Wormwood said:
I am not discounting the fact that it is a possibility to take the millennium literally (if I did, I'd fall into the camp of historic premillinnialists as I have major issues with the entire framework of dispensationalism). However, I think we need to consider the genre of Revelation. It is apocalyptic. It is a very different genre than Hosea or 2 Peter (and I don't even know if that phrase by Peter is to be taken literally).
I am not an adherent of Dispensationalism. I do see how Dispensationalism came to be a school of study because of the layering of God's Plan. Job and Enoch lived before the Law was given and knew God. Then God gives Moses the Law, and then come the Prophets and a whole host of rules come into being. Still, Jesus remains as a fact not yet realized. With His first Advent, we enter into the Church Age and the rules change yet again, and I doubt any Christian here adheres to the Ritual Laws of sacrifice... What happens when Jesus is a fact of life, physically present at times, and easily proved when the people adhere to a new set of rules during the Millennium as specified in Ezekiel? Well, it's yet a new paradigm. That changing scenario reflects different "dispensations" in the world's timeline for man, yet the standard remains unchanged.
I do not make the break between Gentile and Jew that Dispensationalists do. That relationship is not so simple.
But as far as apocalyptic, a lot of meaning has been imbued into its connotation which is not in its definition. Simply put, it means to uncover or disclose. Too often it just means catastrophe, war, and the end of the world. Now there were a whole genre of such writing in the centuries surrounding Christ's first Advent. I do not discount a spirit which stirs in the hearts and minds an imminent sense of an impending event of supreme importance. People were on fire for the Messiah when Jesus walked the earth. Why? Did some pay attention to the Prophet the Sanhedrin discounted to poetry? Or was the Holy Spirit, or some other spirit from God at work preparing the way?
I also note a similar circumstance with the era I think is around when the first Seal is broken. As things began to change in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution and the rise of nation-states, we also see a resurgence of evangelism - to a time when others and I would point to as the time of the Philadelphian Church. I also note that that time also coincidently sees a new chapter in eschatologies, with whole new schools emerging from the statist Amillennium school - and even whole new denominations and even cults springing up (Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons come to mind).
But Revelation is an inspired book.
That books' Greek was so bad, contemporary Church leaders scoffed at its authenticity. However, if we look at John, writing in his own hand, without a scribe to polish his Greek, which is not his native language, but one that he would have used in that time and era, from a diminished status in exile - then the poor Greek is not unlike Paul's example when he writes in his own hand and is not as polished or "proper."
God the Father empowers Jesus to reveal to John what will soon (rapidly) take place (Rev 1:1).
We Western people want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We think omitting a fact is the commission of a lie. This is our cultural more. This fact of our being is not shared by a culture two millennia past, from an agricultural background, which knows nothing of our scientific method, has no regard for the importance we place on dates, nor do they deal in the legalistic wrangling we torture testimony. They do not deal with precise definitions as much as they draw word-pictures. Hebrew is a great story-telling language, but it is hardly capable of writing a technical manual for complicated electronic devices.
I think John held unique information for a long time. I note that the Apostles wondered why John was following them in John 21:20 and Jesus said something cryptic which made the Apostles think he'd never die (but which in fact, points to a special relationship John would have just to be taken up to Heaven) and Paul writes, without naming John, that a man he knew had seen wonderful things but could not (then) write of them (and I think Paul and John surely met, and that Paul got his education on eschatology from John) and John only wrote it at the end of his life when God enabled him to do so.
The first vision he writes establishes the place, and hence the time he received the vision of the Churches.
In the various parallel and overlapping time wise accounts which transpire after he is taken up, at no time does John write everything. There are always gaps. It is an indictment upon us to say as you do, 'well, he doesn't actually say vast portions of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah happen during this "millennial."' Gaps in prophecy happen all the time. There is a gap of two thousand years in one verse, indeed, within one sentence in Isaiah 61:2. Gaps happen often when God links two like events together, like Christ's Advents, or the resurrection of people from the grave to Heaven. The important "fact" is that the truth remains consistent: they are always given in the order in which they will occur.
Another aspect of Revelation is that not only does John use prophetic Old Testament imagery, but more importantly, he puts it into a linear narrative giving various sequences of events - and reveals figurative meaning to us!
The book of Revelation has to be understood with Scripture because he draws on it and it is an inspired book - completely separate from other typical writing of the time.
Thus, Hosea 6:2 and 2Pe 3:8 are tied to the Millennium.
God through Jesus to John reveals that a day of Hosea 6:2 is a thousand years, and in this case, using 2Pe 3:8 as a template for the equation, a literal one. Does it have to be
exactly one thousand years to the day and minute though? No. That would be our standard we would try to impose upon God, and I think that would be a terrible mistake on our part to use as a test for validity from our cultural viewpoint.
. Let me respond to some of his points.
