Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, what is the end times eschatology known as post-millennialism? Most Christians are unaware that there are four major views on what we call the millennium, that word millennium taken from the Latin mile, meaning a thousand, the millennium, that is the 1,000 years when Christ will rule and reign in peace and prosperity. All agree that the portion of the Bible which teaches this truth is found in Revelation chapter 20.

And that scripture says, then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into the pit and shut it and sealed it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be released for a little while. Then I saw thrones and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed.

Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection.

Over such, the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and they will reign with him for a thousand years. Unquote. From Revelation 20, the text that tells us about the millennium. This is the only place in the Bible where this 1,000 year period is mentioned specifically. Consequently, it's important to understand from the outset and that gives me opportunity to introduce to you our 2023 to through 24 midweek Bible study on this very topic.

Did you know that there is more than one view on end times prophecy than the one most likely popular in your church? The one I will teach in our upcoming midweek study is one with a long history in church doctrine. It's ancient, biblical, and true, I submit to you. Our midweek Bible study this year will be on Thursday evening at 7 p.m. at Leo's Place in Idaho Falls, and our first meeting will be on October 26, October 26, Thursday night at 7 p.m. at Leo's Place.

We look forward to seeing you there, but in order to give you an idea of what we will teach over the course of this time, let me give you a brief comparison and contrast between the major features of the two views. First of all, one of the most important things to keep in mind when we think of Revelation 20, which we've just read for you is the number 1,000.

Most teachers in the modern evangelical church today, most likely in your church and then those within the sound of my broadcast voice today, most churches think that Revelation is talking about a literal 1,000 years and that it can only come after Jesus comes again following the Great Tribulation and the Battle of Armageddon. Of course, how can it be anything else? Well, I've been taught since I was a child, right? But what most teachers fail to take into account is that the kind of writing Revelation is, that is, its genre, is apocalyptic. That's the kind of writing it is, and every genre has its own unique style and form and nomenclature.

If I begin a piece with, once upon a time in a land far away, and I end it with, and they lived happily ever after, you know I'm spinning a fairy tale. That is its genre. If I put a date at the top of a piece of paper, along with the name and address of a person, and begin with Dear John, and then conclude with Sincerely, Your Friend Bob, you know I'm writing a personal letter. That is its genre. Every genre of writing has its own rules and style.

In fact, you cannot reasonably hope to understand what's being written without knowing and understanding the genre of the writing. As an example, I like to use the phrase, you send me to the moon. You send me to the moon. See what it means in the context of each genre. How about a letter between an astronaut and a NASA executive?

It literally means that the NASA executive is sending the astronaut to the moon. Or, a Greek petitioner of prophecy, of ancient prophecy, and the oracle at Delphi centuries ago. Indeed, the oracle at Delphi was known to bring down the moon. So, indeed, the petitioner who paid for his prophecy could be sent to the moon. Or perhaps I say, you send me to the moon to my wife.

A love poem from a husband to a wife, you send me to the... The very same phrase means something different in each context. If you do not understand the genre of a writing, you'll get it wrong. Revelation, where the millennium is revealed, is one of a genre called apocalyptic. And if we do not heed the rules of apocalyptic and its style and its form, we'll get it wrong.

And one of those rules is that apocalyptic uses numbers symbolically, not literally. Apocalyptic uses numbers symbolically, not literally. And revelation is of the genre of apocalyptic. In fact, the number 1,000 is used almost always symbolically in the whole Bible and not literally. For example, in Psalm chapter 50, for every beast of the forest is mine, the psalmist says, the cattle on a thousand hills.

Is that a literal number? Does that mean the thousand and first hill the Lord doesn't have? No, it's symbolic, isn't it? Or from Job chapter 9. Job complains when he is in dialogue with God.

He says, if one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand times. Oh, is that literal or is that symbolic? Maybe on the thousand and first time, you could get the best of God in argument. No, no, no, no. That's a symbolic number.

Or in 2 Peter 3.8, famously, Peter says, but do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day, unquote, right? Symbolic. A good example of this also from Revelation is the symbolic use of 10 days in Revelation 2.10, where that verse says, do not fear what you're about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested and for 10 days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life, unquote.

Those 10 days of suffering are symbolic, not literal. They are symbolic of a brief time of persecution, howsoever intense it might be. It's not a literal 10 days. In fact, it is meant 10 days to deliberately contrast with a much greater time of blessing and goodness represented by the thousand year millennium. A thousand is a multiple of 10 and is meant to communicate to John's first audience.

John's first audience was meant to understand that God's time of blessing and peace is much greater than any persecution they might undergo temporarily. It's a symbolic number, not literal. In the light of these interpretive realities, we see the 1,000 years of Revelation 20 as symbolic of a great, vast stretch of time in which Christ reigns as king over a renewed creation. And as we will observe in our class on Thursday night, I invite you to it, that is a time when the lion will lie down with the lamb and the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, as Isaiah says.

Oh, dear listener, it will not happen suddenly. It will not happen magically when the skies are opened and Christ descends to the earth to establish his kingdom. No, he has already established his kingdom. In the opening chapter of Mark, he says, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel or as he tells the Pharisees, but if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

The kingdom of God has come upon you. The kingdom of God commenced with the first advent of Christ and it has been growing apace since that day. The church has grown from a clutch of 11 frightened disciples to billions of disciples in every corner of the globe. Revelation 20 gives us one reason why. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and the great chain.

And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into the pit and shut it and sealed it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be released for a little while. Oh, dear listener, Satan has been bound and chained and thrown into the bottomless pit for this vast period of time. That's why the church has grown. Many of my Christian friends retort, they say, well, how can you say that?

There's still so much evil and demonic activity and wickedness, they say. Well, you know, that's true, but the text does not tell us that all evil influence is or will be eliminated. No, what it does say is that Satan will not be able to deceive the nations any longer. That's the sense in which he's been bound. In other words, the nations, and that's not just individuals, dear listener, but whole nations, will see the truth of the gospel and the messiahship of Jesus Christ, and they will flock to him and be saved.

The people of God will go from being a small group of ethnic Jews in a remote corner of the world who claim exclusive knowledge of God. All the people of God will go from that to billions of souls, as Revelation says, from every tribe and language and people and nation. Oh, before Satan was bound, just think of it. Before Satan was bound, he had the nations, except for the Jews, deceived and enslaved, and it can be made a case that even Israel, most of the time, was idolatrous and deceived and enslaved too.

Well, the Old Testament church was tiny, but after Christ, the nations had their eyes opened, and over the centuries we've seen, the church has grown to being the largest religion in the world, if you will. Even our Lord remarked on this phenomenon. He said, when the disciples returned after initial foray into preaching the gospel and casting out demons, our Lord said, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven, unquote. I saw Satan fall. In other words, Satan had been dethroned from his princely sway over the hearts and minds of the people of the world.

From here on in, there would be a difference in the reach, power, and extent of the kingdom of God. We think, now, I'm just trying to speak for all post-millennialists when I say this, and I hope they would agree, we think that the reach and power and extent of God's kingdom will go on until, as Isaiah says, the air shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. If the thousand years of Revelation 20 is an indefinite period of time that may stretch for many millennia, and we assert that it is, well, indeed, it may go on for 20,000 years or 200,000 years instead of the mere 2,000 years since Christ.

If that's the case, then our descendants may well look upon our own days as early church history. It's a matter of perspective, dear listener. Instead of holding the book of Revelation in one hand and newspaper headlines in the other, and exclaiming, certainly this means that the rapture is going to happen tomorrow, well, we say, well, maybe the Bible is not saying what we thought it was saying when we so badly misinterpret it, yeah. And we take a longer-term view that sees the Bible in the light in which the apostle John's first readers would have read it, and that's better.

It's also very important in interpreting prophecy in the Bible, that is, how would that first audience have read it? And there we find the true meaning. In Revelation, for example, John did not just write down a bunch of hard, indecipherable stuff that would sit around for centuries and mystify everybody who read it until someone came along and saw locusts with beating wings and fire coming from their tails as helicopters with machine guns, or that when Revelation says that every eye will see him, that is, Christ did his return. It means we'll watch the second coming on TV. Gee, I wonder if it'll be commercial-free.

Huh? Oh, this is all patently silly stuff, but it is being propagated by Bible teachers in thousands of churches all across America. No, John wrote Revelation for a specific audience that needed to hear what he was writing in John's day. Consequently, John would expect them to know the symbols and metaphors that he used and the symbolic language that's part and partial of this genre of writing that is apocalyptic.

For example, in Revelation 13, that details what happens with the beast, that there was a well-developed tradition at the time that John's audience was aware of that the debauched Emperor Nero died by a wound to the head and neck and was thought to have come back from the dead and would return to conquer Rome with an army from the east. And they would cross at the river Euphrates, even as Revelation 16, 12 tells us. And this myth was called the Nero Redidivus, Nero revived. And, wonder of wonders, the number of his name added up to 666. Right?

Oh, this is how John's audience, and thus we, ought to understand this chapter. Because the beast, Nero, was persecuting this very church at the time, and we should understand all chapters of Revelation as those first century Christians would have understood it. It's not as sexy or interesting or as fantasizing, perhaps, about Klaus Schwab or Henry Kissinger or Vladimir Putin as the Antichrist, but at least this understanding is truer to the text.

And when we begin to understand the millennium as John's first century audience would have understood it, that is, the seven churches of Asia, then we begin to see that our Lord was encouraging a suffering, persecuted church who wondered where God was and if his kingdom would ever dawn. And our Lord's answer to those questions is very clear to that persecuted church. He said, you have made them, that is, those from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth, as Revelation 5 tells us.

Or from Revelation chapter 11, then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven saying, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. That was John's answer to the persecuted church of the first century and to us consequently. Now, I realize that this is new stuff for many modern evangelicals. We're accustomed to Revelation, Red Heifer, Rapture, Fire Off Future teachings, aren't we? Revelation, Red Heifer, Rapture, Fire Off Future teachings when it comes to Christ's return and the setting up of his kingdom.

But the Bible is clear that the kingdom is already here, and it's growing, it's blossoming, it's flourishing like never before, and it has been since it started, and it will continue to grow and blossom and flourish until he comes again. The Bible is also quite optimistic about this future. We look forward to exploring that with you in our Bible study. Let me invite you to that once again.

Our midweek Bible study is beginning October 26th, that's a Thursday evening, at 7 p.m. at Leo's Place, and we look forward to seeing you there, bring your family, bring friends, and we'll look at these issues and explore this understanding of post-millennialism in comparison with the other views, though, too. We won't neglect those. Well, the Bible is quite optimistic about this future that we're talking about and over the long run we're talking about, and we lose sight of just how far Christ's kingdom has come.

If we just kind of myopically, excuse me, if we just myopically look at our own day and all of the so-called signs that the rapture is imminent, what do you think the year A.D. 999 looked like? In the year A.D. 999 at the dawn of the year 1000, all of Europe saw the same signs that we see, and they were just as certain that the world was going to end in their day. There were in times hysteria, just like today. For example, all of Europe was certain that Christ was going to descend on Mount Sinai, and thousands left their homes and made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where they were dying from starvation and disease and savage bandits.

The Huns invaded Europe at that time in spurts and waves. Famine swept over the continent, and plagues killed thousands. All the signs were there, and they matched Bible prophecy. But as the fateful day struck and the calendar turned to the year 1000, there was only the chirping of crickets, the sound of wind, and a cloudy, cold morning in the same old world as the day before. But several things that very few people noticed were, for example, that the Christian faith had grown to this point, that all of Europe now embraced Christianity and looked forward to Christ's return.

Or Jesus was known, and he was loved, and his impact on the world was growing stronger every day. The people failed to realize that. The great Athanasius, who lived in the 4th century, he put it this way, the transformation that Christ was bringing, he articulated it when he said, and I quote him extensively because he has good observations, and he lived in the 4th century. He says, he it is who won victory from his demon foes and trophies from the idolaters, even before his bodily resurrection.

Namely, all the heathen, who from every region have adjured the tradition of their fathers and the false worship of idols, and are now placing their hope in Christ and transferring their allegiance to him. The thing is happening before our very eyes, Athanasius would say. The thing is happening before our very eyes here in Egypt.

Now, Athanasius was from a town in North Africa, thereby Egypt, and thereby another prophecy is fulfilled, he says, for at no time have the Egyptians ceased from their false worship, save when the Lord of all, riding as on a cloud, came down here in the body, and brought the error of idols to nothing, and won over everybody to himself, and through himself to the Father. He it is who was crucified with the sun and moon as witnesses, and by his death, salvation has come to all men, and all creation has been redeemed. Unquote.

From Athanasius, in his work on the incarnation, all, yes, Athanasius saw the world beginning to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we are certain that the world prophesied by all of the Old Testament and New Testament will be brought to bear on this side of Christ's return. That is, as Isaiah 11 puts it, Isaiah 11 says about that world that we, post-millennials, assert will come before Christ's return. That is, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The wolf and the lamb shall graze together, the lion shall eat straw like the axe, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord."

Unquote from Isaiah 11 and Isaiah 65. What this has the net effect of doing is giving us a long-range vision for future and labor towards building a far more righteous and holy community and culture around us and the church in order to transform that world. That's what we post-millennialists believe and teach. Whether you realize it or not, dear listener, our forebearers have done precisely this, and it's why we have things like running water, or you can hear me on a broadcast over the airwaves, and airplanes fly over us all over the world, cell phones we have in our pockets, and arguably the best form of government to date.

That is a republic formed by a written constitution. Oh, dear listener, these kinds of things do not come about by throwing up our hands and saying things like, oh, the world's getting worse and worse. Look at it. All there is to do is save a few souls and wait for the rapture. Surely it's imminent, right?

Oh, dear listener, the church has had that kind of mental and spiritual attitude for almost 200 years now, and it's why we've got what we've got. That is a sick, wicked, dying world that's on the edge of nuclear destruction with a war in the Ukraine. No, dear listener, as goes the church, so goes the nation. As goes the church, so goes the world. The church has retreated over the last 200 years with dispensationalism and premillennialism.

The church has retreated into her cocoon and taken the advice of one of my favorite radio pastors. He was one of my favorite radio pastors, though he was wrong in this point. That was J. Vernon McGee. You remember he used to say from time to time, we should never soil the garments of the gospel by getting involved in politics and culture. Oh, that was a council of retreat.

That was a council of defeat, and he was just plain wrong on that, but it's because of his eschatology that he held it. Our eschatology does indeed inform and help to shape how we behave in the present world, and he was just plain wrong on that. No, as our Lord tells us, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

Yes, dear listener, we can go forth boldly and aggressively in making disciples of all nations, not just scattered individuals here and there, but discipling all nations and baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We are commanded to go. We are assured that the gates of hell, as we aggressively assault them, the gates of hell will not prevail against us, and we will triumph, and there will be a day of victory and completion when all the things prophesied about the kingdom of God will come to full fruition this side of Christ's return. Come and join us as we study these things.

We will be exploring them, as I said a little earlier. We will be exploring these themes and much, much more, and we'll begin our study Thursday evening, October 26th at 7 p.m. at Leo's Place. Come and join us. We'll be using the book Paradise Restored by David Chilton as a resource, and we will constantly be grounding it in the Bible as well. We've always had fun in the past at our midweek Bible study.

We buy pizza and we drink Coke and we share with one another. We have fun doing it, so we look forward to seeing you and perhaps a friend or your family. But just come. Come and join us for our midweek Bible study on Thursday evening, October 26th, and all Thursday evenings after that at 7 p.m. at Leo's Place. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard.

Come and join us and call us for more information at 208-523-0196. That's area code 208-523-0196.