What "LEFT BEHIND" Got Wrong About the Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times

There is a number in the Bible that has launched more end times charts, more prophecy conferences, and more arguments at Thanksgiving dinner than almost any verse in all of scripture. It's the word thousand, and it appears in Revelation 20. It's used six times in that one chapter. And most of us were handed an explanation as we became a Christian and told, this is just what it means. It's a literal future, thousand year reign of Christ on earth that we're still waiting for somewhere down the road. But here's the question we're going to consider. What if 1000 was never meant to be a stopwatch? What if it's a word the Bible has already defined for us in the Old Testament? My goal with taking this millennial madness apart is to disarm your fears, to take the scare tactics off the table. And I'm gonna hand you something you can actually live out today. In this episode, we're gonna walk through how to read the book of Revelation, why the numbers don't mean what you've been taught. And when I land on the rapture and the millennium, I'm gonna show you how it changed the way I live my life every day today. Welcome back to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty. I wanna start with a question.

What if the book of Revelation is not primarily about the end times? But what if it's about the now times? Not is Jesus going to reign on earth 1,000 years sometime in the distant future at the end of history? The better question we should ask is this, is Jesus reigning in our life today? And here's the truth about the kingdom of God. Wherever God is ruling and reigning over your life, or whenever he is controlling and leading your life personally, the kingdom of God is manifested publicly where you live, work, and play. When Jesus is king of our lives, the kingdom comes to earth, into our homes, into our workplaces, into our cities, and into our churches. We're not standing around waiting for Jesus to come back one day to start reigning. Jesus died and said, all authority has been given to me sometime in the, no, he said, all authority has been given to me on heaven and on earth now. And that one shift will change how you read every page of the book of Revelation. But before I can show you that, I have to give you a tool to help you interpret scripture. This is a fancy term, but it's the word hermeneutics. And it just means the art and the science of biblical interpretation.

There's an art to studying the Bible, and there's a science to it. I learned this in seminary from my first preaching professor, Dr. Jim Shaddix, who has now gone on to be with the Lord. But he took us straight to the book of Nehemiah, and we studied Nehemiah chapter eight. I've never forgotten what we learned that day in class. Now I want you to picture the scene. The walls have been rebuilt. The temple is now restored after the Babylonian captivity. The people have come back into the land after 70 years of banishment. And most of them, sadly, have never heard the word of God for themselves. They've heard about it, but they've never heard it. That's almost impossible for you and I to understand or imagine. Why? Because we're not starved for scripture. We're actually drowning in it. We have it in print form, in digital, audio. We have apps in our pockets with the word of God. You see, our problem isn't that we are illiterate of the Bible. We are a literate society who is illiterate of the word of God. We don't just need to know how to think as Christians. We need to learn how to think biblically. We need to learn how to respond with a biblical worldview. So Ezra stands up on this raised platform.

It's one of the reasons preachers actually preach on a wooden raised platform today. And he reads, from daybreak until noon. I want you to imagine the people are not sitting. They're standing, not singing worship songs. They're hearing the word of God. Many people are weeping and crying because it's God's word. We have people who can't stand, sadly, in churches today through three worship songs. These people stood for hours, and they were hungry to hear the voice of God. Watch what happened next, though. What happens next is interesting because it's the whole point of this passage. After the Levites hear the word of God in the crowd, they walk through, watch this, and it gives the names of them, and they explained the law to the people as they stood in their places. They read out of the book of the law, translating and giving meaning so that the people could understand what they what? What they read and what they heard. Here's what's happening. The Levites explained the word to the people. Why? Even though the people were standing in front of the living word, there were still barriers between them. Now, I want you to imagine the plain word of God as the voice of God.

It's a megaphone. Now, imagine the thing stacked against it so that we are muffled in our hearing. We can't really hear the sound. What do you mean, Robbie? In between the word of God 2,000 years ago or even 4,000 years in the Old Testament, there's a language barrier. What do you mean? We don't read Hebrew and we don't understand Greek anymore, especially the book of Revelation. There's a cultural barrier. We don't live in the first century or think like a first century Jewish man or woman. There's a geographical barrier. There's a historical barrier. There's a customs barrier. There's the land barrier, the timeline. You see the point here. So here's what a faithful expository preacher or textual preacher, expository just means to expose the text. Here's what a faithful textual preacher attempts to do. He takes the barriers down one at a time. So the voice of God comes through clearly. That's the job of a preacher. I actually have three advanced degrees in expository preaching. I did my Master's of Divinity. I did my THM and I've got a PhD in expository preaching

and I'm not telling you that to impress you but just impress upon you this fact. The number one thing I learned is this. Never add to the word of God. Instead, uncover what the word is saying. And here's another principle. You can't apply a text today differently than it applied or meant back then. So it's our job to uncover what it meant to the audience who received the letter, in Revelation's case, in the first century. Before you and I could ever speculate or predict some future event or meaning that none of us can confirm until it actually happens. And nowhere does this matter more than with end times predictions, with tribulation, scare tactics, and millennium conjecture. One of the most important jobs of anyone handling scripture is to figure out the genre. Now this is key. What style is the author writing in? You see, the Bible isn't one flat kind of writing. It's law in one instance. It's poetry in another. It's history. There are letters. There are prophecy explanations. There's apocalyptic literature, which, by the way, we learned is not end times. It actually means to reveal.

And if you read poetry coming close, like a phone book, you're gonna get it wrong every time. If you read a love letter that's sent to someone who's in love, like law, you're gonna get it wrong every time. Watch how Jesus wrote himself or Jesus taught himself. Look in Matthew chapter five, verse 29. Watch what Jesus does in a literary fashion. He uses a literary device called hyperbole. Watch this. Verse 29, if your right eye causes you to sin, if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. For it's better for you to lose one part of your body than go to hell. Notice what he says next. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than your whole body go to hell. Now, look at me. Has anyone ever looked at someone with lust before? Of course we have. I mean, if you're a human being, you have. Well, why in the world are you looking at me with both eyes? Why do you still have both hands then? Because you already know the style and we realize that the style is not literal, it's hyperbole, deliberate exaggeration that Jesus uses to drive a point home.

Now, Jesus is gonna do this constantly. Here's another one. He says it's easier for a camel, you're gonna love this, and this is a very familiar, very misunderstood passage. Matthew 19, 24. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And by the way, I used to preach this passage wrongly for years. I had this great illustration of a little gate in Jerusalem called the Needle's Eye, and it was a place where the camels had to unpack all of their belongings. They would kneel down, shed the load, and squeeze through this little eye of a needle as a gate into the city. I will say that was a wonderful sermon idea, but it was totally inaccurate. There's no such thing as a gate as the eye of the needle. What Jesus is simply doing here is he's taking the biggest animal they knew in the ancient world, which was a camel, and the smallest opening they could imagine, which was a needle, and he's basically. He's saying, in your own strength, this is impossible. Now, here's what's cool. I just got this in the mail. It is a certificate of authenticity from Zach's Antiquities

and it's a Roman bronze needle from the first century. This is the actual eye of a needle. This is interesting right here. If you notice, it's a needle, just like we use today, and there's a little hole right here that you put the thread through. This is what Jesus is talking about, but if we try to make it literal or in today's culture, we miss it totally. Jesus is gonna use more of this. He says, take the plank or the log, two by four, out of your own eye before you try to remove the speck in your brother's eye. He's not picturing people walking around with lumber on their faces. It's hyperbole. It's making a case for a deeper truth. Now, remember that because the same principle is used to unlock the most argued over number in the whole book of Revelation. Here's a rule that's gonna serve us for the rest of our life, especially when you study scripture. Every number in Revelation is first and foremost symbolic and second, literal, if it's literal at all. Let me say that again. The numbers of Revelation always have a deeper meaning than the numeric value they present. The Jewish culture calls this something called gematria. Remember, the Hebrew language,

I've said this in previous videos, the Hebrew language contains only 8,000 words. In comparison, the English language contains 200,000, the European English language, 200,000 words. So the ancient Hebrews had to be creative with the language. And so in a sense, the numbers did double duty. And by the way, John loves numbers, if you've read Revelation. His favorite number is seven. Seven churches, seven lampstands, seven spirits. He even describes Jesus as a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. Now, wherever you land, we all have to agree. John is not saying that he sees Jesus coming back as a seven-horned monster. The seven horns picture complete power. They show that the seven eyes are a picture of complete wisdom. He sees all, he knows all. Jesus is a picture of completeness and the number is a symbol. He also uses the number 10 for the horns of the kings. That was a picture of power, the might of Rome. And he uses the number, you ready for this? 144,000. And people I've talked to swear that this is a literal head count of 144,000 people who God will redeem in the tribulation. Not 143,999.

Not 144,001. But look at it, 12 times 12 times 1,000. 12 are the tribes of Israel. 12 are the apostles. Old covenant, new covenant together multiplied by the number 1,000 equals totality. God is simply saying, listen, it's not, the number's too tidy, it's too clean. Nobody believes, if you really step back, you're like, there's no way this could be right. Everyone who's reading this understands that everyone who's meant to be saved or born again will be saved. Everyone who's supposed to be there at the marriage supper of the Lamb is going to be there. It's complete. God doesn't lose a single one of them. Now, some of my pre-millennial brothers and sisters and dispensational friends will push back here and say, well, Robbie, you have a problem, brother, because you are not reading Revelation literally. And I understand that, I get that. But here's my response. I'm not failing to read it literally. I'm reading it with integrity, I believe, according to the genre in which it was written. Here's another example. If I write an email to my wife, Candy, from a mission trip in the Philippines, while I'm over there on a mission trip,

and I say in the email, baby, the weather here has been crazy. It's been raining cats and dogs. Now, she doesn't freak out because dogs and felines are falling from the sky in the Philippines. No, she understands like you do. This is symbolism from the language of the Bible. The challenge for us is that John does not leave us a decoder in the book of Revelation. So we don't know the glossary of terms. But God did, you're gonna love this, God did leave us a way to understand the book of Revelation by understanding. the Old Testament, understanding genre. Revelation quotes or alludes to over 500 Old Testament references and just 400 verses. If you want to understand Revelation, get this, you don't read it with a newspaper in one hand or the newsfeed in one hand and the book in the other. You interpret it by reading it with Revelation in one hand and the Old Testament in the other. Reading apocalyptic literature as if it were news isn't more faithful, it's categorically dangerous. If you don't believe me, research the theological damage that prophecy watch sites and movements that predict the future have caused upon the people of God through the years, particularly the past 200 years. Now with this in mind, we come to Revelation 20 and the word is a thousand.

I mentioned earlier it shows up six times, a thousand years and here's the first reason for doubting it's a literal stopwatch. The number, as I already alluded, is too tidy. If I told you 1,500 people came to church on Sunday, your gut would push back and say, really, exactly 1,500 or was it 1,488? A perfectly round number should make us suspicious. Why 1,000 and not 919 or 1,025? But I don't have to lean on instinct because God has given us already in the Old Testament a manual for understanding the numbers. The Lord keeps his gracious covenant loyalty for a thousand generations. You've heard this verse before. Does that thousand and first generation, the 1,001th generation get cut off? Oh man, we missed it, of course not. It doesn't mean that they missed it. It's a picture of something bigger. I'll give you another one. God says, I own the cattle on a thousand hills. Wait a minute, what about the cattle on the 1,001th hill? Does God not own that piece of cattle? No, God owns it all. God shows his faithful love to the thousandth generation and listen to this one. You know it's all over the Bible. With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like one day.

Let me pull over and park for a moment because I want to address the tension at this point because I feel it from you because I've been there. When I first started studying the book of Revelation, I came into it like many of you, dispensational, pre-trib, pre-millennial perspective. To have any other view at the seminary I went to was considered heretical. But I decided as I went to the book to put aside all my presuppositions and everything I was taught from commentaries and scholars and read the text for myself in light of how the people receiving it would have understood it. Let me summarize this to get you to understand this. A thousand back in that culture that it was written means this. It is a vast, complete period of time with a terminal ending. It's a long season of time, but it will come to an end. And that's exactly how we should read Revelation 20. The millennial reign isn't a future thousand year clock. It began when Christ rose and ascended at the first coming. And friends, you and I are living in it right now. Why? Because Jesus is ruling and reigning in heaven right now. It's what we call the church age, a long season. It's the age between the first coming of Christ and the second coming, which he will come at the end of time. Now, let me show you this piece

that reframed the whole book for me. And the crucial piece here is the date because where you date Revelation determines how you interpret the book. Now, I know I'm gonna get pushed back on this, so believe me, I've already heard it all. I just want you to consider this possibility. I'm gonna give you three reasons to. The most popular date for the book of Revelation being written by John is AD 95. It is a late date in the first century under the reign of Domitian. And that's the view the loudest voices in the world tell us. John MacArthur, David Jeremiah, Charles Stanley predicted this, Tony Evans, Chuck Swindoll. And if you trace it back, they all came, most of them all came from the same stream. Again, I'm not knocking this, but you can look this up for yourself. They all were taught at Dallas, or most all were taught at Dallas Theological Seminary, the epicenter of dispensational teaching. Hang on, I'm gonna do a video soon about dispensationalism. I'm not knocking any of them. If your mentors taught you that and you sat under their teaching, then you learned. learned it just like them. You're gonna believe what they taught you

and you're going to promote it. Well, wait a minute, Robbie. Are you saying these preachers whom I've listened to for years and years could be wrong about something? Of course they can. Martin Luther, the great reformer, was the one who brought us the Protestant Reformation. Grace by faith alone, in Christ alone, the scriptures alone, but he also, at the same time, had an unhealthy perspective of the Old Testament law and, at the same time, a hatred toward the Jewish people as a whole. Luther would say the Jewish people should be taken out of their synagogues and then burned to the ground. Martin Luther. John Calvin left us his life work, the Institutes, one of the greatest theological treatises of all time. But at the same time, John Calvin was involved in the arrest and the prosecution and in the death of a man named Michael Servetus. He was ultimately executed for, what Calvin said, was a heretic. I heard someone say one time, I'm right 90% of the time, I'm wrong 10% of the time. The only problem is I don't know what 10% of my theology is wrong. Now, listen, I'm not even saying I'm right on this and everyone else is wrong. What I'm trying to do is get you to open up, to reexamine the Scriptures, to evaluate Revelation again

and say, is this what the text is saying or is it different from what I've been taught? Do not, listen to me, do not digest spoon-fed theology from another person without ever investigating it for yourself. Remember, you and I will stand before the Lord one day and give an account for what we believe, not, well, Brother Bob said it and Pastor so-and-so, no, you're gonna give an account like me. The late date traces back largely to one obscure line from an early church father named Irenaeus. He was writing 100 years after the fact. That's the foundation that this entire late dating of Revelation is built on. Now, here's my problem. And again, I'm not saying Irenaeus is a bad guy. The same man in the writings who said the date of Revelation is later, in the same vein claims that Jesus was roughly 50 years old and had a 50-year ministry on earth. Now, you and I know the life of Christ. Nobody, nobody accepts that. Everybody believes Jesus died at 33 and he was in ministry for 2 1⁄2 to 3 1⁄2 years. So my honest question is this. If we won't trust Irenaeus on the age and the ministry of Jesus, why are we gonna build our entire end times theological framework on one stray line from the same page?

Now, I have a couple more rebuttals to the late date, but I'm only gonna give you one that I feel like is the most compelling because once you see this, you won't need the others. Here's the pattern that we find in the New Testament over and over and over. The authors of the New Testament were quick, almost eager to point out fulfilled prophecy by Jesus. For example, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey to fulfill a prophecy, they pointed out this is Zechariah saying it in the old, Jesus fulfills it in the new. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, they pointed out this was to fulfill Micah's prophecy. Matthew does this, John does this, Paul of course does this. They're constantly stopping to say this happened so that it might be fulfilled. That's how they wrote their books. Here's the question that should cause you and I to consider everything we've been taught about the date or about the fact that it was written later. There's not one mention, lock in, not one, of Jesus' own prophecy about the temple being destroyed anywhere in the New Testament. Not in the book of Acts, not in Paul's letters, not in the book of Hebrews, which is a book obsessed with the temple and the temple system. It's not mentioned one time in the book of Revelation, which many would argue is the last book written of the New Testament.

You would assume, don't miss this, that something as catastrophic as the destruction of the temple of God, the epicenter of the presence of God, where the people met God, where the sacrifices of forgiveness were. But Jesus said not one stone will stand on itself, not one mention in the New Testament anywhere. You won't find it. Think about what that would look like anywhere else in history. It would be like writing a history book about New York and never mentioning it. the destruction of the Twin Towers. It'd be crazy. It would be like writing a book about the history of Germany and never mentioning one time about the Holocaust. It's unthinkable. Nobody writes history and leaves those important pieces out. That silence is what convinced me to believe Revelation was written before the temple fell, not after the temple fell. Because if it had already happened, John would have clearly said and had every reason to do so, listen guys, don't mess with God. Just like he decimated the temple, he will take us out. You don't have any of that.

Every other New Testament writer pointed back to fulfilled prophecy. John never does. And my recommendation, my reasoning, is because it never happened. And it's not just the silence. Get this, the text itself assumes that the temple is still standing. See, when you read it with this perspective, it changes the whole book. Revelation chapter six, John is seeing the souls of, watch this, martyrs crying out. John says, I saw, chapter six, verse nine, I saw under the altar, the souls of those who had been slaughtered because of the word of God in the testimony, they cried out with a loud voice. These are martyrs under the temple presently. Now, while we're on the topic of the temple, here's the issue I have with a new temple being constructed in the thousand-year millennial reign. Follow me here. The purpose of a temple, you have to understand in the ancient world, the purpose of a temple in Jesus' day was twofold. It was the place where God met with humans. It was the place where heaven met with earth. Number two is, it was also the place where sacrifices were offered by the people

to have their sins forgiven. When Jesus came, and you know your Bible, we no longer need a place to meet with God, why? Because Jesus is that place. We meet God through Christ. We don't need a mediator, we have one in Christ Jesus. But number two is, and this is the big one, Jesus' death ended the sacrificial system forever. A working temple, if you build one any time in the future, flies in the face of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. If a temple will be rebuilt with Jesus accepting sacrifices in the millennial reign, as dispensationalists and premillennials suggest from Zechariah 14, that's what they quote, get this, then Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was insufficient. Great try, Jesus. You got us to the five-yard line with your death, but we need to do something else to complete the task. Friends, that's not Bible, that's not biblical, that's not even New Testament theology. When Jesus said, it is finished, it was finished forever. No temple will be rebuilt, no sacrifices will be offered. And for any Christian to say, we're gonna speed up the return of Christ by helping the Jews, by the way, who reject Jesus wholesale as the Messiah completely, to build their third temple, that is blasphemy to God. Why? Because the Messiah the Jewish people

are presently waiting for right now to come is actually the Antichrist because he's not Jesus. Friends, their Messiah, our Messiah Jesus, already came the first time and they missed it. When Jesus comes again, he's not coming as Savior like the first time, he's coming as Judge the second time. But John actually gets more direct. In Revelation 11, an angel hands John, you're gonna love this, a measuring rod to measure the temple. Now watch this. Revelation 11 one, then I was given a measuring rod with these words, basically a ruler. Go and measure the temple of God and the altar and count those who worship there but exclude the courtyard outside of the what? Outside of the temple. He says, don't measure it because it is given to the nations and they will trample the holy city for 42 months. Now read this carefully. That's not a memory, that's not a metaphor about something already destroyed, that's a present tense temple with present tense worshipers under a present active threat. You don't hand someone a measuring rod for a building that's already a pile of rubble. I mean, just think logically. And here's the piece that sealed it for me. My favorite argument in this whole case

because it's not a single verse. It's about the whole book and how it chooses to end. I want you to compare two apocalyptic prophecies side by side, Daniel and Revelation. God gives Daniel a picture. of what's coming. The arrival of the Messiah. Many people quote this verse in time, stop it, follow me. Daniel is given a picture of the arrival of the Messiah centuries down the road. And I want you to see how Daniel closes the book he wrote about this prophecy. Notice what he says. But you, Daniel, this is interesting, go on your way, for the words are secret and sealed until the time of the end. So here's what he's saying. Seal these words and keep them secret. Now, why in the world would you seal those words? Because the time for the prophecy to be fulfilled is a long way off. And he tells us in there, 490 years off in the future. Daniel is told to lock the scroll because nobody alive is going to see it fulfilled. Now, let's compare that to the book of Revelation. If we go to Revelation 22, you're gonna see something different. John finishes his book and this is what John says, which is crazy. Let's notice what John says down in verse 10.

Now, by the way, let's go back up here. Look what he says in verse seven. Look, I am coming in 2,000 years. Is that what he says? No, he says, look, I'm coming soon. And then he says this, verse 10. Don't seal up this book or the words of the prophecy of this book because the time is 2,000 years from now, is that what he says? No, he says, don't seal up this book because the time is near. Let the unrighteous go on in unrighteousness. Let the filthy still be filthy. Let the holy still be holy. Look, I am coming soon. And reward is coming with me to repay each one according to his work. The first and the last, the beginning and the end. He goes on and on and he says, I'm coming soon. Do you see the difference in the two prophecies? Daniel is told to seal his book because the prophecy is far away. John is told the opposite. Don't seal the book, get this, because the fulfillment is near. Friends, that's not eloquent language. That's John telling us in plain language when this is going to happen. Soon, very soon, near. Not 2,000 years and counting.

Near to the people who were reading this letter in the first century. So with all that to say, you still might not believe or agree, but just consider the overwhelming evidence keeps pulling me back to a date prior to AD 70. So I think it was AD 64 or maybe AD 66 before the temple fell. And that's not a minor detail. If Revelation was written before the temple was destroyed, then the imagery isn't aimed at our distant future. It's aimed at an event on the near horizon. The city on seven hills is Rome. The beast in Revelation points to Nero. And the great tribulation, I believe, it's destruction of the temple in AD 70. Think about what actually happened. Rome invaded Jerusalem. The campaign began under a man named Vespasian. He passed it on to his son Titus, who finished the job for him, and Jerusalem fell. A siege of roughly 3 1⁄2 years ended in AD 70. That's an interesting number because we see 3 1⁄2 all through Revelation. That's not science fiction. That's not some fictional book you get on the shelf. That's documented history by a man named Josephus, who was a first century historian. And we have a timeline from him. In fact, you can lay the seals, the trumpets,

and the bowls side by side and see them describing the same event. By the way, I may do a video soon on this, but the seals, the bowls, and the trumpets are circular. They recapitulate, if you will. It's the same thing told three different times. You can think of it as flying over a scene in a helicopter from three different angles looking at the same fall of Jerusalem. And here's what that destruction meant. When God allowed the temple to be leveled, that was God handing the nation the separation papers because they didn't keep their end of the bargain. Here's what God says. I sent you my son, the very means of salvation, and you turned on him. He's the only way for you to be saved, and now you have cut yourself off from the only means of redemption, and because of that, there are consequences. And it's bigger than judgment. Hebrews 8.13 says the old covenant is obsolete and passing away. That's what Hebrews 8.13 says, obsolete and passing away. Catch this. Even after Jesus rose from the dead, the people were still going to the temple to sacrifice. They were still burning incense. They were still participating in the festivals and the feast days.

The old system was still standing when Jesus died. So when does it become fully obsolete? When the temple is completely destroyed in AD 70. That's the moment the old covenant, in a sense, is removed and Jesus fulfills, because of his death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus fulfills it and a new one stands alone. By the way, this is also why a rebuilt third temple has nothing to do with Revelation. Could the Jewish people build a temple one day in Jerusalem? Of course they could. Geopolitically, I doubt it, but maybe. There'd have to be the battle of Muslims and Jews, which I think would be the end of the world anyway. But it wouldn't change a thing, though, even if the Jewish people built a temple. Because Peter said in his book, or his epistle, you and I are the temple of God. We are the living stones built up as a dwelling for God. Another temple doesn't restart a clock. The cross has already stopped. Friends, if you're interested, the best book on this topic is one I'm almost finished reading. It's called The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism. The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism. Now let me say this plainly. I believe in the rapture, contrary to what you may think. I believe in the rapture.

I just don't believe in two raptures. I don't believe in a secret rapture when Jesus takes the Christians secretly and the rest of the world, particularly the Jews, are left to suffer, and then he returns at the end. I believe in one rapture, the return of Jesus. The popular view in pre-tribulation theology is Jesus comes, the church is caught up, seven years, then returns. Then there's possibly a mid-tribulation, halfway through, or maybe a post-tribulation, one return at the end when the church is enduring the worst kind of pain. That last one, I think, is the closest to where I've landed after studying the book. And here's the practical knot I could not untie when I studied the book. Trace the popular systems of today. You're caught up to heaven, then you go back and reign on earth after seven years, then you live and die again through the thousand-year millennial reign, only to go up to an intermediate state again, waiting for the return of the end of time to be resurrected in a new form in the body. You end up shuffling people through a one in-between state after another, an intermediary state, heaven, back to earth, different state, back to earth again,

three, four, even five times. And my question is this, what state are we in? Because our bodies are gone after the first time. When I lay that theology next to Revelation, it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit in the New Testament. The simpler reading is this, one resurrection, one return. Ask less of the text, and you get more attention to Jesus. There's even a subtle insight most people miss. If you hold to a second rapture and a second coming, you actually have to believe in a third coming. Most people don't realize this. Because Jesus appearing on the clouds to catch up the church would itself be a coming, and then he comes again at the end. I'd rather hold to what Scripture plainly teaches. He comes once, and he's coming back again. So where does that leave the millennium? Here's a little history first, because people always ask, where did you even come up with this idea? I've never heard this, this sounds new. Well, I didn't invent it, by the way. From the third century all the way to the end of the 18th century, this was the predominant view of the church. There's no separation between the Jews and the Christians. There was no literal year reign, thousand year reign still out in front of us. It wasn't until the 1830, now some will push back and say, well, there were pockets, yeah. But predominantly, it was not the view of the world.

Today, we think it was, but back then it wasn't. It wasn't until the 1830s with the Plymouth Brethren and John Nelson Darby, then the Scofield Bible, then the late great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, and then finally the best-selling 80 million sold book series Left Behind. They introduced this literal millennial view that many people believe has always been the case. That is not the case. The view I'm describing isn't fringe, it isn't new, it's historic. It was the position of the church for 1800 years. And if you wanna learn more about the history of the rapture and how we got here with Nelson Darby and the Scofield Bible, which many of you probably owned for years, I did a whole video, I'll put a link below so you can watch it. So here are the two views we're left with. Amillennialism, which says that we are actually in the quote thousand year reign, which we know is symbolic and not literal, right now. Because Jesus is ruling and reigning. And it tends to read history, this view, with a sober realism that things are gonna get harder, that persecution is ramping up, until the end of time when Jesus returns. makes it right. There's a huge push for this, and you can see this as a popular view.

The other alternative is called post-millennialism, and by the way, I like this view, although I can go back and forth on any day of the week, but I like post-millennialism because it's a whole lot more exciting and hopeful and anticipatory than amillennialism, which is really, things are gonna get worse every day. The view almost nobody in circles talks about is this one. It is this. When Jesus died, rose from the dead, and ascended, he didn't just secure salvation. He was enthroned as king of the world and in heaven, and from that moment, his kingdom started advancing, growing across the world until he returns. Jesus said, God, I've been given authority on earth as it is in heaven. Now, your first instinct is like mine, but Robbie, look at the world. Things are getting worse, and if you only look at America, that may be the case, but America is not the world, and America is not the kingdom of heaven. I want you to look wider. There's a revival right now happening in Northern Africa and Southern France and Iran that is drawing hundreds and thousands of people to Christ. The largest revival on the planet is happening in the Middle East, where thousands are turning from Islam to Jesus. So let me ask you honestly,

have more people heard the gospel today or even in the past 100 years or even in the past 30 years with the iPhone and the internet than they did thousands of years or even hundreds of years ago? Of course, it's not even close, and the reason this view moved me is because what it does with the Great Commission. It reads it not just as a command from Jesus, go make disciples of all nations, it's a promise. Jesus says, I will be with you always to the end of the age as you make disciples. He's not just telling us to do it, he's telling us it's going to happen. Psalm 2 says, on that day, the kings of the earth will kiss the feet of the sun. So here's a thought that's unsettling when I first heard it, but it's actually thrilling. We may still be the early church. Christ may not return for a very long time. Now, don't think I'm crazy, just follow me. If that's the case in light of eternity, then every time you and I share the gospel, every time we turn the other cheek, every time we care for the sick, every time we minister to prisoners, every time we carry the message overseas or lay hands to pray for another person, we are stacking bricks in the kingdom of heaven

that is still being built today, and that's not a mindset of the sky is falling, so throw in the towel or waiting for the shoe to drop, things are getting bad, no. That is, we have work to do, why? Because we win in the end. Now, I wanna bring you back to where we started because this insight really changed everything for me. The popular system of today reads Revelation like this. Chapters one through three are about the past, the seven churches, and then chapter four on through the end of the book are about people who get left behind after the church is raptured away, the people of God, and that view, almost the entire book has nothing to do with you or me. Why, because we're gone, gone from the wrath, gone from the seals, gone from the bowls, gone from everything until the very end, so we're in heaven enjoying the presence of Jesus while the rest of the world and our unbelieving friends and most of the Jews, if not all, are being mercilessly punished. Here's how I got onto this idea. David Jeremiah released a book a couple years ago and the title was After the Rapture. The subtitle was An End Times Guide to Survival. That's the actual title. And he got up in front of his congregation and his radio audience and basically said, go buy these books by the case.

Mail them out to your friends and family. Hand them to every lost person you know and neighbor so that when you and I are raptured, believers, the ones left behind can pick the book up and finally understand how to live. And honestly, I have to give it to him. That's a brilliant way to sell books. I mean, if I believed that, I'd be handing them out too. And I love David Jeremiah. Don't hear what I'm not saying. I think he's an amazing preacher. I've listened to him for years. I just disagree totally with him on this topic. That premise is exactly what got me thinking. What if he is actually thinking backwards? What if that's not how it works at all? Because here are two things I want you to consider. First of all, find me one book in the entire Bible, take all 65 other books, that is written to unbelievers. Find me one, not one of them. Every book of scripture is written to the people of God because that's what the Bible is. The Bible is a story. of how sinful human beings can have a relationship with a holy God. Number two, and here's the logic that makes sense. The logic of this belief is that when the church is raptured the Holy Spirit goes with him, with the church, preachers are gone, theologians are gone, professors are gone, seminaries are gone,

every single person who could explain what the book of Revelation actually means is gone. And what is left is a crowd of unbelievers who are somehow expected to open Revelation up for themselves and decode it for the first time in human history in a way that nobody prior to them for 2,000 years ever could without the use or help of churches or pastors or the Holy Spirit's discernment. Friends, I know it sounds comical because it is when you say it out loud. That cannot be what this book is about. So let me tell you what I think the book of Revelation actually is. It's a discipleship manual for a group of persecuted, hurting believers, men and women, who are trying to faithfully serve the Lord in a Roman empire that hates God. I want you to think about it. What kind of loving God writes a letter to his own people? Faithful believers getting their teeth kicked in, family members being beheaded, their neighbors being put in jail, and says to them, what kind of God is this? Don't worry, this part isn't really for you. I know you need help, but I'm not writing for you. You'll figure it out a couple thousand years from now when you're long, no. Why would God do, that's not a loving God. That's a critical God. That's a harsh God.

No, I think this book is from a loving God to a suffering church, and the message is this. I know they're cutting you down. I know it looks like you're losing, but I want you to understand something. Things are not as they appear. Just when the visible realm is raging against you, you need to understand there is a battle going on in the unseen, invisible realm. The unseen realm is more real than the visible realm. We won at the cross, and we're winning now, even though you can't see it, and by the way, you're on the winning team because we win in the end, and when that truth gets in your soul, it kills the defeated, back of your heels, victim mentality, shoes gonna drop at any moment, reading the headlines for Gog and Magog and Iran. No, you stop bracing for the end to come, and you start living like someone who already wears the winning jersey on a winning team. Friends, the gates of Hades, Jesus promised, will not prevail because Jesus is on our side, and whenever Jesus is on our side, we win. So here's my charge. Cross the bridge first. Ask what the text meant to them before you try to apply it any kind of way to how you think it should apply today. Read it in the right genre.

Let the numbers be what they are, and stop being afraid of the book of Revelation. Why? Because it was never written to terrify you. God has given us no other book in the Bible that is scary but Revelation. Does that make any sense? And if you walk away with a few questions still unanswered, well, you're in good company because I have a lot of unanswered questions, but here's the thing. If I could understand everything about God, he wouldn't be a God I would wanna serve. And oh, by the way, a Jewish Hebraic mind studies the word of God not to get all their questions answered. They actually leave the Bible study with more questions than they started with. Here's why. Because then you'll think and meditate and marinate on the things and the qualities of God throughout the day and the next week. The fact that you're still here is encouraging because you're still searching, and that delights the heart of the Father. Here's the way I would say it. A little sincerity with God goes a long way. And the fact that you desire God is desirable to him. If this video helped you or you know someone who's interested in the topic,

do me a favor and share it right now. Also, like the video. It really helps us get the word out. And subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. I know it was a lot. Thanks for hanging to the end. Until next time, get into the word, until the word gets into you.