Before I start, I want to give some acknowledgement to a few folks, for at least helping me to see the truth on many eschatology teachings.
I started (in my mid twenties) out being taught premillennialism by some very well known men during the forties, fifties and sixties and onwardward to where we are today. I very soon left them after about three to four years, searching almost day and night for the truth, and seeing major holes in their overall teachings, not just in eschatology.
I came across "Behold, He Cometh! An Exposition of the Book of Revelation by Herman Hoeksema that got me first started thinking, which book I still have in my study. But, the one that truly open my eyes even more was Augustine's study of Revelation 20, set out in
Book 20 of his great work The City of God, offers useful resources for an amillennial approach to the passage. Written just four hundred years after the apostles. I owe a debt to Tony Warren on some of his articles that I think were exceptional articles on endtime study. Of course all studies, along with our personal meditations and study, adds even more light, to where we feel very comfortable in defending what we believe.
That being said, no man has a perfect knowledge of the truth on this subject, a knowledge that does not need a little help to be more perfectly converted~I'm sure we all will leave this world not being perfectly converted to the truth, it is one of the perils of living in this body of sin and death.
Until in the morning, you can start with Augustine work on Revelation 20.
Augustine on Revelation 20
Augustine’s amillennial eschatology, which shapes his exegesis of Rev 20, is not entirely his own creation. It is evident from Augustine’s writings that he drew significantly on the work of
a theologian named Tyconius, whose writings are lost apart from the use made of them by Augustine. Tyconius, a fourth-century African Donatist theologian, wrote a work on biblical interpretation entitled
The Book of Rules, which set out seven rules that exerted a powerful influence on subsequent biblical interpretation. Indeed, Gregg Allison points out that Augustine’s
On Christian Doctrine presents “a modified summary of
The Book of Rules”.
[25] It was Tyconius’ contention that biblical prophecies will be fulfilled spiritually, not physically and materially as the premillennialists held. In relation to Rev 20 “Tyconius focused on a spiritual millennium corresponding to the current church period”.
[26]
Initially Augustine was attracted to the premillennial position: “I also entertained this notion at one time”.
[27] He came to feel repulsed, however, by the crass materialism of “the most unrestrained material feasts” said to be enjoyed by the saints, together with quantities of drink “that will also exceed the limits even of incredibility”.
[28] Augustine became convinced that the spiritual interpretation of prophecy was the correct approach and, rather than refute the premillennial view of those he termed “Chiliasts” and “Millennarians” in detail, he chose to set out the positive position which he believed to be sound. In
City of God 20.7-17 he expounds Rev 20:
Chapter 7: The two resurrections and the millennium. The descriptions of John in the Apocalypse, and their interpretation.
The background to Augustine’s understanding of the two resurrections mentioned in Rev 20 is his consideration of Jesus’ words in
John 5:25-29, set out in chapter 6. As Augustine notes, Jesus speaks of a present resurrection: “…I am telling you that a time is coming, in fact has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live…” (v. 25). Clearly, Augustine argues, this is not the resurrection of the body but of the soul, and the dead who are delivered are dead in soul. It is only in v. 28 that Jesus comes to refer to the resurrection of the body. Those who have shared in the first (spiritual) resurrection will be spared condemnation and the “second death”.
In chapter 7 Augustine uses John 5 to exegete
Rev 20:1-6. He notes how some Christians have misunderstood John and have concluded that the “first resurrection” of v. 5 is a bodily resurrection. He links this to their excitement over the mention of a period of a thousand years in v. 2. Drawing on Peter’s reference to one day being to God as a thousand years (
2 Peter 3:8), they believed that the six days of creation provided the pattern for the 6000 years of human history and that the subsequent millennium would be “a kind of seventh day of Sabbath rest for the final thousand years, with the saints rising again, obviously to celebrate this Sabbath”.
[29]
Indeed, in the final chapter of the book Augustine states that “We ourselves shall become that seventh day”
[30] and, as Michael J Scanlon comments in this connection, “the future is the Christian’s favourite tense”.
[31] Nevertheless, Augustine vigorously rejects the view of the “Chiliasts” because of its crassly materialistic understanding of the blessings of the millennium. As noted previously, Augustine admits that he was once attracted to such views, but now rejects them.
The thousand years relate, according to
Rev 20:1-3, to the imprisonment of Satan in “the bottomless pit” (or the Abyss). Augustine offers two possible interpretations of this period. One possibility is that the thousand years indicate the sixth millennium, “the sixth day”, which, according to the scheme discussed above, precedes the eternal Sabbath, “the seventh day”, and of which, says Augustine, “the latter stretches are now passing”.
[32] The second possibility is that the thousand years are intended
to stand for the whole period of this world’s history, signifying the entirety of time by a perfect number.
[33]
The perfect number is, of course, 1000, the cube of 10. In chapter 5 of Book 20 Augustine considered some significant numbers in Scripture and notes here how 100 is sometimes used to signify totality, as in Christ’s statement that those who have left all to follow him will “receive a hundredfold in this world” (
Matt 19:29, Augustine’s quotation). He goes on, “If this is so, how much more does 1000 represent totality, being the square of 10 converted into a solid figure”.
[34] Augustine does not draw a specific conclusion from this discussion of the thousand years assigned to the devil’s confinement.
As far as the confinement is concerned, the “abyss” in Augustine’s view “symbolises the innumerable multitude of the impious, in whose hearts there is a great depth of malignity against the Church of God”. A barrier is set by the angel which the devil is unable to pass, whilst the “sealing” to which John refers suggests to Augustine “that God wished it to be kept secret who belongs to the Devil’s party, and who does not”.
[35] This, he believes, is why in this world it is uncertain who of those standing firm will later fall and who among the fallen will rise again.
This binding of the devil means that he is no longer able to lead astray “the nations of which the Church is made up, nations whom he led astray and held in his grip before they were a Church”.
[36] Augustine recognises that the devil does lead nations astray, though God ensures that individuals within them are not led astray into final condemnation. He does insist, however, that God has chosen certain nations to make up his Church. Quoting
Eph 1:4, which in context does not appear to refer to nations, Augustine asserts that “God chose those nations before the foundation of the world”
[37] and though they once were led astray by the devil, his binding now means that he cannot lead them astray.
