Views of the Millennium--Not Four, but Eight Major Views

[jwmealy]

There are often said to be four main views of the millennium of Revelation 20: Dispensational Premillennialism, Historic Premillennialism, Amillennialism, and Postmillennialism. When the matter is looked at more closely, it appears that there are essentially eight main views: (1) Historic Premillennialism, (2) Dispensational Premillennialism, (3) Amillennialism, (4) Postmillennialism, (5) Partial Preterism, (6) Lifeless Earth Premillennialism, and (7) Atemporal Millennialism, and (8) New Creation Millennialism.

1. Historic Premillennialism. Christ’s coming in glory to judge the living and the dead results in a resurrection of the faithful to reign on a partially renovated earth for a thousand years from a capital in a renovated earthly Jerusalem (Rev. 11:18; 19:11–20:6). Many from the unconverted nations are imagined to be spared at Christ’s coming, so resurrected and non-resurrected people share the world, with the faithful being in charge. At the end of the thousand years, many from the unconverted nations and their progeny rebel and attack the millennial Jerusalem and are destroyed by fire (Rev. 20:7-10). Then this the present creation is dissolved (Rev. 20:11), and a belated resurrection and last judgment of the unrepentant occurs (Rev. 20:12-13), resulting in their being cast into the lake of fire, the second death (Rev. 20:14-15). This accomplished, God brings in a new creation with a new heavens and a new earth, a heavenly Jerusalem comes to the earth, and the faithful reign with Christ forever (Rev. 21:1-8; 22:1-5).
   
   
2. Dispensational Premillennialism. Same overall chronology as Historic Premillennialism, except OT prophecies about the restoration and international preeminence of national/ethnic Israel (e.g. Isa. 65:17–66:21; Ezek. 36–37) and of renewal of Temple service (Ezek. 40–48) are taken literally. By contrast, in Historic Premillennialism these prophecies will typically be taken to refer figuratively to the international community of the faithful reigning with Christ (i.e. Israel and the Gentiles are viewed as co-inheritors of the promises to Israel).
   
   
3. Amillennialism (also termed Inaugurated Millennialism). Christ’s resurrection and exaltation (Rev. 4–5) inaugurates an age (the current age, sometimes called “the church age”) during which those who die in the Christian faith reign in heaven with Christ. The current age is thus identical with the thousand years (Rev. 20:4-6). At the end of this age, many from the unconverted nations will rebel and mount a great attack on the faithful in some way (the “beloved city” symbolizes the community of the faithful in this age), and will be destroyed by fire (Rev. 20:7-10 || Rev. 16:12-16 || 19:11-21 || Ezek. 38–39 || Dan. 7:9-14, 26-27). Then the present creation will be dissolved (Rev. 20:11), and a general resurrection and last judgment of all the dead will take place (Rev. 20:12-13), resulting in the unrepentant being cast into the lake of fire, the second death (Rev. 20:14-15). This accomplished, either (a) the faithful will go to heaven to be with God forever, or (b), as in the premillennial models, God will bring in a new creation with a new heavens and a new earth, a heavenly New Jerusalem will come to the earth, and the faithful will reign with Christ forever (Rev. 21:1–22:5).
   
   
4. Postmillennialism. This is the view that the millennium of Rev. 20:4-6 figuratively refers to an anticipated period the gospel’s widespread success around the globe, leading to a this-worldly golden age of peace and plenty. The millennium is seen as growing into existence progressively, rather than being seen as inaugurated by a great catastrophe or battle (see Mk 4:31 par.). That age will be so full of blessing, it will be as though the devil has been bound and forbidden to deceive the nations and unable to oppose the good news and the triumph of the people of God (Rev. 20:1-6). The outlook for the end of the current age and all that follows agrees with that of Amillennialism: many from the unconverted nations will rebel and mount a great attack on the faithful in some way, but Christ will come in glory and they will be destroyed by fire (Rev. 20:7-10). Then this the present creation is dissolved (Rev. 20:11), and a general resurrection and last judgment of all the dead occurs (Rev. 20:12-13), resulting in the unrepentant being cast into the lake of fire, the second death (Rev. 20:14-15). Then God brings in a new creation, and the faithful reign with Christ forever (Rev. 21:1–22:5). Unlike in Amillennialism, John’s visions of the beast’s career (see Rev. 12–13; 19:11-21) are regarded as exhaustively fulfilled in the past, rather than as representing the present or the future.
   
   
5. Partial Preterism. This view is similar to Postmillennialism, except that the thousand years is viewed as beginning either around 70 CE (the destruction of Jerusalem) or around 410 CE (the sack of Rome), depending on whether the interpreter sees the fall of Babylon the Great in Rev. 17–18 as referring to the Jewish War of 68–70 CE or to the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. John’s visions of the beast (Rev. 13) are understood to be completely fulfilled in 1st century Roman emperor Nero, thus (as in Postmillennialism) there is no major period of persecution for Christians to face in the future.
   
   
6. Lifeless Earth Premillennialism. Seventh Day Adventists embrace a premillennial scheme, in that SDAs see the millennium as inaugurated by future Christ’s coming in glory to resurrect his faithful ones (reading Rev. 19:11–20:6 sequentially). Unlike Historical and Dispensational Premillennialism, SDAs do not believe that any nonbelievers will survive to take part in the age to come, since they are all pictured as taking part in the battle at Christ’s coming and being slain (19:14-21). Thus SDAs see the battle at the end of the millennium as a picture of the resurrection and destruction of the unrepentant (Rev. 20:7-10 || Isa. 26:10-11 || Isa. 26:20–27:5 || Isa. 66:24 || Heb. 10:26-27). Although SDAs take seriously John’s description of the dissolution of the present creation at the coming of Jesus (Rev. 6:12-17), they cannot accept that God would allow the unrepentant to be resurrected onto a “new earth” (Rev. 21:1), so they conclude that Christ and his holy ones reign in the New (at this point heavenly) Jerusalem above a desolate and lifeless earth whose surface, as in the beginning, will be “without form” and “void” of life (Gen. 1:1). Satan’s imprisonment and disempowerment in relation to deceiving the nations (Rev. 20:1-3) is seen as his being trapped in the formless, lifeless earth with the corpses of those he once deceived. After the final judgment and destruction of the devil and all the unrepentant (Rev. 20:7-10 || Rev. 20:11-15), God will radically renew the cosmos and the New Jerusalem will come to rest on the new earth, and the holy ones will reign forever (Rev. 21:1–22:5).
   
   
7. Atemporal Millennialism. This view acknowledges that John’s vision of the millennium (Rev. 20:1-10) makes clear sense as being inaugurated by Christ’s coming in glory (i.e. it follows on naturally from Rev. 19:11-21), but Atemporal Millennialism simply regards the thousand year reign as a symbolic way of expressing the particular triumph and reward of those who had been persecuted to death by the beast (Rev. 20:4-6). According to this view, the thousand years is to be imagined as a temporal period, but it is not ultimately intended to be understood as being fulfilled in an actual period of time. Accordingly, as in Amillennialism (and Postmillennialism and Partial Preterism), Christ’s coming in glory is understood to result in the dissolution of the present creation (Rev. 20:11 || Rev. 6:12-17), followed by a general resurrection of the faithful and the unrepentant to judgment (Rev. 20:11-15), and finally the renewal of the heavens and the earth and the unending reign of holy ones in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:1–22:5). The vision of Rev. 20:1-10 thus does not picture any past, present, or future events at all, but instead conveys the fact that those who have died for their faith are worthy of a very great reward.
   
   
8. New Creation Millennialism. This view is premillennial, in that it reads Rev. 20:1-3 as belonging in the same temporal context as Rev. 19:11-21. The glorious coming of Jesus signals the inauguration of the millennium, not its close. This view has a strong point of commonality with Lifeless Earth Millennialism in that (a) it recognizes that in John’s description of the confrontation between God and Jesus and the unrepentant (e.g. Rev. 6:12-17; 19:11-21), there is no room made for any unrepentant survivors; and (b) it recognizes the attack on “the beloved city, the camp of the holy ones” in Rev. 20:8 as being a picture of the resurrection and last judgment of the unrepentant (Rev. 20:7-10 || Isa. 26:10-11, 26:20–27:5). New Creation Millennialism differs from Lifeless Earth Millennialism precisely in the fact that it sees a temporal recapitulation to the coming of Jesus in glory in the coming of the new creation and the descent of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2, 9 || Rev. 19:6-9). Thus it understands that the millennium takes place in the new creation (underlining yet again the impossibility of unrepentant people surviving to take part in it).

What do you think, folks? Are these fair characterizations of the major views?

 

[duolos]

So four forms of Premillennialism (1,2,6 and 8) three forms of postmillennialism (3,4, and 7) and one that is a modification of how one sees all of prophetic Biblical literature that fits best with postmillennialism.

Preterism and partial preterism properly face off with futurism, historicism and idealism and these are more accurately understood as a spectrum with Talmudic futurism on one end and Hyper preterism at the other.

 

[random person]

And there is Covenantal Eschatology - that heaven and earth are covenants and not literally the cosmic universe itself.

That the whole Book of Revelation is the tale of these two universes colliding, the inhospitable Satanic one meets its complete end and destruction via covenantal curses, the other though gravely threatened by the other with extinction survives and prospers like a healthy mustard seed planted in fertile earth.

These two universes are the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

 

[jwmealy]

So four forms of Premillennialism (1,2,6 and 8) three forms of postmillennialism (3,4, and 7) and one that is a modification of how one sees all of prophetic Biblical literature that fits best with postmillennialism.

Preterism and partial preterism properly face off with futurism, historicism and idealism and these are more accurately understood as a spectrum with Talmudic futurism on one end and Hyper preterism at the other.

I would say that Atemporal Millennialism (7) is very precisely defined as a form of amillennialism, and is not a form of postmillennialism. It concludes that the thousand years of Rev. 20:1-10 are not to be understood as having any chronological referent in the real world at all--whereas the view that people popularly call "amillennialism," but which Revelation scholar Greg Beale rightly prefers to call "Realized Millennialism," sees Rev. 20:1-10 as finding its fulfillment in the real world in the triumph and reign of the saints who have died throughout the current age. Thus, in that view, the current age and the millennium are identical in chronological terms. It is partial preterism that qualifies as a postmillennial scheme, because it posits that the millennium is to be understood as inaugurated in the future relative to the time of Revelation's writing, but before (and ending at) Christ's coming in glory to reign on earth.

 

[jwmealy]

And there is Covenantal Eschatology - that heaven and earth are covenants and not literally the cosmic universe itself.

That the whole Book of Revelation is the tale of these two universes colliding, the inhospitable Satanic one meets its complete end and destruction via covenantal curses, the other though gravely threatened by the other with extinction survives and prospers like a healthy mustard seed planted in fertile earth.

These two universes are the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

Is this your concept, or did you learn it from someone else? It's unfamiliar and sounds a bit like Marcionism to me. In your estimation, why is it that earth and heaven are both present in the new creation (Rev. 21:1), if the earth represents that which is is devilish and destined to pass away completely?

 

[duolos]

I would say that Atemporal Millennialism (7) is very precisely defined as a form of amillennialism, and is not a form of postmillennialism. It concludes that the thousand years of Rev. 20:1-10 are not to be understood as having any chronological referent in the real world at all--whereas the view that people popularly call "amillennialism," but which Revelation scholar Greg Beale rightly prefers to call "Realized Millennialism," sees Rev. 20:1-10 as finding its fulfillment in the real world in the triumph and reign of the saints who have died throughout the current age. Thus, in that view, the current age and the millennium are identical in chronological terms. It is partial preterism that qualifies as a postmillennial scheme, because it posits that the millennium is to be understood as inaugurated in the future relative to the time of Revelation's writing, but before (and ending at) Christ's coming in glory to reign on earth.

Well amillennialism is rightly a subgenre of postmillennialism, both posit that the millennium is part of the overlap of the ages, the differentiation is that Postmillennialism is normally optimistic with its view of how the millennium will play out, and amillennialism is often contrasted as pessimistic, but there's room for both pessimism and optimism

 

[jwmealy]

Well amillennialism is rightly a subgenre of postmillennialism, both posit that the millennium is part of the overlap of the ages, the differentiation is that Postmillennialism is normally optimistic with its view of how the millennium will play out, and amillennialism is often contrasted as pessimistic, but there's room for both pessimism and optimism

I disagree. Amillennialism says the millennium is the whole age from the cross/resurrection to Christ's coming in glory. There is not partial overlap, is there? I think that these positions are delineated by how they see the millennium relating to what is often called "the church age."

 

[random person]

Is this your concept, or did you learn it from someone else? It's unfamiliar and sounds a bit like Marcionism to me. In your estimation, why is it that earth and heaven are both present in the new creation (Rev. 21:1), if the earth represents that which is is devilish and destined to pass away completely?

Nations still need to be healed (Rev. 21:1; 22:2)

There is still sin (Rev. 21:1; 22:15)

There is still child-birth (Isa. 65:17,20)

There is still aging (Isa. 65:17,20)

There is still death (Isa. 65:17,20)

There is still building homes (Isa. 65:17,21)

There is still farming and planting (Isa. 65:17,21)

God promised never to destroy ALL life again (Gen. 8:21)

The Earth abides forever (Eccl. 1:4)

The Kingdom of Christ never ceases growing in size (Isa. 9:7)

Heaven will never shut its gates to accept more saved and redeemed souls (Isa. 60:5,11; Rev. 21:22-27)​

 

[random person]

The number 7 connotes a fullness of quality in Biblical imagery, the number 10 contains the idea of a fullness of quantity; in other words, it stands for manyness. A thousand multiplies and intensifies this (10x10x10), in order to express great vastness (c.f.5:1; 7:4-8; 9:16; 11:3,13; 12:6; 14:1,3,20). Thus God claims to own "the cattle on a thousand hills" (Ps. 50:10). This of course does not mean that the cattle on the 1,001st hill belongs to someone else. God owns all the cattle on all the hills. But He says "a thousand" to indicate that there are many hills, and much cattle (c.f. Deut. 1:11; 7:9; Ps. 68:17; 84:10; 90:4). Similarly, the thousand years of Revelation 20 represent a vast, undefined period of time. It is a round number, but stands for an indefinite period, an eon whose duration it would be a folly to attempt to compute. Its beginning dates from the great catastrophe of this book, the fall of mystic Babylon (Jerusalem, A.D. 70).

- from Days of Vengeance, pgs. 506-507.

 

[Straightshot]

"Nations still need to be healed (Rev. 21:1; 22:2)

There is still sin (Rev. 21:1; 22:15)

There is still child-birth (Isa. 65:17,20)

There is still aging (Isa. 65:17,20)

There is still death (Isa. 65:17,20)"


You are mixing verses that speak of two different kingdoms .... the Lord's coming millennial kingdom upon the earth which will have a mortal population of humans

.... and His next eternal kingdom after which will consist of only immortal humans

 

[jwmealy]

The number 7 connotes a fullness of quality in Biblical imagery, the number 10 contains the idea of a fullness of quantity; in other words, it stands for manyness. A thousand multiplies and intensifies this (10x10x10), in order to express great vastness (c.f.5:1; 7:4-8; 9:16; 11:3,13; 12:6; 14:1,3,20). Thus God claims to own "the cattle on a thousand hills" (Ps. 50:10). This of course does not mean that the cattle on the 1,001st hill belongs to someone else. God owns all the cattle on all the hills. But He says "a thousand" to indicate that there are many hills, and much cattle (c.f. Deut. 1:11; 7:9; Ps. 68:17; 84:10; 90:4). Similarly, the thousand years of Revelation 20 represent a vast, undefined period of time. It is a round number, but stands for an indefinite period, an eon whose duration it would be a folly to attempt to compute. Its beginning dates from the great catastrophe of this book, the fall of mystic Babylon (Jerusalem, A.D. 70).

- from Days of Vengeance, pgs. 506-507.

I have no problem with the thousand years being a round number for an eon. I do have a problem with identifying Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, a little Roman province, as Babylon the Great. That identification is so far fetched, in my opinion, as to be preposterous--not to mention the antisemitism that drips from the pages of many attempts to demonstrate it. In addition, the idea that we are now in the period of Christ's triumph and Satan's complete powerlessness to deceive the nations (symbolized by his imprisonment and his being bound in chains in the underworld), can only be congenial to a person who is a winner in this systemically unjust, endemically violent world. Postmillennialism is an eschatological scheme designed by and for privileged people who are so used to their privilege that they don't even notice that they are sitting in a position of worldly comfort, advantage, and prosperity alongside people suffering starvation, violence, and injustice. Laodiceans, so to speak.

 

[JM]

How is the SDA view a "major view?"

 

[jwmealy]

How is the SDA view a "major view?"

It's major in that it is one of the major logical possibilities for reading the passage. They take seriously the indications in the text that the present creation will be dissolved at the transition point between this age and the millennial age, but they also read Rev. 19-21 chronologically, so they can't have the new creation occur until after the millennial age. You'll see that what I've called Atemporal Millennialism is also listed, despite the fact that very few people even know about it, let alone subscribe to it.

 

[random person]

"Nations still need to be healed (Rev. 21:1; 22:2)

There is still sin (Rev. 21:1; 22:15)

There is still child-birth (Isa. 65:17,20)

There is still aging (Isa. 65:17,20)

There is still death (Isa. 65:17,20)"


You are mixing verses that speak of two different kingdoms .... the Lord's coming millennial kingdom upon the earth which will have a mortal population of humans

.... and His next eternal kingdom after which will consist of only immortal humans

No I am not, does Isa. 65:17 speak of the millennium, Straightshot?

For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.

Does Rev. 21:1-2 speak of the millennium, Straightshot?

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

New Jerusalem is the very same city spoken of in Rev. 21:2 and in Rev. 21:27 and in Rev. 22:15!!!!!!

 

[random person]

Do you agree that the New Jerusalem spoken of in Rev. 21:1-2 is the very same city spoken of both in Rev. 21:27 & 22:15?

If not, what city is it then?

 

[JM]

It's major in that it is one of the major logical possibilities for reading the passage. They take seriously the indications in the text that the present creation will be dissolved at the transition point between this age and the millennial age, but they also read Rev. 19-21 chronologically, so they can't have the new creation occur until after the millennial age. You'll see that what I've called Atemporal Millennialism is also listed, despite the fact that very few people even know about it, let alone subscribe to it.

If you day so, but a major view should be a view held by a majority and not based on how you rate it, personally.

 

[jwmealy]

If you day so, but a major view should be a view held by a majority and not based on how you rate it, personally.

Under that definition only one view could be characterized as "major." But of course the truth is not determined by taking a vote. If you're interested in the question of how John would want us to understand Rev. 20, I recommend checking out New Creation Millennialism (msword) or New Creation Millennialism (Adobe pdf), which contains a very accessible presentation of the view developed more than 20 years ago in my scholarly monograph After the Thousand Years: Resurrection and Judgment in Revelation 20 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992). New Creation Millennialism contains a powerful critique and refutation of both conventional premillennialism and amillennialism, followed by a straightforward exegesis of Rev. 19:5--21:8. See what you think.

 

[jwmealy]

"Nations still need to be healed (Rev. 21:1; 22:2)

There is still sin (Rev. 21:1; 22:15)

There is still child-birth (Isa. 65:17,20)

There is still aging (Isa. 65:17,20)

There is still death (Isa. 65:17,20)"


You are mixing verses that speak of two different kingdoms .... the Lord's coming millennial kingdom upon the earth which will have a mortal population of humans

.... and His next eternal kingdom after which will consist of only immortal humans

Your position seems to be that the millennium must have mortal people in it, or it will contradict this and that OT prophecy, e.g. Isa. 11 and 65, and Zech. 14. This is a common view.

Here’s a sketch of my response to this puzzle. As much as I might like to be able to take OT prophecies of the age to come literally, I am absolutely not able to do so. I’m forced to conclude that the Holy Spirit has, in some OT prophetic passages, given a kind of hint of the nature of the age to come using the ideas that most people could grasp in the day that the prophet was living. I’m talking here about the idea of progressive revelation. God didn’t reveal everything to everyone at every point in the history of revelation, but often—not always--tailored the revelations to the limitations of people’s worldview.

I’ll give two examples.

First Example.
We know from 2 Peter 3 and Rev. 21:1 that no mortal person survives the transition between this creation and the new creation. We also have the promise in Rev. 21:4 that there will be no more death for those who are partakers of the new creation and the resurrection to life. They will live and reign “for the ages of the ages” (Rev. 22:3-5). Yet the statements in Isaiah 65 that refer to human mortality are unmistakably placed in the context of the new heavens and the new earth:

17 “For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
or come into mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in that which I create;
for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy,
and her people to be a gladness.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and be glad in my people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
and the cry of distress.
20 No more shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not fill out his days,
for the young man shall die a hundred years old,
and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain
or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord,
and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
and dust shall be the serpent's food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.

Jesus is going beyond what is revealed in this passage, revealing something new about the age to come, when he says, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are accounted worthy to have a part in that age, which is to say, the resurrection from among the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, nor can they die anymore, but are like the angels [in that regard], being citizens [lit. children] of the resurrection” (Lk. 20:34-35). Whereas Isaiah gives (in his own historical context) a beautiful picture of people living very long and blessed (but still implicitly mortal, v. 22) lives in the new creation, Jesus says there will not be mortality at all in that age; it will be exclusively an age of resurrected people. That is what Paul is talking about when he says “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Cor. 15:50).

I might have kept trying to figure out some way to unlink the statements about mortality and procreation in Isa. 65:20-23 from the context-setting statement in Isa. 65:17-18, if I didn’t then find a passage that was even more absolutely impossible to take literally in relation to the age to come.

Second Example
We know from various passages in the NT that Jesus is sinless (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15; 7:26; 1 Pet. 2:22; 3:18; 1 Jn 2:1; 3:5 etc.), that as of now the sacrificial system of the OT covenant is obsolescent, already superseded by the once for all self-offering of Jesus on the cross (Heb. 8:1—10:22), and that those who reign with Christ in the age to come will no longer be sinners, but “will be like him” (1 Cor. 15:49; 2 Pet. 1:4; 1 Jn 3:2).

Yet it says in Ezek. 45:22, right in the middle of the larger passage Ezekiel 40—48, which John references a number of times in his description of the new creation,“On that day the prince [i.e. the Messiah] shall provide for himself and all the people of the land a young bull for a sin offering.” This is absolutely impossible to take literally, and with it goes the entire picture of the temple and all of its rules, regulations, sacrifices, and everything. After all, John sees no temple in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:22). Ezekiel’s vision is beautiful, but it has limitations that come from the fact that it was delivered to people who only had capacity for a certain level of revelation at that time. In other words, as profoundly beautiful as his picture of the age of Messiah (Ezekiel 37) was, the reality will be even more beautiful, even more radical, even more powerful. In that age, Messiah will be God the Son, not simply a man, and there will be no sin at all anymore. By the same token (see the First Example), there will be no more mortality for those who are counted worthy of taking part in that age (Lk. 20:35 || Rev. 21:4). Ergo, we are not forced to look upon the thousand years as a mixed age of mortals and resurrected people. In fact, when we take seriously the information elsewhere in the Book of Revelation, it is much safer to conclude that no one but the faithful survives to take part in that age.

 

[random person]

These passages aren't about your imaginary "millennium", verse 17 begins the passage which ends in verse 25. Like wise New Heaven and New Earth is spoken of in Rev. 22:1 and New Jerusalem is spoken of in verses 2 and 10. New Jerusalem is spoken of throughout chapter 21. It is not your imaginary "millennium" because there is no New Heaven, no New Earth, and no New Jerusalem during your imaginary "millennium" kingdom, the imaginary millennium kingdom begins and ends on the old Heavens and old Earth, and old physical Jerusalem. You are contradicting yourself. Isn't the earth and heavens supposed to be destroyed and regenerated AFTER the imaginary "millennium" kingdom?

Thus your imaginary New Heaven and New Earth and New Jerusalem will still have sin, death, aging, descendents/child-bearing, construction & agriculture, healing, EVEN after the destruction of the earth and heavens and the imaginary "millennium" kingdom and their regeneration!!!!!

That is where you are incorrect, because there are two "heaven and earth", one is the cosmos, the other is covenantal in nature.

But I am the LORD thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared: The LORD of hosts ishis name. And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.

Isaiah 51:15-16

Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name:

If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.

Jeremiah 31:35-36

It is interesting that "ordinances" (Jer. 31:35-36) in Hebrew is choq (#2706) Mosaic Covenant Statutes; chuqqah (#2708) Mosaic Covenant Statutes

Is the same basic word "elements" (2 Pet. 3:10,12) in Greek is stoicheion (#4747) Mosaic Covenant Rudiments, Principals.

Both Jeremiah 31:35-36 and 2 Peter 3:10,12 are speaking of the destruction of the Temple and the Mosaic Covenant in A.D. 70.

Read this post from one of my earlier threads on the subject:
Covenantal (The Jewish) "Heaven And Earth"

 

[random person]

jwmealy,

Quite confusing the imaginary "Millennium" kingdom (Rev. 20:2-11) with New Heavens and New Earth and New Jerusalem (Isa. 65:17-25; 66:22-24; 2 Peter 3:13; Rev. 21:1-22:15!!!!!