Welcome back to season five of Enter the Bible, a podcast in which we share "Everything You Wanted to Know about the Bible...but were afraid to ask."

In episode 8 of season 5, Pastor at Tokyo Lutheran Church and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson returns as our guest. Her most recent book is "A Guide to Pentecostal Movements for Lutherans." She lives with her family in Tokyo, Japan.

Today our theologians will be answering the listener-submitted question, "What Are Beliefs Concerning the Book of Revelation? Premillennialism, Postmillennialism, Amillennialism?"'

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Katie Langston: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Enter the Bible podcast where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible, but were afraid to ask. I'm Katie Langston,

Kathryn Schifferdecker: And I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker. And our special guest again today is Reverend Dr. Sarah Wilson, who's a friend of ours and a wonderful theologian and pastor. She is associate pastor at Tokyo Lutheran Church in Tokyo, Japan. And she had to get up really early this morning to join us on this podcast. So thank you for joining us. And she is a creator and co-host of a wonderful podcast called Queen of the Sciences, which she does with her father, who is also a theologian, Paul Hinlicky, who has been a guest on this podcast as well. So welcome again, Sarah. Thank you so much for joining us.

Sarah Wilson: You're welcome. I'm thrilled to be here.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Uh, so our question today comes from a listener. And again, as usual, for those listening or viewing us, if you have a question about the Bible, please go to enter the Bible. Org and send it to us. We can't answer all the questions that come, but we'll do our best to address as many as possible. So this one is: What are the beliefs concerning? What are current beliefs, Christian beliefs concerning the Book of Revelation? And this listener wants to understand what these beliefs are, particularly pre millennial ism, post millennial ism and a millennial ism. And just you know we were joking as we, before we started to record that, we're not talking about the Millennials. Of which Katie is one.

Katie Langston: Not talking about Millennials.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Not talking about Millenials. We're talking about some belief systems, about the end of time, about millennial ism, so Sarah, maybe if you could start out just by defining those terms, that would be really helpful, I think.

Sarah Wilson: Right. So the reason why it sounds like the generational term millennial is because it refers to Millennium, which means the thousand years or the thousand year marker. So millennials as a generation got that name because of when they were born. But this millennial ism, these sets of millennial isms from Revelation have to do with a specific passage. So actually, if it's okay, I'll read the passage first because that'll make it easier to define the terms.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yeah, sounds good.

Sarah Wilson: So okay, so this is from Revelation. Oh, and let me just say clearly it's evelation. There's no s at the end because this book is one revelation of the one Jesus Christ. If there's anything that makes me tear out my hair and want to stab a knife through my heart, it's hearing people refer to the Book of Revelations. It's just one revelation of just one.

Katie Langston: Only one in there. It's a really long one, though.

Sarah Wilson: You know what? As soon as I got this question, I was like, If I say nothing else, if listeners remember nothing else, it's going to be that it's just revelation. Okay, I'm over it. So, okay, so this is from Revelation chapter 20, verses 1 to 6. I will read it. This is from the English Standard Version. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he sees the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into the pit and shut it and sealed it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be released for a little while, then I saw thrones and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed, and I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for, let's say it all together, a thousand years.

Katie Langston: A thousand years.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: So what chapter again in the Book of Revelation is that?

Sarah Wilson: So that's chapter 20, verses 1 to 6.

Katie Langston: All right. Well, I think that's pretty clear.

Sarah Wilson: It's very close to the end. Yeah.

Katie Langston: That's okay. That's so clear. I mean, that that's exactly what I was taught when I was growing up, is that, you know, the millennium hadn't happened yet, but it was Jesus was going to come down and he was going to, like, burn up all the bad people. And then Satan would go into like into his own little prison for a thousand years and all the good people would get resurrected and like hang out with Jesus. And then after the thousand years, Satan would get come back for a while and then we'd beat him for good this time. And then all the other people that weren't as good as us, they would get resurrected then.

Sarah Wilson: But they wouldn't have as much fun.

Katie Langston: No, they would not. They would be bummed out for the thousand years when we were all hanging out together. So I think that the Book of Revelation just showed how true that was. Boom.

Sarah Wilson: There you go. So what you have just described is pre millennial ism. That is the term that is used to describe it. Right. So this is the idea that before the whole earth is restored pre, there will be the 1000 years millennial ism of Jesus and his special group of saints hanging out on the earth after all the bad guys have been dealt with. That's the pre millennial version. So that is the most literal reading of this passage. Obviously, the post millennial term, a term post millennial ism is kind of an attempt to deal with this by bringing it down into the plain of ordinary historical developments. So post millennial ism is more like the idea that once human beings have finally gotten their act together, established the Kingdom of God on Earth through their diligent, faithful efforts and a thousand years of peace and progress take place, then Christ will come and say, "Good job, guys, you know, now, now we're ready to, you know, put this thing on steroids and go for the big time." But it's a thousand years, basically, of human effort at bringing about the peaceable kingdom.

Katie Langston: This is generally like a lot of work.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yeah, I don't think we've achieved. I don't think we've achieved even one year of such.

Sarah Wilson: Well, of course not. Of course not. So this one is not believed in usually such a literalist way. However, it is sort of I would say it's implicit and has been very much interwoven with especially since the Enlightenment ideas about modernity and progress and moral improvement over time. Whenever you hear someone easily dismissed that back then, they were bad and they were ignorant and they didn't know better. But now we do. And now we're doing better. That is drawing on what is functionally the post millennial ism of a lot of progressive or enlightenment type thinking that we can do it. We just need to do it. We get our acts together and we can bring the kingdom. And that animated a lot of like social gospel thinking and and other reform movements that often were in explicit tension with this more like cataclysmic approach of pre millennial ism.

Katie Langston: Yeah.

Sarah Wilson: Then we have a millennial ism, and this is the shocking idea that Revelation is not literal. It's not a code and it's not an allegory, but it is a revelation of Jesus Christ and must be understood theologically through its native language of symbolism, which is not a code and is not an allegory. But it's a different mode of literature or understanding that because it is so unnatural to us, it is by definition unnatural. People have a hard time with it and they want to make it purely literalistic or they turn it into some sort of backup for their own, their own ambitions and ideologies for this worldly in, you know, post millennial ism, it would be progress. So a millennial ism says, yes, something significant theological is going on here, but we are not meant to read it as a literal prediction or a literal mandate for what we are supposed to be doing. But all the times and including the end time are in God's hands. God has told us very little about what it's going to look like. Jesus himself said, I don't even know when the end is coming. So if even the Son of God doesn't know, how could anyone else possibly know? So this is a deliberately, let's call it agnostic position that surely some and some way God will fulfill his promise to restore the whole earth. But we don't know how. We don't know when. And it is not our job to even speculate, much less declare to the world at large when and how it's going to happen. Guess which side I'm on?

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yes. Yeah. Me too. So. So, like, locate for me. This series of books and movies that were popular. Don't know, ten, 15 years ago. The Left Behind series. I assume that's the pre millennial.

Sarah Wilson: Yeah, well, okay, that's true. But there's a long prehistory to pre millennial ism. And I think actually, even though this will take us really far back, I think this will be helpful because of course, as you know, both Old and New Testaments have apocalyptic language and literature within them, even like the gospels, like, you know, Mark 13, Jesus' prediction of the end times. That's apocalyptic within the gospel, which otherwise is not explicitly, you know, it's more history, you know, biography, even if a theological one. But even as early as one of the church fathers, Irenaeus, who lived around the year 200 so pretty early in post biblical Christian literature he's already looking at Revelation 20 and trying to make sense of it. And he has a little fun, does a little light numerology, trying to figure out, you know, you know, he's basically saying.

Katie Langston: I heard you could do that. I heard that on the Internet, if you like, type in... If you'd Google it, it'll tell you that if you count this many characters, da da da, then you can know. That's what I heard.

Sarah Wilson: Right? Well, and of course, people figured out very early in human development that numbers are cool and you can do weird stuff with it and you can like and you can have letters and numbers match up like that has been done. The problem is, if you read it as a code or if you read it as a symbol and Revelation is full of numbers, but they're symbolic numbers. They're not code numbers and they're not math numbers, they're symbol numbers. So anyway, Irenaeus plays around, has some fun. But then after trying it out, he concludes and this this is really important. Okay. This is from the year 200. He says "It is more certain and less hazardous to await the fulfillment of the prophecy than to be making surmises and casting about for any names that may present themselves in as much as many names can be found possessing the number mentioned. And the same question will, after all, remain unsolved." So 1800 years ago, one of our greatest church fathers got it. We will never know This is something again in Jesus' hands. Jesus is the one who will answer these questions and make these prophecies true in whatever way he intends to make them true. Alas, that has not stopped Christians from having indulging not in light numerology, but deep and dark numerology and getting themselves very panicked. Like when the year 1000 rolled around, everyone was like, Oh my gosh, it's been a thousand years since Jesus, we're all going to die. And then time kept ticking along and they're like, Oh, maybe it wasn't that millennium. And ever since.

Katie Langston: We did it again in 2000.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Yeah, that happened in 2000.

Sarah Wilson: Yeah. But actually there's a Wikipedia page of all the predictions of the end of the world just from Christians through history. And it is, it's hilarious reading because there have been so many and they've all been wrong. There's been a 100% failure rate in predicting the end, which evidently never stopped someone from trying again because this time I'm going to be right. But yeah, so and like the reformers, they weren't like the Lutheran reformers were not super bad about it, but they saw massive upheaval and they were kind of worried sometimes. Pietists got into it for a while. I would say most errors of the magisterial reformation and Catholics are Orthodox have basically said, you know what, we're not going to do this anymore. This is a bad idea. But unfortunately, that didn't eliminate it. It just passed into a different holding tank. And so the sort of the forefather of modern, especially pre millennial ist thinking, is this guy named John Nelson Darby. He's the founder of the Plymouth Brethren, British kind of break off Evangelical group in the 19th century and he was super duper into prediction predicting the end. And then a lot of his ideas were taken up into the Scofield Reference Bible, which was one of the most widespread Bibles, especially in the US. It's from early 20th century, sometime I think maybe close to the outbreak of the First World War, which you can understand, brought on a lot of apocalyptic panic again. But it's basically a Bible that like tells you like goes through and picks out all the prophecies and how they have been are going to be fulfilled. And that is really what, like I have to say, use this bad word, but like infected the American Christian imagination. And there's something I think there's a lot of mix up in just the whole American project of like such immense promise and such immense darkness and like, trying to sort out, you know, are we are we going the right way or the wrong way? And how do we know and who's on what side? And, you know, you know, the greatest freedoms in the world ever sitting on top of, you know, mass death of Native Americans, enslavement of African Americans, you know, amazing industrial progress, but then loss of land and, you know, being a place that everybody wants to come to and sees as a beacon of hope. So you get such conflicting signals within the American experiment that if you want a clean answer, are we getting better or are we getting worse? You know, if you think we're getting better, you're a post millennialist . If you think we're getting worse, you're pre millennialist. If you think it's probably not either or, it's probably both. And maybe we do not within ourselves have the key to history. Then you choose the right answer which is you're an millennialist . How many more times could I say this before we're done?

Katie Langston: Okay. Okay, go. Go ahead. Well, I was just saying. So.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: So. So the left behind thing, right? Like. Yeah, I know that's not as popular now, but, you know, ten, 15 years ago, there were lots of people and and it was, you know, in popular literature. And, you know, the the the airline pilot who gets raptured. Right. We haven't used that word yet.

Katie Langston: Oh, yeah. The rapture. I forgot about the rapture.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: You know, taken away. And then the airplane crashes. Whatever. It's it's I like how you classify it so that it it reflects our own conflicting feelings about our society. Right? Are we getting better or are we getting worse? And there are so many times where it seems like things are going to hell in a handbasket. Right. And so this kind of belief could, I don't hold this belief myself. Like you said, I think a millennial ism is not, you know, not being a millennial ist is the right choice. But I can see the attraction. That's where wanted to go. Right? That if, you know, if everything looks terrible at any particular point in history, well, maybe it's a sign of the end times and Jesus is going to come back soon. Right. And and so, you know, so you're looking through the Book of Revelation, which is a weird book in many ways.

Sarah Wilson: It is a weird book

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Find some some hope. Um, and and it it is those times, especially when the church is persecuted or when it seems like the end of the world is near. I think it's those times when when the Book of Revelation is comes more to prominence and not in not in bad ways like we're talking about what the Left Behind series or whatever, but but also in good ways just to to give, to remember and to to be reminded that God is God, right. And that God has. God. God has God's will will be done in the end. That is the restoration of all that is good and and that God will reign at the end of days. Right. Even if it doesn't seem that way now.

Sarah Wilson: Yeah, I think we should. We should come back maybe as we finish up about what revelation the Book of Revelation is for. But to try to give now a slightly more charitable gloss on this. Like you were saying, why are people attracted to the to this kind of left behind or pre millennial or also sometimes called dispensationist thinking? I think one thing is that as soon as you realize there is history, you can't help but asking where you are in it and how do you interpret it? Is history one damn thing after another? Is there a narrative thread? Are things inevitable or are they contingent? Are we close to the end or are we still close to the beginning? You can't. Once you know there's history, you have to ask those questions. But it's almost impossible to get a very satisfying answer to any of them. There's also a question of whether the origin is greater or the goal is greater. So one kind of thinking says it was perfect in Eden and everything has been declined since and the goal is to get back to Eden. But another way of looking at saying Eden was a launching point that was never complete in itself. And yes, things went terribly awry when Adam and Eve ate the apple and were expelled for the garden. But nevertheless, the the the goal was always going to be greater than the origin. And the church fathers also had this idea of the felix culpa the the happy faults of sin because it opened the doorway to even greater than the origin itself could have contained, which was the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So I think that's one thing, is that nobody gets out of historical thinking and we might not like this method of historical thinking, but I have a huge problem with a lot of secular forms of historical thinking, too. So it's not you know, I think we're more irritated by the Left Behind version because it's like inside our camp, you know, we want fellow Christians to do better. But it's not like the problem doesn't exist on the outside. I think also in the specific case of the Left Behind books, I think they were expressing a very literal feeling of being left behind. And, you know, since those books have come out, we have seen a kind of gutting of the working class, more and more of the middle class Americans who feel that their nation does not represent them or speak for them is hostile to their values. So, you know, this was a way of giving people who felt really left behind, neglected, uncared , unvalued the deplorables. You know, it gave them a feeling of importance and value. Now, I would say revelation itself, when it addresses murdered people actually at every move, blocks revenge fantasies. So the idea that, you know, these bad people are going to be in car and airplane crashes because they weren't good enough to be raptured, fundamentally misunderstands the message of revelation. But if we talk just about human emotion and social movements, I think that's one of the reasons why this is so powerful. It is a way like if you if you have spiritual insight into the way reality really works, the way, God's real plan. If you're on the right side of history, then it gives you a power in your state of powerlessness, you know, And I think it's hard for Americans now to hear that powerless people are not necessarily virtuous people. You know, they should not be they should be invited into power and responsibility and not denied privileges and opportunities. But powerless people don't just become good because they have no power. They can be resentful, they can be vengeful. They can use their weakness as a tool of moral control. And I think that's one version. The Left Behind series is tapping into that very ugly human characteristic as well. And that's another reason to oppose it. But unless we address also the root cause of the feelings and find some other ways of of inviting them, inviting us, if we are in that category into a different way of relating to the the injustices and power imbalances, then, you know, I can see why that's an attractive option.

Katie Langston: So okay, so if, if, if Revelation is not about the like preparing us for the literal millennium and if we're also not ushering in the millennium by our acts of good works and justice and mercy. Then what even is the point of the Book of Revelation?

Kathryn Schifferdecker: You know, I'll ask

Sarah Wilson: To confuse.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: Well, it's it's to give hope I think. I mean in all of its weirdness and all of its symbolism and you know, oblique references like, you know, Babylon is Rome. And, you know, it's it's to say, in the end, the blood that is shed is the blood of the lamb. And it is the the crucified and risen lamb Jesus Christ who is to be worshiped and glorified. And and that in the end, God wins. Right. The beast doesn't win. Satan doesn't win. The antichrist doesn't win. Right. No matter how bad things look. And remember John of Patmos, John is writing this exiled to an island. You know, things aren't cheery for him, right? No matter the what it looks like on the ground, God wins in the end. And not the, you know, God of the Greeks and Romans or the God of Empire, but the God that we know most fully in Jesus Christ. Right? The the one who gave himself in love for the sake of the world. This the self-giving sacrificial Lamb of God who gives himself for the sake of the world. So in all its weirdness, I think I think the Book of Revelation in the end is a book about hope.

Sarah Wilson: Yeah, I think it's it's written of and for martyrs and not people who think they're martyrs or who vainly wish to be martyrs, but people who are actually facing their own bloodshed from a power that doesn't care about shedding blood is just happy to get rid of them and I think on some level, revelation is really meant for those people above all, and we can do our best from positions of scholarship and security to understand it in the most responsible and theologically insightful way possible. But I think in some respect, Revelation most of revelation is not for us. However, to immediately caveat that at the beginning are the letters to the seven churches, and they range from faithful churches to lukewarm churches to nearly apostate churches. And in that respect, all all churches are called to read this book and recenter themselves on the theology of the ultimate martyr. Who is Jesus Christ of course, the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world, as Revelation says. And then Revelation ends after all the enemies have been dealt with and all the suffering is behind. I mean, the very last bit is the vision of of God and humanity fully reconciled through Christ, dwelling together in a transformed heaven and earth. And in that respect, even if you lead a pretty decent life with relatively low suffering, you're still going to die. You're still going to see other people around you die. That is the ultimate apocalypse that awaits everybody. And in that respect, you know, at least the last chapter of Revelation is also for you. And it's the last chapter of the Bible. And it is the the the goal towards which we're heading, which I would say does exceed the origin. This full integration in a loving fellowship of God with all of his people.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: The new heaven and the new earth, where God will wipe the tears from all faces and death will be swallowed up forever. Well. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for explaining all the millennialists . You haven't explained the Millennials, but the Millennials.

Katie Langston: Well, there's lots of books on that one, too.

Kathryn Schifferdecker: There are a lot of books on Millennials, too. Yeah. Thank you so much. You, as usual, have just explained things very clearly and and articulately. And we really appreciate your depth, sharing your depth of knowledge with us and and your, I think, insightful critiques and insights about about Western society. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to our listeners again for listening to this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast. You can get high quality courses, commentaries, resources, videos and other reflections at Enter the bible.org. If you enjoyed this podcast, please like us and recommend us to your friends. Thank you so much for joining us today. Okay, see you soon. Bye.