Saturday, March 19, 2016

Post-Tribulation: The Millennium / The Heavens and New Earth ---When?



The Traditional Post Trib view teaches that Revelation order is also Chronological order. The chart "Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth" by Clarence Larkin [1] illustrates this scenario.





However there are parenthetical chapters that fill in details from a previous chapter (example Revelation 7). Revelation 21:1-22:6 fills in details about the Millennium between Revelation 20:6 and 20:7.
Using Clarence Larkin's chart I have modified it to illustrate a different scenario Post-Trib.

There is only one difficulty to my Modified scenario as pointed out by John Walvoord:

Peter 3:10-13 refers to the day of the Lord beginning before the millennium, as well as to the destruction of the heavens and the earth with fire at the end of the millennium. If all the passages are put together, the sequence of events becomes plain, and the allusions to the new heaven and the new earth are clearly set forth in the book of Revelation as following the millennial kingdom and immediately preceded by the destruction of the old earth and heaven, as previously mentioned. J. B. Smith’s objection to the first heaven and the first earth passing away is not substantiated by any of the proof texts which he cites.[2]The eternal state is clearly indicated in the absence of sea, for frequent mention of bodies of water occur in millennial passages (cf. Ps. 72:8; Isa. 11:9, 11; Ezek. 47:10, 15, 17, 18, 20; 48:28; Zech. 9:10; 14:8). The evidence of Revelation 21:1 is so specific that most commentators do not question that the eternal state is here in view.[ 3]

My response to this objection by Dr. Walvoord is that "seas" is how the Mediterranean world understood large bodies of water. Beyond the Mediterranean was a more vast body of water that we called an ocean...like the Atlantic. I am assuming that the phrase "no more seas"...applies to are oceans...which served as drainage for the flood waters, but has kept vast areas of land from being habitable in this present dispensation. The old world formed after God's judgment of the flood will be erased by the judgment of fire that will make way for a new heaven and new earth.

If this is true...then you can have seas as mentioned in Old Testament prophecies as bodies of water and yet have no oceans like the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, Southern Ocean when the new earth is created after the purging by fire and restoration by God. The evidence is mainly circumstantial. So I could be wrong. I just offer this as food for thought.

[1] http://www.biblelife.org/dispensations.htm
[2] A Revelation of Jesus Christ, p. 281
[3] The New Heaven And The New Earth
https://bible.org/seriespage/21-new-heaven-and-new-earth

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