Amillennialism (meaning literally “no
millennium”) teaches that we are currently
“reigning” with Christ “spiritually,” having had our
personal, figurative “resurrection” at our
conversion/baptism. Yet there are at least 10 reasons
why the millennial reign of Christ and his saints in
Revelation must lie in the future:
1) The reign of Christ and the saints in Revelation
20 follows the events of the return of Christ given in
chapter 19. In Revelation 19:11 the words “and I saw”
introduce a sequence of events, linked at verse 17
(“and I saw”) and verse 19 (“and I saw”) with the
complete overthrow of the beast and the false prophet
(v. 20) and the destruction of the remainder of those
who oppose Jesus (v. 21).
In Revelation 20:1 “and I
saw” continues the sequence and deals with the
complete removal from the world scene of the ultimate
enemy, Satan himself. Following that event comes the
next stage of the drama: “And I saw thrones and people
sitting on them who had been given authority to rule”
(Rev. 20:4).
2) The reign of the saints with Christ depends on a
resurrection (Rev. 20:5).
The noun “resurrection”
(anastasis) occurs some 40 times in the New
Testament. In every case (apart from a special use in
Luke 2:34) it refers to a real resurrection of dead
people to life, not a “resurrection” from the life of sin
to life as a Christian (as amillennialism has to argue). It
would be both unnatural and inconsistent to think of
anything but the real resurrection of the dead in
Revelation 20:4-5.
3) John described a real resurrection and not a
figurative one by saying that the occupants of the
thrones “came to life” after being beheaded. The core
of the millennial passage reads: “I saw those persons
who had been beheaded…and they came to life…This
is the first resurrection” (20:4-5). People are not
beheaded at conversion, but they may die as martyrs.
The “coming to life” of those “who had been
beheaded” cannot by any stretch of the imagination
describe conversion! Yet amillennialism has to deal
with these words in this extraordinary way in order to
avoid a literal resurrection.
4) In Revelation 20:3 Satan is bound “so that he
can no longer deceive the nations.” Earlier in the same
book John describes Satan as “the one [now] deceiving
the whole world” (Rev. 12:9). Here in Revelation 20:3
Satan is bound and prevented from “deceiving the
nations any longer.” It is beyond question that Satan
cannot at the same time be “deceiving the whole
world” and “not deceiving the nations any longer.” Yet
the whole “amillennial” school is committed to that
contradiction. Amillennialism teaches that the period
of time in which Satan “no longer deceives the
nations” (note: “the nations,” not the Church) is the
same as the period in which he is now “deceiving the
whole” world. It would be hard to think of a more
unsatisfactory method of reading the Bible!
Amillennialists, we fear, are driven to these extremes
by their dislike of the idea of a Messianic Kingdom of
God, ruled by the Messiah and the saints.
5) In Revelation 12:12-13 the Devil is thrown
down from heaven to the earth. This, as all agree, is at
a time prior to the Second Coming. However, in
Revelation 20:1-2, Satan is banished entirely from the
earth and sent to the abyss. This banishment into the
abyss, which coincides with the beginning of the
millennial reign, must lie in the future. Satan cannot be
both confined to the earth and banished from the earth
into the abyss at the same time.
6) Satan is represented as extremely active and
powerful in the present evil age (Gal. 1:4). John
describes Satan as now exercising power over the
whole world: “The whole world lies in the power of
the evil one” (1 John 5:19). 2 Corinthians 4:4 sees
Satan as “the god of this age.” To grasp the New
Testament view of the present activity of Satan the
following passages should be examined:
Luke 22:3;
Acts 5:3; 2 Cor. 4:4; 11:14; Eph. 2:2; 1 Thess. 2:18; 2
Tim. 2:26;
1 Pet. 5:8: “Your enemy, the Devil, is
prowling around like a roaring lion, searching for
someone to devour.”
Yet in our passage we have a description of the
total cessation of the influence of Satan over the
nations. He is removed from the scene, banished and
sealed in the abyss. We urge our readers to abandon a
view which makes Satan’s present deceptive activity
over the whole world (Rev. 12:9) compatible with a
time when he is bound and unable any longer to
deceive the nations (Rev. 20:3).
7) It is evident from Revelation 20:10 that Satan is
finally thrown into the lake of fire after the thousand
years (millennium), plus a “short time” (v. 3). Thus a
thousand years separates his binding and sealing in the
abyss (v. 3) from his casting into the lake of fire (v. 10). It is equally clear that the beast (Antichrist) and
false prophet are already in the lake of fire when Satan
joins them a thousand years later (v. 10). In John’s
vision a thousand years separates the throwing of the
beast (Antichrist) into the lake of fire and Satan’s
arrival there. If, as the amillennial school holds, the
thousand years began at the crucifixion, or the
conversion of the individual believer (opinions vary),
what is the meaning of the throwing of the beast and
false prophet into the lake of fire a thousand years
earlier than that time? What John obviously describes
is the ruin of the beast and false prophet at the Second
Coming, Satan’s banishment to the abyss at the same
time, and his being thrown into the lake of fire to join
the beast and false prophet a thousand years later. The
thousand-year reign thus follows the Second Coming
— which is premillennialism, a recognition of the
future Messianic Kingdom.
8) Amillennialists sometimes argue that the present
freedom of Satan (assuming the premillennial scheme
that he has not yet been bound) contradicts the effects
of the crucifixion. They admit, however, that Satan
must be let free for a brief period of time (Rev. 20:3).
This period of freedom would equally contradict the
effects of the cross. The biblical facts are that Satan has
already been defeated, but his sentence is put into
effect when his authority as god of this age is finally
removed by banishment, first into the abyss and
subsequently by being cast into the lake of fire — a
two-stage punishment.
9) Satan cannot possibly already be “deceiving the
nations no longer” (as amillennialism has to say). In
Revelation 19:15 Christ at his coming strikes the
nations precisely because they have been so
disastrously deceived by Satan into opposing the
Messiah at his arrival.
10) Nearly all agree that the “rest of the dead”
(those not included in the first resurrection) come to
life literally at the close of the thousand years (Rev.
20:5, 12). Yet amillennialists deny that the “coming to
life” of those in the first resurrection is a literal
resurrection. The same Greek word describes the
resurrection of both groups, and the same words “came
to life” [1] occur in two consecutive sentences.
Henry
Alford’s celebrated protest, known as “Alford’s Law,”
against the inconsistency of this reading of the passage
deserves to be heard again:
“I cannot consent to distort the words [of Revelation 20] from their plain sense and chronological place in the prophecy…Those who lived next to the Apostles, and the whole Church for three hundred years, understood them in the plain literal sense…As regards the text itself, no legitimate 1 Used also of literal resurrection in Rev. 1:18 and 2:8. treatment of it will extort what is known as the spiritual [amillennial] interpretation now in fashion. If, in a passage where two resurrections are mentioned, where certain ‘souls’ came to life at the first, and the rest of the dead came to life only at the end of a specified period after the first — if in such a passage the first resurrection may be understood to mean spiritual rising with Christ, while the second means literal rising from the grave — then there is an end of all significance in language, and Scripture is wiped out as a definite testimony to anything. If the first resurrection is spiritual, then so is the second, which I suppose no one will be hardy enough to maintain. But if the second is literal, then so is the first, which in common with the primitive church and many of the best modern expositors, I do maintain and receive as an article of faith and hope.” [2]
The failure to see in Revelation 20:1-6 a future
reign of the Messiah with his saints involves an
extraordinary feat, by which the plain meaning of
words and context are thrown aside in order to sustain
a theory which did not appear in the Church until 300
years after the Apostles.
As K.L Schmidt observed,
“The man who refuses to find clear teaching about a
future millennium in Revelation 20 approaches the text
with preconceived ideas, and gains from it neither the
exact sense nor the value.” [3] George Ladd points to a
whole tradition of anti-Messianic reading of the Bible
when he writes, “The first anti-millenarians disparaged
the natural interpretation of Revelation 20, not for
exegetical reasons, because they thought the book did
not teach a millennium, but because they did not like
millennial doctrine.” [4]
Opposition to the Jewishness of Jesus’ Gospel
about the Kingdom is explicit when commentators
confront a straightforward (and in this case a climactic)
statement about the resolution of the world’s ills when
the Messiah comes to reign.
[1] Used also of literal resurrection in Rev. 1:18 and 2:8.
[2] Greek New Testament, Vol. IV, Part 2, p. 726.
[3] K.L. Schmidt, Le Problème du Christianisme Primitif,
Paris: Leroux, 1938, pp. 84, 85.
[4] Crucial Questions about the Kingdom of God, Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952, p. 149, emphasis added.
The above was taken from
Focus On The Kingdom Vol. 24. No. 11
