A. K. Chidgzey

Before we address the millennium, it’s probably helpful to explore four different ways that Revelation is generally interpreted. How you interpret not just the millennium, but lots of other images and symbols and things going on Revelation, like the beast – which we’ll explore next week – or the harlot of Babylon, or the four horseman, depends on which one of these approaches you take.

The first is the futurist approach. This is the belief that everything in Revelation is forecasting events that will literally happen, literally as they are described in the book. These events will happen one day at some time in the future. Those who take this approach will also use prophecies from Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, parts of the gospels, and various passages from the New Testament, to create timelines of what is to come.

The second is the historicist approach. This is similar to the futurist approach, but the events in Revelation recount events that occur within human history, over the great span of time between Jesus’ ascension and his eventual return. So some of the events in Revelation have already occurred, and some events are still to come. Various interpretations have linked passages from Revelation to the fall of the Roman Empire, to the Pope (something some Protestant reformers loved doing), and that the seven small letters in the first few chapters of Revelation correlate to periods of time, with the first letter referring to the time of the apostles, the second to the time of the persecution of the church until Constantine, and so on, and of course the seventh letter refers to the present immediate age, meaning that Christ should be returning any moment. Right…now. Okay not yet. But in 3…2…1.

Okay, so we’re still here and I don’t trumpets. But people love predicting that Christ is going to return in their generation. Every generation since Jesus has predicted that Jesus would return in their generation.

The third approach is the preterist approach. Here, everything in Revelation has already occurred in the first century. It’s all coded messages about the current state of the early church under the rule of the Roman Empire. The harlot of Babylon is Roma, the deified personification of Rome, the Beast is the Roman emperor, and the images of war and judgment refer to the Jewish-Roman war and the destruction of the temple.

Where the futurist is about…the future, obviously…the preterist is about the past, and the historicist is a bit of both.

And then the fourth is the idealist, which is similar to the preterist, in that it is about the context of the first century, critiquing Roman imperialism through coded messages and symbols, but does not restrict itself to the first century. The beast is the Roman emperor, but the emperor represents all tyrannical rulers. It’s more abstract and theoretical than it is about specific time periods or events or individuals.

Let’s now turn our attention to the millennium itself. I recited the key passage at the top of this episode, but the basic idea is that an angel comes down, throws Satan into a pit and locks him away for a thousand years. The following verses are also key:

Then I saw thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its brand on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

In other words, when Satan is imprisoned for those thousand years, Christ is ruling on earth with the Christian martyrs, those who had remained faithful and obedient during times of persecution.

And so belief in this period of time when Jesus is ruling over the world and Satan has been defeated is known as millennialism, from the Latin word for a thousand years, a millennium, but is sometimes known as chiliasm, from the Greek.

So what shape does this millennialism actually take? What does it really look like? Well it does depend on which of those approaches to Revelation you might take, be that futurist, historicist, preterist, or idealist, and there are generally three distinct approaches to the millennium in particular, which are premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism.

We’ll start with premillennialism. This is the classic futurist approach, and I haven’t done a tally, but it seems like this is the most commonly believed position. It’s the assumed position for most Christians, even though I’m not sure if most are wholly committed to it, theologically, if they even really care. It’s position taken in the popular Left Behind book series, which I haven’t read and honestly, don’t really plan on it.

This is the position that sketches out a chronological picture of the end times and produce timelines, where things like the rapture, the great tribulation, the second coming of Christ, the first resurrection, the second resurrection, the seals, the trumpets, the horsemen, are all worked out and mapped out precisely. And they draw on a whole lot of texts to work it out. So the idea of the rapture is from 1 Thessalonians ch.4 where Jesus comes down on the clouds, and the Christians will leave this planet and meet him in the heavens. The tribulation is the period of time that Jesus talks about in Mark 13 and Matthew 24, this period of war and judgement and calamity. A lot of what happens in Revelation describes this period of time.

The big question there is whether the rapture occurs before or after the tribulation. Will Christians have to endure this period of horror and calamity? All sorts of arguments exist for different positions: pretribulation says that Christians will be raptured before the tribulation; posttribulation says the rapture occurs after. It’s generally believed that the tribulation will last for 7 years, based on a few passages which seem to suggest two lots of 3 and a half years. Daniel ch.7 mentions a time, two times, and half a time, understood as years, adding up to 3 and a half. Revelation 11 mentions a period of 42 months when Jerusalem is being trampled by heathens, which equals, you guessed it, 3 and a half years. So there’s two lots of 3 and a half years. There are also some who argue that the second half of the tribulation is worse than the first half, and so insist that the rapture occurs in the middle of the tribulation, after the first three and half years, so Christians experience some of the bad stuff, but not the worst of it.

In any case, after the rapture, after the tribulation, then comes the second coming of Christ. So Christ returns, again, this time accompanied by those who had been raptured, at which point Satan is bound and the one thousand year reign of Christ begins. And all is wonderful. This is called premillennialism, because Jesus returns before the millennium.

Then Satan is let out again for a final hoorah before being utterly finally defeated and the new heavens and earth are created.

The version of premillennialism which breaks these events down into such a timeline is known as dispensationalist premillennialism, because they break it all into dispensations, or epochs. Whereas historic premillennialists still hold that Christ returns before the millennium but don’t necessarily insist upon a concrete timeline that includes the rapture, tribulation, and so on. Some historic premillennialists take an historicist approach to Revelation, but usually futurist.

There is of course a bit more to it, but that’s basically premillennialism. And if you can tell by my tone, you might be able to tell that I find this position, honestly, a little bit ridiculous, at least the dispensationalist version. Sorry if any of you are committed dispensationalist premillennialists.

The next approach is postmillennialism. This is the idea that Jesus returns after the millennium, and so proponents of this approach take Revelation much more symbolically, and are generally futurist or historicist. Basically, the church is successful in fulfilling the commission given by Christ to make disciples of all nations. In Matthew 24, Jesus says that the good news of the Kingdom will be proclaimed everywhere, and then the end will come. Eventually, all will convert to Christianity, ushering in the one thousand year reign. Jesus will then come down to assume his throne. Some interpret the thousand years literally, that there will be one thousand years of perfect peace, others metaphorically, that the thousand year period began at Jesus’ ascension and will end when the final person is converted to Christianity – talk about peer pressure.

Premillennialism is generally a little more pessimistic about the future of humanity, in that things will get worse and worse until Jesus comes back and kicks the world back into shape. Postmillennialism is much more optimistic, in that humans have the capacity to live out good, righteous lives and create a universal, peaceful kingdom. While I think this is a rather naïve and overly romanticized view of humanity and of the church, it is interesting to note that the world is actually improving and is actually becoming a more peaceful place. I expanded on this in the theodicy episode, but this does all assume that we don’t destroy the earth before we get to enjoy it.

The third and final version is amillennialism. The prefix there gives it away: there is no thousand years; it is metaphorical. The whole thing is metaphorical. In amillennialism, the Kingdom of God is already, presently inaugurated, rather than something to come in the future. God’s reign is already here, and came by Jesus’ resurrection. If you remember from the eschatology episode, we might call this dynamic already/not yet. As in, God’s kingdom is already inaugurated but has not yet been consummated. We are living the millennium right now.

And, cards on the table, I do align with this amillennial perspective because of how I understand the nature of apocalyptic literature, but also because of my understanding of Jesus’ resurrection as the fulfilment of apocalyptic hope. That is, in Jesus’ resurrection, the full scope of apocalyptic hope, for justice, for the inauguration of the kingdom of God, for the defeat of death, for the reign of Christ, has taken place. Which would suggest that he is ruling now, not in some distant future where he’ll reign for this very specific period of time.

And because of how I understand the nature of apocalyptic literature, of which Revelation is the prime example, I just cannot take the text as anything but allegory. As with all the other apocalyptic texts, they critique the current imperial powers in coded language and present an alternative reality. Revelation does exactly this. And we’ll explore this a little more next week, when we look at the Beast, who is symbolically, the Roman emperor. So I take a preterist or idealist approach, somewhere between the two of them. So the millennium is metaphor for the period of time when Jesus is ruling, which is right now, and is so because of his resurrection. Yes, there is still pain, and suffering, and injustice, and all of that, again listen to my episode on theodicy, but there is still the hope of the renewed heavens and earth.

And, just a note on another interesting symbol. The three and a half years in Daniel and Revelation, which I mentioned when discussing premillennialism, coincides, coincidentally, with the length of time that the temple was desecrated under Antiochus. So rather than referring to some speculative period of time comprising the Great Tribulation at some point in the future, it makes perfect sense to me that it is actually referring to this historical moment when the temple was quite literally being trampled. And the temple, and tyrannical rulers, are, again, key themes in apocalyptic literature. So I really struggle to see how this sort of imagery could be anything but symbolic.

But why a thousand years? Why not 900? Why not 2307?

1000 as a period of time didn’t really appear in any Jewish or Christian texts before Revelation, so it’s use in Revelation is rather unique. However, the number 1000 was used occasionally in earlier Jewish literature when referring to something that is sufficient or is just very large. 

In Judges 15, we read of how Samson killed 1000 Philistines using the jawbone of a donkey. A few verses earlier we read that there were 3000 who came to arrest Samson, but Samson managed to attain victory by massacring only a third of them. But when you think about it, this surely must be hyperbole or allegory. After Samson has finished off, say, 20 of these people with a shard of titanium strength Donkey bone, where do the bodies go? It just becomes impractical to think that he literally killed one thousand people. It reminds me of Neo in the Matrix taking on incalculable numbers of Agent Smiths or the Spartans in the movie 300 where they start making walls out of the bodies of their vanquished foe. But whether this is an exact recounting or not, the point is clear: the number 1000 signifies victory, it was sufficient.

It also comes up in Deuteronomy ch. 1 when talking about God’s blessing – that their numbers would increase a thousand fold. And then in ch. 7 where it says that God’s covenant would last for a thousand generations. In both cases the number is used allegorically.

The number is used in a few occasions through the prophets, such as Ezekiel 47, where the prophet is recounting a divine vision, or Isaiah 7, where the thousand vines of Israel, each worth a thousand shekels of silver, will become thorns, so again surely allegorical, as well as in Psalm 84 – a day in the court of the Lord is better than a thousand days elsewhere. The Psalmist here is not saying that one thousand and one days would be better than a day in the presence of God; he’s simply saying that being in the presence of God is better than anything else.

1 Maccabees recounts the moment when the army of Antiochus Epiphanes attacks Israel and states that a thousand people died, when in reality it was many, many more.

And then it’s also used in various occasions when numbering amounts of soldiers or goods or how much something cost, which could well be speaking literally but carries the connotations of being a great amount, a sufficient amount required for the task. Each tribe sends 1000 troops – surely that’ll do the trick of defending our people! Sacrificing a thousand bulls will surely appease God.

So the point here is that the number is generally used symbolically. It refers to a large, incalculable number, or an amount that is sufficient.

All that is to say that the one thousand years of Revelation 20 is decidedly not a specific amount of time, where Satan has been imprisoned and Jesus reigns a kingdom on earth with the saints. As in apocalyptic tradition, the author of Revelation is envisioning an alternative reality to the present, where the Roman Empire is a parody of the real thing. The one thousand years refers to the period of time right now and is similar to what Jesus says in Mark ch.1 – “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near.”  

So hopefully I’ve made it clear that recognizing and understanding the nature of apocalyptic literature helps us to understand the rather complex, esoteric, and foreign symbolism within the book of Revelation. Knowing that apocalyptic literature is usually filled with coded criticisms of imperial power and presents an alternative reality where God is the ruler helps us to understand that Revelation, the very book from which apocalyptic literature draws its name, is doing the same thing.