Revelation 20 · Featured Study

The Millennium

One chapter of the Bible says a thousand years, and it says it six times in six verses. Everything the church has argued about the millennium comes out of those six mentions and the sequence around them. So take the chapter as data first: what is bound, what is loosed, who lives, who does not, and in what order. Then the three readings, drawn as three lines with the same block moved to a different place, because that is exactly what the disagreement is.

Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom (c. 1834) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Summary

This page lays Revelation 20 out as its own sequence of events before naming any position, then draws three readings as one gold segment moved to three places on a timeline. Each view gets its holders, best case, and hardest problem, and the page closes with where this site lands and what it keeps from the other two.

The chapter's own sequence appears first: binding, first resurrection, loosing, final battle, the great white throne.
Three timelines, premillennial, amillennial, postmillennial, move the same thousand-year block to a different position.
Each reading gets its historic and modern holders, its best argument, and its hardest problem.
A short history traces the church from early chiliasm through Augustine's amillennial reading to premillennialism's later return.
This site names itself premillennial, while naming what it keeps from the other two readings.

What the Chapter Says

before anybody argues: the sequence as reported

20:1
An angel comes down out of heaven with the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand.
20:2
He lays hold on the dragon, the old serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and binds him for a thousand years.
20:3
He casts him into the abyss, shuts it and seals it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years are finished. After that he must be loosed for a little time.
20:4
Thrones, and judgment given to those who sat on them; and the souls of them beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, who had not worshipped the beast. They lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
20:5
The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
20:6
Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: the second death has no power over them; they shall be priests of God and of Christ and reign with him a thousand years.
20:7
When the thousand years are finished, Satan is loosed out of his prison.
20:8–9
He goes out to deceive the nations, Gog and Magog, and gathers them to war; they compass the camp of the saints, and fire comes down out of heaven and devours them.
20:10
The devil is cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are.
20:11–12
A great white throne; earth and heaven flee away; the dead, great and small, stand before it, and the books are opened: and another book, which is the book of life.
20:13–15
The sea, death and Hades give up their dead; death and Hades are cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

Six mentions, six verses

120:2: bound him for a thousand years
220:3: till the thousand years should be finished
320:4: reigned with Christ a thousand years
420:5: lived not until the thousand years should be finished
520:6: shall reign with him a thousand years
620:7: when the thousand years are finished

The Greek is chilia etē, and the Latin behind our word is the same arithmetic: mille plus annus. Every position in this argument is named after where it puts these six verses.

Two resurrections, one verb

Verse 4: the martyrs lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years. Verse 5: the rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years were finished. The same word, the two groups, and the thousand years standing between them. Whether that gap is an interval on a calendar or a way of saying two things about one moment is the whole question below.

Where the chapter ends

Not with the reign. With a great white throne, opened books, and death itself thrown into the lake of fire: the second death. That judgment has its own study →

Three Readings, One Block Moved

the gold segment is the thousand years in all three: watch where it sits

Premillennial

This site’s tradition

This age
He returns
The thousand years: Christ reigning on earth
Satan loosed
Judgment · new creation

Amillennial

The thousand years: the present age, from the cross
He returns
Judgment · new creation

Postmillennial

This age
The thousand years: the gospel's triumph
Brief apostasy
He returns
Judgment · new creation

Premillennial

He returns first, then reigns. The thousand years is an interval on earth between the return and the final judgment.

Amillennial

The thousand years is now. Satan was bound at the cross; the martyrs reign with Christ in heaven; the return ends the age and brings judgment at once.

Postmillennial

The gospel wins the world first. Christ returns at the end of a long age of Christianised nations, to judgment and the new creation.

Each at Full Strength

who holds it, its best case, and its hardest problem

Premillennial

This site's tradition

Held by Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 80–81, c. 155) and Irenaeus (Against Heresies 5.32–36, c. 180), both public domain, and much of the ante-Nicene church. Today the dispensational stream: Missler, Lindsey, Walvoord. Among the public-domain expositors, Seiss and Bullinger; and Spurgeon, unusually for his circle, was premillennial.

Its best case

The order of the text is the argument. Chapter 19 ends with the Rider returning and the beast and false prophet taken; chapter 20 opens with the binding, then the reign, then the loosing, then the great white throne; chapter 21 brings the new creation. Nothing in the seam suggests a rewind. And the two resurrections are separated in the text by the thousand years themselves: 'they lived' in verse 4, 'the rest of the dead lived not until' in verse 5, the same verb for both. This is also the oldest reading on record, held by writers who spoke John's language and lived within living memory of his church.

Its hardest problem

It rests heavily on one chapter. No other passage in Scripture mentions a thousand years, and the New Testament's other end-time texts, 2 Thessalonians 1, 2 Peter 3, move from the return to judgment to the new heavens without pausing for an earthly interval. A doctrine held from a single chapter must be held with care, and premillennialists owe an account of that silence.

Amillennial

Held by Augustine, City of God 20 (public domain), whose change of mind carried the Western church, and after him the medieval, Lutheran and Reformed mainstream. Today R. C. Sproul, on the founder's own roster, holds it.

Its best case

Every other number in this book is symbolic, seven churches, twelve times twelve thousand, forty-two months, so a literal thousand would be the single exception. The binding fits Jesus' own image of binding the strong man before spoiling his house (Matthew 12:29) and the New Testament's claim that the powers were disarmed at the cross. John sees souls, not bodies, on the thrones: the reign is the departed saints reigning with Christ now. And the book recapitulates constantly, so chapter 20 need not follow chapter 19 on a clock.

Its hardest problem

The chapter says Satan is sealed in the abyss 'that he should deceive the nations no more': and the same New Testament describes him in the present age as a prowling lion, the deceiver of the whole world and the blinder of minds. The two pictures are hard to hold at once. And verses 4 and 5 use one verb for both groups: if 'they lived' is spiritual and 'the rest of the dead lived not' is bodily, the sentence is doing two different things with one word.

Postmillennial

Held by Jonathan Edwards and much of the Puritan and 18th–19th century missionary movement. On the founder's roster the nearest living stream is victorious eschatology, Harold Eberle (Victorious Eschatology), Dutch Sheets, Bill Johnson, Chuck Pierce, though that stream is often optimistic-amillennial rather than strictly postmillennial.

Its best case

The kingdom parables describe leaven working through the whole lump and a mustard seed becoming a tree: growth that fills, not a remnant that survives. The commission is to disciple nations, given by One who already holds all authority. And expectation is not neutral: a church that believes it is losing behaves as though it is losing. Postmillennialism produced the modern missionary movement, and that is not an accident.

Its hardest problem

The New Testament's own last-days descriptions, 2 Timothy 3, Matthew 24, foresee mounting deception and pressure rather than a Christianised world. And the chapter under discussion ends its thousand years not with a handover to a returning King but with a global rebellion so large that fire has to come down out of heaven.

How the Church Changed Its Mind: Twice

the honest history behind the labels

2nd century
Chiliasm is the common expectation. Justin says plainly that he and every right-minded Christian know there will be a resurrection of the flesh and a thousand years in Jerusalem; Irenaeus devotes the close of Against Heresies to it.
3rd century
Alexandria pushes back. The allegorical method treats the reign as spiritual, and the Eastern church begins to hesitate over Revelation itself: the same hesitancy that produced the authorship doubt.
5th century
Augustine, having once held a chiliast expectation, comes to read the thousand years as the age of the church between the advents. City of God 20 becomes the settled Western reading for a thousand years.
19th–20th century
Premillennialism returns in force through the Brethren, the prophecy conferences and the dispensational systematisers: and, on the founder's line, through Missler.

Two things follow, and both are worth saying out loud. Premillennialism is not a modern American invention: it is the earliest recorded expectation of the church. And amillennialism is not a liberal drift: it is Augustine, and after him almost everyone, for a very long time. Anyone who tells you this argument is obvious has not read its history.

This Site's Tradition

premillennial, and what it keeps from the others

This site's tradition is premillennial: Christ returns bodily, then reigns on the earth for a real interval, then the last rebellion is crushed, then the great white throne, then the new heaven and new earth. Two things carry the reading: the plain sequence of chapters 19 → 20 → 21, in which nothing signals a rewind, and the ante-Nicene witness, the church closest to John in time, language and blood, which expected exactly this.

Kept from the amillennialist

That this book's numbers are freighted with meaning and not merely measurements, and that Christ's reign is not only future: the strong man was bound at the cross, and the saints who have died are with Him now. A premillennialism that forgets the present reign has learned only half the chapter.

Kept from the victorious-eschatology stream

That the church's commission is advance, not retreat, and that expecting decline can become a way of excusing it. Eberle, Sheets and Johnson are carried on this site for that emphasis: the flag stays premillennial, but a premillennialism that produces passivity has misread its own Lord.

Within premillennialism a further question remains: when the church is caught up relative to the tribulation. That gets its own page.

The rapture: four timings The four schools The Lamb The lake of fire The New Jerusalem Revelation 19 Revelation 21