77 - Millennium and the Eternal State, Part 1 | Striving for Eternity | Andrew Rappaport

Striving for Eternity Videos

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

78 - Millennium and Eternal State, Part 2

00:20

Well, welcome to the

00:28

Striving for Eternity Academy. We're glad to have you with us. This is the

00:34

School of Systematic Theology. We are in book number four of our four book series called

00:41

God's Program for the Ages, the Doctrine of the Church, and the Doctrine of Last Things.

00:46

We're glad to have you with us. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity, and you can get all the information about the ministry there at the website, strivingforeternity .org.

00:58

So you'll be able to go there. One of the things I encourage you to do is go there, go into the store, and pick up the syllabus.

01:05

The syllabus is where you can follow along. We have only about two classes left, but if you go back you can get all of the other classes and go through them again.

01:17

You can start at book one. By the way, I don't know if I mentioned this, but you can get the syllabus for $25 each, but if you get four, in other words if you got all four in the

01:26

Systematic Theology series, you can pick all four up for $75, or pick up six for a bundle of six for $100.

01:34

In other words, you can get the Systematic Theology, School of Biblical Hermeneutics, and the

01:40

World Religions all for $100 and have the syllabuses for all those classes.

01:45

That's over a hundred classes that you can go. This is actually class number 77, just in the

01:51

Systematic Theology. So we're getting close to about 150 classes all together that you could take, maybe even more than that.

01:59

I don't know. We'll have to check that and get back to you. But we're glad to have you with us. Today's lesson is going to be the last in our book, though we'll probably cover this in two weeks.

02:09

It's lesson number nine, the Millennium and the Eternal State. So we will probably only get to the

02:17

Millennium. Now, some of you are going, wait a minute, he said that M word, Millennium, oh. Okay, so we're going to give the same warning that we've given with every one of these classes when we talk about end times.

02:28

I really, again, want to caution people because it seems that many people are very, very divisive and separate over people on differing views of end times.

02:42

It's probably one of the weakest arguments that you should be separating over. It's not a core doctrine.

02:48

It's not something that puts you in or outside of the camp of Christianity in these views that we're going to discuss.

02:55

And for those who get upset because, well, you spent a lot of time on a premillennial view, well, this week we're going to look at all the views again.

03:05

We gave an overview some lessons ago. This week we're going to go into each of the views and how they view the

03:11

Millennium again, more detail. And we're doing that specifically with this issue of the

03:17

Millennium, what it is, the thousand year kingdom, how each view is held, their support, the arguments against them.

03:25

So we're going to try to do that with each of them. So if you're one of those types that you just got upset because the word millennial was in the title, get over it.

03:35

All right. I mean, seriously, it's like you got to stop judging without watching the classes.

03:40

I'm amazed how many people get upset with us and they haven't watched the class. Okay. So that's my warning again, please don't, let's not be divisive over these issues.

03:52

Let's try to understand one another's point of view and try to see what we can learn. We are not, again,

03:59

I'll say we are not going to have everything as clear on this issue as we do with other doctrines because it's still future to us.

04:06

Hindsight's 20 -20, but foresight is not. And so the issue being is that we look at the first coming and to us, it's clear because we're on the other side of it.

04:16

But on the other side of the first coming, people got it wrong.

04:21

There were lots of views and people got it wrong, just like we will get it wrong. So we're taking a look at the scriptures, trying to come to conclusions that we think is the best arguments, but it really is that.

04:36

It's our best arguments. It's not something I think we could be dogmatic on. All right.

04:42

So with that said, let's begin. Let's talk about the millennium.

04:50

What is a millennium? Well, the millennium and the eternal state, which are the two periods we're going to talk about, are periods in God's plan where Jesus will visibly rule and reign.

05:04

And so the question becomes, the eternal state is where we'll spend, where we really end up spending all of eternity,

05:13

OK? But this idea of a millennium is one where theologically people get into a lot of discussion.

05:21

It's literally a 1 ,000 -year period. Let me correct that.

05:27

It is a 1 ,000 -year period. The correction being, I wanted to remove the word literally because I gave away my position.

05:36

Not everyone believes it's literal, so I needed to correct that. So the information concerning God's future kingdom is extensive in Scripture, and this is what we're going to try to do is just summary information because it would take a long time to go through everything.

05:53

So there's several different views, and what we may only get to is going through these different views of the kingdom today, but I hope we would get through more.

06:04

The views are, and there's three main views that we're going to cover. Maybe you've heard of them, postmillennial, amillennial, and premillennial.

06:12

These views are dependent upon how one interprets

06:18

Scripture. So this really comes down to, if you took our class on biblical hermeneutics, it's what rules are you going to follow?

06:27

We have clear rules on many things, but when it comes to prophecy, that becomes hard.

06:33

Prophecy is one of the most difficult things to interpret, and one of the reasons it is is because there are things like near and long -term fulfillment to prophecy.

06:43

You can have a prophecy that is fulfilled in a near term of the prophecy being given, and then you have long -term fulfillments.

06:52

You have things in Daniel where some of those prophecies were near term in Daniel's lifetime, and others, it took a whole lifetime before they were fulfilled.

07:04

And so, let's take an example, when we talk about the millennium, just if we could put up Revelation 20, verse 6.

07:13

And we see here it says, "...blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection, over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years."

07:34

So you see that it's saying there's a thousand years, this reign of a thousand years.

07:40

However, there's one commentator, George Ladd, in his commentary on Revelation, page 262, he says, quote, speaking of the thousand years, he says, quote, "...third

07:56

power of ten is an ideal time." In other words, what he argues is that this is not literally a thousand years, even though it's mentioned literally six times in those verses from Revelation 1, from verse 1 to 7.

08:15

Six times, all right? And he says, no, no, no, it's not to be taken literally, it is just meaning that the third power of ten is an ideal time frame.

08:30

Now, where do we get that from? When else, you know, and this becomes the question hermeneutically that I would challenge people with is, when else do we take numbers like this and say, well, it's really talking about the third power, and the third power makes it an ideal time.

08:45

What makes that an ideal time? Why is the third power an ideal time? And how does that argue that it's some ideal time that we just say it's not a definite time?

09:00

I'm pointing this out just to say that this is where we get into the hermeneutical issues. And I think that we have a couple of scenarios that we can look at where I think some of these arguments are going to be stronger than others, okay?

09:16

And obviously I'm going to show you where I lean, but I do want to try to be fair with these differing views.

09:22

Now, so let's start with the first one, which if you have your book there, it is post -millennialism.

09:28

If you remember when we did the overview, we talked about pre, post, ah, millennial.

09:34

So the issue here is that each of these three views have a view of this millennial reign, okay?

09:43

This thousand year reign. Post -millennial is the one, if you remember, we went over this.

09:52

Well, let me start with the ah -millennial. The ah -millennial means there was no millennium. In other words, no literal millennium.

09:58

So they believe that the millennium is a longer period of time, as George Ladd argues, that it's just an ideal time.

10:06

And when that time is up, then basically Christ returns. The idea is basically when is the return of Christ?

10:16

Ah -millennial would say there's no literal kingdom. Post -millennial would say that there's a kingdom, and then at the end of that kingdom, ah, we'll see at the end is when

10:28

Christ returns. The other is pre -millennial, which would say that the return comes before the kingdom.

10:37

Alright, so these are the different views. Now, post -millennialism, their position, if you look in your syllabus, there will, will there be a literal thousand -year reign of peace on earth?

10:49

That one's not so easy. It's not so easy because I, you know, if we're going to be fair with the position, we have to recognize the fact that some post -millennialists take this as a literal thousand -year reign, but not all do.

11:06

So it would be incorrect to argue that they all take it this way.

11:12

Some take it a long period of times, much the way that ah -millennialism does. Some take it as a literal thousand -year.

11:21

So I think most that I know of, and so this is me saying

11:27

I'm giving something subjective, that I think that most would think that it is a thousand -year reign or something close to that, and it will be on earth, okay, versus being in heaven.

11:40

We'll get to that in a bit. The second point, though, as we look, is that it is, it will be, it will come, this literal reign will come because of the spread of the gospel.

11:55

That's your blank there, the spread. The spread of the gospel. In other words, I, and this is a sense where I do agree some with the view of post -millennialism is that the solution to our social ills is not political.

12:12

We should not be protesting the government or the Supreme Court to get them to rule the way we want in society.

12:22

No, the solution to society's ills, I would argue, is the gospel.

12:28

If more people were out sharing the gospel, if more people were understanding the gospel, guess what?

12:33

The politicians, they would do like they did in times past and pretend to be Christian so that they could get votes, okay?

12:43

That's what they would do. We need to be about the business of sharing the gospel as the church and letting

12:49

God work through His people to change hearts and that would change society.

12:58

But that's a difference in motivation, though. I'm not saying that we share the gospel to usher in the kingdom of God, okay?

13:10

I don't think that would usher it in. However, I do think the gospel, I do agree with post -millennialists here that the gospel is the solution to social ills.

13:21

Now, number three is that there will be a kingdom, that's your blank, there will be a kingdom at the end of this time.

13:30

So in other words, there's going to be the sharing of the gospel. In post -millennialism, it's the idea that the gospel is going to go out, it's going to go forth, more people are going to believe, and then at the end of that period, there will be the kingdom.

13:44

And then, number four in your syllabus, then Christ will reign, that's your blank,

13:49

Christ will reign, defeat evil, and have a resurrection and a judgment.

13:55

So the idea is, is you have Christians, the church, sharing the gospel. They go out in the highways and the byways, and as they're going and they're sharing the gospel, people start to receive at some point.

14:07

They're receiving the gospel, they're believing the gospel, it seems that there's peace on earth, people are getting along because they're practicing the law, they're following God's law because they're now believers in Christ, and then at that point,

14:22

Christ returns and shares and reigns. This is historically many, especially in Germany, before World War I, in the early 19th, part of the 20th century

14:36

I should say, in the 1900s, many thought that we were getting to the end. Post -millennialism was on the rise, very much so because as we were being connected to people around the world, as we were breaking through language barriers, there was a time in Western civilization where Christianity was more known, that there was a time of prosperity, and during this time of prosperity, people thought that things were getting good, and much of what we really see in teachings in the

15:16

German scholarship, there's a lot of Christian scholarship being done in Germany, not all good, especially after the

15:23

First World War, but before the First World War, much of it was good, and what you saw was people thinking, many people speaking of post -millennialism, it was kind of really the glory years for post -millennialism because it really looked like, at the time, many thought this looks like this is going to be true.

15:42

Now, just because history seems to line up with that doesn't make it true, I'm going to give an argument against my own view for that, is to say the same thing, because this is something that some make a mistake in pre -millennialism, and they say, well

15:58

I'll just say it now, many think in pre -millennialism, and I'll get to it again, is that they say that because Israel is now a formal state, that that's proof, that shows that we're getting that pre -millennialism is true.

16:10

We don't interpret scripture by history, okay, and so post -millennialism at the time before World War I, it looked like it was going to reign, and then

16:21

World War I, the war to end all wars, well, up until World War II, right, so you ended up having a world war where much of the western world was now engulfed in a war, and that time of prosperity led to a

16:40

Great Depression, and much of that German scholarship that used to be so conservative suddenly turned liberal, why?

16:50

Well, much of it because they were anticipating a post -millennial -like state, and that didn't happen, the exact opposite happened, and many turned away, not only from post -millennialism, but conservative

17:06

Christianity, and what you ended up seeing there is that they turned to liberalism, and liberalism started to reign in the

17:17

German scholarship, so with that we end up seeing that there was this, there was what was going on was people that were reacting with their theology to history.

17:34

World War II, that occurred, it's been some time, post -millennialism is kind of on a rise again, that's not necessarily a bad thing,

17:46

I do think if we have, do we have Luke, if we could put Luke up for us,

17:53

Luke, and this is going to be Luke 17, Luke 17 verses 26 to 37, so this is a little bit of a longer verse, and that's hard to see, any chance of, can we enlarge, oh that's nice, thank you, enlarged it, you were quick, all right,

18:17

Luke 17, 26 to 37, and I want to read this because I think this passage teaches that the world will become increasingly evil, not better, and I think that this becomes a problem for post -millennialists, but Luke 17, 26 to 37 says, "...just

18:38

as in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the

18:43

Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when

18:51

Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when

19:06

Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all.

19:12

So they will be on that day when the Son of Man is revealed.

19:18

On that day, let no one say on the housetop with his goods in the house, not come down and take them away, and likewise let one who is in the field turn not back.

19:37

Remember Lot's wife? Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will keep it.

19:49

I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed, one will be taken and the other left.

19:57

There will be two women grinding together, one will be taken and the other left.

20:03

And then he will say to them, Where is the Lord? He said to them,

20:08

Where is the corpse? Where the corpse is, the vulture will gather."

20:14

So what you see there is a time like in Noah's day where things are getting worse.

20:20

The time of Sodom and Gomorrah where things are getting worse. So the point there being,

20:26

I think, in my looking at that, is that I think it says that things are not going to get better and better and better and it gets to some apex when

20:35

Christ returns and then instills his kingdom. I think it says that things are going to get worse and worse and worse and then

20:43

Christ will come. Now it would be wrong, as some people argue, when they argue against the view of post -millennialism, they would argue that, look, look at the news.

20:54

Have you seen the news? Go watch the news. Things are getting worse. That proves that post -millennialism is wrong.

21:02

No, no it doesn't. That doesn't prove anything.

21:08

That proves that you watch the news. That's what it proves. That proves that you think the news is reporting bad news.

21:16

That's all it is. Do you know whether things are going to get bad, bad, bad, and then

21:22

God's going to do a revival around the world and people are going to come to know the gospel in say 100, 200, 300 years from now, maybe 1 ,000 years from now?

21:33

Do you know if that could happen? It could, couldn't it? There's nothing that says it cannot.

21:40

That's the point. The point is, is that we do not know the future.

21:46

So reading it, the news, and trying to read that into proving that post -millennialism is wrong, is wrong, okay?

21:55

It's wrong because the fact is that we don't know what God is going to do in the future and we have to be aware of the fact that, and be mindful of the fact that God may do something that we just are not aware of yet.

22:10

The assumption I think that people make when they make that argument is that Christ has to return soon.

22:17

But why does he have to return soon? The argument many give is because things are getting bad.

22:24

Well you see, now what you're doing when you argue that way is you're letting the news interpret your position because people that usually make that argument are pre -millennialists.

22:32

So what are they doing? They're arguing that, well the news is pointing bad things and pre -millennialism says things will get bad, so that's proof that pre -millennialism is true.

22:43

That's a logical fallacy called begging the question. You assume your position to be true by using the things that you're using to prove it.

22:53

So you're using the news and the times are bad to prove that pre -millennialism is true, but the only thing is you're assuming pre -millennialism to be true to interpret that this must be close to the end of days and that's the issue.

23:07

We could have another thousand years, two thousand, five thousand years. How do we know?

23:13

We don't. And God could do many things even within ten years. God can radically change things in a short period of time if he wants to.

23:25

Look at the first century. I mean within the first ten years of Christ's death they're saying that the apostles are turning the world upside down.

23:36

Why can't God do that again? He could. There's far more Christians now than there were then.

23:43

So you know this is the point. We don't know, so please do not interpret the post -millennial view as being wrong based on the news.

23:55

So that's post -millennialism. Like I said, I think there's some valid points that they have with some of the views and I just don't think it's the strongest.

24:08

That's my opinion. I could be wrong, so could you on this issue, just saying, unless of course you think you're

24:16

God. So amillennialism. Let's look at amillennialism, number two in your syllabus.

24:23

The position of amillennialism is that the thousand years are only figurative.

24:29

That's your blank there, figurative. The thousand years are only figurative representing part of the age where Christ reigns triumphantly with his followers.

24:41

Satan during this time would be bound in the sense that Christ gives him freedom to those who claim it.

24:49

So the idea here is twofold. The thousand years mentioned in Revelation. In Revelation 6, 1 to 7 is the clearest passage we're mentioning the thousand years.

25:01

Now a couple things with this. One, many argue that, go back to Augustine for their support for the view of amillennialism.

25:12

Augustine made a strong argument for the fact that we were in this millennial kingdom.

25:17

That the kingdom began with Christ's death and resurrection. That began the kingdom and they viewed that as the beginning of the kingdom and nowadays we say it goes to an indefinite period of time to a time when

25:31

God is right or sees it as fulfilled. The issue here that we do want to bring out is

25:36

I wrote a paper on Revelation and looking through Augustine. One of the things

25:41

I found of interest was that Augustine believed that the thousand year kingdom was literal.

25:48

He did believe that they were in it. He just thought it was a literal thousand years.

25:54

That was somewhat held up until about a thousand AD. Why? What do you think could have happened in a thousand

26:00

AD? They looked left, they looked right and Christ didn't come. They were like how do we explain this?

26:07

So they changed the theology. They say well this is just figurative. Now one of the things that becomes a problem when we build a doctrine on early church fathers is the fact that they don't have their theology as well defined as we did.

26:19

As we do I should say. The theology has developed over time. It's become something that's been progressive as heresies rose up.

26:28

Theology had to rise up to answer it and so when we look at theology we have to look at the fact that it is something that is a work in progress usually.

26:38

That doesn't mean God's word is changing. It's our understanding of it and how we systematize it that's changing.

26:46

So people accepted certain things until there became an issue. So no one really wrote a whole lot on the thousand year kingdom because it wasn't something they really addressed until a thousand

26:57

AD and then it had to be really hammered out and the Catholic church at the time just argued it was figurative.

27:06

So do I think there's problems there? Yeah I do. We'll get But the idea here is that this thousand years is something that they're going to say is a figurative thing.

27:22

So let's deal with some arguments that are made for this. One of the

27:29

I think strongest arguments is that when we see the word thousand years everywhere else in scripture it is always figurative.

27:38

Therefore it must be figurative here. Now that's the argument made. I think like I said I think it's one of their strongest and I personally think it's weak but let's address that and say why.

27:50

Okay so first off now some people will say every time a thousand appears in scripture it's always figurative.

27:57

That's a mistake. That is not accurate. There are times where 1 ,000 literally means 1 ,000.

28:08

Okay 1 ,000 years is different. The term outside of Revelation, outside of Revelation 6, thousand years appears four times in three passages.

28:22

Okay in those three passages we have two in the

28:28

Old Testament. One's in Psalms so that's poetry. You have it in Psalms.

28:35

You have it again in oh I just drew a blank I think it's Ecclesiastes but it's in wisdom literature.

28:41

So again it's used in a way that's figurative. Once in the

28:47

New Testament we have two verses in 1st Peter where he says to Lord of those long -suffering to Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.

28:59

Is that literally a thousand years? Well it's used in a literal sense being compared to a literal day but the idea of it is not literal and so it's the thousand years itself you could argue is literal in that sense because it's doing an actual comparison of a literal thousand years compared to a literal day but the thing it's trying to teach is about the

29:25

Lord's long -suffering and this is an illustration of that and being an illustration it is not literal and so by the way this is why

29:34

I wouldn't hold to what's called the day -age theory for the first book of the Bible in Genesis where people say that God those six days were actually a thousand years because to the

29:46

Lord a thousand years is a day a day is a thousand years. They take that literal and apply it there to argue that that the earth is older because there's a thousand years to a day the problem they still have with that is they don't have enough they're they're trying to argue for millions of years and they've only added six thousand years so their argument would only make the earth twelve thousand years old instead of six thousand years old it's still far off from the millions to billions that they're trying to argue for just saying but if you look at those others there is an argument that could be made that four times in the

30:22

Bible that is figurative however you have six times within one book

30:28

I would argue these six times are literal therefore more of the time it's literal than non -literal okay but there is a principle that you'll see and this is where we get into how you interpret the

30:41

Bible harmonetics and is why this harmonics is important just because the other times that one thousand years appears is figurative does not mean that it is always figurative and that's the point it's not always the case that it's figurative just because it is elsewhere that becomes a harmoneutic that can get you into a lot of trouble because anything can mean anything okay and so we want to be careful with that we don't want to sit there and say that just because we see something interpreted some way in one passage that it must mean the same thing everywhere okay and so I think that though that is their strongest argument

31:29

I think it's a weak one because what it assumes is that this must be an interpretation principle for the words or the phrase a thousand years so the thousand years let's deal with some of the problems

31:45

I think that the thousand years is said to be a length of time in the future six times in Revelation I've been bringing this up if we put up Revelation 20 verses one to seven hey since you did a quick fix on another one can you make this one a little bit larger too so that I could read it that would be like a wonderful thing cool thank you

32:10

I appreciate it's a little bit larger and this is a little bit of a longer passage but Revelation 20 verses one to seven then

32:22

I saw an angel coming down from heaven holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain and they settle and they seize the dragon the ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan and bound him for a thousand years then he threw him into the pit and shut him and sealed sealed it over so that it he might be deceived deceived the nations no longer until the thousand years were ended after that he must be released for a little while then

33:02

I saw thrones and seated on them were those who whom the authority to judge was committed also

33:10

I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony of Jesus and for the word of God and those who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their forehead or their hands they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years the rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended this is the first resurrection blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection over such the second death has no power but they will be priests of God and Christ they will reign with him for a thousand years and when the thousand years are ended satan will be released from prison let's leave that up and let's work through this one of the things that some amillennials will say is that this is clearly figurative they argue it's figurative because how could you have a chain that holds an angel angels or spirits so the chain can't be literal now part of the problem with this is that could the chain be literal well this is literally what john saw john is describing what he literally saw he saw a chain that somehow held satan okay we we don't understand this completely but he seizes the dragon and he he's he's held by a chain and he's bound for a thousand years now i think if this is figurative if this was figurative we would not see this thousand years repeated six times in six verses chapter verse two to seven and so you have the repetition which leads me to believe this that the thousand years is literal some i do find it interesting because some of the people that argue this who argue that a chain can't hold a demon because they're not physical also argue that in genesis 6 where you have the the nephilim being offspring of these sons of god they argue that the sons of god were angels who somehow procreated with women therefore they were able to take on physical form somehow do we understand that no we don't there's not enough revelation to tell us whether you know that how that could possibly happen but if you're going to argue that and then deny that a chain can't hold them you're kind of denying your own argument and so the issue being is i think that they are able to be chained if they can be physical but even if not it's still literal to what john saw and john saw this and he's repeating the thousand years over and over and over on purpose because i think it gives the emphasis now some of the other things uh if we could put that back up you see here that satan will be bound for this period of time this thousand years this presents a problem because satan would then have to be bound right now according to this he would have to not only be bound but it says that he can no longer deceive the nations he would not be able to any longer deceive nations in other words he wouldn't be present and active in our day and age if our millennialism is true he would be bound right now many argue he is bound right now but first peter chapter 5 and verse 8 says be sober -minded be watchful your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour that does not sound like someone who's bound does it that sounds like you know peter is saying and peter's writing much later that peter's thinking we're not in the kingdom where satan's bound satan is roaring around like a lion god wrote that through peter did god get it wrong no i i think that i don't think satan is bound right now i think he will be that's my opinion uh now some will say he's bound in some way he's bound by his influence on the nations and it's just human nature uh there's some who will say that you know well there's a lot of different views but some will say that uh the binding is is again figurative and so he doesn't have to literally be bound that at least is being consistent with taking the thousand years as figurative so i kind of think that's a little bit more of an honest position uh but there's no way in which uh the believers will rule with christ during that age as as you see if if we put it back up there um what we see here that it says that he sees the thrones is verse four sees the thrones with them seated on them who have the authority to judge and commit the judgment well who are those people well it says those who are beheaded and didn't take the mark of the beast so if the mark of the beast is still future then i would say that's becomes a problem how are we raining we're not raining the way that describes with our reigning with christ and so again that has to be figurative one of the strongest arguments against it um i don't know if we have daniel let's not even look because we're short on time i want to get through at least pre -millennialism quickly so in daniel the 70 weeks of daniel you see a literal period of time given seven seven year periods for a total of 490 years he explains specifically when they're going to start a decree to rebuild the the the city of and until the first 69 of those 70 of those seven year periods the um what you're seeing is that you're going to see in in the 483 years then the messiah is going to come then he's cut off and then it talks about the last seven year period now to take an amillennial position most amillennialists i've only met one that says that that full 77 year periods are figurative that at least is a consistent position what many argue is that the first 69 weeks the first 69 seven year periods are literal the last one is figurative because we're in that last one now and it's lasted more than seven years there's nothing in daniel in that passage of daniel with the 70 weeks that i think justifies that argument there's nothing in the text that suddenly changes to say that this last week is figurative but the first were literal there is something that gives allows for a gap in there it says and then the messiah is cut off and afterwards then the seven year period occurs there is an allowance in that passage for a gap there is not an allowance for it being a literal uh a literal 483 years but a figurative seven years and so i think that's the strongest argument against amillennialism so i actually think even though amillennialism is the most held to view i think it's actually the weakest in my opinion no offense this is not poisoning the well fallacy but amillennialism came out of roman catholicism that's not a bad thing much of our theology was being developed by the roman catholic church during the middle ages so that's just who was doing the work much good came out of that as well but it is something that came out of that and the reformers carried that over it wasn't an issue that they really needed to address they were addressing issues of salvation doctrine of justification by faith alone and in doing that what they focused on where they had to deal with issues and so the end times things became something that was focused on later actually much later like in the 19th century is when that started to really get a lot of focus again and that's where you had the rise of premillennialism which is what's next and so this one is is one where i think is the strongest it's my position so obviously i think it's the strongest but the premillennial position if you're looking number three in your syllabus christ's second coming will occur prior that's your blank christ's second coming will occur prior to the thousand year kingdom so christ will return and usher in the thousand year kingdom we see this in revelation let's not put this up but you can look revelation 19 1 to 21 that's a long passage but it's there if you want to look it up so revelation 19 talks about his coming prior to the thousand years we see christ coming occurs during the lifetime during the time of great evil we already kind of looked at that earlier in luke the thousand year the thousand years is understood literally literally that's your blank there we already looked at this but revelation chapter 20 the first seven verses i think the repetition of thousand year period is for emphasis for it being literal letter d there is satan will reappear at the end of the years we saw that in uh where he's going to be released for a while in revelation 20 but also in revelation 20 verses 6 to 9 we see it says and when and then when the thousand years are ended satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that were at the four corners of the earth gog and to gather them for battle their number is like the sand of the sea and they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city but the fire came down from heaven and consumed them and so what you see here is you see this satan will be released to deceive the nations again at the end of the thousand years he will be bound during that thousand years not able to uh mess with this kingdom that christ will rain literally reign in and then at the end he'll be released and then he could deceive the nations again for a short period of time and i i think that fits again i don't think that satan is bound right now based on what peter says in first peter 5 8 so that's an argument uh e is there will be a resurrection that's your blank there will be a resurrection after the rebellion following the great tribulation and you see this in revelation uh chapter 20 verses 10 to 15 uh let's not actually i know you put it up there but let's not go to it thank you uh just because of time so uh the what we see here though is we we see and and by the way for those who want to argue that i'm not being fair with the other views i gave more time in today's class to the other views than my own just like i did when i did the overview and some will say yes but you spent you know three whole classes on giving your view with the rapture and all that i i understand that and like i said last class it's because they have a little bit more details with those areas that need explanation that the other views don't take an don't have an issue on so they don't there's nothing to address with the other views um are there issues with the pre -millennial view well it depends on how you're going to interpret like i said if you're going to think that a thousand years must be figurative then yeah you're going to see a problem with it uh you're going to see some people that focus on things like the last days versus last day you're going to look at a lot of things like that and see some some things where people are going to have issues that they're going to see again i'm going to end with this and just say that we can't be a hundred percent sure there are some things we can know we've discussed some of those we know that during this millennium whether it's literal figurative satan is going to be bound for that time christ will reign on millennialism would say christ is reigning right now from heaven we would say this reign will be on earth that's a difference we're going to look next class and we'll wrap up this actually this whole school next class we're going to look at the some facts of the millennium and then we'll wrap up with the eternal state and then that will be so what is it less that'll be the 78th lesson 78 lessons in theology if you have made it this far congratulations one more class to go and you will have accomplished a pretty neat thing and i do encourage you guys to watch from the beginning because our our systematic theology should be based on the nature and attributes of god and that's where we get the foundation from so i encourage you to go back to that uh would like to encourage you you can if you have questions about this or any of our other classes you can email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org academy at striving for eternity dot org at our website striving for eternity dot org you can go there to the store like i said earlier you could pick up the syllabus for this class which is systematic theology book four you pick up other syllabuses you might if you so choose order my book what do they believe amid the major systematic theology the major western religions what you're also going to see there hopefully sometime soon depending when you're watching this what do we believe which is the next book that i have coming out which is really a condensed version of what we spent 77 and soon 78 lessons going over but we're going to give it systematic theology we talked about how to the bible and with that i encourage you to maybe while you're at the website striving for attorney .org

47:54

think about hosting a bible interpretation made easy seminar by near you go there and look to see if you can get a seminar it's it's a weekend seminar where we come out and teach you how to interpret the bible in one weekend lastly i'd like to just say there's a way you could support us as if you're watching live as the christmas season is upon us if you would be so kind shall we say as to if you do your shopping on amazon if you go to smile .amazon

48:27

.com you can search for striving for eternity ministries as your charity and amazon will actually give us half a percent of everything you spend there's a link if you're watching the video you there's a direct link to striving for eternity and you could just go there to get to add striving for eternity as your charity and then just go always go to smile .amazon

48:52

.com when you do your shopping and they will donate to us we are very thankful we are getting some nice size checks so someone out there does a lot of shopping on amazon just saying but uh we appreciate it very much it's just yet another way a very easy way for you to donate to support this ministry and these courses what it does is it's really it's if you just go shopping as you normally would on amazon just make sure you go to smile .amazon