REVELATION #47 – The Millennium

We’re in Revelation Chapter 19, we finished up at verse 16 last week. In verses 11-16 John sees a vision and he says (11) And I saw heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True; and in righteousness He judges and wages war. This is very obviously Jesus Christ. (12) And His eyes are a flame of fire, and upon His head are many diadems; These are descriptions from Revelation 1, the vision of Christ. He calls Himself the faithful and true witness in Revelation chapter 3:14. (13) He’s clothed in a robe dripped in blood; We talked about that being a quote from Isaiah 63 and how that’s describing YHWH who’s robe is bloody because of the blood of his enemies, where He has been tramping out the grapes of wrath, in the winepress of His wrath.  We talked about the sword that comes from His mouth; (15) And from His mouth comes a sharp sword which is the word and that with it He may smite the nations; We’ll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment. But notice it is the word that is the chosen weapon of warfare of God. Notice too, He has a name that no one else knows, and yet we know that because we are in Him. (16) And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” And we ended up talking about the fact that that describes YHWH in the Old Testament and that YHWH is also called the Alpha and the Omega and that Jesus is called the Alpha and Omega in Revelation.

19:17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried out with a loud voice, saying to all the birds which fly in mid-heaven, “Come, assemble for the great supper of God; (18) in order that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them and the flesh of all men, both free men and slaves, and small and great.” (19) And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies, assembled to make war against Him who sat upon the horse, and against His army. (20) And the beast was seized, and with him, the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image; these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone. (21) And the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat upon the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.

            What you see here is looking back at the Old Testament covenant curses. When you read the Old Testament and you see they cut a covenant with someone, part of the curse if you broke the covenant, was to have the birds of the air eat your flesh. What does that signify? Why in the world would God say to somebody the birds of the sky are going to eat your flesh? Because they won’t be buried. Why won’t they be buried? Because there won’t be anybody around to bury them. There won’t be enough people to bury them. You see that in Ezekiel for instance, where the war is so incredible and the carnage is so great, that there weren’t enough people to bury the bodies, so they just laid out on the surface and therefore the animals and the birds came and ate the flesh.

Q: Is this in any way the same reference that Jesus used?

A: Yes, in Matthew 24 when Jesus is talking, and here again is another thing that relates Matthew 24 to the destruction of the temple, in verse 28 He says “…wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” I think probably there’s actually a two-fold reference there, which we see many times in Scripture. The word that we translate “vultures” can also be translated “eagle.” If it were eagle, remember the eagle represents the Romans in Matthew 24. Remember the Roman standard, the banner that they had before their army was the eagle, that was one of their gods. So there’s probably a two-fold reference here. That where you see the eagles gather, is where you see the Roman army gather. And of course the Roman army is the one that caused so much slaughter.

Q: You’re saying that the first thing that you see in this is that God is telling them your judgment is going to be severe?

A: Yes, right. It’s talking about the severity of the judgment and the carnage and it’s relating back to an Old Testament covenant curse. It’s saying that these people are covenant breakers and therefore they’re going to be left out for the birds and the animals, and you see that consistently throughout the Old Testament.

Q: And this is directed at…?

A: It’s directed at Jerusalem. It says to all the birds which fly in mid-heaven, “Come, assemble for the great supper of God; (18) in order that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them… This is talking about the war, if you will, between Christ and those who are against Christ.

C: Of course these are the pagans who are not going to be buried, and they would have this symbolism probably for them because it would be very bad not to be buried.

R: Well, it was very bad for the Jews also. They buried normally above ground in caves and stuff, but they also buried in the ground as I recall.

But again, what this sounds like to us, because we’ve had it filtered for so many years through the pre-millennial kinds of stuff, this sounds like the end of the world kind of thing. But really in the context, I think this is talking about Jerusalem. It’s talking about those within Israel. Remember we’ve just been talking about Babylon the great is going to be destroyed and the church rejoices because Babylon the great is being destroyed.

John says “And I saw…” Here’s a vision, this is a series of seven visions according to Chilton; all beginning with “And I saw.” The first one in verse 11 “And I saw” and he sees a vision of Christ. Verse 17 “And I saw an angel standing in the sun;” calling the birds to eat the flesh of the enemies of Christ. Verse 19 “And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth…” Who’s the beast? The Roman Empire under the direction of Satan. “…with him the false prophet…” which is apostate Israel working in consonance with Rome, and they are both seized and are thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone.

            What does the lake of fire represent? Very clearly, God’s wrath. We tend to think of hell as fire, a lake of fire, because the Bible describes God’s wrath as a consuming fire. Fire cleanses in the case of those things that are to be redeemed, but fire is also condemnation. Fire is God’s wrath. The fire comes out of heaven and destroys God’s enemies. What you see here is God’s wrath is overwhelming the enemies of God. But there’s something here I want you to understand. What weapon did God use to accomplish this? A sharp sword – the sword of the Word. This is really important. What does this tell us about things like the crusades? They were using a physical sword! They were going to take over the world for God. What was the problem? It wasn’t the sword of the Word.

Q: I’ve read that the Muslims were going with the sword to the different communities saying convert to Islam or die. So these “Christian kings” said we’ve got to stand up to this Muslim threat. It was more an issue of justifiable Biblical self-defense. Some people have made that claim. Do you oppose that view?

A: No, I don’t oppose that view that some people make that claim. Very clearly the Muslim world was taking over the world at the point of the sword saying ‘accept Islam or die.’ What you may not understand is that the Koran says that all the infidels must be wiped off the face of the earth. Who are the infidels? You are infidels. If you’re not Islam, you’re an infidel. Your Muslim neighbor down the street probably doesn’t know that, because they don’t study the Koran, they study what the IMAM tells them. But the fact is that Islam preaches that you destroy all the enemies of Allah.

Q: So do I hear you saying that maybe there could have been more emphasis on reliance on the Word of God for conversion than the sword?

A: Yes.

Q: But there could have been in some situations justifiable self-defense with a sword. It’s not a flat condemnation of what they did.

C: Offensive operations after the fact and not defense.

R: Right. What they said in the crusades was, ‘we’ve got to re-take the Holy Land which has been taken over by Islam, and we’ve got to do it at the point of the sword.’ That’s not the only case. My point in bringing that up was to say that there have been movements within Christianity where the Christian church misunderstood the message of Scripture and said ‘we need to take over the world at the point of the sword.’ The Inquisition, for instance. So there’ve been lots of movements like that. Constantine, the Roman Emperor. ‘Let’s go conquer the known world for God!’ One of the problems that I have with post-millennialism is not that they’re saying we’ve got to go out and kill everybody, but they’re saying in essence ‘we’ve got to go out and take over the world using the political system, using every means possible and make this a Christian world,’ rather than saying ‘we’ve got to get out there and tell people about Jesus Christ.’

C: Every post-millennial writer that I have ever read, Chilton, Bahnsen, Gentry, I can give you twenty names, they all say conversion through the Word of God. They have books on rejecting revolution. Gary North has a book condemning the notion of revolution. I can tell you that any post-millenialist author I’ve ever read strictly emphasizes through the power of the Holy Spirit, by the preaching of the Word, this world is to be evangelized, Christianized and will and the Gospel will triumph. Not some military army, but the God’s Gospel will triumph. So you’d have to show me what post-millennials are saying that.

R: I shouldn’t have even brought it up! I do this to myself all the time!

C: I know people have taken people and they’ve done it, but I have to agree with Stuart. I read everything I can get my hands on and it was never a top down, it was always from the grass roots, preaching the gospel up.

R: And you’re right. Let me say this, Bahnsen, when you read Bahnsen, and I’ve not read all of his books – I’ve read a couple – the major one is By This Standard; in answer to Rushdooney – by Bahnsen’s definition I am a theonomist. If you took his definition of theonomist (for those who don’t know theonomy is God’s law and it’s saying this is a person who wants to implement God’s law in the world today) and those people who are theonomists (by the way there’s a problem in the PCA where the PCA is very concerned about the theonomic movement which tends to be fairly militant and they’re concerned with heretical kinds of attitudes in those people who hold to a theonomic point of view). Most people who hold to that theonomic point of view are also post-millennial (we’ll get into that later). Basically post-millennial just means that Christ is going to come back after the millennium which is mentioned in chapter 20 of Revelation. The post-millennial position basically is Christ is going to come back after (post) the thousand years (the millenium which is mentioned in the first part of Revelation chapter 20). The problem is, and where I depart from Bahnsen’s position, is that as I recall the book, and it’s been a while, in the working out of the definition on theonomy, what Bahnsen really says, and I realize that there are words in there to say ‘we do this by evangelization.’ But what Bahnsen really says at bottom, as I understand it, is that yes you’re doing evangelization, but you get Christians in positions of power and you implement Christian laws and you implement the laws of the Old Testament in the world. Now I have a problem with that. The reason I have a problem with that is when God gave Israel the Law, at Mt. Sinai, what did He tell them to do with it? He said obey it! He said you, Israel, obey My commandments because you are in a covenant relationship with the God of the universe. He did not say to Israel, Israel, you go into Philistia and implement these commandments in the Philistine territory.

C: What Bahnsen says to that is, he can show you case by case by case where nations violated His law and He brought judgment on them for failing to comply and furthermore, the issue of implementing these Laws he will cite the Scriptures that say not one jot, not one tittle, Jesus said that’s His key text, and all he says is as a nation when they covenant with God, what I heard Bahnsen say many times is when the nation comes to repentance and the nation converts, then naturally they’re going to elect godly leaders. Leaders that look to God’s law and say we should comply. His wisdom is higher than our wisdom, we don’t in humanistic sense rationalize, ‘hmmm, we’ll punish this crime this way,’ That’s what he’s saying. Only when the society is ready to embrace this can it happen.

R: I understand that and I agree emphatically with everything you said and everything that Bahnsen said, however, except when a nation is in a covenant with God, what is the only entity that’s in covenant with God? The church. Amen. That’s my argument. When you look at Scripture, it’s not a political entity that’s in covenant with God. It’s not the nation Israel. It is God’s peculiar people whom He has called out of bondage into the freedom of covenant with Him. So that’s where I depart. That as a political entity, a nation cannot in that sense be in covenant with God.

C: That may not have ever been stated by anybody.

R: No, I agree with that. But I want to bring it back to the lesson, because when you look at Revelation 19, you are seeing Jesus Christ doing battle with the beast and the false prophet, which is the political entity (Rome) and the apostate church (the false prophet). How is He doing battle with them? With the Word! That’s where I think we as Christians need to focus. I’ve been involved in politics. I was elected to the school board. I’ve done all that kind of stuff. I’ve talked to politicians and what I’m saying here is if we depart from the Word, I think we are doomed to failure. How in the world did the Christians of the first century after the death of Christ, turn the world upside down? Did they get involved in politics? No! They were slaves! Did they form an army and take over the world? No! They were slaves!

C: They actually formed their own government

R: Within the church!

C: They displaced Rome.

R: Exactly. They displaced it with a Biblical form of government (Presbyterianism by the way). It wasn’t congregational, it was ruled by Elders. And, they followed the Word and they turned the world upside down. I am absolutely convinced that if we took that message to heart and we were out there telling and friends and neighbors, if we were out there living godly lives and saying I’m not going to follow that ungodly law if it is an ungodly law, then we too could turn the world upside down, because that’s how Christ is going to defeat the nations. With the sword of the Word.

(20)… thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone. Just remember that it is the Word. Verse 21 is the key. And the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat upon the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh. All of these popular stories, and that’s what they are – stories about some great battle where the forces of good go up against the forces of evil – are wrong! It does not exist. Notice it’s not the armies who are with God who triumphed. It’s not the armies that are with Christ. It is the sword of the Word which triumphs.

C: One thing that really amazes me is that even if you say evaluating our culture or whatever, most people who aren’t even regular attenders in church, people worry. Talk about Y2K and this and that, they see this and are familiar enough with it and make remarks to me at work and I never have time to straighten them out or tell them what I think. But it’s just amazing how our culture in general has embraced this notion. Even the movies and all that. A final climatic, physical, literal battle.

R: Because that’s what we’ve been bombarded with for the last 50 years or so.

C: That’s what everybody has wanted, is violence. Jesus did not do violence. He came and only used His words.

R: And here’s an important point. You may think we’re digressing here but we’re not. Why is it that people in the world who are not even Christian and Christians, focus so much on the forces of good in which they are a part of triumphing over the forces of evil in a final battle? Why is that? Why do people cling to that so much? They want to be on the winning team – and because of their own works. We don’t want to depend on God. We want to do it ourselves. Remember the little commercial with the little girl: “Please Mother, I’d rather do it myself!” “Please God, I want to do it myself!” It is humbling to us to admit in our hearts that we can’t do anything without God. That’s the problem folks. We want to be like God. It goes all the way back to the garden and you’ve heard me use this illustration many, many times. What was the temptation for Eve? Was it the beauty of the fruit? No. What was the temptation? In the day that you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will be like God. That’s the temptation! We want to be like God.

C: By doing violent things, taking over, essentially you’re the winner.

R: By doing it ourselves, not trusting in God, we become God-like. In our eyes. We’ve got to learn to trust in God and the Word. That’s the whole point.

Revelation 20:1 And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. (2) And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, (3) and threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he should not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.

That is the fourth vision by the way. “And I saw” is the fourth vision.

            The thousand years. Now, there is a HUGE focus on those words, which are mentioned four times in the first seven verses of Revelation 20 and no where else in the Bible. Why in the world is there so much focus on that thousand years?

C: ‘Cause you’re a liberal and you don’t interpret Scripture literally, that’s what I’ve been told. You know, if the shoe fits, then you’re wearing it too.

R: That’s true. I’ve never been accused of being a liberal before. I’ve been convicted of being a fundamentalist.

C: They say if you don’t take this literally, then you’re on the slippery slope of liberalism.

R: Okay. So at that point you take them back to Revelation where the woman is flying around on the back of the dragon and say do you take that literally? Or the cattle on a thousand hills – so there’s only a thousand hills that God owns.

            So what does, number one it says that Satan is bound for a thousand years. When does Satan get bound for a thousand years? R: I do remember in the gospel where Jesus binds the strong man, he came and bound the strong man.

Matthew 12:25 Jesus knowing their thoughts said the them, “Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided itself shall not stand. Remember that he was being accused of being satanic because he was casting out demons. He says (26) And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand? (27) And if I by Beelzebul (Beelzebul is a term name for a god who was the lord of the flies. I don’t know if any of you have read that novel about basic evil and mankind, but that’s where that title comes from.) And if I by the lord of the flies cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Consequently they shall be your judges. (28) But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. In other words, if Jesus was indeed casting out demons, which we know for a fact he was, and if in fact he was doing it by the power of the Spirit of God, which we know that he was, then what do we have to automatically, necessarily, understand? About his kingdom? It has come, past tense. It came while he was talking or during this period of time that he was on earth. (29) “Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man and then he will plunder his house. What is Jesus talking about with this little parable? Who is the strong man? Satan. And Jesus is saying that unless Satan is bound first, who can be pulled out of his family? Who can be pulled out of his kingdom? Who can be removed from his house? Nobody. So what Jesus is saying then is that by His power, by the power of the Spirit of God, not by might nor by power, Satan was bound and that allowed the church to explode in the world.

            So when did the thousand years begin? When Jesus bound Satan, that’s very clearly what it says. Verse 2 in Revelation 20: And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,

C: That begs the question, what’s the definition of binding then? People will say to me, well hey abortion is going crazy in the world. People who go on vacation in Yosemite get kidnapped and murdered, evil everywhere.

R: Yes there sure is. So what does it mean? How does it follow that he’s bound! (laughter) If there is so much evil in the world, what in the world did Jesus mean when he very clearly says that Satan is bound? The power of the church, of course. Not the power of the church is bound, the power of Satan is bound so that the church has power. He’s helpless to stop the church. Listen folks, what was going on before Jesus came? How many people were coming to Christ before he came? Very few. 1 or 2, not very many. What happened after Jesus died?

C: Elijah was told there was a thousand, but I do know how many.

R: But that was over a period of time. I’m talking about over the period of history. When you look at history, what was going on. How many people were coming to Christ historically? They were stagnant. There were very, very few. What happened immediately after Jesus died? It exploded. Why did it explode? The strong man was bound, of course.

C: Okay. How about that thousand years?

R: This is 1999. It’s been how many years?

C: He’s unbound now?

R: He’s unbound now, that’s why everything’s so wicked now isn’t it? Wrong answer! What does a thousand mean?

C: Is a thousand ever literal in the Bible?

R: Sometimes. Context, context, context.

You’ve heard me do this before. What was ten to the Jews? Perfect number. What was three to the Jews? Unity. Trinity. What is ten times ten times ten? Perfect unity. God’s own perfect time. I don’t think that the thousand years is literal. We’re talking about a highly symbolic book. We’ve just talked about the fact that the beast, is this a literal beast? No. It’s Rome. It’s the political entity. We just talked about the false prophet. Is this a literal false prophet? No. It’s a symbolic false prophet. The heretical church, the heretical section of Judaism and they’re thrown in the lake of fire and the rest were killed with the sword. Die!… How come you’re not dying? Can people be killed by the word? (That’s a trick question by the way!) It depends on who speaks the word, doesn’t it? If God speaks the word, guess what? End. Finished. The rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of him who sat upon the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh. We’re talking symbolism here. Now why is it two verses later, suddenly I’ve got to insist that this is a literal thousand years?

C: Last point. Can I share a quote from Chilton ‘cause it really helped me out. He has a chapter in Paradise Restored on Biblical hermeneutics and he really summarizes it so well. He says it’s not a matter of an issue between literalism versus symbolism as the dispensationalists will want to make the claim, he says it’s more a matter of Biblical versus speculative. When Biblically you can show so many times that thousand is not used literally, that dispensationalists could never ever agree that God doesn’t own the cattle on the thousand and first hill, that they’re never going to agree that there are five hundred generations yet to live on this earth. That thousand generations is not literal. God’s not in their mind never going to wait another how many years. So it’s not literalism versus non-literalism. It’s Biblical versus speculative.

R: That’s right. Good point.

Q: When we’re going through chapter 18 & 19 talking about the destruction of Jerusalem

A: Right, Babylon the great.

Q: It says ‘then I saw,’ ‘and I saw,’ ‘then I saw,’ and we’re saying that this is actually something that happened, Jerusalem was destroyed. Okay. Then we saw the armies. I know before you were saying that this is literal in the sense that it happened in Jerusalem, but then there’s also principles there that we can draw out as far as that are symbolic, but now it seems like you’re switching all of a sudden to be totally symbolic. No literal events.

A: No, I’m not saying that at all. Remember I said that the church exploded after the death of Christ. That is a historical fact. Why did it explode? Because Satan had been bound in the sense that his power against the church had been restrained by God. That’s what is symbolized here. Do you think that there’s a dragon with a chain wrapped around him? No. Clearly nobody believes that. My point is that this is all symbolic. Who’s Babylon the great? It symbolizes apostate Israel. Jerusalem.

C: But with Jerusalem there was some physical, historical thing that happened.

R: We can equate it to actual historical events.

C: Jesus says an army is going to surround it. You’ll see it.

R: Right. When you see the army of desolation surrounding Jerusalem, flee. Luke.

Q: But there’s no scenario for what you’re moving into now. There’s no historical…

A: Except that the church exploded after the death of Christ. I can’t tie these verses to a historical event.

C: It’s Biblically supported, no necessarily historically.

Q: Moving from the destruction of Jerusalem, chronologically, and then we move into in this chapter, ‘And then I saw…’

R: Let me put you off because we’ve only got two more minutes. It’s going to take a lot longer than that to explain what’s going on. But the rest of the passage I think is symbolic and we’ll see that later on because it talks about the first resurrection and the second death, and that clearly is symbolic of something that is spiritual, rather than physical. Premillennialists will not agree with me on that, but I think I can show that Biblically.