the post-Tribulation world: the Millenium

General Questions
#1

(not sure about appropriate forum, mods move if needed)

The book of Revelations talks about the Tribulation- the time when the Antichrist reigns and disasters come close to extinguishing the human race. It ends with Christ’s physical return to Earth to put things right. Now if I"m reading it correctly, this isn’t the Final final showdown: the one where the souls of all mankind receive their eternal judgement, Satan, the fallen angels and the damned are cast into the lake of fire. and Heaven and Earth are remade. Rather, the Tribulation is followed by the Millenium, the thousand years of Christ’s rule. Revelations doesn’t go into it in much detail. It says that Christ will rule the nations “with an iron hand”, and that during this time Satan will be “bound”. My question is, just what exactly is this imagined to entail?

Is a physically immortal Jesus supposed to be a soft of theocratic world dictator, ruling the world presumably from Jerusalem? And what does it mean that Satan will be bound? That for the Millenium no one will be evil, or subject to original sin? If not, what will happen to the people who are evil? Will there still be natural disasters or will they be supernaturally prevented?

In other words, inbetween our current world of sin, pain and evil, and a new universe in which reality itself has been remade to create a perfect paradise, there will be- ???

#2

Dunno. What I do know, however, is that you should put aside your “Book of Revelations” and pick up the “Book of the Revelation_”

#3

This is actually a General Question, since–given a frame of reference of belief–there are particular answers available to it.

Unfortunately, there is not a single answer to it because, as you have already noted, the details are far from specific, the chronology is not clear in the text, and the actually held beliefs are based on a number of differing interpretations.

The best short synopsis of each of the beliefs (along with who tends to hold them) can be found at religioustolerance.org on the ESCHATOLOGY, END TIMES, AND MILLENNIALISM: Competing theories page. There are additional notes on the END-OF-THE-WORLD PREDICTIONS: Interpretation of Jesus’ and Paul’s prophecies page.

I’m going to send this to GQ for further explication, although if anyone seriously wishes to debate the various interpretations, I suppose that it might come back here to GD.

#4

Or John’s Apocalypse, even.

Whatever, it’s past its expiration date. It’s a failed prophecy, a fantasy.

#5

Well, yes, but Lumpy wasn’t asking if it was true, but was asking what was supposed to happen according to the myth.

#6

Wait – when was it supposed to happen?

#7

Haven’t read it in a while. Um… collapse of the false god Caesar, restoration of Jewish power, new era of niftiness (arguably shunted into the afterlife or another plane of existence to remove falsifiability).

Oh, the AntiChrist. One of the Caesars, not sure they had a specific one in mind. Remember that Jerusalem had been leveled by Vespasian’s son Titus by the time the Apocalypse was written. And there were some serious persecutions (torture & death) of Messianic Jews/Jesus cultists/whichever group wrote the Apocalypse around this time. So that’s what the OP is calling “war on humanity.” It was on the movement, & Jews in general, & it was already active.

Since the Romans & the Christians eventually co-opted each other, I think it’s arguable that the Caesars didn’t end as the Apocalypse prophecied. But some would say it’s already come true metaphorically, & the Millennium is the Christian Era. Since the Christians have fragmented into warring factions, I don’t buy it.

#8

There have been a few novelistic attempts to portray the Millenium. LaHaye & Jenkins’ KINGDOM COME is the completion of their Left Behind series. It did not sell nearly as well as the least-seller of the Tribulation books in the LB. I leafed through it & it presents a pretty decent picture of standard Evangelical views.

Here’s what I always believed when I’ve been Pre-Mil (I’m about 90% PreMil now, 10% PostMil)-

To Lumpy’s Qs:

JC as theocratic world dictator ruling from Jerusalem- yep.
And He has His millions of His immortal followers as His enforcers all over the world & wherever humanity extends. (I’ve always thought this would be an era of space travel as well.)

Satan &, by extension, the demons would be bound. Humans would still be subject to innate fallenness but would be vastly better behaved. A lot of incentives to crime would no longer exist. What incentive would there be to steal in a world of total plenty. Now would murder & rape be prevented from happening by the Immortals? I don’t know but I would suppose so. An attempted murderer/rapist would quite possibly be executed immediately & publically. SO any human sinfulness would be kept from getting out of hand. There is a passage in Isaiah which has been interpreted as meaning that if any die before reaching 100 years old, it would be because of their unrepentant or severe sinfulness. At the end of the Millenium when Satan is unbound & allowed to gain followers, there will apparently be throngs of unredeemed under-100y-olds who join in the Rebellion.

Either there would be no natural disasters during the Millenium or they would be detected beforehand & the people protected or evacuated (semi-raptured?).

That’s my attempt to explain.