Tonight at our Gospel community group, I said, "Imagine this! We (immortals) will be amongst mortals in the 1,000 year reign of Christ. A friend challenged me and I said I would get back to her as to how I arrived at that conclusion.
*The Believers who survive the tribulation (i.e. tribulation Saints) will go right into the 1,000 year kingdom which kicks off after the end of the 7 years.
Before the onslaught of anti whatever theology you think I have emails, please consider the combo of verses below. I'm compelled.
Overall, I always look forward to learning something new and most importantly talking about how this ties in to our need of the Gospel today! So let's talk :)
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A problem generated by the
viewpoint of premillennial, posttribulationism is as follows: "Who will
populate the millennium with mortals, if the
rapture
occurs in association with the second coming?" This is a problem that
has never been answered by any posttribulationist. In fact, very few
posttribulationists even attempt to answer this problem. Instead, most
just ignore it.
The Problem Stated
All modern-day
premillennialists believe the Bible teaches that Jews and Gentiles will
survive the seven-year tribulation and enter the thousand-year kingdom
or the millennium in their current mortal bodies. Mortals that
enter the millennium
will be able to marry and have children, who will then multiply at a
rapid rate since such people will be capable of a thousand-year
lifespan, there will be no poverty, very few people will die during this
time, and there will clearly be a population explosion likely into the
billions (
Isa. 19:24–24;
65:17–25).
Pretribulationists
have no problem explaining how such a scenario will take place. At the
rapture, all living church age believers will be evacuated to heaven by
the Lord. At that
split second
in history there will not be one believer upon planet earth. But,
shortly after the rapture many unbelievers will start getting saved.
Since there will be an interval of days, weeks, months, or years between
the rapture and the start of the tribulation, there could be millions
of Christian converts even before the tribulation begins. Further, even
more will be converted during the tribulation itself, meaning that there
could be hundreds of millions of believers by the middle of the
tribulation. Even though a high percentage of believers will be
martyred during the tribulation,
there will still be many that survive this time and are then ready to
enter the millennium in their mortal bodies. This issue is not a problem
for pretribulationism.
However, for posttribulationism this issue
is in my opinion an unsolvable problem. If the posttribulational view
that the rapture occurs in conjunction with the second coming is
accepted, then the rapture event will result in all believers alive at
Christ's return being transformed from their current mortal state to
immortality via a translation to heaven. Since all unbelievers will be
judged or killed at Christ's return (
Matt. 13:30,
36–43,
47–50;
24:36–41;
25:30,
31–46), thus, there will be no mortals left to enter into the thousand-year reign of Christ. For example in
Matthew 25:31–46, the
sheep and goat judgment that will take place shortly after the second coming, how will any goats (unbelievers) make it into the
kingdom?
After placing the goats on the left, the text is clear when it says,
"Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed
ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and
his angels;' ... And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the
righteous into eternal life" (
Matt. 25:41,
46). It is not surprising that very few posttribulationists do not even attempt to answer this issue in their writings.
Robert Gundry
Scholar,
Robert Gundry, is one of the few to attempt an explanation of how
premillennial posttribulationism might handle this biblical issue.
Gundry strives to avoid the clear implications of his position by
attempting interpretative gymnastics in the following way: First, he
says, "the 144,000 will include both men and women who will populate and
replenish the millennial kingdom of Israel. If they will resist the
Antichrist but remain unbelievers in Christ until the second coming, the
reason for their sealing at once becomes apparent: their unconverted
state will require special protection from the wrath of God and the
persecution of the Antichrist." [
1] Second, based upon
Matthew 24:40,
41
(relating to Gentiles), Gundry believes it is merely an assumption that
sees "the destruction of the entire unsaved population of the earth...a
partial destruction would leave the remaining unsaved to populate the
millennial earth." [
2] Third, "the judgment in
Matthew 25
will take place after the millennium, the unregenerate who survive the
tribulation and second coming will go into the millennium in their
natural bodies." [
3]
The 144,000
Gundry's
view that the 144,000 Jewish witnesses will provide Jewish mortals for
the millennium because they were sealed, but not be saved until they see
Jesus during His descent to the Mount of Olives (
Zech. 12:10) [
4] is an amazing stretch of anything in the biblical text concerning this matter (
Rev. 7:1–8;
14:1–5).
Problems with this view start with the problem that Gundry has to make
the 144,000, not Jewish men only, as the text demands, but men and
women, so that there will be women in order to produce Jewish prodigy in
the millennium.
Revelation 14:4a
says, "These are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for
they have kept themselves chaste." The 144,000 must be Jewish men, based
upon that passage. Thus, even if they entered the millennium in mortal
bodies, there would be no Jewish women to bear their offspring.
Further,
Revelation 7:3
says, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have
sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads." These are
servants of God, not of the Antichrist. It is hard to imagine that as
unbelievers they resist the mark of the beast, remain virgins throughout
the tribulation, and are given a new song to sing in heaven (14:3).
Also,
Revelation 14:4c
says, "These have been purchased from among men as first fruits to God
and to the Lamb." Why are the 144,000 said to be sealed upon their
foreheads before some tribulation judgments occur (7:1) if they are
unbelievers throughout the tribulation, while the destiny of unbelievers
is clearly noted in
Revelation 14:9–11,
which will be the eternal torment of the lake of fire. The only reason
Gundry's view could make sense would be if one is trying to avoid
pretribulational implications and support posttribulationism.
Judgment of Gentiles
Virtually all premillennialists place the sheep and goat judgment of
Matthew 25
at the end of the tribulation since it makes sense that it follows
Christ's second coming in the previous chapter. Thus, it makes sense
that this judgment is one that precedes the beginning of Christ's
Kingdom, which is the millennium. "Then the King will say to those on
His right [sheep], 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world'" (
Matt. 25:34). However, Gundry equates the sheep and goat judgment of
Matthew 25 with the
Great White Throne judgment of
Revelation 20, which does occur at the end of Christ's millennial kingdom.
Gundry takes the term "nation" in
Matthew 25:32 to refer to all peoples, including Jews. [
5]
"And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate
them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the
goats." Gundry's view does not fit the
Matthew 25
context since the focus of the judgment there relates to how one
treated "these brothers of Mine." "And the King will answer and say to
them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these
brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me'" (
Matt. 25:40).
"These brothers of Mine" are Jewish believers who have been persecuted
during the just completed tribulation period. So the nations (Greek =
ethnos)
must refer to Gentiles only in that context. In contrast with the Great
White Throne where all unbelievers (Jew and Gentile alike) are judged
for their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah and judged according to
one's works (
Rev. 20:11–15).
A number of other factors prohibit Gundry's view: The Greek word
ethnos "is normally and most frequently used of non-Jewish people." [
6] The few times when
ethnos
is used to refer to Israel, it occurs in the singular, while the plural
use always refers to the Gentile nations. When the definite article is
used, as is the case in
Matthew 25:32, it always refers to Gentiles. The phrase "all the nations" occurs twice in the preceding context of
Matthew 24 (9, 14) and refers to Gentiles. [
7]
These factors support the traditional understanding of the sheep and
goat judgment occurring at the second coming, a view that renders
Gundry's view as impossible.
Unbelievers to Enter the Kingdom?
Gundry's
view requires that unbelievers enter into the millennial kingdom since
all believers will be raptured and resurrected at the second coming. He
says the pretrib belief that all unbelievers will be judged and totally
eliminated from entering into the millennial kingdom is an assumption. [
8] It is not an assumption if specific texts say what one believes.
Look at what some of the key Scripture passages say:
"The
Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His
kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will
cast them into the furnace of fire; in that place there shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as
the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matt. 13:41–43).
"So
it will be at the end of the age; the angels shall come forth, and take
out the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the
furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 13:49–50).
It
is clear in these contexts that what the righteous are entering into is
the millennial kingdom. It is equally clear that the unrighteous are
being prevented from entering into the millennial kingdom as well.
The
issue of populating the millennium remains an unanswered problem for
posttribulationists. Gundry's heroic effort only results in a distortion
of the plain reading of the Bible. This issue remains a powerful
argument in favor of the
pre-trib rapture position. Maranatha!
Endnotes
[
1] Robert H. Gundry,
The Church and the Tribulation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1973), pp. 82–83.
[
2] Gundry,
Church and Tribulation, p. 137.
[
3] Gundry,
Church and Tribulation, p. 164.
[
4] Gundry,
Church and Tribulation, p. 83.
[
5] Gundry,
Church and Tribulation, pp. 168–71.
[
6]
Steven L. McAvoy, "A Critique of Robert Gundry's Posttribulationism,"
(ThD dissertation at Dallas Theological Seminary, 1986), p. 175.
[
7] McAvoy, "Gundry's Posttribulationism," pp. 176–77.
[
8] Gundry,
Church and Tribulation, pp. 166–67.
SOURCE:
Populating the Millennium
by Dr. Thomas Ice
Pre-Trib Research Center
