“Use the clear texts interpret the difficult ones.” I don’t remember where I learned that but I do remember learning it and using it. It stuck with me for a long time. Then I took a class with Grant Osborne and he made a great point about this approach. He said, in effect, that what is a difficult text for you may not be a difficult text for someone else. Grant is an Arminian and so the texts that he finds clear can be troublesome for Calvinists. And visa versa. You have to include the “difficult” texts in the formulation of your theology. If you ignore them till the end and then make them fit, you’re in danger of misreading them. Wise words! Probably the very best thing I learned in his class. He also said that about 1/3 of everyone’s theology is wrong, the trick was figuring out which third. ¹Just occurred to me that that notion could be in Osborne’s incorrect one third! This was the second best thing I learned.

The Book of Revelation is cryptic and symbolic. There are tons of commentaries written on it and many disagree in meaning and approach. I seem to remember either being taught or just figuring for myself that to understand Revelation we need to bring the rest of the New Testament to bear on it rather than trying to understand it by itself. Let the clear text interpret the unclear.

See my first paragraph.

I don’t want to oversimplify the complexities of handling the Book of Revelation but I don’t want to treat it as second class revelation either. Normally, I would say that to properly understand the text you need to recognize the genre of the text. But what happens when the genre is poorly understood? Yikes. Still, not everything in Revelation is equally confusing. “From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God” (Rev 4:5) is perhaps more difficult to understand than “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” (Rev 22:18-19)

What I’m saying is that there are places where The Book of Revelation will give us trouble and there are places where it will not. The difficulty is not in what it says but in understanding what is symbolic and what is not symbolic.  In my previous post, I said that the chain and pit that bind Satan are symbolic but the curtailing of his deceptive work in the world are not. I made a decision based on what I know about angels from the rest of the Bible. Did I violate my second paragraph? Maybe some, but there is a different between a detail in the vision and what the vision is showing. I could defend that a bit more but I don’t want to spend all my time there.

Besides, this post isn’t about angels.  It is about the saints during the millennium. We look again at Revelation 20 and read:

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also 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 a thousand years. (Revelation 20:4-6)

There are a number things going on here so I’ll take them one at a time.

I’ve said it elsewhere but it bears repeating. The ones who are raised are those who were beheaded for witnessing to Jesus and the word of God. The ones who are raised are those who didn’t worship the beast nor were they identified with him. They did these things and then they were resurrected. This isn’t an attempt at pulling some sort of chronology out of Revelation, it is looking at who is described as being resurrected. It would be like saying “Those who took drug X and suffered kidney disease were give a large settlement.” It says nothing about when they took the faulty drug, simply that the fact that they had qualified them for the settlement. The same thing is true of the saints who are resurrected.

Of these saints, John says “I saw the souls” of them. What does this mean? Well, what else would John see of these saints before they were resurrected? This verse doesn’t teach that the first resurrection is a spiritual one. If all John said was “these came to life” then that would be a possible meaning but he specifically calls this “the first resurrection” in verse 5 and resurrection is something that happens to our bodies though our souls may be made alive with Christ. ²See? I did bring the “clear” verses of the Bible to bear on the unclear. Old habits die hard.

Next, it says that these saints, the ones who were raised, reigned with Jesus. Again, the chronology isn’t what’s important, it is the fact that those who were raised are the ones who got to reign. This was a sticking point for me with the historic premillennial position. On the earth will be these resurrected saints walking around with other people who are not only not resurrected, but many who are not even regenerate!? How does that work?

Well, it isn’t without precedent. When Jesus died on the cross,

The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Matthew 27:52-53)

This really happened. The dead saints were raised and walked into Jerusalem and visited many people. This was not the final resurrection and these folks either died again or returned to their graves after a period of time. But the dead were raised and interacted with unresurrected humans.

But (and this is significant) they weren’t glorified saints. This was a taste of the things to come but not the fullness of it. Though the fullness of this hasn’t happened, Paul anticipated his future reigning with Jesus as his hope for enduring his suffering:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful (2 Tim 2:11-13)

Don’t pass over this too quickly. The context is Paul’s imprisonment for the gospel. (v 9) He says that if we endure we will also reign with him, not that in our enduring we reign. Paul endures prison for the sake of the elect (v 10) ³By the way, this verse disproves the theory that what is “the elect” is the status of being saved and not individual people who God foreknew. Paul suffers so that the elect can be saved. If “the elect” are simply slots in heaven and not specific individuals, this makes no sense. Yes, I’ve had that theory put forward to explain divine election. It doesn’t work.

While it would be sufficient for the single verse of Revelation 20:6 to establish this truth (does God have to repeat himself?) there are other verses that indicate this kind of arrangement.  James and John have their mom ask Jesus for the right to sit on Jesus’ left hand and right hand in his kingdom. (Matthew 20:20-21) Jesus’ reply to her is not that once he ascends to heaven that they will be reigning with him on earth. Instead he says “to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” Those positions of honor are assigned by God himself! Jesus’ answer to the request sounds very much like there are people who will sit in positions of honor with him in his kingdom.

Ok, this post is too long now. I’ll wrap here. I think my next post will be on Earth and the Millennium.