The Millennium, Part 1

A little Southern blues to put you in the mood for the Apocalypse —

(Rev 20:1 ESV) Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain.  2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,  3 and threw him 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. After that he must be released for a little while.

4 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.  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.

7 And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison  8 and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea.  9 And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them,  10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.  12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.

Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.  13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done.

14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.  15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Revelation 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

Having laid out a fairly extensive argument for conditional immortality, I guess it’s fair for readers to ask how this fits into the 1,000-year reign. Well, I’d never really studied the 1,000-year reign. I did, after all, grow up in the Churches of Christ, and we avoid eschatology and the Revelation. Foy Wallace, Jr. taught that getting these things wrong will get you damned and disfellowshipped, and so we just kind of avoid the topic altogether. At least, that’s how it was where I grew up.

So let’s begin by making one thing quite clear. The various Millennial theories are not salvation issues. Well, they’re all about salvation, of course, but not whether you are saved. You don’t have to get this right to go to heaven. Revelation 20 won’t be on the final.

This passage was written as a word of comfort for the persecuted church, not to test our hermeneutical expertise. The words may well have been written obscurely to hide the seditious nature of the church and the harsh teachings against Rome. But it was meant to be understood by a church that was not far removed from Judaism and for whom the Old Testament was their “scriptures.” The writer assumes a strong familiarity with Old Testament prophecy and even with Jewish intertestamental literature not included in the scriptures.

Therefore, we Westerners greatly struggle to understand the book, because our knowledge of the Old Testament is generally pretty poor. We try to turn apocalyptic literature into a handbook for interpreting the newspaper, looking for prophecies about the European Union and Hitler and terrorism, while John’s audience had entirely different concerns. They were more worried about whether God would prevail and whether their martyrdom at the hands of Rome was worth the cost.

Now, I’m no expert on the Millennium. This is the first time I’ve studied the issue seriously. But I am convinced that there are a lot of false interpretations out there (they can’t all be right!). My approach hasn’t been to study the various schools of thought and pick one. Rather, my approach has been to start with the text.

Let’s start with some basics.

Outline of the Revelation

I borrow the following from Anthony Hoekema:

John sees the risen and glorified Christ walking in the midst of seven golden lampstands. In obedience to Christ’s command John now proceeds to write letters to each of the seven churches of Asia Minor. The vision of the glorified Christ together with the letters to the seven churches obviously form a unit. As we read these letters we are impressed with two things.

First, there are references to events, people and places of the time when the book of Revelation was written. Second, the principles, commendations and warnings contained in these letters have value for the church of all time. These two observations, in fact, provide a clue for the interpretation of the entire book. Since the book of Revelation was addressed to the church of the first century A.D., its message had reference to events occurring at that time and was therefore meaningful for the Christians of that day. But since the book was also intended for the church through the ages, its message is still relevant for us today.

The second of these seven sections is the vision of the seven seals found in chapters 4-7. John is caught up to heaven and sees God sitting on his radiant throne. He then sees the Lamb that had been slain taking the scroll sealed with seven seals from the hand of the one who was sitting on the throne. The various seals are broken, and various divine judgments on the world are described. In this vision we see the church suffering trial and persecution against the background of the victory of Christ. The third section, found in chapters 8-11, describes the seven trumpets of judgment. In this vision we see the church avenged, protected and victorious.

The fourth section, chapters 12-14, begins with the vision of the woman giving birth to a son while the dragon waits to devour him as soon as he is born–an obvious reference to the birth of Christ. The rest of the section describes the continued opposition of the dragon (who stands for Satan) to the church. This section also introduces us to the two beasts who are the dragon’s helpers: the beast out of the sea and the beast out of the earth.

The fifth section is found in chapters 15-16. It describes the seven bowls of wrath, thus depicting in a very graphic way the final visitation of God’s wrath on those who remain impenitent.

The sixth section, chapters 17-19, describes the fall of Babylon and of the beasts. Babylon stands for the worldly city — the forces of secularism and godlessness which are in opposition to the kingdom of God. The end of chapter 19 depicts the fall and final punishment of the dragon’s two helpers: the beast out of the sea, and the false prophet, who appears to be identified with the beast out of the earth (see 16:13).

The seventh section, chapters 20-22, narrates the doom of the dragon, thus completing the description of the overthrow of the enemies of Christ. In addition, it describes the final judgment, the final triumph of Christ and his church, and the renewed universe, here called the new heaven and the new earth.

Note that though these seven sections are parallel to each other, they also reveal a certain amount of eschatological progress. The last section, for example, takes us further into the future than the other sections. Although the final judgment has already been announced in 1:7 and has been briefly described in 6:12-17, it is not set forth in full detail until we come to 20:11-15. Though the final joy of the redeemed in the life to come has been hinted at in 7:15-17, it is not until we reach chapter 21 that we find a detailed and elaborate description of the blessedness of life on the new earth (21:1-22:5). Hence this method of interpretation is called progressive parallelism.

There is eschatological progression in these seven sections, not only regarding the individual sections but also regarding the book as a whole. If we grant that the book of Revelation depicts the struggle between Christ and his church on the one hand and the enemies of Christ and the church on the other, we may say that the first half of the book (chapters 1-11) describes the struggle on earth, picturing the church as it is persecuted by the world. The second half of the book, however (chapters 12-22), gives us the deeper spiritual background of this struggle, describing the persecution of the church by the dragon (Satan) and his helpers. In the light of this analysis we see how the last section of the book (chapters 20-22) falls into place. This last section describes the judgment which falls on Satan, and his final doom. Since Satan is the supreme opponent of Christ, it stands to reason that his doom should be narrated last.

I highlighted the boldfaced text to point out the viewpoint that these sections cover much the same material but from different perspectives. Therefore, we find that the final battle against Gog and Magog of Rev 20:7-10 recapitulates the battle of Armegeddon described in Rev 16 and the defeat of the beast and the prophet in Rev 19. The New International Commentary by Mounce and Leon Morris’s commentary in the Tyndale series lay out the arguments for the parallel structure in detail.