If you take Revelation too literally, it describes the universe collapsing during the alleged Great Tribulation. Realising this, someone has proposed that the New Heavens and New Earth must be made before the Millennium not after - and has found numerous Scriptures proving this - proving that the New Heavens and New Earth are made at Christ's Second Coming.
I think he could be right that the New Heavens and New Earth will be made at Christ's Second Coming. But Peter said only the righteous enter the New Earth, whereas Revelation says the nations got deceived again after the Millennium. In a Pre-Millennial view, that would mean only Christians go into the Millennium, and that the nations who are deceived and who attack the camp of the saints might be the departed souls of the lost. One theologian believes something like that.
Wouldn't it fit better to think of the vision of the Millennium as symbolising the scheme of things during the Church age? Isn't it taught in the Epistles and Gospels that despite martyrdom and death, believers live spiritually and reign with Christ (whether in life or in death), being unhurt permanently or spiritually by the devil (from whom the power of death has been stripped, on the cross), and then after an indeterminately long period of time, and perhaps a brief period of increased persecution towards the end of time, all the dead will be raised physically this time, either unto damnation, or to finally share in the visible Kingdom of God in the eternal New Heavens and Earth? The vision of the Millennium seems to fit that framework, with fewer anomalies than other ideas about the Millennium.
Not that I'm asserting it. Just thinking.
I think he could be right that the New Heavens and New Earth will be made at Christ's Second Coming. But Peter said only the righteous enter the New Earth, whereas Revelation says the nations got deceived again after the Millennium. In a Pre-Millennial view, that would mean only Christians go into the Millennium, and that the nations who are deceived and who attack the camp of the saints might be the departed souls of the lost. One theologian believes something like that.
Wouldn't it fit better to think of the vision of the Millennium as symbolising the scheme of things during the Church age? Isn't it taught in the Epistles and Gospels that despite martyrdom and death, believers live spiritually and reign with Christ (whether in life or in death), being unhurt permanently or spiritually by the devil (from whom the power of death has been stripped, on the cross), and then after an indeterminately long period of time, and perhaps a brief period of increased persecution towards the end of time, all the dead will be raised physically this time, either unto damnation, or to finally share in the visible Kingdom of God in the eternal New Heavens and Earth? The vision of the Millennium seems to fit that framework, with fewer anomalies than other ideas about the Millennium.
Not that I'm asserting it. Just thinking.
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