Answers In-Depth to
Questions about
Christianity
Hi!  I am a Catholic priest.

There are lots of question-and-answer forums on the web.  Many
of these are about religious matters, especially the Bible.  Over
the years, I have discovered that the quality of the responses is
almost always compromised because of the quantity of questions
addressed.  This site is dedicated to posting in-depth responses to
only a FEW, carefully selected, quality questions about Christian
matters.  I hope that you will find this approach rather
refreshing!

Rev. Paul L. Rothermel
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

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Email Me
IF the book of Revelation does NOT teach a millennium once we dig deep enough,
then there really is no hope for anyone of us to construct a convincing argument
from the New Testament documents.

As King, Jesus reigns now and will gloriously reign forever.  The faithful share in His
glory.  What is disputed about this joint reign is when and where and how long.  
There is much evidence that Revelation does not teach pre-millennialism.  All of this
is exegetically based, and I will mention some of it.

1.  Hardly any well-informed Bible reader disputes that an understanding of
Revelation, chapter 20, is the biblical generating point of Christian pre-millennial
teaching.  But it seems to be a misunderstood chapter in a book notorious for its
obscurity.  Revelation, full of visions and symbols and strange details, is not the kind
of book that lends itself to dogmatic certainty.  As one of the major Protestant
Reformers is reported to have remarked, "Revelation is not too revealing!”

2.  Although some Jews at the time of St. John taught a future temporary Messianic
reign on earth, the Jewish view looks almost totally different from the description of
“the thousand years” in Revelation, chapter 20.  For these Jews, during this future
Messianic reign, all people will live in a natural state of non-resurrection, animals
and humans will dwell together in harmony, the earth will produce superabundantly,
people will live very long, the earthly Jerusalem and its temple will be rebuilt, God’s
people will control the other nations politically, and the ten lost tribes of Israel will
return.  Oddly enough, John comes closest to these Jewish views in chapters 21
and 22, which deal with the eternal state after the Last Judgment (cf.  2 Pet. 3:13).  
So St. John’s original readers could easily read chapter 20 without in any way
identifying it with the Jewish view, and they would be open to an interpretation of it
quite different from pre-millennialism.

3.  Christian pre-millennialists down through the centuries have heavily borrowed
from John’s descriptions of the eternal state to enrich their own millennial imagery!  
When they also borrow from elsewhere, they usually borrow from the Old
Testament, from many of the very same passages that the Patmos seer applies to
the eternal state!  The seer tells us absolutely nothing about the distinctive
situations of the Church and the nations on earth during the 1000 years!  Except for
the fact that Satan’s “binding” means that he will not deceive the nations for a very
long time, St. John’s sober and meager description is totally lacking in the curious
and imaginative details that have almost mesmerized Christians who expect a future
temporary Messianic reign on this earth.

4.  Like Revelation 20:7-10, Second Thessalonians, chapter two, presents a full
outbreak of evil after a period of restraint and as a result of much supernatural
deception, and a rebellion under the Devil’s orchestration, but one quickly destroyed
by God’s sovereign intervention through flaming fire sent down upon His enemies (2
Thess. 1:7-10).  The Apostle Paul places all these rather unusual events right
before the Second Advent.  Although Rev. 20:7-10 does not use Paul’s words about
“the man of lawlessness,” this character may be the “Gog” in Ezekiel 38-39, one of
John’s referents.  And although Second Thessalonians describes a climactic contest
of power rather than a battle, Christ’s destructive breath in 2 Thess. 2:8 may be
symbolized by the sword coming out of His mouth in Rev. 19:15.  These scenarios
are so much alike that the same end-time events must surely be meant.  This places
the “1000 years” before the Second Coming.

5.  A key point bears repetition.  There is one and only one cosmic shaking in the
New Testament end-time theology, but John retells this moment several times for
dramatic affect.  Pre-millennialism teaches several actual cosmic shake-ups.  
Several times St. John relates the disintegration of the earth (6:14, 16:20, 20:10),
the arrival of God’s doomsday wrath (6:17, 16:14, 19:15, 20:9-15) and the coming of
the divine Warrior-Judge in Person (6:16, 19:11-16, 20:10).  These graphic
references in 6:12-17, 16:17-21, 19:11-21 and 20:9-11 must all refer to the same
dramatic episode, because the writer of Hebrews 12:26-27 asserts that only once
will such a cosmic shaking ever occur.

6.  The order of John’s visions is not always the order of His recording them, and the
order of John’s recording of them is not always the order in which the events
foreseen in them occur!  We notice that Revelation, chapter 20, records the details
of at least three visions, and likely no more than four.  Kai eidon (“And I saw”)
appears four times there (vv. 1,4,11,12).  Vision 1 is the “1000-year” binding and
then loosing of Satan (vv. 1-3,7-10), vision 2 is the “1000-year” reign with Christ (vv.
4-6), vision 3 is the cosmic shaking by the Holy God upon His judgment throne (v.
11), and vision 4 is God’s judging of the dead at the Last Judgment (vv.12-15), if
these last two are not really one vision with two focal points, God and the dead.  
While recording the first vision, the seer already has vision-knowledge that the
binding will end in a short period of Satanic activity after 1000 years (v.3).  In vv.7-
10, John more fully describes this loosing and asserts that it is future to his day, and
so, since he must have seen and/or heard whatever accounts for his knowledge of
these details, the Devil’s loosing is perhaps best understood as seen by St. John at
the same time that he saw his binding.  Although the binding and loosing seem to be
part of the same vision, details surrounding the loosing are reported only after the
seer records and parenthetically comments on the second vision, the one
concerning the reigning.  The first sentence in v.5 shows that he is commenting on
the second vision in light of knowledge gained from the last vision (vv. 12-14), and v.
6 shows the seer zigzagging from the start of the 1000 years (‘first resurrection ‘) to
their aftermath (“second death “) and then back to their central activity of priestly
reigning with Christ.  This disjointed style shows the error of the pre-millennial claim
that chapter 20 indicates a strict chronological order from 19:1 to 21:8.  St. John
does not mention that any other evil spirit is bound when Satan is bound.  At least
some fallen angels had been bound a very, very long time before “the 1000 years”
symbolizing Satan’s binding (cf. Jude 6).

7.  Revelation 20:7-10 retells parts of the drama in 19:11-21 and in its parallels,
especially in 16:12-21.  The book’s last three uses of the Greek noun, polemos
(“battle”), are found in 16:14, 19:19, and 20:8, and these are the only places in the
book where this word is accompanied by the Greek article (the word without the
article is in 9:7,9, 11:7, 12:7,17, 13:7).  ”The battle” of 19:19 is clearly “the battle” of
16:14, for which Satan ”gathers” (16:14, 19:19) the nations, yet the seer writes in 20:
8 of the "gathering” (the same Greek word) of the nations by Satan for “the battle”!  
In 16:17-21, 19:11-21 and 20:7-10, John clearly draws upon the Gog-Magog
prophecy in Ezekiel 38-39 as a means of linking the three passages. The rebellion
of the nations after “the 1000 years” and their destruction by fire from heaven is
clearly related to “Gog and Magog” in 20:8 (cf. Ezek. 38:2, 39:1,6), and the angel’s
invitation in 19:17-18 is almost word-for-word from Ezek. 39:17-20.  In the entire Old
Testament, the combination of God’s judgment of the nations with hailstorms and
earthquakes is only found in Ezek. 38:18-22.  But in the New Testament, John alone
combines them in Rev. 16:17-21.  It appears very unlikely that the seer intended the
revolts of Revelation, chapters 19 and 20, to depict different episodes separated by
a literal ten centuries, because he clearly gets many of his details for both from the
same end-time episode prophesied by Ezekiel.  Also, since the bowl plagues bring
an end to God’s wrath (15:1), the wrath of 19:19-21 and 20:7-10 cannot be later
than the wrath of 16:17-21.  It seems that Revelation 16:12-21, 19:11-21 and 20:7-
10 are three literary depictions of the same end-time scenario, although the first sets
the stage for the destruction of the ruling trio of evil (dragon, beast, false prophet)
while the second and third depictions narrow their focus in order to portray the end
of the beast and his false prophet, and then the end of the dragon itself. The second
and third depictions are not meant to be taken as a historical sequence of future
events.  The ruling trio ends up in the lake of fire in reverse order from the initial
appearance of each in the book of Revelation.  The Lamb’s enemies come on the
scene in the following order: evil men (1:7, cf.11:8, 2:2,6), Satan, who is the dragon
(2:9, 12:3), sea-beast/beast (13:1), earth-beast/false prophet (13:11), whore of
Babylon (14:8), and beast-worshippers (14:9-11).  But they receive God’s judgments
in the opposite order: beast-worshippers (16:2), the whore of Babylon (16:19), earth-
beast/false prophet (19:20), sea-beast/beast (19:20), Satan, who is the dragon (20:
1,10), and evil men (20:14-15, 21:8).  One cannot, as many pre-millennialists do,
figure out an order of future events from such artistic symmetry.  History is never so
neat and tidy!

8.  The meaning of “the first resurrection” determines whether the “1000 year” reign
of Christ’s faithful ones precedes or follows the Second Advent.  The identities of
those seated on the thrones in Rev. 20:4a are kept vague.  In Revelation 20, only
the martyrs are clearly said to experience “the first resurrection” (v.4b,c,d).   Before
their “resurrection,” these “souls” were beheaded; they suffered because of their
witness for Jesus Christ.  Now they "live," which in this context must mean “rise.”  
Their reign is associated with those who sit on the “thrones” (v.4a), a translation of a
Greek word used 47 times in the entire book, and outside this verse it always refers
to thrones in heaven, except for Satan’s throne (2:13) and the throne of his
henchman, “the beast” (13:2, 16:10).  These martyrs have conquered "the beast" (v.
4b,c), yet at least some who conquered “the beast” were earlier seen “standing
beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands” (15:2), a clear reference to
heavenly activity (cf 3:21).  For early Christians who were not pre-millennialists,
heaven meant joy between death and resurrection for non-martyrs as well as for
martyrs, just as all early views of pre-millennialism taught that holy ones of all ages,
not only the martyrs, would rise to share in the delights of the millennium (Justin in
Dial. 80).

9.  This "first resurrection” occurs after physical death, and so cannot refer to the
conversion leading up to baptism.  Both conversion and baptism produce martyrs,
but in Rev. 20:4-5 the martyrs are martyrs before they obtain “the first resurrection.”  
All who experience “the first  resurrection” can never die again, since logically there
is no room for another death between the first death and “the second death” (v.6).  
The resurrection that St. John saw in vision need not mean a literal resurrection.  
This “first resurrection” cannot be a physical one, since the resurrection of the
bodies of all the dead will take place on the Last Day!  Pre-millennialism teaches at
least two bodily resurrections separated by ten centuries—a first bodily resurrection
at the time of Christ’s Second Coming right before the millennium and a second
bodily resurrection right after that glorious age.  There is no Pre-millennialism
without this teaching.  Since everything the biblical writers assert is asserted by the
Holy Spirit, their assertions cannot contradict themselves.  St. John asserts that
Jesus taught the resurrection of all the dead at once.  “The hour is coming in which
all who are in the tombs will hear His [the Son of Man’s] voice and will come out,
those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have
done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:28b-29).

10.  Parallels in words and ideas between chapters 12 and 20 suggest the same
time frame of reference.  Only these two chapters in the entire book of Revelation
call God’s chief enemy “the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and
Satan,” by using these same four titles in the same order.  Almost all biblical
scholars agree that chapter 12 rehearses the main themes of salvation history,
including the birth and ascension of Christ, with a special focus on the Devil’s
opposition.  This chapter has three scenes: an earthly scene of Satan’s initial attack
(vv.l-6), a heavenly scene of Satan’s heavenly defeat at the ascension (vv.7-12),
and an earthly scene of Satan’s final attack (vv. 13-17).  Chapter 20 advances this
theme in three scenes; the first and the third describe the progress of Satan’s defeat
as a result of his initial and last attacks on earth, while the central scene describes a
result of Satan's heavenly defeat of chapter 12.  The events of 20:1-3 and 7-10 are
clearly on earth, but the seer often presents a heavenly reaction or interlude to
earthly events (7:9-17, 11:16-19, 12:10-12, 19:1-10) and alternates between heaven
and earth.  Since the Devil’s binding (vv.1-3) and loosing (vv.7-12) are earthly
scenes, these parallels with chapter 12 suggest an earth-heaven-earth pattern in
chapter 20 also, one that helps us to discover the meaning of the living and reigning
of Christ's faithful ones (vv.4-6).  Before their bodies rise again, their souls begin to
live and reign in heaven, since Christ has cast Satan from heaven at His ascension.  
This is what “the first resurrection” means—the rising of the martyrs’ souls to
heaven at the moment of death (cf. Hippolytus in CD 11.37.4, Origen in Hom. Jer.
11.3, Ignatius of Antioch on Eph. 11:2 & Rom. 4:3, Ambrose on the Psalms, 1.47-54.)

11.  Chapter 20 uses a criss-cross word pattern (first-[second] resurrection / [first]-
second death), a pattern in which the mentioned (outer) pair of terms is spiritual
while the implied (inner) pair of terms is physical.  One finds two phrases, “first
resurrection” and “second death,” but not “second resurrection” or “first death,” yet
these are present as ideas.  These two deaths are of different qualities.  So, just as
“the second death,” an eternal post-resurrectional torment of body and soul for
some, is of a very different sort from the first, which is bodily and universal, so “the
first resurrection,” the rising of martyred souls to the state of heavenly bliss, is of a
very different sort from the second, which is bodily and universal, that is, the general
resurrection.  The first death (21:4) leads to the first resurrection for some, while the
second resurrection leads to the second death for some.  But no one who inherits
the first resurrection shall undergo the second death (v.5).  The martyrs are
experiencing spiritual life in bodily death, while apostates who are taking the beast’s
mark are experiencing spiritual death in bodily life.  St. John elsewhere mentions two
types of life and of death side by side (Jn. 5:24-25, 11:25-26).

12.  Time has tended to clarify that “1000” is one of Revelation’s symbolic numbers.  
It is true that John mentions “1000” six times in six verses (20:2-7).  But emphasis
does not make a number literal.  Seven appears almost fifty times in the entire book.  
It appears six times in one verse, 1:20, but this sort of emphasis does not mean that
there are real Lambs with seven eyes and seven horns (5:6)!  So “1000” likely
stands for a very long but unspecified period of time.  The period of Satan’s binding
seems to begin sometime after St. John’s visions, and seems to end a little while
before Christ’s Second Coming.  THE END.
QUESTION:  I used to
think that Catholics are
biblically illiterate.  Since
then, I have met Catholics
who know the Bible
surprisingly well.  Yet they
still seem ignorant when it
comes to Bible prophecy.  
For example, they have no
clue about the Millennium.  
Catholics I have met think
that there will NOT be an
earthly reign of Jesus for a
thousand years after He
comes again.  I can
understand how someone
might go with the flow and
follow tradition.  But
Catholics who read their
Bibles need to get with the
program, God's program.  
All they need to do is open
their Bibles and read
Revelation, chapter 20.  
How can any honest reader
of the Bible escape the fact
that this thousand year reign
of Christ was predicted by
St. John the Revelator?  
Answered by Rev. Paul L.
Rothermel
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