Monday, May 31, 2010

The Millennium – Revelation Chapter 20

Happy Memorial Day weekend to everyone. This past Saturday, we went to a wonderful wedding ceremony of my niece Allie and her beau David. It was a beautiful ceremony, and a special reception, because we were able to see so many family members that we've missed. Congratulations to Allie and David.

I have recently read a great book on the Millennium by M Waymeyer called 'Revelation 20 and the Millennial Debate', and I wanted to write a little bit about it. Professor Waymeyer is a graduate of the Masters Seminary in California, and he has provided a clear summary of the three main positions in understanding the Millennium. The opening chapters are written in the form of a class syllabus. This makes it a quick and easy read that provides a good deal of depth of understanding on the various Millennial positions. Another good thing about this book is that it doesn't try and present something new on this topic, instead it is a very good summary of existing thought. Prof. Waymeyer writes from a Pre-Trib / Pre-Millennium position, where Jesus first comes in a Rapture of the Saints, followed by 7 years of Tribulation, concluding in the literal 1,000 year reign of Christ on Earth with the Saints.

He provides a guide to some crucial questions in trying to understand Revelation Chapter 20. The various interpretations of Revelation 20:1–6 seek to answer these five crucial questions:

A.     Is the binding of Satan present or future?

B.     Is the "first resurrection" spiritual or physical?

C.     Is the duration of the thousand years symbolic or literal?

D.     Is the locale of the millennial reign heaven or earth?

E.     Is the chronology of Revelation 19:21–20:1 recapitulatory or sequential?


 

A Summary of Key Interpretive Issues in Rev 20:1–6

   

Issue

Premil

Postmil

Amil

   

Satan's Binding: 

Future 

Present/Future 

Present 

   

First Resurrection: 

Physical 

Spiritual 

Spiritual 

   

Thousand Years:

Literal 

Literal/Symbolic 

Symbolic 

   

Locale of Reign:

Earth 

Earth/Heaven 

Heaven 

   

Chronology of 19–20: 

Sequential 

Sequ/Recap 

Recap 

   


 

From M Waymeyer, 'Revelation 20 and the Millennial Debate'.


 

  1. Is the Binding of Satan happening today or sometime in the future?

    Here, with this initial question, Prof. Waymeyer does a very good job setting out the reasons for accepting the PreTrib view. Let's start by looking at Rev. 20:1-3


     

    1Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. 2And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 3and 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. (ESV)


     

    These verses show that an Angel comes from heaven (I believe this is Jesus, see Rev. 1:18, as He is the One with the keys to the Abyss and Hades). This Angel seizes Satan and throws him into the Abyss/pit, shut it and seals the door, so that Satan may not deceive the nations any longer. He is placed in this "jail" for 1,000 years, and then is released for a little while.

    So as shown on the chart (above), the PreTrib view believes this binding of Satan takes place in the future. While Amillennialists believe that Satan is currently bound, so that he cannot deceive the nations. And the Post-Trib view have some understand Satan to have been bound at the time of Christ's victory on the cross, while others see the binding of Satan to represent a future point in time when the successful proclamation of the gospel will have effectively reduced Satan's influence to nothing (Gregg 1997: 457). Because postmillennialists teach that the present age gradually merges into the millennium, the precise time of the binding is not always emphasized in their writings. (This is fn 3 in Waymeyer's book).

    Here are three author's quotes from Prof. Waymer's book that persuasively show that this passage does not mean that Satan is presently bound (as the Amillennialist's believe):

    a.    "The imagery of throwing Satan into a pit and shutting it and sealing it over him gives a picture of total removal from influence on earth" (Grudem 1994: 1117).

    b.     "The elaborate measures taken to insure his custody are most easily understood as implying the complete cessation of his influence on earth (rather than a curbing of his activities)" (Mounce 1977: 353).

    c.    "If a symbolic presentation of the binding of Satan were intended to teach that Satan was rendered completely inactive, what more dramatic picture could be provided than is here portrayed?" (Walvoord 1986: 231).


     

    These writer's are very persuasive to me in showing that we should not interpret Revelation 20:1-3 as saying that Satan is somehow bound today. Yet I have a difficult time embracing the PreTrib view for a number of reasons related to Revelation Chapter 20. But for now, let me raise perhaps this argument, perhaps the best argument for the PreTrib viewpoint, and I will try in my next post and summarize the reasons I still reject the PreTrib view of the Millennium. I think it's important to address the best arguments of a position, to make sure that I truly understand a topic.

Until next time, Praise Jesus our Redeemer and Savior. We can trust that because our God is not a God of confusion, and that His Spirit will lead us into all truth. Have a great week. /s/Tom

Saturday, May 22, 2010

The Devil Doesn’t Touch Christians?

Happy Sabbath to y'all. I am battling rattling lungs and a cough and sniffly sinuses, but I think I am on the upswing for better health. Here's to a nice warm, sticky weekend!

I have recently thought about the promise of God that the Elect are free. Free from the chains of having to sin. Free from having our thought-life consumed by thinking about sinful actions. And free from a life that is characterized by sin. Praise Jesus Who for freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1). Now I am also wrestling with one of those tough verses 1 John 5:18 which I think has application to the topic of freedom in Christ. Here is 1 John 5:18:

We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. (ESV)

So did we read this right? The Devil does not touch anyone who is born of God? Let's place this in context with another section of the Bible, the wonderful Book of Job. In this we see the righteous servant of God Job. And the Devil accuses Job before God on the grounds that God has blessed Job so much that if everything was taken away, then Job would "curse" God (Job 1:11). And so God lifts His protection from Job and allows Satan to attack him with all of the worst tragedies a person can face in this life: Job's 10 children were killed (Job 1:19), all of his property and wealth were stolen by thieves (Job 1:15-17), and Job's good health was taken by horribly painful sores all over his body (Job 2:7). And through all of this, Job did not sin with his lips and did not curse the Lord (Job 2:10).

So how does the story of Job help in explaining 1 John 5:18's teaching that Satan does not touch the Elect? I think that if we look at the main objective of Satan against Job (to cause Job to sin, to curse God – Job 1:11), we see the close connection between Satan and our own sinful nature. This means that Satan wants us to become slaves to sin, and to thereby have our lives filled with sin (whatever consumes a person to that he is enslaved – 2 Peter 2:19). And so, there is an intertwining of our sinful lives and Satan. We want to sin, and Satan helps us to do it.

We see this drawn out in 1 John 5:18, where the verse starts out by saying that those born of God do not keep on sinning. Does this mean that long-time Christians will live perfect lives? No, I don't think so. Even the Apostle Paul considered himself a "wretched man", and that there was a war taking place in his mind - I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! (Romans 7:23-24) And so, Christians are in a battle against their own sinful lusts and desires, and a powerful enemy is attacking us to have us go back to our previous sinful life.

So what is Paul's shout of joy in facing this battle that we are involved in?His shout is this Who will rescue me? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:25)
Our Rescuer is the righteous life lived by Jesus the Messiah, and His perfect sacrifice offered on our behalf that saves us from our sins. Through Jesus' death, and our faith making Jesus our Lord and Savior, we are now "dead" to sins (Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? - Romans 6:1-2). And so we see the reason for Paul's joyful praise in Romans 7:25, the Elect are rescued by Jesus, and by His death we are now dead to sins. How much can a dead person be tempted to sin? It's hard to sin when your eyes can't see, your tongue can't speak, and there are no feelings in your members, right? And so our death to sin provided by Jesus is the source of the freedom that is provided to us all who call Jesus Lord (Galatians 5:1). We are free to no longer sin! Yeah!

Thus, though Satan can "touch" us by harming our possessions, our health, even by harming our loved ones as he did with Job (if God so permits), he cannot touch us by making us sin. To that, we are protected.

My take away application is this - Do you feel free? Do you feel as though you are dead to all of the sins that have plagued you in your past life? Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. (1 Peter 2:16). Thanks be to God for His Grace and for sending His Son. Amen.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

The Bible – Has it Changed Over Time?

Happy Fishing Opener to everyone in Minnesota. The fish must be biting, but who cares when you have the beautiful weather that we have this weekend.

Let me discuss in a little bit more detail what I posted as a comment to my most recent post. A common charge against the faith of Christians is that the Bible is untrustworthy. I'll call this "the Evolution argument", and by this I mean that because everything changes over time, then the Bible must likewise also be unreliable because it was written so long ago. It must have changed a lot since it was originally written, right? These people who attack the faith suggest that later Christians must have changed the Bible to add things about Jesus that couldn't be true, like His Divinity. And so, this is an important topic. If the Bile is unreliable, why should anyone trust what is said about Jesus?


 

  1. The Example of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest untouched copies of the OT books.


 

Here's my technical artistic depiction of the difference between the DSS and the Masoretic text <grin>:

Dead Sea Scrolls roughly 100 AD -------------------------------------à 1950 AD discovered

(The Dead Sea Scrolls not touched or copied for 1,850 years)


 

Masoretic Text of the OT copied again and again for over 2,000 years:

        llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllà copied many times over 2,000 years. And it still is 95% the same as what is contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And no significant doctrine is effected by any of the copyists differences. Instead, most of the differences are minor, mostly consisting of spelling variations.


 

The Masoretic Text is the same as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Example of Isaiah 53. DSS and the Masoretic text are 95% identical. If any OT text was going to be changed by Christian copyists it would be the prophecy about the Messiah contained in Isaiah 53. But instead there are only 17 differences between the DSS and the Masoretic text.

  1. 10 of the 17 differences is alternate spellings (similar to in America 'Judgment' is spelled without the 'e', while in Great Britain it is spelled 'judgement' with the 'e' in the middle.) These differences have no effect on any meaning,
  2. 4 of the 17 differences are the addition of a conjunction. Again, no change in the meaning.
  3. 3 of the 17 changes are contain in Isaiah 53:11, where it says 'They shall see", and the DSS add "light" which is not contained in the Masoretic text. Again no change in the meaning.


 

And that's all of the changes between the Dead Sea Scrolls that are pure, uncopied, untouched for 1,850 years and the Masoretic text of the OT which was repeatedly copied for over 2,000 years. They are identical in meaning, with only a very few, minor changes, with most of these differences being spelling changes. And it is the same with the other portions of the OT as well. The text contained in the DSS is the same as the Masoretic text, again with only a few, immaterial differences between the two manuscripts. This is the best example showing that copyists of the Bible took their job seriously, and that we are able to trust that the Bible we now have in our hands today is a near-perfect copy of what the original author wrote.


 

  1. Early Papyrus from Gospel of Matthew.

Here is another reason to trust in the Bible's authenticity of being what the original author's actually wrote:

Papyrus Discovery
In 1994, a segment of the Greek text of Matthew's Gospel appears to now have been dated before AD 66. This Papyrus, P64, contains segments of Matthew 26:23, 31 on both sides of three fragments. 

Carsten Peter Thiede, then  Director of the Institute for Basic Epistemological Research in Paderborn, did the research on this Papyrus. According to The Times of London, December 24 1994, he determined, "that the Gospel according to Matthew is an eyewitness account written by contemporaries of Christ."

It appears that within five years after the death and resurrection of Christ, most of His words and deeds had been committed to a simple written (Tom's note, perhaps a common verbal group of stories) Hebrew form and Matthew is, of course, assumed to be part of this compilation. Within a decade, this corpus would have been translated into a Greek version for church requirements. This body of information is often called the "Q-document" (for German, quelle, source). Around the year AD 50 the original material was developed into written Greek form and the "synoptic" Gospels were composed, probably since the persecutions were imminent. The key point is that eyewitnesses were still around to verify the details.

While some argue that Matthew, as an eye-witness, would not have depended on other sources for his Gospel, it can also be argued that he didn't need to reinvent the wheel regarding the narrative of Jesus' life. It had been sufficiently written down, and Matthew verified it by accepting much of it. Rather, the information unique to Matthew's Gospel demonstrates that Matthew was indeed with Jesus – and with his pen in hand. (from Koininia House E-News, May 4, 2010).

Conclusion. Be careful to note what I am not saying. I am not saying that because we have confidence that we have something very close to the original transcripts of the Biblical writings, that this proves that the Bible is Divinely created. No, instead, my post today is instead my attempt to show that the Biblical Books were not corrupted through the years of copying. We can have assurance that the Bible we read today is something very close to what the original authors wrote. God bless you, and your walk with the Creator, through Jesus the Messiah our Lord. /s/Tom