The Revelation of Saint John

The book of Revelation was written to seven churches that existed in the mid to late 1st century AD. This sounds obvious to anyone who has been a student of the book or even just read it casually but it is a central point to the book. Each of the churches have listed attributes in the book; some good, mostly bad attributes.

What Does Smith Do With These Churches?
Like most allegorizers of the Book of Revelation, Chuck Smith has a fanciful way of understanding the churches. This way of understanding them is outside of the historical context of the letters. For instance, in his article Answers for Today, Smith writes about two of the churches:

The unrepentant church of Thyatira. which had gone into spiritual "fornication" (idolatry and saint-worship), was to be cast into the Great Tribulation unless, the Lord said, she repented. 2. To the church of Philadelphia in Revelation 3:10 Jesus said, "Because you have kept the word of my patience, I also will keep you from the hour of temptation which is coming to try them who dwell upon the earth."

Smith writes these things to support his belief in the pre-tribulational rapture but they prove way too much for Smith's position. What they prove is that the first century saw events which will never be repeated in human history with the destruction of the Jewish people in 67-70 AD and their being carried off into the nations. What these texts don't prove is some future tribulation period.

Why Do These Churches Matters?
Smith, and other teachers like him, have to allegorize or spiritualize the seven churches out of their historical context. Otherwise they can't read these passages as referring to a future tribulation period. You see, these churches no longer exist in their forms they once did, although according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there is still a church in the city. Thyatira, for instance, is the modern Islamic city of Akhisar.

The situation was purely a mid to late first century AD situation. WHen the passage talks about "great tribulation", Smith re-reads that as "the great tribulation". Since for Smith the great tribulation is future, then the churches have to be allegorized. They are no longer actual churches. Some take them to be various churches today and others see them as ages of the church. Smith credits his own church as being Philadelphia and of course other churches are the apostate churches listed at the beginning.

What justifies this reading of the text?
Certainly people like Smith can read the Bible any way that they wish. It's a free country after all. But should they be teaching it this way? Of course they should not.

What Generation Will See the Rapture?

When Chuck Smith wrote about the timing for the Rapture, he wrote:

What "Generation"?
Not the generation Christ was talking to, because they've passed - but the generation that saw the fig tree budding forth. The coming of Jesus Christ is "even at the doors." The rebirth of Israel should be a sign to every child of God! Jesus said throughout the rest of Matthew 24, "Watch... be ye also ready." That was the constant warning to the Church: watch and be ready. In Luke 21:28 when Jesus was speaking of these same things, using again the parable of the fig tree, He said, "And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."

Why not the generation that Jesus was speaking to?
Because it makes our own generation seem less important. If we aren't the "Rapture Generation" then what are we? What exactly did Jesus mean by "this generation"? After all, He should have said "that generation" if He pointing to some future generation thousands of years later.

Mat 23:36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
Mat 24:34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.
Mar 8:12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation.
Luk 11:30 For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.
Luk 17:25 But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.

Jesus wasn't speaking of some distant generation, but the generation that he was speaking to. Parallel passages make this very clear:

Mat 16:28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.
Mar 9:1 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
Luk 9:27 But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.

What About the Fig Tree?
Smith takes the fig tree in a non-literal sense, as a figurative symbol, in this case for the national Israel. He sees the fig tree blossoming as a figure of Israel becomming a nation once again. There is nothing in this immediate text to support that premise. Jesus is using the example of the fig tree in an entirely different way than what Smith suggests. Jesus is using the fig tree as an example of something you can see with your own eyes as a sign of the seasons. The events Jesus described were the signs to watch for, not the fig tree itself. The fig tree stood for those events not some other event, such as Israel becoming a nation.

Suppose the Fig Tree is Israel!
But if the fig tree is Israel then what about this passage?

Mar 11:13-14 And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.

If the fig tree is Israel then Jesus has just cursed Israel forever to wither and die.

More Smith Resurrection Heresy

In his book, What the World is Coming To, Chuck Smith wrote:

God made our new bodies in a new manner. They're made from heavenly elements. You'll be able to walk right through a material wall. It's as when you shine a flashlight through a one-foot thick piece of glass. The light comes out on the other side completely unimpaired. Similarly, after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, He evidently passed through the walls into the room where the disciples were gathered (John 20:26). All the doors were locked and, suddenly, Christ appeared in their midst and began talking to them.

Our new bodies will probably be made of a different molecular structure than the material universe. As far as we know, in this material universe everything is made up of three building blocks: protons, electrons, and neutrons. God has created such an infinite variety from these three components by combining them in different ways. How do we know that God doesn't have other building blocks? Why should God limit Himself to three? God made our earthly bodies out of these three building blocks and God has another body waiting for us. He said that as we have borne the image of the earthy, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly (I Corinthians 15:49). Those building blocks God used to create heaven are the building blocks He has used to make your new body.

Not only does Smith deny the resurrection of the flesh and assert that we get different bodies, but he says that they are made out of the same stuff Heaven is made from. This stuff is just plain crazy. No commentary should be needed but apparently people have itching ears. Why is this guy leading a church? He isn't qualified to lead a home Bible Study!

Using Smith's way of thinking Jesus must have been made of the same material as ducks. After all, Jesus walked on water and we know ducks float on water, too.

Rapture Proof Texts

Let's look at the texts that are claimed as support for the Rapture from chapter 4 of Chuck Smith's book, What the World is Coming To.

Rev 4:
Chuck Smith wrote:

I believe that the rapture of the church takes place in verse one of Revelation 4 - after the things of the church history are completed. John heard a voice as a trumpet saying, "Come up hither, and I will show you things that shall be after these things." Now John will see the things that shall take place after the church is gone.

Contrary to Smith, this first text is not a text at all, it is a chapter divide, namely the chapter divide that starts at Rev 4 verse 1. John is asked to come up into Heaven to view a heavenly scene. What this has to do with the rapture is hard to discern. John being transported to Heaven for a revelation from God has nothing to do with the church being taken to Heaven for 7 years (or even part of seven years). Just because John got to see something doesn't mean that future people would see something.

This particular connection is one of the most imaginative of all Dispensational ideas and it is based on the theory that the book of Revelation is time ordered/coded with events from earlier at the start and events from later at the beginning. At best it's an allegorical reading of the text. There is nothing in that text that indicates that the church will be taken up into Heaven. The text is clear, it is John the Revelator who is in Heaven at this point in the text, not the church.

1 Thes 4:16:
This text is:

1Th 4:16-17 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Unfortunately the previous two verses are ommitted by Smith. The entire section, read it context, reads:

1Th 4:14-17 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Listing out the events in the order listed in the passage:

-The Lord descents from Heaven
-There is a shout which is the voice of the archangel (no secret coming there)
-The trumpet sounds (the trumpets are at the end of the tribulation)
-The dead are raised (the resurrection)
-The alive people are taken up to meet them in the clouds (we know they are clothed with immortality at that point)
-We all go to be with the Lord

Before the rapture teaching was invented it was uniformly believed that this text described the descent of Jesus with the saints at the start of His earthly reign. The dead are raised and the living are transformed into their immortal bodies. They remain on the Earth with Christ. This is completely consistent with the text. The only way to get Smith's view is to read it into the text and then the problems multiply. For instance;

Problem #1 - When will this happen?
If this event is 7 years (or any period of time) before next Second Coming then there would need to be another resurrection at that time. There are no texts which support two resurrection of the righteous, just one at the end of time.

Problem #2 - Where is the second Second Coming in Scripture?
Secondly, there is no second translation of the living anywhere in Scripture. What happens to those who believe in Christ at His second Second Coming? Presumably they will need to be translated as well.

Problem #3 - Down and back or Down?
Thirdly, what is presumed by Smith is that Christ comes down and then goes back up again. This view is not supported by the text which does not say which direction Jesus is going. Since Jesus is bringing the souls of the dead with Him to be raised in their resurrected bodies, why taken them back to Heaven at all? There's no need for resurrection bodies in Heaven.

The Historical Views
Historical Pre-millennialists believed that the 1000 year Millennium started at that point in time. Amillennialists disagreed and stated that the church age constituted the millennium. It is a misnomer to say Amillennialist in that Amillennialists don't believe in any sort of millennium, rather they believe that the Millennium in Revelation is a description of the current time frame.

Why does Pre-wrath matter to CC?

There are a couple of reasons I am focusing on Pre-wrath. One is the recent attention brought to the subject by the Phoenix Preacher who is an advocate of the position.

Another reason is its attraction to folks on their way out of Calvary Chapel. They have begun questioning the teachings of Calvary Chapel and are looking for alternatives. Pre-wrath, for them, is a way of salvaging most of their Dispensationalism without keeping the Biblically unsupportable Pre-tribulational rapture doctrine.

A third reason is that this view has some footholds in the evangelical community which is hasn't earned because most others give it a free pass thinking it is a harmless error.

Pre-Wrath Prevarications

Yet another quote from the Pre-Wrath website:

Since a view of a literal thousand-year kingdom on earth holds that there is still a future kingdom for the Jews, and that God has not rejected the nation of Israel and yet will fulfill His covenants with them, this view came to be rejected in this growing anti-Jewish church culture.

There are two mixed up notions here which the pre-wrath advocates can't seem to understand in their materials. On one hand they want to present their view as the historically accepted view in the Earliest Church days. As one of their sources writes:

In contrast to this “great cloud of witnesses” for the chiliastic (one thousand year kingdom) view of the early church, there are virtually no early church documents prior to AD 325 which support a different view.

On the other they have this notion that the 1000 year reign of Christ on the Earth somehow relates to genetic descendants of Jacob/Israel.

What did the Early Pre-Millennialists believe?
The early Premillennialists believed that Christ was going to return to the Earth for a reign of 1000 years after which there would be a general resurrection of the dead. They did not equate this 1000 year time period for National Israel. They did not see "the church age as a parenthesis" as the Pre-Wrath and other Dispensational variants see it.

In other words, the early church had a completely different view of the purpose and peopling of the 1000 year reign of Christ than the Pre-Wrathers do today. Not only was the purpose different, but the people who inhabit the time are different. Ask yourself, who rules and reigns with Christ during that 1000 years according to the book of Revelation? Is it Israel or is it the Church?

The bottom line is that their view is sadly mistaken and the notion of a future for Israel is a separate question from the 1000 year reign which they have mixed up due to their own Dispensational leanings. Most, if not all, of the early church did not see this 1000 years as focused on Israel. They saw it as the church age. No wonder Amillennialism arose, since it was a natural continuation of this same theme, not some new radical teaching.

This is an important point and refutes the central notion of Pre-Wrathism, namely their claim of historical connection to the Early Church's view on Pre-millennialism. The only thing their view has in common with the Early Church is the return of Christ at the start of the 1000 year period. Everything else about their view is different. The Early Church writers did not see a need for the Millennium to fulfill some Old Covenant promises to Israel. They realized that the New Covenant was now the controlling document and that the Old Covenant had died with the destruction of the temple in 70 AD as the final evidence of the ending of that Covenant (with the cross being the very real beginning of the end).

Wikipedia article on the differences between the Historical Pre-millennialism and the Dispensational Pre-millennialism.

Was Early Amillennialism a Result of Anti-Semitism?
Or were there other reasons for the rise. I suggest above why it made perfect sense when a couple of hundred years passed to assume that since Jesus who was already reigning from Heaven they were in the millennium. After all, there are no texts which show Jesus returning to the Earth prior to the Millennium without making assumptions brought into particular texts. Check it out, it's true!

Also, there were many Pre-millennial authors who were anti-semitic by today's standards. It's not necessary to go beyond the New Testament itself to find materials which people have claimed is anti-Semitic. The recent hoopla over the movie "The Passion of the Christ" demonstrates that content directly out of the Gospels appears to some as anti-semitic.

It is important for Christians to understand the work of Christ that was done by His death and resurrection from the dead. Once we really understand that we can proclaim to all of our neighbors, Jew and Gentile alike, that Jesus really is the Savior of the entire world.

For a good short article on the Orthodox view, see this page.

Contemporary Judaizers

Why did the church so early on embrace Amillenialism and reject Premillennialism which had ancient roots predating the Christian era? Was it because the church got corrupted or was was because the church came to realize the central notion of Pre-millennialism was/is Judaizing?

At its core, the idea that the New Covenant is somehow not complete and that the Old Covenant with its promises to National Israel is still in force denies the Gospel and the Cross of Christ. It says what Jesus did was inferior to the Old Covenant. No wonder it was sharply rejected by the Apostles and Early Church.

It's important to realize that the New Covenant was with the House of Israel and being the New Covenant it replaced the Old Covenant. Jeremiah wrote about this new Covenant:

Jer 31:31-33 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

There is no continuation of the Old Covenant with Israel, the New Covenant replaces the Old Covenant. Call this "replacement theology" if you wish, but that's the very language of this text. Not according to the Old [Covenant], Jeremiah wrote, but a New Covenant.

It's not so much that the people of God were replaced, it's that the Covenant God had with people was replaced with a better covenant based on better promises. It was no longer with National Israel, but with the entire Earth, including National Israel. It was much more than what it ever was before.

New Testament Writers on the New Covenant
This "New Covenant" is picked up on by the writer of Hebrews who wrote:

Heb 8:6-13 But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.

Those who would seek to return to the Old Covenant are Judaizers. Seeing a future for Israel based on promises of the Old Covenant is exactly what the author of Hebrews is clearly rejecting. To say that the promises of the New Covenant are inferior and therefore the old promises to National Israel are what matters is patently false. The New Covenant is superior to the Old Covenant.

To take it a step further, it is a damnable heresy to reject the New Covenant and seek the Old Covenant:

Heb 10:29-31 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

This is why the early church rejected Premillennialism - it sets the New Covenant aside and tries to reestablish the Old Covenant. In the process it denies the work of Christ. Follow such false teachings at your own peril!