By Arnold D. Ehlert, Th.D
T h e controversy between the millenarian and the amillennialist is a complicated one, and is not by any means confined to the problem of the existence of a millennium. The present study is not concerned with the implications nor the complications of the two systems of theological interpretation of the Scriptures. It limits itself to the question of the existence of a millennium in the biblical system of theology on the basis of the twentieth chapter of Revelation. This is the only passage in the Bible that teaches a thousand years as a definite period of time that is characterized by certain specific distinc tions. In spite of West’s Thousand Years in Both Testa ments and Biederwolf’s Millennium Bible one is shut up to this passage for the millennium as a definite period of time, unless one should want to hazard a stand on Psalms 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 as being definite instead of indefinite. If the thousand years in Revelation 20 be established as definite and certain, then, these two verses may have some relevancy to it. Amillennialism, insofar as its rejection of a millennium is concerned, labors diligently to make the thousand years in this chapter indefinite and symbolic. Its basic tenet falls immediately if this period is proved definite. We believe that it is definite and can be proved to be so on the basis of one of the most solid principles of biblical interpretation. The Book of Revelation is peculiarly guarded at both the beginning and the end against any derogation. Its
channel of descent is peculiar to this book. No other extended portion of Scripture has come to us (1) from God (2) through His Son Jesus Christ (3) sent and signi fied by His angel (4) to and through the human instru ment, John, (5) to be shown to the servants of the Lord (Rev. l.T ). John bears “record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw,” which the angel signified (verse 2). Furthermore, this book is specifically called a prophecy and not merely an apocalypse (verse 3). (The amillen- nialists have put heavy weight in their arguments on their insistence that because Revelation is an apocalypse it cannot be taken literally, but that its imagery is merely symbolic.) If it is true prophecy, however, one would expect to find it in visions and the predictions based upon them, together with the interpretations of the vis ions upon which the predictions are made, whether stated or implied. Neither can the charge be successfully lodged against the prophecies of this book that they were not genuine nor valid because they were not fulfilled in the days of the writer or his contemporaries. Isaiah 53 was not fulfilled in his day, but God did fulfill it in His own good time. The method that we shall use here belongs to the larger realm of what has been sometimes called the analogy of Scripture, or the consideration of any particu lar passage in the light of other passages of similar nature continued on next page
AUGUST, 1959
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