Conclusion
Samuel Hopkins, an American theologian from the 18th century, wrote this in 1792 in his Treatise on the Millennium: “If it were known when the Bishop of Rome first became what is designed to be denoted by the beast, the time of his fall, and of the end of the church of Rome, and of Satan’s kingdom in the world, when the Millennium will commence, could be ascertained to a year” (Samuel Hopkins, A Treatise on the Millennium, p. 107.) On the next page, after crunching some numbers, he hints that the millennium might commence in 2016. That year is well behind us now. Another Bible scholar named Bryce Johnston said this in 1794 in his Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, quoted by another Bible scholar called George Bush in 1832: “The Millennium must commence immediately upon the final overthrow of Papal Rome: But it was formerly shewn in its proper place that Papal Rome shall be completely overthrown in the end of the year of Christ 1999. The Millennium therefore, which both in the order of this prophecy and in the nature of the thing follows close upon the overthrow of Papal Rome, must commence in the beginning of the year of Christ 2000” (George Bush, A Treatise on the Millennium, p. 25.) Our twentieth century millenarians and their twenty-first century successors have done the same kind of thing that Mr. Hopkins did in 1792 and that Mr. Johnston did 1794. Instead of using dates associated with Papal Rome for their time-stamp, they have used 1948 (because of Israel’s victorious War of Independence), 1967 (because of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War), Y2K (because of the number 2000 and the supposition that all the computers were going to crash), 2012 (because of the Mayan calendar), and their opinions on the mid or pre-tribulation rapture as their means to set dates again and again for the return of Christ. Readers that have read, with care, books by Hal Lindsey, Grant Jeffrey, and Jack Van Impe, have noticed this. These men have set dates so often that it is not even necessary to quote from their works to prove it; and quoting from these authors is hard to do, anyway, after their books have been indignantly cast away. Selling startling books has been more important to writers like these than the exercise of caution through the knowledge of erstwhile folly. And springing from this lucrative platform has been irresistible for writers good at rehashing the impulsive prognostications of others. Caeca invidia est. (Envy is blind.) Books on what one charismatic crier has called ‘the last of the last days’ will continue to be published, probably, until the last minute of the last day; and even then the date will be gotten wrong.
Older books on the millennium, though, in spite of their faults, are often brilliant in their insights, arguments, and assimilation of historical knowledge. George Bush’s Treatise on the Millennium from 1832 is faulty because he interprets the book of Revelation through the lens of Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But his book is valuable for its presentation of the theological history of millenarianism. Millenarianism, also known as premillennialism, aka Chiliasm, was, he says, extensively believed by Christians during the first three centuries of the Church. This belief, however, he also says, and with convincing evidence, originates from the Jewish tradition that the world will subsist for seven thousand years, the last thousand being, as was supposed, a thousand years of rest. Chiliasm is, most probably, one of the sundry traditions of the elders, regardless of how long the world, in its present fallen form, will last. Quoting a French Protestant divine by the name of Daubuz, he relates the following: “Now that tradition was grounded upon the allegorical exposition of the creation of the world in six days, and the rest of God in the seventh; and that a thousand years are with God as one day” (George Bush’s Treatise on the Millennium, p. 26.) So the premillennial literalists who accuse amillennialists of being at fault for interpreting a thousand years allegorically, have, for their interpretation of a thousand years, an allegorical basis. They take the millennium literally; but this literal interpretation is based on the allegorical application of a ‘day.’ How far back does their tradition of a literal millennium go? On the next page of the same book, completing the quote from Daubuz, we read: “Now that the Jews had it must be plain from this, that we find it in St. Barnabas, who wrote before St. John many years. And indeed we give very good reasons in our Commentary to think that the notion is as old as the Deluge, because we find it pretty plainly to be also the tradition of the Chaldean Magi, and perhaps too of the Egyptians.” I have not read Charles Daubuz’ Perpetual Commentary on the Revelation of St. John or what St. Barnabas wrote; but I provide the information above to show the likely source of a dogma that is far less expository of the Scriptures than a dogma needs to be.
“One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day” (2 Peter 3.8.) There is no rationale for literalizing ‘a thousand years’ on the basis of this allegorical saying. The meaning of the saying—the reason for St. Peter using the saying—lies on each side of the verse. On the one side it is used to reprove; on the other its use is to encourage. So on the one side the message is to scoffers who say that the second coming will not happen because it is taking a long time. The answer to them is: From your flippant perspective it seems that way; but from the Lord’s perspective it will arrive soon enough. On the other side the message is to saints who feel that that the promise of the Lord’s coming is slack, or delayed. The answer to them is: From your fretful perspective it seems like that; but from your Lord’s perspective it is even at the door. Plain, or literal speech, is sometimes meant allegorically; an example of this readily comes to mind. We see it in Luke 14.26 from Jesus: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” But if allegorical speech is ever meant to be taken literally, an example is not so easily thought of. Since the Revelation of St. John of the Revelation of Jesus Christ is a series of visions, the interpretation of a vision is the doorway to coming to an understanding of the ultimate book of God’s word; and visions, in the Bible, are usually symbolic, and therefore to be interpreted allegorically.
After dashing through most of the dreams and visions that are recorded in the Bible, I see that the interpretation of visions and dreams is a minefield only to careless walkers; or, it is not so much a minefield as it is a field to glean from. First, dreams and visions are sometimes used synonymously, or nearly so. We have this in at least two instances in the book of Daniel. “Thy dream,” says the prophet to king Nebuchadnezzar, “and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these” (Daniel 2.28.) The other occurrence even more obviously shows the synonymous association. “I saw a dream which made me afraid,” says the king, “and the thoughts upon my bed and visions of my head troubled me” (Daniel 4.5.) He ‘saw’ a dream means that he had ‘visions.’ Second, a dream might be so blunt and to the point as to bear a literal interpretation. We have this in Genesis 20.3: “But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man’s wife.” There are other examples of this kind: Genesis 31.24; 1 Kings 3.5; Matthew 1.20. Third, a dream might be allegorical, which is usually the case with dreams. This we have in Joseph’s dream of the sun, moon, and eleven stars doing obeisance to him (Genesis 37.9), for the celestial bodies bowing down to him signified his parents and siblings becoming reliant on him for sustenance in the future famine. There are other examples of this kind: Genesis 40; Judges 7.13; Daniel 7. Fourth, a vision is sometimes literal, and needs no interpretation. We have an instance of this in the life of Samuel when still a boy. In this vision the LORD spoke to him plainly of Eli: “I will perform against Eli all things which I have spoken concerning his house: when I begin, I will also make an end” (1 Samuel 3.12.) There are other examples of this kind: Genesis 15; Luke 1; Acts 9.12. Fifth, a vision is sometimes figurative, allegorical: what Jonathan Edwards calls ‘mystical.’ Examples of this sort are not wanting. Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones is one of the most obvious and well-known (Ezekiel 37.) Others of this kind include: Daniel 8; Acts 10; Revelation 9.17. To sum up: These dreams and visions, except for the last one cited, are either plain, needing no further explanation; or mystical, but explained to us in their respective passages. In the book of Revelation, though, verse 9.17 being one example out of many in that book, we have mystical visions that require the aid of the Bible at large for their understanding. This has been shown by comparing the casting down of Satan (Revelation 20.3) to the testimony of Jesus concerning Satan falling like lightning from heaven (Luke 10.18.) So while it is true that most of the figurative dreams and visions that the Bible has recorded are interpreted for us in their immediate contexts, what St. John saw in the spirit requires, for its interpretation, the understanding of adjacent contexts and outlying texts together. Just as calculus and algebra are more difficult to learn than addition and multiplication, the Revelation of St. John is harder to figure out than the books of Ruth and Esther.
What is recorded in the Apocalypse is what John the apostle saw in visions. What a seer sees in visions is not always to be taken literally as we would see the sights in three dimensional form standing before us. St. John was in the spirit when he saw the heavenly Revelation; but he was still a mortal, not glorified, man. Therefore he was shown what he was shown in the fashion that a mortal would be able to be shown it. And this Revelation had to be communicated like that too, from St. John the mortal to mortal saints. So what we have in Revelation are pictures condescended to mortal capacity. To take what is revealed in this last book of the Bible in literal form would be like interpreting the dream that Pharaoh had (Genesis 41) as seven lean kine eating seven fat kine and to put the foot down and exclaim, “It has to mean that! We have to take what the Bible says literally.” But, for examples, blood ‘even unto the horse bridles’ (Revelation 14.20) and ‘locusts’ emerging from the pit of hell (9.3) and ‘the thousand years’ (20.2-7) are about some things else, just as the lean kine eating the fat kine was about famine. If God showed to Pharaoh something as earthy as a famine in symbolic pictures, how much more likely is it that he would use symbolic pictures to show an apostle things that are heavenly?
Chiliasm appeals to our carnal lusts. Even non-Christian readers are attracted to books about a thousand epicurean years on earth. In the early days of my faith, I read many of these voluptuous books. Then, little by little and more and more, in accord with the principle that the apostle Paul communicated to disciples in Corinth (1 Corinthians 13.11), this childish pursuit was put away. The premillennial belief has a lot to do with escaping the great tribulation by the rapture, and enjoying earthly pleasures (not unlike ‘Turkish delights’) for a thousand years before these things pass away forever in the creation of the new heaven and the new earth. Proponents of premillennialism believe that there will be, near the end of their golden millennium, a final uprising by Satan and his henchmen. This is fine; a conflict like this indeed happens near the end of time. But this insurgency will be followed, they say, not only by the defeat of the devil and his evil bands, but also the destruction of that rich millennial earth that took so long to perfect. Would it make sense to burn up a paradisiacal world that has taken 1,000 years to build and beautify? It makes more sense to believe that the Lord will finish this present earth with fire (2 Peter 3.10), the same earth that is being destroyed right now by Communist and Globalist degenerates: that he ‘shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth’ (Revelation 11.18.) These two verses are well matched, especially since Revelation 11 is one of the seven chapters in this book that brings us to the end of history. Those chapters are, by the way: 3, 7, 11, 14, 16, 19, and 22. Each of these chapters ends with the closure of history, but with progressive continuance as new details and features are added until the last ‘Amen’ in the Bible. This way of dividing Revelation is an old one; I heard it first through Martyn Lloyd-Jones in an audio sermon; he seems to have gotten it from E. W. Hengstenberg, a German theologian from the 1800s. I saw hints of a division like that in Bede’s Explanation of the Apocalypse from the eighth century; and also in Victorinus’ Commentary on the Apocalypse of the Blessed John from about the turn of the fourth. This mode of interpreting the book of Revelation, along with an amillennial understanding of ‘the thousand years,’ is not something to insist on, even though it may be something that we are convinced of. The interpretation of the Apocalypse as a linear sequence of future events, though, with its ‘rubber meets the road’ millennium, is exhausted on account of having been humiliated through the long train of preposterous books that have been written by its leading advocates.
From the Confession of the Evangelical Free Church of Geneva, A. D. 1848: “We expect from heaven our Saviour Jesus Christ, who will change our body of humiliation and make it conform to his own body of glory; and we believe that, in that day, the dead who are in Christ, coming out from their tombs at his voice, and the faithful then living on the earth, all transformed through his power, will be taken up together into the clouds to meet him, and that thus we shall always be with our Saviour.” This Confession goes on from this to outline the truth on resurrection and judgment without touching on a millennium of whatever kind; no millennium is mentioned in the Confession at all. Christians do not have to agree about the nature or length of the millennium. It can be left out of a Confession because it is a peripheral matter, not a preeminent one. Sadly, because of their zealous adhesion to a literalistic millennium, with its numerous auxiliary teachings, many Christians, no doubt, would be perplexed at it being omitted from a summary of essential doctrine and might even have qualms about subscribing to a Confession of Faith on account of this omission. When I was first introduced to Reformed Confessions, and still a millenarian, I wrote this in the margin near the end of the Belgic Confession: “Where is the Mill?” That is what reading Charles Ryrie’s and C. I. Scofield’s notes on the Bible can do to a person. It can influence a reader to pay more attention on subsidiary matters than on matters of great moment. The great Confessions of the Christian Faith do not include articles on the millennium because the kingdom of God does not necessarily involve a matter-of-fact thousand years of peace on this present earth. There is a kingdom within, which is what the Lord focused on during his ministry; and there is an eschatological kingdom that he did not ignore. These aspects of the kingdom are complimentary; the one will follow upon the other. The kingdom of heaven is entered through regeneration, by being born again by the Spirit of God. This aspect is the essence of the kingdom; this is first; this is fundamental. This aspect is as intangible as what must be conquered by the Lord for our entry into it: Satan, Sin, and Death. The eschatological aspect, for its part, is the ultimate manifestation of God’s rule over every creature, especially his regenerated saints in the new heaven and the new earth: the everlasting kingdom of God. To focus attention on a literal millennium that hinges on one passage of Scripture from the Bible’s most allegorical book, is unwise and reckless; in so many cases among so many writers, this focus is more a monetary move or a prejudicial move than a righteous one. The subject of the millennium, though, because it is in the Bible, and because it is a subject that has been lately abused by fanatics for financial gain, deserves some attention. Working on the subject, because it is biblical work, is a blessing; but, as Bede confessed in his Explanation of the Apocalypse, it is ‘hazardous labor.’ My confidence that amillennialism is correct and that its rival views are false, notwithstanding the hazard involved in the foregoing labor, is stronger than it has ever been; I can barely restrain myself from being dogmatic about it. That the thousand years is allegorical is supported by the ‘first resurrection’ being allegorical and the binding of Satan being allegorical as well; and the interpretive apparatuses that are used to come up with this figurative point of view are exacting and forthright, not incompetent and underhanded.
Whether there is a literal millennium to come or whether there is a figurative one right now, this gospel age will end in glory: “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11.9.) Christianity (in the face of persecution or opposition by first century Jewish Leaders, the Roman Caesars, the Roman Catholic Priesthood, Barbarians, Muslims, Communists, Evolutionists, Polytheists, Atheists, Institutionalized Religion, Religious Cults, all the Humanist Ideologues, and all the Savage Tribes of Heathendom) is the reason why there has been enough peace in the world to keep us from destroying each other and our planet these last two thousand years. When this verse runs over into a new earth, it will pour out its blessings without intermission and opposition forever. Then we will look back and understand each prophecy to perfection, whether it originates from the hardest sayings of Daniel, the last chapters of Ezekiel, or the Revelation of Jesus Christ to his servant John.
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