Center for Biblical Theology and Eschatology
We Shall Also Reign With Him
by Rick Ritchie
It is the first century. Some members of your trade guild have convinced you that instead of there being many gods, there is one, and his name is Christ. You were baptized into Christ's name during a period of relative peace, but now everything has changed. Instead of enjoying prosperity, your friends are being carted off to jail, and it looks as if things are only going to get worse. If God were to add one more book to the Scriptures for your sake, what kind of book would you need?
Would you need a book of obscure symbols foretelling a technological war occurring in some distant future? A book that you could perhaps take the time to chart while you wasted away in prison? No. You would need a book that showed that while enemies threaten the Church, Christ still reigns. Those who defy his will do not thwart his plan for his people.
Tribulation and Millennium
The book of Revelation was originally addressed to the needs of Christians suffering persecution. From their earthly vantage point, all they could see was defeat. The book of Revelation was written to pull back the curtain, supplementing the earthly perspective with the heavenly. A plausible case can that the tribulation and the millennium symbolize these earthly and heavenly viewpoints respectively. The distinction is not one of 'earlier versus later', but one of 'earthly versus heavenly'. The millennium is not after the tribulation, but above it. Both periods begin with the first coming of Christ, and end with the second.It might be suspected that there are ulterior motives behind such a position. Perhaps those who would hold such a position do so because they are afraid to apply the book of Revelation to the headline events of our day. They don't believe that God can be active in real history or foretell real events. Maybe this view is a clever disguise for disbelief in the supernatural. The motives are in fact different.
When we appeal to the conditions of the first century to throw light on the meaning of the book, this does not confine the relevance of the book to the first century; rather, it ensures that the book is applicable to all ages. It is a rigid focus on peculiarly twentieth-century conditions which would trivialize the book for most its readers through the ages. This view glorifies Christ by showing that he is sovereign Lord of the whole of human history, not just a seer capable of predicting a narrow slice of it.
Symbols in the Book of Revelation
It is clear that those who hold the view that the tribulation and the millennium are the same period of time do not take the Bible 'literally', because the tribulation is said to be a period of seven years, and the millennium a period of a thousand years. What besides unbelief could be the cause of such a position? A careful reading of the appropriate passages in light of the rest of the book and the rest of Scripture.In the first verse of the book of Revelation, we are told that God gave John the revelation in order "to show his servants what must soon take place" (Rv 1:1). The words "to show" elsewhere mean to picture or to communicate by signs. In John 21:19, this same Greek word is used to describe how Jesus, by means of an image, told Peter how he was to die. This word is also used in a Greek version of Daniel 2:45 to refer to Nebuchadnezzar's dream in which the future is shown to him symbolically in his sleep.
As believers in the authority of Scripture, we may depart from a literal interpretation of the text only where the text itself demands it. In the book of Revelation, the text does indeed demand a symbolic interpretation--in the very first verse! The book of Revelation demands to be seen as a book of signs, and the whole book is to be read accordingly.
The Tribulation as a Sign
If the book of Revelation is a book of signs, then it may not be necessary to take the number of years assigned to any period literally. The numbers may have symbolic meaning.Everyone agrees that some numbers in the book are used symbolically. Even the most literalistic reader of the book of Revelation agrees that the number 666 does not refer to a quantity, but to a name. The book calls for the one with wisdom to "calculate the number of the beast" (Rv 13:18). The agreement as to the identity of the beast is not, however, universal, and this poses a question for the one who wishes to depart from the literal meaning of the number seven as it applies to the tribulation. In the case of the number 666, the meaning is intentionally obscure, requiring special wisdom. But in the case of the passages dealing with the tribulation, there is no such expressed intention to obscure meaning. If these passages end up obscure, it will only be as a result of our insistence that we not read them quantitatively, that is, in reference to a literal number of years. How do we avoid the charge of obscuring what is clear?
First we must point out that the charge is not fair. While the quantitative meaning of the word 'seven' is clear, its quantitative reading does not make the book of Revelation clear as a whole. Among those who agree on the "clear" quantitative meaning of the number seven, just look at how many different schemes are employed to order the events! Second, there is evidence in the book itself that the number seven might have more than quantitative meaning. In addition to seven years of tribulation there are seven churches, trumpets, plagues, bowls of wrath, thunders, and Spirits of God. The abundant use of the number, especially to refer to symbolic items, is enough to make us wonder if the number is indicative of the character of the tribulation rather than its duration.
Now what is the character of the tribulation, and where do we learn of it? It would be nice if its interpretation were spelled out like the book's overall symbolic character right in the beginning. In fact, it is. No, not at the beginning of the book of Revelation, but at the beginning of the Bible, "In the beginning." Does it not make sense that God might not close his book in the same manner that he opened it?
In the book of Genesis, seven days were used to represent the complete period of Creation and its consummation. The first six days portrayed God's creative work, while the seventh and last day consummated it. This is a good pattern for interpreting the seven year tribulation. It is the complete period of judgement and its consummation. But where are the six days of Creation paralleled? In the seals (Rv 6), trumpets (Rv 8), and bowls (Rv 15-16). In the first six of each of these items, we see God's judgement upon the enemies of his church. It is not a complete judgement, however, for there is leniency. Some of the wicked are spared and given more time to repent. This is a period of trouble for the Church when the saints are martyred and cry out "How long, O Lord?" and the world receives a foretaste of the Last Judgement to come. It is in the seventh seal, the seventh trumpet, and the seventh bowl that we see the final delivery of the saints and the Last Judgement of their enemies. As the wicked are called by the last trumpet to Judgement, the people of God are called to enter the sabbath rest which was intended for them on the last day in Genesis.
The Millennium as a Sign
If the seven year tribulation pictures the apparent chaos on earth, the thousand year millennium pictures a cosmos where God reigns and Satan is bound. The Bible teaches that this time period began with Christ's ministry and therefore is simultaneous with the trouble the Church experiences in persecution. Revelation chapter 20 tells us that Satan is bound for the thousand years and thrown into the abyss. Christ tells us that this happened during his ministry in Luke 10:17-18. He says "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." When he healed the demoniac, he said that for someone to carry off the strong man's possessions, the strong man must first be bound (Mt 12:29). Jesus did carry off the strong man's (Satan's) possessions, so He must have bound Satan first.While throughout the church age Satan appears to be having a field day slaying the saints, God has fixed a limit to his activity. For the believer, the present sufferings are not to be taken as a sign that God is deaf to the cries of his people or powerless to help. When we bear up under them, our sufferings are signposts telling us that we can expect glory up ahead. As Paul told his readers, 'If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us' (2 Tm 2:12). The picture of the millennium in Revelation 20 shows us that the translation from suffering to reigning is immediate at the point of death, no waiting involved. If martyrdom is imminent, so much the more is glory.
But What about the Old Testament Promises?
One reason that some offer for a literal millennium is that there are unfulfilled Old Testament promises which must find their fulfillment in the future, and the millennium is the ideal period in which to expect their fulfillment. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the promise of a certain portion of land in Palestine to Abraham and his offspring. It is claimed that the Old Testament nation of Israel never extended as far as God promised, but that during the millennium it will.The promise referred to, the Abrahamic covenant (see Gn 15, especially verses 18-21), was a royal land grant covenant between God and Abraham. It involved a unilateral oath on the part of God, so that it cannot be claimed that the unfaithfulness of the people invalidated it. Therefore the only way to prove that this need not be fulfilled in the future is to prove that it was already fulfilled in the past. If we cannot do this, then the premillenialists are right, for God must keep his promises no matter what it might require to fulfill them. On the other hand, if this promise can be shown to have been fulfilled in the past, then an earthly millennium be of no explanatory use for the promise.
What makes our task easier is the fact that Scripture itself tells us in clear words that this promise was fulfilled long ago:
And the LORD gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein. And the LORD gave them rest round about, according to all that he sware unto their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them; the LORD delivered all their enemies into their hand. There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass. (Jos 21:43-45).
The promise referred to is clearly the promise to Abraham. It is Scripture's own interpretation of the facts that all the conditions of the promise were met. This is much more certain than things would be if we had to hunt for the fulfillment of each element of the promise to prove that all was fulfilled, for we could always wonder if all territories were held at the same time.
Error in the System
Another problem with the idea that the millennium is a future period of Christ's rule upon the earth is the problem of evil. Who will be capable of rebelling against Christ at the end of the thousand years? From where do these wicked people come?It is the pretribulationists' own method of reading Scripture that gives rise to the problem. Pretribulationists insist that the book of Revelation must be read as a chronological account of the last days. If the book is read this way, then the events in Revelation 19 (the Second Coming of Christ and the Judgement of the Wicked) must precede the millennium. We know from other Scriptures that at the Last Judgement the wicked will be "weeded out" and there is no hint that this job will be left incomplete (See Mt 13). Could those who are left still rebel against Christ? No, for they will be glorified (See 1 Jn 3:2). What about their children? Read Luke 20:35. They won't have any!
The idea that during the physical reign of Christ on the earth a host of people would mount a rebellion against him is unusual to begin with, but what is more serious, it is contrary to the data which suggest that these people would not have made it into the millennium in the first place.
Revelation Glorifies God in All Ages
If both the tribulation and millennium span the entire Church age, then the teaching concerning them is a comfort to a believer in any age. Instead of the first-century Christian being bewildered by vague descriptions of twentieth-century military hardware, he is heartened by a vision of victory. The world may be out to kill him, but it will not destroy the Church. If the Christian is martyred, he will not be left defeated in the grave. He will reign with Christ as a faithful soldier until his King claims final victory.Surely this makes the book of Revelation more alive, not less so! It may be less thrilling for satisfied twentieth-century Christians who just want to be titillated by reading end-time speculation after Sunday brunch. But Christians in any age of persecution, it is a wonderful consolation. Their King fights for them! He reigns even today and has a realm where they can reign with Him if they are killed in battle. What can compare to this?
| This article was originally written in 1994 and appeared in the 1994 Modern Reformation magazine. Rick Ritchie is a contributing author to the book Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), and is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. |