Doctrine of the Last Things (Part 15): The Millenium

The Millenium

Hello, and welcome to Defenders. I’m glad that you could join us today.

We closed out our session last time by saying that I have not said anything about the subject of the millennium. This is simple because this is not a topic that I have studied at all, and therefore I have no firm opinions about it. What I thought I would do is share a few thoughts with you about the subject of the millennium. What I am going to do is to lay out for you some alternative positions and arguments pro and con which are reviewed very nicely in Wayne Grudem’s popular one volume Systematic Theology, and then leave it up to you to make up your own minds.

The subject of the millennium is mentioned in Scripture in Revelation 20:1-10. Let’s read that passage together.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were ended. After that he must be loosed for a little while.

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to 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 a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years.

And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, that is, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city; but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

Here is described this thousand year period of the reign of Christ and of his saints on Earth, after which Satan will be released and a final cataclysmic conflict takes place. Then people will go into their eternal state.

In church history there have been at least three broad views about the millennium.

The first view we could call amillennialism. This is the view that Revelation 20:1-10 isn’t to be interpreted literally as describing some sort of future thousand-year reign of Christ with the saints on Earth. Many amillennialists take it to simply describe the present church age. On this view, at the end of the church age when Christ returns, then there will be a judgment of the wicked and the just. But the return of Christ will not precede the establishment of this literal earthly thousand year reign of Christ.

The second view is premillennialism. It holds that there will be a return of Christ prior to a literal thousand-year reign of Jesus on the Earth. This is often referred to as chilianism from the Greek word for one thousand. Chilianists are those who believe in a literal thousand-year reign of Christ on the Earth. Traditionally in church history, those church fathers and others who have been chilianists have taken the view that there will be a return of Christ such as we have described already prior to the establishment of the millennium and then the reign of Christ on Earth will follow. After that will be the final judgment of Satan and then the judgment of the world.

Those who hold to a rapture theology add an additional wrinkle to the classical premillennialist position by positing another return of Christ prior to the Second Coming in order to evacuate the church out of the tribulation. Christ will come and will snatch believers out of the world before the tribulation begins. Then at the end of the tribulation he will come again and establish his earthly Kingdom for a thousand years. It is important to recognize therefore that premillennialism is not bound up with rapture theology. Until the early 1800s premillennialists didn’t hold to rapture theology. So the issue of the millennium is independent of rapture doctrine. Whether you believe in a rapture or not, you still might be a premillennialist, thinking that after Christ comes again he will establish an earthly Kingdom.

Finally, the third broad perspective would be postmillennialism. Postmillennialism holds that Christ will return after the millennium. The millennium is actually describing the triumph of the church as the Gospel spreads to all nations and a great harvest comes into the Kingdom. God’s Kingdom is established on Earth through the preaching and dissemination of the Gospel to all nations; in effect the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Then Christ will return after that.

So we have three different perspectives on the subject of the millennium. Only premillennialism takes it to be literal. What differentiates the amillennialists and the postmillennialists, I think, is the sort of triumphalism that characterizes postmillennialism. The amillennialist treats the millenium purely symbolically. But the postmillennial view sees an additional element in that the millennium is a sort of idyllic period of human history that will arrive here on Earth as a result of the propagation and worldwide triumph of the Gospel and the subduing of the forces of unbelief and sin.

What we want to do now is to look at some of the arguments for and against these specific views. Let’s begin with the amillennial perspective. The amillennialist presents a number of arguments in favor of his view that might seem surprisingly strong for those of us who have been raised in churches where we’ve always been taught premillennialism.

1. The amillennialist points out that the millennium is taught in only one passage in Scripture. It is found only in Revelation 20:1-10. It is not to be found anywhere else in Scripture. So this whole doctrine of the millennium is based on this single passage. It comes from a book of the Bible that is filled with apocalyptic symbolism and imagery – dragons, monsters, beasts, bowls of wrath being poured out upon people, a many-eyed lamb on the throne in heaven. The whole book of Revelation is permeated by symbolic, apocalyptic elements that aren’t meant to be taken literally. This really gives one pause, I think – why should we take the millennium literally if it is found only in the book of Revelation in Scripture, a book that is noted for its symbolic and apocalyptic imagery? It would be much more convincing if the doctrine of the millennium were also found in the teachings of Jesus and in the teachings of Paul just as the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ is. But to base a doctrine totally upon one passage in the book of Revelation, I think, ought to give us serious pause.

2. The amillennialist will point out that Scripture teaches only one (and not two) resurrections of the dead. There will be a single resurrection of the dead when Christ returns. This is a point that we’ve already seen in our study of the return of Christ. But let’s just review a few passages concerning this. Daniel 12:2, for example, says, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Here there is a resurrection predicted of both the righteous and the unrighteous alike. Turning over to the New Testament you find Jesus teaching something similar in John 5:28-29: “Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” Here again Jesus speaks of a resurrection of both the evil and the righteous alike when the Son of Man returns. Finally, Acts 24:15 says, “there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.” Here Paul teaches that there will be a resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous alike. So there is just one resurrection, not multiple resurrections such as you have in Revelation 20:1-10.

3. The idea of sinners living alongside glorified, resurrected, righteous saints is an intolerable thought. Think of what the millennium contemplates. This is after the return of Christ. The dead in Christ have risen. They are now no longer earthly beings; they have resurrection bodies like Christ’s with all of its supernatural powers. They have a body that Paul described as immortal, incorruptible, powerful, and glorious. They are now free of sin. These are glorified saints. Yet we are to imagine them living in a society with mortal, sinful, corruptible people? Is this the kind of interrelationship that they would have? It just seems inconceivable that you would have that sort of mixture.

4. If in the millennium Christ is present and reigning as described, then how can people persist in sin? The whole idea of the Kingdom of God having been established is to do away with sin and with the enemies of God. So how is it that Christ is reigning in his millennial kingdom on Earth and yet sin still continues and people still persist in sin? What does it mean that Christ is the reigning King? That is the situation we have now! Christ is King but the Kingdom isn’t yet established, right? It is still waiting to be fully established on Earth when sin and death will be done away with.

5. The amillennialist says that the millennium serves no purpose. Why have such a thing as this strange, earthly kingdom? Why not simply, upon people’s being raised from the dead and judged, go into the eternal state of heaven or hell? The millennium doesn’t seem to serve any purpose.

How might premillennialists respond to these sorts of arguments?

1. In response to (1) that there is only one passage in Scripture that teaches the millenium, they will point out that the teaching that God’s Kingdom will be established on Earth is all throughout the Old Testament. This is the Jewish hope that God will establish his Kingdom here on Earth, not in some afterlife. And they will point out that the prophecies of the first coming of Christ are not clearly distinguished from the prophecies of the Second Coming. Everyone who believes that Christ is the Messiah has to think that many of the Old Testament prophecies about Messiah (about how the government will be upon his shoulders and his reign will be forever and ever) haven’t yet been fulfilled in a literal, temporal sense. So there is a distinction between those prophecies fulfilled in his first coming and those that will be fulfilled in the Second Coming, and premillennialists will insist that these prophecies about an earthly Kingdom go to support the idea of a millennium – that there will be an earthly Kingdom of Christ established here on this planet.

They will also point out that in Revelation 20:1-10 it says that Satan is going to be temporarily bound, incapacitated, put into a pit, so that he will be temporarily out of commission. But they would point out that during the present age, that isn’t true. Satan is very much on the prowl today. Look at 1 Peter 5:8 which says, “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour.” So against the postmillennialist, at least, it doesn’t seem that Satan has been bound. He is still very much on the loose. Also 1 John 5:19, a very sobering verse, says, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world is in the power of the evil one.” So the whole world is under the power of Satan in the present age. Therefore, this can’t be reasonably described as the millennial kingdom.

2. In response to the second argument that Scripture teaches only one (not two) resurrections, the premillennialist might say, Look at John 5 again. In John 5, Jesus teaches that there will be a resurrection of the just and of the unjust. So this is really two resurrections; it is not one resurrection.

I am not convinced that is such a good response because it does seem to me that Jesus there is talking about one resurrection of two sets of people. What he differentiates is not the resurrections but rather the subjects of the resurrection. Nevertheless the premillennialist could say that here two resurrections are described and these might be temporally separated.

3. What about the third argument that the idea of sinners living alongside of and having relationships with glorified, resurrected saints is just unbelievable? Premillennialists would point out that Christ was on Earth in his glorified resurrection body for forty days following his resurrection before ascending to heaven. So this isn’t an idea that is completely absurd.

That is a fair enough point, I think, but it really doesn’t go to speak to the issue. It seems to me quite another matter to imagine a whole society, a whole planet, which is populated by ordinary, mortal sinners but then living in their midst and maybe even married to some of them are these glorified, resurrected, immortal, righteous persons. That really is quite unlike saying Jesus was temporarily with the disciples for forty days after his resurrection and prior to his ascension.

4. What about number (4) – if Christ is present and reigning in the millenium, how can people persist in sin? What premillennialists point out is that people resisted Christ during his earthly life when he was present among them, and people continue to resist Christ today even though the Holy Spirit is present among us.

Again, I think that response fails to convince because Christ during his earthly reign was here in his so-called state of humiliation, not his state of exaltation. Remember when we looked at the Doctrine of Christ we saw that there is a period of humiliation where Christ takes the form of a servant. He lowers himself, as it says in Philippians 2, and is obedient until death. But that is not the same as the glorified, risen, reigning Christ. Similarly, even today the Holy Spirit doesn’t make the glorified, risen Christ evident and apparent to everybody. So I think that appealing to the way in which people resisted Jesus during his earthly life and resist the Holy Spirit today isn’t really comparable to what we would be talking about in the millennium.

5. In response to the argument that the millennium serves no purpose, premillennialists will say that the millennium shows God’s plan for social structures, for redeeming human society, and therefore this is a worthwhile thing to do rather than just usher in the eternal state.

Those are some of the arguments pro and con about amillennialism. You can consider them for yourself and look into it further if you wish to.

Next time we’ll look at arguments pro and con for postmillennialism and premillennialism. See you next time.^[1]