The following ebook is an excerpt, a little altered, from my earlier work
“Millennium Now”.
Prologue
In times of
uncertainty, many seek some way to peek beyond the curtain of
the future. Ours is an age of much uncertainty, so it is not
surprising that we have seen a rise in interest in “future
seeing”, whether this be occultist fortune-telling, scientific
prognostications concerning the greenhouse effect or whatever is
the fashionable fear of the moment, or biblical prophecy. The
latter, in many cases, is interpreted as applying specifically
to our own day and is interpreted such as to give information
about what is supposed soon to befall us.
Typically, such
attempts at “future seeing” foretell a time of doom and gloom
soon to fall upon the world. There may be a distant horizon of
hope, but the immediate future looks bleak!
In the pages that
follow, we will look at some key biblical prophecies and attempt
to discern just what they are saying to us. Are they really
predicting such a bleak future? Or are they telling us that
Christ has already overcome and that the future is safe in God’s
hands?
It is my belief
that the doomsayers have misread much of biblical prophecy and
it is my further contention that their gloomy and defeatist
interpretations have resulted in a sapping of spirit of the
Christian Church. Unless I am seriously mistaken, the prophecies
join with the entire Gospel message in a call, not just to
battle but to go out and conquer in the name of Christ until all
things are placed under His feet. Christ has won the victory,
but much of the Church is cowering in the bomb shelters awaiting
the tyranny of Antichrist and the war of Armageddon!
I fear that the
prophecies which are actually forthtelling the victory of Christ
have been misinterpreted in such a way as to essentially become
prophecies foretelling the defeat of the body of Christ in this
world, ie the Church. To be sure, the ultimate victory will be
Christ’s, even on the gloomiest interpretation of scriptural
prophecy, but even this can become a deception as the inference
to the Church is “Wait until He comes again to set up the
Kingdom, nothing you can do now can stand against the forces of
darkness”. But this is clearly a call to inaction! It is a call
not to fight, but to passively hold fast in our bunker until our
Commander comes to rescue us. What sort of soldiers would this
advice make us?
I believe that
Christ’s command to His Church was clear ; “go and make
disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19) and that this will
succeed because “surely I am with you always” (28:20) and
because “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to
me” (28:18). Note, that Jesus said all authority “has been given
to me”, not “will be given to me at my second coming”. It is He
who has authority over the world. He has already fought the
great determining battle and bound the prince of the powers of
darkness. And it is He who continues to fight through His
corporate body, the Church, to mop up the remaining shattered
and demoralised forces of Satan that remain and to tell the
people of earth that they are free at last from the power of sin
and death, if only they will believe and acknowledge the
rightful King. But if we as a Church are to fulfil our role in
this conquest, we must not allow ourselves to be demoralised and
led astray by the defeatist propaganda being fed to many truly
godly Christians by a desperate enemy.
We must never let
down our guard or “liberalise” our doctrinal position or moral
convictions under the guise of being made more “acceptable” to
the secular world. The secular world is not calling the tune —
Jesus is and it is to Him alone that we must pay heed and, in
the end, give account!
If the world
darkens around us with rising crime and immorality, let us not
become tempted to follow the fashion but rather let us dedicate
ourselves anew to a greater purity; purity of heart, purity of
morals, purity of faith and purity of doctrine. Let this be our
arsenal. If the light of the world dims, let ours shine ever
more brightly that all may be drawn to it, like moths in the
blackest of nights, seeking the one brilliant beacon. Let our
shining light be our wholehearted commitment to Jesus Christ,
the Lord, God, Saviour, Conqueror and Absolute Ruler under God
the Father of this world and the next! Amen!
Introduction
What is the Future of the Church?
Are we really
living in a post-Christian era in which Christians will become a
decreasing minority whose presence and opinions long since cease
to be relevant to the wider society?
Many believe this
to be so. Perhaps it is not surprising that this opinion is held
by non-believers, as in their view the Christian movement is
just another crackpot sect, but it is distressing to find such
opinions amongst some who would call themselves Christians. This
is surely a contradictory position to hold for “Christians”; as,
by calling themselves by that title, they are making a claim to
acknowledge Christ as the King and Lord of all things, a
position totally incompatible with the belief in a fading of the
Church. Can Christ the King really lose His Kingdom??
Professing
Christians of this kind would probably describe themselves as
“liberal”. Perhaps “secularised” would be a better term. But a
not-very-different attitude is also widespread at the other end
of the theological spectrum.
Many
fundamentalists hold to a doctrine which effectively sees the
Church as defeated in this age. True, they combine this with a
belief in a millennial rule of Christ on earth following the
Second Coming, but until that time, the situation on earth will
just go from bad to worse and the Church will become less and
less effective. One popular doctrine even has the Church being
taken bodily into Heaven for a period (usually believed to be
seven years) while all Hell quite literally breaks loose here on
earth.
The view that I
am about to suggest makes a radical departure from all such
notions. I believe that the Bible teaches that Christ has
already overcome death, Satan and the forces of evil and that He
already rules as King and Lord from the highest Heaven. True,
the victory is not yet total in its practical manifestations,
but the great eschatological war has nevertheless been won and
what we call “Christian history” is really the mopping up phase.
This is being done by Christ the King, through His chosen
instrument the Church. All the power required for a complete
clean-up of the evil of the world is available through Christ
ministered via the Church. It is His own instrument, His own
body in this age. He has no other plan for saving the world!
Unfortunately,
individual Christians have all too often been less than ready to
believe this high calling and to wield the spiritual sword that
has been given them. This has, in my opinion, been due to false
humility (unable to see ourselves as instruments of the Lord),
false teaching (such as the defeatist ideas mentioned above),
outright laziness and conformity to secular philosophies that
stress the smallness of mankind and deny the existence of the
supernatural.
Of course we are
small in our own stature. Of course we are weak in our own
strength. But that is precisely the point ... we are not in our
own strength and we do not stand in our own stature. We have the
ability to stand in God’s!
God invites us to
be made strong with His strength and to let Him fit us for His
battle. We may be small and weak, but so was the shepherd boy
David, and look what God was able to do with him!
In the following
pages, I will argue from the Bible (concentrating principally on
the Apocalypse) for a belief in the triumph of Christ through
the Church. I will argue that many of the biblical passages used
to support the view that the Church will face only defeat prior
to the Second Coming have been misunderstood out of their
original context.
The view which I
present is certainly optimistic, but it is not an easy optimism.
Christ will, I believe, make the victory manifest through the
Church, but there will be many battles yet to come as the forces
of darkness resist His onward march. Moreover, to be effective
as the conquering body of Christ in this age, the Church must
face hard examination and must be willing to purge itself of
anything that is not fitting it for the great task to which it
has been allotted. If it is to function efficiently as the body
of Christ, it must transcend all division and this will require
a willingness to give up whatever causes of division its
different branches continue to cherish. I am not necessarily
talking about institutional union here. What is to be sought is
something deeper, something so magnificent that in comparison
with which institutional union becomes irrelevant. What is to be
sought, found and held on to is nothing less than a union of
identity through mutual union with the will of God.
If enough members
of the Church truly believe that victory is not merely possible
but inevitable, the determination to forge ahead will surely
follow, what ever sacrifices may be called for.
It is this spirit
of Christ-centred optimism for the future — the heart-felt
conviction that the future belongs to Christ and that the Church
is His chosen instrument for determining this future — that I
hope to arouse. There may be things in these pages with which
you disagree. You may be correct. I certainly do not claim
infallibility (far from it!). But the details are less important
than the overall conclusion and it is with this in mind that I
ask you to seriously and prayerfully consider the argument
presented. Our attitude, as Christians, toward the future is
important. If we can honestly pray “Your Kingdom come, Your will
be done in earth as in Heaven” and really believe it, I have no
doubt that the prayer will be answered!
Apocalypse When?
Interpretations
of the Book of Revelation are legion. For some, it represents a
prophecy of the turmoil that was about to befall the civilised
world in the first century of our era and was essentially a
warning to the early Christians to hold fast to the profession
of their faith during the times of strife and persecution about
to befall them.
At the other end
of the spectrum, we have those who view John as little more than
a Christian Nostradamus, putting forth mystical prophecies that
will only have relevance in some still-to-come future age.
Between these two
extremes — where, happily, most commentators on the book are to
be found — are various schools of interpretation ranging from
the partial preterist who sees most of the prophecies as having
been fulfilled soon after they were written down, but who still
maintains a future fulfilment for some of them, to the partial
futurist who, while still looking to the fulfilment of much of
the prophecy in ages to come, nevertheless admits to a degree of
realised eschatology within the book. In between are the various
historicist interpretations that see fulfilment of the
prophecies unfolding in history and even in the evening news.
These schools of
interpretation are not as distinct as they may at first sight
appear, as is evidenced by the number of commentaries on the
book which begin by enumerating the traditional interpretations,
only to disavow rigid adherence to any of them. Most
commentaries are therefore partial preterist/partial
historicist/partial futurist, with the real difference between
them depending upon which approach is the more prominent.
In the opinion of
the present writer, both of the extreme ends of the spectrum can
be discounted.
If the
hyper-preterist view is correct and everything in the book
related simply to the writer’s immediate future, it is difficult
to understand why the work was retained as part of the canon of
Scripture. Surely the post-apostolic Church must have recognised
some continuing relevance for the book, or it would have dropped
out of circulation after the events that it prophesied came to
pass!
At the other
extreme, the hyper-futurist position fares at least as poorly.
We must understand that the book was essentially a letter and,
like the other letters preserved in the New Testament canon of
Scripture, it was written primarily to specific groups for
specific purposes. The New Testament letters were real letters,
not simply literary devices aimed at the instruction of a
general readership. Their continuing relevance is due to the
fact that the teaching they contain has application beyond their
immediate purpose. By implication, Revelation should be viewed
in the same light.
But herein lies
the problem with a hyper-futurist interpretation. The Christians
to whom the letter was addressed obviously had very real
problems and were in need of pastoral advice. Would they really
have been interested in receiving a letter wholly concerned with
the state of world and Church hundreds or thousands of years in
the future?
Related to this
is the fact that the author of the letter was not someone
seeking esoteric knowledge of the future from a cosy retreat,
but a prisoner who had been incarcerated for being a member of a
religious movement suspected of holding subversive doctrines.
The prophetic message that came to him was unexpected and
specifically directed him to record the visions in a letter and
direct it to various Churches located at specific places. The
visions contained specific messages directed to the “angels” of
these Churches who were then to pass them on (presumably read
them to) the congregations concerned. The “angels” were
presumably human messengers as John is unlikely to have written
to supernatural beings! Some commentators have understood the
“angels of the Churches” as referring to the bishops or
overseers of these various assemblies, but the force of “angel”
(i.e. “messenger”) probably implies that these were
representatives of the Churches who had access (not necessarily
direct) to John in his prison and who could be relied upon to
carry copies of the letter to their home Churches.
In the present
writer’s opinion, this implies an urgency about the distribution
of the letter. In a time of persecution, it must also have
involved a certain risk both for the author and the messenger.
The symbolism of the visions may have been dismissed as mystical
nonsense by a Roman soldier into whose hands the letter could
have fallen, but the symbolic picture of the harlot seated on
seven hills in Chapter 17, would probably have been sufficiently
suggestive for the true nature of the “harlot” to be recognised
(Rome was known as the city of the seven hills) and the
subsequent description of what happened to the “harlot” in
Chapter 18 would have been enough for a charge of treason
against the author, the messenger, and probably the entire
Christian Church! (As we suggest later, this interpretation is
probably not the whole story, but a Roman officer of the day may
not have been convinced). Such risk hardly seems warranted for a
book of visions of a remote future. Better to secretly bury the
manuscript in an earthenware jar where people of a future age
could find it! However, nothing in Scripture resembles such an
esoteric document; certainly not the Book of Revelation!
Actually,
although this difficulty is most obvious for the hyper-futurist,
it is also encountered to a greater or lesser degree by more
moderate futurists and even by those who take an historicist
view of the book. In short, anyone who sees the greater part of
the prophecy as predicting events after the close of the first
century (that is to say, any interpretation that sees the
prophesied events occurring after the expected lifespan of the
book’s first readers) must answer the question as to why such
prophecies were required to be distributed to a Church that had
enough problems in its own day. What would be the point in
worrying about events in the more or less distant future, when
the events of one’s own day were so serious (Matt.6:34)?
This does not,
however, lead us into the opposite difficulties of a
hyper-preterist interpretation. Even if it should prove true
that all of the specific prophecies found in the book had their
fulfilment during the first Christian century, there may still
be an extended sense in which the prophecies are fulfilled to a
greater or less degree throughout history and in which the book
thereby remains relevant to every age and place. Although not
taking such a strongly preterist position as this would imply,
Bishop Paul Barnett interprets the continuing relevance of the
book of Revelation in a similar manner and sees the prophecies
as being in most instances non-specific, i.e. as relating not so
much to specific events (whether in the first or twenty first
centuries) as to general principles, working within history,
that find a certain fulfilment in just about every generation.
For instance, although (in Barnett’s interpretation) the Beast
would have been interpreted by John and his initial readers as
Caesar Domitian, it could just as truly have referred to Hitler
for a German Christian living in the late 1930s or to Lenin for
the Russian Church circa 1920.
Barnett did,
however, understand certain specific aspects of the prophecies
as relating to historical events either in the first century (eg
the situation during the reign of Domitian) or in later history
(he interpreted Rev. 17:16, 18 as being a prophecy of the fall
of the Roman Empire). He also held to the usual interpretation
of the Last Judgment and Consummation as being a specific event
that is still to come.
This
interpretation also avoids the difficulty of the immediate
relevance of the book. Not all of the prophecies need to be
fulfilled within the lives of John’s first readers for the book
to be of vital relevance to them. If immediate difficulties were
prophesied and endurance encouraged, the book would be of great
relevance. If some events of the more distant future were also
prophesied, this of itself would not make the book less relevant
in the short term. Indeed, a reminder of the eventual
Consummation (how ever remote in time that might be) could only
encourage believers as they faced persecution in the present,
and the prediction of the fall of the persecuting Roman Empire
(assuming, for the moment, that Barnett’s interpretation of
Rev.17:16 - 18:24 is correct) would also give encouragement to
those suffering under its tyranny.
Part of the
problem of correctly interpreting the book concerns the date at
which it was written. A widespread view holds the book to have
been written in the 90’s, during the reign of the tyrannical
emperor Domitian. This is a position held by many from the
earliest days, and appears to rest upon a statement by Irenaeus
in his work Against Heresies. This work has not been preserved
in Greek, but has survived in Latin and the relevant passages
were cited by the early Church historian Eusebius. The English
translation says “We will not, however, incur the risk of
pronouncing positively as to the name of Antichrist; for if it
were necessary that his name should be distinctly revealed in
this present time, it would have been announced by him who
beheld the apocalyptic vision. For that was seen no very long
time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian’s
reign.”
The question
raised by some scholars, however, is whether the word translated
as “that” in the final sentence refers to the vision (as many
assume) or to the visionary himself, John, who is known to have
lived well into the reign of Domitian. K. L. Gentry, for
instance, cites an interpretation of this passage by F. E. Chase
viz., “Had it been needful that the explanation of the name
should be proclaimed to the men of our own day, that explanation
would have been given by the author of the Book. For the author
was seen on earth, he lived and held converse with his
disciples, not so very long ago, but almost in our own
generation. Thus, on the one hand, he lived years after he wrote
the Book, and there was abundant opportunity for him to expound
the riddle, had he wished to do so; and, on the other hand,
since he lived on almost into our generation, the explanation,
had he given it, must have been preserved to us.”
Although far from
definitive, this expansion of Irenaeus’ passage is certainly a
possible interpretation.
More interesting,
perhaps, are Irenaeus’ references to “ancient copies” of
Revelation, an expression which does not square with a time of
authorship “almost in our generation”.
Other early
evidence for the date of composition of revelation is to be
found in the writings of another early Church Father, Clement of
Alexandria (150 - 215). Clement stated that “When after the
death of the tyrant [the apostle John] removed from the island
off Patmos to Ephesus, he used to journey by request to the
neighbouring districts of the Gentiles, in some places to
appoint bishops, in others to regulate whole Churches, in others
to set among the clergy some one man, it may be, of those
indicated by the Spirit.” This would have been an active career
for a man in his nineties, but the main question raised here is
the identity of the one to whom Clement refers as “the tyrant”.
Was it Domitian, or was it Nero?
While there can
be no doubt that the description would have applied to Domitian,
it was Nero who was regarded as the quintessential tyrant at
that time. Sometimes he was simply referred to as “Tyrant”, as
if by a proper name. Reference to “the tyrant” would therefore
most probably have been read by contemporaries as reference to
Nero.
Clement adds two
other pieces of information which would seem to support an early
date for Revelation.
First, he relates
an incident concerning John pursuing a young apostate on
horseback, sometime after his release from Patmos. If his
imprisonment there had really taken place during the reign of
Domitian, he would have been over ninety years old when the
related incident took place. Although not impossible, we must
admit that this is unlikely.
The second piece
of evidence relates to a statement in Clement’s Miscellanies in
which he stated that the teaching of the Apostles ended with
(i.e. in the time of) Nero. There is no doubt that Clement
considered the apostle John to have been the author of
Revelation and, in view of his statement that the apostolic
writings ceased during the reign of Nero, it would seem to be an
inevitable conclusion that Clement thought that this book was
composed before Nero’s reign had ended.
Further support
for a Neronic date is the fact that it is difficult to associate
the prophecy of widespread persecution with events of Domitian’s
reign. Certainly, tradition sees him as a persecutor of
Christians, but it seems that most of the supposed evidence for
this comes from the Book of Revelation, supposing this to have
been written during Domitian’s reign! As this is the very point
at issue, it is worthless if used as evidence.
Apart from this,
the only evidence appears to depend upon records of the
executions of Titus Flavius Clemens (a first cousin of
Domitian), his associate Manius Acilius Glabrio and the
banishment of Flavius Clemens’ wife, Flavia Domitilla, all on
charges of “atheism”. Presumably this “atheism” amounted to the
refusal of these people to worship the official gods and, by
implication, their denial that Domitian himself was one of the
gods. We can be virtually certain that Domitilla was a Christian
and both her husband and (especially) Glabrio were widely
believed by early historians to have been Christians as well.
Nevertheless, their arrests and subsequent sentences seem more
in line with the paranoid emperor’s elimination of family and
close associates who, for one reason or another, were perceived
as being possible threats, than evidence of any concerted
campaign against Christians of the type earlier instigated by
Nero.
Gentry, R. C.
Sproul and many others who accept a Neronic date for the writing
of Revelation, see it primarily as a prophecy of the events of
the immediate future. This does not commit one to a totally
preterist view of the entire book, but it does tend to see the
main focus of the book in the events that took place in the
“Last Days” i.e. the period from the Ascension of our Lord in AD
30 until the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.
Arguably the most
thorough development of this line of thinking is presented by
Rev. David Chilton in his exhaustive commentary on Revelation,
Days of Vengeance. Realizing how inadequate any summary of a
position as extensively and minutely argued as Chilton’s must
be, the author himself mercifully provides us with a skeletal
overview of the main themes and symbolism of Revelation, which
will be worthwhile repeating here.
Much of the Book
of Revelation is concerned with a series of divine judgments
symbolized in terms of seven seals, seven trumpets and seven
chalices. Questions about these judgments abound. Are they
really the same judgments described under differing symbolism?
Do they refer to specific judgments at some time in history
(First Century? A time still to come?) or are they experienced
throughout the whole of human history? Are they intended for the
entire human race or for the apostate Jewish people?
Chilton argues
that they refer to the increasingly severe judgment on the
Jewish nation during the Last Days. The “Last Days”, as already
mentioned, constituted the final decades in the life of the
Jewish state. This period began when Christ ascended to take up
His rightful rule in the heavenly places in AD 30 and ended with
the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, the cornerstone of
Jewish worship under the Old Covenant, in AD 70. Following the
Temple’s destruction and the razing of Jerusalem to the ground,
the instrument of divine revelation became the Christian Church,
the New Temple not made with human hands and the New Jerusalem
which came down from heaven, i.e. which was a divine creation,
not a human one.
According to
Chilton’s interpretation, the Seven Seals set forth the period
of the Last Days (in the sense being used here) in general. The
Seven Trumpets sound the warning of the Tribulation, which
Chilton understands as being the period up to the first siege of
Jerusalem under Cestius. The Seven Chalices revealed the final
outpouring of God’s wrath upon Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 67
- 70. One may note the intensification of the judgments from the
Seal stage to the Chalice stage and the chances given for the
nation to repent before final judgment became inevitable.
The meaning of
the main symbols used throughout the Book of Revelation may be
summarised as follows:
The seven-sealed
Book is the New Covenant, which Christ obtained at His Ascension
and “opened” during the Last Days, climaxing in the destruction
of Jerusalem in AD 70.
The “Little Book”
which explains the seven-sealed Book is Revelation itself.
The 144,000
represent the believing (i.e. Christian) Jews of the First
Century, symbolically represented as twelve thousand from each
of the twelve tribes of Israel.
The Great
Multitude represents the redeemed from every nation.
The Two Witnesses
symbolise the faithful Church of the Old Covenant, exemplified
par excellence by Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the Prophets) and
culminating in John the Baptist.
The woman clothed
with the sun is faithful Israel, the mother of Christ,
exemplified most specifically by the Virgin Mary.
The Beast from
the Sea symbolises the Roman Empire and its embodiment in Nero
(Barnett speculates that the symbol may have been influenced by
the boats carrying the Emperor’s officials, complete with
figure-head and multiple oars, arriving in the harbour of
Ephesus like some alien-headed, multi-legged monster from the
deep).
The Beast from
the Land represents Israel’s apostate religious leadership.
Chilton equates this with the False Prophet and also with the
earlier references to the “Synagogue of Satan”, “Baalamites”,
“Jezebel” and “Nicolaitans”. He regarded all of these terms as
being references to the occultist, gnostic and statist form of
apostate Judaism which had captured the minds of the religious
hierarchy of Israel.
The Image of the
Beast represented the apostate Jewish synagogue.
Babylon or the
Harlot City, he understood to refer to Jerusalem. In this, he
agreed with Warfield but went against most commentators who saw
these terms as referring to Roman. We will return to this in due
course.
The New
Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ, is the Church, contrasting
strongly with the old Jerusalem that had become a harlot.
The marriage
supper of the Lamb, Chilton understood as symbolising Holy
Communion.
Following the
marriage feast, the Church, the Bride of Christ, follows her
Husband who, as the Word of God, goes out and conquers all
nations by means of the Gospel, the sword of His mouth with
which He slays fallen man’s enmity against God. This conversion
of the nations is, according to Chilton, the real meaning of the
symbolism of Armageddon. The “war” is a spiritual and symbolic,
not an actual, one. Moreover, it is not fought between the
nations, but as an alliance of the nations against Christ. The
gathering of the nations to battle against Christ is a symbolic
way of picturing the resistance of the nations to the rule of
Christ over them. They gather for war and yet, as Barnett
stresses, no war eventuates. They are conquered, not by a
superior army, but by Christ Himself with the sword of His
mouth; the Sword that is the Word of God.
The binding of
Satan, according to Chilton, took place at the First Advent of
Christ. It is this binding that prevents him from gathering the
nations into the eschatological war of Gog and Magog, which is
really the final rebellious act of unredeemed humanity that
brings down the final judgment of God.
The Millennium is
the period during which Christ reigns, beginning at His
Resurrection/Ascension and continuing until the end of the
present age. It is during this period that His reign will by
degrees extend throughout the world and during which all things
will be placed under His authority.
The New Heaven
and New Earth is a picture of salvation. This is brought in
definitively by the finished work of Christ, developing
progressively throughout the present age (i.e. the Millennial
age) and finally revealed in all its glorious fullness at the
Consummation of all things (pp. 582 - 3).
Chilton stresses
that the rule of Christ cannot be properly understood apart from
the original Dominion Mandate, i.e. the task assigned by God to
Adam to exercise dominion, under God, over the creation. This
will be fulfilled by the triumph of the Gospel throughout the
world, and it is the task of the Church to bring this about,
under the Lordship of Christ, during this present Millennial
age. Christians are ruling now with Christ in His Kingdom. His
Kingdom has already begun and this Kingdom — Christianity or the
Church — is destined to take over all the kingdoms of the earth
(p. 587). God has given His people a “covenant grant” to take
possession and to exercise dominion (always in submission to God
of course) over His creation.
It could be said
that, for Chilton, we do not need to await the Millennium. We
only have to live it. It is here now, but it will become
progressively realised or actualised as more and more people
submit to the Lordship of Jesus and as those who have already
submitted yield increasingly to His will.
In Chilton’s
interpretation, most of the prophecies of Revelation were
fulfilled by the end of AD 70. Most, but not all. The Millennial
rule of Christ has begun and will continue until Christ’s rule
becomes universal, continuing into an indefinite future. The
thousand years is, of course, purely symbolic on this
interpretation. After all, two thousand years have already
elapsed and the world has still not been converted. In Chilton’s
opinion, this may take thousands of years, followed by thousands
more of a Christianised world in which the whole of society,
national and international, will acknowledge the rule of Christ.
Even then,
however, not every individual within that Christianised society
will be a committed Christian, but they will not openly rebel
while ever Satan remains bound from “deceiving the nations”.
This situation will remain until the end of the Millennial
period when Satan is to be released “for a short time” (Rev.
20:3). Then the rebels will come out of hiding and gather to
attack the people of God, but instead of a war, God’s judgment
will fall on them and they will be destroyed. This is the
meaning of the Gog and Magog symbolism. The original Gog/Magog
battle as prophesied by Ezekiel had many different features from
the final battle as prophesied by John, and it seems best to
understand Ezekiel’s prophecy as referring to an earlier event
and not the final judgment of the intransigently rebellious that
was prophesied by John. Chilton sees the original Ezekiel
prophecy as referring to the Maccabees’ defeat of the Syrians
(p. 520) and that John’s prophecy of the end-time battle employs
the symbolism of the earlier one adapted to his own purposes. We
may note, however, that John “spiritualises” the symbolism.
Thus, whereas Ezekiel foretells the armies being led by a human
king (“Gog”) and doing battle with human armies, John foresees
the final onslaught being both inspired and led by Satan himself
and defeated, not in battle, but by “fire from heaven”
(Rev.20:9) i.e. by the direct judgment of God Himself. Indeed,
in John’s prophecy there is no battle at all, only a
presumptuous deception that God’s Church can be conquered by
human attack, followed by God’s intervention and judgment.
Unlike most
premillennialists (people who believe that the Millennial period
will follow the Second Coming of Christ) Chilton does not
believe that the resurrected righteous dead will rule physically
on earth at any time during the Millennial age. In this he is in
total agreement with Barnett and S. H. Travis and virtually
everyone who takes an amillennialist or postmillennialist
viewpoint. He understands the First Resurrection to be the
resurrection which we share with Christ and which is
appropriated by us in conversion and symbolised in our baptism.
Christ’s resurrection is the definitive resurrection (p. 517 -
518). Those who participate in the Resurrection of Christ reign
with Him already in the heavenly places and will continue to
reign with Him throughout this Millennial age.
Most prophecies
contained within the Book of Revelation were, as we have said,
fulfilled by the end of the year AD 70. If Chilton is correct,
practically all of the specific prophecies were fulfilled long
ago. What remains for a more distant future are generally less
detailed and mentioned only briefly. Gog/Magog and the Final
Judgment, we have already mentioned. Chilton also sees hints of
the future in the vision of the Eighth King of Chapter
Seventeen. In the person of the Eighth King, the Beast (Roman
Empire) was effectively resurrected, a prophecy in which Chilton
sees the strong hint of further kings following the Eighth and
future troubles beyond those prophesied in the Book of
Revelation (pp. 436 - 437). Many “kings” ruled the Roman Empire
following the Eighth, and many national leaders even in our own
time restrict the free spread of the Gospel.
He also discerns
reference to the distant future in the sealing up of the voices
of the Seven Thunders (pp. 262 - 263). The “Thunders”, Chilton
argues, represent nothing less than the Voice of God itself
(Psalm 29) and announce the final Judgment and the Consummation
of all things. John was given this vision of the far distant
future, or maybe of the whole of history culminating in the
Great Consummation, but the vision was for him alone. It did not
concern his immediate readers who were facing far more immanent
problems about which Revelation was more urgently concerned.
The great future
vision of the Consummation is the culmination of Revelation and,
indeed, of the entire Bible. In one sense, the final Chapter of
Revelation brings us back to the opening chapters of Genesis,
but, Chilton stresses, the final vision of the Book of
Revelation is not simply that of a restored paradise. It is of a
consummated paradise (p. 567) relating to the paradise of
Genesis as a fully flowering plant relates to a seed planted in
the ground. The vision is not simply of a garden growing a
single Tree of Life, but of a flourishing and fantastically
beautiful City encompassing a veritable forest of Trees of Life,
lining each side of the River of Life which flows through the
midst of the City. The prophecy of John assures us that what
will be restored (what is, indeed, actively being restored even
now) is much more than what was lost in the Fall. Seen in this
light, the stormy times prophesied in the Book and the hint of
other troubles to be faced by the Church even after the fall of
Jerusalem in AD 70, take on their proper perspective.
If seen in the
light of the events of AD 69 - 70, the Book of Revelation
becomes a lot clearer than many other interpretations render it.
The tendency to read it as a sort of futuristic message written
in code vanishes and in its place we find something far more in
harmony with the other letters of the New Testament. And that is
just what the Book is; a letter, like those of Paul and the
other letters of John. It is, in reality “The Fourth Letter of
John” and like those of John, and of Paul, Peter, Jude, James
and whoever wrote the Letter to the Hebrews, was written to a
specific group of people in order to address certain crises that
had arisen within that group and/or to warn of certain external
troubles about to be faced by that group. In this sense, all the
New Testament letters, including the Book of Revelation, were
contemporary in their focus, but they have remained relevant to
subsequent generations down to the present day, because the
advice and warnings given to their authors’ contemporaries are
based upon eternal principles applying at any date and in every
age. The main difference between the Book of Revelation and the
other New Testament letters is its heavy use of symbolic
language. Some symbolic language is found in other New Testament
letters, especially when relating to the consummation of all
things (eg 1 Thessalonians 4:16 - 18, 2 Peter 3), but the
difference with John’s fourth letter is that there symbolic
language dominates.
This
interpretation of the Book of Revelation has several
implications as to how we should think about the future of world
and Church. In general, premillennialism is what Chilton and
others call “pessimillennialism”. That is to say, it virtually
necessitates the view that human society will go from bad to
worse and that the Church will become an increasingly persecuted
minority movement having no positive influence upon wider
society. The Second Coming of Christ (which, remember,
inaugurates the Millennial era according to this eschatological
viewpoint) is seen as a “rescue mission”, as Christ returning to
a world which is going out of control and to a humanity
hell-bent (literally!) on destroying itself if He does not
quickly intervene. The Second Coming is, from the
premillennialist point of view, very much the case of Christ
pulling mankind out of the fire before it is totally consumed.
Although it may
be supposed that the fact of the fallen nature of humankind
supports such a pessimistic viewpoint, surely the redeeming act
of Jesus Christ does not. Premillennialism does indeed provide a
corrective against an easy humanist progressivism (if, after
reviewing the Twentieth Century, such a thing exists any more!)
and it does emphasise the genuine hopelessness of any attempt by
fallen man to attain an harmonious state on earth or to
facilitate his own salvation, how ever that may be interpreted.
But it over corrects, I would argue, in so far as it reduces the
mission of the Church - which is the mission of Christ Himself,
let us never forget - to a failed utopian enterprise together
with all other political or religious movements promising a
better world. At least, it sees the Church as a failure until
Christ comes back to bring in His Kingdom.
However, surely
the “rescue mission” of Christ was at Calvary! It was there that
He intervened decisively to save mankind from a hopeless future
and from spiritual death. It was at Calvary that Christ fought
and finally defeated the powers of darkness and reclaimed the
Kingdom on whose throne He regained at His Ascension. This is
what Barnett means when he says that the battle of Armageddon
was won on the Cross at Calvary, for it was there that the final
battle between good and evil, God and Satan, really took place.
We must remember that Jesus, as a descendent of King David, was
in reality the royal prince of Israel. Even as Herod sat on the
throne, Jesus was the rightful heir of David and the one who
should have been occupying the royal palace. This was why He was
so feared by the Herodic dynasty; the Herods saw in Him an
entirely legitimate challenge to their rule. At His Ascension,
His true throne was reclaimed, not as a political position
ruling over the physical nation of Israel, but over the New
Israel, the New Jerusalem, the spiritual nation consisting of
redeemed persons from both the old Israel and the Gentile
nations. All, in other words, who recognised and submitted to
His rule. This is the heavenly Kingdom which came to earth with
power on the day of Pentecost and has been growing ever since.
It is the City which has been given dominion over the earth and
into which the nations will come (Rev. 21:24). This is a
supernatural nation distributed across the face of the earth. It
is empowered with the Holy Spirit and has been given the mission
of being the corporate body of Christ Himself; the means through
which Christ continues to be present to humanity at large. As
such, it cannot be defeated, because its defeat would be God’s
defeat!
In defence of the
premillennialists, it must be said that many believe that the
Church will be purified during the unprecedented time of
tribulation which, they hold, will immediately precede Christ’s
Second Coming. Some even believe that many will be won to Christ
by the purified Church just prior to the Second Advent.
Nevertheless, the role of the Church as the Holy Spirit-filled
and empowered corporate body of Christ, through which Christ
rules and which has the divine mandate to go out and win the
nations, is ultimately a failed one for the premillennialist.
The
amillennialist holds a similar point of view, except that he
believes the Second Coming of Christ to be synonymous with the
Last Judgment and final Consummation of all things and to
introduce, not a temporal millennial period, but the eternal
state. Strictly speaking, the amillennialist does not really
reject the millennium (as the prefix “a”, literally understood,
means) but in a manner of speaking “de-mythologises” it. Thus,
descriptions of the peaceful kingdom are deliteralised to mean
peace in the hearts of believers and to harmony between true
followers of Christ. If an amillennialist accepts the Bible as
God’s written Word, he must accept the Millennium as a clear
(though minor) biblical teaching, albeit one that should not be
taken too literally. Rather than call such a position
amillennialism, it would be more accurate to call it realised
millennialism. In practice, the dividing line between this
position and postmillennialism is not always clearly defined.
Indeed, any eschatological doctrine which understands the
Millennium (how ever this is understood in detail) as preceding
the Second Coming is by definition a postmillennialist doctrine.
Any form of
postmillennialist doctrine which rejects the notion of a
victorious Church at some time during the Millennium agrees with
premillennialism in being “pessimillennialistic”, in Chilton’s
sense. In spite of the large differences between these
positions, they are nevertheless in agreement that the Church
will not succeed in winning the nations to Christ.
There is another
form of postmillennialism which Chilton terms
“optimillennialism” and which differs from the above in that it
understands the Church to be the instrument through which Christ
exercises His rule and by which God will eventually place
everything under the feet of Christ. As sometimes expounded,
this position understands the Millennium to begin when the
gospel has become victorious and to extend for an indefinite
period (not normally interpreted as a literal thousand years)
until the Second Coming of Christ at Judgment. The problem with
starting the Millennium at the point of gospel victory, however,
tends to eclipse the fact that the victory was won at Calvary by
Jesus alone and that He has already come into His Kingdom and
rules now in the heavenly places. This doctrine must be the
pivotal point of any eschatology and a postmillennialist who
loses sight of it is in danger of coming to place his faith more
in the success of missionary and evangelistic outreach than in
the already-completed sacrifice of Christ. If we take our eyes
of the Cross, we may allow optimillennialism to drift into
optimistic humanist progressivism, albeit in a very “Christian”
garb!
Nevertheless, I
would argue that this position comes closer to biblical teaching
than the others mentioned earlier. The one major modification,
theological rather than practical, is to understand the
Millennial era as beginning, not with the conversion of the
nations but at the moment that Christ ascended back to Heaven to
take His seat at the right hand of the Father. This would appear
to be Chilton’s position. Like the so-called amillennialist
doctrine, it is a realised postmillennialism but unlike
“amillennialism” it is one in which the rule of Christ, already
present right from the start of the Millennial period, will
become progressively apparent until all the nations yield to Him
as Lord. If one wished to give this position a distinguishing
name, perhaps “progressively realised millennialism” would be
appropriate, although this may obscure the fact that the
millennium was not actually realised progressively at all, but
quite suddenly at the time of Christ’s victory. Perhaps
“progressively apparent millennialism” would be even better.
This seems to me
to best agree with biblical teaching on the subject of the
earthly Kingdom of God. It agrees with Daniel’s symbol of the
rock not cut by human hands which grows to become a mountain
filling the whole earth. It also agrees with Zechariah’s vision
of the Day of the Lord (Zech. 14:6-7); a day that was neither
completely dark nor completely light throughout much of its
duration, but which became bright as evening approached, just
when one would expect a normal day to be darkening. According to
Collins, the “day” referred to in this passage is the gospel
epoch, what we have identified with the Millennial era. That it
has known periods of both relative light and relative darkness
warns us that even though the growth of the Kingdom is
progressive, it has not been without its dark periods and
setbacks. “Progressive growth” is not necessarily the same as
continuous growth.
Most references
to the growth of the Kingdom, like the two Old Testament ones
just cited, are framed in symbolic language. Interpretation is
not always straightforward. Nevertheless, there is a passage in
the New Testament which is almost free of symbolism and which is
therefore of the greatest value in forming the clearest possible
idea of the nature of the Millennial rule of Christ. I would
argue that this passage should be seen as the primary one
against which the more symbolic verses should be interpreted.
The passage to which I am referring is 1 Corinthians 15:22-28.
Speaking about the resurrection of Christ and the future
resurrection of His followers (something about which some at
Corinth apparently had doubts or maybe interpreted in a
“spiritual” way), Paul writes,
For as in Adam
all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his
own turn: Christ the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who
belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the
kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion,
authority and power. For he must rule until he has put all his
enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says
that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this
does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ.
When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject
to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in
all.
This passage
should be examined carefully, as it is capable of several
interpretations. Indeed, it is easy to read this passage in the
light of an eschatological doctrine already derived from some of
the more symbolic passages of, say, the Book of Revelation. But
this goes against the rule that obscure passages of Scripture
should be interpreted in the light of clearer ones, not vice
versa.
Taking the first
two sentences, Paul appears to be saying quite plainly that
Christ will rise first (this refers to the Resurrection on
Easter morning, of course) then those who belong to Him at His
Second Coming. Then, says Paul, the end will come; the end, that
is to say, of unredeemed human history. Christ will hand the
Kingdom over to the Father after He (Christ) “has destroyed all
dominion, authority and power”. After He has, that is to say,
prepared the Kingdom to be ready to hand over to the Father.
This destruction of all that is contrary to God’s rule will be
accomplished during the reign of Christ; this is the reason why
He must “rule until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”
The problem of
interpretation here is to determine the time when this
conquering rule will be. Many see it as being after the Second
Coming, that is to say, between the time when Christ returns and
“the end”. However, there are strong reasons against this
interpretation.
First, Paul
clearly states that when Christ returns and the Christian dead
rise, “Then the end will come”. This does not appear to leave
any time for an earthly rule of Christ during which His enemies
are progressively conquered (and the fact that Paul mentions a
“rule until he has put all enemies under his feet” and a “last
enemy” to be conquered indicates that this is indeed a
progressive process, not something that is immediately
accomplished at the Second Coming).
The most telling
statement, for the present writer at least, concerns the fact
that the rule of Christ will continue until the last enemy,
which is death, is put beneath His feet. Paul seems to be
equating the resurrection of Christ’s followers and the conquest
of death. That death is called the “last enemy” can only mean
that all other enemies will be conquered before it. But if these
other enemies, collectively named as “dominion, authority and
power” are indeed conquered before death is conquered and if all
of these are conquered during the rule of Christ, then we can
only conclude that the complete conquest of death comes at the
end of Christ’s rule. It is then, at the end of His rule, that
He returns and the Christian dead rise. The conquering rule of
Christ must, therefore, precede His Second Advent. Paul would
appear to be picturing the Second Advent as the great
culminating and consummating event crowning a period of Christ’s
increasingly obvious victory over all that opposes Him. Then
will come the resurrection of the dead and final Judgment.
But When Does His Rule Begin?
A clue is given
by Paul’s quotation from Psalm 8:6 viz. “He (i.e. God) has put
everything under his feet”. The “his” in the Psalm referred to
man, but Paul sees it as referring to Christ as representative
Man. That is to say, for all things to be placed under man’s
feet, they must first be placed under Christ, as only in and
through Christ will God place all things under man. If all
things are placed under Christ, then they will be progressively
placed under mankind in general to the extent that we place
ourselves under Christ. The same Psalm is also quoted by the
writer of the Letter to the Hebrews (Heb. 2:5-8) where it is
explained (v. 9) that Jesus, as representative Man, “is now
crowned with glory and honour” (emphasis mine).
Interpreting
1Cor. 15:27 in the light of the Hebrews passage, it seems best
to understand Paul as saying that Christ is ruling now and, as
representative Man, has all things placed under him by God the
Father. All things have been placed under Him, but not
everything submits to His authority as yet. Nevertheless, such
submission is inevitable and more and more things will come to
acknowledge the authority that is already His, until even death
is conquered and the redeemed rise again to life. Then, when all
things submit to His rule, He will hand the Kingdom to the
Father.
If our
interpretation of this passage is correct, it would seem that
Paul subscribed to a form of postmillennialism where Christ was
believed to be already ruling, where the Millennial era had
already begun and would continue to become progressively
apparent until all enmity against Christ had been put down and
the Church had been purified and made ready to be presented to
God the Father.
This position
surely follows from the clear teaching of the New Testament that
sin, death and Satan were defeated by Jesus on the Cross. As
Barnett argues, the great eschatological conflict between good
and evil is not something that lies in the future. It has
already been fought and won. Christ’s last words from the Cross
“It is finished” was not a cry of despair. They were a
declaration of victory. The last battle had been fought, and it
had been won. Christ was victorious and Satan had lost. The
Resurrection of Jesus was the Father’s vindication of the
victory, as for the first time, the last enemy — death — had
been conquered, a sure and certain foretaste of the final and
complete victory over death that still lies ahead for all those
who place their trust in Jesus and who enter into His Kingdom
and, by so doing, partake in the victory that is already His.
This
understanding of the Millennium places before us a vision of the
future which is both more optimistic and more challenging than
the alternatives of premillennialism and amillennialism. It is
more optimistic, because it sees even the near future as
belonging to God and Christ, not to Satan and Antichrist.
Premillennialism certainly believes that Christ will have
ultimate victory on earth, but the more immediate future is
black and there seems nothing that the Church can do about it.
The problem with this position is that the Church is seen as
being effectively impotent. If it is simply a human
organisation, that would be understandable. But the Church is a
supernatural, God-indwelt creation against which the gates of
Hades shall not prevail. How can such a movement, founded by the
Son of God Himself and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, not prevail!
The premillennialist doctrine of Christ returning and “rescuing”
the Church does not sit well with the high position of the
Church as taught in the New Testament. The Church only exists
because Christ has already rescued it. He has taken ordinary
people, placed His Spirit within them and made them into His
corporate body; the body through which He now rules on earth.
This is what the Church really is ... the instrument through
which Christ is now ruling and through which He is bringing all
things under His authority. To see this body as failing in this
task and needing a second rescue, is to detract, not merely from
God’s Divine plan but also from the efficacy of the sacrifice of
Christ on the Cross. It is also to weaken the resolve of the
Church. Christians are really Christ’s “viceroys” in this world.
Or, on another model, His hands and feet ... hands through which
He works and feet by which He carries the Gospel far and wide.
To have “failure” preached at us and to be told that we cannot
succeed until Christ comes again is enervating to our efforts.
Of course we can do nothing without Christ, but He is here with
us already (Matt.28:20). There is no need to look to a future
era for Christ to accomplish what He is already doing. Rather,
the role of the Church is to submit to Him in His rule and thus
hasten the day when all this shall be accomplished (2 Pet.
3:12). My fear is that premillennialist and amillennialist
eschatologies are doing to the Church militant what Tokyo Rose,
and Lord Haw Haw tried to do to the troops in World War II and
what Hanoi Hannah tried to do to those fighting in Vietnam.
Their pessimillennialist teachings risk demoralising the Army of
God, subtly inducing an inward-looking survivalist mindset as we
prepare for the times of tribulation which these eschatologies
say are coming, rather than supporting what should be a mood of
triumph born of a recognition that we are the people of the King
and that we have been given the command to win all nations to
Him, a command which Jesus surely would not have given if He
intended it to fail.
Premillennialism
does at least acknowledge that there will be a time when the
will of God will be “done on earth as in Heaven”. In this
respect, it is preferable to amillennialism, which effectively
sees the present state of the Church as being about as good as
it will get. Yet, if this is true, we would seem forced to
believe that the number of people who are lost must vastly
outnumber those that are saved, implying, in a sense, that the
victory of Christ was less successful than the temptation of
Satan. A doctrine that sees the vast majority of the human race
as being lost to Satan and only a relatively small remnant won
to Christ does not sit well with, for instance, Romans 5:14-19
which speaks of the gift of life in Christ being so much greater
than the curse of death brought about by the Fall.
It is true, of
course, that God has often worked through a faithful remnant,
but always for the purposes of a wider salvation. Again, one may
quote Christ’s words “many are called, but few are chosen” to
justify the belief that only a few are saved. Yet, as F. F.
Bruce argued, these words were addressed at a specific time and
to a specific audience, and hardly applied to the Church in the
years following Pentecost for example, when many came into the
Church. The old Puritan hope, which I believe was held by Calvin
himself and which in more recent times has been upheld by
preachers such as David Chilton and John Stott, is that the
number of saved will greatly outnumber that of the lost. Can it
be otherwise when Jesus Himself taught us to pray “Thy Kingdom
come, Thy will be done on earth as in Heaven”? How can an
amillennialist pray this prayer believing, as he must if he is
to be consistent, that it will forever go unanswered in any
recognisable sense? But then, why would God the Son have taught
His followers a prayer to God the Father that He knew would not
be answered? The thought is just too preposterous to
contemplate!
The
amillennialist writer, Stephen Travis raised some objections to
the type of optimillennialism presented here, and these need an
honest appraisal before we can truly accept it.
First, he argues
that any millennialist eschatology (understood in any literalist
sense) seems to conflict with the Biblical dichotomy of “this
world and the next”. That is to say, the New Testament
persistently contrasts the present fallen world with the
redeemed life in Heaven in such a way (Travis argues) that there
is no room for a “spiritual halfway house” where quasi-heavenly
conditions are prominent in what basically remains the present
world.
While
acknowledging this argument to some degree, the present writer
believes that it can be carried too far. The dichotomy, it seems
to me, is not so much between a place or era called “earth” and
a contrasting place or era called “heaven” (or “this world” and
“the next world”, if you like these terms better), as between
the state of affairs without God and that in which God rules
supreme. The point is, I would argue, that this second state of
affairs is even now breaking through into the first, and has
been ever since Christ won the victory on the Cross. Two worlds,
two eras, are intersecting and the real issue is not to
introduce a third which somehow straddles them, but to
acknowledge the increasingly prominent breaking through of the
“heavenly” into the “earthly”. If my reading of Scripture is not
totally in error, this is exactly what I believe it to be
teaching. It seems to me that the earlier quoted passage from
Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians is telling of the
progressive fulfilment of Daniel’s vision of the rock that
becomes a mountain and fills the earth (Dan. 2:34-35, 45). The
rock (the rule of Christ) is clearly of the heavenly realm (the
rock not cut by human hands), yet equally clearly, it is seen as
exercising progressive rule over the earth. It is difficult to
understand how Travis’ position can do justice to either of
these biblical passages.
Secondly, and
potentially more serious, is Travis’ argument that this variety
of postmillennialism cannot do justice to Jesus’ warning that
His followers must keep alert to His return, at a time that
nobody knows. How, Travis argues, can we do this if we expect a
long period of triumphant Christianity to precede the Second
Coming?
Superficially,
this objection seems very powerful indeed and was enough to hold
the present writer in the amillennialist camp for a goodly
number of years, oblivious to what I now believe to be very
serious arguments against it.
The solution to
the problem lies, I now believe, in determining exactly what
Jesus meant by His “Coming” in this context. Was the “Coming”
for which His followers were to remain alert the Final Coming at
the end of human history, or was it another “Coming” in
judgment, during the lifetime of His initial hearers? We tend to
forget that Jesus did not leave His teaching written on a scroll
to be picked up and interpreted by a future Church (although, of
course, His teachings continue to be relevant), but were given
in conversation to specific people at a specific point in
history and, to be properly appreciated, must be understood in
the light of how they were relevant to those folk at that time.
In this instance, Jesus was telling the people to whom He spoke
to keep watch. In other places, He even told them that their
generation would not pass away before all of these things had
been accomplished, implying that most of them would live to see
the events He prophesied. This time frame strongly implies that
Jesus was speaking, not about the Final Consummation of all
things, but about the judgment soon to be poured out against
Jerusalem and the Jewish nation that had rejected its Messiah.
This ‘coming in judgment’ took place in AD 70, while most of
Jesus’ original hearers would indeed have still been living.
If this
interpretation is correct, Travis’ second objection evaporates.
These particular words of Jesus are not directed toward those
living after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the
old system of worship in AD 70. Travis’ third objection, namely,
that postmillennialism does not pay sufficient heed to Jesus’
teaching of a coming time of tribulation, can be criticised
along similar lines. Thus, if Jesus was really referring to the
judgment about to fall on Jerusalem, the times of wars, rumours
of wars, earthquakes, etc. and the time of terrible tribulation
would have fallen between the time of His earthly ministry and
AD 70 and would, as Travis himself, together with many
commentators believe, correspond with the seal, trumpet and bowl
judgments depicted in the Book of Revelation. We may recall how
Chilton interpreted these as referring to the increasing
chastisement of an unrepentant Jewish nation preceding the
judgment of AD 70. We may, incidentally, note how the prophecy
of the sealing of the 144,000 (interpreted to mean the Christian
Jews in Israel at the time) so that the judgments would not harm
them was fulfilled by the rescue of the Jewish Church through
visions and prophecies before the siege of Jerusalem. According
to early Church historian Eusebius, not one Christian Jew
perished when the city fell. We may also see a prophecy of the
calling out of Christian Jews as mentioned by Eusebius, in
Jesus’ prediction that “one will be taken and the other left” (
Matt.24:40 - 41). Christian Jews were “taken” to safety by being
called out through prophetic visions, while non-Christian Jews
were “left”. If this prophecy of Jesus does indeed foretell the
event noted by Eusebius, His warning to “remember Lot’s wife”
becomes chillingly relevant. If a Christian Jew’s love for
Jerusalem held him back from obeying the vision — as Lot’s
wife’s heart remained in Sodom — he would fall with the rest of
the population. If Eusebius’ statement that no Christian Jew
perished is indeed correct, there must have been no “Lot’s
wives” among the Jewish Christians!
This ‘preterist’
interpretation of these passages seems, therefore, to be
entirely consistent with Scripture and we therefore suggest that
Jesus’ warnings of turbulent times and tribulation refer to a
period already long past and, as such, do not conflict with an
‘optimillennialist’ eschatology. Indeed, we can go even further
than this and recall Jesus’ words that the time of tribulation
was to be greater than anything that had ever been and greater
than any that would ever be again. If the Great Tribulation
really was the tribulation of the last days of Jerusalem before
its destruction in AD 70, we have Jesus’ own words that another
like it will not occur in the future.
To some, this may
be the biggest objection to this interpretation. They need only
point to the terrible things that have occurred during the past
century as evidence that equally terrible times have occurred
after AD 70. Were the events leading up to AD 70 worse than the
Holocaust, for example?
Terrible times
are a sad reality, and it generally seems a pointless exercise
trying to determine which is worse. Jesus did not promise that
there would be no more times of trial after the Great
Tribulation, simply that none would equal it in severity.
Incidentally, this very way of speaking about it seems to
suggest that Jesus saw human history as continuing after the
Great Tribulation. In other words, by saying that a period of
such great distress would never happen again, He implied that
other events would follow the period of tribulation. He
evidently did not see it as coming at the end of history.
Without in any
way making the other terrible events of history seem any less
terrible, the sacking of Jerusalem was unique in history, not
simply in the severity of its suffering, but in the fact that
the destruction of the Temple and the total desecration of the
land represented a termination of the Jewish sacrificial system
and acted as visible evidence that the way to God upon which the
Jewish faith depended had now been closed forever. It was not
just a time when people who were not even permitted to eat pork
or any unclean animal were forced by starvation to revert to
cannibalism (even of one’s own babies, as has been recorded) or
where suicide became the preferred option of people who had
always regarded the taking of one’s own life as such a serious
sin that men refused to shave their beards or cut their hair
lest the razor should slip and cause a fatal cut. Terrible
though this alone would have been, the destruction of one’s
country, ones’ holy city, one’s place of worship and
(ultimately) one’s only known way to God and salvation must have
been so much worse. Nothing indeed, as terrible as this has
happened at any other time in history.
We said earlier
that the optimillennialist vision of the future was not only
more optimistic, but more challenging as well. To some degree we
have already touched upon the challenge; the challenge that it
presents the Church to be the army of God and the body of Christ
in this world and the challenge to be the instrument through
which God has chosen to exercise His rule in this world. All
these functions are really one — to represent God in Christ on
this earth!
Think about that
for a minute. Can there be a greater privilege or a greater
responsibility? The Church is called to reflect the image of God
in Christ, as if in a mirror, to the wider world. And the image
that we reflect will be the only image of Christ that most of
the world’s people will see. The task is mind-numbing, but even
that is not the end of it. We are called not only to reflect the
image of God in Christ to humanity, but also to those spiritual
beings constituting the angelic host. There are some aspects of
God’s nature that can only be seen, either by human beings or by
angels, in so far as they are reflected in the mirror of the
Church. Principally, I believe, the aspect of God’s nature thus
revealed through the Church is His mercy. His mercy is revealed
through the redemption in Christ of a people chosen to bear His
image and indwelt by His Holy Spirit. The Church is the only
company of such people, and in this capacity, the only means of
revelation of the extent to which God’s mercy will go. Only by
looking at the Church can anyone, human or angel, see the degree
of God’s mercy that would take the most avid persecutor of
Christians and turn him into the most prominent Christian
Apostle. Or would take an atheist such as C.S. Lewis and turn
him into the Twentieth Century’s most popular and influential
Christian apologist.
Not only does the
Church reflect God’s image to human beings and angels, but it is
also the instrument through which God chooses to reveal His
power and government of the world of humanity. It may not rule
as a world government, but the real power on earth is the
Church. This may seem a ludicrous statement. How, it will be
asked, can the Church be said to rule in today’s world?
It rules by and
through prayer. Prayer is the instrument through which
Christians influence the course of events. Prayer has tremendous
power because it is the God-chosen means through which the power
of God is channelled into the human world.
Can it be
co-incidence that the fall of the Iron Curtain was preceded by
concerted prayer efforts by both Protestant and Roman Catholic
Christians?
It is also a well
known fact that every great Christian revival has been preceded
by a concerted and earnest prayer effort, sometimes by just a
few dedicated Christians.
Then there is the
experience of many believers who suddenly feel a burden to pray
for some specific thing. I remember an instance where a
Christian travelling by public transport heard something like an
inner voice ordering prayer for fellow passengers. Shortly
thereafter an event occurred which may have resulted in injury
or death, but which in actual fact resulted in nothing more than
minor inconvenience. I think that most Christians would agree
that the response of this believer to this urgent burden for
prayer brought about divine intervention to prevent what would
otherwise have been a major tragedy.
Did an Angel Speak to this Christian? Did the Holy Spirit?
We do not know,
nor does it matter. What is important is that the call was
answered with a positive response. Sceptics will no doubt
question why it should be necessary for God to first call
somebody to pray in order for something to happen. Surely, they
will argue, God could have simply intervened without the need
for anyone to have first prayed. Isn’t it strange that God
should first give someone the burden to pray for His
intervention … and then to intervene in answer to that very
prayer?
Yes, we agree
that it is strange, but it is the way in which God has chosen it
to happen. It is just another demonstration of the high value
that God places on the Church. It is not that the Church “calls
down” God’s intervention, but that the divinely-inspired prayer
of the Church (or, as in this example, one of its members) is
itself part of this divine intervention. The Church becomes
God’s instrument of intervention!
We must also
appreciate the fact that the Church is not confined to what is
called the “Church militant” here on earth, but also to the
“Church triumphant” in Heaven, i.e. to the whole company of the
redeemed who have already run their earthly race. The Book of
Revelation (20: 4-6) teaches that the Church triumphant — with
especial reference to those who had been martyred for Christ —
rule during the Millennium. The premillennialist sees this as a
still-future happening and understands the thrones mentioned in
this passage to be on earth. However, as Travis points out,
there is nothing in this passage, or anywhere else for that
matter, to suggest this. The only “thrones” mentioned as earthly
ones belong to the Beast. Surely, argues Travis, the thrones of
the saints are in Heaven from which they exercise their rule
during the present era of the gospel. Travis, as we have said,
is an amillennialist, which we have already declared to be a
misnomer and more accurately described as realised millennialist.
But he is a “pessi-realised millennialist” in so far as he does
not see the Church ever being victorious during this era and
looks upon the post-millennial vision as being nothing more than
a dream of what might have been possible. Nevertheless, with
respect to the rule of the redeemed in Heaven, he is at one with
the “opti-realised millennialist” view being supported here. The
risen saints are now with Christ in Heaven and we believe (as
against Travis) that this rule will become increasingly apparent
as time goes on and as the Church still on earth grows
spiritually closer to the Church triumphant in Heaven.
We read in
Revelation 6:10 that those who had been martyred prayed for the
vindication of their cause. We see no reason to disbelieve that
the saints in Heaven do not continue to pray with the Church on
earth for the furthering of God’s Kingdom. Most Protestant
Christians shy away from thoughts of the saints in Heaven
praying for the situation on earth or in any way intervening.
This reserve is understandable in so far as the cult of the
saints has at times degenerated into something approaching
polytheism as veneration of saints has effectively slipped into
worship of saints. Some parts of the church effectively raised
the status of the saints in Heaven to that of mediators between
God and the church on earth. This belief, however, eclipses the
role of Christ as our only Mediator. There is no mandate for the
practice of praying to the saints. But can we really imagine
that a Christian with a strong burden of prayer for the Church
and world would automatically cease praying once he or she comes
into the nearer presence of God? I rather feel that these people
remain part of the praying Church, interceding now in the purer
Light of Divine Truth.
The Church,
therefore, quite literally links Heaven and earth and brings the
power of the former down into the latter to rule, to guide and
to reflect the glory of God in Jesus Christ. The Church has been
placed in the position of the real power in the world, but it
exercises this, not through worldly governments, but through
prayer. I believe that the prayers of the Church triumphant in
Heaven, informed by a clearer Light than here, always influence
the affairs of the world, but the prayers of the Church militant
are also vitally needed, as these are the prayers directed from
the front line of the battle. If the Church downplays the role
of believing prayer, the link between Heaven and earth is
broken, or at the very least, weakened. For this reason alone,
the Church must have the high vision of its own cosmic role and
the vital importance that prayer plays in the fulfilment of that
role, ever before it and whatever else it does, it must grow in
prayer. We must never see our prayers as being mere rituals, but
as true communication with God and genuine channels through
which God’s power is released into the world. Concerted prayer
is the way through which God has chosen to revive the Church,
convert the nations and make explicit in the world what is
already implicit, viz. the rule of Christ.
Can we imagine a
world where war and crime no longer exist, where Christ is
universally acknowledged as Lord, where the United Nations (or
its future equivalent) begins each session with Holy Communion
and prayerfully awaits the guidance of the Holy Spirit before
each decision is made, where all the governments of the world
are filled with people who publicly acknowledge the Lordship of
Jesus Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit and where
governmental policies are seen as steps towards the furthering
of God’s rule on earth? Can we imagine a world where scientific
research is directed by the Holy Spirit for the good of
humanity, where poverty and hunger have been eliminated by the
rich nations sharing of their resources until nobody has too
much or too little? Can we imagine a Church in which the
majority of the world’s population are members; a Church united
(though not necessarily into a single denomination) by a common
sense of union with Christ and through Him, “horizontally” with
God and “vertically” with one another, a Church were the
conscious presence of God (once thought restricted to the
so-called Christian mystics) is perceived by virtually everyone
and where visions of angels and even of Christ Himself, together
with all manner of miracles, have become so frequent as no
longer to attract newsworthy attention?
This world and
this Church is, I believe, only a prayer away. This is the
potential which has been given to us and sooner or later, I
believe, will come to pass. If we so choose and pray, really
pray, it can come sooner rather than later.
There will be two
aspects of this time when Christ will be acknowledged as Lord by
the nations.
One aspect will
be spiritual and inward, namely, the individual’s yielding to
Christ as his or her personal Lord and Saviour. This is not a
“good work” for which one is rewarded with salvation, but the
response to a special grace of God through which we share in the
victory won by Christ on the Cross. It is a grace, a gift from
God and not something dependent upon any action on our part. We
remember that when Peter responded to Jesus’ question “Who do
you say that I am?” by correctly replying “You are the Christ,
the Son of God” (Matt. 16:16), Jesus told him that this
knowledge had been revealed to him by God the Father. Peter’s
belief came to him as a gift from God; as a spiritual insight.
The gospels were written that this belief may become ours. Yet,
mere belief is not enough (James 1:22 - 27, 2:14 - 26). The
belief must be applied and lead to true acceptance of Christ as
Saviour and Lord, not just held as a theological doctrine, and
this can only happen, as it did with Peter, by the working of
the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3b).This is why Paul insists that
no-one can accept Christ as Lord except through the Holy Spirit.
Paul knew better than most just how much of a miracle true
belief is. After all, it was while he was trying to destroy this
very belief that he was overwhelmed by a vision of Jesus and
converted.
This special
grace is saving, transforming and sanctifying. As more and more
of the world’s population receive it, so the very nature of the
race will be transformed.
The second aspect
concerns general grace or common grace; grace which God extends
to everyone as He makes His rain to fall on the just and unjust
alike. In a sense, the presence of the saved assures a degree of
blessing to all people (Genesis 18:23 - 32). This is yet another
role of the Church in the world. Its presence assures God’s
wider blessing. This is really the opposite of the “general
curse” following the sin of Adam. Saved and unsaved both suffer
because of the results of the Fall in that both are susceptible
to physical death, illness and the effects of disharmony in the
world.
As increasing
numbers of people are brought into the Kingdom and live
increasingly in conformity with God’s laws (which means living
increasingly in harmony with Creator and creation) we may expect
this beneficial influence to spread increasingly to society at
large, to the benefit of believers and non-believers alike.
Thus, all will share in the blessings of God’s general grace.
The spiritual atmosphere, so to speak, will be changed.
What we have been
saying is not mere utopian dreaming. I believe that it is what
the Bible teaches, despite pessimillennialist objections to the
contrary. But there is also direct evidence that this kind of
situation can come about ... it has already come about for
limited periods in limited geographical areas. We have already
suggested that the mystics of the Church (a group so diverse
that everyone from Ignatius Loyola to John Calvin and John
Wesley have been included by various writers) were really
Christians who were granted a foretaste of “Millennium
consciousness” or direct awareness of the presence of God. But
there have been times in the Church’s history when this
consciousness has been experienced, not by an individual
“mystic” but by an entire congregation or even community. Such
times are times of revival and for a time the Millennial rule of
Christ is explicitly revealed in a community experiencing them.
During the Welsh
Revival of 1904, for example, the formerly high crime rate
dropped so dramatically that the magistrates courts were empty,
the pubs went broke while the Churches filled to overflowing,
prayer meetings continued for days at a time, miners held prayer
meetings in the pits and one reporter wrote of finding a Welsh
village with lights on in every house at 3am, as the sound of
prayer rose from each home and people were even found praying in
the streets. Pit ponies were said to have stopped working
because the expletives that had been their commands were no
longer being used by the miners. For many, the presence of God
became a conscious, almost tangible, experience.
Similar events
occurred during the wider revival under the Wesleys. Indeed, it
is often said that this revival saved England from a
French-style revolution and directly inspired many liberal
social reforms that may even have prevented the country from
turning communist at a later time. Karl Marx himself, it should
be remembered, thought that his communist revolution would begin
in England.
The point being
made is simply that if such things can happen in villages in
Wales, they can happen throughout the world and if the effects
of these limited revivals were profound, just imagine the impact
of a world-wide turning to Christ!
It is with this
vision that we should approach the subject of revival. That is
to say, we only correctly appreciate what happens in revival in
so far as we understand it as the rule of Christ becoming
visible in the world, presenting us with a foretaste of the
latter stages of the Millennium and, beyond this, of the
Consummated Kingdom itself. Praying for revival is therefore
praying for the Kingdom to come. Working for revival is working
towards the coming of the Kingdom, preparing the way for the
Lord Himself. If the above interpretation of the Book of
Revelation is correct, we can have a confidence based upon that
Book itself that this prayer and this work is in accordance with
the will of God and that sooner or later there will be the
“ultimate revival”; the final turning of the nations to Christ.
“Babylon is Fallen”
Chilton, as we
saw, equates the harlot city “Babylon” with First Century
Jerusalem, which actually became the enemy of Christ after the
Jewish leaders rejected Him as their Messiah. He pointed out
that the initial persecution of Christians was by Jews and not
Romans, and even after persecution by the Roman authorities
began, Jews were often involved in the accusation of Christians.
The city of the anti-christian forces was therefore, he argued,
Jerusalem rather than Rome as most commentators on the Book of
Revelation believe. His argument that Jerusalem was the first
city where organised opposition to Christianity became a reality
is certainly a weighty one (Rome initially protected
Christianity, during the reign of Tiberius Caesar) and an
identification of Jerusalem with “Babylon” certainly fits well
with the preterist interpretation that sees most of the Book of
Revelation as a prophecy of the destruction of that city and the
end of the Jewish age. Rome was not destroyed, Jerusalem was.
To the objection
that the description (Rev. 17) of the harlot city as riding the
beast (i.e. the Roman Empire) fits the Empire’s capital rather
than a provincial city such as Jerusalem, Chilton argues that
the issue here is not so much political power as the mandate
given by God. Jerusalem was the city of the Temple of God, and
as such had been the most important place on earth. From this
great height it had fallen!
Chilton also
argued that the picture of the harlot riding on the beast is
symbolic, not of the capital city of the Empire controlling that
Empire, but of the fallen Jerusalem enjoying the protection of
Rome. The turning of the beast against the harlot (Rev.
17:16-17) would then be a prophecy of the Jewish war leading to
Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70.
Yet, what are we
to make of Rev. 17:9, where the city is said to sit on seven
hills. True, Jerusalem is a hilly city, but Rome was
specifically known as the “city of the seven hills” and
characterising “Babylon” as a city sitting on seven hills seems
tantamount to identification with Rome. Moreover, Rev. 17:18
(“The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings
of the earth”), although it may refer to the dominion mandate,
seems more easily understood in terms of political power.
So, is “Babylon”
Jerusalem as Warfield and Chilton argue, or Rome as Barnett,
Beasley-Murray and the majority of commentators argue?
Perhaps it is
both!
By the time of
the last days of the Jewish era, Jerusalem and Rome were as one
in their opposition to the Christian Church. Both had gone over
to the Beast. Of the two, Jerusalem was the more culpable, as it
had been given the Scriptures wherein the will of God was
revealed and had been led to expect the coming of the Messiah.
And yet, when the Messiah did come, this was the city that
crucified Him and continued to persecute His followers. It
therefore brought down upon itself the greater punishment.
Rome, as the
capital of a pagan Empire, had not been entrusted with the
revelation of the purpose of God and had no knowledge of the
Messiah. For the Romans, Christianity was just another
troublesome cult. Yet, it too committed grave sins by the
dreadful persecutions of Christians under Nero. It also
“deserved a beating”, but received a lighter one (Luke
12:47-48). The Flavian armies that were soon to sack Jerusalem
captured Rome in a bloodbath said to have cost fifty thousand
lives and which also saw the destruction of the Temple of
Jupiter, yet the city itself was spared.
Vespasian had
been willing to destroy the city in his endeavour to rout every
last vestiges of loyalty to Emperor Vitellius, and threateningly
camped on the other side of the Tiber awaiting the time to
attack. Seeing themselves greatly outnumbered, the troops that
had till then remained loyal to the Emperor finally deserted him
and crossed over to the Flavians, thereby averting the wholesale
destruction of Rome. The fighting was still heavy and great
numbers of people lost their lives as the battle was carried
from street to street, yet the events that were to occur in
Jerusalem only months in the future were prevented from
befalling Rome by the last minute desertion of the Emperor’s
remaining supporters.
Vitellius, now
deserted by everyone, was found by the Flavian soldiers hiding
in the janitor’s closet. He was paraded through the streets,
pelted with excrement, tortured and finally impaled on a hook
and thrown into the Tiber. Thus ended the brief reign of this
gluttonous, drunken and completely ineffectual emperor. With
the fall of Vitellius, the Roman Empire emerged from its time of
division, civil war and turmoil.
The events of AD
69-70 are to be seen, I believe, as a judgment upon both the
beast of the pagan Roman Empire and the beast of the fallen
Jewish state, with the latter being judged more severely. It had
been given more, and from it more had been required, yet its sin
was even greater than that committed by Rome under Nero.
A word should be
said at this point about the nature of the “ten horns” of the
Beast which are identified (Rev. 17:12-13) as “ten kings who
have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will
receive authority as kings along with the beast. They will have
one purpose and will give their power and authority to the
beast.” They will also, according to verse 14, “make war against
the Lamb” yet He will overcome them “because he is Lord of lords
and King of kings” i.e. that the real rule of the world is in
His hands.
Both Chilton and
Barnett agree that the ten kings or rulers represent the
governors of the ten provinces into which the Roman Empire was
divided. At least some of the ten specifically relevant to this
prophecy were presumably not in power when it was given and
therefore “had not yet received a kingdom”. It also ensures that
they will rule only for “one hour”, i.e. a very short while.
Verse 14 makes it
clear that the ten “kings” are completely subservient to Rome
and are at one with the Imperial government in its hostility
toward Christianity. The seemingly specific reference to a
particular set of governors (they “had not yet received a
kingdom” and would rule for “one hour” implies a specific
reference for this prophecy rather than a sweeping application
to the rule of the provincial governors in general. In
particular, it appears to be referring to their role in the
coming period of intense persecution, either by participating
themselves or by tacitly agreeing with it).
It is not
necessary, I believe, to associate this prophesied period of
persecution with the eighth king however. The text does not
imply this. There seems no reason to doubt that the time of the
persecution would occur during the reign of the sixth king,
Nero, and that it would begin soon after the prophecy was made.
The Battle of Armageddon
We saw earlier
that Chilton understood this as symbolic of the spiritual war
between Christ and all that is in human beings which opposes His
rule. The battlefield of Armageddon is the soul of man and the
“slain” are those whose enmity against Christ has been conquered
by the sword in Christ’s mouth, i.e. the Word of God.
Armageddon, viewed in this light, is not an event confined to
the end of the age, but a process which continues throughout the
Millennial age. In this, Chilton follows Swete in understanding
Armageddon as symbolising the conversion of the nations.
G. Beasley-Murray
strongly objects to such an interpretation on the grounds that
the “slaying” of 19:21 should be read as equivalent to the
harvest of the earth of Chapter 14, and as such is to be
regarded as “wholly judicial” (p. 1193) and involving the
physical destruction of those involved. Indeed, the angelic
invitation to the birds of the air to feed on the flesh of those
slain — which some commentators have described as a parody of
the invitation to the Great Feast of the righteous in God’s
consummated Kingdom — certainly speaks as if physical
destruction of Christ’s enemies is involved (19:17-18). This
does not necessarily mean that Armageddon is to be interpreted
as a literal war of course. On the contrary, it would be odd if
a literal war was described in the midst of the symbolic
language of the Book of Revelation and, in any case, the picture
given is not of a war at all in the usual sense of the word. The
nations gather together, not to fight one another, but to resist
the reign of Christ which they obviously see as a threat to
their own selfish rule. Furthermore, as Barnett observes, no
battle eventuates! The scene moves from the gathering of
nations, not to one of warfare but to one of judgment.
In my opinion,
this judgment aspect is not made sufficiently explicit in the
interpretations of Swete and Chilton. To be sure, the conversion
of the nations and the slaying of all enmity toward Christ by
the sword of the Living Word is there, but so is the powerful
warning that those who remain rebellious will be destroyed by
that same Word. The gospel brings news of both salvation and
judgment. Indeed, neither salvation nor judgment can be
adequately understood alone. They go together, and the
conversion of the nations includes the judgment of those who
persistently oppose the spreading of the Kingdom of Jesus
throughout the world. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that
Beasley-Murray is entirely correct in equating the “slaying” of
19:21 with the harvest of 14:14 - 20. The “harvest” is probably
to be interpreted as the Messianic judgment against the land of
Israel which culminated in the sacking of Jerusalem in AD 70
whereas the slaying of Chapter 19 depicts a judgment against
“the nations” of the world. There may still be a connection
however, in so far as the events of AD 66 - 70 (and especially
the events of 69 - 70) could be seen as the opening act of
divine judgment against the world; of both Israel and the
Gentile nations. If Chilton and those who accept the early
dating of Revelation are correct in seeing a prophecy of the
events of 69 - 70 as being central to this book, the judicial
aspect of the “slaying” may be interpreted as having as its
immediate reference the tumultuous events which rocked the Roman
world in AD 69. This again emphasises the terrible judgment
which both Rome and Jerusalem brought upon themselves by
rejecting Christ and persecuting His followers.
Symbolically
locating the battle at Armageddon — Megiddo — may have been a
way of emphasising its decisive nature. Megiddo was not only the
site of many battles, it was also very strategic, being located
on the main trading rout between the fertile lands to the east
and the great oasis of the Nile delta. Whoever captured Megiddo,
could exercise considerable control over a wide area, in fact,
over the then-known world. By picturing the insurrection of evil
symbolically as a gathering for battle at Megiddo, only to be
decisively conquered by Christ alone without so much as an arrow
being fired by the anti-christian forces, beautifully depicts
how utterly complete the victory won by Christ — and by Christ
alone — really is. “Megiddo” is in Christ’s hands; He is in
control of everything, now and for ever. Moreover, this victory
was won, not in a literal battle but on a Cross, not with the
assistance of “Christian” countries or even of armies of risen
saints and hosts of angels, but by Christ’s atoning sacrifice
alone.
The Last Judgment
Verses 11 through
15 of Chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation depict a scene which
is usually interpreted as being of the final Judgment of
mankind. It is graphic in its imagery. Heaven and earth — the
whole created order — fleeing away from the majestic scene of
God seated on the throne of the Cosmos. The place of the passage
describing it, coming directly after the account of the final
Satan-inspired rebellion of Gog and Magog is normally read as
implying that this Judgment will follow immediately upon God’s
judgment of the rebels. Certainly, John’s vision of the Judgment
immediately follows the vision of the latter, but no time
sequence is given for the events themselves.
Moreover, the
Judgment is specifically of the dead. Unlike the other judgment
scenes in the Bible, there is no mention of the gathering of the
nations before the Judgment Throne. Only the dead are mentioned.
Perhaps the real force of having this vision come straight after
that of the defeat of Gog and Magog lies in the reinforcement of
the fact that not only physical death awaits those who oppose
God and not only the last unredeemed generation faces judgment.
It is as if John sees through the physical world and into the
spiritual realm beyond, where all the dead of all times and all
places are raised to face their Judge.
Whatever the
exact sequence of events will be and whatever form they take,
the teaching is surely that there will be a time when all
rebellion against God will be brought under the feet of Christ,
who will then hand over the Kingdom to the Father. Death, the
final enemy, will cease. The dead will rise and be judged by
God; those whose names are found written in the Book of Life
will enter into the fully consummated Kingdom.
This great and
final Day of the Lord can in no manner be equated with the
judgment upon Jerusalem in AD 70, as the hyper-preterists argue.
The resurrection of the dead and their judgment, plus the
transformation of the created order, clearly speak of something
that is still future and toward which all history, not simply
Jewish history, moves.
This teaching was
surely part of the theological framework in which all the New
Testament letter writers thought. We need not point to
specifically doctrinal passages to find it. Throughout the
letters, expressions such as “on the day of the Lord” occur time
and time again which, for the most part, seem to refer not so
much to a judgment on the unbelieving as to a time when the
believing will be raised to life immortal in the perceived
presence of Jesus Himself. That is not to say that judgment of
the unbelieving was not a part of this belief, but it does not
appear to have been the chief thought, as it would have been (I
should think) if the “day” was synonymous with the destruction
of Jerusalem.
Consider, for
example, the following verses from Paul’s beautiful hymn of love
in 1 Corinthians 13;
Love never fails.
But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are
tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will
pass away. For we know in part and we prophecy in part but when
perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child,
I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a
child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now
we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see
face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even
as I am fully known. (vv 8 - 12).
Could anybody, by
any amount of twisting and warping of Scripture, make this refer
to the fall of Jerusalem? How could “perfection” refer to this?
How could that historic event be construed as a time after which
“we shall see [God] face to face”? How could this event possibly
have been seen as a time when the child became a man?
How, indeed,
could any of the above quoted passage refer to anything less
than the total consummation of all things following the Last
Judgment?
Some, admittedly,
have understood “when perfection comes” as referring to the
completion of the canon of Scripture. If this interpretation is
to be taken seriously, they must also say that with the
collection of the complete Bible came the ability to see God
“face to face” and to know as fully as we are known. But surely
Paul had something far more significant in mind. The chief
motive for so unlikely an interpretation seems to be a desire to
disprove the continuation of charismatic gifts after Apostolic
times. If Paul really is talking about the Last Judgment (as he
surely is!) his words imply that the charismatic gifts will
continue until then and only “cease” in the sense of being
absorbed into something greater ... in the way that an
engagement “ceases” at the wedding. Indeed, the force of his
reference to the child becoming the adult is that it makes
precisely this point.
My aim is not to
defend the continuation of charismatic gifts in this context,
though I do believe that anyone arguing the counter case must do
so in spite of, rather than because of, this passage. What I am
simply pointing out is that making this passage refer to
anything less than the Consummation (whether that “something
less” be the destruction of Jerusalem or the completion of the
text of the Canon) seriously fails to do justice to the plain
sense of what Paul is saying.
It is even more
difficult to interpret John’s statement that “when he appears,
we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1Jn. 3:2b)
as having any relationship with the events of AD 70. Clearly,
this can only be fulfilled by a full and final revelation of
God.
In short
therefore, we stress that an interpretation of Revelation and
other Scriptural passages that allows many of the references,
frequently assumed to be to the Last Judgment, to relate instead
to the historic events of AD 69 - 70, does not preclude the
doctrine of a Last Judgment and does not give license to a
wholesale reinterpretation of all “last days” Biblical
references as prophesying something which from our epoch of
history, has already taken place. On the contrary, many
eschatological references cannot be properly appreciated unless
they refer to a final Judgment of all mankind and a total
consummation of history where God will be “all in all”. This is
a vital part of the Christian message and remains an
indispensable part of our hope.
As to the form
that the Last Judgment will take, we can only speculate, if
indeed, we may legitimately do even that!
But, if we may
tentatively tread on such holy ground, I would only say that,
the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that
Chilton’s notion of a very long period of an almost-christianised
world is correct. I am tending more and more to think that the
final great awakening will come rather suddenly and with great
evidence of divine power. In the end, the conversion of the
world may well take place in a single generation. Maybe at that
time, the perceived presence of God will become so apparent
that, just like Stephen before his martyrdom, all the
inhabitants of earth will see the heavens opened and perceive
the Glory of God and Christ at His right hand. Not just as a
fleeting vision, but as a permanent perception. Then all will be
judged, because all will find themselves before the Judgment
seat of God and Christ.
Earlier, we dared
imagine a world Christianised. Now, let us stretch our
imagination to the next stage of God’s plan when all traces of
evil have been removed, when death has been put totally under
the feet of Christ and God is all in all. What manner of life
will that be?
Of course,
anything we say must be wild speculation, but there is no harm
in this, providing that we remember that it is only speculation!
We are told that
our bodies will be transformed and that the mortal will put on
immortality. The bodies of the living will become like the body
of the risen Jesus and the spirits of the “dead” will be joined
again with matter, albeit matter transformed to likewise match
that of Jesus’ risen body.
After Jesus’
resurrection, He demonstrated in a number of ways that He was
not a mere spirit. He ate fish, indicating that His body could
metabolise food. He told Thomas to touch Him and feel that He
was no phantom. Yet, He was not merely a resuscitated corpse
either, unlike Lazarus after Jesus had restored him to life. The
risen Jesus could make His body disappear and reappear inside a
closed room and He could apparently move from place to place
with the speed of thought.
There is a
scientific theory that sees the mass of material objects as
being due to the interactions of material particles with the
force fields that are believed to be ever present in
three-dimensional space. Without going into details, material
particles experience the resistance of these fields and it is
this resistance that we experience as mass and inertia. Many
scientists also believe that there are more dimensions than the
three familiar spatial and one temporal of our normal
experience, although most argue that these others exist only on
very small scales. Still, if atoms of matter could somehow be
shifted into one of these other dimensions, they would cease to
“feel” the resistance of the force fields of three-dimensional
space and would no longer be restricted to the physical laws
governing the motion of masses. Remembering that we are only
speculating, we might suggest that the matter in Jesus’ risen
body was brought under such control by His spirit that all the
atoms comprising it could move in and out of this extra spatial
dimension and thereby transcend the laws restricting motion
through three-dimensional space. More than that, the material in
His body could escape the decay of time as readily as the
restriction of space.
This is how our
physical bodies will also become. Physical, yet no longer bound
by space and time as we know it!
We are also
promised that the whole of creation will come to share in this
freedom. At the Fall, creation was cursed because when humanity
sundered itself from God, it could no longer act as the chain
linking the Creator with the rest of His creation. The chain was
broken and creation was left to the forces of decay. But when
the link is again fully restored, we can again become the hands
of God in the world. Scientists predict that the material
universe will one day die – albeit not for billions of years in
the future. The sun will swell and destroy the earth and
eventually all the stars will burn out and fade away. Yet, some
scientists dare to speculate that advanced civilizations
billions of years hence, may find a way to avert this and some
have even made suggestions as to how this might come about. I
can only remark that if some secular scientists think that life
might eventually find a way of overcoming the death of the
entire universe, without even considering the presence of God,
what may truly be open to redeemed mankind fully under the
direction and illumination of the One who made the universe in
the first place and who has promised that the whole of His
creation will come to share in the liberty of the Sons of God?!
What I cannot
imagine is that life after the Consummation of all things will
be one of idleness. I take seriously the doctrine that we will
spend Eternity in resurrected bodies and that eternal life is
just that – life! Not disembodied amorphous consciousness, but
real and active life. Science, technology … all the best of
human endeavours, sanctified and God-directed, will flourish as
part of that life. That, I believe, is part of our assurance.
Maybe, as Adam was originally mandated to subdue the earth, we
who will bear the likeness of the Second Adam will be the
instrument through which God restores the universe.
I am aware that
many will find this sort of speculation excessive. Yet, even if
what I have said in the above few paragraphs is totally
incorrect, I believe that it will have served some purpose if it
draws attention to the physical nature of life after the
Consummation. We must never, never, be allowed to think of our
final state in terms of harps and clouds!!!
Bibliography
Atkinson, B. F. C. “The Gospel According to Matthew” in The New Bible Commentary.
(F. Davidson, A. M. Stibbs & E. F. Kevan, eds.) London: The Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1967.
Barnett, P. Apocalypse Now and Then. Sydney: The Anglican Information Office, 1989.
Beasley-Murray, G. R. “Revelation” in The New Bible Commentary.
Bruce, F. F. The Hard Sayings of Jesus. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983.
Chilton, D. Days of Vengeance. Fort Worth: Dominion, 1985.
Collins, C.N.M. “Zechariah” in The New Bible Commentary.
Holford, G. P. The Destruction of Jerusalem. Exeter: Leonard Jackson, 1830.
Josephus, Flavius. The Complete Works (Tr. William Whiston). Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998.
Massie, A. The Caesars. London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1983.
Russell, J. S. The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of
Our Lord’s Second Coming. New edition 1887. Reprinted Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983.
Sproul, R. C. The Last Days according to Jesus. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998.
Travis, S. I Believe in the Second Coming of Jesus. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982.
Scripture quotations taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society.
If you have any questions, comments or would just like
to share thoughts with me, you can contact me at:
seargent@ozemail.com.au