Let's talk about some truth claims.

Are the numbers in Revelation only metaphors? Is Satan currently bound?

Hi friends,

Consider this a bonus letter as I take a break from our current topic to speak into something that I've seen cropping up a lot lately.

Are the numbers in Revelation meant to be taken metaphorically? I heard a Bible scholar make this claim recently, and it's not the first time I've heard it. Usually, as was the case this time, they make this claim in support of the 1,000-year reign of Christ being a metaphor for the Church age, denying that Jesus will literally return and establish his Kingdom on the earth for a thousand years before the new heavens and the new earth replace everything and we enter into the eternal kingdom of the Father.

This is the view of amillennialists as well as post-millennialists – those who either believe that the Church is Christ's earthly kingdom and he won't literally return, and/or that it's the Church's job to establish the earthly kingdom by conquering the unbelieving world and establishing Christianity throughout the whole earth, after which Jesus will return and take us into the Father's kingdom. This view generally goes hand-in-hand with supercessionism, aka replacement theology – the belief that the Church has replaced Israel in God's Kingdom plan, or that the Church is the new Israel.

These views largely rest on being able to prove that the thousand years mentioned throughout Revelation 20, during which Satan will be bound and Jesus and the saints will reign on the earth, is meant to be taken metaphorically. Which leads to the assertion that ALL numbers in Revelation are metaphorical, and also to claims that Satan is currently bound.

So let's examine these claims.

Use of Numbers in Revelation

The first number we come across in Revelation occurs repeatedly the first chapter – the number seven. Seven spirits, seven lamp stands, seven stars, etc. In biblical numerics, seven is a symbolic number for completion or divine perfection. God, for example, rested on the seventh day because his work of creation was complete.

However, Jesus tells John that the seven lamp stands represent seven churches, and he names those churches by name. These are seven literal churches. Here is a clear-cut case where the number seven has a literal application. So we can see just from this first instance that a number used in the book of Revelation is meant to be both symbolic and literal at the same time. It's not an either/or proposition.

Seven comes up again in the judgments. Seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls – three courses of seven judgments each. I struggle to see how this is meant to be taken any way other than literally.

Other significant numbers include the number four – referring to the four seraphim surrounding God's throne. There's nothing in the text to indicate that this is a metaphor for anything and that there aren't literally four winged creatures in view.

Next we have the 24 elders. The number 24 calls back to 1 Chronicles 24 and 25, wherein David organizes both the priests and the musicians and worship leaders into 24 courses , or shifts, who will rotate their services throughout the year. This seems to be a deliberate allusion to that, seeing as how the elders are acting as both priests as they minister before God's throne, and also as singers and worship leaders. Are there literally 24 elders present, or is this number representative of a larger group? We don't actually know. This number may be purely symbolic, or it may also have a literal fulfillment. We can't know for certain until we get there and see for ourselves.

The same is true of the 144,000 in Chapters 7 and 14. Chapter 7 explicitly states that this number is made up of 12,000 men from each of the 12 tribes of Israel.

In Biblical numerics and Gematria, the number 144,000 reduces to 9, which is another number that symbolizes divine completeness, or finality (interestingly, 666 also reduces to 9). So it's possible that this is, indeed, a metaphorical number representing that a complete number of set apart Jews will be preserved through the Tribulation. It's also possible that this is the literal number of Jewish men and, as with the 5,000 that Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish to feed, their wives and children are included in this number but not counted, and also that it's rounded off. Again, we can't really know for certain until it comes to pass. The claim that this number is purely metaphorical is an assumption, at best.

So we can already see that the assertion that numbers in Revelation are all to be taken as metaphors has a lot of weaknesses. But what about numbers concerning time?

In Revelation 8:1, when the Lamb opens the seventh seal, it says there was silence in heaven for “about half an hour.” Kind of weird to phrase it that way if it's not speaking of a literal amount of time, isn't it?

Next, in Chapter 11 we're told that the two witnesses will prophesy for 1,260 days – exactly three and a half years on the Hebrew calendar (also, again, it reduced to 9). This corresponds to the time breakdown of the 70th “week” of years in Daniel 9 and 12. After the end of the 1,260 days, the witnesses will be killed, and we're told that their bodies will lie in the open for 3.5 days before being resurrected and taken up to heaven. Again, while these numbers may have symbolic significance, I'm struggling to see why we should assume that they're not meant to be understood literally.

And if we're meant to understand those amounts of time literally, why wouldn't we also be meant to understand the 1,000 years as a literal amount of time? Unless, of course, you're coming to the book of Revelation with the presupposition that the entire book is meant to be taken metaphorically, in which case, nothing will be taken literally.

The problem with this presupposition is that, if it's all metaphor, then, a metaphor for what? This leaves it open to a broad range of interpretation, which opens the door to a lot of confusion. And as God is NOT the author of confusion, and yet he IS the ultimate author of this book, it seems to follow that he didn't intend for this book – or any other book of the Bible for that matter – to be interpreted in a way that leads to confusion.

This all leads to my next question:

Is Satan Currently Bound?

Those who view the 1,000-year reign of Christ on the earth as a metaphor for the Church age would also have us believe that Satan has been bound for the last 2,000 years. This would seem to contradict the warning given in 1 Peter 5:8, which tells us that the devil is currently, in the present age, prowling around like a lion, seeking someone to devour.

The other night, I heard a Bible scholar clarify that Revelation 20:3 specifies that Satan is bound from deceiving the nations. He argued that, in the Church age, the nations aren't being deceived, they're being saved.

I would really like to sit down with that scholar and ask him how he accounts for the rise of Islam? Or all the various deceptions that came out of the Enlightenment – atheism, secular humanism, modernism and post-modernism, Darwinism, etc. What about Communism – which if you've spent any time looking into these things, you'll know is actually rooted in Luciferianism? What about out-and-out Satanism? What about the Occult? How does he account for all of the heresies that were rampant in the early Church, and that persisted down through the ages? We've had two thousand years to spread the gospel to all nations – why is Christianity currently diminishing instead of growing? Why has paganism never been fully conquered and wiped out, even in so-called Christian nations?

Why did Jesus warn us in Matthew 13 that Satan himself would be at work, snatching away the seeds of the gospel before they can take root in people’s hearts, and sowing tares amongst the wheat?

I look around at the proliferation of New Age and Progressive theology in the current Church and I see deception all over the place.

This scholar acknowledged the current deceptions and offered the possibility that we're moving into the age in which Satan is released and allowed once again to deceive. But from where I stand, while deception is growing more rampant as the spirit of antichrist gains strength, it has never ceased. In fact, in upcoming issues we'll be digging into some Satanic deceptions that worked their way into the medieval Church, sinking us into the Dark Ages.

Clearly, the idea that Satan has been bound for the last 2,000 years is contradicted both by scripture and by history. Not to mention reality.

Ultimately, it's up to you to make up your own mind. I can only share how I see it – I'm not trying to tell anyone what to think or believe. But I can promise you, not because I have any special training or knowledge, but because the Bible says so, that the Bible was written to be plainly understood. You don't need years in seminary or a PhD to interpret it properly.

Another logical fallacy I forgot to mention in my last letter is the appeal to authority. We've seen this fallacious reasoning over the last two years in our media's and government's insistence that we trust the experts – just as we've seen that the “experts” often have no idea what they're talking about, when they're not being paid to outright lie.

This fallacy crops up often in theological debates. Scholars, pastors and teachers often expect us to simply accept what they tell us without testing it against scripture, and so many people do exactly that because, well, they're the experts, aren't they. They're really smart and they know a lot of stuff.

But knowledge can puff up. Seminaries can indoctrinate people into a particular view. Even sincere Bible scholars can miss something, or fail to be led by the Holy Spirit in their understanding.

That's why we, individually, are called to be Bereans and test everything against scripture. Who were the Bereans? They were a group of people who didn't take the words of the Apostle Paul at face value, but searched scripture to verify what he was teaching. And it's hard to get more authoritative than Paul without going to Jesus himself. At any rate, how can we test a claim against scripture to see if it's true, if scripture is wide open to varying metaphorical interpretations?

Peter also warns us in his second letter (Chapter 1, verse 20) that we don't have the leeway to interpret prophecy however we like. The prophetic word was more fully confirmed by Christ's first coming, and he tells us to pay attention to it as to a lamp shining in a dark place. Prophecy is meant to bring clarity, not confusion. It's meant to give us clear expectation and hope.

The Bible says exactly what it means, y'all.

Okay, rant over. Next time – hopefully later this week – I'll get back on track as we look at some Church history and how and when, exactly, the practice of interpreting scripture metaphorically began in the first place.

See you then!

Jean