Distinguishing between The Millennium, and The
New Heaven and New Earth in the Hebrew Scriptures can be difficult. One
can argue that without the help of the New Testament we wouldn't know
for certain there are two distinct future Messiah reigning on Earth time
periods to look forward to. But I do think it's possible to draw that
conclusion from the Hebrew Bible alone. But we certainly don't get any
doctrinally absolute reason to give either a time frame of exactly 1,000
years without the Book of Revelation.
Chuck Missler likes to say
that most of what we know about the Millennium comes from the Old
Testament, not Revelation 20. Thing is I don't think he's ever cited
any OT passage as being about the New Heaven and New Earth, or New
Jerusalem.
Futurists are good at understanding everything
that happens during the Eschatological Week in Revelation based on it's OT
references. But it seems to be we're not so great at doing the same for
Chapters 20-22.
Chuck Missler also likes to define the
Millennium as the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant. But the Davidic
Promise in II Samuel 7 and elsewhere is never defined as a Thousand
years, it's defined as Forever.
Let's take Isaiah 65 for example.
Chuck Missler and others are convinced this can't be the Eternal state
yet where there is absolutely no Curse because Death does seem to
happen during this time in verse 20.
"There shall be no more
thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days:
for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an
hundred years old shall be accursed."
First off the assumption
that there is absolutely no Death in the Eternal state simply because
The Curse of Genesis 3 is gone I think is based on an assumption that no
one new will be Born during this period, and thus no one new will need
their Eternal fate to be decided. But the Eternal state is also a
return to how things where supposed to be before Adam fell, and before
Adam fell he was already told to be fruitful and multiply. Adam's Sin
is the origin of Death, I'm not a Gap or Extended Day theorist. But in
the future there could still be new people who need to make Adam's
choice. I also feel like Saved Women should get the opportunity to
experience painless childbirth if they choose to.
Yes I know how people think Jesus
statement about there being no Marriage in the Resurrection equals no
reproduction. But they're misusing that the same way that same passage is
misused to support the Sethite view of Genesis 6.
But besides all that, this verse is
expressed in a poetic style, and it's possible to interpret the real
message of the verse as being that there is no Death. Certainly not the
Death Curse we've been bound to, where it is appointed unto each Man
once to die. And which I think to an extent could still exist in the
Thousand years, nearly a Thousand Years was the normal lifespan between
the Fall and the Flood.
The thing is verses 17-19 just before this says.
"For,
behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not
be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever
in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and
her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my
people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the
voice of crying."
Now if you read that without any preconceived
notion put in your head by your favorite commentator about where this
fits into Biblical Chronology. I'm pretty sure you'd have to conclude
it resembles Revelation 21 far more then Revelation 20.
Ezekiel
40-48 is another important passage where Chuck Missler and Chris White
and almost every major commentator simply states unambiguously that this
is the Millennial Temple/Kingdom. But the thing is New Jerusalem in Revelation
21-22 is drawing on imagery of Ezekiel 40-48 constantly, not just the
12 gates named for the 12 tribes, and there are no Ezekiel 40-48
references in Revelation 20.
Ezekiel 43:7-9 tells us how long this condition God's revealing to Ezekiel will last. It does not say 1000 years, it says FOR EVER.
The differences people use to refute
seeing these as the same, are no more significant to me then the
inconsistencies between Revelation 4, Ezekiel 1 and Isaiah's visions of
the Heavenly Throne Room of God. They're clearly describing basically the
same thing, but because they're mortal four dimensional humans seeing
something that is in fact beyond their compression because they've left
Space-Time, the details of what they see, or how they choose to describe
what they see, have some pretty seemingly incompatible differences.
The
first and most obvious difference that comes to mind is that Revelation
21:22 says "And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and
the Lamb are the temple of it." And Ezekiel's vision revolves around
The Temple. But a few things to consider.
First, The Temple in Ezekiel is
very different in both how it looks and how worship there functions, it
could very well be that John seeing the same thing simply saw it as a
Royal Palace or Throne Room rather then as a Temple.
Second, Technically John just says there was no Temple in the City, and Ezekiel's Temple is technically outside the City.
Third, Revelation 21:3 does say "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men".
And sometimes the future Messianic Temple is described as the
"Tabernacle of David" (Psalm 15:1, Isaiah 16:5, Amos 9:11). The
name of Ezekiel's Jerusalem is Yahweh Shammah, meaning "The LORD (YHWH) is there" Ezekiel 48:35, clearly parallels that verse from Revelation 21.
And Ezekiel's description of the "Temple" he saw never tells us the material the walls are made out of. For all we know it could be a Tabernacle rather then a Stone Temple.
Chis
White when he mentions this debate briefly acknowledges the
similarities but says the differences are far greater. But it's only
the Size he singles out, (and the size is the only difference I even remotely consider a problem). Observing that the size of Revelation's New
Jerusalem dwarfs the entirety of the Promised land laid out in Ezekiel,
being about half the size of the Continental United States.
But
again, in the Eternal state physical reality itself has changed, and
even size could be a matter of Ezekiel and John's perception.
Some have argued you can calculate the
circumference of the Earth by combing the measurements in Ezekiel
40-48 and Revelation 21-22.
There
are reasons I'm not inclined to agree with the entity of that site's
premise, but it's an interesting mathematical theorem.
The main point is that regardless of size Yahweh-Shammah and New Jerusalem have the exact same shape, a perfect Cube.
Perspective is important to consider, Ezekiel ultimately spends more time on the rest of the Holy Land, while John pretty much only describes New Jerusalem.
I think maybe Ezekiel is describing the size of the city as it appears from the Outside and John how it appears on the inside. That may be difficult to wrap your head around, but remember in The New Creation the laws of physics itself could be different. If you're a Comic Book Nerd, think of it maybe as being like the Bottled City of Kandor, except the bottle is still larger then the entire modern city of Jerusalem.
Another objection is Ezekiel
also seems to allude to people possibly dying. Ezekiel's style isn't
as Poetic as Isaiah, but I still feel the same arguments can apply.
That Sacrifices are performed is an issue for Christian theology whether it's the Millennium or the New Creation. One answer I've considered is that the Sacrifices referenced are semi-allegorical and it's all Jesus Blood that was shed on The Cross.
Revelation
22 begins by describing the same river Ezekiel describes. Now I've
seen people say Ezekiel's River is also in Joel and Zechariah, in
contexts that have it coming into existence around the time of
Armageddon. And not connecting it to Revelation 22 at all. But I've
looked at the relevant references in Joel and Zechariah, and they don't
seem like they're describing this single very special River at all,
certainly not as identically as Revelation 22 does. Daniel 12 also
seems to see the same River and places it after the White Throne
Judgment.
But still the view I'm advocating here could have the
River come into existence at the start of the Millennium in some form,
before the Holy City's descends and perfects it. But it's also clear to me
in Daniel 12 that some Old Testament discussions of Eschatology tend to
skip right from the end of the First Resurrection to the Second
Resurrection, effectively skipping the Millennium the same as Chuck
Missler likes to point out how The Church Age is often skipped over.
The possibility that much of what Ezekiel describes begins in The Millennium is possible. The connection to Revelation 21-22 are pretty much all in the Description of New Jerusalem itself, which directly comes into view in the last chapter.
Paul
defines The Church as The Temple of God in I Corinthians 3:16 "Know ye
not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth
in you?" And Ephesians 2:21 "In whom all the building fitly framed
together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:". In the Latter the
Twelve Apostles are also defined as the Foundation, fitting Revelation
21's description where it's in parallel to the Twelve Tribes. Jesus
promises the Disciples they'd rule the Twelve Tribes at The Last Supper.
And
each individual believer's body is also defined as The Temple of God in
I Corinthians 6:19 "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of
the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not
your own?". John 2:21 also defines the body of Jesus as The Temple.
And The Church is The Body of Christ.
New Jerusalem is spoken of
as being synonymous with The Bride of Christ. "Come hither, I will show
thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." So all this imagery overlaps. I do
not believe any of this contradicts there being a literal Temple
Building or City lay out like Ezekiel saw and measured.
I still
see Israel and The Church as distinct Covenants, don't think I'm
confused on that. But they are linked Covenants, our salvation is still
derived from Genesis 12. The promise made to the Twelve Disciples
shows those in the Church that are of physical Israel are in a sense
inheritors of both covenants. The 144,000 are also interesting to look
at, I don't allegorize them, they are specific people from each Tribe
minus Dan. But in Revelation 14 they sound an awful lot like The
Church.
Now you might be worried that I'm supporting some form of
Amillennialism, by pushing up some of the epic unmistakable details of
the Millennium. No, I still take Revelation 20 literally.
Even if the
time-span of a Thousand Years doesn't calculate to exactly how we'd
measure a Thousand Years, it's still a period of time when Christ rules on Earth with Bodily Resurrected believers. And there is still no way you
could convince me the events of Revelation 6-19, or Matthew 24, already happened in 70 A.D. or any other
period already in the past.
The problem with Amillennialisim is
making the Millennium synonymous with the Church Age. My own reading of
Revelation 19-21 gives me the impression The Church won't even be on
Earth during The Millennium. Christ's Co-Rulers there are chiefly the
Post-Rapture Tribulation Saints who were Martyred for not taking the
Mark and worshiping the Beast or his Image. But I do feel inclined to
see Pre-Church Saints, who were Resurrected soon after Jesus in 30 A.D.
as Matthew 27:52 records, as being here too.
If Ezekiel is not
describing the Millennial Temple as we keep assuming. Maybe it's wrong
to assume the Millennial Temple will be a separate building from the
coming Third Temple. The Second Temple could be rededicated after it's
violated by Antiochus Epiphanes. Jesus is at least as qualified to
rededicate a violated Temple as the Maccabees where. And if we believe Daniel
8's Little Horn applies to the coming Man of Sin as much as to
Antiochus, verse 14 says the Sanctuary will be cleansed, not destroyed
and rebuilt.
Independent
Nation States do still exist in the New Heaven and New Earth, not just The Millennium. Revelation 21:24 "And the nations of them which are
saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring
their glory and honour into it." That's probably another stumbling
block that makes people assume the Millennium in various Psalms and
Isaiah passages where perhaps they shouldn't.
Psalm 48 I believe is about the descent of New Jerusalem. It's linked to the "Sides of The North" a term elsewhere in Scripture is used only once, linked to God's Heavenly Throne in Isaiah 14.
So since I see the New
Heaven and New Earth in so many places where most see the Millennium, where
do I see the Millennium in the Hebrew Scriptures? Well some passages
that are very broad in nature might simply have both in view together,
like one simply saying The Messiah will reign for ever.
Daniel 7
is one key passage for getting from the Hebrew Bible that there is a
distinction. The Fourth Beast (Edom-Rome) is destroyed right at the
beginning of the Reign of the Son of Man in verse 11. But the other
Three beasts (Assyria, Persia, Greece) in verse 12 "they had their
dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and
time." So there is a distinction here.
I've come to support the
Post-Millenial view of Ezekiel 38&39 but allowing the possibility
of a lesser near fulfillment. Christ White while he does not agree with
my New Jerusalem view makes a good argument on this subject. Based on
that, I think it's probable that it's only really Persia which won't
continue into the Eternal State, being destroyed for taking part in the
Gog and Magog invasion.
It's possible to some degree changes will
take place even during the Millennium. Ezekiel 29-32 seems to see a
period of Egypt being desolate and it's people scattered for 40 years,
and I also see the possibility of The Antichrist as contemporary with
the beginning of this period. Joel also sees Egypt as Desolate at the
time the Millennium starts like Edom had become. But it won't be
forever like Edom because Isaiah 19 talks about Egypt and Assyria having a
special relationship during some Future Messianic era. Whether that's
latter in the Millennium or the Eternal State I don't know.
The Jubilee is often seen as a type of the Millennium. That too should maybe be rethought.
If the the Thousand years are a "Sabbath Millennium" as often thought. Then we should remember that The Jubilee isn't the Seventh of something, it's an 8th, what comes after the Seven are all complete. Like the
8th day of Tabernacles is sometimes viewed as.
On the other hand, defining the Millennium as a
Sabbath Millennium isn't directly Biblical, and arguably draws on accepting too much Rabbinic tradition.
