ONCE YOU GET past the great debates over the timing—and mere existence in Scripture—of the Rapture, Tribulation period, and Antichrist, you move on to the next major point of contention: the millennial kingdom.
Premillennialists generally believe that Revelation contains information that was both pertinent to John’s contemporaries as well as to future generations. This, of course, would include the view that the book provides explicit details about Christ’s impending return and the new heaven and earth to come.
The latter part of Revelation takes readers through a complex and vibrant narrative, with many biblical experts believing that Revelation 19 explicitly describes how Jesus will one day triumphantly return from heaven with a “sharp sword” coming out of His mouth to achieve final victory.
The text proclaims that Christ, accompanied by armies, will defeat the “beast and the kings of the earth with their armies.” Both the Antichrist and the false prophet are present in chapter 19.
Despite the Antichrist and false prophet having amassed world power, the biblical story doesn’t end well for either of these evil forces, as verse 20 tells us that they “were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with brimstone.”
What directly follows in Revelation 20 is an introduction of the millennial kingdom, with the chapter opening by describing yet another scene filled with complex imagery in which an angel comes down from heaven to seize the “dragon,” also known as Satan, binding him for “a thousand years.”
This act will purportedly prevent the devil from further deceit until that thousand-year period concludes, and it is followed by the release of Satan for a brief time, according to verse 3. That’s just a brief recap of what’s presented in the text.
It is the reference to Christ’s one-thousand-year rule before Satan’s release, which is mentioned in Revelation 20:7–8—verses that recount the devil’s exit from prison and his effort to “deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle”—that has sparked fierce eschatological debate.
One of the central questions that has emerged is whether readers are intended to take the millennial period literally or figuratively. With no clear consensus, theologians continue to battle over whether Christ will physically reign on the earth during a set, thousand-year time period, whether He’s already been doing so from heaven following His death and resurrection, or whether there is no literal real-world application at all to these scriptures.
With that in mind, let’s explore the array of biblical interpretations among Christian leaders when it comes to Jesus’s thousand-year reign. Christians generally fall into one of the following categories: premillennialism, amillennialism, postmillennialism, or preterism.
Postmillennial theologian and pastor Douglas Wilson explained the differences between the main three millennial worldviews as follows: “Premillennialists believe that the Lord comes, then the millennium. Amillennialists believe [there is] no literal millennium, no earthly millennium. Postmillennialists believe there is an earthly millennium, but that Jesus comes at the conclusion of it, at the end of it.”1
Despite his own proclivities, Wilson provided a very rough estimate of where he believes most conservative Evangelicals in North America stand on the millennium, assuming 75 percent are premillennialists, 20 percent are amillennialists, and just 5 percent are postmillennialists.
He called the presence of the premillennial worldview “very, very strong,” predicting that it holds a dominant view among American Evangelicals.2 It is, most certainly, the view that dominates the perspectives of some of the most well-known eschatology commentators, as observed in the interviews for this book.
Others have crafted different ways of viewing what will happen following Christ’s return in Revelation. But what is the impetus for each of these views? Let’s take a closer look at the latter chapters of Revelation, which contain the scriptures that are at the heart of the overarching debate, beginning with Revelation 20:4:
I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and the authority to judge was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness of Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshipped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
Verse 6 says that those who share in this “first resurrection” will be “priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” In fact, the term “thousand years” actually appears six times in Revelation 20:2–7—a fact that individuals who believe in a literal reign often cite.
What do these references actually mean? Many dispensational premillennialists, who generally embrace a literal interpretation of Revelation and believe that the book was written in AD 95, argue that Jesus will establish a kingdom on the earth following His return, and they believe that it will last one thousand years.
Evangelical expert Joel Rosenberg is among those who argue in favor of a Messianic kingdom that lasts ten literal centuries.
“[Christ] needs to come before that to the earth to set up that one-thousand-year kingdom,” Rosenberg said. “That makes me a premillennial believer. He comes before the millennial kingdom.”3
The prophecy expert was candid, though, in noting that he believes that one would probably find that a majority of Christians likely don’t necessarily take a premillennial end-times stance, instead seeing Revelation 20 as more symbolic than literal.
His view on the matter does not necessarily conflict with Wilson’s eschatological estimate in that Wilson was specifically speaking about Evangelicals and not Christians more generally. “My perception is that if you take Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, sort of independent evangelicalism, and then all the rest, you’d end up with an amillennial or a postmillennial majority,” he said. “Most denominations don’t teach that there will be a thousand-year reign.”4
As with many end-times subjects, the battle is really rooted in one’s view of just how literal the Scriptures should be taken.
Evangelical scholar Dr. John Noē once wrote that premillennialism is “known for its insistence that the words of prophecy be interpreted ‘literally whenever this does not lead to absurdity,’” which essentially forms the underpinning of all associated end-times views, not simply opinions about the Millennium.5
It is through this lens that Noē explained that a futuristic view on both Old and New Testament texts is taken, though he separated out a subgroup known as historic premillennialists—individuals who he said combine both preterist (past) and futurist views when it comes to eschatology.6 We will spend some time looking at the preterist worldview in a subsequent chapter.
Thus, it should be noted that premillennialists are divided into two key camps: dispensationalist premillennialists and historic premillennialists.
In describing the key difference between the two related systems in his book The 8 Great Debates of Bible Prophecy, Rhodes wrote, “Dispensational premillennialism . . . distinguishes between the church and Israel and holds that in the millennium, God will fulfill the unconditional promises He made to Israel.”7
In contrast, he said that historic premillennialism “does not insist on the distinction between the church and Israel (the church is viewed as spiritual Israel), nor does it demand a consistently literal interpretive method.”8
Theologian William Lane Craig has further differentiated historic premillennialism from its dispensational counterpart by noting that it is “a millennial view that doesn’t involve rapture theology—just classic millennial theology.”9
That said, Dr. Sam Storms explained that, when it comes to the Millennium debate, many of those who embrace historic or nondispensational premillennialism “would agree that there’s going to be this thousand-year rule of Christ on the earth between the Second Coming and the eternal state.”10
But he said that these individuals wouldn’t see the primary purpose as being bent on reestablishing Israel as a theocratic nation, considering the view that the modern-day church is essentially spiritual Israel.
Premillennialists look to Jesus’s words to John in Revelation 1:19 to find what they believe to be an outline for the book in its entirety—one that they say shows that the twenty-two chapters that comprise Revelation are to be grouped together and divided for different purposes. That verse reads, “Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this.”
With that in mind, Noē explained that premillennialists generally see Revelation 1 as being focused on the past glorification of Christ, Revelation 2 through 3 as focusing on seven present churches at the time of its writing, and Revelation 4 through 22 focusing on end-times prophecy.11
Pastor Greg Laurie, who embraces a literal Millennium period, laid out his case for what he believes will unfold during the end times: “I believe that Christ will come back at the end of the battle of Armageddon in the Second Coming and that He will establish His kingdom,” he said. “But it doesn’t end with the Millennium.”12
Speaking of the latter chapters of Revelation detailed at the start of this chapter, Laurie said that he believes that there are some misconceptions about Revelation 21:2, the verse that describes “the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
“Effectively at that point, heaven and earth become one,” Laurie said. “We need to understand that right now heaven is a real place for real people, but sometimes Christians will say, ‘One day I will die and go to heaven and stay there forever.’ That’s not really true.”13
The pastor said that, though Christians will die and go to heaven, the latter portion of Revelation makes it clear that heaven will eventually come to earth, calling that event the “ultimate conclusion” to the end-times paradigm.
Laurie also pointed to Jesus’s words in the Beatitudes (Matt. 5), which discuss God’s favorable view of the “peacemakers,” with the scriptures saying that the “meek . . . shall inherit the earth.”
“In the Lord’s Prayer, He taught us to pray, ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ [DRA].”14
Laurie continued, “I believe that in the Millennium reign—the Millennium reign of Christ—we’ll be in glorified bodies, but they will be real bodies in a real place, and we’ll be doing real things.”15
Pastor John Hagee, senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, and founder of Christians United for Israel, corroborated these views, telling me that fifty-eight years of studying Scripture has solidified his premillennial worldview—a perspective that he called the “only rational Bible position.”16
“That position is that God would call the Jewish exiles from the nations of the world to form the state of Israel before the Rapture of the church,” he said. “We believe the state of Israel, reborn May 15, 1948, is that state and will be the place to which Messiah will come to rule the world from the city of Jerusalem for one thousand years in the golden age of peace called the millennial reign.”17
Of course, premillennialists are only the first brand we’ll look at while exploring the Millennium. Next comes the amillennial view, which rejects the notion that the thousand-year period is literal, instead believing that the text is symbolic when it references that time frame.18
Adherents see Jesus as presiding over the current church age; thus the millennial kingdom that is referenced in Revelation is, in the minds of amillennialists, unfolding as we speak, with Christ ruling from heaven.
Storms told me in an interview for this book that he believes that the differences between historic premillennialism and the amillennialism that he embraces are minimal.
“It’s really only one difference, and that is: Will there be—following the second coming of Jesus but before the creation of the new heaven and earth—a thousand-year reign of Jesus on the earth called the Millennium?” Storms said.19
While many premillennialists would answer affirmatively, he said that amillennialists would reject such a notion. That said, Storms explained that the differences become greater when specifically comparing dispensational premillennialism to amillennialism, as the views of the former are “significantly and substantially different from amillennialism.”20
“That version of premillennialism believes that when Christ rules on this earth for one thousand years . . . that He will reestablish His authority and His kingdom centered in Jerusalem—and that the Jewish people will have unique privileges and promises fulfilled in and for them that are [not available to believing Gentiles].”21
Storms said that he holds a strong disagreement with such a view, believing that the one thousand years referenced in Revelation 20 is symbolic rather than literal, and that this is a reflection of “every other number in the Book of Revelation.”22
“I think a careful reading of Revelation 20 indicates that the so-called one-thousand-year reign is not one thousand years that you can mark on a calendar,” Storms said, instead calling it a “reference to completeness” which he believes can be likened to Christ’s current rule in heaven. “Christ has been seated at the right hand of the Father and . . . He rules and reigns throughout this present church age.”23
Storms also penned a blog post back in 2007 defending his eschatological view in an effort to help clear up any confusion and affirm that amillennialists actually do embrace a millennium view. He wrote:
Contrary to what the name (Amillennialism) implies, AMs do believe in a millennium. The millennium, however, is now: the present age of the church between the first and second comings of Christ in its entirety is the millennium. Therefore, while the AM does deny the Premillennial belief in a personal, literal reign of Christ upon the earth for 1,000 years following His second coming, he affirms that there is a millennium and that Christ rules.24
It’s clear that amillennialists don’t flatly reject the notion of a millennium; they simply don’t embrace a literal reign of Christ on earth, arguing that Revelation 20 is the only place in which the theology of a literal one-thousand-year reign can be gleaned. Considering the complex and symbolic nature of Revelation, they take a more spiritual view of what such a reign would look like.
Commenting on the amillennial perspective, William Lane Craig said that it’s more about not seeing a viable reason for the presence of a literal reign.
“The amillennialist would say the millennium serves no purpose. Why do such a thing as to have this strange earthly kingdom?” Craig wrote. “Why not simply, upon people being raised from the dead and judged, go into the eternal state of heaven or hell?”25
Specifically commenting on arguments made by Storms, Craig explored some of the key details that have led some theologians to reject premillennialism. Among those issues is sin, seeing as Christ’s earthly reign following His return would mean that sinful individuals would be living alongside resurrected Christians—something that amillennialists believe is impossible as it would mean that Christ would be reigning during a time in which sin was still running rampant on the earth.
“They have a body that Paul described as immortal, incorruptible, powerful, and glorious. They are now free of sin. Sin has been done away with. These are glorified saints,” Craig wrote of the amillennialist perspective. “Yet we are to imagine them living in a society with mortal, sinful, corruptible people and that this is the kind of interrelationship that they would have? It just seems inconceivable that you would have that sort of mixture.”26
Amillennialists, on the other hand, do believe that good and evil will coexist in the world until Christ’s second coming, with the latter being defeated upon His return.
It should be noted that there are other differences, including the fact that amillennialists do not “identify this period of tribulation with Daniel’s 70th Week, as does the dispensational premillennialist, nor [do they] define its purpose as having anything to do with the restoration of national theocratic Israel,” though some do believe in mass Jewish salvation during the end times, according to Storms.27
Sharing some areas of agreement with premillennialists, amillennialists also hold that there will be intense tribulation, apostasy, and quite possibly an antichrist during the end times; the nature of these elements simply differ a bit.
Next come the postmillennialists, who, like their amillennialist opponents, generally don’t believe that the thousand-year period is literal.
They see most of Revelation up through chapter 19 as having already been fulfilled in AD 70, with differing views among adherents when it comes to remaining chapters 20 through 22.28
“The postmillennialists are those who believe that Jesus is coming again at the conclusion of the Millennium,” pastor Douglas Wilson explained. “That means that the Millennium is brought about, not by the Lord’s physical presence, but through missionary work, preaching the gospel, and so on.”29
Putting this into perspective, Ron Rhodes explained that there’s an idea among postmillennialists that “for an extended time—roughly, called one thousand years—the church will Christianize the world.”30
The driving notion is that the world will get “better and better, so that when Christ comes again, the world will be ready for Him,” Rhodes explained.31
Under a postmillennial worldview, adherents believe that Jesus won’t return until after the Millennium age—a time during which the Christian faith flourishes. Theologian Kenneth L. Gentry described the dynamic as a “progressive cultural victory and expansive influence of Christianity in history.”32
This is the key area in which amillennialists and postmillennialists differ, as the former reject the notion that Christianity will gain major prevalence throughout the earth, with Storm writing that “it is here, and for all practical purposes only here, that [Amillennialism] differs from Postmillennialism.”33
Postmillennialists see the millennium as a time in which the gospel will spread globally and have “triumph”—a power so profound that it results in the “subduing of the forces of unbelief and sin,” Craig explained.34
Adherents find this belief inherent in Scripture, as Jesus called believers in Matthew 28:18–20 to fulfill the Great Commission—Christ’s call to “help take His message of love and forgiveness to every person in every community, in every city, in every country of the world and make disciples of all nations,” as recapped by the late Bill Bright, cofounder of Campus Crusade for Christ (now known as Cru).35
It is in Matthew 28 that Jesus calls His disciples to travel the nations, baptizing, teaching, and making disciples of the masses. With that in mind, Craig noted that postmillennialists will look to verses such as the parable of the mustard seed and the yeast in Matthew 13:31–32 to corroborate their belief that the kingdom of God will progress.36
Those verses read: “He told them another parable, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. This indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest among herbs and is a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches.”
In the end, this, among other references, would likely be used to advance the notion of Christian triumph, though those ideas don’t come without fervent pushback from individuals who reject the postmillennial worldview.
Premillennialists would generally find these ideals somewhat problematic, considering that there’s a belief that they see a world in which there will be intense struggles and problems before the end—not necessarily triumph.
Observing the postmillennial view from a thirty-thousand-foot view, premillennialists, among others, would wonder if and when, considering the rise of the horrifically violent Islamic State, among other emerging problems across the globe, domestic and international affairs will ever take a turn for the better. After all, a spiritual improvement, it would seem, would be a requirement for the fruition of the postmillennial worldview.
When I asked Douglas Wilson, a postmillennialist, to respond to the critique that the world is actually worsening at a time when postmillennialists are expecting it to improve, the theologian said that he believes some critics are likely “standing too close to the picture.” These individuals, he said, can only see the “brush strokes.”37
“You need to stand back across the museum gallery and look at the whole picture at once,” Wilson said of contemporary affairs. The theologian explained that it’s all about how one examines the historical narrative. “If you’re looking at human history in five-year increments, it does appear to be getting worse and worse, depending on who just got elected.” But when you expand that lens to look at five-hundred-year increments, he said the paradigm changes. “Basically, if you look too closely, you’re staring at the brush strokes and not at the picture,” Wilson said.38
If given the chance to try and persuade dispensationalist premillennialists, Wilson—who is also a partial preterist—said that he would try and persuade them that he’s “not a liberal,” as he knows that his critics would surely dismiss some of his beliefs on the end times as being out of line with Scripture.39
“If I say that the Matthew 24 business or the Book of Revelation was fulfilled in the first century . . . it looks to them like I’m explaining away the Bible, or, as they would describe it, I’m spiritualizing the Bible,” Wilson said.40
In the end, he said, “Virtually all current contemporary postmillennialists are partial preterists.”41
As for his personal beliefs about the end times, Wilson said that, though he believes that many of the verses ascribed to the end times have already come to pass—including much of Revelation—he thinks that the latter portions of the book are still yet to come.
“I believe that the overwhelming majority of the book—with the exception of the last part, where the New Jerusalem is fully manifested . . . I believe that is happening now and will continue to happen—but, the seven-headed beast, and the seven heads, or seven hills, and seven kings, all of that, I believe happened, was fulfilled, in the first century.”42
As for the evolution of the postmillennial view, Wilson said that there’s been a shift in ideology over the past two hundred years, as many in the nineteenth century seemingly sided with premillennialists on one key fact: the literal length of the Millennium.
Postmillennialists believed that the time frame would be one thousand years, but that it was “the last one thousand years of the church age.”43
Thus, early postmillennialists didn’t believe in Christ’s literal earthly kingdom, but they did embrace the notion that the Millennium would be the final one thousand years of the church’s existence. But Wilson said that this view has largely disappeared in the modern era.
“Most contemporary postmillennialists believe that the Millennium is not a literal one thousand years, but that it’s coextensive with the church age,” he explained.44
It was perhaps most refreshing while writing this book to hear what William Lane Craig had to say about the Millennium. While many biblical experts have their rigidly set and strict ideas about what they believe is happening in Revelation 20, he took a much more subdued approach, admitting to me that he’s simply “uncertain.”
“I really am quite uncertain about how to interpret this,” he said. “It’s the only place in the New Testament where the idea of a millennium is predicted . . . [it is] difficult to know if it is meant to be taken literally.”45
Others like Hanegraaff—who shares some similar beliefs to partial preterists (like Wilson) who see much of Revelation as having already been fulfilled—believe that the context of Revelation is important to understanding exactly what’s happening in the text.
Explaining the book as seven letters to seven churches, he said that John’s purpose was to encourage the churches that were in the midst of the Caesar cult to “be faithful and fruitful.”46
“They’re going to suffer terribly for a short time, but their vindication is going to be an eternal vindication . . . a thousand years has to do with a metaphor,” he said. “The reason that I’m quite certain about that is the Bible uses metaphors throughout the biblical text, but here you have apocalyptic language.”47
He argued that language shouldn’t be taken in this case in a “wooden, literal sense,” saying that he is certain that this is the case, citing other biblical examples of the use of “one thousand” in Scripture to drive home his point.48
“If you look through the Scripture, whenever thousand is used as a whole number, it’s always used in a metaphorical way. You have a highly figurative passage,” Hanegraaff said. “You can have an angel coming down . . . having the key to the abyss, and holding in his hand a great chain. He sees the dragon, that the ancient serpent is the devil, and binds him for a thousand years.”49
He said that this is “figurative apocalyptic language,” wondering how an angel—a non-corporeal being—could hold a chain, for example.50 As for Hanegraaff’s claim about instances of the Bible’s metaphorical use of one thousand, he cited these verses:
• “Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and mercy with them who love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations” (Deut. 7:9).
• “For every wild animal of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:10).
• “For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere” (Ps. 84:10).
His point was that taking the millennial kingdom in a literal sense is problematic since it’s the only instance in Scripture that he believes that the number is viewed literally.
“The only place that you find a thousand years mentioned, and now we’re going to read it in a wooden, literal sense? We’re going to posit that Jesus comes back, and then there’s going to be a semi-golden age?” Hanegraaff rhetorically asked. “This is, quite frankly, madness, particularly when you think about the fact that Jesus is the substance that fulfills all the types and shadows.”51
All of the debate over the premillennial, amillennial, and postmillennial worldviews aside, I’ll briefly touch on what happens in the biblical text after references to the debated one-thousand-year reign in Revelation 20:4–6.
It’s a complicated and multifaceted mixture of verses, but let’s dive into a quick review: Satan is released from prison and heads out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth, gathering them for battle. (We’ll get into the Gog and Magog debate in subsequent chapters as well.)
When they surround the “beloved city,” fire comes from heaven and they are defeated, before joining the beast and false prophet in the “lake of fire and brimstone” (vv. 9–10).
From there the dead are judged, the institution of death abolished, the creation of a new heaven and a new earth accomplished, and the making of everything new comes to fruition in Revelation 21, with the description of the restoration of Eden following in chapter 22.
On a final note in this chapter, let’s briefly circle back to the potential reasons why Satan is released following the one-thousand-year period, as Revelation 20:3 reads, “After that he must be set free for a little while.”
Naturally this has created a fair number of questions, mainly: Why does Satan need to be released after the one thousand years are over?
There is clearly ambiguity when it comes to the purpose for this release. There are also questions surrounding what will be happening on earth during Jesus’s reign. If humans alive at the time continue to have babies, will they be born sinful? If so, how does this play out in practice?
We can’t dive into these themes in-depth in this book, but it is worth noting that they are some of the other areas of contention for which a consensus will likely not be reached in the near-term.