The Coming of the Son of Man: When?

As a follow-up to the last post, I’d like to discuss Jesus’ prediction of the “coming of the son of man” in the gospels. My purpose here is not to debate whether the coming of the son of man should be understood literally or metaphorically (on which, see this post) but instead to ask the simple question: Did Jesus believe that this “coming” (whatever that might refer to) would happen within the lifetime of many of those alive during his ministry? There are four texts that are most significant for addressing this question:

1) Matthew 24:34 (cf. Mark 13:30; Luke 21:32)

“Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”

2) Matthew 10:23

“But whenever they persecute you in one city, flee to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the son of man comes.”

3) Matthew 16:27-28 (cf. Mark 8:38-9:1; Luke 9:26-27)

“For the son of man is going to come in the glory of his father with his angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds. Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in his kingdom.”

4) Matthew 26:63-64 (cf. Luke 22:69)

But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, from now on you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Each of these texts have two things in common: first, they each point back to Daniel 7:13-14, the famous vision in which “one like a son of man” is exalted with the clouds to receive the kingdom from the Ancient of Days; and, second, they each give off the powerful impression that Jesus anticipated the fulfillment of that passage within the expected lifetime of his original audience. In light of this common dependence on Daniel 7, it bears mentioning at the outset that in Daniel the son of man comes up with the clouds of heaven into the presence of the Ancient of Days; he does not come down from heaven to earth. If we keep this in mind while reading through the following passages, we may find that they begin to make more sense.

The first text (Matt 24:34) is without question the one which gets the most press in discussions like these, since it appears towards the end of Jesus’ lengthiest eschatological discourse, and everyone has a special stake in defending their particular view of that passage. When taken at face value, however, Jesus appears to be saying that all of the events forewarned in that discourse (from the beginning of birth pangs to the coming of the son of man) would come to pass within the generation of his audience at that time. Unable to accept this face value reading, futurists have suggested alternative ways of understanding Jesus’ use of the word genea, such as translating it instead as “race” or “nation”. But considering Matthew’s usage of the word throughout his gospel (1:17; 11:16; 12:39, 41-42, 45; 16:4; 17:17; 23:36), and the other texts which we will consider below, such an alternative translation has little to commend it, and appears to be driven more by a particular ideology than any real interest in accurately representing the original meaning of the text.

Another alternative, which has garnered more support than the one above, is to accept that genea does indeed mean “generation,” but that the particular generation in question is not the one to which Jesus was then speaking, but rather the one in which “all these things take place,” i.e. the final generation. This is an ingenious solution to the perceived problem of non-fulfillment, but it only survives as an escape route for those who cannot accept the plain meaning of the text. The problem with this reading is that it makes the entire verse redundant, while Jesus’ emphasis suggests that it is the most important part of the whole chapter. Furthermore, the whole context of the Olivet Discourse concerns the judgment which would befall that perverse generation for not accepting Jesus’ offer of peace. Matthew sets the scene for Jesus’ prediction of the nation’s fall and the Temple’s destruction by placing it together with his lengthy rebuke of their hypocritical leadership in chapter 23, and that whole passage concludes with his pronouncement that the recompense for the blood of all the martyrs from Abel to Zechariah would “come upon this generation”.

Now, for the sake of argument, let’s say that the coming of the son of man here refers to the second coming, and not to Jesus’ kingly vindication via the destruction of Jerusalem; that doesn’t change the fact that he predicted this “coming” within the expected lifetime of his audience at that time. This is why C.S. Lewis, in a 1960 essay, called Matthew 24:34 “the most embarrassing verse in the Bible”. Of course, I think Lewis was wrong to assume that the phrase in question refers to the second coming, but I still appreciate his honesty in admitting the plain sense meaning of the text regarding “this generation”. Futurism just isn’t an exegetically viable option where this text is concerned.

The second text (Matt 10:23) has received less attention than the first, but it places the timing of Jesus’ expectation in an even clearer light. The disciples will not even finish going through all the towns of Israel “before the son of man comes”. As Albert Schweitzer argued over a century ago, it is sufficiently evident that Jesus’ words here should not be in any way weakened down. But given that the “coming” of Daniel 7:13-14 speaks of the exaltation (and not the “decent” to earth) of the son of man to receive the kingdom, it seems likely that Matthew regarded this saying as having been fulfilled by the time of the Great Commission, when the resurrected Jesus, having received all authority in heaven and on earth, sends the disciples out beyond the boarders of Israel to call the whole world into the kingdom (Matt 28:18-20).

The third text (Matt 16:27-28) only solidifies this impression further. There are some of Jesus’ hearers who will live to see the kingdom of the son of man, when he comes in the glory of his father and rewards everyone for their deeds. This text adds to the two above by explicitly identifying the coming of the son of man with the arrival of the kingdom, just as the son of man receives the kingdom from the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7:13. It also bears mentioning that in all three Synoptic accounts this saying appears just after Peter’s confession and just before the Transfiguration, when Jesus begins to subvert the disciples’ kingdom expectation in light of the cross and resurrection. Jesus elsewhere alludes to the kingdom of Daniel 7 with his coming suffering in mind (e.g. Mark 10:45). Is he perhaps doing that here?

The fourth text (Matt 26:63-64) is much more significant than many English translations imply. The key phrase here is “from now on” or “hereafter,” which literally means “from this time forward”. Here Jesus combines his characteristic allusion to Daniel 7 with an allusion to Psalm 110: “The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool’. The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of your enemies!” Is it a coincidence that Jesus quotes from this passage right after being accused of conspiring against the Temple? Is that why Caiaphas, the high priest, was sent into such a rage? Whatever the answer, the central question is this: What did Jesus see happening at that time which could be interpreted as the messianic enthronement of Daniel 7 and Psalm 110?

In summary, each text speaks clearly for itself: (1) “This generation will not pass away”; (2) “before you finish going through all the cities of Israel”; (3) “there are some standing here who will not taste death”; (4) “from now on…” The cumulative effect of all four passages is overwhelming. Whatever we might say about the content of this prediction, it appears glaringly obvious that Jesus anticipated this “coming” very quickly, to the point of being almost present, and that in his mind it was intrinsically connected to what he saw himself doing at that time. This conclusion is so firmly based in the explicit words of Jesus, and in the parallel accounts of all three Synoptic gospels, that it is as close to a “proven fact” as any point of biblical theology can be.

Why I am no longer a futurist

I used to take a consistently futurist approach to biblical prophecy. Whether it was Jeremiah’s lengthy oracle against Babylon in Jeremiah 50-51, Ezekiel’s panoramic vision of a rebuilt temple in Ezekiel 40-48, Jesus’ Olivet Discourse in each of the Synoptic Gospels, or John’s vision of the “Beast” and the “Harlot” in Revelation 17-19, I would always assume a literal interpretation of the text, and, because of my faith in its inspiration, I would always assume it referred to events still to come in the future, thousands of years after it was given, since it obviously hadn’t yet been fulfilled. A futurist reading, I thought, was the only faithful approach to such passages.

It took me several years to realize that my commitment to futurism was ironically based in the same underlying prejudice as the allegorical school which I so strongly opposed. As different as those two approaches are in their outworking interpretations, the same controlling agenda which drove Origen and Augustine to spiritualize whole books of the Old Testament causes today’s student of Scripture to project every seemingly unfulfilled prophecy into the future. That underlying prejudice, that controlling agenda, arises from the psychological need to erase discrepancies when newly perceived data conflicts with our strongly held beliefs. The “perceived data” in this case is the apparent non-fulfillment of prophecies with explicitly time-sensitive content; the “belief” is our faith in the authority of Scripture. The problem, though, is that if we really believe in the authority of Scripture, then we are warned not to change the meaning of the text into something it never intended to say.

The primary question for the interpreter of biblical prophecy must be centered on the authorial intent and the public meaning which the prophetic word would have carried in the period in which it was given. To put it otherwise: Our first duty with biblical prophecy, no less than with any other genre of Scripture, is to interpret it with reference to its own time. This doesn’t mean that all biblical prophecy must of necessity refer to past events, but that the language of all biblical prophecy must have been readily understandable to the people of its own time. Otherwise it becomes subject to the changing paradigms of each successive generation. The true interpretation is not necessarily the one which carries the most perceived value or spiritual application in the twenty-first century, but rather the one which best explains the prophetic language as it would have been understood by its original audience. But again, if we really believe in the authority of Scripture, then we should always assume that the interpretation arrived at through the inductive process will be the one with the most Spirit-filled application for our own time, regardless of our expectations.

As simple and as self-evident as this is, it’s remarkable how often it is either forgotten or ignored. The besetting sin of futurist interpreters, in their approach to prophetic passages throughout Scripture, is their deeply felt need to liberate the text from the embarrassing constraints of its own time. Such interpreters are not really interested in understanding what the text would have meant in its original historical context, but only in what it can be seen to mean for our own time. Thus, where Jeremiah pronounces a retributive judgment on Babylon and its king for their treatment of Judea, or where Ezekiel foresees a rebuilt temple after the regathering of his people from exile, or where Jesus predicts the son of man’s coming within the generation of his listeners, or where John predicts the sudden destruction of the great city which reigned over the kings of the earth in his own day—in all of these cases futurists feel the need to lift the referent of the prophetic text out of the immediate future of the original audience and into our future, in order to thereby save the text from the reproach which, upon the assumption of a literalist reading, would undoubtedly come upon it. Where was the bloody, violent, and absolute destruction which Jeremiah pronounced on Babylon? Where was “the coming of the son of man” in the lifetime of Jesus’ listeners? Where, indeed, was the fulfillment of all of the cataclysmic events foreseen by John in the book of Revelation?

When confronted with such unpleasant difficulties, futurists see two basic options: either (a) we admit that the text was uninspired, unathoritative, and glaringly wrong in its predictions about the future, or (b) we project it into the future and thereby protect its inspired status. So like Peter in Gethsemane, we unsheathe our swords and cut away! But like Peter, we fail to consider that there might be other alternatives besides the two extremes of denying our Lord or plugging our ears and fighting to save face. Are we sure we understand what the prophecies are all about? As a true post-Enlightenment Westerner, I used to assume a literalist reading of all biblical prophecy, giving very little room for metaphorical, symbolic or hyperbolic modes of speech; but I have since come to realize that such a commitment rarely does justice to the intention of the biblical prophets themselves. Jesus’ intention with respect to “the coming of the son of man” is a prime example of this. If we endeavor to understand Jesus’ words historically, then the rigid literalism of the futurist school appears at once grossly anachronistic and impossibly constricting.

Before we can even contemplate the possibility of other alternatives, however, we must face the music; we must give proper recognition to the text’s fundamental rootedness in its own time, whatever the outcome. When prophecies with historical detail and context such as Jeremiah 50-51 aren’t “fulfilled” in a rigidly literal, meticulous sort of way, the futurist assumption is that we should simply lift the text from its stated context and postulate a future one-to-one fulfillment. But if our primary aim is to handle such passages with exegetical integrity, as indeed it should be, then we simply cannot ignore the specific indicators of historical context and authorial intent. Jeremiah was not speaking against a nation that did not exist at that time or a king who had not yet been born. No, he speaks against a contemporary nation and its king for the evil which they had committed against Judah in the years 599-586BC, which Jeremiah himself witnessed and documented at length. The whole point of the passage, resting on the law of retribution, is that the violence and destruction which Nebuchadnezzar dealt to Israel would come back upon his own head (cf. 50:17-18, 29; 51:34-35). Exegesis demands this conclusion.

To claim, on the other hand, that this passage must speak of a future period, because several details of the prophecy did not play out exactly as described, is a decidedly eisegetical move. Instead of reading the text inductively and asking the appropriate questions of authorial intent and public meaning, the futurist view relies entirely on a deductive process of elimination, looking outside of the prophecy and imposing one’s own set of criteria for what it can and can’t mean based entirely on what did and what did not in fact occur thereafter. Such an abstract a priori has absolutely nothing to do with what the text itself would have meant in the world in which it was written, but has everything to do with maintaining a particular theological construct despite all the evidence to the contrary. If it didn’t happen, just transpose it into the future. It must not have meant what it said. The original audience probably didn’t get it. The prophet himself probably didn’t get it. But we get it.

By thus lifting the passage out of its own world of meaning and supplying another we lose all anchorage with the only context in which the text itself makes sense. This is not exegesis. Genuine exegesis is committed to listening to the text on its own terms–and if history does not play out exactly like the passage said it would, then we should ask the question why. Perhaps we’ve misunderstood the content of the prophecy, or perhaps something transpired afterwards which altered the terms of the prophecies’ fulfillment. In the case of Jeremiah 50-51, I suspect that Nebuchadnezzar’s apparent change of heart may have had something to do with it (cf. Dan 2:47; 3:29; 4:2-3, 34-37; 7:4). Remember, the God of the prophets regularly speaks about what will happen if humans presently respond in such and such a way; he does not speak in an abstract vacuum of time and space about what will happen regardless of the present human response. The whole point of prophecy is to produce a response, a change; and if all men responded then no prophecy of judgment would ever come to pass (cf. Jer. 18:7-11).

In other words, we are not bound to reject the truth of biblical prophecy by remaining faithful to the text. But then, even if we can’t find a solution to every text in which this problem appears, it’s a much more honest display of faith in the authority of Scripture to first take the text at its own terms, and then to say “I don’t know” in reply to the question of fulfillment, than to try to save face by suggesting the text actually refers to something else, something easier to get our hands around. That’s not true faith; that’s doubt in disguise. And that is why I am no longer a futurist.

The History of Hell (Mark Edward)

In a brief post several months ago I weighed into the debate over hell and the doctrine of eternal conscious torment by proposing some alternative ways of approaching the subject. Part of the reason this debate tends to get so easily convoluted is that there are several different words in Scripture which have regularly been translated into the one English word “hell”–and then there are several other phrases and concepts which are routinely assimilated into that traditional portrait. This has resulted in a great deal of confusion, as we are automatically inclined to misunderstand what those words and phrases would have meant in their original historical contexts. In order to understand what the Bible has to say on the subject, we must cut through all of the anachronistic baggage which has crept up around the biblical phrases like moss on an old building; we must approach the text on its own terms, as it would have been heard in the time and place in which it was written.

To this end, my good friend Mark Edward (who has a fantastic biblical studies blog) has written a very helpful list for nine of the different words and phrases which regularly come up in our thoughts and discussions about hell, shedding much light on the particular connotation which they would have carried in their own historical contexts. I appreciated the insight and clarity of this list so much I had to share it here:

Hell comes from an old, old, old Proto-Germanic word meaning ‘to cover up’. The English concept of ‘hell’ specifically came from the Norsehel, the name of the underworld in Norse mythology, as well as the name of its ruler. The Norse concept of hel has very little resemblance to the contemporary concept of a burning place of torment. The word ‘hell’ was used as a catch-all rendering for sheol, hades, gehenna, and tartarus when the Bible began receiving English translations. This word really should be left out of the discussion when studying the topic of afterlife punishment, because it’s far too ambiguous and inaccurate to be of any help.

Sheol is a common Hebrew word used to refer to what we would otherwise call ‘the grave’, and is treated as contextually synonymous with death, destruction, the earth (as being buried), the sea (as being a deep, dark place), or the pit. In the Hebrew Scriptures, sheol is the fate of all men: to die. The rare occasions that sheol is described beyond the concept of simply being the end of man, it is dark, gloomy, and defined by its ‘residents’ inactivity, lack of knowledge, memory, thoughts, or even awareness.

Hades originally referred to both the Greco-Roman underworld, as well as the Greek god that ruled over it. Hades was a world of dark, gloomy, nothingness (which is why it was chosen to be the most appropriate Greek word for sheol, when the Jews translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek the second or third century BC), but it came to be seen as having different regions within it for either the righteous or unrighteous. When we get to the New Testament, hades is regularly used when citing Old Testament passages that refer to sheol. Very rarely, hades is sometimes used as an illustration for afterlife punishment, but it otherwise continues to carry the simple idea of ‘the grave’, the state of being dead. In this way, sheol / hades is seen as being the ultimate enemy of Christ, and was conquered through his resurrection. In the Revelation, ‘death and hades’ are thrown into the lake of fire.

Abraham’s Side, (let’s face it: the word ‘bosom’ is weird in contemporary English; the most appropriate modern word is ‘chest’ or ‘side’), is a figure of speech referring to the place of rest for those considered members of the Covenant family (i.e. children of Abraham). Analogy can be drawn to the early custom in the ancient near east that resting against the side of one’s master was a sign of honor and favor. So, to be resting at Abraham’s side meant one was favored and honored by Abraham (or rather, by the God of Abraham). The phrase originated in reference to the ‘side of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’. In wider Jewish culture (outside of Jesus’ use of the phrase), this place was seen as a part within hades, where the righteous would go apart from the unrighteous. The mere fact that Jesus names Abraham and has him speak in no way means the parable is meant to reflect a literal account. Jesus adapted a common cultural image for the sake of his parable. He even utilizes Abraham’s servant from Damascus, Eliezer (in Greek: Lazarus), to illustrate that those who originally were not included in the inheritance of the Covenant people have now been included (Eliezer was set to be Abraham’s heir until Isaac was born).

Death is occasionally personified to represent the ultimate enemy of God and his people. Adam’s disobedience to God brought death upon all humanity. Through his resurrection, Jesus overturned death. Death, along with hades, will be cast into the lake of fire.

The lake of fire comes from Revelation, where John’s vision borrows, but somewhat changes, the river of fire from Daniel 7. In Daniel’s vision, the river of fire poured out from God’s throne, and was a symbol for his divine judgment against Antiochus IV Epiphanes’ for his persecution of the saints of Israel. In John’s vision, the lake of fire is the place of divine judgment against the Roman Empire and its Emperors (the beast), and the Caesar cult (the false prophet). Later on, the satan (the dragon), death, the grave, and all of the wicked are likewise cast into the lake of fire. John explains to his readers very explicitly: the lake of fire is a symbol for the second death. The ‘first’ death (above) was the personified enemy of God and his people, because through sin this ‘first’ death brought death to even the righteous, including Jesus. The lake of fire, that is, the second death, represents the final punishment that Christ brings at his coming. It is not a depiction of eternal conscious torment. The Roman Empire and the Caesar cult, a kingdom and a religion, do not suffer pain for eternity, they are simply destroyed in their entirety. Death and the grave are concepts, not persons that feel torment; they simply cease to exist.

Bottomless pit is a symbol drawing from two sources.

The first source is the Old Testament concept of ‘the sea’. In the Hebrew Scriptures, ‘the sea’ is used poetically as a synonym for ‘the deep’ or ‘the pit’. In the Hebrew Scriptures, ‘the sea’ could represent chaos and disorder. In the Hebrew Scriptures, ‘the sea’, as a symbol for chaos, is sometimes personified as a serpent / dragon / leviathan, sometimes named Rahab, which was an alternate name for Egypt. In poetic metaphor, Egypt is depicted as the ancient enemy of God’s people, so God slays Egypt, the dragon called Rahab, splitting apart the sea for the freedom of his people. With the defeat of Egypt / Rahab / leviathan / serpent / dragon / sea / deep / pit, God brings a new life to his Covenant people. The exodus event is described in the Prophets as if it was a new creation event.

This is not coincidental, because several Hebrew poetic passages look back to the time of creation (Genesis One) as the time when God conquered the deep / sea / chaos / dragon. Altogether, this ‘God conquers the dragon’ metaphor is tied together in Revelation 20 in two ways. First, the dragon is imprisoned in the bottomless pit for a thousand years; the serpent is cast back into the deep; leviathan is imprisoned in his sea. Second, the dragon is permanently destroyed in the lake of fire. With God’s conquest of the satan / dragon / bottomless pit / chaos / deep / sea (through Jesus!), God begins a new creation with his Covenant people. (This is why John notices a lack of ‘the sea’ in his vision; he is saying that there will be no more chaos or sin.)

The second source is that John appears to be borrowing from the Greco-Roman concept of tartarus. In ancient Greco-Roman mythology, tartarus was the place where the old gods (the Titans) were imprisoned by the new gods (the Olympians). In later (but still pre-Christian) Greco-Roman mythology, when hades began to be seen as having different regions for the righteous and unrighteous, tartarus was the place of punishment for the unrighteous. They would descend into the earth to be punished for a thousand years, after which they would be reincarnated. One of the epistles of Peter borrows the concept of tartarus as a prison in order to describe what God did with the ancient angels who sinned; they’ve been imprisoned. John borrows the concept of tartarus (referring to it as the ‘bottomless pit’) to describe the imprisonment of the dragon, satan.

Gehenna should be translated as the Valley of Hinnom. This was a valley near Jerusalem, and appears to have held this name perhaps as back as the time of Joshua. This valley was used by the more idolatrous kings of Judah as a place where they would sacrifice their own children to the god Moloch. It may also have been the location where, in a single night, the Messenger of Yahweh killed a massive number of Assyrians from the army of Sennacherib. Going from there, it was traditionally associated with the location Isaiah refers to in his final chapter (‘they shall go out’ implies exiting Jerusalem into the valley), where dead bodies are devoured by unquenchable fire (i.e. fire that does not stop burning until it has completely consumed everything in its path) and undying worms (i.e. the maggots that unceasingly feast upon corpses). In ancient Aramaic translations of this chapter of Isaiah, the dead bodies are explicitly stated to be in the Valley of Hinnom, where the wicked suffered the ‘second death’. Jesus confirms the traditional association by describing the Valley of Hinnom in the same way Isaiah describes the location filled with unquenchable fire and maggots.

The Valley of Hinnom is only ever used by Jesus (with a single, extraneous usage by James) when speaking to his fellow Jews. He uses it especially when warning them about sinning unrepentantly. Jesus uses the Valley of Hinnom because it had become a common symbol for God’s divine punishment. In this sense, it is analogous to the lake of fire (especially since both are referred to as the ‘second death’). According to Jesus, God is able to destroy both body and soul in the Valley of Hinnom.

Note: a little ‘fact’ is often thrown around that the Valley of Hinnom was a perpetually-burning garbage dump for the city of Jerusalem, where the bodies of dead criminals were thrown. As far as archaeological evidence goes, this is unproven. As far as textual evidence goes, the earliest this idea is mentioned is the 12th century AD. In the scope of this discussion, it is unreliable hearsay.

The Millennium in Greek and Roman Thought

As the history of this blog testifies, the interpretation of Revelation 20 has been a subject of ongoing interest to me. I first wrote about it as a premillennialist in this series of responses to Sam Storms, a classical amillennialist.  But after several years of continued investigation, I’ve slowly come to see the passage quite differently, and I’ve explored this alternative reading from various angles here, here, here, here, and here. I still resist the title “amillennialist,” because it tends to suggest certain medieval associations to which I do not ascribe. But I do believe John’s vision reflects an inaugurated eschatology of sorts, and you can see my reasoning for this in each of the posts linked above.

But I’d like to come at the passage from a different angle in this post. Most commentaries don’t really look outside of the Old Testament and later Jewish parallels for the background of John’s millennium, but I wonder if the main source may lie elsewhere. It’s difficult for us to hear the same cultural resonances which the original audience would have heard loud and clear, how politically subversive the notion of a “thousand-year reign” must have been in that particular time and place. But in order to hear these resonances in John’s millennium, I suggest that we should look first to the Roman court poet Virgil, who for years had predicted a messianic deliverer before Caesar Augustus had succeeded in unifying the empire and pacifying most of the known world.

Virgil spoke in exalted language of a “golden age” of Roman rule, patterned after the primordial reign of Saturn in Greek mythology (Aeneid, 6.791-96). In the first century AD, with the dawn of the so-called Pax Romana and the unparalleled growth of the Caesar cult, only more poets and politicians followed with this tone of rhetoric, enthusiastic about the unbreakable might of Rome. Just as it was in the last century with Nazi Germany, propaganda announcing the Empire’s golden age of peace was rampant in the first century, especially in the regions most sympathetic to Rome like Asia Minor, where John received his vision of a different kingdom. Thus, when John sees the great beast and the false prophet thrown into the lake of fire, what he goes on to convey in his vision of the “millennium” is explicitly intended, in some respects at least, as the antitype to Rome’s tyrannous reign, the transfer of the kingdom from the beast to the saints of the most high.

In some respects, but by no means all. There are clearly other influences going into John’s composite picture. In regards to the symbolic figure of “a thousand years,” I suspect that Revelation is actually drawing from a contemporary Greco-Roman depiction of judgment in the afterlife. This might sound like a strange connection to the modern reader, but I’m confident that it would have come quite naturally to John’s first-century audience, Greek and Latin speaking Gentiles in Asia Minor. In Book X of his Republic, Plato describes the transmigration of souls in Tartarus and Elysium as follows:

“He said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgment on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew near, and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would carry the report of the other world to men, and they bade him hear and see all that was to be heard and seen in that place. Then he beheld and saw on one side the souls departing at either opening of heaven and earth when sentence had been given on them; and at the two other openings other souls, some ascending out of the earth dusty and worn with travel, some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And arriving ever and anon they seemed to have come from a long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the meadow, where they encamped as at a festival; and those who knew one another embraced and conversed, the souls which came from earth curiously enquiring about the things above, and the souls which came from heaven about the things beneath. And they told one another of what had happened by the way, those from below weeping and sorrowing at the remembrance of the things which they had endured and seen in their journey beneath the earth (now the journey lasted a thousand years), while those from above were describing heavenly delights and visions of inconceivable beauty. The Story, Glaucon, would take too long to tell; but the sum was this: –He said that for every wrong which they had done to any one they suffered tenfold; or once in a hundred years –such being reckoned to be the length of man’s life, and the penalty being thus paid ten times in a thousand years. If, for example, there were any who had been the cause of many deaths, or had betrayed or enslaved cities or armies, or been guilty of any other evil behaviour, for each and all of their offences they received punishment ten times over, and the rewards of beneficence and justice and holiness were in the same proportion. I need hardly repeat what he said concerning young children dying almost as soon as they were born. Of piety and impiety to gods and parents, and of murderers, there were retributions other and greater far which he described.”

Note the lines in bold, which sound particularly close to some of the descriptions in Revelation. Virgil describes a similar scene in Book VI of the Aeneid:

“Each man receives
His ghostly portion in the world of dark;
But thence to realms Elysian we go free,
Where for a few these seats of bliss abide,
Till time’s long lapse a perfect orb fulfills,
And takes all taint away, restoring so
The pure, ethereal soul’s first virgin fire.
At last, when the millennial aeon strikes,
God calls them forth to yon Lethaean stream,
In numerous host, that thence, oblivious all,
They may behold once more the vaulted sky,
And willingly to shapes of flesh return.”

Note that the “millennial aeon” is also called a “perfect orb” of time’s long lapse, and that after this thousand-year period in Elysium the purged souls return once more to flesh. I find it very likely that all of this is typologically significant for Revelation 20, especially if the millennial reign there is concerned with the intermediate state of the faithful dead, as I’ve argued elsewhere. It makes a lot of sense to me that John would borrow from a contemporary Greco-Roman conception of postmortem judgment, as he does with so many other pagan myths (e.g. the Combat myth and the Nero Redivivus legend)–and yet, in classic apocalyptic form, that he would subvert it with a different vision altogether. The court is seated, as in Republic 10.614, but the sentence is ironically made against Rome and the power which stands behind it and for the very people which it oppressed, so that while the followers of Jesus spend a thousand years reigning in Elysium, the great enemy, Satan, spends a thousand years bound in Tartarus.

A Kingdom of Priests: Reigning with Christ

One of the most common reactions I receive to my interpretation of Revelation 20:4-6 is incredulity at the implication that the saints currently reign with Christ in heaven. But this reaction, I believe, is due to an unbiblical understanding of what it means to reign.

We tend to think of reigning and serving as two separate and almost opposite things, and yet the very center of Jesus’ message in the Gospels is a redefinition of the kingdom into the terms of servanthood (e.g. Mark 10:42-45). To reign means to serve. According to Revelation 5:5-6, it’s as the Servant-Lamb that Jesus occupies the throne of God in heaven. And if Jesus reigns right now, then there is also a sense in which we, his people, reign with him through the Spirit–and (I would argue) a further sense in which those who have gone to be with him sit on his throne and reign with him in a new way (e.g. Rev 2:26-27; 3:21).

The opening passage of Revelation says in no uncertain terms that Christ, by his blood, “has made us kings and priests”. This is in the past tense. Just as Christ was exalted to the right hand of God where he “reigns,” as Paul says, “until he has put all enemies under his feet,” so we who are “in Christ” (who are his body, “the fullness of him who fills all in all”) reign together through our union with him in baptism. That, I think, is the force of Romans 5:17 in light of the inaugurated eschatology of Romans 6, as it is also a necessary implication of Paul’s point in Ephesians 1-2, of our being “seated with Christ in heavenly places”.

But how do we “reign” in the present age? This is where a fully-formed biblical theology on the subject is needed, and not just a vague conception based more on the kind of picture which Jesus repudiates in Mark 10:42-45. I can only briefly point us in what I believe to be the right direction.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28)

From the very beginning humanity was called, as a matter of vocation, to rule over everything that God had made, which means that we were called to reflect, as God’s image-bearers, the wise stewardship of the creator outward to his creation. This is a much larger vocation than a “king” (as we think of kings) “reigning” over his kingdom. At most that is a limited metaphor to describe the reality to which we were called. At worst it becomes a gross and beastly parody (as we see clearly in, say, Revelation 13:1-8). But after humanity was expelled from the garden, the place from which we were called to have dominion, God called Abraham to bear his covenant and carry that vocation in a broken and fallen world.

But the question now is this: What does that kingly vocation look like in a context like this, with a largely disjointed and rebellious kingdom? As texts like Exodus 19:6 indicate (and passages like Isaiah 40-55 spell out in detail), the kingdom-vocation which God’s people have been called to bear is primarily a servant-shaped and intercessory vocation, a calling to stand as representatives and reflections of God to his creation in outward-focused prayer and mission, and as representatives and reflections of creation (as God intends it to be) back to God in holiness and worship.

And this is exactly the kind of theology which stands behind Revelation’s idea of the saints “reigning” with Christ; hence the reason why the role of “kings” is constantly paired with the role “priests”. The point is that these are not two separate vocations, but one: we are to be a “kingdom of priests”. And it is this priestly kingship which we constantly see in operation throughout Revelation, by the prayers of the saints coming before the throne of God and helping to advance his eschatological plan of redemption (e.g. 5:8; 6:9-11; 8:3-5).

The only difference between the apocalyptic portrait of Revelation and that of (say) Paul, is that whereas Paul’s inaugurated eschatology focuses on the “church militant” on earth, John’s vision focuses on the “church triumphant” in heaven, i.e. on the souls of the saints reigning with Christ from the heavenly “paradise” by “serv[ing] him day and night in his temple”. As Dionysius of Alexandria said of the martyrs in Revelation: “These… who now are assessors of Christ and who share the fellowship of his kingdom, and are partakers of his decisions and judge along with him…” (Letter to Fabius, Eusebius, HE VI.42.5).

There’s so much more that can be said, but I must qualify that none of this is meant to imply that we won’t ultimately “reign on the earth” in the new creation, as Revelation 5:10 says. We absolutely will. The point, though, is that since Christ really does “reign” at the right hand of God in heaven right now, so all who are “seated with him” reign as well. And if this messes with your definition of what it means to “reign,” then that’s probably for the best.

In Christ,

Matt

Isaiah 65: The Greatest Premillennial Proof-Text

I realized, after the last post, that I should probably address more directly some of the OT passages which are commonly called upon in support of a premillennial scheme. As for most of those passages, I think it’s more likely that they express the widespread Jewish conception of the age to come, and not another interim period at the close of this age. I mean, would we really read those passages as speaking of an interim messianic kingdom if Revelation 20 didn’t definitively express such an interim kingdom? I doubt it. It seems to me that we have to read the premillennial structure from Revelation 20 back into those passages in order to see them as being “millennial,” but that they make much better sense within their own historical contexts as expressing the more fundamentally Jewish eschatological dualism between this age and the age to come. The fact that those passages express “earthly” conditions doesn’t make them millennial. In ancient Jewish expectation the age to come was always a very earthy affair. After all, it is spoken of as the new earth, isn’t it?

But for a specific example, let’s look at Isaiah 65, which is arguably the single greatest proof-text for the premill interpretation of Revelation 20. In my opinion, such proof-texting reveals more about the anachronistic tendencies of premill hermeneutics than it does about Isaiah’s own intention in that passage. Premillennials argue that if we are to read the passage in its plainest sense, without allegorizing it to fit the amill scheme, then the portrait it paints of a child dying at a hundred couldn’t possibly fit in the age to come after death has been destroyed, and yet it couldn’t possibly belong to this age either, since it portrays the human lifespan being extended far beyond the normal 70 years of our post-fall world. The only explanation, therefore, is that Isaiah 65:17-25 belongs to a period of transition between this age and the next, and thus this passage is appealed to as powerful proof of the premill millennium. A sterling piece of deductive logic.

For the longest time I considered this argument to have the most solid foundation. What seemed to be the only alternative (allegorizing) has always been out of the question for me. But I’ve come to realize that there’s a large hermeneutical problem hidden behind this reading of Isaiah, a problem which it ironically shares with the allegorical interpretation. That is the problem of anachronism, i.e. reading an idea into a period in which it does not historically belong. Besides the fact that the premill reading brings the vision of Revelation 20 into a tenuous relationship with Isaiah 65 which John himself did not support, as we’ve already seen, there is no indication that Isaiah would have supported it either. And yet by puzzle-piecing these two passages together without considering them each in turn, premillennials simply assume that Isaiah must have expected a further period after the “new heavens and new earth” of 65:17-25.

Most OT scholars agree that there is no clear indication of a belief in bodily resurrection in Scripture prior to Daniel 12. That was, of course, one of the main reasons why the Sadducees rejected the doctrine. Many would attempt to read the idea into the language of Isaiah 26:19 (which from the context appears to be metaphorical for the restoration of Israel, cf. Ezek 37), but the fact remains that bodily resurrection is nowhere to be seen anywhere in proximity to the “new earth” of Isaiah 65, and while life is said to extend dramatically beyond the properties of this age in that passage, it still has a definite end. It hardly needs pointing out that this portrait stands in stark contrast with the “new earth” of Revelation 21-22.

But the premill reading implicitly assumes that Isaiah must have envisioned a time of bodily resurrection after the period he speaks of in vv. 17-25, by artificially inserting that passage into John’s millennium. In doing this they ignore the fact that Revelation 20 has no contextual affinity with Isaiah 65. Thus the premill connection of Isaiah 65 with Revelation 20 works entirely off of eisegesis, reading into both passages ideas which belong to neither. This is the definition of anachronism, and this is why the common premill reading is no better than the allegorical interpretation which it derides. In contrast to both of these readings, an historically sensitive approach would recognize that while Isaiah’s vision of the lengthened life of God’s people belongs to his version of the “new earth” and not to an intermediate “millennium,” the idea of bodily resurrection is simply nowhere on his prophetic radar. Hence the reason why this vision is taken up and then consciously transcended by John’s vision of a “new earth” where “there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain”.

The Old Testament in Revelation 20: Why are there no “millennial” references?

It’s a fact widely acknowledged that Revelation contains more references to the Old Testament than any other New Testament book. Indeed, some scholars have found as many as 635 echoes and allusions in John’s apocalypse. As a Jew who was thoroughly versed in the ancient Scriptures, it seems that John couldn’t help but make associations with God’s previous revelations as he himself was given the climactic vision of God’s redemptive plan. Granted, sometimes those associations seem to be less of a conscious action on John’s part, and simply reflect the way his mind was furnished so entirely by Israel’s sacred texts. But sometimes his allusions do reflect a conscious parallel, calling on an OT passage in order to say “This is that!” in some way or another.

Whether conscious or unconscious, however, John’s many echoes and allusions constitute our single greatest aid in understanding the way that he, the seer, understood his own vision. If we want to see things through John’s eyes and understand his vision the way he understood it, therefore, we should pay close attention to the many references he has left for us.

And yet, curiously, this fact has been largely overlooked in the long and wearisome debate over the millennium. What should have been the interpreter’s very first question has seldom been asked: What does John think about his extraordinary vision of a thousand-year reign? In fact, there is much to be learned from the passages John references in Revelation 20:1-10, and perhaps even more from the passages he does not. We find allusions to Isaiah 24:21-22, Genesis 3:13-15, and the LXX of Isaiah 27:1 in verses 1-3; allusions to Daniel 7:9-11, 26-27, and Exodus 19:6 in verses 4-6; and multiple allusions to Ezekiel 38-39 in verses 7-10. These several OT texts have a lot to tell us about how John himself understood his vision of the thousand-year reign.

But the truly remarkable thing (and the point I would like to focus on here) is that we don’t find a single allusion to any of the OT passages which have long been labeled “millennial” by chiliasts. Think of all the so-called “millennial” passages in the OT: like Isaiah 25, where God makes a feast for his people on mount Zion and wipes away the tears from every face; or Isaiah 65, where the Lord makes Jerusalem a place of rejoicing in a newly restored earth and makes the lifespan of his people like the days of a tree; or, perhaps most famously, Ezekiel 40-48, where Ezekiel sees a glorious new temple for the Lord to dwell in when he returns, out of which flows a river of healing waters for the nations. Well, not only does John not allude to any of these supposedly “millennial” passages in his write-up of the millennium, but he ironically does allude to each of them in his description of the post-millennial and eternal new heavens and new earth.

This presents a rather awkward problem for the premillennial scheme, since that interpretation of John’s “thousand years” relies most heavily on those passages outside of Revelation 20 for its content. This problem can be broken down into two questions for further dialog: First, granted that Revelation 20 is the only passage in which a thousand-year reign is explicitly mentioned, why do none of the stereotypical “millennial” passages come to John’s mind in his vision of the millennium? And, second, how do we account for the ironic presence of many such passages in John’s portrait of the “new heavens and new earth” in chapters 21 and 22? Have premillennials perhaps mislabeled those OT passages in order to fit a particular scheme, a scheme which is in fact foreign to the thinking of John himself?