Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (49 page)

♦
Point 2: Resurrection precedes the Millennium
. We now turn to the second rapturist claim: “Christians will be resurrected in their glorified bodies at the start of these thousand years.” Here we must not forget that we are reading apocalyptic literature that uses the imagery of physical resurrection to describe the spiritual reconstitution, renewal, or rejuvenation of God’s people. This is not something new; it runs throughout the Bible (GR7).

Even our entry into the Church is designated as “regeneration,” a resurrection of the spiritually dead. The sacrament of Baptism is imbued with this resurrection symbolism. Let’s take the example of a new convert in the early Church. He would have been placed under water by the baptizer three times. The baptizer would have said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the name of the Son, and the name of the Holy Spirit.” Going into the water symbolizes death to this world and its appetites. Coming out of the water symbolizes the new life to which a Christian is called via the power of the Holy Spirit. The new Christian has been resurrected to a new life in Christ.

The “first resurrection” that John mentions here is not a physical one, but the taking of a soul to Heaven by God. Upon death, these Christian saints join the Church Triumphant. It is the ultimate renewal and reconstitution of God’s people! To the casual reader, it may not seem like much of a resurrection at all. So St. John specifically tells the reader what it is: “This is the first resurrection” (20:5).

The first resurrection is experienced only by Christian saints, including the martyrs of the Neronian persecution. Upon death, they are bestowed with a ruling role in the Kingdom. Only Christian saints experience this immediate “first resurrection.” “The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended” (20:5).

Those who experience the first resurrection will never experience “the second death, the lake of fire” (20:15). The letter to Smyrna anticipated this idea with significant detail: “He who conquers shall not be hurt by the second death” (2:11). The Christians in Smyrna were fighting the temptation of those in the “synagogue of Satan.” The Jewish leaders were using persecution to entice Christians to forsake their faith in Christ and return to the Old Covenant sacrifices. The Apocalypse assures the Church in Smyrna that those who die in the Faith will not be hurt by the second death: eternal separation from God in the lake of fire after the final judgment.

Let us now apply this insight. “Blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power” (20:6). See the parallel? A group of people are described, over whom the second death (damnation) has no power. They are described as those who conquer (keep the Faith to the death) in Chapter 2, and then they are described as those who experience the first resurrection in Chapter 20. These are Christian saints who die and immediately go to rule with Christ in Heaven.

St. Paul expounds the same teaching in his letter to the Corinthian Church: “We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord … and we would rather be away from the body [first death] and at home with the Lord [first resurrection]” (2 Cor. 5:6, 8).

Let us sum it all up:

    1. First death is when any human dies.

    2. First resurrection is when the soul of the Christian saint goes to Heaven at the first death.

    3. Second resurrection is when all are raised to be judged at the final judgment.

    4. Second death is damnation, judgment in the lake of fire at the great white throne.

There is no indication in this vision that all Christians will be physically resurrected at some future point to rule for a thousand years. The first resurrection has been occurring throughout the Church age, as Christian saints have died and their souls have entered Heaven.

♦
Point 3: Christ will reign on earth physically
. In examining the rapturists’ third claim, we need only look at the language of the passage. Nowhere does it say that “Christ will be physically present on earth, reigning from the throne of David in Israel.” Nowhere does this passage even
imply
a physical, earthly kingdom in Jerusalem, Israel. It seems almost blasphemous to picture Christ seated on a throne doing administrative tasks, involved in ruling the day-to-day affairs of the earth. Rather, His Kingdom is spiritual. His Kingdom is universal. His Kingdom is ecclesiastical.

Thrones
are
mentioned, as is Christ. But locating these events on earth rather than in Heaven reads something into the passage. The souls of the martyrs are specifically mentioned as being in Heaven under the altar (6:9). Since those souls are also reigning, it is more consistent to understand them as still being in Heaven. Nowhere do we have reason to deduce that these are embodied souls. They are ruling with Christ, who in this vision is ruling from Heaven.

These are all spiritual realities. It makes no sense to try to plant Christ on a physical throne in Jerusalem (GR6).

St. John describes the “Church age” in this passage (20:1–6). This age started with the birth of the Church at Christ’s Passion. Satan was then definitively defeated, but his public “chaining” occurred when the Temple in Jerusalem fell. From this point, Christ reigns with His saints over a worldwide spiritual Kingdom. The blessings of Daniel are being bestowed via the “strong covenant” he predicted (Dan. 9:27). The forces of evil are hampered by God’s restraining of Satan. The saints of the Church Triumphant in Heaven have undergone the first resurrection. By their prayers, they are active in the affairs of the earthbound Church Militant during the entire Millennium. The reign of Christ and His Church will extend for a very long time, until the Father’s plan is complete. At that point, Christ will again physically enter human history at the second advent.

Some rapturists maintain that the majority of the early Church Fathers believed in a literal, physical, future thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. I believe that this is a misunderstanding of the record. Yet it is a claim worth examining.

Throughout our examination, we have repeatedly referred to the
Commentary on The Apocalypse
, written by Victorinus in 270 A.D. This earliest extant explanation of The Apocalypse speaks of the Millennium clearly: “Those years wherein Satan is bound are in
the first advent of Christ, even to the end of the age;
and they are called a thousand, according to that mode of speaking, wherein a part is signified by the whole, just as is that passage, ‘the word which He commanded for a thousand generations,’ although they are not a thousand.… [During this time] the Devil [is] excluded from the hearts of believers.… That is, [God] forbade and restrained his seducing those who belong to Christ” (
COA
, XX).

Eusebius is known as the father of Church history. He makes it clear that those who believed in a future, literal, physical reign of Christ were a fringe element of the Church, whose beliefs were odd in other ways as well. They accepted questionable, noncanonical teachings of Christ (perhaps now lost), as well as some of the more unbelievable apocryphal stories about Christ. Although they appeared early in Church history, and were at times even numerous, worldwide they were always in the minority.

This is how Eusebius describes them: “This same historian [Papias] also gives other accounts, which he says he adds as received by him from unwritten tradition, likewise certain strange parables of our Lord, and of His doctrine and some other matters rather too fabulous. In these he says there would be
a certain millennium after the resurrection
, and that there would be a
corporeal reign
of Christ on this very earth; which things he appears to have imagined, as if they were authorized by the apostolic narrations, not understanding correctly those matters which they propounded mystically in their representations. For he was very limited in his comprehension, as is evident from his discourses; yet he was the cause why most of the ecclesiastical writers, urging the antiquity of man, were carried away by a similar opinion; as, for instance, Irenaeus, or any other that adopted such sentiments” (
EH
, III:39).

Some try to draft St. Jerome into the premillennialist camp. Yet he clearly taught that “the Holy City denote[s] the present world” (
REV
, 65).

Justin Martyr, too, is supposed by some rapturists to have been an early example of premillennialism. But listen to his words: “The Spirit of prophecy speaks … in this way: ‘For out of Zion shall go forth the law.… And He shall judge among the nations … and
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares
, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.’
And it did so come to pass, we can convince you
. For out of Jerusalem there went out into the world, men, twelve in number, and these illiterate, of no ability in speaking: but by the power of God they proclaimed to every race of men that they were sent by Christ to teach to all the word of God” (
ACR
, XXXIX). Justin Martyr makes it clear that he believed the peace promises of the Old Testament were a present reality.

How do we reconcile this very amillennial (Catholic) statement of Justin Martyr with his supposed reputation as a premillennialist? Actually, I think he was being inconsistent. His basic view is definitely amillennial, because he clearly believed the Kingdom’s benefits were readily available in the Church. Yet the idea that the Messiah would “reign on earth for one thousand years … is rooted deeply in early Jewish apocalyptic tradition” (
NCE
, IX, 852). He adopted the prevailing mindset of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition without thoroughly Christianizing it. As a result, he ended up with a belief system that at points contradicted itself. But regardless of that, Justin Martyr did see the benefits of the Millennium as already a present reality. He cannot be regarded as a justification for the rapturist viewpoint by any means.

Ultimately, the key issue is not what certain writers of the early Church believed. The crucial issue for Catholics revolves around the beliefs held by the successors to the Apostles, the bishops of the early Church. As a whole, they vehemently repudiated premillennial notions of a corporeal kingdom on earth distinct from the Church. We need not count heads. It is enough to remember that the Eastern part of the early Church refused to recognize the canonicity of The Apocalypse because some perceived it as premillennialist. It was only when the Western part of the early Church succeeded in convincing the East that premillennialism was
not
integral to this book that it was universally accepted as canonical.

Of course, that is the view of this book that we have been expounding. But we must not miss the point. The Church was willing to reject as inspired any book that
did
teach premillennialism. Why? The bishops were overwhelmingly
not
premillennial. They believed the Millennium had begun at Christ’s first advent and would end at His second advent. They believed in a thoroughly spiritual Kingdom, the Church. During the first few centuries of the Church, a thousand years was “further than the eye could see.”

I grew up as a rapturist. I was convinced of the truth of these beliefs for much of my adult life, and I know how most rapturists would respond. They would say something like this: “David, the world today just does not fit the description of what the Millennium is supposed to be like. Where is the lion lying down with the lamb? Where is worldwide peace?”

It may surprise these rapturists to know that the early Church did believe that the world had changed in
precisely
this way, due to the preaching of the gospel. This includes even those they try to claim as premillennialists, such as Justin Martyr. Reread his quotation six paragraphs above. He wrote, “ ‘… neither shall they learn war anymore.’ And
it did so come to pass, we can convince you
.”

From our perspective two millennia later, we perhaps do not fully appreciate the impact the gospel had on humankind in the first century. St. Athanasius certainly saw his fair share of strife. Yet like Justin Martyr, he firmly believed that the peace promised in the Millennium had already arrived. “Who is He that has
united in peace
men that hated one another, save the beloved Son of the Father?… It was prophesied of the peace He was to usher in, where the Scripture says: ‘They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their pikes into sickles, and nation shall not take the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.’ … Even now those barbarians cannot endure to be a single hour without weapons: but when they hear the teaching of Christ, straightway … instead of arming their hands with weapons, they raise them in prayer” (
INC
, LII).

Unlike these early Church Fathers, it seems that present-day rapturists want to see a smithy on television hammering someone’s sword into a farm implement. But is not this the same problem that plagued the Sanhedrin? They would not accept John the Baptist as the new Elijah, nor Jesus as the Messiah, because the fulfillment was not tangible enough for their standards.

Origen would say that rapturists are looking for too literal a fulfillment; that a careful reading of Scripture leads one to believe that God never envisioned a physical, political kingdom. “Many, not understanding the Scriptures … have fallen into heresies.… They think, also, that it has been predicted that the wolf, that four-footed animal, is, at the coming of Christ, to feed with the lambs … and the bull to pasture with lions, and that they are to be led by a little child to the pasture … that lions also will … feed on straw.… Some have not believed in our Lord and Savior, judging that those statements which were uttered respecting Him ought to be understood literally … that He ought also to eat butter and honey, in order to choose the good before He should come to know how to bring forth evil.… Now, the cause, in all the points previously enumerated, of the false opinions, and of the impious statements or ignorant assertions about God, appears to be nothing else than not understanding the Scripture … but [understanding] the interpretation of it agreeably to the mere letter” (
TPR
, IV:1:7–8).