Christ’s return and the millennium

This same Jesus

On the day of the ascension, as the disciples stood staring at the sky, two men in white spoke to them.

"Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven."

Acts 1:11

The one who will come is not a vague spirit or a feeling in the heart, but the same Jesus who ate with his friends by the lake. His coming will not be secret. Jesus said that all the tribes of the earth "will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:30), and John adds that "every eye will see Him" (Revelation 1:7). Paul says that "the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command" (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The first time he came to bear sin; "He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him" (Hebrews 9:28). No wonder Paul calls it "the blessed hope" (Titus 2:13).

The New Testament often calls this event the parousia (παρουσία), a word for ‘presence’ or ‘arrival’ that was also used when a king or high official paid a formal visit to a city (1 Thessalonians 4:15). The King is coming to his own. From the beginning the church put this hope at the centre of its faith. In the Apostles' Creed we confess that Christ sits at the right hand of the Father, and "from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead" The Apostles' Creed. The Nicene Creed adds: "And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead: Whose kingdom shall have no end" The Nicene Creed. Churches East and West confess this hope together.

No one knows the day

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

Matthew 24:36

Even after his resurrection Jesus told the apostles, "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority" (Acts 1:7). Jerome saw mercy in this silence. The Lord withheld the day, he says, so "that being in uncertainty of the coming of their Judge, they should live every day as though they were to be judged that day" Jerome. Again and again people have calculated dates from the numbers of Scripture and announced them, leaving fear and disillusionment behind. Setting dates is something Scripture does not allow.

What Jesus asks instead is watchfulness: "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come" (Matthew 24:42). And watching, in his parable, does not mean gazing at the sky. It means being the faithful servant who keeps feeding the household: "Blessed is that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns" (Matthew 24:46). Peter asks what kind of people we ought to be and answers, "You ought to conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness" (2 Peter 3:11). John says that "everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as Christ is pure" (1 John 3:3). Matthew Henry, writing on Paul's words to the grieving Thessalonians, calls the resurrection and Christ's return a remedy against the fear of death, and adds: "of these doctrines we have full assurance" Matthew Henry.

Four ways of reading the thousand years

In Revelation 20 John sees Satan bound for a thousand years, and the martyrs: "they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years" (Revelation 20:4). This is the only passage in Scripture that speaks of a thousand-year reign, and Christians have read the millennium in four main ways.

The amillennial view does not deny the thousand years; it holds that we are living in them. Augustine, who admitted that he had once looked forward to a thousand-year sabbath of the saints after the resurrection, came to read the thousand years as the whole time of the church, in which Christ reigns with his people Augustine, City of God, Book 20. Satan is bound as the strong man is bound in Jesus' saying, "unless he first ties up the strong man" (Matthew 12:29): he can no longer stop the gospel reaching the nations. The first resurrection is new life in Christ, or the reign of departed believers with him in heaven. The Lutheran Augsburg Confession (Article 17) likewise rejected the idea that before the resurrection of the dead the godly would take possession of the kingdom of the world Augsburg Confession, Art. 17.

The postmillennial view expects the gospel, in the power of the Spirit, to spread and transform the world until a long age of righteousness and peace has come, after which Christ returns. It reads the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven, which works through the whole batch of dough (Matthew 13:31-33), and the promise that "the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the sea is full of water" (Isaiah 11:9). Many Puritans and nineteenth-century evangelicals held this hope, which fuelled missions and reform, and some hold it today.

The historic premillennial view holds that Christ will come after a time of tribulation, raise his people, and reign on earth for a thousand years before the last judgment and the new creation. It notes that the verb for ‘came to life’ in verse 4 is used again for the rest of the dead in verse 5, and so takes the first resurrection as bodily. Irenaeus taught that the righteous will reign in a renewed creation Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 5, and Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho, held this view while freely granting that many Christians of pure and devout faith thought otherwise.

The dispensational premillennial view was systematised in the nineteenth century by John Nelson Darby and spread widely by the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 Scofield Reference Bible. It sees God dealing with Israel and the church in distinct ways. Christ will first catch up his church to meet him in the air (the rapture); then comes a seven-year tribulation, read from the last of Daniel's seventy weeks, after which Christ returns with his saints and sets up a thousand-year kingdom in which God's promises to Israel are fulfilled. It points to the promise that "God has not appointed us to suffer wrath" (1 Thessalonians 5:9) and treasures the hope that the Lord may come at any moment.

The hope they share

These readings differ, but they confess one hope: Christ will come bodily, visibly and in glory; he will raise the dead, judge the world and make all things new; and no one should set a date. The ecumenical creeds do not decide how to read the thousand years, so there is no reason to doubt the faith of a Christian who reads them differently. For more, see Will Jesus come again?, What are the rapture and the millennium? and When will the end come?.

The last words of Jesus recorded in Scripture are a promise, and the church answers it. "Yes, I am coming soon," he says, and we reply, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!" (Revelation 22:20). What happens when he comes, the resurrection, the judgment and the new creation, is the subject of the next lesson.

Practice