**Rowland Croucher**
2009-09-25 02:46:45 UTC
I've had an interest in this subject since childhood in a Brethren
Assembly, where the wisest thing I ever heard was 'It's a good idea to
concentrate on the material *between* Scofield's notes'.
Try this re Revelation 20:1-6:
The Utopian idea of a one-world government by Christ has fascinated and
excited Christians for a long time. The second century Montanists - who
could be pretty wild and unbalanced - taught it. But respected church
leaders like Justin Martyr, Iranaeus, Tertullian and Papias also
believed in a millennial reign of Christ. Others, among them Eusebius,
Jerome and Origen believed the apostles were using metaphorical
language, and '1000' was not meant to be taken literally. Augustine
believed in a literal millennium but later changed his mind: 'A thousand
years is all the years of this age' (see City of God 20.7). Most of the
Reformers and Protestant scholars today have followed Augustine.
Most modern sects believe in a literal millennium. Indeed many of the
Anabaptists, at the time of the Protestant Reformation, called for the
immediate establishment of the Kingdom of God on this earth, an idea
which, among others, contributed to the terrible Peasants' Revolt in
Germany. Then there were the Fifth Monarchy men of Oliver Cromwell's
time, who argued that the establishment of his power will be the
beginning of a new reign of Christ on earth.
Many specific dates have been set for the coming of the Millennium. Here
are a few of them - 1785 (Stilling), 1836 (Bengel), 1843 (Miller,
founder of the Seventh-Day Adventists), 1890 (the Mormons), 1914 (the
Jehovah's Witnesses). Paul had to warn the Thessalonians against unwise
and unprofitable speculations. The Day of the Lord would come like a
'thief in the night', he said, i.e. at a time no one could predict or
calculate.
Now why all this confusion? The certainty of Christ's second coming is
affirmed right through the New Testament. But the specific idea of a
millennium was not taught by Christ, and rests on a particular
interpretation of the first 6 or 7 verses in Revelation 20, a highly
symbolic book. Some of the Jewish rabbis, in the period just before
Christ came taught that the Messiah would reign on earth for a limited
period. How long? They couldn't agree, and estimates varied from 40 to
7000 years. 4 Ezra suggests 400 years (cf. Gen. 15:13 and Ps. 90:15). 2
Baruch describes the incredible material blessings to be enjoyed during
this time: '...each vine a thousand branches, each branch a thousand
clusters, each cluster a thousand grapes, and each grape (the equivalent
of) 120 gallons of wine... no more disease, no more untimely death; wild
animals will be friendly with man... women no pain in childbirth.'
In the last 150 years or so orthodox Christians have been divided into
roughly three groups over this issue. The Postmillennialists believed
that the Kingdom of God was being extended throughout the world through
Christians' missionary preaching and the peace and prosperity of our
steadily-improving times. 'All the false religions are dying' said one
of them, Boettner. Postmillennialism flourished during times of peace
and prosperity, particularly in the U.S. A couple of world wars, the
Great Depression, and the terrible social problems of our modern world
have put paid to this general idea.
The Premillennialists have always believed that the world is getting
worse. Christ will come and Satan will be bound for 1000 years, during
which Christ will reign over the whole earth from Jerusalem.
Dispensationalism, a relatively recent form of premillennialism (taught
by an early Plymouth Brethren leader, J.N. Darby, and popularised in the
Scofield Reference Bible) asserts that between the 'rapture' of the
church, and Christ's millennial reign, a seven-year period of
'tribulation' will be suffered throughout the world. At the end of this
period, Christ returns again, defeats the 'Antichrist', and sets up his
kingdom. The Jewish people will be converted 'en masse', and will have a
favoured place in the Kingdom.
Premillennialists generally believe that the 'prophetic clock' stopped
when Jesus was crucified, and begins 'ticking' again at the second
coming of Christ. During the 1000-year reign the 'curse' will be removed
from nature, the 'desert shall blosson as the rose', swords will be
beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks. The 'lion shall
lie down with the lamb' (Woody Allen says the lamb won't get much sleep!
Actually Isaiah 11:6 says 'the wolf shall live with the lamb') and
presumably animals and humans will become vegetarian. For modern popular
elaboration of this general idea, see Hal Lindsay's The Late Great
Planet Earth, and the 'Left Behind' finctional series by Tim LaHaye and
Jerry Jenkin.
Amillennialists say the world is both getting better and worse at the
same time. There is a parallel development of good and evil - the
Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan - which will continue until the
second coming of Christ. As the Bible - and the Creeds, as Geoff has
pointed out - often speaks of the coming-resurrection-judgment in the
same breath, these will occur at the same time, followed by the new
eternal order.
In summary, these are the amillennialists' objections to premillennialism:
* The Book of Revelation is not merely a book of long-distance
predictions, but a series of visions and pictures to comfort persecuted
Christians in the first two centuries of the church's history.
* The idea of a literal 1000-year reign, into which are poured all kinds
of Old Testament promises of material blessings, is foreign to the New
Testament teaching of the Kingdom of Christ being `here and now',
'among/within you', a spiritual kingdom.
* The premillennialists are too literal, and often inconsistent in their
interpretations of numbers etc. in Revelation. '1000' is used more than
20 times there, and is an apocalyptic 'code-word' for the perfect
number. (Would any literalist imagine a woman sitting on seven
mountains, Rev. 17:9?)? Throughout the Bible, numbers are used this way.
If God owns the cattle on only 1000 hills (Ps. 50:10) he'd be no
wealthier than some of our Northern Territory station-owners. The whole
picture in Rev. 20:1-7 is symbolic (how, for example, can you confine a
spiritual being with a literal chain and padlock?).
* The Bible does not teach a 3- or 4-fold resurrection, nor several
specific 'judgments' near the end-time. See, e.g. Dan 12:2, John
5:28,29, Acts 24:15 etc. where the resurrection of both righteous and
wicked is mentioned in a single breath. Jesus, in John 6:40, talks about
the resurrection happening on `the last day'.
It's the old problem of the jigsaw puzzle. Do we have only some of the
pieces of the total picture? Or do we have pieces of different puzzles?
The human mind always tries to fill in the gaps. If we have some open
space, we shuffle the pieces around to try to make them fit. What I
think has happened with the millennial jigsaws is that some of the
pieces have fallen on the floor, and others have been bent here and
there to make them fit our picture!
Why, if Jesus expected a millennium, did he not spell it out clearly?
Why has God hidden such amazing news 'under cryptic devices and curious
cyphers - so cryptic indeed that serious Christians, poring over these
records, extract diametrically opposite views from the same passages'
(James Black)? Why have millennial (chiefly premillennial) views also
been associated with a deafening silence on the great prophetic
questions of social justice? And yet - to be fair - premillennialists
have been ardent evangelists and missionaries...
Premillennialists are likely, in interpreting Genesis, to be
'creationists'. Amillennialists are more likely to have an open stance
on that question as well. I think we can only make sense of these issues
by keeping the following in mind:
(1) At the proton no human being was there. And no one has yet witnessed
the eschaton.
(2) 'Picture-language' isn't a problem for the eastern mind. We
Westerners have inherited a 'Greek' mind, and perhaps we're asking the
wrong questions. In both the creation stories and the apocalypse we've
been asking 'how?' and 'when?' instead of 'who?' and 'why?'. If we ask
the right questions we're more likely to arrive at better biblical answers!
(3) Genesis 1-3, and the Book of Revelation spell out the doom of Satan,
so the 'enemy of our souls' has set out to sow confusion in the church
over the interpretation of these passages.
Let us affirm what we do know: 'JESUS SHALL REIGN WHERE'ERE THE SUN DOES
HIS SUCCESSIVE JOURNEYS RUN!' Of that fact we can be sure. We do know
'who and why' even if we don't know the 'how and when'. Christians - and
many Jews before them - have attempted to 'fill in the gaps'. Perhaps
there are good reasons for God's not revealing a lot of these details to
us! Because the disciples of Jesus had wrong ideas about His kingdom,
they, too, asked the wrong questions about it (like 'Who's going to sit
on which throne'?). Millennialists, with too much time on their hands,
have also been asking lots of irrelevant questions (like 'Will people
die during that time?').
C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia imagine a world created by God, held
in the grip of Satan, but released when Christ, in the figure of a lion,
died for his people and came back again to reign. Here's part of the
last paragraph: 'The things that began to happen after that were so
great and beautiful that I cannot write them... Now at last they were
beginning chapter 1 of the great story which no one on earth has read,
which goes on forever and ever, and in which every chapter is better
than the one before.'
More... 'Understanding the Book of Revelation' -
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/2265.htm
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/
Assembly, where the wisest thing I ever heard was 'It's a good idea to
concentrate on the material *between* Scofield's notes'.
Try this re Revelation 20:1-6:
The Utopian idea of a one-world government by Christ has fascinated and
excited Christians for a long time. The second century Montanists - who
could be pretty wild and unbalanced - taught it. But respected church
leaders like Justin Martyr, Iranaeus, Tertullian and Papias also
believed in a millennial reign of Christ. Others, among them Eusebius,
Jerome and Origen believed the apostles were using metaphorical
language, and '1000' was not meant to be taken literally. Augustine
believed in a literal millennium but later changed his mind: 'A thousand
years is all the years of this age' (see City of God 20.7). Most of the
Reformers and Protestant scholars today have followed Augustine.
Most modern sects believe in a literal millennium. Indeed many of the
Anabaptists, at the time of the Protestant Reformation, called for the
immediate establishment of the Kingdom of God on this earth, an idea
which, among others, contributed to the terrible Peasants' Revolt in
Germany. Then there were the Fifth Monarchy men of Oliver Cromwell's
time, who argued that the establishment of his power will be the
beginning of a new reign of Christ on earth.
Many specific dates have been set for the coming of the Millennium. Here
are a few of them - 1785 (Stilling), 1836 (Bengel), 1843 (Miller,
founder of the Seventh-Day Adventists), 1890 (the Mormons), 1914 (the
Jehovah's Witnesses). Paul had to warn the Thessalonians against unwise
and unprofitable speculations. The Day of the Lord would come like a
'thief in the night', he said, i.e. at a time no one could predict or
calculate.
Now why all this confusion? The certainty of Christ's second coming is
affirmed right through the New Testament. But the specific idea of a
millennium was not taught by Christ, and rests on a particular
interpretation of the first 6 or 7 verses in Revelation 20, a highly
symbolic book. Some of the Jewish rabbis, in the period just before
Christ came taught that the Messiah would reign on earth for a limited
period. How long? They couldn't agree, and estimates varied from 40 to
7000 years. 4 Ezra suggests 400 years (cf. Gen. 15:13 and Ps. 90:15). 2
Baruch describes the incredible material blessings to be enjoyed during
this time: '...each vine a thousand branches, each branch a thousand
clusters, each cluster a thousand grapes, and each grape (the equivalent
of) 120 gallons of wine... no more disease, no more untimely death; wild
animals will be friendly with man... women no pain in childbirth.'
In the last 150 years or so orthodox Christians have been divided into
roughly three groups over this issue. The Postmillennialists believed
that the Kingdom of God was being extended throughout the world through
Christians' missionary preaching and the peace and prosperity of our
steadily-improving times. 'All the false religions are dying' said one
of them, Boettner. Postmillennialism flourished during times of peace
and prosperity, particularly in the U.S. A couple of world wars, the
Great Depression, and the terrible social problems of our modern world
have put paid to this general idea.
The Premillennialists have always believed that the world is getting
worse. Christ will come and Satan will be bound for 1000 years, during
which Christ will reign over the whole earth from Jerusalem.
Dispensationalism, a relatively recent form of premillennialism (taught
by an early Plymouth Brethren leader, J.N. Darby, and popularised in the
Scofield Reference Bible) asserts that between the 'rapture' of the
church, and Christ's millennial reign, a seven-year period of
'tribulation' will be suffered throughout the world. At the end of this
period, Christ returns again, defeats the 'Antichrist', and sets up his
kingdom. The Jewish people will be converted 'en masse', and will have a
favoured place in the Kingdom.
Premillennialists generally believe that the 'prophetic clock' stopped
when Jesus was crucified, and begins 'ticking' again at the second
coming of Christ. During the 1000-year reign the 'curse' will be removed
from nature, the 'desert shall blosson as the rose', swords will be
beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks. The 'lion shall
lie down with the lamb' (Woody Allen says the lamb won't get much sleep!
Actually Isaiah 11:6 says 'the wolf shall live with the lamb') and
presumably animals and humans will become vegetarian. For modern popular
elaboration of this general idea, see Hal Lindsay's The Late Great
Planet Earth, and the 'Left Behind' finctional series by Tim LaHaye and
Jerry Jenkin.
Amillennialists say the world is both getting better and worse at the
same time. There is a parallel development of good and evil - the
Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan - which will continue until the
second coming of Christ. As the Bible - and the Creeds, as Geoff has
pointed out - often speaks of the coming-resurrection-judgment in the
same breath, these will occur at the same time, followed by the new
eternal order.
In summary, these are the amillennialists' objections to premillennialism:
* The Book of Revelation is not merely a book of long-distance
predictions, but a series of visions and pictures to comfort persecuted
Christians in the first two centuries of the church's history.
* The idea of a literal 1000-year reign, into which are poured all kinds
of Old Testament promises of material blessings, is foreign to the New
Testament teaching of the Kingdom of Christ being `here and now',
'among/within you', a spiritual kingdom.
* The premillennialists are too literal, and often inconsistent in their
interpretations of numbers etc. in Revelation. '1000' is used more than
20 times there, and is an apocalyptic 'code-word' for the perfect
number. (Would any literalist imagine a woman sitting on seven
mountains, Rev. 17:9?)? Throughout the Bible, numbers are used this way.
If God owns the cattle on only 1000 hills (Ps. 50:10) he'd be no
wealthier than some of our Northern Territory station-owners. The whole
picture in Rev. 20:1-7 is symbolic (how, for example, can you confine a
spiritual being with a literal chain and padlock?).
* The Bible does not teach a 3- or 4-fold resurrection, nor several
specific 'judgments' near the end-time. See, e.g. Dan 12:2, John
5:28,29, Acts 24:15 etc. where the resurrection of both righteous and
wicked is mentioned in a single breath. Jesus, in John 6:40, talks about
the resurrection happening on `the last day'.
It's the old problem of the jigsaw puzzle. Do we have only some of the
pieces of the total picture? Or do we have pieces of different puzzles?
The human mind always tries to fill in the gaps. If we have some open
space, we shuffle the pieces around to try to make them fit. What I
think has happened with the millennial jigsaws is that some of the
pieces have fallen on the floor, and others have been bent here and
there to make them fit our picture!
Why, if Jesus expected a millennium, did he not spell it out clearly?
Why has God hidden such amazing news 'under cryptic devices and curious
cyphers - so cryptic indeed that serious Christians, poring over these
records, extract diametrically opposite views from the same passages'
(James Black)? Why have millennial (chiefly premillennial) views also
been associated with a deafening silence on the great prophetic
questions of social justice? And yet - to be fair - premillennialists
have been ardent evangelists and missionaries...
Premillennialists are likely, in interpreting Genesis, to be
'creationists'. Amillennialists are more likely to have an open stance
on that question as well. I think we can only make sense of these issues
by keeping the following in mind:
(1) At the proton no human being was there. And no one has yet witnessed
the eschaton.
(2) 'Picture-language' isn't a problem for the eastern mind. We
Westerners have inherited a 'Greek' mind, and perhaps we're asking the
wrong questions. In both the creation stories and the apocalypse we've
been asking 'how?' and 'when?' instead of 'who?' and 'why?'. If we ask
the right questions we're more likely to arrive at better biblical answers!
(3) Genesis 1-3, and the Book of Revelation spell out the doom of Satan,
so the 'enemy of our souls' has set out to sow confusion in the church
over the interpretation of these passages.
Let us affirm what we do know: 'JESUS SHALL REIGN WHERE'ERE THE SUN DOES
HIS SUCCESSIVE JOURNEYS RUN!' Of that fact we can be sure. We do know
'who and why' even if we don't know the 'how and when'. Christians - and
many Jews before them - have attempted to 'fill in the gaps'. Perhaps
there are good reasons for God's not revealing a lot of these details to
us! Because the disciples of Jesus had wrong ideas about His kingdom,
they, too, asked the wrong questions about it (like 'Who's going to sit
on which throne'?). Millennialists, with too much time on their hands,
have also been asking lots of irrelevant questions (like 'Will people
die during that time?').
C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia imagine a world created by God, held
in the grip of Satan, but released when Christ, in the figure of a lion,
died for his people and came back again to reign. Here's part of the
last paragraph: 'The things that began to happen after that were so
great and beautiful that I cannot write them... Now at last they were
beginning chapter 1 of the great story which no one on earth has read,
which goes on forever and ever, and in which every chapter is better
than the one before.'
More... 'Understanding the Book of Revelation' -
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/2265.htm
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/