Inconsistent Eschatology: Examining Amillennialism<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
Introduction
This is a very personal paper in that it reflects a line of demarcation of Biblical hermeneutics which will influence all other dearly held doctrines.  To begin, this paper has been written to examine the claims for Amillennialism.  According to "Wikipedia," the free online encyclopedia:     
Amillennialism (Latin: a- "not" + mille "thousand" + annum "year") is a view in Christian eschatology named for its denial of a future, thousand-year, physical reign of Jesus Christ on the earth, as espoused in the premillennial and some postmillennial views of the Book of Revelation, chapter 20. By contrast, the amillennial view holds that the number of years in Revelation 20 is a symbolic number, not a literal description; that the millennium has already begun and is identical with the church age (or more rarely, that it ended with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70); and that while Christ's reign is spiritual in nature during the millennium, at the end of the church age, Christ will return in final judgment and establish permanent physical reign.[1]
This is definition will suffice to begin the topic.   
What is of utmost importance in this debate is the clear recognition that this is not a debate about salvation.  The two camps being examined, premillennialism and amillennialism, are within the range of orthodoxy and it is safe to call those on "the other side of the aisle," brothers in Christ.  BlueLetterBible.com had this poignant comment:
The lone fact that so many well-intentioned and intelligent Christians believe so variously when it comes to Revelation 20 must give us pause. The Book of Revelation itself is probably the most curious and oft-debated piece of the canon. This ought to place us in a position of caution when either accepting or dismissing another's interpretation.
As with any body of Christians, there are members of the Blue Letter Bible team with differing opinions on the matter. However, in light of all the Scriptures on the subject, the Blue Letter Bible feels that the most consistent viewpoint with a literal interpretation of the Bible is dispensational premillennialism. Our ultimate advice is to go to the Bible itself (Acts 17:11). The best way in which to interpret the Word of God is to see what it has to say about itself. And if, in the final analysis, you are yet undecided, do not fear for salvation is not built or broken on Revelation 20, but on the person of Jesus Christ.[2]
Though Amillennialism does not take away from the Person of Christ, it does do an injustice to Scripture as a whole, taking away one of the most precious doctrines of the believer; the immanent return of Christ.  All that said, it is the contention of this paper that the debate about Amillennialism is really a debate about hermeneutics.  This paper, being a small drop in the bucket of what has been written, will be settled on the foundational issue at hand; how do we interpret God's Word to us about things to come.  
 
The Importance of Bible Prophecy
Eschatology, the study of last things, has become a very hot topic these days.  With war going on in the Middle East, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Israel in the land and ecumenism reaching a global scale, its no wonder that people are asking, "is this the end?"  It is significant that almost thirty percent of the Bible is prophetic.  With prophecies for the first coming of Christ numbering in the triple digits, it is a safe bet that God wanted His people to know He was coming.  In fact we see Jesus reprimanding the Pharisees for not discerning the signs of the times; signs revealed in Old Testament prophecy (Matt 12:42, 16:1-4).
Unfortunately we see that prophecy has been largely neglected by our most recent generation of teachers.  Having just examined the lack of Eschatological scholarship in men as prominent as Hodge and Warfield, Chafer tells us that "these greatest of authorities on certain aspects of theology evinces an incomprehensible inattention to the most elementary prophetic revelations."[3]  Because one cannot teach what one does not know, thousands of churches today never hear a prophetic message or sermon, not because the pastor does not believe in, but because he does not know much about it.[4]  The vary fact that that this paper is written on this site however shows a major turn around in these "last days."  Yet despite all of this there is still so much confusion.
                        Most likely, this confusion comes from the great divide over the interpretation of prophecy.  When you have great numbers of orthodox Christians divided over large portions of Scripture it seems impossible to proclaim with any certainty that your camp is right.  Many opt for a mixed bag of prophetic beliefs, internally inconsistent made for easy application to whatever situation seems best.  Televangelists epitomize this when they personally claim prosperity blessings, made to the nation of Israel, but neglect to claim the curses that often accompany these conditional promises.   I also believe that Messianic Jews confuse the issue in that they do not (at least the ones I know) call themselves Christians per se but fulfilled Jews leaving one to wonder which promises they are under. 
            Many read the Bible with two competing views mixing pre, post, and amillennial scholarship through the use of randomly bought commentaries.  This "grab bag" of interpretations is sloppily promoted through prophetic guess sessions linked with every current event to hit the papers.  Chafer answers this current trend with these pointed words:
Lastly, the Scriptures present but one system of truth.  Men may not comprehend it, and of those who disagree respecting interpretation one or both sides of the controversy may be wrong; but both cannot be right.  The Word of God does not lend itself as support to postmillennial, amillennial, and premillennial schemes of interpretation at the same time.  It is for the student to weigh these claims and to be convinced of which one is Biblical.[5] 
Answering the claim that prophecy should be avoided because it is "divisive," Chafer goes on to say that he believes the premillennial position to be irrefutable and points out that there are no more problems in Eschatology than in Soteriology.[6]  Disagreements as divisive as the raging debate between Calvinism and Arminianism do not hinder the great creedal statements made by the reformers but disunity over even the slightest aspect of Eschatology has been seized on as a reason to neglect prophecy.[7]
           
 
The Great Debate
What you believe affects how you behave.  For the Amillennialist understanding the second coming of Christ as a single event, requires certain events to take place before Christ's return.
In 2 Thessalonians we see Paul addressing a seemingly common belief in the immanent return of Christ prevalent in this persecuted group.  People were even quitting their jobs and hanging around waiting.  Weust comments this way:
These Thessalonian saints were playing truant from their daily employment. The occasion for this is suggested in the context where Paul says, "The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and the patient waiting for Christ." The doctrine of the immanent return of the Lord Jesus for His Church was firmly believed in this church. The saints looked from day to day for that event. Some argued, of course wrongly, that if the Lord might come the next day, that there was no need for earning one's daily bread. But Paul, who had taught them this great truth of the immanency of the Lord's return, and whose expectation was just as intense as that of the Thessalonian saints, calls their attention to the fact that he worked for his daily bread in order that he might not be obligated to anyone for support.[8]
 
Israel was to seek for signs of Christ's return many times, yet the church is given this promise in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians:
Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
1 Corinthians 15:51-52 (NASB95)[9]
 
It is this very practice of seeing the Church and Israel as one that flies in the face of biblical evidence. Unfortunately however, presupposition is allowed to take precedence over biblical data.[10]  This section of Thessalonians is a decisive refutation to the claim that premillenniailsm is a product of recent popularity unlike the supposed amillennialism of the first century church.  According to the Moody Handbook to Theology, Premillennialism was a belief of the early church despite claims to the contrary and Amillennialism was really a product of Augustine's allegorical blundering:
George N. H. Peters identifies Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Apollinaris (as well as others) as second-century premillennialists.27 Amillennialism can be related to the allegorical school of interpretation in Alexandria, Egypt, and men like Clement, Origen, and Dionysius. Augustine was probably the first explicit amillennialist, teaching that the present age was a conflict between the church and the world. The reason for Augustine opting for amillennialism is noteworthy: he observed that Christians holding to a millennial view saw the kingdom in carnal terms. As a result, Augustine abandoned a literal millennial view.[11]
 
Perhaps one of the most obvious errors of Amillennialism is the belief that Satan is currently bound.  Revelation 20:2 describes the binding of Satan during a predicted thousand-year period.  Since the amillennialist assumes that the millennial form exists now, he is forced to accept that Satan is bound now. It does not take much biblical investigation, however, to conclude that such an assumption-a central one to the amillennialist's position-stands in absolute contradiction to 1 Pet. 5:8–9: "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour".[12]
Another hard idea to swallow is the reprehensible idea that God is a liar in that He will never literally fulfill His promises to Abraham, David and others of a land blessing with peace on all sides and David on the Throne.  The amillennialist believes that these promises are being fulfilled through the Church.  Ryrie explains their positions like this:
Amillennialists have three different ways of explaining the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. Some say that the land promises were fulfilled completely during the reign of Solomon who did have much of the promised territory under tribute (1 Ki 4:21). However, he did not possess the total extent of the land, and certainly it was not possessed forever as the covenant promised. Others insist that the covenant was conditional and therefore the unfulfilled promises of the covenant do not have to be fulfilled since Israel was disobedient and thus sinned away her right to the promises. Still others (probably the majority) feel that the church fulfills the promises in a nonliteral way. Christ is now seated on the throne of David in heaven and is fulfilling to the church the necessary essence of the Old Testament promises. Amillennialists seem to feel the force of the importance of doing something with the covenant promises.[13]
 
This is very hard to reconcile with the literal incarnation and passion.  If the three hundred or so prophecies about Jesus' first coming were fulfilled literally, it seems difficult to see how all of the sudden we are to interpret the prophecies about His second coming allegorically.  Feinberg, an amillennialist, makes this decisive statement:
…It can be shown that the reason the early Church was premillennial was traceable to its interpretation of the Word in a literal manner, whereas the cause of the departure from this view in later centuries of the history of the Church is directly attributable to a change in method of interpretation beginning with Origen in particular.[14] 
 
In other words, the church became amillennial through a change in hermeneutics.  As stated earlier, it comes down every time to hermeneutics; is the Word of God to be understood completely in its most plain, simple, and straightforward way or is it to be interpreted literally everyplace but prophecy?
 
 
Prophetic Hermeneutics
It is of great significance that some amillennialists have admitted that if they took prophetic Scripture at face value they would have to be premillennialists.[15]  Being that God has spoken to us through the medium of language, it is not unreasonable to think that He would not write something for us that we could not understand.  The allegorical method of interpretation used by the amillennialist for prophecy misses the main point of allegory and symbolism; to make a picture clearer.  Interpreting the promise in Isaiah 11:6-9 that ferocious animals will be tame as referring to the spiritual transformation of Saul, changed from a "vicious wolf-like persecutor to a lamblike follower of Christ," is plain wrong.[16]  The rules for interpretation are not arbitrary because they are the rules we use everyday in order to understand one another.  To say "I ran for a mile," would imply, in normal everyday speech that I actually ran for a literal mile.  It is the normal meaning of my words that are being interpreted.  The Bible is a human book, and God is a God of order who makes sense.  It would be false to say that I meant that I ran for spiritual miles.  Likewise, if I were to say that I ran like the wind it would be false to think that I was invisible and I went across the water.  But rather that I, being a person, ran as fast as I could.  In this case, depending on the context that I am not crazy, it would seem I am literally using an idiom.  Whenever we read or hear anything we presume the literal meaning, which includes figures of speech, until the nature of the communication gives us reason to presume otherwise.  This is the way the Bible is to be interpreted.  To do otherwise gives one no safeguard to the imaginations of man and leaves God without the same authority we give ourselves, the ability to define our own terms when we communicate.
 
Conclusion
In sum, one's final interpretation of the thousand years from Revelation 20 depends more upon certain factors related to a Christian's hermeneutic than the strict text of the ten much debated verses.[17]  Knowing that the Lord may come at ay moment influences believers to lead Spirit filled lives.  Knowing that at any moment we can meet the Lord in the air brings absolute comfort in the midst of the worst of trials.  Adopting amillennial eschatology leaves us with no hope any immediate union with Christ outside of death and debases the plain meaning of Scripture.  We will know soon who is right!
 
Matt Smith
Pastor, Barabbas Road Church
pastormatt@whoisbarabbas.com
www.whoisbarabbas.com
619.459.3873

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amillennialism

[2] http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/mill.html#amil

[3] Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology volume 1V (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1976), 256.
 

[4] Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Are We Living In The End Times? (Wheaton, Tyndale House Publications), 4.
 

[5] Chafer, 261,
 

[6] Chafer, 258.
 

[7] Ibid.

[8]Wuest, K. S. (1997, c1984). Wuest's word studies from the Greek New Testament : For the English reader (Treasures from the Greek New Testament: p.66-67). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

 
[9]  New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995. LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
 

[10] Wuest.

 
27 27. George N. H. Peters, The Theocratic Kingdom, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1952), 1:495–96.

 
[11]Enns.

 
[12]Karleen, P. S. (1987). The handbook to Bible study : With a guide to the Scofield study system. "This book is intended as a companion to the Scofield Reference Bible"--Pref.; Includes indexes. New York: Oxford University Press.

 
[13]Ryrie, C. C. (1995, c1972). A survey of Bible doctrine. Chicago: Moody Press.

 
[14]  Charles L. Feinberg, Premillennialism or Amillennialism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1936), 51.

 
[15] Oswald T. Allis, Prophecy and the Church (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co, 1945), 17.

[16] Roy B. Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation  (Colorado Springs: Victor, 1991), 9.
 

[17] http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/mill.html#amil