Should the number 1000 in the Book of Revelation chapter 20 be interpreted literally?
Revelation 20:1-6
Revelation 20:1-6 And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,3 And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.5 But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
I do want to deal with the issue of the 1000 here because it is in fact used in the Book of Revelation. It has to be dealt with.
Premillennialism teaches that there is a rapture of the saints before the 1000 years. That’s what a Millenium is – 1000 years. Premillennialism interprets Revelation 20 as referring to a literal 1000 year reign of Christ on earth.
The pre-millennial is someone who believes that Jesus comes before the thousand year period. He believes Jesus is going to reign on the earth for a thousand years.
Conversely, the Amillennialist generally maintains that there is no literal millennium in Revelation chapter 20. That 1000 is figurative and refers to the time after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. To an Amillenialist, we are in the 1000 years now.
Post-millennialists, interpret the thousand years in Revelation chapter 20 literally. But they believe Jesus returns at the end of the millenium, where the premillenials believe he comes before.
So pre-millennial lists aren’t the only ones who have a literal interpretation of Revelation chapter 20.
But in my mind, the 1000 years reign mentioned in Revelation chapter 20 should not be interpreted as a literal 1000 years.
To properly interpret this passage, we need to see where else the Bible uses the number 1000. By understanding how it is used in other places in the Bible, we can get a handle on how the first century recipients of John’s Revelation wold have understood it.
Psalm 50:10 “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.”
Psalm 84:10 “For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.”
Deuteronomy 32:30 “How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up.”
Certainly, we don’t take the number 1000 literally in these verses. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, bu the cattle on the 1001st hill are not his?
One day in the Lord’s courts is better than 1000 years elsewhere, but not better than 1001 years? Is one person literally chasing 100, and 2 people chasing 10,000?
No. The number 100 is used in these verses and others to represent a large number. It just means a large number. The scripture uses 1000 in these verses like a kid might say, “I stepped in a bee’s nest and I got stung a million times.”
Generally, it means more than a thousand or just a big number. And that’s the way the thousand in Revelation 20 has been interpreted.
Let’s look at Revelation 20:4 “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.“
Now the comparison isn’t self-evident in the passage until you recognize that the quotation that this particular quotation comes from an earlier place in Revelation chapter 6.
Revelation 6:9 King James Version (KJV) “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:”
Now, go back to Revelation 20:4 “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”
So this is this, this is talking about the same group. Revelation 6:10-11 “And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.“
So these martyrs, these are the ones who had been beheaded and there will be others who will be, beheaded because of the beastly elements found later in the Book of Revelation and been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image.
And so what’s being compared here is the short amount of time that those who are under the altar have to remain in this condition and don’t see their vindication as compared to the 1000 year reign that they’re going to have with Jesus.
Because the only ones who are reigning here in Revelation chapter 20 are those in fact who were beheaded.
So the comparison is here with those who were martyred because of the testimony that they held and the little while that they have to wait until the judgment is going to be made and the 1000 years that they are going to reign with Christ. There’s the comparison. It’s a short amount of time over against a long period of time.
It’s no problem at all to see that Revelation chapter 20, the thousand years, is a symbolic number representing either a period of great quality or a period of an extended period of time as compared to the time that they’re under the altar having to wait for this judgment for the vindication of their martyrdom.
What is the thousand year reign?
According to the premillennial-dispensationalist view that is popular in America, Jesus is going to return in a secret rapture and remove the saints, the believers and raise the dead saints. We go to heaven with Jesus.
For seven years there is a tribulation where the Antichrist reigns. Then Jesus returns to earth with the saints, conquers the Antichrist and reigns on earth for 1000 years.
But this view incorporates a lot of things which are not in this passage of scripture.
Well, what is it not? You should notice there is:
- No mention of the second coming of Christ.
- No mention of Jesus being on the earth.
- No mention of a bodily resurrection.
- No mention of a rapture.
- No mention of people living in modern times—only mention of those in the early church who are persecuted (“beheaded because of their testimony”). Paul, for example.
There is absolutely no scriptural reason to accept the pre-millenial view of a literal 1000 year reign of Jesus on earth.
For more information on the Book of Revelation, check out these two articles of mine:
Can We Know Christianity Is True? What is The Evidence?
Why are you a Christian? I get the same three answers everywhere I go.
I’m just going to tell you what they are. The most popular answer I get is I was raised in the church. That is the number one reason why most people believe anything because their parents did.
The second answer I get. Well, I’ve had some experience that confirmed for me that Christianity was true. I saw a miracle occur. I have had, God has been speaking to me about think whatever. You’ve had some experience that demonstrates to you that Christianity is true.
The third answer is kind of similar to the second answer. I used to be a jerk. Then I met Jesus and not so much a jerk anymore. He changed my life.
Those are good answers, but if you ask a Mormon, guess what they say? Same three answers in the same order. As a matter of fact, those are the top three answers from Muslims and the top three answers for Buddhists, Hindus, etc.
Why do our answers sound alike? We don’t think their system is true. If that’s the case, why do ourr answers sound like their’s? I think we need better answers.
So what I want to do is try to walk through some of that for you. We actually do have better answers even if we’re not prepared to give them. There are better answers out there, so I want to teach you about the nature of this evidence.
There are two forms of evidence that we use: direct evidence and indirect evidence. That’s it. That’s the only two forms of evidence on the planet. Direct evidence is eye witness testimony. If you don’t have an eyewitness, you don’t have direct evidence.
DNA is indirect evidence. Fingerprints are indirect evidence. Behaviors that you saw are indirect evidence. Statements from people familiar with the incident or those involved are also indirect evidence.
Unless you have a witness who can say, I saw him do it and I’m going to identify him, you have to use indirect evidence.
There’s another word for that. It’s called circumstantial evidence. Don’t you hate that word? Haven’t you heard people say, “oh, they don’t have a very good case?” It’s entirely circumstantial. They just have a circumstantial case. It’s just a circumstantial case. How many times have you heard that?
Circumstantial cases are actually incredibly powerful.
You may ask, isn’t the case for Christianity built on the eyewitness testimony and the Gospels. Yes, but remember, witnesses lie all the time. How do I know the Gospel authors aren’t lying?
To prove the case for Christianity, we don’t blindly trust eyewitnesses. We must test eyewitnesses. If you test them and they pass the test, that’s different, then you can trust them. They’ve got to pass the test in order to be trusted.
What’s the test? The tests come down to four broad categories.
1) Was the person was really present to see what it is he said he saw, was he really there?
2) Can his testimony be corroborated in some way?
3) Has he changed his story over time?
4) Does he have a bias?
That’s it. Were the witnesses present, can this be verified, is their account accurate and are they biased?
If they pass the test in these four categories, we can trust them.
Let’s look at this event called the Ministry of Jesus. It’s recorded in the gospels. Then you have a church council where allegedly people came together and said, well, which Gospel accounts can we trust to put in the Canon of Scripture? There’s 330 years between those two dates. That’s a long time.
If the gospels were written late in history over here somewhere, then you cannot trust them as eye witness accounts. They weren’t there. The eye witnesses had been dead. To be eye witness accounts, they had to be written early.
By the way, if you want to lie about Jesus, let me tell you how you do it. You wait until everyone who knew Jesus is dead. Then you can say anything you want about Jesus. Who’s going to know?
If you’re going to write it early though, when people who knew Jesus were still alive and in the region where he was living, then you’ve got to be tougher, right?
It’s tougher to lie if you’re going to write it early. There are skeptics out there who are writing books, tons of books, and these are very well read skeptics. These guys sell millions of books.
Bart Erhman has about as famous as any skeptic gets on Biblical literature and he’s Phd trained as a biblical scholar at Princeton. He’s teaches the Bible Department at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He’s not a Christian. He’s an atheist.
Erhman thinks the New Testament has been changed over time and he thinks that this was written really late. He thinks nobody who was actually alive wrote the gospels. These are late stories.
If people like this are right, then we’ve got a problem because it can’t even pass the first test. On the other hand, if they were written while witnesses were alive, then we have good confidence to at least know they passed the first test.
So how do we know when it was written? There’s a book by Luke called the Book of Acts, The Acts Of The Apostles. Luke was a witness during the time of the Book of Acts. He was a friend of Paul. He even slips into first person in the Book of Acts when he’s writing it. But he was not a witness to Jesus.
Luke interviewed the witnesses who knew Jesus. He knew those people because they were hanging out in the Book of Acts together. Nowhere in the Book of Acts does Luke ever mention the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Why wouldn’t he mention it? It happened in 70 AD so it’s still relatively early in history. Luke could have mentioned it. After all, Jesus predicted it.
Why wouldn’t Luke mention what he predicted? It makes Jesus look like he’s an accurate predictor, a true prophet. Not only that, Luke doesn’t mention the siege of Jerusalem. That happened about a year or two before that. The entire city barricaded blockaded by the Roman soldiers. They were starving the city. The Romans stopped all supplies coming in and going out. People tried to escape. The soldiers crucified them on the road out of Jerusalem.
It was so bad that Josephus, the historian, the Jewish historian says that when the Roman soldiers finally entered the city, they discovered that children had died and that some parents were eating their kids to stay alive.
That’s worth mentioning. Yet it’s missing from the Book of Acts. If you’re writing a history of New York City and you don’t put in the twin tower attack, someone’s going to say, why would that be missing from your history of New York City?
Not only that, Paul is still alive at the end of the Book of Acts. We know when he dies, he dies in the 60s why not mention how he dies? He’s an important guy.
Peter’s death wasn’t mentioned. He’s an important person. James, the brother of Jesus is probably the biggest leader in the early church. He is leading the council in Acts 15 yet Luke makes no mention of his death. We know when he died, he died in 61 AD.
Luke did mention the death of Stephen. Why would you tell of the death of James, the brother of John, not the brother of Jesus. Luke mentions that death. Why would you mention these minor players? But leave out the three most important players.
Well, if this hasn’t happened yet, you can’t write about it. So let’s test this. What if Acts is written before any of this happens? Even if it is just one year prior.
I think it is earlier, but I’m going to put it one year prior just to be conservative. Now it’s tested. The omission of major events gives us all reason t believe the Book of Acts was written before they happened.
Luke wrote two books, the other being the Book of Luke. Which one did he write first Luke or Acts? The Book of Luke was written first. We know that because Luke tells us that in the first verse of Acts. “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up.” That’s the gospel of Luke.
What is the evidence that will help us determine when Luke was written? I believe Luke was written in 53 AD. In 63 AD, we have a letter from Paul to Timothy and in this
“Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.” 1 Timothy 5:17-18
What is Paul referring to as scripture, as his Bible?? As early as 63 AD, Paul references what the scripture says. He says two verses.
He quotes, “do not muzzle the ox while as treading out the grain.” That is from Deuteronomy. The second verse though is not from the Old Testament. That verse, 1 Timothy 5:18, “the worker deserves his wages” is a New Testament verse. He’s using a verse from the Old Testament, and a verse from the New Testament to make his case, but that means that the New Testament has to be available to him.
He is quoting the Gospel of Luke.
Now I said Luke was written in 53 AD, and 1 Timothy in 63 here’s why. There is another letter Paul wrote to the church in Corinth trying to remind them how to properly do the Lord’s supper. He planted this church probably two years earlier.
By this time, they’re already doing the Lord’s supper wrong. They’re getting drunk before the Lord Supper. He says, “Go back to the way I taught you. I didn’t teach you that way,” and he reminds them of the way he taught them earlier and he uses one passage about the Lord’s supper to do it.
It’s the only passage in all of scripture that sounds anything like that because he has once again quoting from the Gospel of Luke, the much larger piece of Luke, but that means you’ve got to have Luke available to quote from it.
“For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, this cup is the new testament in my blood,” 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
“And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” Luke 22:19-20
Paul is saying, “I taught you this two years earlier.” How early is Luke? Let’s go to the first verse of Luke. He’s talking to Theophilus here. He wrote both books to Theophilus at one time these two manuscripts were together as Luke-Acts.
“Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.” Luke 1:1-4
Luke says, he had perfect understanding from the very first. Remember he’s not an eyewitness in the Gospel of Luke. He’s an eye witness in the Book of Acts but he’s speaking to the eye witnesses for the Gospel of Luke and he says, “therefore since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”
Notice, Luke puts some emphasis on the fact that his Gospel is an”orderly account,” he is putting things in order. Why? Because it’s appears there is an uncareful or less orderly version of the Jesus story out there. He’s drawing his as a contrast. What would that be? What’s the other early story of Jesus? It’s Mark.
Compare Mark to Luke. There is a big difference. Almost two to one in terms of volume and detail. Luke is very careful. Not only that, he uses this optional word as a title, “most excellent.” That’s a title given to very few people in local cities. Probably Theophilus is somebody important.
Notice in the introduction though, the optional word, “orderly” or “in order” the KJV puts it. It means correct chronological order. Why in the world would you have to tell me that you are writing a history of Jesus in the right historical order? Isn’t that what histories are? So why is he saying that?
Well, if there’s another early history of Jesus that’s not in the right order, then the contrast becomes important. Is there an account that is not chronological? There is. It’s called the Gospel of Mark. Have you ever compared Mark to Luke? The events don’t line up in the same order. Well, why is that?
Because Papias, a bishop in the first century said that Mark wrote his account at the feet of Peter. As Peter was teaching in Rome, Peter often taught in themes not in chronological order. So it says that Mark’s account is according to this ancient document, accurate, if not orderly. He uses the exact same Greek word. So Papias says that Mark is not orderly.
And who do you think Luke quotes word for word more than any other source? Mark. Only he’s now got it in the right order. But that means that Mark’s account has to be first because Luke is quoting him. Check it out for yourself. But that means that Mark’s account is pretty early.
There is something we need to know when looking at various accounts of things which have taken place. Not all memories are created equal. You may ask, if someone tells a story of something that happened 10, 20 or even 30 years earlier, how do we know they are remembering the story correctly? The Gospels were not written at the time they happened, but years later by people who were there.
But remember, Not all memories are created equal. My wife has prepared many meals for me and I can’t tell you what she fixed 3 months ago on any particular day. I do however, remember the first meal she made for me. It right after our honeymoon and she made onion pie. I remember because it was awful. We still joke about it.
I remember our first kiss, I remember the first bass I caught and a day 4 years later when I was fishing with friends and we had a great day. I can tell you the lure we were using that day.
Why do I believe the accounts of what J
I think we can trust the gospels as being written early and accurately preserving the words of eye witnesses. Matthew and John were eyewitnesses of the ministry of Jesus. Mark recorded the memories of Peter, an eyewitness and Luke says he interviewed the witnesses,
We have eyewitness accounts, but the next qualification we look for is corroboration of the witnesses’ stories. I think verification is important and there is a ton of corroborative evidence both archaeologically, and from first century authors who write about Jesus, who are not even Christians.
The third thing we want to ask is has the story changed?
You have this event, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then you have the Council of Nicea. No matter how early it’s written, how do I know that what was written is what made it into our Bible? How do I don’t know it wasn’t changed?
Perhaps the originals only spoke of a simple preaching Rabbi called Jesus of Nazareth who never did a miracle, never walked on water, never rose from the grave, just a simple first-century rabbi.
How do we know it hasn’t been extrapolated and exaggerated into the Christ of Christianity from several changes of the original documents?
That’s the claim some make. We can trace the story from the original writer to the people they gave it to, to the people they gave it to, and see if it changes along the way.
The apostle John wrote the Gospel of John. He gave it to three of his personal students, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Papias. These three students of John wrote down what John taught that.
If you didn’t have John’s Gospel, you could just ask these guys, what did John Teach you about Jesus? Is He less miraculous? Was He really born of a virgin? Are all those things there or are those not there?
Well, lucky for us, these guys became leaders in the local churches and we now have the documents that they wrote to local congregations.
They are very ancient documents. They’re not in your Bible. We have seven letters from Ignatius in which he is describing what the eyewitnesses taught him because he had access to the witnesses.
We do have one letter from Polycarp. If you want to know what John was teaching about Jesus, you could just ask his students. Now, these guys had a student too. Ignatius and Polycarp had a student named Iraneaus and he wrote a lot of books and letters. Much of that survives. He even had a list of 24 New Testament books that he was using as his canon.
Don’t let anyone tell you the Canon is invented at some church council. No, it’s quoted immediately. Many people quote different letters of Paul along the way. They quote scripture, and it’s listed hundreds of years before any church council. The Canon was not created by a council.
The Canon was simply confirmed by the council. It’s been in use for hundreds of years.
There are many other early writings, too. The story has not changed.
Peter taught Eusebius in North Africa. Paul was writing letters in Rome. They’re in different parts of the Roman Empire, and it turns out we have good data in all three regions.
So if you lost all of your Bible, all of the Gospels and all you had were the writings of the students of the eyewitnesses, everything you know about Jesus from the virgin birth to all the miracles, to the ascension, into heaven, to the seat at the right hand of the father, all of that information can be found. It is the first story and it never changes.
Finally, we must determine if the eyewitnesses are biased. Is somebody lying to us about this, are they motivated to lie?
So it all comes down to learning what motivates people to lie. And there are only three reasons why anyone lies. These are the same three reasons why anyone commits a theft.
The same three reasons why anyone commits a murder. The same three reasons why you have ever done anything you shouldn’t do. Any sin you’ve ever committed, you only committed for one of these three reasons. Did you know that?
The three motives behind a crime, or a lie, are simple.
- The first is just financial greed. People do lots of stupid things for money.
- The second is sex, relational or sexual lust, usually more relational for women, usually more sexual for men.
- The third is more nuanced. It’s the pursuit of power. Power over a situation, power over another person or to retain power or respect.
If you’re suggesting that the disciples are lying about Jesus because they are biased, that means they’re motivated by one of these three things. So, which is it?
What is motivating the disciples? Is it their pursuit of all the cash? No, they all died poor. Was it to get the girls? To impress the ladies? Not likely. They’re broke, on the move, being beaten and jailed.
But you could argue, and many skeptics have, that they were motivated by the kind of respect and authority that was given to them as leaders in a fledgling religious community. They didn’t have power though. They were beaten, jailed and killed.
Paul who wrote more new testament scripture that anyone else, is not motivated by money. He’s not motivated by sex. He’s motivated by power. That’s the theory. He wants to be respected by this new religious community.
This doesn’t hold water. Paul was already respected by his religious community. He says he was of the highest of the high. He was respected so much as a Jewish authority that he could draw papers to have Christians executed and he was out doing that work.
But to make the idea Paul is lying work, you must assume that one day, Paul decides, “I’m going to hop out of this position I have here, of authority and power and respect and I’m going to join in with these Christians and I’m gonna spend the next 25 years getting beat to death because someday I hope to return to a position of power, authority, and respect.”
Paul lost power, respect and authority when he chooses to follow Christ.
That’s possible, but it’s not reasonable. If you are a religious leader in the first century of Israel, you were respected and had power. If you were a Christian, and especially if you are a leader, you know what happened to these guys? They were killed.
You could end this story of a resurrected Jesus in the first century, you could end this mythology. Here’s how you do it. You get the body of Jesus, you drag it around town, it’s game over.
No one becomes a Christian or you get one of these guys to recant. It wouldn’t be that hard. We know that they were trying, but nobody ever recanted.
Now many folks will die for what they believe to be true. That has no evidential power. There are a lot of people who are willing to die for what they don’t know is a lie, but the twelve disciples would know if it’s a lie.
That’s very different. Your death, as a Christian willing to die for his faith, has no evidential value as far as making the case for Christianity. But the death of the disciples, without ever recanting that has huge evidential value. They’re in a different category. They didn’t have anything to gain.
So were the witnesses biased? They were biased to the point that they believed the things they wrote or told Luke. But, there is no logical reason for them to lie. The disciples did travel with Jesus for three years. Some were disciples of John the Baptist, before following Jesus.
We have one witness though, who is a little different. Matthew is a friend of Jesus. He’s not a friend of any of the disciples. He wasn’t. Several of the disciples of Jesus were previously the disciples of John The Baptist. They had known each other for years. They were looking for the Messiah.
That’s not true for Matthew. Matthew is a tax collector who comes into the game of late. Jesus just says, “Hey, come with me.” Three years of traveling, watching and learning from Jesus, Matthew writes a gospel.
If you’re looking for an eyewitness that has little bias, one who wasn’t expecting the Messiah, who was the skeptic that’s called the Gospel of Matthew. Peter, Andrew, John, James, Philip, and Nathanial all had connections to one another and to John the Baptist. Matthew was an outsider. He followed Jesus and continued to follow Jesus solely on what he saw and who Jesus proved himself to be.
We have eyewitnesses. We have accounts written early while witnesses were still alive. If Luke or Matthew or Mark had written something that was not true, there were witnesses to call them out.
We have a story that has not changed from the beginning and the witnesses we have do not have a reason to perpetuate lies. The historical accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings are accurate and reliable.
Christianity is true. It can be tested and proven with eyewitness testimony that withstands scrutiny.
Lawyer and scholar, Dr. Simon Greenleaf (1783–1853) wrote “A Treatise on the Law of Evidence,” which has been called “the greatest single authority in the entire literature of legal procedure.”[Knott, The Dictionary of American Biography, back cover of The Testimony of the Evangelists.] The U.S. judicial system today still relies on rules of evidence established by Greenleaf.
As a legal scholar, Greenleaf tested the claim of the resurrection of Jesus Christ with his tests for legal evidence. He wanted to test whether or not the evidence would support it in a court of law.
After studying all the evidence, Greenleaf concluded that Jesus’ resurrection was the best explanation for the events that took place immediately after his crucifixion. Greenleaf concluded it would have been impossible for the disciples to persist with their conviction that Jesus had risen if they hadn’t actually seen the risen Christ.[Simon Greenleaf, 1874. The Testimony of the Evangelists. New York, NY: 28.]
The case for Jesus’ resurrection was so compelling that Greenleaf had no doubt it would hold up in a court of law. In his book, “The Testimony of the Evangelists,” Greenleaf documents the evidence supporting his conclusion.
Greenleaf believed that any unbiased person who honestly examines the evidence, as in a court of law, will conclude what he did—that Jesus Christ has truly risen.[Simon Greenleaf, 1874. The Testimony of the Evangelists. New York, NY: 28.]
Why am I a Christian? Because it is true. There is no doubt the testimonies of the Gospels are true, no doubt Christ resurrected and no other religion that can stand up to the test the way Christianity does.
Why am I a Christian, yes, because it is true. But also, I am a Christian because God has revealed himself to me. He has given me his Holy Spirit and I know him. That is the real reason I am a Christian. But for those who would want to call my experiences with God fantasy, there is material evidence that supports the claims of Christianity. It is true.
What Is Truth? Post-Modernism And Its Attack On Christianity
Dennis Regling preached “What Is Truth?” at Manchester Baptist Church in October 2016
John 18:37, 38 ” Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth ? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.“
That is the question. What is
I’m going to try and give you some ideas to think about because as we’re witnessing to the world out there, we need to understand how they think. We will look at some of the thought patterns of the men going out over the years and where we’re at today. This might give you a better understanding of even some of the things that are going on in the churches and government and society. So it will try to do that. I need the Lord to help me.
In 2 Corinthians 10:5, the Apostle Paul is writing, he says, “ Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;”
Spiritual warfare is an ideological battle. It’s a battle of minds, a battle of truth. We’ll start simple and then we’ll get a little deeper and deeper into the spirit of this age. Paul was saying that spiritual warfare is an ideological battle. Yes, our main enemies are demonic “
Real spiritual warfare requires us to refute false ideas with the truth. True spiritual warfare (according to this passage in 2 Corinthians 10) involves tearing down the ideological strongholds of false belief systems.
We don’t win spiritual warfare by casting out demons. We
It’s casting down false ideas. When the Bible talks about doctrines of demons, they bring false teachings. Society is so willing to receive these doctrines, but they also integrate the churches through false teachers. And affect believers who have not studied, who not learning, as the Church of Corinth which
” Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.” Jude 9
This is how we fight spiritual warfare. Real spiritual warfare requires us to refute false ideas with the truth. Oh, about the ideas.
What’s going on in society now? There’s been a series of thoughts and times in this country and the Western world. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of
Obviously, over that span of time, multitudes of human philosophies and various
The modern era or “The Age of Reason”, after the title of the famous book Thomas
While many Enlightenment thinkers did not completely reject belief in God, they banished Him to the remotest realm of the transcendent. If God did exist, He was neither
They believed in three things and these things have changed. The first thing they believed in was an objective ultimate truth. They believed in truth. It can be found, and if it was true for me, it was true for you. It was true today. It was true yesterday and will be true tomorrow. There
It transcended man. We who are grounded in the faith still believe these three things. We believe in this ultimate objective truth, “a truth is
Things changed in 1794. Thomas Paine wrote a book called “The Age Of Reason,” and even the period was known as the age of reason. During the age of reason, they still believe in a meaningful objective, ultimate truth. But
If you could not test, touch it and prove it then It’s not real. They’re rejecting the supernatural. That entered the church by 1820 and up through the
Darwinism is part of that and we know it. Darwin caused a revolution against God. We can see what it has done in this country. It led to planned parenthood, it led to Hitler and it led to communism and socialism. Modernism led to all this wickedness.
Now Spurgeon preached against it. Other preachers preached against it, but it infiltrated the churches. The major denominations all died
It killed the church because that was their reasoning. You know where you get women preachers from? They reasoned it out. Other things, they reasoned it out and they brought it in and we started using natural means. It killed the churches. It killed. It became pervasive among the churches. Because I can trust my reasoning. Even still today so many preachers are not preaching the Word of God as authoritative. They give you what they feel, what they
All men are rebuilding. They stopped preaching the Gospel. They want to bring people in and so they reject God’s truth for man’s truth.
But now we’re in what’s called the postmodern age and the postmodern age basically rejects all of modernism. Postmodernism is a radical reaction to the failure of modernism. It rejects virtually every distinctive of modernism, starting with the notion that truth can be objectively known. It takes God off the throne so it must be better, but it’s different than the other two.
The
There won’t say there’s not ultimate truth because that would be an ultimate truth. So they won’t even say it doesn’t exist, but they’re saying if it
It’s postmodern thinking and that’s what we are not fighting. We’re out there trying to witness to people and we still have the premodern mindset. We believe in a supernatural God and ultimate authority and truth from that God. We’re saying this isn’t true, and they’re saying you can’t know it. That’s why it’s gotten so much more difficult in the last 20 years. This is true. They reject it in every area of their life. It makes it so hard, so hard with this belief system.
The supernatural. That pretty much was next. They did believe in the supernatural before the late
They say, “I’m not religious. I’m spiritual.” So we have yoga and meditation and the influence of the eastern religions. Even churches now have prayer
Ultimate Authority. The church, we accept the authority from God, the premodern, they accepted the authority. It came from God and the supernatural world. The modernist, their truth came from their own minds and reasoning while the postmodernist rejects all authority. We see it in this country and it’s been boiling for 10, 15, 20 years. They reject authority. They will ask, “How can you tell me this? No, no, no. Don’t make rules for me personally.”
We’ve gone from the sexual revolution of the
“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” 2 Timothy 3:13
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20
They can call evil good and good evil because they reject all authority. The reject the authority of
Our children go to college and that’s what they’re teaching them. They’re teaching them to question truth and they deconstruct everything. They study literature taking it apart to uncover the underlying meaning. Which is good, if you don’t stop there. But they stopped right there and they leave doubt and skepticism, and we see this now. There’s what’s called micro-aggressions. You heard that term, micro-aggressions. For example, if we have a class, and there is only one minority in the group, that’s a micro-
They look for offense. This craziness is killing Western society. The political correctness, the call for tolerance. They
It’s because we all make up our own spirituality and we can’t know
It killed every group that embraced the culture and rejected the Bible. Now the modernists have been replaced with the postmodernists. The Millenials. They say there is no objective truth. They won’t stand up front saying this is an objective truth. There are groups, it’s called the emergent church. The emergent church. They did already emerge.
You say you believe what the scripture says, but when you have a pastor who won’t tell you what the scripture says, we believe his say so and opinion, we have a problem. They teach on the supernatural. and they’re teaching mysticism, that it all comes from within. “I feel this God clothing. ” Feelings instead of being Holy Ghost led. Instead of scripture, they say, “God told me this.”
I actually read an article about a Southern Baptist minister who had an abortion. Now that tells you something right away. First, all it tells you
We can no longer teach what is right and what is wrong. No, we have to figure out for ourselves. That’s the thinking of this age. And it’s in churches, so they don’t preach the gospel at all because we don’t know. We can’t preach this is right. You can’t preach that is wrong.
2Timothy 3:16, “all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Well, they don’t believe it’s profitable. They believe it’s useful and the stories are good. Yup. It’s why you’re having so much trouble up there knocking on doors, talking to people, they don’t believe in truth anymore, it isn’t taught in our society. The church people don’t believe in truth anymore. They reject the Bible as the ultimate authority. It’s even worse in postmodernism. At least Modernists accepted that there was
It’s wicked. It’s wicked, and that’s what our society believes. It’s what they’ve been taught and unfortunately, it’s got into the churches with these new young pastors who refused to speak about truth. They try to create an experience. Matter of fact, I heard that they have conferences now instead of meetings. There is a speaker speaking and they don’t preach. They don’t want to preach. They have dialogue. They dialogue conversation. They don’t like to preach because that implies authority, which is offensive. They encourage attendees to just walk around and go light a candle up, go back and get a cup of coffee. The speaker is up front trying to share and people are mingling around. It’s a church for the
They want to replace words like evangelism with jargon like this. Instead of actually going out and trying to reach people with the Gospel, they want to reach them through their lifestyle, which is good. We have to have a Christian life. If we don’t walk with the Lord, there was no testimony. James said, “look at my works. I can prove my faith by how I live.” Okay, but they stopped there. They don’t believe in truth so they can’t share truth.
What comes next? I don’t know what post-postmodernism is, but man is waxing worse and worse. They go after these philosophies and they grab onto them. We’re dealing with people out there, especially people in their thirties and younger, and we must understand they’ve been taught there is no truth. So you need to start from there to proclaim the truth, but you see rather than reject it, they hate it. They will.
But the Lord uses us to take the gospel and it’s hard.
2 Timothy
The last day started with when the Lord was crucified, resurrected and ascended. But now it is bubbling over in the Western society. They despise you if you speak about even the harmful effects of homosexuality.
They’re learning. They’ll admit they’re ever learning. But they are unable to come to the knowledge of the
Truth is immutable. God does not change and the truth does not change. We need to stand and fight for the truth. What is truth? Jesus said,”Thy word is truth.” We must stand up in a world where truth is rejected.
The truth cleanses and purifies. It penetrates into the deepest level of the human heart, cuts to the bone, and works from the inside out.
“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any
It has life-changing power. It converts, sanctifies, and strengthens. It conforms, transforms, and reforms. Truth renews our minds, revives our hearts, and redirects our steps.
First, truth is divine. Ultimately, all truth is God’s truth. Truth is from above.
Romans 3:4 “God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be jus
Second,
Third,
Fourth,
Fifth,
Truth is permanent, fixed, and established. It is inflexible, unvarying, constant, lasting, enduring, timeless, unchanging. Therefore,
Sixth,
Comparing the Bible to Other Creation Accounts
To properly interpret the Bible, we must try to understand it as the original audience would have understood it. Words and phrases would have a meaning to the culture in which they were written that we miss with our Western world mindset and experiences.
Understanding where the stories of creation fit in the Ancient Near East is part of the conversation that we need to have when we look at the opening chapters in the Book of Genesis.
I will explain some of the creation stories in the Ancient Near East. Then look at how the story of Genesis is like and unlike those accounts.
Probably the most well known one is from Babylonia. It’s called Enuma Elish, which means “when on high.”
It starts with a watery abyss and talks us through the creation, first of the various gods of that society, but also then into the battle that leads to the creation of the world and humanity and so on.
It’s got all sorts of different motifs in it. Some of them are similar to the Bible, like starting with a deep, dark, watery abyss, and others are very different.
For example, in Genesis 1, there’s no battle going on there. But in the Enuma Elish, the world is created as the result of a war between the god Marduk and the sea god Tiamot.
There are quite a number of stories from Babylonia from early on, long before the 7th century BC, way back into the third millennium BC.
We have sources for creation and the creation not only of the gods, but also of humanity and of the world. There’s a Sumerian story as well that has both creation of man and the flood in the same story, much like we have in Genesis 1 through 11.
And then also from Egypt we have quite a number of different stories from different temple contexts, therefore, from different perspective of different gods in terms of how creation was done.
There we have various kinds of concepts that are very different from the Bible on the one hand. But then there are certain similarities, like one of them we do have a God speaking and the creation happens.
But then you have all sorts of other kinds. Sometimes people are made out of the tears of the god or various things along that line. So there’s lots of different kinds of stories from the Ancient Near East.
And then related stories, like from Ugaret in Northern Lebanon, which we have texts from there. And it talks about Baal and how he’s related to nature.
All this affects how they would understand in the Ancient Near Eastern world how a world is put together and how it works.
Some of the motifs associated with these mythologies come into background concepts that the ancient Israelites would have been familiar with because the ancient Israelites were Ancient Near Easterners too.
These creation stories explain how mankind was created so that man could replace lower gods who were responsible for working and, therefore, feeding the gods. And so man was created so that the lower gods don’t have to work, because they were complaining about the hard work.
We have the story of Adapa, of a particular primeval person. We have different kinds of things. We have Babylonian Noah-type stories with concepts of the flood and survival from the flood. And these early chapters of Genesis have a lot of different kinds of connections to things that were understood in the Ancient Near East.
In the Bible, what God is doing is he’s connecting to the Israelites in their world, but also taking them places they’ve never gone before in their understanding of who God is and how the world came into being.
Genesis 1-6 is not so much a historic account of HOW things were made, as a polemic against the other creation stories of the world the israelites lived in. It’s not the “HOW” that is important. It is the WHO – the one self-existent creator God, and the WHY.
This does not mean Genesis is not historic. The bible clearly teaches a literal six day creation, but the purpose of the first chapters is to reveal WHO God is as compared to the gods of the mytholgy of that time.
The way in which Genesis tells the story would not be unfamiliar to someone if they were familiar with some of these other accounts that exist in Ancient Near East, at least in terms of some of the motifs.
There would be a lot of things that’d be very similar. One of the things that would be very similar is how in the beginning with the watery deep.
But there are also in the Ancient Near Eastern context, you have to have not only the creation of the world, but before that, the creation of the gods. So you have theogony, creation of the gods. And that is something that the Bible just stamps out completely from any kind of concept.
“In the beginning, God created.” Genesis 1:1
As opposed to all other Near-Eastern mythologies, the God of the Bible has no creation. He is self-existent. That is how God identified himself to Moses. He said, “Tell them I am sent you.”
“And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.” Exodus 3:14
The God of the Bible is unique in that he has no beginning and is the beginning of all things. We have the uncreated God as opposed to the creation of gods in the Ancient Near East mythologies.
Now, sometimes it’s said that these accounts outside the Old Testament are dealing with explaining the origin of things. They are a certain kind of story that etiology, which explains why certain things happen.
In those stories there is a lot of explaining of how did this come into being, how did that come into being. How was it arranged in such a way that the world actually works? Things along that line are very common in these stories.
And in the Bible, a big part of what God’s concern is to explain to us our world. Who are we and where’d we come from? How do we fit into what’s all around us, and what place are we supposed to take in it as far as God is concerned?
These stories frame the creation of humanity, explain where humanity fits in relationship to the gods, in relationship to the responsibilities that they have on earth.
In other creation accounts, man is a low being, often crude, sometimes even evil. Man is made to serve the gods. In return the gods provide for man.
One of the things that really stands out about the creation story in Genesis, in that regard, is that we’re created in the image and likeness of God, not just kings in our culture and not just the elite or anything, but all of humanity is created as God’s image and likeness and is meant to reflect who he is in the world and to handle the world in a way that’s pleasing to him. We’re put in charge.
In Genesis, man is completely different. He is made in God’s image. And God has need of nothing, so man is created not as a servant, but as a companion.
There is an exalted role for all people in the way that creation works in the Old Testament.
There are quite a number of accounts that talk about kings being the image of God, and so on. But the thing that stands out in the Bible is that people, just common people, are put here to be God’s representatives in the world, those who stand here for him.
In a lot of the Ancient Near Eastern accounts creation happens by doing battle between the gods in various ways. It’s got a name for it, the chaos battle, or battle of chaos. So you can bring order out of this by doing battle with this god of chaos.
There are reflections in the Bible of God being the one who can defeat all this chaos and so on, sometimes in relation to creation.
But in Genesis, what we have is an account that makes it very clear that God doesn’t have to do any battle here at all. God speaks and it happens.
Rather than creating through chaos, God brings order out of disorder. “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Genesis 1:2
The earth was void, but it was not chaos. There was ‘the deep,” the water, but there was no sea god, no battle. The Spirit of God merely moved across the water and brought forth land and life.
This is an extreme contrast to the other creation stories of the area and what the israelites would have heard and believed before God revealed himself to them.
And things like the sun and the moon and the stars that are gods in the Ancient Near Eastern world, they’re just called the Big Light and the Little Light. They’re even demoted. They don’t even have the name of Shamash or something like that, the name of the sun god.
So it’s very clearly telling us these things that are so commonly thought of as gods are not, and there is no god that can stand against our God.
We see the influence of the other mythologies in the culture of the time and how the Bible addresses things like the sea monster gods.
We see references to the sea monster Leviathan, also called Rahab.
So like in Isaiah 27:1, the little apocalypse of Isaiah, it looks forward to the great final defeat of this great Leviathan, this evil monster.
Whereas in Psalm 74 and other places it refers to this Leviathan that’s been defeated in the olden days. It’s a way of talking about how God is the one who defeats evil and stands against those forces in the world.
The Introduction of Evil
One of the problems that you run into in the early chapters of Genesis is understanding how evil is even present when we come to Genesis 3 and where it’s come from. And there is, in the unwinding of the Genesis story, no backdrop for where this has come from. It just comes in.
What I think is happening in Genesis, in creation we don’t have a battle between God and the great monster, the chaos monster. What happens is in the Old Testament and in Genesis 1 through4, the battle doesn’t begin at creation. It begins with the fall. That is the battle of the ages that’s encountered there.
The serpent attacks the image of God, us, and in so doing he attacks God. And so the battle that we’re in the middle of is this force of chaos coming into the world. Sin, disruption, and corruption are introduced and that is a big part of who we are and that we struggle with in the world.
What happens in the early chapters of Genesis is that the Bible does something very different from what the Ancient Near Eastern world does.
It takes this battle and puts it right in our laps, and it says the battle came through the temptation and the fall, and now the battle is the great battle of the ages.
If you go through the Book of Revelation, Chapter 12, it talks about this woman who’s about to have a child, and it has all of this imagery from the Old Testament and how this great one is the dragon of old, this great evil one. And he gets defeated by this child who rules the nations with a rod of iron.
In Jewish circles, it’s called a Midrash, where it explains what’s going on in the ultimate day by talking about how that great evil that began back then and that great evil one, that’s all going to be destroyed, and we’re going to end up, eventually, in Revelation 21 and 22 with a new heaven and a new earth where that sort of corruption just does not exist.
This spiritual battle is really something that runs through the entirety of Scripture from start to finish. We’re in the middle of a great, big cosmic fray. It’s a brawl and we’re the territory under dispute, you and I and everyone in this world. It’s us as people because we were created as God’s image.
The attack was upon God because it was an attack upon the image of God. The battle starts in history in Genesis 3, and it will be consummated on the last day of history.
The portrayal of the battle is a different kind of battle than the battle we’re seeing in the Ancient Near Eastern text, which is between the gods, themselves.
Humanity is part of the battle because there might be one particular god who is the good god. For example, in Canaan, Baal was considered a good god. In the Old Testament, he’s evil. And he is.
Baal is defeating the great evil monster, Leviathan, in the Ugaritic material. And what happens is that because he defeats Leviathan, there is fertility and, therefore, prosperity in the world of mankind. So mankind is involved in a relationship to the gods, but the battle is on the divine level.
God was speaking into the world of the ancient Israelites in a way that really made sense, was true about what really happened and was put in such a way that they could really get the point. They could really see the power of this great evil, but the greater power of their great God.
Genesis, and the entire Old Testament, reflected and built upon the ancient mythologies that the Israelites were exposed to. It is put in a context they could relate to.
With the Leviathan figure, one wonders what kind of a beast is this? Is it a fish, since it is a sea monster? We have the image of Revelation of a dragon. What are we looking at when we talk about Leviathan? Do we know?
Actually have quite a few descriptions. He’s the great sea monster, and he has multiple heads according to Psalm 74. And these kinds of pictures come out in other literature of the Ancient Near East too. There’s a sense of this great evil power.
People all over the world knew about evil; they knew about the corruption, and they faced it. All of us do every day in our lives.
They had this picture of this great evil serpent. In fact, we have actually pictures of this great serpent with seven heads. And there’s a battle going on. This is actually in Ancient Near Eastern picture material, iconography.
And in this material, they will have, like, seven heads on this serpent. And maybe three of them are hanging down dead and four of them are still striking out. And, yes, they have pictures of this sort of thing.
The opening of Genesis is much more tranquil, in comparison to the chaos of the battle that is a part of the creation in these other stories. We’re starting in a slightly different place.
One thing that’s very clear from Genesis is that there’s only one God in the beginning. Then there’s a deep, dark watery abyss, but he doesn’t have to do any battle. He reshapes it by speaking and there is no battle that takes place. It’s very tranquil.
The Spirit of God is hovering over the waters, kind of as ready to do creative work.
Is there a conflict between Genesis Chapter One and Genesis Chapter Two?
One thing that you hear about that often comes up is the claim that the story in Genesis1 and the story in Genesis 2 are two very different stories of creation, that they don’t connect. And, in fact, some people will say that they’re even written by different authors.
There is an important shift between Genesis 1:1 through chapter 2, verse 3. And then there’s a particular expression: “these are the generations of the heavens and the earth” which is often translated “these are the accounts of the heavens and the earth.” And it refers to what comes out of, what generates from what’s already going before it.
We have tes whole cosmos, the whole universe in Genesis 1:1 through 2:3. And then Genesis 2:4 goes on and really zeros down into the work of humanity.
There’s an interesting thing that happens. In the first chapter, the name for God is Elohim. It’s the broad name for the great God. Then what happens in Chapter 2 is there’s a shift. We still use the name, Elohim, but along with it the name, Lord.
What happens is in Genesis 2:4, going from Elohim in the Chapter 1 story, it moves to Yahweh Elohim, and uses Yahweh Elohim throughout the account in Chapter 2.
The writer, and I do take it to be Moses, is actually telling the people of Israel, who are the recipients of this material, this story of this account.
He’s telling them the Yahweh who is the God delivering you from Egypt is the same God who created all that we have, all that we’re in the midst of here in this universe.
It is tying the history of Israel and the importance of Yahweh as the covenant God of Israel into who he really is. And he is the great Creator God.
In the context of the Ancient Near East, that’s a very important statement. In Chapter 2 when we go to Yahweh Elohim, we’re dealing with the personal covenant God who has relationship.
This explains, in part, the shift between the grand creation in seven days that we get in Genesis 1, and the more personalized focus on the creation of Adam and Eve as a development of being created in the image of God, but in very personal and in very direct relationship with God.
There are other things too that really distinguish Chapter 2:4 and following from Chapter 1.
The Chapter 2 account is really a much fuller, down to right in the soil kind of development of day six in Chapter 1.
An important feature of Chapter 1 is the seven-day element. One of the things that’s happening in Genesis 1 and we’re talking about etiology again, is explaining the creation and how the Sabbath is a mirror of what happened in the creation.
How did Jewish theology think about that in reading Genesis?
The fact that we have evening and morning suggests that we’re talking about the regular day, evening and morning at the end of the day and so on.
One of the things that stands out is that there is good reason to believe that these are actual literal days. But, on the other hand, there’s also this pattern in Scripture, this six-seven pattern where they use a lot of sixes with seven or seven patterns.
Like even in Proverbs Chapter 6, there’s six things the Lord hates, yes, seven. There’s these various kinds of combinations of six and seven patterns. And we have them not only in the Bible, but also in the Ancient Near Eastern world in a number of texts that we have.
The ancient Israelites would have been familiar with this pattern of sevens and six sevens.
One of the questions we have to ask is whether they would have understood this to be a literal six days and then the seventh day, or whether they were saying, “Oh, wow. This is the regular six-seven pattern and it’s a literary way of shaping the story.”
It’s kind of like you can tell the same story in different ways, so like we have the four different Gospels in the New Testament and they’re not all arranged the same. They tell the truth, each one. But they tell it and they shape it in such a way that makes particular points, too, in a certain way.
And we have the same thing in the Old Testament in other places, as well as in this place. We even have Psalm 104, another account of God’s creation that does the similar kinds of differences, but with a lot of parallels.
So the question becomes then, do we take these days as literal days, or do we take these as literary days?
When I read Exodus 20, I see a literal week. For this reason I believe that although the seven day creation week has literary significance, it is still a literal seven day week.
Exodus 20:8-11 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
We also see that on the seventh day, God rested. This is not because he was tired.
For God to rest means he has accomplished bringing order from disorder and now he takes his place on the htrone, ruling over his creation.
And what did God do on the eighth day? He rested.
But with the fall of man, disorder came back into the universe. The Bible is the story of how God created order, not from chaos, butfor he is not the God of chaos, but from disorder. It is the story of how disorder came into this world and how God will restore perfect order once more.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is the first big step in that restoration, as God has restored fellowship between himself and man. The church, as God’s ambassadors are part of the continuing work of restoration and Christ’s return at the end of history will make the completion of God restoring order.
Who was Melchizedek?
When we look at Melchizedek, he’s an interesting figure in the Bible. And Christians have had different interpretations as to who was Melchizedek.
Some Christians have thought of him as a historical figure, a Canaanite king priest who was living at the time of Abraham. Other Christians have interpreted Melchizedek just as a type. And other people have interpreted Melchizedek as an appearance of Christ, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, which we would call a Christophany.
In Genesis 14, we have an interesting passage which talks about four kings. These kings from the east had subjected the people of Canaan and were expecting the people of Canaan to pay tribute. And they didn’t pay the tribute, so the next year the kings from the east came to attack the Canaanite kings and subdue them and force them to pay tribute.
And this is where Abraham enters into the story because Lot, his nephew, was living in one of these cities, so when these four kings captured the five cities south of the Dead Sea, they took Lot and his family into captivity.
So Abraham gathers all of the men that were in his household that he had trained for war, 318 men, and he surprises the four kings and conquers them, and recovers his nephew, Lot, and his family.
When he comes back, all of a sudden, we have this person called Melchizedek, who’s described as the king of Salem, which is obviously connected with Jerusalem. And he’s presented as a king and priest.
Genesis 14:18 “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. 19 And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: 20 And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.“
Melchizedek is the king of Salem, he’s the priest of the Most High God, the Creator God. It says in the text, he says, “Blessed be God, or El, creator of heaven and earth,” and he calls Him the Most High God.
So here we have a Canaanite king priest who is a worshiper of the one true creator God. And we shouldn’t be surprised by that. Jjust because, Abraham was a worshiper of the one true God, it doesn’t mean he was the only worshiper of the one true God. There were other people who worshiped the one true God.
Job for example, Melchizedek for example. Other people at that point in history were still worshiping, one, supreme being as the creator and God over everything and had not abandoned and fallen into polytheism.
These things have actually been clarified, by archeology in the last 100 years. In the 1920s, archeologists were excavating a site, called Ras Shamra, which turned out to be the ancient city of Ugarit.
And this city of Ugarit, flourished in the 12th century BC. And the archeologists uncovered hundreds and thousands of tablets that describe every area of Canaanite life, including their religion.
So we have many hundreds of tablets that describe the worship of Baal or Baal. The Canaanites worshiped, Baal. He is the god of lightning and thunder. He’s the West Semitic storm deity. He is the one who brings the rain, and he’s the one who brings fertility to the land.
What we see from these tablets is that there is an evolution, or maybe I should call it a devolution, to Canaanite religion. So what they show us is that at an earlier period, the Canaanites worshiped one true creator God.
They would not necessarily have known Him as Yahweh or had a relationship with Him like the people of Israel in the Old Testament, but they did worship one supreme transcendent being.
And in the period of time between Abraham, and the 12th century BC, their religion degenerated, and they abandoned the worship of one supreme God and began to worship many gods.
And so these texts that we have from Ugarit actually show us that the creator God, who’s called El, who’s called the Most High, has faded into the background and the chief god ruling all of the other gods is Baal the rain god.
So this fits perfectly with the data that we have in the Bible because in the Bible, in Genesis, we have a Canaanite king priest who is a worshiper of the one true creator God.
And what we see then in the next, from the period of Abraham, from maybe 2000 BC down to the 12th century BC, the Canaanites degenerate from worshiping one true creator God into worshiping all the forces of nature, particularly, the rain god.
Many people have not understood what the author to the Hebrews was trying to do. The author to the Hebrews, as well as David himself in Psalm 110, see Melchizedek as a model or pattern of the Messiah.
And the question is why is that? Simply because he’s both a king and a priest.
In Psalm 110, the Psalm is divided into two stanzas. In the first stanza, a divine declaration creates a king. In the second stanza, a divine oath creates a priest.
The king and the priest are the same person. And both stanzas show this coming descendant of David, this coming king priest as defeating and conquering the nations.
In the book of Hebrews, the author is seeing Melchizedek as a model or pattern of the coming Messiah.
So for example, in the book of Genesis, everybody has a genealogy, except Melchizedek. So he’s presented as if he just doesn’t have any father or mother. He’s presented as if he’s almost like an eternal person. And so, it’s not that Melchizedek was an eternal person. It’s the way the author of Genesis presents him.
It makes it feasible for him to be a model or pattern of the coming Messiah. And he is not a Christophany. He’s not a pre-incarnate, appearance of Christ.
He’s an actual, historical, individual or person. He was a king of a city in Canaan, probably around 2000 BC. And he was both king and priest.
Because Christians didn’t have very much information about the ancient near eastern background, they didn’t have very much information about the development of Canaanite religion, and because of the statements in the book of Hebrews, they misunderstood the author of the book of Hebrews to be suggesting that Melchizedek was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, which is not what the author to the Hebrews is actually saying.
And what’s important about Melchizedek is that he is the earliest figure that we have in the Biblical history of someone who is both king and priest. And so according to Psalm 110 and Hebrews 7, he is a model or pattern for the coming deliverer that finds ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
What Is The Gospel Of Jesus Christ?
The answer to that is that the gospel is best put in biblical terms. What the Bible says it is, the word itself is simply good news. God’s good news for man.
The Bible gives you various ways of describing or defining that good news in the simplest terms, in Paul’s language, it is the good news of God reconciling the world to himself and in through the person and the work of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
Paul also said, and I suppose this is the nearest thing you have in the New Testament to an actual definition of the gospel, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
Now, that’s the core of the good news. Data’s first of all, with a person, Jesus Christ. Who is he? That’s a question that comes up quite often in the gospel story of his life.
People ask everywhere he went, who is this? Who is this? And the Bible gives us the answer. This is in Peter’s words, the Christ, the son of the living God.
This is God’s son. Come into the world on a particular mission sent by his father to do something and that brings us to his work. His work was coming into the world to live and to die and to rise again from the dead.
Now, those are three important parts of the work of Christ. He came into the world with sin. He lived without sin and obedience to the law of God. He died for sin, a sacrifice to put away the wrath of God that was against our sin.
How do we know he actually succeeded in doing this? Well, he said he would give one indication, one sign, and that would be, he would rise the third day from the dad.
So that’s why Paul emphasized the person, Jesus Christ dying for our sins as the scriptures had said, and then rising again the third day as the scriptures had prophesied.
This is the heart of the gospel.
Now, why is this such good news and why is it so important? Well, it’s good news because according to God’s word, every one of us is born a sinner. We don’t need to be taught to sin. We send us naturally as breathing. It’s in our nature.
Every one of us knows from his own conscience. He’s a sinner, not just against all their man and women, but against God. Sin is the transgression or the breaking of the law of God and that brings the wrath of God.
The Bible tells us that God is angry with the wicked every day that the wages of sin is death. It also tells us that we can not do anything to save our ourselves or to change ourselves.
We may change our behavior, but we do not change our sales or our status in the sight of God. It takes divine intervention and that’s the importance of the gospel.
That’s the necessity of God sending his own son into the world and yet sending him as a man. He was born of a virgin without sin, but he was born. He was a real man.
Now here we have the glory of the person of Christ.
God and man two distinct natures, divine and human, not a mixture, God and man and yet one indivisible person. This is the savior, the importance, the necessity.
How do we know he succeeded? Did he actually put away sin? Is he able to save sinners? Is he able by his life and death to reconcile us to God?
Well, he said, I’ll prove it. I’11 rise from the dead, and that’s exactly what he did.
So what’s the significance of that? For us, Paul puts it like this. God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that is he bore our sin in his own body on the tree, having lived a perfect life and met our obligation to the precept of God’s law, he died an atoning death and paid the penalty for our breach of God’s law.
Now the other side is God makes us to be the righteousness of God in him as he imputed. That’s the biblical word, laid to the charge of Christ our sin. So he lays to our kind, his righteousness, all the merit of his life, all the merit of his death.
How do we obtain this? The Bible says we are justified by faith, by faith in Christ. Jesus said, come onto me. He said that whosoever believeth in him, not just about him, but in him hath everlasting life. That in a nutshell is the gospel.