Sermon Tone Analysis

Overview

In the previous episode (Rev 19, Part 2) we looked at how John’s use of the Old Testament, especially Ezekiel 38-39, more or less proves that Revelation 16-20 cannot be read as a linear sequence of events, but as a series of cycles that describe the same series of events leading to the return of Jesus and the destruction of the Beast.

In this episode we explore one major difficulty for this approach: If, as this approach validates, the “kingdom” and “thousand year” language used in the book actually refer to the present Church Age, how is it that Satan can be said to be “bound” and imprisoned during the present Church Age.

This seems absurd and some answers to the question are weak.

Listen as we propose a different explanation, one that dovetails beautifully with the Deuteronomy 32 worldview.

So last time we went through at length the Armageddon element of Revelation 19.

And we looked at how John’s use of the Old Testament more or less proves that Revelation 16-20 (that section) should be regarded as recapitulation cycles about the judgment of the beast at Armageddon and the return of Jesus and the end of the present age.

So if you have not listened to Revelation 19, Part 2, you’re going to need to, or certain things in this episode will make no sense at all because I’m not going to repeat it here.

But I will offer a bit of a summary.

So as far as what we did in that last episode, I’ll say it this way:

Summary of Last Week

1) The Old Testament use by John, specifically of Ezekiel 38-39, in chapters that precede the second coming (that is Revelation 16-19) and also in chapters that follow the “thousand year” language of Revelation 20 forces the conclusion that the kingdom language up through Revelation 20 is basically the present Church age.

You know, you really can’t wiggle out of it if you see that John, in his description of Armageddon, is taking a pretty clear deep dive into Ezekiel 38-39 (the Gog and Magog battle).

Then we’ve got him aligning Revelation 16 to

Ezekiel 38-39.

He does the same thing in Revelation 19.

And then when we get Revelation 20, after the Lord has returned, we get Gog and Magog specifically mentioned in that climactic battle.

So you can’t read these things as three separate events in a linear chronology, or else you have three Gog and Magog events.

Or… It’s just ridiculous.

So what we have instead is a recycling of the same series of events three times in these chapters.

It’s actually more if you loop in the bowl and the trumpet judgments and all that.

So that was the first thing we talked about and summarized.

eschatology

Now that, in turn, produces an eschatology that has the present age (the Church Age) headed toward Armageddon.

No problem there

premillennialist system flawed

1) We interacted with an article with Meredith Kline, where he basically uses this material to destroy the premillennialist eschatological system.

And I said, “Yeah,

he does destroy the system, for the most part.”

But all he really destroys is the traditional definition of premillennialism or how people who believe in a literal reign of Christ on earth are accustomed to articulating that idea.

They’ll use the references to 1,000 years in Revelation 20 as sort of the foundation for that view.

And what I suggested was that we abandon that.

What if we ditch the

“premillennial” or the “millennial” language?

What if the idea of a literal messianic reign on earth doesn’t depend on the word “thousand” in Revelation 20?

If you do that (again, you have to listen to the episode) then the literal kingdom idea is alive and well.

It’s just not 1,000 years.

It’s forever.

And it follows Armageddon.

So we talked about that.

Pastor’s View

1) You know, and basically, I had some personal notes in that last episode.

My position, just generally, is that when all of this stuff in the book of Revelation plays out on earth, Christ will literally return, he will literally defeat the beast (which is both a chaos system and an antichrist), and he will literally reign forever on earth in a new global Eden.

I believe in a literal messianic reign on earth that never ends.

Now that isn’t the standard way that you will hear of the literal kingdom articulated.

Because we have somehow married that biblical theological thought to specific terminology, and even more than that, specifically terminology given to us through a system—a sandbox in which we must play to talk about the reign of Christ.

Well, I don't play in the sandbox.

And I don't care about the vocabulary.

I care more about the ideas.

So that is what we covered in Revelation 19, just this whole notion that we can’t read this as a linear chronology of separate events.

It’s a rehearsal—a recapitulation—of the same series of events several times.

Now what that brought us to, at the end of the last episode, was a question.

Actually, more than one question, but sort of a fundamental question about Revelation 20.

And this is what I want to lead into here.

So I’m going to read, as I did at the end of the last episode, the first seven verses of Revelation 20 and then introduce the question that I want to start with.

So John writes:

Now remember, the “thousand years” here is the Church Age.

So he binds Satan for the Church Age, which is the present age.

Right away you should be thinking, “It sure doesn’t look like Satan’s been bound.

How do we interpret that?” Okay, hold that thought.

So he seizes the dragon, binds him for a thousand years (the length of the Church Age)…

So most amillennialists would say that this refers to dead martyrs (who are depicted a lot in the book of Revelation), that when they die, they’re still alive in heaven and they are reigning with Christ in heaven, because that’s where Christ is reigning from until he returns.

So they’re reigning during the length of the Church Age.

And I made the comment that this thousand years can’t refer to the Church Age because that just ended.

So Kline’s approach that we talked about in the last episode doesn’t really account for this instance—doesn’t really work here.

But we’re more concerned about is the “Satan” talk.

In verse 7 it says:

Then we get the whole Armageddon scene rehearsed again.

So we have Satan being bound so that he “can’t deceive the nations” until he’s released, right before Armageddon, and then everything’s destroyed (the beast and Satan and the false prophet—all this).

They’re destroyed.

There’s a general resurrection.

Then we have the eternal state.

So on and so forth.

So the first item of today, like I promised at the end of the last episode, is we’ve got to deal with this “Satan” talk, and how do traditional amillennialists (because that’s what Kline was) deal with this.

Because a majority of the Church (believe it or not—this might come as a shock to a lot of our listeners) is not premillennial, pretribulational rapture people.

Okay?

Your Reformed traditions are not.

All your Presbyterians, your Lutherans, all this kind of stuff, the major denominations, the people who are… I’m not talking denomination in name only.

The people who are really believers that are in these denominations that take Scripture seriously, they’re not thinking like Tim LaHaye.

They’re not thinking Left Behind and a rapture and all this stuff.

That’s actually a minority view, even though it’s probably the view that, if it comes to books about prophecy, that’s the view that is most dominant in terms of what is sold and what is read and consumed.

But that’s actually not the majority view historically in the Church.

So for those who look at the kingdom as only the present age, and then after the Lord returns we have some sort of… We go to heaven or some sort of eternal heavenly existence, which more often than not gets abstracted (as I commented in the last episode) that, “We can’t have the kingdom here on earth because then we’d look like premillennialists or something.”

It’s kind of odd.

This is why amillennialists will say, “The kingdom is now, and that’s the kingdom, period.

When the Lord returns then we get the eternal state, which is somewhere.

And the language in the New Testament used to describe it is idyllic or allegorical or purely metaphorical, or something.”

Again, this is how they do it.

They don't expect the literal release of the Watchers in Revelation 9.

And they don't expect, in many cases, a literal antichrist.

They don't literalize any of this.

Because the “thousand years” talk, they can make a very good case (and Kline does, and we shared that last episode) that the “thousand years” talk should not be understood literally but as the present Church Age, which is a lot longer than a thousand years anyway.

And we’re basing that on Kline’s very deft handling of how John uses Ezekiel 38-39, and Psalm 48, Isaiah 14, and a little bit of Zechariah 14, in Revelation 16 and Revelation 19 and Revelation 20.

He uses the same material in three different places, showing that John is recycling the same set of events three times.

He is not doing a linear chronology.

And if you follow that, you see it for what it is, then you can’t have an intervening literal 1,000-year reign in Revelation 20:1-6.

It doesn’t work.

So if you’re going to take this view, you still have to answer the Satan problem.

What in the world?

What could it possibly mean, that Satan is bound, like in the present age, so that he might not deceive the nations?