The millenium which we are now to consider is, of course, that particular period of a thousand years which is spoken of in Revelation 20: 3, that period for which Satan is to be bound up in the bottomless pit so that he may no more deceive the nations. Such a restraint on the activity of Satan is obviously a tremendous boon for the world, and for the Church of Christ in particular. Charles Hodge is only typical of so many of the greatest Reformed writers when he describes the Millenium as a period in which “the Church is to enjoy a season of peace, purity and blessedness such as it has never yet experienced”. Yet this is by no means the way in which all interpreters look at this passage. Some do believe in a future period of extensive blessedness for the Church because they find it taught in other parts of Scripture, although they do no accept that it is the teaching of this particular passage. More fundamentally, A-Millennialists deny that there is any such period of world-wide blessing before the Church. They speak instead of the progressive development of both good and evil in the world until the second coming of Christ at the day of judgement. William Hendriksen, a prominent A-Millennial writer, understands the binding of Satan for a thousand years to indicate “that throughout this present gospel age” (ie since New Testament times) “the devil’s influence on earth is curtailed. He is unable to prevent the extension of the Church among the nations by means of an active missionary programme. During this entire period he is prevented from causing the nations — the world in general — to destroy the Church as a mighty, missionary institution.” But he adds, “The majority will always be on the side of the evil one. We most emphatically reject the dream of a man-made era of peace, prosperity and universal righteousness on the earth preceding the second coming of Christ”.
We, of course, also reject, and with equal emphasis, any such man-made era. It is probable that one of the most important reasons for the strength of present-day A-Millennialism is this kind of reaction against an evolutionary type of theology which was especially fashionable before the First World War, a type of theology which held that man by his own powers, and with perhaps a little help from God, would develop into something approaching perfection. It is interesting to note, almost by the way, a remark by J. M. Kik, “One of the contributing factors to present-day pessimism, gloominess, defeatism within the Church is the omitting of the Psalms from the hymn books”.
It is certainly not on the strength of just one verse, and that one verse a verse in the most figurative book of the Bible, that we base the doctrine of the Millennium, the word being understood in its traditional sense. Samuel Miller, in a single paragraph in a sermon entitled, The Earth Filled With the Glory of the Lord, quotes twenty separate verses from various parts of the Bible to support this view of what he calls “the universal prevalence of true religion,” and He by no means exhausts Scripture testimony on the theme.
There is no doubt that true religion enjoyed a period of tremendous expansion in the early Christian centuries; there is equally no doubt that through the work of Bible translation, over the last two hundred years especially, God’s Word has been taken to most quarters of the world. And wherever the Bible is we can expect that it will in some measure be blessed by God to the good of souls. To that extent there has been a fulfilment of such a verse as Psalm 72: 7, which speaks of the Kingship of the Saviour in these terms: “He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” The point at issue, however, is: Has the world ever yet seen this, and similar verses, fulfilled in anything like that fulness of meaning which they contain? Quite simply, has the world ever seen a time when all nations have been brought, as Psalm 72: 17 promises, to call Christ blessed? Multitudes of individuals, certainly, but not by any stretch of the imagination all nations.
In this connection it is worth quoting Robert Gordon’s comments as he discusses the promises of deliverance to God’s Church which are recorded in Isaiah 52, and these comments are applicable to many other parts of the prophecies. “The passage . . . ought to be full of interest to every believer, considered simply as a prediction of the future enlargement of the Church and her final establishment, in the conversion of all nations to the faith of the gospel. Much of what is here foretold has already been accomplished; and we should beware of undervaluing what has already been done towards carrying into effect the glorious deliverance here predicted of immortal souls from their state of ignorance, guilt and servitude. In what a different condition did the apostles leave the world from that in which they found it! . . . And amidst all the struggles which the Church has had to maintain . . . what countless multitudes have there been who made their escape from all the degradation and defilement of their house of bondage! . . . “Believers ought to remember and rejoice in all these; and on the principle here laid down respecting the deliverances wrought for the people of God in Old Testament times, believers should regard the past triumphs of the gospel as so many pledges and tokens of future and still more glorious victories, till the kingdom of the Redeemer, the dominion that he is to wrest from the powers of darkness, shall extend from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. The firm conviction that such victories will infallibly be achieved is essential to the maintenance of a lively and active zeal in the cause of Christ. . . . Such predictions then, as we find recorded here, should be full of interest to believers, as fitted to awaken a vivid anticipation of the time when all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God”.
It should be perfectly obvious that in so many of these Old Testament prophecies there is so much more of God’s blessing held out to His Church than has ever yet been brought about. Apart from some such concept of the Millennium as we are putting forward, it seems impossible to do justice to a verse like Isaiah 11: 9, “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” The figure implies a widespread knowledge of God, similar in its extensiveness to how the seabed is covered by water. So widespread will that knowledge be, that the figure can only be satisfied by a completely different order of things from what we, or any other generation, has known.
It will be a time when we may expect to see fulfilled in every direction the words of Jeremiah 31: 34. “They shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.” It is not, on the whole, mere head-knowledge that is to overspread the earth. It will be saving knowledge, knowledge that carries in its train true repentance and spiritual worship, for “all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s, and He is the governor among the nations” (Ps. 22: 27f). We need not assert, however, that every individual at that time will be a follower of the Lamb; there will still be those who do not at the heart submit to the Saviour, and “the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed” (Is. 65: 20).
A-Millenialists deduce from the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, not only that good and bad will continue together in the world until the end of time, but also that their proportions will not change dramatically. But what is taught with remarkable clearness in, for instance, the early verses of Isaiah, chapter 2, is that the position of the Church of God in the world will indeed change dramatically. There, as so often in the Old Testament prophecies, Old Testament terms are used to express New Testament ideas. Thus, because the temple of God on Mount Zion was the centre of the Old Testament Church, the term Zion is used in the prophecies to represent the Church in all ages, even in an age after the temple has been destroyed, never more to be restored. So we are told that “it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it.” The physical Mount Zion bears no comparison for height with the mountains which surround the land of Israel. Equally, the true Church of God has always been of very little consequence to most people; there are many institutions, false religions among them, which make a far greater impact on the world scene today, just as in almost every other generation. But, before the last days (ie the whole New Testament age) will have come to an end, the Church of God will reach a prominence above all human institutions.
When an individual gets a change of heart there follow effects on his or her outward life, for Christ is accepted not only as Saviour, but as King. So when the multitudes come under the saving power of Christ there will be dramatic changes in national and international life, for He will be accepted as King of nations. Then, as we further learn from Isaiah, chapter 2, Christ “shall judge (or rule) among the nations.” And a particular effect of His rule will be that “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Peaceful uses will be found for armaments, and not only will war itself come to an end, but no one will feel the need to learn the skills which are necessary for waging war. Peace between man and man is the natural consequence of man being reconciled to God.
In a sense there is no need to make special reference to any particular nation, given that during the Millennium it will be said universally, “The nations of this world are become the nations of our Lord and of His Christ” (Rev. 11: 15). Yet the Jews have from the time of their first father Abraham had a special place in the history of redemption. And Paul is at pains in writing to the Romans to demonstrate the future ingathering of his people. He thus addresses the Gentiles, “If thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree; how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?” (11: 24). There can only be one answer to Paul’s question — in his own words it is, “And so all Israel shall be saved” (11: 26).
There are very many other passages which could be referred to, which teach the same truth and develop various aspects of the matter further, but we may now return to look more carefully at that specially controversial passage at the beginning of Revelation, chapter 20, where we read of the binding of Satan. In doing so we may note how Christ reacted to the report which the seventy disciples brought back of their mission, “Even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.” He told them, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven” (Lk. 10: 17f). The Saviour was evidently seeing their mission as one example of the damage that is done to Satan’s kingdom when His messengers go out in His name, and the corresponding advancement there is for the Kingdom of grace. Doubtless His mind was then exercised about the whole work that will be successfully carried on until every knee will bow before Him. This binding of Satan must then be one particularly effective step in that great work of destroying Satan’s kingdom.
David Brown draws attention to the expression, “Satan’s seat”, used in the epistle to the Church in Pergamos (Rev. 2: 13), and states, “This certainly refers to the powerful party which Satan had in that place, and the dominant influence which through them he exercised in opposition to the gospel — a party made up of persecutors on the one hand and licentious corruptors of the truth on the other. If this be correct, the unseating or dethroning of Satan in Pergamos — his banishment from where he dwelt — would not mean the total cessation of his influence in that city, but just the destruction of the party which represented him and did his work in opposing the gospel there”.
Accordingly during the Millennium, and we now use Patrick Fairbairn’s words, Satan “shall no longer have a distinct party to represent him, or a fitting agency to ply his devices and prosecute his designs. It will be as if he had altogether lost his influence among the generations of mankind, though, since men shall still be in the flesh, and death shall still work, and a liability shall still exist to deception and apostasy, his connection with the world cannot be wholly destroyed”. The extent of the work done on the Day of Pentecost, and throughout apostolic times, is proof positive that it needs no power different from what is already at work in the world to bring about the prosperity of the Church. So, as we look at the Lord binding Satan, can we not see a vastly increased degree of the restraint that He already exerts on Satan’s power to put into effect his malevolent designs? Thus, on the one hand, the power of the Holy Spirit will be exerted to a very much greater extent, and, on the other hand, the power of temptation will be very much reduced.
At this point in describing his vision John speaks of a resurrection — the first resurrection — and those who then rise are to live and reign with Christ for a thousand years; they are to sit on thrones, and judgement is to be given to them. They are “the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands.” They obviously include the souls that John saw under the altar when the fifth seal was opened, and to whom it was said “that they should rest yet for a little season until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled” (Rev. 6: 11). We have then a picture of the martyrs of old once more alive, but now reigning over the world instead of dying for the cause of Christ as previously they did. But the expression soul itself suggests that it is not a literal and bodily resurrection that is being described. We are reminded of how, when the time comes for receiving the Jews as a nation into the Church of God once more, it is to be “life from the dead” for the Gentile world — the near-total spiritual death of the Gentile world being replaced by God-given life, which will be a resurrection indeed.
What is represented here is the greatest of the gospel’s triumphs, when, in Fairbairn’s words, “the universal Church, freed at length from the thraldom of the antichristian yoke and recovered from the slumber and filth of ages, is to burst forth in the freshness and beauty of a divine life; when all her members shall reflect the holy grace and energy of her glorified Head, and these members grown so many in number and so powerful in influence that every sphere of life shall be penetrated by their agency, and every region of earth be willingly obedient to their sway”. If we think of the spiritual state of individual believers at this time, when the Holy Spirit is to come with such power, we must expect that they will on the whole grow more in grace and grow more quickly than at any other time. According to Psalm 72 the righteous are to flourish in the day of the Messiah. It is a Psalm which refers particularly to Christ as King, and it is surely at a time when His Kingship is most evident that grace in believers will flourish most.
Accordingly it is the resurrection of the martyrs that provides the most appropriate figure. “It should be”, says Fairbairn again, “as if the flower alone of the Church, her noblest exemplifications of holy zeal and self-sacrificing love, had come to life again and entered on their immortal career. Nothing any longer should appear of the lukewarm . . . far less of those who had openly espoused the cause of ungodliness . . . Hence the eulogium, ‘Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power’; that is, they shall all be visibly of the right stamp . . . men so sincere in heart, so consistent in behaviour, so clearly and transparently Christian, that no room shall be left for doubt in regard either to their blessed condition or their glorious destiny”.
This glorious state of things is, however, not to continue indefinitely; the thousand years are to come to an end. “When the thousand years are expired”, we are told, “Satan shall be loosed for a little season and shall go out to deceive the nations” (Rev. 20: 7f). A first resurrection was mentioned, the rising of the children of God to power in the earth. A second resurrection is implied in the words, “The rest of the dead lived not till the thousand years were fulfilled” (Rev. 20: 5), which we may safely take to be the rising once more to power and influence of the ungodly, when the power of the Holy Spirit is largely withdrawn and God’s restraint on the devil is also in large measure removed.
John sees how Satan is once more permitted to “go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth and compassed the camp of the saints about and the beloved city” (Rev. 20: 7-9). As so often in the book of Revelation, the symbolism of these verses has its roots in Old Testament prophecy, in this case in Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39, where Gog is described as belonging to the land of Magog, the chief prince of various tribes. With his army are other nations which lived at a considerable distance from the land of Israel, some of them at the very corners of the earth. Fairbairn comments on how “they were, therefore, the fit representatives of a hostile movement to be made from quarters morally at the greatest distance from the kingdom of God, and thence disposed to imagine that by mere dint of carnal weapons and numerical force they might carry it as by storm over the children of righteousness and peace”.
This is the final assault of Satan and his forces against the cause of God in the world, but it will not be successful, for fire is to come down from God out of heaven to devour Gog and Magog and their followers, while the devil that deceived them is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone (see Rev. 20: 9f). Jonathan Edwards speaks of how at that time “the wickedness of the world will remarkably call for Christ’s immediate appearing in flaming fire to take vengeance on them”, and he is by no means alone in seeing the deliverance which God then gives to His Church as Christ’s literal coming at the last day to judge the world and to consign all the wicked to hell with the devil and his angels.
(To be continued)
- Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1977 reprint, vol 3, p 859. This reference appears in an extended and useful treatment of the subject-matter of this lecture. Briefer, but useful, treatments appear in other textbooks on theology, eg. Dabney’s Systematic Theology, A. A. Hodge’s Outlines of Theology and Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology.
- Hendriksen, More than Conquerers, 1986 reprint p 188.
- Ibid, p 189.
- Quoted by Lorraine Boettner, The Millennium, 1984 edition, p24, Boettner provides useful summaries of the main views taken of the Millennium; however, his book is distinctly inferior to those by Fairbairn and Brown.
- In The Missionary Enterprise, A Collection of Discourses on Christian Missions by American Authors, 1846, p 146f.
- Gordon, Christ As Made Known to the Ancient Church, vol 3, 1854, p 333.
- Brown, Christ’s Second Coming. Will It Be Premillennial? 1983 reprint, p 403f, Brown does an excellent job of demolishing nineteenth-century Premillennial arguments and provides much excellent material in support of the Postmillennial view in the process. In the nature of things it is not as straightforward an account of Brown’s position as would have been the case if the book had been constructed on a different principle.
- Fairbairn, Prophecy Viewed in Respect to Its Distinctive Nature, Its Special Function and Proper Interpretation, 1865 edition, p 466, Fairbairn’s final section, pp 442-493, is, in the present writer’s opinion, the best exposition available of the position taken in this lecture. The whole book deserves to be reprinted; it was last published by the Banner of Truth Trust in 1964.
- Ibid., p 474.
- Ibid., p475.
- Ibid., p 487.
- The History of Redemption, 1959 reprint, p 328.