It’s no cop-out to post this one. It’s putting words to my emotions as of late; sometimes it’s good to just sing it out & speak some truth to my soul

Thanks for posting this.

I thought I would just give (extremely) brief explanations to answer some of your quesions regarding Hoekema.

First, the binding of Satan is usually misunderstood by millenarians because they are still viewing it in light of their millenial view. The reason that Amillers say that Satan is bound, yet the nations are still decieved, is that there is a fundamental difference between how the Gospel is going out to world in comparison to Biblical Judaism. There are very few occaissions in the Old Testament where we see gentiles converting, and this is mostly due to the failure of the covenant people of being a light to the nations. Yet, after the resurrection of Christ, we see a staggering movement that eventually made the early church predominantly Gentile. This is how most would see the binding of Satan- it is not a complete binding, so that he cannot work at all in deceiving, but we do see a binding on his ability to deceive all the nations, in that the Gospel went out, is going out, and will continue to go out throughout the whole world (think of the parable of leaven and the mustard seed). It’s the nations in the sense of Rev 7.9: Not every individual, but every people group. The contemporary rejection of the Gospel is far less than the rejection of the covenant God by the nations. Though bound in deceiving the nations, Satan is still able to prowl around and devour. Again, this is part of the already/not yet. Satan WAS defeated at the cross, and Jesus even said the strongman was bound in his ministry, yet we will see the invisible become visible at his coming.

Symbolic vs. Actual. Don’t forget that Amillers don’t think that the millennium is symbolic, merely some of the descriptions of it. It is actual, hence the term “realized millennium” which you touched on. It is real and actual. The reason we take some of the description as symbolic is, as you say, the nature of apocalyptic literature. Though you are right to point out that some should be taken literally, the overwhelming majority is to be taken as a symbolic description of an actual reality- for example, the beast that comes out of the sea is a symbolic description of a governmental power, in my view Rome, which did indeed have to come from the Mediterranean sea to reach the area of Israel. We see Revelation 20 in this way because of the nature of the language- Round numbers, such as 1,000 are generally used in apocalyptic and poetical genres as being “complete” or “total.” So when we see it in the Revelation, we see John as saying a “complete or total amount of time.” That is, the predetermined amount of time God lets history go about until he brings it to his intended close. We see this in poetic literature such as the 1,000 hills in the Psalms. Does God not own the cattle on the 1,001 hill? Of course he does, it is representative of his complete sovereignty over his creation.

Also, once the parallelism is seen, it seems obvious that the story is restarted after chapter 19. If all the enemies of God are destroyed at the end of 19, who is left to revolt at the end of the millennium? The problem for premills is that they have to accept the reality of sin and apostasy in the millennium, in the presence of the risen and exulted Christ. It makes much more sense to see the battle of 19 and the battle of 20 as the same event- which occurs at the time of the second coming. This also makes sense of 1 Cor 15:22-28 which seems to say that at his second coming several events take place: The resurrection, the final defeat of death (not 1,000 years later, and for the second time), and the delivering of the kingdom to the father. It states that he is already reigning. Yet, the PM view doesn’t have Christ handing the kingdom over to the father at his coming, but receiving it for 1,000 years.

I’m not going to try and convince you, but I did want to answer some of the objections you brought up to show that the Amill system is quite tenable. I’m a bit surprised Hoekema didn’t touch on these things, but I realize that he had limited space. If you do want to check out a fuller presentation, Dr. Sam Storm’s website has a ton of articles, and Kim Riddlebarger’s book “The Case for Amillennialism” is pretty good, though he gives poor treatment of preterism.

For “good” morals and “good” social behavior does not make anybody a “good” person. Christianity is not a religion of human accomplishment, but rather a relationship of divine achievement, as faith in Jesus Christ — whose blood shed for our sins in our place — is the only thing that can make us “good” or “right” in God’s sight.

All of us, without faith in the justifying work of Jesus on the cross, are in and of ourselves bad, depraved to the inner most, radically corrupt in every part of our being. But by the grace of God, Christ was crushed for our iniquities, and only thus we can be forgiven of our sin and cleansed from all unrighteousness. (cf. Romans 1-4)

The Lord be praised for your kind comments. I look forward to a time when you and me can share with your audience how it is that you and I “met” via the Net.

I’m happy to have you as one of the correspondents for Apprising Ministries. As you have time around your schooling I look forward to repubishing on the new Apprising Ministriesw website pieces you will be writing.

God be with you my dear brother.

In the biblical metaphor, we are only betrothed to the Lord in this time on earth — which is already a covenant, thus it is a marriage, even though the wedding has not taken place yet. The church is the bride, but the wedding banquet has not taken place yet! What gloriously joyful thing we look forward to in Heaven

I did use 2+ years years arbitrarily; I could well have used “~3″. I’m considering writing something substantive on this topic of long vs short relationships / quick vs long periods until engagement / short vs long engagements… however, I have no position on it, so I’m up for hearing more from both sides Further, “long” to some may be “short” to others, and vice versa, so how “long” it is really depends on who is involved…

Second, I think we have to be careful to cite Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:9, “But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion”. It is a burning that is assuaged by marriage, not necessarily “sexual sin, fornication”. People are still sinful and suffer from sinful desires after marriage. The burning is set in contrast to self-control, i.e. fervent discontentment. The same word is used in Ephesians 6:16, “In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming [burning] darts of the evil one”. There is certainly at least a likeness between the discontentment of not being married and one of the weapons of the evil one against us.

Third, 2+ years seems arbitrary and indefensible as a measure of when a man should declare his covenant intentions. I wonder if there are any examples in the Bible of a man who dated at all. Most men are guilty of it, as I am (and, to be sure, for more than 2 years), but that does not need to continue. If we feel compassion for our sister in Christ who has gone two years without her boyfriend’s intentions being known, why not two months, why not the first date? Why should she even date at all when the man does not make his intentions clear?

Here’s another problem with relying on the scientific community to authenticate the Bible: they have rational%93%94 blinders on. Scientists that have no faith in Christ are limited in their ability to investigate because they assume that certain phen…

God bless ~