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“Is there any way the new heavens and new earth could be happening now?”
The idea that the new heavens and new earth prophesied in scripture exist today “in seed form” is a concept embraced by a subset of the post-millennialist prophetic school. They would say this seed “grows and spreads and becomes more and more manifest until it finally culminates in the Final Coming of Christ, which introduces the Eternal State”.
I feel like that’s a major stretch.
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As we have discussed several times in the process of trying to interpret the prophecies of Zechariah, commentators have tried a variety of approaches to the text. One of the least successful (but most respectful) of these remains Martin Luther, who wrote, “I give up. I am not sure what the prophet is talking about.”
Hey, better than blabbering on without any idea where you are going.
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We are coming down the home stretch in Zechariah, moving topic by topic, though not necessarily in the order these future events will take place. Today’s four verses are set in millennial Israel, describing the geographic upheaval that will take place at the second coming of the Lord Jesus and continue into the millennium, as well as a couple of statements concerning the rule of Christ during this period.
That rule is a well-established Old Testament fact. Zechariah can sum it up in two sentences.
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Zechariah’s final message of four is full of hope. Responding to a question from the men of Bethel about when Judah’s seventy years of judgment would finally come to an end, the prophet first paints a picture of a future Zion in which the Lord sweeps up their exiled brothers and sisters all over the world and restores them to their national home, coming to dwell in their midst. As with many prophecies, this one would not come to pass for thousands of years, but its fulfillment is as certain as the character of God himself.
Now, in view of God’s future mercies to Israel, Zechariah gives seven instructions for the men and women of Judah living in the early sixth century BC about how they ought to conduct themselves as a people for whom God intends and desires nothing but good.
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Get ready, we’re going to do a little time traveling for the next week or two.
Zechariah’s fourth message from God is his longest, even if you break it into two parts as many commentators do (using the words “And the word of the Lord of hosts came” as the starting point of each revelation). I prefer to keep the two revelations together, since both speak of the future restoration of Zion, and both use similar language to distinguish past from present and future. When we break them up, we lose what I feel are intentional associations.
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Over at Doug Wilson’s place, Levi inquires, “What is your position on Satan being released at the end of this millennium? If the nations truly come to Christ, how can they be deceived when Satan is loosed?”
Doug responds, “Levi, I don’t believe that the elect will be deceived, but I do believe that there will still be non-elect individuals at that time who would be vulnerable. But then again, the revolt will be very short-lived.”
The postmillennial view of prophetic scripture has its difficulties. To me, Satan’s rebellion is one of its most substantial.
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“Why would God release Satan after 1,000 years?”
Any answer to a “why” that is not clearly spelled out in the text of scripture itself is bound to be somewhat speculative, but it seems to me that the text of Revelation 20 does indeed give us a few clues with which to formulate a reasonable suggestion.
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What will the Middle East look like during Christ’s millennial reign?
Obadiah tells us seven distinct facts about the future division of the former land of Israel and the territory around it. Considering their number, we should not expect them to be comprehensive. They supplement the more detailed tribal division of the land described in Ezekiel. If you notice, as I did, that these details harmonize better in some places than others, bear in mind that any map drawn today based on ancient place names is bound to have considerable wiggle room. Some ancient locations are well attested; others are mere speculations. As a result, no two maps of Ezekiel’s tribal division of the land square exactly.
Both passages agree future Israel will occupy considerably more territory than at any point in its previous history, expanding north, south, east and west.
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The Christian who reads the last few verses of Joel 3 immediately says to himself, “Aha, that’s about the return of the Lord.” No Judean of Joel’s day would ever have thought such a thing, at least not if he only had Joel’s prophecy to go by; after all, you can hardly speak of a second advent when you have yet to distinguish it from the first, and both are still far in the future.
Nevertheless, that’s what this is all about. The Second Coming. Christ’s victorious return to reign over planet Earth.
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Zephaniah gives us a brief glimpse in these closing verses of the glories of the millennial reign of Christ in Israel, maybe the earliest among the Minor Prophets and one of the more fully developed visions of the Bible’s version of our future to date. Zephaniah concentrates primarily on the impact that the presence of Christ will have on his earthly people and his restoration of their perpetually-divided and much-maligned nation.
Where will Christians be in all this? Good question.
Henry Giroux wrote that a utopia is “an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members”. He was generalizing based on the way the concept has been used (and misused) for over five centuries, trying to distill a jumble of ideas down to a basic concept everyone can agree about. The word itself comes from a 1516 book of the same name written by Sir Thomas More, but Plato’s Republic took a crack at the same ideas almost 2,000 years earlier, and it may be argued that even the Tower of Babel was an early, misguided stab in that direction. It would be hard to find a time when men have not dreamed of and yearned for social perfection, though always on their own terms and by their own standards.
Literally, utopia means “no place”. You would think more people might take More’s not-too-subtle hint.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
A few weeks back we spent some time considering eternity as described in our Bibles, and the various misunderstandings that exist about it even among believers.
Tom: I promised at the end of that exchange that we would put together some thoughts on the subject of the Millennium, the coming thousand year reign of Christ, a subject explored mostly in the psalms and the writings of the Hebrew prophets and touched upon only briefly in the book of Revelation, where we are told that Satan will have no part in it, having been consigned to the abyss.
So let’s talk about this golden age a little, IC. Why have a Millennium at all? Why is it so important? Why not transport Christians straight into our promised eternity with Christ?
Tal Bachman is a 54-year old Canadian writer who had a cup of coffee with pop music success back in 1999, not all that surprising given he’s the son of legendary Guess Who guitarist and BTO-founder Randy Bachman. Since 2020, he mostly covers politics from a conservative perspective, but he’s written everything from a four-part analysis of the band U2’s influence on the political landscape to a brilliant 25-parter called “We Have Met the Enemy” that unearths the origins of the lucrative, transparently fraudulent, unbelievably evil and powerful transitioning industry. You can find his archive here, and it’s well worth it.
Tal is an ex-Mormon, the “ex” part being his rejection of the prophetic posturing of Joseph Smith. But his latest post at SteynOnline strongly suggests his belief in God and interest in what the Bible teaches about him did not get jettisoned along with his former confidence in the founder of the LDS Church.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon makes the argument that God has put a longing for the eternal into the human heart, yet seems to have provided less revelation about eternity than some of us might wish. And notwithstanding the fact that we’ve had plenty more prophetic revelation since the book of Ecclesiastes was written, we still have a tendency to speculate about what lies in store for us at the end of history as we move into eternity.
Tom: We’re discussing a recent Todd Billings post at Christianity Today entitled “The New View of Heaven Is Too Small”. What was your last point, IC?
Immanuel Can: Serious Christians need some kind of counter to the common misconception that the eternal state involves a lot of unrelenting, undifferentiated, disembodied, white-clad, purposeless hanging about on clouds …
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tom: Earlier this week I poked around the subject of Christian hope a little. My sister had kindly linked me to Todd Billings’ recent post at Christianity Today entitled “The New View of Heaven Is Too Small” in which Billings talks about Michigan deer hunters who expect to continue enjoying their favorite pastime in heaven.
I’d rather not spend more time debunking other Christians’ cherished heavenly speculations, so I’ll trust that my own post didn’t completely fail to make the case that a New Testament view of our hope in Christ is rich, multifaceted and real.
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I find the next three verses of Micah’s prophecy very difficult to interpret, so much so that I almost put this post off another week to let it percolate. I like to do the spadework first, reading a passage repeatedly and then doing any relevant word studies before consulting the commentaries.
In this case, repeated readings and word studies still left me with major questions. I finally tapped out after checking eight or ten popular commentaries, few of which provided any satisfying insights, and concluded another week wasn’t likely to produce an epiphany.
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The vast majority of Jacob’s descendants elected not to return to Israel in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, preferring the lives they had made for themselves in other nations during the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. 587 years later (or thereabouts), when James wrote his epistle, the twelve tribes were still largely “scattered abroad”, and this almost two decades before the Romans sacked Jerusalem in AD70 and dispersed the Jews yet again.
It may be argued that Jacob’s descendants have been “in the midst of many peoples” and “among the nations” for the better part of the last two thousand years. Israel is still scattered abroad today, despite the existence of a national home for the Jews. Seven million live in Israel, while 8.25 million live elsewhere, six million in the US alone. And these are just the ones who identify as having this very specific type of Hebrew background.
In a sense, then, there is nothing new about what we are about to read in Micah.
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From John Gill’s introduction to Micah 4:
“This chapter contains some gracious promises concerning the glory and happiness of the church of
Christ in the last days; as of its stability, exaltation, and increase, and
of the spread of the Gospel from it, Mic 4:1, 2; and of the peace and
security of it, and constant profession and exercise of religion in it,
Hmm. Notice anything weird here?
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Chapter 4 begins with three verses of text that are strikingly similar to Isaiah 2:2-4. The differences between the two passages are trivial: in Micah, the words Ê¿am (“peoples”, which can mean either “nations” or “tribes”) and gôy (“nations”) are reversed at the end of verse 1, the beginning of verse 2 and the beginning of verse 3, but since they are clearly being used as synonyms, nothing of significance turns on that. Also, in verse 3 Isaiah has “He … shall decide disputes for many peoples”, while Micah has “strong nations far away”.
Other than these minute differences and a couple of irrelevant prepositions, the passages are word-for-word identical in the original Hebrew. Most of our English translations reflect this.
The little band of Jewish disciples who followed the Messiah in “the days of his flesh” asked to be taught to pray. The Lord’s answer was in the form of a pattern prayer, one that was appropriate at that time while the kingdom of God was being announced as “at hand”.
But repentance was required of those who would be the King’s subjects and, for the most part, that was not forthcoming.
The book of Hosea is full of references to “days”. These are not twenty-four hour periods, but eras of varying duration notable for specific features.
In chapter 1, Hosea prophesies of a day then future and now past, when Israel’s strength would be broken in the valley of Jezreel and its people dispersed among the nations, and another, much more distant day in which Israel and Judah will finally be reunited. In chapter 2 there are the “days of the Baals”, the “days of Israel’s youth”, and the “day” when the nation came out of Egypt.
Then there are three references in the last few verses of chapter 2 to a coming era of restoration, peace, safety and blessing, characterized by righteousness, justice, love and mercy. Our English translators consistently label it “that day”, though the language used about it strongly suggests this day will be at least 1,000 years in duration. Needless to say, the events which set it apart from all other days in Israel’s history have yet to take place.
The territory occupied by the nation of Israel today is not the territory occupied by the Israel of the divided kingdom period. It is not the territory occupied by the nations of Israel and Judah when they were briefly united under the house of David. According to the prophets, it is also not the territory which will be occupied by the Israel of the future.
There is some land in common, of course. Territory has been gained (the Negev and the Gaza Strip, for example). But when Israel lost the Transjordan to Assyria, it never got it back. Moreover, few modern Israelis are descended from the people who occupied the northern kingdom when Amos prophesied against it.
We understand the prophets more accurately when we correctly identify their intended audience. Let me take a stab at that.
So I’m browsing through old emails, and I find this one from JR, naturally received in the middle of the night. He was up, I was up, and I guess these are the sorts of things we think about when we can’t sleep:
“Hey ... I’m just reading a book where the author is discussing Mt 16:19. He says that since the verse is talking about the kingdom of heaven, it is referring not to the church age but to the coming kingdom and that the verse is therefore referring to the church’s role in that kingdom (reigning with Christ). Keys speak of authority, etc. He further points out that if we interpret it in that context, the weird ideas that many have drawn from that verse evaporate.
I’ll have to give this some thought.”
Okay. Interesting.
“Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion!
Tell among the peoples his deeds!
For he who requires blood is mindful of them;
he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.” (Psalm 9:11,12)