I've had an interest in this subject since childhood in a Brethren Assembly, where the wisest thing I ever heard was 'It's a good idea to concentrate on the material *between* Scofield's notes'.

Try this re Revelation 20:1-6:

The Utopian idea of a one-world government by Christ has fascinated and excited Christians for a long time. The second century Montanists - who could be pretty wild and unbalanced - taught it. But respected church leaders like Justin Martyr, Iranaeus, Tertullian and Papias also believed in a millennial reign of Christ. Others, among them Eusebius, Jerome and Origen believed the apostles were using metaphorical language, and '1000' was not meant to be taken literally. Augustine believed in a literal millennium but later changed his mind: 'A thousand years is all the years of this age' (see City of God 20.7). Most of the Reformers and Protestant scholars today have followed Augustine.

Most modern sects believe in a literal millennium. Indeed many of the Anabaptists, at the time of the Protestant Reformation, called for the immediate establishment of the Kingdom of God on this earth, an idea which, among others, contributed to the terrible Peasants' Revolt in Germany. Then there were the Fifth Monarchy men of Oliver Cromwell's time, who argued that the establishment of his power will be the beginning of a new reign of Christ on earth.

Many specific dates have been set for the coming of the Millennium. Here are a few of them - 1785 (Stilling), 1836 (Bengel), 1843 (Miller, founder of the Seventh-Day Adventists), 1890 (the Mormons), 1914 (the Jehovah's Witnesses). Paul had to warn the Thessalonians against unwise and unprofitable speculations. The Day of the Lord would come like a 'thief in the night', he said, i.e. at a time no one could predict or calculate.

Now why all this confusion? The certainty of Christ's second coming is affirmed right through the New Testament. But the specific idea of a millennium was not taught by Christ, and rests on a particular interpretation of the first 6 or 7 verses in Revelation 20, a highly symbolic book. Some of the Jewish rabbis, in the period just before Christ came taught that the Messiah would reign on earth for a limited period. How long? They couldn't agree, and estimates varied from 40 to 7000 years. 4 Ezra suggests 400 years (cf. Gen. 15:13 and Ps. 90:15). 2 Baruch describes the incredible material blessings to be enjoyed during this time: '...each vine a thousand branches, each branch a thousand clusters, each cluster a thousand grapes, and each grape (the equivalent of) 120 gallons of wine... no more disease, no more untimely death; wild animals will be friendly with man... women no pain in childbirth.'

In the last 150 years or so orthodox Christians have been divided into roughly three groups over this issue. The Postmillennialists believed that the Kingdom of God was being extended throughout the world through Christians' missionary preaching and the peace and prosperity of our steadily-improving times. 'All the false religions are dying' said one of them, Boettner. Postmillennialism flourished during times of peace and prosperity, particularly in the U.S. A couple of world wars, the Great Depression, and the terrible social problems of our modern world have put paid to this general idea.

The Premillennialists have always believed that the world is getting worse. Christ will come and Satan will be bound for 1000 years, during which Christ will reign over the whole earth from Jerusalem. Dispensationalism, a relatively recent form of premillennialism (taught by an early Plymouth Brethren leader, J.N. Darby, and popularised in the Scofield Reference Bible) asserts that between the 'rapture' of the church, and Christ's millennial reign, a seven-year period of 'tribulation' will be suffered throughout the world. At the end of this period, Christ returns again, defeats the 'Antichrist', and sets up his kingdom. The Jewish people will be converted 'en masse', and will have a favoured place in the Kingdom.

Premillennialists generally believe that the 'prophetic clock' stopped when Jesus was crucified, and begins 'ticking' again at the second coming of Christ. During the 1000-year reign the 'curse' will be removed from nature, the 'desert shall blosson as the rose', swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks. The 'lion shall lie down with the lamb' (Woody Allen says the lamb won't get much sleep! Actually Isaiah 11:6 says 'the wolf shall live with the lamb') and presumably animals and humans will become vegetarian. For modern popular elaboration of this general idea, see Hal Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth, and the 'Left Behind' finctional series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkin.

Amillennialists say the world is both getting better and worse at the same time. There is a parallel development of good and evil - the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan - which will continue until the second coming of Christ. As the Bible - and the Creeds, as Geoff has pointed out - often speaks of the coming-resurrection-judgment in the same breath, these will occur at the same time, followed by the new eternal order.

In summary, these are the amillennialists' objections to premillennialism:

* The Book of Revelation is not merely a book of long-distance predictions, but a series of visions and pictures to comfort persecuted Christians in the first two centuries of the church's history.

* The idea of a literal 1000-year reign, into which are poured all kinds of Old Testament promises of material blessings, is foreign to the New Testament teaching of the Kingdom of Christ being `here and now', 'among/within you', a spiritual kingdom.

* The premillennialists are too literal, and often inconsistent in their interpretations of numbers etc. in Revelation. '1000' is used more than 20 times there, and is an apocalyptic 'code-word' for the perfect number. (Would any literalist imagine a woman sitting on seven mountains, Rev. 17:9?)? Throughout the Bible, numbers are used this way. If God owns the cattle on only 1000 hills (Ps. 50:10) he'd be no wealthier than some of our Northern Territory station-owners. The whole picture in Rev. 20:1-7 is symbolic (how, for example, can you confine a spiritual being with a literal chain and padlock?).

* The Bible does not teach a 3- or 4-fold resurrection, nor several specific 'judgments' near the end-time. See, e.g. Dan 12:2, John 5:28,29, Acts 24:15 etc. where the resurrection of both righteous and wicked is mentioned in a single breath. Jesus, in John 6:40, talks about the resurrection happening on `the last day'.

It's the old problem of the jigsaw puzzle. Do we have only some of the pieces of the total picture? Or do we have pieces of different puzzles? The human mind always tries to fill in the gaps. If we have some open space, we shuffle the pieces around to try to make them fit. What I think has happened with the millennial jigsaws is that some of the pieces have fallen on the floor, and others have been bent here and there to make them fit our picture!

Why, if Jesus expected a millennium, did he not spell it out clearly? Why has God hidden such amazing news 'under cryptic devices and curious cyphers - so cryptic indeed that serious Christians, poring over these records, extract diametrically opposite views from the same passages' (James Black)? Why have millennial (chiefly premillennial) views also been associated with a deafening silence on the great prophetic questions of social justice? And yet - to be fair - premillennialists have been ardent evangelists and missionaries...

Premillennialists are likely, in interpreting Genesis, to be 'creationists'. Amillennialists are more likely to have an open stance on that question as well. I think we can only make sense of these issues by keeping the following in mind:

(1) At the proton no human being was there. And no one has yet witnessed the eschaton.

(2) 'Picture-language' isn't a problem for the eastern mind. We Westerners have inherited a 'Greek' mind, and perhaps we're asking the wrong questions. In both the creation stories and the apocalypse we've been asking 'how?' and 'when?' instead of 'who?' and 'why?'. If we ask the right questions we're more likely to arrive at better biblical answers!

(3) Genesis 1-3, and the Book of Revelation spell out the doom of Satan, so the 'enemy of our souls' has set out to sow confusion in the church over the interpretation of these passages.

Let us affirm what we do know: 'JESUS SHALL REIGN WHERE'ERE THE SUN DOES HIS SUCCESSIVE JOURNEYS RUN!' Of that fact we can be sure. We do know 'who and why' even if we don't know the 'how and when'. Christians - and many Jews before them - have attempted to 'fill in the gaps'. Perhaps there are good reasons for God's not revealing a lot of these details to us! Because the disciples of Jesus had wrong ideas about His kingdom, they, too, asked the wrong questions about it (like 'Who's going to sit on which throne'?). Millennialists, with too much time on their hands, have also been asking lots of irrelevant questions (like 'Will people die during that time?').

C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia imagine a world created by God, held in the grip of Satan, but released when Christ, in the figure of a lion, died for his people and came back again to reign. Here's part of the last paragraph: 'The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them... Now at last they were beginning chapter 1 of the great story which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever and ever, and in which every chapter is better than the one before.'

More... 'Understanding the Book of Revelation' -

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/2265.htm

Rowland Croucher

(updated September 23, 2009)