day 1304-1306

“when He comes to be glorified in his sanctified” (2 Thes. 1:10, ACV)

We are still discussing the extensive sixteenth characteristic of the spirit of Zerubbabel’s working within the Body of Christ, which is concerned with God’s restoration process of all created things, to bring all things to an eternal state. Seen in overarching terms this corporate mantle shakes the entire heavens and earth.

As necessary detour we have looked at three theories of the thousand year reign of peace, and in the last teaching we presented a counter argument that consisted of various perspectives that oppose the Charismatic view of the so-called thousand year reign of peace.

It is clear that there is a lot of mythologising and traditions concerning this theological concept that cannot be woven into a coherent whole. In this teaching we will look at the Biblical understanding of this completely misunderstood theme.

The section on which this theorising of the thousand year reign of peace is based, will be quoted here again, in full, for the sake of the argument: “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” (Rev. 20:1-6).

A few important interpretive keys that might prevent possible confusion in this section:

 

• The book of Revelation is not so much concerned with the so-called end times, as it is with the ‘unveiling’ (apokalupsis in Greek) of the primal identity of the members of the Body of Christ. Thayer defines it as follows:
  1. “laying bear, making naked
  2. a disclosure of truth, instruction
  3. concerning things before unknown
  4. used of events by which things or states or persons hitherto withdrawn from view are made visible to all manifestation, appearance”.

 

• There is no future-oriented or temporal interpretation contained in the concept of apocalypse, as is commonly understood. No terrifying visionary scenes of horses fleeing streets of blood; no Antichrist who is anxiously beheading Christians without the mark of the beast; no major world crisis with unknown pestilences, massive earthquakes, floods, ethnic wars, and the like. No! These are all imaginary fables. Apocalypse is concerned with the bringing to light of true Godly identity in the Body of Christ.
• Thus the entire book of Revelation is not a manual to the end time, but rather a symbolic or typological guide to the appearance of the Saviour IN the individual believer, “when He comes to be glorified in his sanctified” (2 Thess. 1:10, ACV). A Conservative Version translates it as “when [He] may come to be recognized in the [men] pure”.
• From the pericope above it seems as if the thousand year reign of peace will commence through an angel [= sent one] from heaven [= spiritual realm] who holds a large chain, and the key to the bottomless pit.
• To understand this symbolic action, we need to examine the greater symbolic thread of the book of Revelation, something that is not specifically part of this theme. But let us just give a few broad explanations of this single point of focus in this section, namely the “bottomless pit”, that is perhaps the most important point in this pericope.
• What is the “bottomless pit”? The Greek word for this is abussos, which is translated into abyss. This “pit of the unfathomable depth” is immeasurable, which also indicates the symbolic nature thereof. If it points here to the unveiling, the apokalupsisof human depth, it is very clear what is at stake here: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). From the beginning of human history the “intent of the thoughts of his [man’s] heart” (Gen. 6:5) was an enormously problematic matter to God. Therefore Job (11:8, KJV) refers to the heart as being “deeper than hell”. The bottomless pit is thus most probably indicative of a character and carnal, selfish, evil human nature, that which ensnares all nations (heathens) of the world in a corporate, deep darkness. [The Greek word abussos has a further, related meaning, buthos, which can be translated as profundity, which points to “a thought or a nature — so deep as to be beyond the comprehension of the natural mind”. Man alone cannot understand this – a spiritual being is needed to trace the origin and extent of this in the natural man (1 Cor. 2:14). It is in this bottomless pit that the natural Adamic man tumbles into the groundless depths of his beastly nature – through an all-stronger spiritual gravitational spiritual power he descends to the immeasurably deep core of his being, without ever finding himself. Therefore Luke 11:26 notes that “the last state of that man is worse than the first”. This is clearly not a single historical event, but something to which man is subjected to daily. In this generative core of doom everything that is un-truth or un-reality is found. It is also this symbolic space over which “the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness” (Isa. 34:11) are stretched, with “nettles and brambles in its fortresses”, “a habitation of jackals, a courtyard for ostriches”, where “the wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the jackals, and the wild goat shall bleat to its companion”, as “the night creature shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest”, and so too “the arrow snake shall make her nest and lay eggs and hatch” (verses 12-15). All these animals are demonic manifestations.
• The only way in which this human being, delivered unto the darkness, can find REST, is if he ascends from the bottomless pit. For this Jesus holds the key (Isa. 22:22), and He alone has the right to the key, which He hands over to those who have the revelation of the Christ: “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. 16:18-19).

 

Back to Rev. 20, onto the second verse – the dragon/snake/devil/Satan thus clearly lives in this bottomless pit of human nature, his heart. In Genesis he is already cursed by God to the dusty realm from which man was taken (Gen. 3:14 & 19). All that now happens in this verse, is that the demonic underground is bound, in other words, ‘rendered powerless” (Rom. 6:6, TCNT), or  “disarm(ing) principalities and powers” (Col. 2:13, ESV), and that it seems as if will be the case for a period of one thousand years. From there we have the concept of the “thousand year reign of peace”.

The website http://www.biblemeanings.info/Words/Number/Thousand.htm offers a detailed explanation of how the concept of “thousand” in Biblical terms does not point to a specific number, but rather to

 

• “Divine completeness and Fathers glory
• much and countless, and when predicated of the Lord what is infinite
• a thousand years denote what is without time, and therefore eternity, which is infinity of time.”

 

(We will not focus on why the devil is let loose for a while after this, as it is not specifically concerned with what we are currently discussing, and would necessitate a number of other arguments.)

What is however relevant and important, is that those individuals who reign with Christ (take note – not Jesus) as kings, will all have a communal trait – they are all BEHEADED! Most believers argue that it is only these specific martyrs who will reign one day. But this is not in accordance with Scriptures like Rev. 5:10, which is applicable to the entire Body of Christ, and which argues that we are now already “kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth”. Also see Rev. 1:6 where the crowd of believers is made up of all nations, people groups, tribes and languages, “and has [been] made … [as] kings and priests to His God and Father”.

The beheading is clearly not physical, but points to those who have lost their own heads, thus their own agendas, plans and desire, and accepted Jesus as the only Head (Col. 1:18; 2:19) and live(d) under his Headship. They also did not receive the mark of the beast on their foreheads and hands – a second explicit non-physical sign. [The mark of the beast has, through the ages, become a symbolic marker of the carnality (666 – Rev. 13:17-18) that is engraved in their thoughts (forehead) and their deeds, thus what they do (hand).]

The first resurrection, we’ve extensively discussed in the teachings of Day 578-580, 610, 611-612, 740-742, 770-771 and especially 1169-1171, takes place whilst you are still in your physical body!

In the next teaching we will thus conclude the sub-theme of the thousand year reign of peace.

 

 

• Selah: Explain to someone what your understanding of the thousand year reign of peace is at                       this point.
• Read: 1 Sam. 30-31; 2 Sam. 1-7.
• Memorise: 2 Sam. 3:1.