PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION III

Death. “For the wages of sin is death.” We are all familiar with physical death: the separation of the soul from the body. But there follows another after that: the separation of the soul from the goodness of God in eternity, which happens because the soul would not unite with God while on earth. It used to be common knowledge that Jesus spoke of hell more than heaven. Since the wisest Teacher spoke of hell more often than he spoke about heaven, it must be more useful to scare than it is to coax. The final Revelation is given for the ‘servants’ of Jesus Christ, the already saved (Revelation 1.1.) The specific revelation of hell is given (note the ‘Pharisees’ in Luke 16.14) for those who are under condemnation. It is always a good idea to rake some truth up from the bowels of hell—from the story that Jesus told as he looked into it with his piercing eye, for most of us are still in peril of perishing. The story is a comparison of the dissimilar futures that two souls came to after their deaths on earth. One man is called ‘the rich man’; his future ended up being hell. The other is Lazarus; he had been the beggar at the rich man’s gate. We will stick to the rich man’s future, and the characteristics of it. (1) The rich man was in torment. He said: “send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue” (Luke 16.24.) The rich man will condescend to let the beggar touch his tongue with his dirty finger? If it has water on it, he will. (2) He was denied his request for relief: “son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented” (verse 25.) (3) He could not leave his place of confinement: “there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence” (verse 26.) (4) He was depersonalized, known only as ‘a certain rich man,’ while Lazarus was dignified with a name. The rich man’s future, then, came down to this: conscious torment, no relief, no escape, and no name worth remembering. There is some argument about whether this parable is historical or not. There is no consolation in the opinion that Jesus told a story that is not historically true. There is no proof that the story is not historical; there is no proof that this story is merely a parable. In any case, Jesus didn’t waste his time telling stories that do not touch, in decisive and material ways, ultimate reality. As a matter of fact, be it a parable or not, the story of Lazarus and the rich man only dimly conveys what an experience of hellfire is. “But those things that are used as similitudes, instead of exceeding the reality, are only faint images and shadows of the torments of hell” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, p. 35.) Stories of hell are told to make the strongest impression on sinners in order for them to take every possible pain to avoid what is not possible to convey the horribleness of. Jesus taught spiritual truth. He did it plainly and by parable. It makes no difference whether the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man is historical or not.

This future—the wrath of God endured in hell—will be the unending reality for every unfortunate soul who refuses God’s alternative offer. Not only that, but it gets worse than hell when hell and all of its grimacing inhabitants are cast into a lake of fire at the final judgment: “This is the second death” (Revelation 20.14.) What we thought was quintessential (hell) ends up being merely penultimate (because the lake of fire is even worse.) This is the future of man without God. Thin-skinned Christians do not like to hear the tribulations of hell referred to as ‘torture.’ But torture means anguish that is inflicted. And what is that but a description of being punished? To be punished by provoked omnipotence must be a torturous experience. This is why the word ‘torture’ is often used in older books of divinity to characterize the agonies of hell. The fate of the impenitent is terrible beyond words to describe. It is an ‘outer darkness,’ wherein is a continual ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matthew 25.30.) Sometimes in Scripture it is difficult to ascertain whether hell is being described, or else the lake of fire that hell is eventually poured into. Hell, hellfire, the lake of fire—it is not wrong to treat these synonymously; but there are two stages of punishment in the afterlife, just as there are many aspects of punishment. There is hell, where remorseless sinners are consigned to wait to be finally judged; and there is the lake of fire that follows upon the final judgment. In the Bible, many similitudes are used to describe the future that impenitent sinners must one day have for their everlasting experience. How all of these similes agree and harmonize exceeds our ability to fathom, no matter which, whether hell or the lake of fire, is the subject. “Everything that gives an idea of an extreme misery is used to set forth hell torments because no one is sufficient to express it” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, pp. 35, 36.)

Considering the future that obstinate sinners are headed toward, what a shame it is that the majority of them will not pause to contemplate their likely destination! The future that they are speeding toward is more harrowing than their worst nightmare. The agony will be worse than the most lingering, painful death. It will be worse than dying of stomach cancer forever. The nightmare will be one that no soul will be able to wake from, for souls in hell will be eternally awake. The irreversibility of this outcome is the worst aspect of it. 

PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION II

Sin. “For the wages of sin is death.” One of the biblical definitions of the word ‘sin’ is ‘offense.’ Anything less than perfect obedience to God is an offense. To sin is to offend God by falling short of his holy law. We all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23.) The wages for our offense is death; but ‘the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Far from falling short, we no longer aim to obey God, do we? But we seldom call our shortfall ‘sin.’ This word ‘sin’ has become an unacceptable word in our society. The more wickedness is done and encouraged, the less mention is there of wickedness being sinful. Abiding sin has made us hate the word ‘sin.’ Our society scoffs at the mention of something as ‘sin.’ But should something that we are condemned to hell for doing be something to scoff at? The reason for the scoffing is that we wish to live in denial of what we permit ourselves to wallow in day after day. Sin is tolerated, while being held responsible for it is unpopular. Righteousness makes us uncomfortable because righteousness is a light that points out the darkness of sin. The next time you see something wrong being done, yell out the word ‘sinner’ and then observe the reaction. It is a myth that people are dumb to the word ‘sin.’ They know that it means an accusation of guilt. This is why they hate hearing the word brought up. Compare how indifferent people are to cursing, to how terrified they are of praying, in a public place. Terrified faces show a horror of holiness and righteousness. When a young woman took a man aside in the mall in order to pray for his soul, I stood back and watched the reactions. Bystanders were visibly uncomfortable at what they saw and heard. Who else but guilty sinners can curse God thoughtlessly one minute, and in the next be embarrassed by, or insulted at, God being prayed to? 

When confronted with reverence to a holy God that he is at odds with, the sinner turns away in disgust. This world is dark and mean and lewd. These are the days when, “The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted” (Psalm 12.8.) Our heroes consist of entertainers, villains, and cheaters. Man pays tribute only to what feeds his lust, pride, and greed. Most songs are about fornication, adultery, and violence. Movies are degenerate. Professional sports are corrupt. And if celebrities are wicked, and if they are nevertheless admired, then the vilest men are indeed exalted among us. They are idols, and are even spoken of that way. These are the days when evil is called good while good is called evil (Isaiah 5.20.) Virginity is laughed at while promiscuity is praised. Serious literature is shunned while trashy books fly off the shelves. So far are we from acknowledging sin that we have been inventing euphemisms to make allowances for vicious behaviors. A young hulking thug, for example, who stomped his teacher almost to death because she took his digital game away, was said to be suffering from ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ and ‘Reactive Explosive Disorder.’ He had been detained, before this, not in a prison or asylum, but in an ‘Intensive Behavior Group Home.’ When sin is no more sin, pretty soon crime is no more crime; and then law-abiding citizens are targeted by both brutal ruffians and their political abettors, which is persecution of the best persons among us by a combination of anarchy and tyranny. The Western world has been stabbing itself for a long time now; it’s finally slitting its throat. ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ and ‘Reactive Explosive Disorder,’ by the way, are dreamed up diseases that make drug manufacturers a lot of money. 

What will the end of these things be? We are going backwards nationally and running after hell individually. Each man must come to the end of his life on earth; and each one must begin his future in another world. For sinners who will never repent, the sooner their life on earth ends, the better it will be for them in hell. “Sinners are little sensible that hellfire grows hotter every day they live in sin; by their sins, they increase the heat of that furnace more than the heat of Nebuchadnezzar’s was increased for the three children. If they go on in sin therefore till they die, it is no advantage to ‘em to live long; the sooner they die the better for them. If they should live twenty years longer and then die in sin, it would be a great Calamity to them that they lived so long” (Jonathan Edwards, Unless You Repent, p. 79.) This might seem like risky preaching. But it’s the preaching of truth. Sinners want to live long; but this means a worse experience in hell unless they repent in time. In this present age of weak minds and faint hearts it should be said that suicide would not be a good solution because this would make one’s hell begin sooner than necessary. Each day out of hell is worth a world of kingdoms; each day out of hell is an opportunity to learn how to avoid going there; each day out of hell is a blessing forever lost to any who are in hell already. Suicide, furthermore, is murder; and murder, even of oneself, is just another way of turning hell’s temperature up. Living long, in any case, without repenting, occasions and ensures the accumulation of wrath to oneself.        

An Englishman by the name of Tom Parr is reputed to have lived to the age of 152. His years are 1483-1635. Such longevity in a man is outstanding in the comparatively recent past. There was another Englishman by the name of Henry Jenkins who eclipsed even Tom Parr. His years are 1500-1670. “There were also four or five in the same parish that were reputed all of them to be 100 years old or within 2 or 3 years of it, and they all said he was an elderly man ever since they knew him” (Anthony Cumby, Evidences of the Great Age of Henry Jenkins, p.6.) Henry Jenkins’ great age was so believed to have been authenticated that a mural of black marble was fashioned in his honor to preserve the knowledge that he had lived so long on the earth. The inscription reads: “Blush not marble/to rescue from oblivion/the memory of/HENRY JENKINS/a Person obscure in birth/But of a Life truly memorable/for/He was enriched/with the goods of nature/if not of fortune/and happy/in the duration/if not variety/ of his Enjoyments/and/tho the partial world/despised or disregarded/his low and humble state/The Equal Eye of Providence/beheld and blessed it/with a Patriarch’s Health and Length of days/to teach mistaken man/these blessings were Entailed on Temperance/Or a life of Labour and a mind at Ease/He lived to the amazing age of/169/was interred here Dec. 6/1670/and had this justice done to his memory/1743” (Ibid., pp. 10, 11.) Well, congratulations to Henry Jenkins. But at last, even for him: Gutta cavat lapidem. (The drop wears away the stone.) 

We tend to admire men who live to a hundred years of age or more; and it is our duty to live as long as we can because life on earth is a gift of God. But unless aged patriarchs and elderly matriarchs are reconciled to God before they die, they have done nothing more than store up more punishment to receive at the day of God’s wrath. Man stores up punishment by living long or sinning big. To bring so many men to greater punishment, God withdraws his restraining grace; and, sinking deeper into sin, these men go on to commit dishonorable deeds of the grossest kind, like sodomy (Romans 1.27), a sin so wicked that it is rarely forgiven because seldom repented of. To meet a Christian who was once a homosexual is a rare thing; it is so rare that it might be called a phenomenon. The acceptance and normalization of homosexuality is the measure of how filthy a nation’s character is, and of how far from God that people have distanced themselves. A people so flagrant, and that so readily dismiss God’s natural order, are eventually given over to a swarm of hostile behaviors, which are delineated in Romans 1.28-32. Are the USA and Canada not nations full of people who are ‘filled with all unrighteousness’? Most of us do not commit homosexual acts; but multitudes of us celebrate that lifestyle; and almost everyone else defends its ‘right’ to flaunt and strut. What mayor disallows a pride parade? Does irreverence and unrighteousness not characterize North America and Europe? We should never mind how evil the rest of the world is until we have studied history to learn how far toward hell the Western world has fallen. Then we might wake up before we are taken over by violent migrants from third world countries. 

Have we not been delighting in wickedness progressively since at least the year 1900? Sin is part of us. We think about it; we talk about it; we act out our offensive conversations and thoughts; we even celebrate sinners who commit the vilest abominations. We ‘have pleasure in them that do them’ (Romans 1.32.) The end of all this countenancing of sin is the future death, not only of body, but of body and soul in ‘the second death.’ This must be the destiny of all sinners who refuse to repent. The consequence of continuing in our despicable condition is the second death, the death with no end to it in a fire that will never be extinguished. Therefore the wretchedness of an impenitent, unredeemed sinner cannot be overstated.

PART I, ARTICLE X: THE FUTURE OF MAN, SECTION I

This is my second study on Romans 6.23. It is less technical and more fluid than the first one, and emphasizes the end that man is coming to as his ‘future,’ a future that will have no end, and that, once entered upon, will be as unalterable as it was inevitable. This study is not a vain repetition of the first one on the same verse, though its deductions and conclusions, because tethered to theology, are indistinguishable.

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23.)

What is the future of man? With the Bible for our Seer, it is possible to foresee the future. In few words, I will attempt to answer this question from the Bible. Where discoveries and inventions are concerned, what man will accomplish on earth is hard to tell. Hundreds of years ago it would have seemed like magic to produce an image of a man suspended in time (photos), to fly above oceans and mountains in tubes (jets), to hear voices in real time from a thousand miles away (phones), to see a man move around on a screen (television), to see the same in real time (live streaming), to send messages across the world that are immediately received (emails), to carry whole libraries in our pockets (thumb drives), to have surgery done on an infant in the womb, to have power enough to exterminate the human race (the atomic bomb), or to see a man walk on the face of the moon. But no matter what man will make his future on earth to be, he cannot remain on earth for long to experience it, for each man must soon die. That sentence is irrevocable. Cryogenics will not reverse it, and reincarnation will not supply a new body for our soul. Eastern religion and Western science must both fail on account of their ignorance and the power of God’s curse for sin. Neither East nor West can, or will, put man on a path that will subvert what ‘the Judge of all the earth’ (Genesis 18.25) has decreed. Man has been dying since the time of Adam; he will continue to die until the end of time; and his body will stay dead until the resurrection. No matter how much a man hates and fears to die, he dies anyway. His spirit cannot resist his appointed hour. When a man dies, his spirit leaves his body. This event begins the everlasting future of man, whether he likes it or not and whether he is ready for it or not. His spirit, which is the essence of his life, cannot be willed to perpetually dwell inside his body. God will not suffer that to happen. When the spirit is called back by God, life leaves the body, and physical death occurs. What happens then? 

What is man’s future? What happens after death? What then? There is a negative future that each person, even from the womb, begins to irresistibly move toward; and there is only one alternative to it. These two futures are summed up for us in one brief verse: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23.) This is perhaps the most compacted statement of vital information in the whole corpus of literature. A more serious ‘diverb,’ furthermore (a proverb in which a contrast is set forth), will not be found in any book anywhere. No verse, even in the Bible itself, contains more compression of saving truth than we find written here. The assertion is that death happens because of sin and that eternal life can happen by the gift of God through Jesus Christ. This gift does not preclude man from dying physically, as we all know. It is offered to save us from a more ominous death—what the Bible calls ‘the second death’ (Revelation 21.8.) The second death is an everlasting death in a lake of fire; the second death is an always-dying but never-ending death. The future of man is this death. The alternative future is eternal life, which may be received as God’s gift ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ 

There may be several levels in this verse, because of the comprehensive meaning of the word ‘death’: spiritual, physical, and eternal. I fix on death as eternal, because: (1) The last words of Romans 6.22, ‘the end everlasting life,’ introduce verse 23 to us; and verse 23 is given to preach the end that is the opposite of that. Therefore the ‘death’ that is mentioned in 6.23 must be as everlasting as the ‘life’ that is mentioned in 6.22. (2) In Romans 6.23 the two possible ends of man are contrasted. ‘The wages of sin is death.’ Because of a divine curse, this is man’s future; this is his future by default. ‘But the gift of God is eternal life.’ This is the exception; this is the future that a sinner may obtain by ‘the gift of God.’ Because ‘death’ is presented in parallel with ‘eternal life,’ we are meant to be mindful of the eternal duration of each. There is a life to everlasting; and there is its contrary: ‘everlasting destruction’ (2 Thessalonians. 1.9.) There are two sequences in our verse: sin and death; gift and life. Then there is the Mediator, Jesus Christ, through whom the good future is received in exchange for the miserable one, life in exchange for death. 

Only the grace of God can cause a condemned man to receive eternal life in place of the appalling future that he is speedily and heedlessly on his way to experiencing. But the grace of God operates through knowledge. More perfect knowledge of man’s future may be used by the Holy Spirit to induce a sinner to turn to God for eternal life through faith in Christ. Romans 6.23 may be divided into five parts. What better use of time can there be than to briefly consider these five parts one by one?

PART I, ARTICLE IX: AMILLENNIANISM NO LONGER INCONCEIVABLE, SECTION VIII

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. 

PART I, ARTICLE IX: AMILLENNIANISM NO LONGER INCONCEIVABLE, SECTION VII

The last inducement has to do with the underhandedness that I have encountered while studying books by advocates of premillennialism, who are usually dispensationalists as well: those Bible teachers who are weak, to say the least, on the doctrines of grace, and who emphasize instead, a decision on the part of man to allow the grace of God to save. Exhibits of underhandedness do not prove that the parties guilty of shiftiness hold to a false view. But the exhibits are suggestive. The first man to be singled out is M. R. DeHaan again, who used to host the Radio Bible Class. In my report of his book, The Second Coming of Jesus, I had more to say about his handling of Scripture than I have already shown. What will be shown from my report of his book cannot be attributed to incompetence merely; the man is guilty of an underhanded handling of the Bible. From my report: During his dilation on the second coming of Jesus being, as he supposes, an event divided into two appearings, DeHaan tries to prove that there will be a secret appearing seven years before the great and last one. “Thus it will be at the coming of the Lord. Only those who are tuned to Station ‘Blood’ will hear that shout” (p. 30.) There is no secret ‘shout’ spoken of in Scripture concerning the second coming, though. This is why DeHaan resorts to saying that those who will hear it must be ‘tuned in’ or be on the ‘right wave length.’ Here is the second coming as predicted by the apostle John: “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen” (Revelation 1.7.) This verse is like 1 Thessalonians 4.16: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” Mr. DeHaan seems too embarrassed to mention the whole of 1 Thessalonians 4.16 on page 30 of his book. He stops at the word ‘shout.’ The verse continues with: ‘the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.’ With more of the verse before us, it cannot be missed how the apostles Paul and John and their verses on the same subject are in perfect harmony. According to the apostle Paul, every ear will hear, for who could be deaf to an archangel’s voice and God’s own trumpet? According to the apostle John, every eye will see, for who can remain blind to the Light of Christ descending from heaven? Even when DeHaan comes to his heading called ‘The Archangel’ on the next page, he avoids the verse that he alluded to and halfway paraphrased: 1 Thessalonians 4.16. The voice of the archangel is something for DeHaan to leave out in order to convince the unwary that the shout is only for Christians to hear. His exegesis is shifty because he is feverishly committed to a faulty eschatological system. Authors from this school of thought are often sinfully sectarian, and misleading because of it.

Nowhere in the Bible do we find the general resurrection of the dead described as more than one act. Acts 24.15: “And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.” It says ‘a’ resurrection there. The last resurrection is one, not two, not several, not many; it is not divided into parts.              

The second exhibit of underhandedness comes from Renald Showers in his book, There Really is a Difference. I did not review this book, but compared parts of it to Louis Berkhof’s History of Christian Doctrines and my book report of that. From that report: Note, first, what Renald Showers asserts under the head, A Description and Early History of Millennial Views in his book, There Really is a Difference: “This examination of early Church leaders indicates that they were, indeed, Premillennial by conviction” (p. 126.) Can this be the case if, as Berkhof alleges, early Church Fathers of note, like Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Ignatius, Polycarp, Tatian, Theophilus, Origen, Dionysius, and Athenagoras left no trace of pre-millennialism in their writings? (Louis Berkhof, The History of Christian Doctrines, p. 262.) Berkhof must be speaking truly here because these early Church Fathers are the very ones who are not highlighted in Showers’ discussion of ‘early history of millennial views.’ Renald Showers names the early Church leaders who advocate his pet dogma, makes no mention of early Church leaders who do not advocate it, and thus leads us to believe that all early Church leaders do. In spite of his carefulness to avoid being caught in a lie by a comprehensive statement, as in ‘the early Church leaders’ or ‘all early Church leaders,’ it can be detected by his presentation that he counts on what he says being taken that way. Why only highlight early Church leaders who were pre-millennial? Why be exclusive in a chapter called A Description and Early History of Millennial Views? It is easy to be deceived because of what an author leaves unsaid. Early Church Fathers did not universally hold to a pre-millennial position. Implying that they did is a lie. Unlike what Renald Showers does, Louis Berkhof does not hide the fact that some early Church leaders took a millennial position that he himself does not subscribe to. Mr. Showers does mention, in his next chapter, a couple of the early Church leaders who held no pre-millennial view; these he styles as Church leaders who rejected the pre-millennial position or ‘prejudiced’ the Greek Church. This is a devious way of doing business after setting the reader up in the previous chapter to believe that early Church leaders, without qualification, were pre-millennial in belief. Renald Showers’ layout inculcates prejudice against any view that is not pre-millennial, and by implication, any author who declines from endorsing that view. I have had to digress like this in order to show how an author obsesses over a peripheral doctrine like the millennium, even to the point of being underhanded in order to gain subscribers to his view of it. Louis Berkhof is better than that. Mr. Showers’ book is a comparison of covenant theology with dispensational. His book is 225 pages long. His pages on the millennium amount to 54 of these. Berkhof’s book on the history of Christian doctrines is 285 pages long. His pages on the millennium amount to 3 of these. Why the disparity of attention on the millennium between these two books? It is because almost every doctrine is more important than the millennial doctrine. The Covenant theologian knows this; the Dispensational writer does not.            

When an author treats a subject deceitfully, as Misters DeHaan and Showers do in their books, it is not proof that his position is wrong; but deceptive treatment should impress us with a strong suspicion. After two of us read Showers’ convincing but misleading book back in the year 2000, we had a casual discussion about it. Referring to the Covenant Theology that Showers skillfully attacks in his book, my friend remarked, “It’s poison.” I remember wondering about whether or not that was a perceptive remark. Now I know who the dispenser of poison is. Showers is not only deceptive, he is a divider among brethren.        

Dispensationalists are fond of asserting, as Showers does in his book, that they use the ‘historical-grammatical method’ of interpretation while Covenant theologians allegorize or at least do so too often. The truth is, if the historical-grammatical method is employed properly, it will be clear that some passages call for allegorical interpretations. When Showers cites the Bible thirty-eight times on page 48 of his book but quotes nothing and exposits nothing, what kind of interpretive method is that? It is not grammatical; it is not historical; it is not allegorical; it is nothing but the method of opining. It is an incompetent method of treating the Holy Scriptures; and it is an underhanded method of convincing readers of a teaching that needs biblical and exegetical support.

PART I, ARTICLE IX: AMILLENNIANISM NO LONGER INCONCEIVABLE, SECTION VI

The next inducement to be noticed is incompetence, which has already been demonstrated to a degree in the case of M. R. DeHaan’s treatment of ‘the thousand years’ in Revelation 20. This kind of incompetence is perennial among writers of premillennial material. Year after year, in book after book, these writers show their commitment to opinions more than exegesis, especially, or at least, respecting their pet doctrine of a thousand literal years of pleasure and plenty. The Meaning of the Millennium is a book presenting four views on the subject by four current (in the 1970s) exponents of these respective views. I first read the book in 2001. When I read the book again in 2023 I was able to spend more time with it because now it was not borrowed. After reading Herman A. Hoyt’s presentation in favor of dispensational premillennialism, I noted: “He does not actually exegete. He merely cites passages copiously, which dispensationalists commonly do.” A few pages after his presentation and my comment upon it, I found that Anthony A. Hoekema, the advocate for the amillennial view, had observed the same thing. He said: “What makes Hoyt’s essay difficult to evaluate is that he nowhere gives us a specific exegesis of any Scripture passage. Most of the time he simply gives scriptural references in parentheses; occasionally he quotes a Bible passage; but never does he give a detailed and argued interpretation of a passage” (The Meaning of the Millennium, pp. 104, 105.) Dispensational premillennialists are like kids looking at pictures in books but never gaining understanding by the words on their pages except for whatever may be gleaned by lightly glancing at the text. The frequent use of figurative language in the Bible makes it a picture book; its pictures must be interpreted by the dissection of passages and words and by comparing text with text. When this work reveals that the view we’ve been espousing is wrong, what should we do? Alia tentanda via est. (Another way must be tried.) So often, as in all aspects of life, be it occupational, romantic, or religious, what holds us back from change and progress is what we want the truth to be. The first words in Hoyt’s essay on the dispensational-premillennial view are these: “A world in turmoil yearns for a period in history when mankind can enjoy the benefits of the millennial kingdom as described in the Bible, a golden age of civilization” (The Meaning of the Millennium, p. 63.) God has better gold for us, though, than any old-earth civilization can yield. The unbelieving Jews of Jesus’ day looked for an earthly kingdom; our present-day dispensationalists look for the same thing; they have been making the same mistake. Jesus says to focus on the kingdom within; they focus on a kingdom without. “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, the kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17.20, 21.) Dispensationalists may not be Pharisees; but they are looking with a Pharisaical eye. Their eye is not penetrating beneath the terms. Even when looking up the meaning of a word, Hoyt shows how nearsighted he is. On page 75 of The Meaning of the Millennium, he says: “In the Latin translation the word millennium renders the Greek word for a thousand, and that explains the term as used for this kingdom.” Does that settle the matter? Does the use of the number ‘thousand’ in other parts of the Bible than Revelation 20 matter at all? The evidence that amillennialism is the correct view is based on a close look at what key words and concepts that are used in Revelation 20 mean, not only in that chapter, but outside that chapter, outside the book of which the chapter is a part, and even outside the New Testament and inside the Old. 

The incompetent surfing of Scripture verses to convince readers of opinions is not Bible teaching; it is opinionated persuasion. Tacking on numerous citations at the ends of opinionated sentences might make a writer look like he knows what the Bible means on a subject; but it has something to do, maybe, with appearances. The show that is put on is rarely scrutinized by readers; and writers who put on this kind of show know that. How many readers look up the verses that are cited but not quoted or that are cited and only partially quoted? How many readers study the passages in which the verses that are quoted are found? How many readers will do this when the verses that are cited are as numerous as they are in Showers’ There Really is a Difference? On one single page of this book, Renald Showers (p. 48) cites the Bible thirty-eight times but quotes nothing from it; he does not quote one single verse, much less exegete anything. But the page is supposed to prove ‘the characteristics of the future Kingdom,’ by which kingdom he means: the coming millennium of a thousand actual years. He has seen, in these verses and passages, references to improved conditions, bumper crops, domestication, vegetarianism, the abolition of diseases and deformities, longevity, and worldwide peace on earth; and, without collating and expositing in order to see what any or all of this means, he supposes that there is a millennium coming of the kind that he wishes will come. John Bunyan tacks on numerous citations of verses at the ends of his sentences too, for example, in his Few Sighs from Hell. But he never does this in place of exposition. He quotes and explains in order to teach and convince; he turns the Bible contents over to show us what lies underneath; and he depends on mere citing sometimes, but never when trying to convince us of something from a hard subject or dark saying. There is a difference between amassing Bible citations in order to convince, and what Jonathan Edwards, in his History of the Work of Redemption, calls the ‘induction of particulars.’ Just before Showers commits one of his citation maneuvers, he says that ‘space will not permit a thorough evaluation….’ (Renald Showers, There Really is a Difference, p. 19.) How can ‘space not permit’ when you are writing a book? Was there a lack of paper in 1990? ‘Space does not permit’ is his excuse for ‘evaluating’ Covenant Theology in six measly pages. On the cover picture of my edition of his book, spectacles lie on top of an open Bible as if to show that Showers has taken a really close look at the contents of God’s word. Renald Showers needs to look a little closer at the text of Scripture and turn a blind eye to the Scofield notes at the bottom of the page while he does it.

PART I, ARTICLE IX: AMILLENNIALISM NO LONGER INCONCEIVABLE, SECTION V

These three inducements come straight out of close analyses of Scripture texts; they are not opinions based on a general look or gathering together of passages that, at first sight, seem to prognosticate blood and fire falling from the sky and the erecting of a greater temple than the one in Solomon’s day on the soil of Palestine. There is a symbolic resurrection; there is a symbolic binding of Satan; there is a symbolic duration of a thousand years. All three inducements happen to be gospel-centered: the first one being about individuals receiving new life in Christ on the basis of his merits and through the Spirit’s agency; the second one being about multitudes from the nations of the world coming into the kingdom of God through their reception of the saving work of the King of the Jews; the third being about, not a literal, material millennium, but the Age of the Gospel, or Church Age, which extends from the first coming of Christ to his glorious return. There will be no literal millennium; there will be no rebuilding of the temple for memorial sacrifices; there will be no mingling of glorified saints with impenitent sinners while lions and bears dine peaceably beside zebras and caribou.               

Proponents of premillennialism admit that when Jesus Christ comes back, he will come back in his exalted state. But for him to come back to mingle and mix with mere mortals during the millennium, he would have to come back, not in his exaltation, but in his humiliation. When Saul saw the Lord way up in heaven from somewhere along the road to Damascus, he went blind (Acts 9.) When the apostle John, undoubtedly the holiest man on earth in his day, saw the same Lord in a vision, he fell ‘as dead’ (Revelation 1.17.) This old earth, with humans in earthly bodies, cannot endure light come down from heaven brighter than the sun. The unbiblical incongruities involved in a literal millennium, as summed up by a postmillennialist, make up the best part of The Meaning of the Millennium, a book of four views on this disputed topic. From that book, Loraine Boettner: “In developing their ideas of what conditions will be like during the millennium, premillennialists fail to take into consideration the overpowering majesty of the risen and glorified Christ. They imagine that men will be in personal contact with him as he reigns from an earthly throne. Apparently they assume that he will be as he was in the days of his humiliation...When Christ returns in his own glory and that of the Father, with all the holy angels, certainly no mere man, who by comparison is but a worm of the dust, shall be able to stand before him. His period of humiliation is over, and his divine glory forbids the approach of those who are tainted with sin” (p. 50.) This observation is theologically astute.