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

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy. We're glad to have you with us. This is the School of Systematic Theology. We are in book number four of our four-book series called God's Program for the Ages, The Doctrine of the Church, and The Doctrine of Last Things.

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. 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. 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.

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

In other words, you can get the Systematic Theology, School of Biblical Hermeneutics, and the World Religions all for $100 and have the syllabus for all those classes. That's over a hundred classes that you can go.

This is actually class number 77 just in the Systematic Theology, so we're getting close to about 150 classes all together that you could take. Maybe even more than that. I don't know. We'll have to check that and get back to you, but we're glad to have you with us.

The Millennium and the Eternal State as Future Kingdom Realities

Today's lesson is going to be the last in our book. We'll probably cover this in two weeks. It's lesson number nine, The Millennium and The Eternal State, so we will probably only get to the Millennium.

Now, some of you are going, wait a minute, he said that. 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. 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.

It's probably one of the weakest arguments that you should be separating over. It's not a core doctrine. It's not something that puts you in or outside of the camp of Christianity in these views that we're going to discuss.

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, we gave an overview some lessons ago. This week we're going to go into each of the views and how they view the Millennium again in more detail.

We're doing that specifically with this issue of the Millennium, what it is, the thousand-year kingdom, how each view is held, their support, the arguments against them. We're going to try to do that with each of them.

If you're one of those types that you just got upset because the word millennial was in the title, get over it, all right? I mean, seriously, it's like you got to stop judging without watching the classes.

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, let's not be divisive over these issues. Let's try to understand one another's point of view and try to see what we can learn.

We are not, again, 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. 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.

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

It's our best arguments. It's not something I think we could be dogmatic on, all right? So with that said, let's begin. Let's talk about the Millennium. 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.

And so the question becomes, the Eternal State is where we really end up spending all of eternity, okay? But this idea of a Millennium is one where theologically people get into a lot of discussion. It's literally a 1 ,000-year period.

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

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. 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. These views are dependent upon how one interprets scripture. So this really comes down to, if you took our class on biblical hermeneutics, it's what rules are you going to follow?

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

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

Let's take an example when we talk about the Millennium, just if we could put up Revelation 20 verse 6. We see here it says, So you see that it's saying there's a thousand years, this reign of a thousand years.

However, you know, there's one commentator, George Lawrence, who says this. He says, In his commentary on Revelation, page 262, he says, Speaking of the thousand years, he says, 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.

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. Now, where do we get that from? When else, you know, and this becomes the question hermeneutically that I would challenge people with this, 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.

What makes that an ideal time? Why is the third power an ideal time? And what is that, you know, how does that argue that it's some ideal time that we just say it's not a definite time? 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? And obviously, I'm going to show you where I lean, but I do want to try to be fair with these differing views.

Postmillennialism and the Spread of the Gospel

Now, so let's start with the first one, which if you have your book there, it is post-millennialism. If you remember when we did the overview, we talked about pre, post, a, millennial. So the issue here is that each of these three views have a view of this millennial reign, okay?

This thousand-year reign. Post-millennial is the one, if you remember, we went over this. Well, let me start with the a-millennial. The a-millennial means there was no millennium. In other words, no literal millennium.

So they believe that the millennium is a longer period of time, as George Ladd argues, that it's just an ideal time, and when that time is up, then basically Christ returns. The idea is basically when is the return of Christ?

A-millennial would say there's no literal kingdom. Post-millennials would say that there's a kingdom, and then at the end of that kingdom, we'll see at the end is when Christ returns. The other is pre-millennial, which would say that the return comes before the kingdom.

All right, so these are the different views. Now, post-millennialism, their position. If you look in your syllabus, will there be a literal thousand-year reign of peace on earth? That one's not so easy.

It's not so easy because 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. So it would be incorrect to argue that they all take it this way.

Some take it a long period of time, much the way that amillennialism does. Some take it as a literal thousand-year. So I think most that I know of, and so this is me saying 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 versus being in heaven.

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

In other words, 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. We should not be protesting the government or the supreme court to get them to rule the way we want in society.

No, the solution to society's ills, I would argue, is the gospel. If more people were out sharing the gospel, if more people were understanding the gospel, guess what? The politicians, they would do like they did in times past and pretend to be Christian so that they could get votes, okay?

That's what they would do. We need to be about the business of sharing the gospel as the church and letting God work through His people to change hearts and that would change society. 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? 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.

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. 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.

And then, number four in your syllabus, then Christ will reign, that's your blank, Christ will reign, defeat evil, and have a resurrection and a judgment. 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. 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, 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, I mean 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 German scholarship, there's a lot of Christian scholarship being done in Germany, not all good, especially after the First World War, but before the First World War, many, much of it was good, and what you saw was people thinking, many people speaking of post-millennialism.

It was kind of the, 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. 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, 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 they're, you know, that shows that we're getting that pre-millennialism is true.

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

Why? 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 Christianity, and what you ended up seeing there is that they turned to liberalism, and liberalism started to reign in the 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. 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. I do think if we have, do we have Luke? If we could put Luke up for us, 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 work quick. All right. 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 as in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man.

They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when 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 Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all.

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

Remember Lot's wife? Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will keep it. I tell you, in that night, there will be two in one bed, one will be taken and the other left.

There will be two women grinding together, one will be taken and the other left, and then he will say to them, where is the Lord? He said to them, where the corpse is, the vulture will gather. So, what you see there is a time like in Noah's day, where things are getting worse.

The time of Sodom and Gomorrah, where things are getting worse. So, the point there being, 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 Christ returns and then instills his kingdom.

I think it says that things are going to get worse and worse and worse, and then 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.

Have you seen the news? Go watch the news. Things are getting worse. That proves that post-millennialism is wrong. No. No, it doesn't. That doesn't prove anything. That proves that you watched the news.

That's what it proves. It proves that you think the news is reporting bad news. That's all it is. Do you know whether things are going to get bad, bad, bad, and then 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?

Do you know if that could happen? It could, couldn't it? There's nothing that says it cannot. That's the point. The point is, is that we do not know the future. So, reading it, the news, and trying to read that into proving that post-millennialism is wrong is wrong, okay?

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.

The assumption, I think, that people make when they make that argument is that Christ has to return soon. But why does He have to return soon? The argument many give is because things are getting bad.

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, 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. 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. 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.

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

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

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

That's my opinion. I could be wrong. So could you on this issue, just saying, unless, of course, you think you're God. So, amillennialism. Let's look at amillennialism, number two in your syllabus. The position of amillennialism is that the thousand years are only figurative.

That's your blank there, figurative. The thousand years are only figurative representing part of the age where Christ reigns triumphantly with His followers. Satan during this time would be bound in the sense that Christ gives him freedom to those who claim it.

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

Augustine made a strong argument for the fact that we were in this millennial kingdom, 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 God is right, or sees it as fulfilled.

The issue here that we do want to bring out is, I wrote a paper on Revelation and looking through Augustine, one of the things I found of interest was that Augustine believed that the thousand year kingdom was literal.

He did believe that they were in it, he just thought it was a literal thousand years. That was somewhat held up until about a thousand AD. Why? What do you think could have happened in a thousand AD? They looked left, they looked right, and Christ didn't come.

They were like, how do we explain this? So they changed the theology and said, 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, as we do I should say.

Theology has developed over time, it's become something that's been progressive as heresies rose up, 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.

That doesn't mean God's word is changing, it's our understanding of it and how we systematize it that's changing. 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 AD and then it had to be really hammered out and the Catholic Church at the time just argued it was figurative.

So I think, do I think there's problems there? Yeah, I do. We'll get them. But the idea here is that this thousand years is something that they're going to say is a figurative thing. So let's deal with some arguments that are made for this.

One of the, I think, strongest arguments is that when we see the word thousand years everywhere else in scripture, it is always figurative. 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. Okay, so first off, now some people will say every time a thousand appears in scripture it's always figurative.

That's a mistake. That is not accurate. There are times where one thousand literally means one thousand, okay. One thousand years is different. The term outside of Revelation, outside of Revelation 6, thousand years appears four times in three passages, okay.

In those three passages, we have two in the Old Testament. One's in Psalms, so that's poetry. You have it in Psalms, you have it again in, oh, I just drew a blank, I think it's Ecclesiastes, but it's in wisdom literature.

So again, it's used in a way that's figurative. Once in the New Testament, we have two verses in 1 Peter where he says to the Lord of those long-suffering, to the Lord, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.

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 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 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 Lord, a thousand years is a day, a day is a thousand years.

They take that literal and apply it there to argue 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 trying to argue for millions of years and they've only added 6 ,000 years.

So their argument would only make the earth 12 ,000 years old instead of 6 ,000 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 Bible, that is figurative.

However, you have six times within one book. 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 Bible, harmonetics, and is why this harmonetics is important.

Just because the other times that 1 ,000 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 harmonetic 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, 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 1 ,000 years. So, the 1 ,000 years, let's deal with some of the problems I think.

The 1 ,000 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 1 to 7. 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. I appreciate it. It's a little bit larger. This is a little bit of a longer passage, but Revelation 20 verses 1 to 7. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain.

And they seized the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for 1 ,000 years. Then he threw him into the pit and shut him and sealed it over so that he might be deceived the nations no longer until the 1 ,000 years were ended.

After that, he must be released for a little while. Then I saw thrones and seated on them were those whom the authority to judge was committed. Also, 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 1 ,000 years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the 1 ,000 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 of God and Christ. They will reign with him for 1 ,000 years. And when the 1 ,000 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 are 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. We don't understand this completely, but he seizes the dragon and he's held by a chain.

And he's bound for 1 ,000 years. Now, I think if this is figurative, if this was figurative, we would not see this 1 ,000 years repeated six times in six verses, verse two to seven. And so, you have the repetition which leads me to believe that the 1 ,000 years is literal.

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 Nephilim being offspring of the 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 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 1 ,000 years over and over and over on purpose because I think it gives the emphasis.

Now, some of the other things, if we could put that back up, you see here that Satan will be bound for this period of time, this 1 ,000 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 amillennialism is true.

He would be bound right now. Many argue he is bound right now. But 1 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 don't think Satan is bound right now. I think he will be. That's my opinion. 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.

There's some who will say that, you know, well, there's a lot of different views, but some will say that the binding 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, but there's no way in which the believers will rule with Christ during that age. As you see, if we put it back up there, what we see here that it says that, he sees the thrones, this is verse 4, 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 is still future, then I would say that becomes a problem. How are we reigning?

We're not reigning the way that describes our reigning with Christ, and so, again, that has to be figurative. One of the strongest arguments against it, 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, 7 seven year periods for a total of 490 years. He explains specifically when they're going to start a decree to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, and until the first 69 of those seven year periods, the, what you're seeing is that you're going to see 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 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 a 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 is 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.