Yesterday, I promised to talk about guidelines for the proper interpretation of Revelation 20.1–10. Well, I lied. Or rather—to be a bit more charitable to myself—I bit off more than I could chew. Way more. If premillennial, postmillennial, and amillennial scholars cannot agree amongst themselves after writing thousands of pages on the topic, who am I to think I can settle the debate in a 500-odd-word email?   Of course, on first glance, the proper interpretation seems obvious, right? Premillennialism is the most literal interpretation of the passage, the one that reads it with the most common sense and … Continue reading The Millennium, Part 2 (Revelation 20.1–10)

  Revelation 20.1–10 describes the events surrounding the Millennium, or thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ with his saints. John’s description seems straightforward enough: After an angel binds Satan in the bottomless pit, Christ rules the world for a thousand years with Christian martyrs whom he has resurrected to life. At the end of the millennial period, Satan is released and gathers armies to make war against Christ’s “beloved city” but is defeated and thrown into hell along with the Antichrist and False Prophet.   As I said, this description seems straightforward enough, but Christian theologians have never fully agreed on … Continue reading The Millennium, Part 1 (Revelation 20.1–10)

  Several years ago, Philip Yancey wrote a book called, The Jesus I Never Knew. By reading the Gospel with fresh eyes, Yancey saw—and helped his readers to see—Jesus as his contemporaries saw him, not as modern people so often imagine him. As Yancey told it, Jesus was not a person who could be packaged in any conventional religious box. Indeed, the primary targets of his righteous indignation were many of the prevailing religious conventions of his day. Instead, as someone has famously said, Jesus afflicted the comfortable but comforted the afflicted.   Outside the Gospels, few portraits of Jesus … Continue reading The Jesus We Never Knew (Revelation 19.11–21)

  The second coming of Jesus Christ has a twofold effect: judgment and salvation. God reserves judgment for those who, in this present age, persistently refuse his offer of forgiveness and choose instead to continue sinning against him and against their neighbors. But God freely forgives any and all who turn to him with repentance and hope for salvation.   In John’s vision, judgment and salvation are depicted using a variety of graphic images. Judgment, for example, is urban destruction (Rev. 18.1–19.5) and battlefield carnage (19.11–21). Salvation, by contrast, is a wedding feast in which Jesus Christ marries his bride, … Continue reading The Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19.6–10)