I’m reading a book on eschatology, largely because it has a good chapter by Greg Smith (on the eschatology of the historical books of the Bible), who has read and appreciated my own books. So I thought I should return the compliment. I’m surprised to find I’ve never written on the topic of millennial theologies here, though I’ve done so quite extensively on it for local study guides on the Book of Revelation, etc, in the past.
The book overall takes a dispensationalist and premillennialist position, partly because it is a tribute to Southern Baptist teacher Craig Blaising, who holds those views. Personally I hold neither, having come to what is called the Augustinian amillennialist position when I was studying the text of Revelation to teach young people back in the 1980s. It was years before I discovered that St Augustine had developed the idea first, which I found rather affirming! It seems worthwhile, therefore, to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the various views here. I won’t include the cop-out “panmillennialist” position, which says that whatever happens, it will all pan out in the end. In fact, one’s Christian view of the future can make a significant difference to how one lives in the present.
The idea of a thousand year earthly reign of Christ is found, biblically, only in Revelation 20, and several writers in the eschatology book admit that’s a poor basis on which to build an entire theological picture of the future, especially given Revelation’s notoriously difficult apocalyptic symbolism. I thought so too, especially when I read early views in church history about constant feasting and other material pleasures, and modern folks seriously strategising how they would apply their skills in, say, irrigation engineering for a vast population in the millennial Jerusalem.
However, premillennialists like Blaising say that taking a literal view of biblical texts is the soundest hermeneutic, and that in any case chiliasm (the alternative term) was the earliest recorded view of the church through the teaching of Papias, who is said to have been a disciple of John, the writer of Revelation, himself. Against that, taking the plain sense of an apocalyptic book like Revelation may not be the safest course, which (as one writer in the book points out) is perhaps why the logical John Calvin felt unqualified to write a commentary on Revelation. Furthermore, Papias, a Greek, may not have been in a good position to comprehend the unique genre of Jewish apocalytic that was native to the Galilean apostle.
As I’ve said, I came to my Augustinian understanding of the book having waded through 19 chapters of rich symbolism, which had convinced me that for the most part I was being shown different perspectives on the same last-days truths, including stylised visions of John’s own times, rather than a consecutive narrative of future astonishments. I was immediately struck how the white horse/final battle scene of chapter 19 draws on exactly the same portion of Ezekiel’s Gog-Magog vision as does the final-final battle after the millennium of ch 20. That suggested to me I was supposed to see them as the same event from different angles. What, then, if the thousand years actually represents the church-age leading up to the final troubles before Jesus returns and consummates every promise, rather than to an intermediate earthly reign of Christ that, in only 1,000 years, alienates the entire population of the world sufficiently to unite them under Satan to destroy it?
John is notable as the gospel writer with the most “realised eschatology.” That is, he illustrates Jesus’s inauguration of the Kingdom of God as, in essence, containing its fulfilment already, and says relatively little about the future completion. And so it is from him we understand that eternal a life is not just a future state, but a present mode of life for believers. Hence:
“Truly, truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” (John 5:24)
And to Mary after the death of Lazarus:
“Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”
Similarly, rather than seeing Jesus as glorified after his death, which is the emphasis of most of the New Testament, John sees Jesus’s crucifixion as his glorification, demonstrating as it does the self-giving love of God. Hence Jesus’s repeated allusion to Isaiah 6:1 in John ambiguously refers both to his physical lifting up (like the snake in the wilderness) on a cross, and his ascension to God’s right hand. In this way, unlike some chiliasts who minimise the victory of the Kingdom before Christ’s return, John sees the cross as Jesus’s divine coronation, and hence the saints as already sharing his reign in like manner, through suffering.
Although indeed there is only one biblical reference to a millennial kingdom, second temple Jewish messianism often included it. Jews who saw the promised Messiah as a human king, albeit supernaturally endowed, foresaw his reign as lasting some unnaturally long period, often a thousand years (to make it the sabbath of a 7,000 year creation). Others, concentrating on the promises of Yahweh’s return to Israel through the Messiah, conceived of an eternal imperishable Kingdom. To me it seems that John, in Revelation 19-20, cleverly affirms both apocalyptic traditions in conformity to fact on the ground – the hitherto unexpected already-but-not-yet kingdom of Jesus.
This view admittedly leaves some loose ends, especially that Revelation 20 seems to restrict the millennial kingdom to deceased martyrs – and indeed, to beheaded martyrs at that, on a literal understanding. But throughout the book, John uses the beheaded as a metaphor for the common experience of tribulation for Christians, so as a symbol it works for all believers. And the literal interpretation is more problematic for premillennialists, as billions of believers who haven’t actually been beheaded down the ages must miss out on the earthly reign of their Lord.
No biblical eschatology is intended simply to satisfy our curiosity about the future, but rather to encourage our discipleship through hope. Which view of the millennium you adopt actually makes a significant difference to the shape of discipleship. One prominent premillennialist scholar cited in the book calls this view the only solid foundation for Christian hope. I suppose that is because it promises a tangible reversal, in our own world, of the suffering of believers.
But potentially it can be the least encouraging of the three main views (on each of which I should stress there are many variations, none of us having a crystal ball). Since it minimises the current rule of Christ in a world dominated by evil (see 1 John 5:19), and anticipates a final crisis of evil under antichrist, it can encourage inward-looking defensiveness. In the phrase that my friend Andrew Green coined, “We can’t be more than guilty worms/ So grit your teeth till Christ returns.” A resulting non-involvement in culture and politics, by keeping the salt in the cellar and the lamp under a bushel, leaves society to deteriorate, even to the point where Christianity is eliminated (witness the fall of most of Christendom to Islam from the 7th century).
Extreme examples of this passivity have occurred when the perception of current evil coincides with a trust in new prophetic utterance, like the sects of radical Reformers in Europe who abandoned their fields, their jobs, and their wives, on predictions of Christ’s imminent return, and their becoming like angels in the millennial kingdom. This led not only to disillusion, but economic calamity.
Now, it’s true that such foolishness is at least a potential risk for any theology anticipating the sudden return of Christ to an evil world. Postmillennialism might be thought to avoid this, but doesn’t necessarily, and has its own share of deadly risks. In postmillennialism, the thousand years is seen as symbolic, as in my view. But it takes the reign of the saints to be the progressive triumph of the Church in the world, slowly transforming it into an ideal society prepared and suitable for Jesus to return and take up his eternal rule, with all that includes.
This view was strong among the English Puritans (and other Reformers), who saw the Reformation’s breaking of the “Babylonish Captivity” of Catholicism as the key to a new world in which the gospel would transform not only unbelievers, heretics and Jews, but the whole of society. In England, the war against the King was seen as a struggle against the spirit of antichrist, and the dominant belief amongst Non-conformists was that a godly nation under a Christian Parliament would form the basis of such a kingdom prepared for its King, who must surely return immediately (the imminence of the year 1666 seemed to resonate with the Book of Revelation somehow, as well).
Like some of the Anabaptists on the continent, some took this view to extremes by believing that any and every earthly king was a usurper to Jesus, the only true King who was on the brink or returning. In Britain this belief took the form of the Fifth Monarchists, with whom the founders of my own Particular Baptist Church (not Anabaptists from the radical stream) sympathised. Some of these were troopers in Oliver Cromwell’s own regiment, and so rightly saw themselves as changing the political landscape (arguably in accord with gospel truth), but wrongly saw that action as preparing a millennial kingdom for Christ. Like all utopian aspirations, the hope fell apart: our Baptists became disillusioned with Cromwell as he became a king in all but name, and with Parliament as it became a contentious talking shop. And of course, the restoration of Charles II destroyed their aspirations for a godly kingdom completely.
Fortunately, as its records show, my own church, including its Parliamentary soldiers, reacted with disappointment, and the abandonment of their Fifth Monarchism. Others, though, responded by trying to force the issue by armed rebellion, and ended up dead. Their activism was a major reason for the suppression of Nonconformity that followed, setting back biblical Christianity for generations – the opposite of what had been hoped. So although postmillennialism has the great strength of engagement with society, there is some risk of its becoming another form of utopian oppression (for even redeemed sinners can’t be trusted to build a righteous world order). And there an almost inevitable risk of self-righteousness, since the emphasis is on our building the Kingdom for Jesus by our activism, rather than his building his Kingdom through our patient endurance. Beware, Christian nationalists.
To my mind, the amillennial approach covers the bases. By emphasising that, even in our suffering, or even because of it, we reign with Christ now, we are encouraged in our troubles and active in our discipleship, whether that means evangelism, social action or politics, and even our struggle against indwelling sin. Yet we share the chiliasts’ recognition of evil in the world and of sin in our lives, which limits our earthly ambitions, and centres our hope on the return of Christ – the whole purpose of New Testament eschatology. In this case the parousia is a single event that destroys Satan and all his hordes, purges our own sin, raises us to resurrection life in the body, and brings in the new heavens and earth in which we shall dwell with God face to race.
That, to me, is a more appealing hope than gloating over the dhimmi status of the ungodly nations from my mansion on Mount Zion. On the other hand, should I find on Christ’s return that I’ve been mistaken, I’m quite happy to volunteer as a grave digger for the Jerusalem Corporation, to bury those “mere youths” in Isaiah 65 who only reach a hundred years, presumably to wait out the remainder of the millennium in a disembodied state.
