Short Shot: The End of the Millennium– In Flaming Fire!
Short Shot: The End of the Millennium– In Flaming Fire!
As noted in earlier posts, I am currently finishing a book on the Millennium, (It is currently at 300+ pages) that I feel will be a great addition to the Full Preterist literature and will, hopefully, bring some clarity to the subject. The “Short Shot” posts have been abbreviated portions of that work that will, hopefully, pique your curiosity on the subject. In the upcoming book, I will be expanding the scope of the discussion about the judgment in flaming fire at the end of the Millennium to include Daniel 7, Isaiah 66 also. This post will focus on 2 Thessalonians 1 and Revelation 20.
We begin with Revelation 20:7-9
Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.
Note several things:
☛ The scene is after the Millennium.
☛ Satan is released for a “little while.”
☛ He gathers the nations for Gog and Magog.
☛ The war is directed at the saints and the beloved city.
☛ Fire comes down from heaven and consumes Satan and his forces, defeating the persecutors and vindicating the saints. The fire coming down from heaven not only vindicates the saints, it gives them– clearly– relief from that persecution.
To help us understand the text in Revelation we need to know who the persecuting power was. John identifies the key player as Babylon, which is the city “where the Lord was crucified” (Revelation 11:8). She was not only where the Lord was slain, but she was also guilty of killing the prophets – that would be the OT prophets- (Revelation 16:6) as well as the “the apostles and prophets” of Christ (Revelation 18:20-24). Her blood guilt had filled up the cup of her sin (17:6) and her judgment, at the Day of the Lord was at hand (Revelation 18-19).
What this means is that in Revelation, we have the “Tale of Two Cities.” We have the persecuting harlot city just described, and we have the beloved city of the saints, the New Heavenly Jerusalem, that was the object of the persecution from the Old Jerusalem, the Jerusalem that was in bondage with her children when the epistles were written (Galatians 4:24-30).
The persecutor of the saints is depicted as making a final assault against the beloved “heavenly Jerusalem” but fire comes down from heaven and destroys that persecutorial earthly Jerusalem. We turn now to 2 Thessalonians 1: 6-11:
it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed.
What are the constituent elements of this text?
We have the persecution of the saints.
Their persecutors were the Jews (Acts 17:1-5).
The persecutors would become the “persecuted.”
The Saints would be vindicated in their suffering and receive relief (anesis) at the coming of the Lord.
That relief from their persecution would be at the coming of the Lord “in flaming fire”
That coming of the Lord in flaming fire to give the persecuted saints was to be in their lifetime, during the very time of their being persecuted “It is a righteous thing with God to repay, with tribulation, those who are troubling you, and to give to you who are being trouble, rest, WHEN the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in flaming fire.
☛ The text does not say those saints would be killed and then go to heaven.
☛ It does not say that they would be persecuted until the end of time.
☛ The text does not posit a vast gap between their persecution and their vindication.
The text explicitly says that the promised relief would come “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven.” This “relief when” is inviolate. This demands that the Thessalonians would be alive, being persecuted, when the Lord would come in flaming fire against their persecutors. Be sure to get a copy of my book, In Flaming Fire for an in-depth exegesis of 2 Thessalonians 1. It is a powerful example of proper exegesis and hermeneutic.
Likewise, Revelation posits the judgment of Babylon, the persecuting city, as coming soon, shortly. It was at hand. To suggest, as some do, that all Revelation was saying is that, “One day, by and by, after perhaps millennia, when the Lord finally gets around to coming, He will take the fastest cloud out of heaven” makes a mockery of language.
Kenneth Gentry addressed such claims:
Another detriment to the strained interpretations listed above is that John was writing to historical churches existing in his own day (Rev. 1:4). He and they are presently suffering “tribulation” (Rev. 1:9a). John’s message (ultimately from Christ 1:1) calls upon each to give careful, spiritual attention to his words (2:7 etc). John is deeply concerned with the expectant cry of the martyrs and the divine promise of their soon vindication (6:10; cp. 5:3-5). He (John, DKP) would be cruelly mocking their circumstances (while committing a ‘verbal scam’ according to Mounce) were he telling them that when help comes it will come with swiftness–even though it may not come until two or three thousand years later.” (Kenneth Gentry, The Beast of Revelation, (Powder Springs, GA, American Vision, 2002), 27).
I would point out that when it comes to 2 Thessalonians 1, Gentry abandons this excellent hermeneutical observation. In fact, in his 2024, two volume work on Revelation, he conflates 2 Thessalonians 1 with Revelation 20:7-9, positing them both “at the end of human history” (Kenneth Gentry, The Divorce of Israel, Vol. II (Acworth, Ga: Tolle Press), 1600). Doug Wilson (When the Man Comes Around, (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2019), 237) also conflates 2 Thessalonians 1 with Revelation 20:7f and the “end of human history.” It is very common for commentators to make these connections.
In my book, We Shall Meet Him In The Air, I responded to Gentry’s claim about 2 Thessalonians:
//This is an excellent hermeneutical statement and we could hardly agree more. However, let’s apply this principle to the texts in Thessalonians.
According to Gentry, Revelation cannot apply to the future because: 1.) It was written to specific historical churches, 2.) Those churches were actually undergoing persecution, 3.) John calls on his audience to give heed to his words, and, 4.) John promised imminent relief from their persecution. Okay, let’s apply that to 1 Thessalonians 4 and 2 Thessalonians 1.
First, was Paul, like John, addressing a specific historical church? No one doubts that he was.
Second, was the church at Thessalonica actually experiencing persecution when Paul wrote to them? Undeniably. See 2 Thessalonians 1. Paul uses the present participial form of thlipsis four times to describe the persecution they were enduring.
Third, did Paul call on the Thessalonians to give heed to his exhortations? Who can doubt he was? After all, he did say, “Wherefore, comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18).
Fourth, Paul promised imminent relief (anesis, see our discussion above) from their persecution. The words of Mounce apply equally well to Thessalonians as to Revelation. If Paul was simply promising that one of these days by and by Jesus would bring relief to them, “He (Paul in this case, DKP) would be cruelly mocking their circumstances (while committing a ‘verbal scam’ according to Mounce) were he telling them that when help comes it will come with swiftness–even though it may not come until two or three thousand years later.//
To justify his dichotomization between the imminent coming of the Lord in Revelation and the “end of human history” in 2 Thessalonians 1 and Revelation 20:7-9, Gentry totally abandons his own hermeneutic of honoring the temporal imminence of Revelation. Not only that, he completely ignores his own four rules of hermeneutic given just above. But, to keep this “Short Shot” actually short, let me offer the following argument:
The coming of the Lord in flaming fire against the persecutors of God people, in 2 Thessalonians 1, is the same judgment of the persecutors of God’s people in flaming fire at the end of the Millennium, in Revelation 20:7-9 (Gentry, Wilson, and many, if not most commentators agree).
But, the coming of the Lord in flaming fire against the persecutors of God’s people in 2 Thessalonians 1 was to be in the lifetime of the first century Thessalonians. The relief would come “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven.”
Therefore, the judgment of the persecutors of God’s people in flaming fire at the end of the Millennium in Revelation 20:7-9 was to be in the first century, “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven.”
Unless one can prove definitively that 2 Thessalonians 1 and Revelation 20 are speaking of different persecutions, by different persecutors, at two totally different times, the conflation of 2 Thessalonians 1 and Revelation 20 demands that the Millennium ended in the first century.
As you wait for my upcoming book be sure to get the book: The Millennium: Past, Present or Future, by Joseph Vincent.