
every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan
casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by
whom do your sons cast them out?
Therefore they shall be your judges. But
if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God,
surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless
he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house.” (Matthew 12:24-29, New King Jimmy
Version)
Jesus
here refutes the idea that he cast out demons by the power of the devil. Rather, he spoke about himself as the one who
bound the strong man (the devil) and plundered his goods. This interpretation is affirmed repeatedly in
the writings of the early Christians.[7] Indeed, there are two points at which they
would note that Jesus had bound the devil.
In His incarnation and in His resurrection. In both of these actions, the devil is bound
and Christ frees those who were under the power of the devil and his minions.
Therefore, with Satan already bound,
the Church reigning with Christ, and Church being the New Israel who have
inherited the promises made to Israel, a physical and literal millennium is
superfluous and awkward. In this sense
the millennium does not matter. At the
same time, we are living in the millennium.
As such, Christians ought to conduct themselves in the knowledge that
Christ has bound Satan and that they have experienced the first resurrection in
baptism. Not even death can separate a
Christin from reigning with Christ.
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