20 Questions for Your View on the Millennium

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By Mitch Chase

Revelation 20:1–6 contain the Bible’s teaching on a period of “a thousand years,” and these verses comprise one of the most disputed passages in the whole Bible. 

You may have thought through the four main millennial views (dispensational premillennialism, historic premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism) and have reached a conventional conclusion. 

Or maybe you’re undecided.

No matter what view you hold (firmly or loosely), here are 20 questions that would be good to think through:

  1. What is the relationship of Revelation 20:1-6 to Revelation 19?
  2. Should the “thousand years” in Revelation 20:1–6 be interpreted literally or symbolically?
  3. Is there a relationship between Revelation 12 and Revelation 20:1-6?
  4. Can the “first resurrection” in Revelation 20:5 and 20:6 refer to anything other than a bodily resurrection?
  5. Though the terminology of a millennial reign occurs only in Revelation 20, is the millennial reign taught conceptually in any previous New Testament or Old Testament passage(s)
  6. In Revelation 20:4, are the “thrones” in heaven or earth?
  7. How might Daniel 7:9-14 help us understand Revelation 20:4?
  8. If the pattern of biblical passages depicts a general resurrection of the dead, to what degree should that pattern influence our reading of Revelation 20:1–6
  9. Since theologians in the early centuries of the church wrote about the millennium, what role should they play in our own interpretive conclusions?
  10. Does the binding of Satan in Revelation 20:1-3 have any relationship to Jesus’s binding of the strong man in the Gospel accounts and his defeat of Satan on the cross?
  11. How does Christ’s promise that “the gates of hell will not prevail” against his church (Matt 16:18) factor into your millennial position?
  12. What role does persecution play in your millennial view?
  13. How does your view incorporate Jesus’s parables about the mustard seed that grows and the leaven that spreads (Matt 13:31–34)?
  14. In Revelation 20:5 and 20:6, does the ordinal “first” (in the phrase “first resurrection”) imply a “second” resurrection, and if so, are those resurrections the same or different in kind?
  15. What are the valid challenges and weaknesses of your millennial view?
  16. How important do you think a position on the millennium is to other biblical doctrines?
  17. Do you believe Christ reigns now, and if so, does that reality have any bearing on Revelation 20:1-6?
  18. Is your understanding of other millennial views based on what the advocates of those views have said or based only on what critics of those views have said?
  19. What does it mean to “reign with Christ” in Revelation 20:4 and 20:6?
  20. Reflecting on Revelation 20:3, what did Satan’s deception of the nations involve?


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