By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

Archive for August, 2009

The Saints and the Millennium

“Use the clear texts interpret the difficult ones.” I don’t remember where I learned that but I do remember learning it and using it. It stuck with me for a long time. Then I took a class with Grant Osborne and he made a great point about this approach. He said, in effect, that what is a difficult text for you may not be a difficult text for someone else. Grant is an Arminian and so the texts that he finds clear can be troublesome for Calvinists. And visa versa. You have to include the “difficult” texts in the formulation of your theology. If you ignore them till the end and then make them fit, you’re in danger of misreading them. Wise words! Probably the very best thing I learned in his class. He also said that about 1/3 of everyone’s theology is wrong, the trick was figuring out which third. 1Just occurred to me that that notion could be in Osborne’s incorrect one third! This was the second best thing I learned.

The Book of Revelation is cryptic and symbolic. There are tons of commentaries written on it and many disagree in meaning and approach. I seem to remember either being taught or just figuring for myself that to understand Revelation we need to bring the rest of the New Testament to bear on it rather than trying to understand it by itself. Let the clear text interpret the unclear.

See my first paragraph.

I don’t want to oversimplify the complexities of handling the Book of Revelation but I don’t want to treat it as second class revelation either. Normally, I would say that to properly understand the text you need to recognize the genre of the text. But what happens when the genre is poorly understood? Yikes. Still, not everything in Revelation is equally confusing. “From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God” (Rev 4:5) is perhaps more difficult to understand than “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” (Rev 22:18-19)

What I’m saying is that there are places where The Book of Revelation will give us trouble and there are places where it will not. The difficulty is not in what it says but in understanding what is symbolic and what is not symbolic.  In my previous post, I said that the chain and pit that bind Satan are symbolic but the curtailing of his deceptive work in the world are not. I made a decision based on what I know about angels from the rest of the Bible. Did I violate my second paragraph? Maybe some, but there is a different between a detail in the vision and what the vision is showing. I could defend that a bit more but I don’t want to spend all my time there.

Besides, this post isn’t about angels.  It is about the saints during the millennium. We look again at Revelation 20 and read:

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those 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. 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. (Revelation 20:4-6)

There are a number things going on here so I’ll take them one at a time.

Read On…

↩1 Just occurred to me that that notion could be in Osborne’s incorrect one third!

Satan and the Millennium

Thanks to Nathan‘s excellent comments on my post on amillennial problems, I’m going to try to flesh out a few of my points. Not so much by showing where I think non-millennial positions are wrong, but more to positively state my position better. One place to begin is with Satan.

Revelation 20:3 says that John saw an angel who took Satan “and bound him for a thousand years.” This angel had a key and a great chain and he threw Satan “into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended.” This is an important part of the millennial discussion. Is Satan currently bound?

To answer that question, we have to understand what the text says and what it doesn’t say. First, the chain, the key and the pit cannot be physical things. An angel, even a fallen angel, is a spiritual being and a million foot pit cannot hold one. That said, the key, chain and pit are not without meaning. In a very real sense, Satan will be (or is) bound. So don’t get too hung up over the imagery used here, it is not meant to be the focus but instead to explain spiritual matters in a fashion we can understand.

Also pay careful attention to how Satan is bound. The qualification to his binding is  “so that he might not deceive the nations any longer.” For Satan to be bound doesn’t require the complete removal of his activity in the world but it does require that his deception of the nations ceases. He could still trouble the saints but he cannot lie to the nations.

Finally, this curtailing of his activity is not eternal. It lasts a measured amount of time. I don’t believe that 1,000 years is to be taken literally here. The way 1,000 is used in Revelation, really the way numbers in general are used in Revelation is much more figurative. 1,000 seems to indicate a sense of fullness. For example, in the next chapter, the bride of the Lamb, the heavenly Jerusalem, is described as being a 12,000 stadia cube. The picture there is 12 x 1,000. The 12 Apostles times the fullness of their ministry or the people they represent. 1Some translations make the sad mistake of translating 12,000 stadia as “fifteen hundred miles;” as if the important thing is the physical size! It clouds the imagery of the vision. So “a thousand years” here isn’t meant to be 365,250 days but rather a grand, large, majestic period of time.

So is Satan currently bound? In Matthew 12:29  Jesus asks a rhetorical question, “Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man?” It would seem that Jesus is teaching that the strong man, Satan, is bound because Jesus is plundering his house! So in a sense, yes, Satan is currently bound. But is it the same sense we read in Revelation 20? The context of Matthew 12:29 is not Satan deceiving the nations but rather the casting out of unclean spirits. Jesus is plundering Satan’s house by “setting the captives free” not by terminating Satan’s deceptive activity. If the binding of Matthew 12 was the same as the binding of Revelation 20, then Paul would have no occasion to say that “[Satan,] the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” in 2 Corinthians 4:4.

Blinding to the eyes of the unbelievers is the same kind of activity as deceiving the nations. Both keep people from seeing the light of the gospel. So in a “Revelation 20” sense, no Satan is not currently bound. He is still blinding, still deceiving. But he is bound so that his house may be plundered of the captives he once held. Demons cannot withstand being cast out of a person in Jesus’ name. His house is being plundered.

And I wonder if this is not what Jesus meant when he told Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. Gates are not offensive weapons, they are barricades. They are designed to prevent passage. The Church is not trying to march into hell so the meaning cannot be that the gates of hell are there to keep us out as we try to press in. Instead, it could be that the Church is rescuing souls from hell by preaching the gospel. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church by restraining those souls she has unbound. Might this not be another picture of the strong man bound and his home being pilfered?

But there is another day coming when Satan’s binding will be more complete. Not simply a man bound in his own home, but an angel locked with a chain and thrown into a deep pit. His deceptive activity, his most powerful and familiar weapon will be denied him. When Satan “lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44) When that ability is removed from him, then his binding will be much more complete and effective.

That binding, according to Revelation 20, takes place during Jesus grand, large, and majestic reign on the earth. Next post will deal with the saints and the Millennium.

↩1 Some translations make the sad mistake of translating 12,000 stadia as “fifteen hundred miles;” as if the important thing is the physical size! It clouds the imagery of the vision.

Problems with Amillennialism

I kind of hate to post this but a list was posted of Sam Storms’ problems with Premillennialism so I thought I should say something. I read Storms’ list of “problems” and am fine with all of them from the context of my understanding of the millennium. I might respond to his list at some point.

In another setting, I’d said, “Eschatology is a tough nut to crack. It is like an ill-fitting jacket. Okay overall, pinches in a spot or two. You just have to decide which places you’re okay being pinched.” I believe this is essentially true. From my perspective Dispensational Premillennialism pinched in far too many places. Amillennialism seemed to fit pretty well till I’d worn the jacket for a while then I noticed the pinches and they became uncomfortable. Postmillennialism always seemed like a jacket with three arms or something. I could never get that one to fit though I do appreciate its optimism. What I’ve found is that Historic Premillennialism embraces all the strengths of these other perspectives and pinches in a few spots that I’m currently OK with.

Anyway, here goes with my list of some of the problems. If you are amillennialist there are some important things you must reckon with:

You must necessarily read New Testament prophecies of Jesus’ Second Coming the same way Jews read Old Testament prophecies of Jesus’ First Coming. This thought came from George Eldon Ladd:

From the Old Testament perspective, the church age is not seen…There are indeed prophecies which describe the coming of a Messianic personage in suffering and humility such as Isaiah 53 and Zechariah 9:9-10, other prophecies which describe the victorious King of the Davidic Line (Isaiah 9, 10), as well as a prophecy of the coming of a heavenly Son of Man in Daniel 7. But the Old Testament does not relate these several prophecies to one another, either theologically or chronologically. God will finally act to redeem his people, and different prophets describe this eschatological redemption in different terms. The Old Testament makes no effort to synthesize the prophecies; and the effort to decide which prophecies apply to the church age, which apply to the millennial era, and which belong to The Age to Come ignores this basic fact of the prophetic perspective. – George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 37

What Ladd is saying is that in the Old Testament, the prophets and the prophetic message didn’t clearly articulate a space between the events of Jesus First Coming (the Suffering Servant) and those of his Second Coming (reigning Davidic King). The perspective of the Old Testament prophets was that those events appeared to happen at once. That is why the Apostles expected Jesus to “restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6) before his ascension. They did not yet understand that there would be a time period between Christ’s two comings.

Non-millennialists do the same thing with the New Testament explanations of the events of Jesus Second Coming and the ushering in of the New Heavens and New Earth. Ladd again:

One would never discover this fact [of the millennial reign of Christ] from most of the New Testament because it sees the future like a two-dimension canvas in terms of length and breadth without depth. The transition between the two ages is viewed as though it were one simple event, even as the Old Testament prophets looked forward to a single Day of the Lord. – George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 38

And

From the New Testament perspective, the eschatological act of God is usually viewed as a single day which will introduce The Age to Come. However, the Revelation of John, as well as 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, indicates that there are yet to be two eschatological stages in the accomplishment of the divine purpose and the establishment of God’s Kingdom. – George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 37

You must conflate two separate resurrections into one. In Revelation 20:4 John says that he saw “the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus…came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.” In verse 13 the sea and Death and Hades give up the dead and they are judged. The amillennialist must deal with these two resurrections (separated by “a thousand” years) in such a way that there is only one resurrection at Christ’s return. Some amillennialists have said that the first resurrection is speaking of regeneration, the new birth. After all, regeneration is passing from spiritual death to spiritual life (Ephesians 2:5). The immediate problem with that is that anastasis, which is translated ‘resurrection’ in Revelation 20:5, always refers to physical resurrection, never regeneration. And the resurrection mentioned in verse 5 is “the first resurrection,” that is, the resurrection of the beheaded martyrs. Their resurrection is described as a pysical one, not strictly spiritual.

Also consider how those who were raised in Revelation 20 are described. They are those “who had been beheaded” who “had not worshiped the beast” or “received its mark”. They were not brought to life, i.e. regenerated or born again, before they did these things in order that they might be able to do them, but after they had done them. In any other discussion we would say that regeneration is the only way we are able to resist such things, otherwise we’re slaves to sin. The implication that those who were raised can do it before they are regenerate is problematic. No, it was after they had done these things that they were brought to life. In other words, as John describes it, they behaved like born-again Christians, were killed for that, and then were brought back to life. The only way that makes sense is if they were physically resurrected after their martyrdom.

If instead the amillennialist says that this resurrection actually happens at the same time as the one in verse 13, then what does their reigning with Christ mean? They were raised and then reigned with Jesus. If they are raised at the time of the final judgment in what sense did they reign with Jesus? And why would John mention a specific interval of their reign if they are raised, judged and brought in to the New Heavens and New Earth in one event?

A potential answer to this is that at our spiritual resurrection we reign with Christ. This sounds good because as Ephesians 2:6 says, God “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” As glorious as that truth is, it doesn’t mean that we’re currently reigning with Jesus. New Testament discussion of our reigning with Christ always puts it in the future:

The saying is trustworthy, for:
if we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself. (2 Timothy 2:11–13)

and

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! (1 Corinthians 4:8)

You must reconcile the current binding of Satan with verses in the New Testament that indicate he is still actively deceiving people. One of the verses that bothered me enough to move me out of  amillennialism was 2 Corinthians 4:4: “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” If Satan is currently bound as described in Revelation 20:1-3, “that he might not deceive the nations any longer,” then he should not be able to “blind the minds of unbelievers.”

That is not to say that at the cross Jesus didn’t in some sense bind Satan. Matthew 12:28-29 indicates that Jesus’ and his disciples’ ministry of casting out demons was in essence binding the strong man and plundering his house. But that appears to be different than Satan’s binding more fully so that his deceptive powers over humanity are removed. The non-millennialist usually equates the binding of Satan in Revelation 20 with the binding of the strong man in Matthew 12 and exegetically that appears to require stronger justification that has been offered.

Perhaps “so that he might not deceive the nations” in Revelation 20:3 is not describing the extent of Satan’s binding but rather the reason for it. But that doesn’t solve the problem because if his being bound doesn’t prevent him from blinding the eyes of the unbelievers, then Jesus did not achieve his purpose in binding him.

You must believe that the present earth will never be set free from its bondage under sin but will only be destroyed and recreated. Under a non-millennial view, Jesus returns to earth, judges the living and the dead then ushers in the final state in one cataclysmic event. According to 2 Peter 3:10-12 on the Day of the Lord the creation will be dissolved and judgment will come. There is no deliverance of creation, only a day when it is replaced. But Romans 8 indicts that creation is waiting a day when it will be delivered from the futility it was subjected to at the fall. If there is not a time when peace reigns on the earth but there is only recreation, creation is not waiting for deliverance but destruction. It would be like a hostage waiting for friendly forces to come and shoot her rather than liberate her.

We experience rebirth before resurrection. There is a period for us when we are born again but are not yet glorified. We have redeemed hearts but un-redeemed bodies. The non-millennialist must believe that this “now and not yet” does not apply to the rest of creation even though verses like those in Isaiah 11 describe a time when the earth is at peace with itself, not yet burned up and replaced, death is weakened but not removed.

You must see the reign of the promised Davidic King as only ever partial on this earth. The non-millennialist sees Jesus currently reigning from heaven, as he truly is, and must accept that as the full extent of it. Though he is promised to rule the nations with a rod of iron (Isaiah 11:4, Psalm 2, Revelation 2:25-27), he actually will only rule his church on this earth. We do not see Jesus rule this way yet (Hebrews 2:6-9) but there is a day coming when he will (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).

We do not see Jesus rule the nations in this manner now and in the non-millennial view, he never will. The nations rage under God’s sovereign control as they have all along (Danial 7). But what seems to be pictured in many verses is the significant, earthly reign of the Davidic King over the nations of the earth. As I mentioned above, the Apostles still had this hope when Jesus ascended to heaven. His answer to them did not sound particularly amillennial; “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” (Acts 2:7) An amillennial answer might have been more along the lines of “Yes I shall as you receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Instead Jesus tells them to not worry about when that will happen but that they will first be his witnesses to the nations under the hope of that coming day when Jesus will rule in that fashion.

Also, I did a follow up post on the binding of Satan here.