How Do We Interpret the Book of Revelation?

An argument for a literal, futurist, premillennial interpretation of the book of Revelation

Aug 06, 2024

MICAH 4

It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and it shall be lifted up above the hills;
and peoples shall flow to it,
²and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
³He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore;
⁴but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
    and no one shall make them afraid,
    for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

I could exhaust you with Old Testament texts that teach a future earthly kingdom of God centered in Jerusalem governed by a promised messianic figure descended from King David that will rule the nations (Ps. 2, Jer. 23:5-8; Is. 11; 24:21-23; 65-66; Ez. 36-39; Zech. 14; etc). But doing that still wouldn’t settle the question, “I know what that says, but what does that mean?”.

While it is true that there are a variety of legitimate ways to interpret prophetic and apocalyptic literature, I wish to argue here that there is one way that is most correct in looking at the big picture of what is being revealed. What we wish to call “Apostolic Premillennialism”, or taking the plain meaning of the text at face value that a resurrected Jesus Christ will return to rule the nations of the earth for 1,000 years within human history before the eternal state is completed.

What I wish to demonstrate with this article is that this particular interpretive grid, which will guide our study of the book of Revelation this semester, is firmly embedded in the most reliable traditions of biblical history. Let’s start with what is called the “second temple” period of Judaism in which we find the Deuterocanonical books of the bible.

The bible you say? Well you won’t find them in Protestant bibles sold in most Christian bookstores (as Methodist we don’t technically consider ourselves Protestant), but they are included in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canons of scripture. They were determined authoritative in several very early church councils and were cited frequently by early church fathers.1

Below is a good description of how early Methodists thought about rooting our understanding of scripture within the traditions of the church, especially those traditions before the corrupting influence of the post-Nicene era.

John Wesley and his brother Charles, the founders of the movement, were high church Anglican priests in the vein of the Caroline Divines, who had a deep respect for the Primitive Church, which they generally defined as the Church before the Council Of Nicea. Unlike many other Christian Primitivists, the Wesleys and the early Methodists did not subject Scriptural interpretation to individual human reason, but rather to the hermeneutical consensus of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, holding to a view of authority more akin to Prima Scriptura rather than Sola Scriptura. Furthermore, they did not hold to the separatist ecclesiology of many primitivist groups, but rather saw themselves as working within the historic established church to return it to its foundation in Scripture and the tradition of the pre-Nicene Church. John Wesley very regularly asserted Methodism's commitment to the Primitive Church, saying, "From a child I was taught to love and reverence the Scripture, the oracles of God; and, next to these, to esteem the primitive Fathers, the writers of the first three centuries. Next after the primitive church, I esteemed our own, the Church of England, as the most Scriptural national Church in the world." And, "Methodism, so called, is the old religion, the religion of the Bible, the religion of the primitive Church, the religion of the Church of England." On his epitaph is written, "This GREAT LIGHT arose (By the Singular providence of GOD) To enlighten THESE NATIONS, And to revive, enforce, and defend, The Pure Apostolical DOCTRINES and PRACTICES of THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH…"2

Select Readings from Deuterocanonical books

These select readings from the Deuterocanonical books reflect how the best Jewish religious thinkers in the centuries (1-2nd Century AD) leading up to the New Testament era thought about what Old Testament texts predicted about the future kingdom of God:

Behold, Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of David, to reign over your servant Israel in the time which you did foresee, O God. Gird him with strength to destroy unrighteous rulers, and purge Jerusalem from the nations who trample her down to destruction … And he will be a righteous king over them, taught by God. There will be no unrighteousness among them in his days, for all shall be holy, and their king shall be the anointed Lord. [Psalms of Solomon 17:21-22, 32]

And it will happen after these things when the time of the appearance of the Anointed has been fulfilled and he returns with glory, that then all who sleep in hope of him will rise. And it will happen at that time that those treasuries will be opened in which the number of the souls of the righteous were kept, and they will go out and the multitudes of the souls will appear together, in one sole assembly, of one mind … The souls of the wicked, on the contrary, will waste away completely when they shall see all these things. [2 Baruch 30:1-2, 4]

When the nations are troubled and the time of my Anointed comes, he will call all nations, and some of them he will spare, and others he will kill. These things will befall the nations which will be saved by him. Every nation which has not reigned over Israel and which has not trodden down the seed of Jacob will live … All those, now, who have ruled over you, or have known you, will be delivered up to the sword. [2 Baruch 72:2-4, 6]

Other Jewish sources:

The Messianic Era. This is an era long anticipated by both Jewish leaders and by most all early church fathers. They believed, based upon ancient Jewish thinking, that since God created the earth in six days, followed by a day of rest, that he would therefore finish history in six millennial days, followed by a millennial “day” of rest (millennial meaning 1,000 years). It would be an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity for humanity.

The Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar state that the date by which the Messiah will appear is 6,000 years from creation.3

The Witness of the New Testament

The premillennial interpretation of the Bible, based upon a plain reading of Revelation chapter 20 (also see 1 Cor. 15:20-28), assumes the bible says what it means and it means what it says. We have a significant track record of Old Testament texts predicting events that have already been fulfilled in history. Both the messianic expectations fulfilled that are predicted with the first coming of Jesus Christ as well as prophecies from the book of Daniel being fulfilled through secular governments in history.

We have no reason to expect New Testament prophetic and apocalyptic texts will be fulfilled any differently.

The Witness of the Ante-Nicene Fathers of the Church

Two of these men were personally discipled by the Apostle John, author of the book of Revelation himself. The third was a direct disciple of these two men. What is the probability, in your mind, they misunderstood what John taught about these things?

Papias (60-130AD)4

“Who is now mentioned by us, affirms that he received the sayings of the apostles from those who accompanied them, and he moreover asserts that he heard in person Aristion and the presbyter John. Accordingly he mentions them frequently by name, and in his writings gives their traditions. The residence of the Apostle Philip with his daughters in Hierapolis has been mentioned above. We must now point out how Papias, who lived at the same time, relates that he had received a wonderful narrative from the daughters of Philip. Amongst these he says that there will be a millennium after the resurrection from the dead, when the personal reign of Christ will be established on this earth.” - (From the writings of Papias, Fragment 6)

Polycarp (69-155AD)5

“Both Irenaeus and Tertullian say that Polycarp had been a disciple of John the Apostle, one of Jesus's disciples. In “On Illustrious Men”, Jerome similarly writes that Polycarp was a disciple of John the Apostle, who had ordained him as a bishop of Smyrna. Polycarp is regarded as one of three chief Apostolic Fathers, along with Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch.”6

“Archbishop James Ussher identified Polycarp as the angel of the church in Smyrna, spoken of by Jesus Himself in Revelation 2:8. This is quite likely given that Polycarp was the pastor of this congregation during the period in which Revelation was written in A.D. 95-96.”7

If we please Him in this present world, we shall receive also the future world, according as He has promised to us that He will raise us again from the dead, and that if we live worthily of Him, “we shall also reign together with Him,” provided only we believe. In like manner, let the young men also be blameless in all things…since “every lust warreth against the spirit;’ and ‘neither fornicators, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, shall inherit the kingdom of God,”… (Polycarp, the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, ch. V.)

Irenaeus (130-202AD)

Ordained and discipled by Polycarp8

If any one, then, does not accept these things as referring to the appointed kingdom, he must fall into much contradiction and contrariety - (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, bk. V, ch. XXXIII.)

and nothing is capable of being allegorized, but all things are stedfast, and true, and substantial, having been made by God for righteous men’s enjoyment. For as it is God truly who raises up man, so also does man truly rise from the dead, and not allegorically…For since there are real men, so must there also be a real establishment - (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, bk. V, ch. XXXV-XXXVI.)

For in as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded. And for this reason the Scripture says: “Thus the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their adornment. And God brought to a conclusion upon the sixth day the works that He had made; and God rested upon the seventh day from all His works.” This is an account of the things formerly created, as also it is a prophecy of what is to come. For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years; and in six days created things were completed: it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year. - (Against Heresies bk. V, ch. XXVIII)

“In defending the blessings to be found in the millennial kingdom, Irenaeus wrote, “the elders who saw John, the disciple of the Lord, related that they had heard from him how the Lord used to teach in regard to these times…” (Remember that Polycarp was a student of the apostle John and the teacher of Irenaeus. He is very likely one of these elders that delivered teachings on the Millennium.) Irenaeus soon after wrote that the millennial blessings were, “borne witness to in writing by Papias, the hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp…” - (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, bk. V, ch. XXXIII.)9

The Witness of John Wesley

"The doctrine (as you well know) which Justin Martyr (100-165AD) deduced from the Prophets and Apostles, and in which he was undoubtedly followed by the Fathers of the second and third centuries is this. The souls of them who have been martyred for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and of those who have not worshiped the beast, neither received his mark, shall live and reign with Christ a Thousand Years. But the rest of the dead shall not live again until the Thousand Years are finished. Now, to say they [the Fathers] believe this, is neither more nor less than to say, THEY BELIEVE THE BIBLE." – (John Wesley to Dr. Conyers Middleton 1749)

Justin Martyr’s understanding of the future is found particularly given in his celebrated "Dialogue" with Trypho the Jew, held at Ephesus. The Jew asks, "Do you confess that this place, Jerusalem, shall be rebuilt, and your people be congregated, and rejoice together with Christ and the Patriarchs and Prophets" The answer of Justin is: "I confessed to you, before, that I and many others, besides, do believe, as you well know, this shall be. On the other hand, l have also signified to you that MANY, WHO ARE NOT OF THE PURE AND PIOUS FAITH OF THE CHRISTIANS, do NOT CONFESS THIS. They are called Christians, indeed, but are godless impious HERETICS, because they teach doctrines that, in every respect, are blasphemous, atheistic, foolish. . . . They do not confess this, but dare to blaspheme the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and say there is no resurrection of the dead, but that at death souls are received up into heaven. Do not imagine that these are Christians. But I and others, who are orthodox on all points, know there will be a Resurrection from the dead and a Thousand Years in Jerusalem, built again, broadened, and adorned, as the prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah, and others declare. A certain man among us, of the name of John, one of the Apostles of Christ, in a Revelation which he had, prophesied that they who were faithful to our Messiah would accomplish a Thousand Years in Jerusalem, and after that the general, and to speak concisely/the final Resurrection and Judgment of all would take place" (Dialogue with Trypho, chapters 80, 81).

"Christ is the Stone cut out of the mountain, without hands, who shall destroy temporal kingdoms, and introduce an eternal one, which is at the Resurrection of the just. When the Antichrist shall have devastated all things, and shall reign for three years and a half (1,260 days) and sit in the temple at Jerusalem, then the Lord will come from Heaven, with the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this man to the lake of fire, but bringing in, for the righteous, the Times of the Kingdom, the Rest, the Hallowed Seventh Day, and restoring to Abraham the Promised Inheritance. Christ will Himself renew the inheritance of the Earth, and reorganize the mystery of the glory of His sons. In the Times of the Kingdom the Righteous shall bear rule when they rise from the dead, and then Creation shall be renovated. The Earth shall be called by Christ to its pristine condition, and Jerusalem rebuilt after the pattern of the Jerusalem which is the Mother of us all .... Man rises, not allegorically, from the dead, as I have shown repeatedly. And as he rises actually, so shall he be actually disciplined beforehand for incorruption, and shall go forward and flourish in the Times of the Kingdom. John, therefore, did distinctly foresee the FIRST RESURRECTION; that of the just, and the Inheritance in the Kingdom on Earth" (Iren. Adv. Hares. V, 26, 30, 33, 35).

"It was," (the Millennium) says Mede (Joseph Mede an English scholar, educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow in 1613), the ablest scholar of his day, "the general belief of all orthodox Christians in the age next following the Apostles, and none but Heretics denied it" ( Works, 6o2, 771).

It never was abandoned until Church and State were united under Constantine; never until, as Kurtz says truly, "The State Church under her temporal prosperity forgot the millennial glory of the future" (Ch. Hist. I, 47), and the Church, as the great (Johann Albrecht) BENGEL, whom Wesley took for his teacher, says, "became worldly, and the hope of the future was weakened by the joy over the present success!" (Erlklurt Offenbarung, 664.) Then, and only then, did she depart from the martyr faith, under the teaching of Rome (the beginning of a corruption of Apostolic teaching) and the influence of worldly philosophy, so that, as Canon Faussett well says, "Christians began looking at the temporal prosperity and ceased to look for Christ's promised reign on earth" (Comm. VI. Introd. to Apoc., 70).

"Your book on the MILLENNIUM was lately put into my hands. I cannot but thank you for your strong and seasonable confirmation of that comfortable doctrine, of which I cannot entertain the least doubt as long as I believe the Bible." - (Wesley to Rev. Thomas Hartley, MA Methodist Magazine, 1783

Wesley taught, specifically:

The spread of the Gospel as a testimony to all nations;
An apostasy yet more to be developed, and already at work, in Christendom;
The literal Conversion and Restoration of Israel to their own land;
That the full revelation of the Antichrist precedes the Advent; (every single early church father who spoke on the subject believed the church would face the final antichrist on the earth at Christ’s return to destroy him and his followers)
That it is the duty of the Church to observe the Signs of the Times:
The literal, visible, personal, and glorious Second Coming of the Lord;
That the Third Beatitude, "the meek shall inherit the earth," refers to the millennial Age
That the curse shall he removed from the earth, and the animal creation restored to pristine innocence;
That there shall be a transfiguration of the Planet into a New Earth, with a New Heaven and a New Climate;
That it is the duty of the Church, always, to pray and look for the Coming of the Lord10

A brief history of why and how the church adopted other interpretive grids for biblical eschatology

below from Bible.org - “Theology Adrift: The Early Church Fathers and Their Views of Eschatology”

“Tertullian was also a premillennialist, but he unfortunately based his eschatology on the predictions of Montanist prophets as well as on Scripture. Indeed, the Montanists' fanatical excesses worked to discredit premillennialism among early church leaders, and opposition to premillennialism began in earnest as a result of the Montanist movement. Caius of Rome attacked millennialism specifically because it was linked to Montanism, and he attempted to trace the belief in a literal millennium to the heretic Cerinthus.

In Alexandria, Origen spiritualized the eschatological prophecies of Scripture, in keeping with his general allegorical hermeneutic. His student, Dionysius the Great, went so far as to even deny that the apostle John wrote the book of Revelation. Instead, he attributed the Apocalypse to a heretofore unknown elder of the same name.

However, these were mere harbingers of things to come. The crushing blow for premillennialism came with the Edict of Milan in AD 313, by which Constantine reversed the Roman Empire's policy of hostility toward Christianity and accorded it full legal recognition and even favor. Historian Paul Johnson calls the issuance of this edict "one of the decisive events in world history. With it, no longer was the blood of the martyrs the seed of the church. Rather, Christianity would be, in many ways, a mirror-image of the empire itself. "It was catholic, universal, ecumenical, orderly, international, multi-racial and increasingly legalistic." It was a huge force for stability. Hence, Christianity after 313 would become worldly, rather than other-worldly.

The church's new-found favor from Rome caused dramatic upheavals. Jerome complained that "one who was yesterday a catechumen is today a bishop; another moves overnight from the ampitheatre to the church; a man who spent the evening in the circus stands next morning at the altar, and another who was recently a patron of the stage is now the dedicator of virgins." He wrote that "our walls glitter with gold, and gold gleams upon our ceilings and the capitals of our pillars; yet Christ is dying at our doors in the person of his poor, naked and hungry."

Thus, the focus of the church changed from looking for ultimate comfort in the world beyond the grave to seeking comfort in this world, in the here and now. Christianity was viewed as "a religion with a glorious past as well as an unlimited future. As a result, it suffered what Johnson called "a receding, indeed, disappearing, eschatology." He stated:

After Christianity, contrary to all expectation, triumphed in the Roman empire, and was embraced by the Caesars themselves, the millennial reign, instead of being anxiously waited and prayed for, began to be dated either from the first appearance of Christ, or from the conversion of Constantine and the downfall of paganism, and to be regarded as realized in the glory of the dominant imperial state-church.

Instead of being aliens and strangers in this world, Christians found themselves utterly at ease in the city of man as well as the city of God.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterocanonical_books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorationism#:~:text=John%20Wesley%20very%20regularly%20asserted,of%20the%20first%20three%20centuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_6000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papias_of_Hierapolis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarp

https://appleeye.org/2015/03/01/the-premillennialism-of-polycarp/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irenaeus