“Shortly,” “Near,” and “a Thousand Years”: One Rule for Time in Revelation

Revelation carries a difficulty, and in this study’s view the difficulty comes mainly from one habit: harmonizing too early. What is known from Matthew, Mark, and Luke is imported into Revelation before Revelation has spoken for itself.

Preterists are right about Luke’s account of Jerusalem. Luke 21:20–24 depicts the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, preterists have observed that account accurately, and a futurist has no good ground to push back against that reading of Luke, because the reading is correct. The issue lies elsewhere: in thinking that Luke harmonizes with Revelation, and that Matthew and Mark harmonize with Luke. Matthew and Mark stand close in time to Luke, but this study does not read Matthew and Mark as the same conversation as Luke. On this study’s reading, Jesus tells the matter twice, once publicly and once privately. Matthew and Mark are possibly harmonizable with Revelation. Harmonizing Luke with Revelation is the first mistake.

This article does not cover the differences between those accounts or the debates surrounding them. The point here is narrower: harmonizing too early is the issue, and the nearness statements of Revelation show what early harmonizing costs. To make the nearness of Revelation harmonize with Luke, a reading has to give up two things: the thousand years, and the date of the writing of Revelation.

The Text Sets Its Own Terms

Before any school of interpretation is brought to Revelation, the text sets its own terms, and the first of them is nearness. Revelation opens with “the things which must come to pass shortly” (Revelation 1:1, URV) and “the time is near” (Revelation 1:3, URV), and the book closes with the same two statements (Revelation 22:6, 22:10, URV). Revelation does set things out as near. The question is what is near. This study takes those words literally: what the book says is in force and matters in that timeframe, and the timeframe begins where the words are spoken. From 1:1 onward, “shortly” and “near” apply to what comes next.

Nearness Lands First on the Seven Churches

What comes next is the seven churches. Revelation 1:19 names three parts, “the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which are about to come to pass after these things” (Revelation 1:19, URV). “The things which are” are the seven churches of chapters 2 and 3: real churches, named in order, addressed in their present situations. So the nearness lands there first, and it lands literally.

Then Revelation 4:1 opens with “After these things” and closes with the same words:

“After these things I saw, and, behold, a door open in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was as of a trumpet speaking with me, saying, Ascend here, and I will show you the things which must come to pass after these things.”

— Revelation 4:1 (URV)

How Revelation Places Its Prophecy in Time sets out the Greek wording of these time statements. The text does not say “divide the book here.” Revelation 4:1 gives a time statement that points only forward, and what follows from that statement is this: there are things after the first ones, and everything from 4:1 to the end of the book stands after the things which are. Both sets could be near, and one might take the whole book as near. But the dividing line is there in the text, and the text swings the door wide open for the things of chapters 4 through 22 not to be near, at least in a human sense, since “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8, ESV).

Read this way, the nearness and the “after” stand together without strain: the things which are, near; the things after them, after. That is what the text sets up. What follows is what partial preterism asks of the text instead.

What Partial Preterism Builds on the Nearness

Partial preterism takes the nearness statements at full strength and builds on them. The partial preterist case runs like this. In AD 70 the Roman army under Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, ending the sacrifices and the city of the old covenant; Jesus had foretold that judgment within a generation. If Revelation was written before that year, under Nero, then “shortly” and “near” point to AD 70, and the seals, trumpets, and bowls of chapters 6 through 19 describe the Roman war and the judgment that fell on Jerusalem and on the persecuting empire. That reading is compelling on its face: it takes the time statements seriously and reads the book from where its first readers stood.

The Date Carries the System

Because partial preterism points “shortly” and “near” at AD 70, the date of the book carries the whole partial preterist system. The earliest external witness to the date, Irenaeus (Against Heresies 5.30.3), places the vision toward the end of Domitian’s reign, in the nineties. If John wrote in the nineties, Jerusalem had already fallen some twenty-five years before, and “the things which must come to pass shortly” cannot be the fall of Jerusalem. Partial preterism therefore argues for a date before AD 70 from within the book, and arguments are made on both sides; this study holds the later date on the strength of the early testimony.

Where Near Ends for Partial Preterism

Set the date aside, though, and a second problem remains, and it is the one this article is about.

Partial preterism presses “shortly” and “near” with full force to reach AD 70, across the seals, trumpets, and bowls. Yet partial preterism also holds that the resurrection and the final judgment are still future. So on the partial preterist reading, near has to stop being near somewhere in the book. The thousand years of chapter 20 is where partial preterism places that stop. Let’s break that down.

On the partial preterist reading, the near things lead up to the start of the thousand years. The binding of Satan and the reign of the saints began in the first century, the thousand years are a lengthy period, and the loosing of Satan and the judgment come when the thousand years are over. Once the book reaches the thousand years, the reading says, the book has moved out of the near things and into something new. So the stop is not merely a tally of fulfilled events; it is a point in the text.

But the price of that stop is the thousand years themselves. Nearly two thousand years have passed since the book was written, so the thousand years cannot be a thousand years; they become a long and undefined age, and “thousand” is read as a figure. The same reading that holds “shortly” and “near” to exactly what they say now holds that “a thousand years” does not mean a thousand years. The time statements are read literally where the literal sense reaches AD 70 and figuratively where literal time would not fit the partial preterist system. The book’s words for time are handled in two opposite ways.

The Case for a Figurative Thousand Years

The case for reading the thousand years as a figure is one of genre. Revelation is a vision, and its numbers are said to be symbolic as a class, the seven spirits, the hundred and forty-four thousand, the number of the beast; a thousand sits in that company, and elsewhere Scripture uses a thousand as a round number for a great many: “every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10, ESV), and “May the LORD, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times as many as you are” (Deuteronomy 1:11, ESV). That case deserves a fair answer, and the answer is in the text.

First, Scripture does use a thousand as a round figure for time, and the wording is not the wording of Revelation. God keeps His covenant “to a thousandth generation” (Deuteronomy 7:9, NASB 1995), and “He has remembered His covenant forever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations” (Psalm 105:8, NASB 1995). A thousand generations depicts unlimited generations; Psalm 105:8 sets the phrase beside “forever.” A generation is not a specific length of time the way a year is. Revelation could have said “a thousand generations,” as the Old Testament does, and that wording would have opened the door to the figurative reading. Revelation says “a thousand years.” A thousand years is a number with a unit, a counted amount, and everywhere else that Revelation counts time, the count is specific. “A thousand years” is not the same as “a thousand generations,” and this study does not pivot from the count to the symbol because the symbol is available.

Scripture has one more precedent, and that precedent is a statement about a thousand years: “a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past” (Psalm 90:4, ESV), taken up by Peter as “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8, ESV). That precedent cuts both ways. If a thousand years can be as a day, so that a long wait is a short one to the Lord, then a day can be as a thousand years, so that “shortly” and “near” may name a long wait on the same ground; the precedent that lengthens the thousand years is the precedent that loosens the nearness.

Second, the book’s symbols are rooted in literal meanings, not cut loose from them. The seven churches are seven real churches, named in order, and seven carries its sense of completeness at the same time; the two are not rivals, and pointing to the symbol does not remove the literal count beneath it. A thousand works the same way: a thousand is the number of fullness, and a thousand years are a thousand years, with the fuller sense carried along rather than put in the place of the count.

Third, Revelation marks which amounts are counted and which are not. The book is specific about its numbers on purpose. Twice John says he heard a number: “I heard the number of them who were sealed, a hundred forty four thousand” (Revelation 7:4, URV), and of the armies of the horsemen, “two hundred thousand thousand: I heard the number of them” (Revelation 9:16, URV). Where an amount is not counted, the text shows that too. The great multitude is one “that none could number” (Revelation 7:9, URV). The messengers around the throne are “ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands” (Revelation 5:11, URV), and the Greek there gives no numeral: myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands. Those are non-counted amounts. At 9:16 the Greek adds “twice” to the same kind of wording, and the text then says the number was heard.

So the book’s own examples point to counted numbers and say that the numbers are counted. To make a counted number a figure is to say that the number is not what the text says it is, in a place where the text says, “I heard the number of them.” This study does not try to interpret what two hundred thousand thousand means. The text says the number was heard, so this study takes the number as one that was actually counted, lets the text say what it says, and leaves the reader to decide what the number means.

The thousand years belongs with the counted amounts. A number stands with the unit, six times in Revelation 20:2–7. This study has sorted every word for time in Revelation by whether the text counts it, and a thousand years is counted time, alongside one hour, five months, and twelve hundred sixty days.

The Forty-Two Months

The forty-two months and the twelve hundred and sixty days (Revelation 11:2, 11:3, 12:6, 13:5) are the book’s spans of about three and a half years. Partial preterist writers have read the forty-two months of Revelation 11:2 as real time, matching that span to the Roman war against Jerusalem from the spring of 67 to August or September of 70. Other schools of thought take those spans as symbolic. Those who read them as real time are right that the figure is a real span of about three and a half years, whatever one makes of the events. But then the thousand years is the span of time treated as a figure, and the book’s time references are handled differently from one another. A reading that holds forty-two months to be exactly forty-two months, and twelve hundred sixty days to be exactly twelve hundred sixty days, needs a reason from the text for holding that a thousand years are not a thousand years. Without that reason, the reading is choosing which counts to keep, and choosing which counts to keep is an inconsistent hermeneutic.

This study is strict on its hermeneutic. Where the study gives leniency and catches the tension, it spells the tension out plainly. The aim is to be accurate to what the text says.

Two Moves in Opposite Directions

Holding “near” to its literal sense while holding “a thousand years” to a figurative one is therefore not a consistent reading of the book’s words for time. What stays consistent is that meaning is adjusted to fit the interpretation where a detail requires it. The date shows the same pattern: the early witness places the book after the fall of the temple, and the partial preterist system sets that witness aside for a date before the fall because the reading requires one. On the words for time and on the date alike, details that are not trivial, textual and historical, are made to yield to the interpretation rather than to govern it.

Put the two moves side by side and the difficulty shows. Partial preterism must move the writing of Revelation back some twenty-five years, from the nineties to before AD 70, against the early witness, and at the same time move the thousand years forward into an indefinite future, already more than nine hundred years past the thousand the text names if the count began in the first century. History is shortened at one end so that the words can be literal, and the text is lengthened at the other so that the words need not be. A reading that has to pull in both directions at once to stay standing is carrying a weight the text has not asked it to carry.

The Sequence Breaks the Same Way

The sequence of events shows the same problem. When a reading maps Revelation onto Luke and moves the seven trumpets back as a recapitulation of the six seals, the sequence of the book is broken. The text shows that the trumpets come after the seals: the seven messengers receive their trumpets inside the seventh seal, and the text shows no trumpets in the hands of the seven messengers before the seventh seal. For the trumpets to retell the first six seals, the giving of the trumpets would have to happen before the first seal, and that is a reordering of what the text says.

The rules of grammar have to be followed when it comes to the text. Otherwise a reader can make the text say anything.

The Line the Text Draws

Partial preterism draws its line at the thousand years. The near things lead up to the start of the thousand years, and from that point the thousand years are read as a lengthy period that is no longer near. That is a line, and the line stands at a point in the text. But the line holds only if a thousand years are not a thousand years. The text, as this article began, draws a line of its own, and draws that line at 4:1, where “after these things” sets everything that follows after the things which are.

The closing statements of the book do not move that line. Revelation 22:6 repeats the opening of the book: God sent his messenger “to show unto his bond-servants the things which must come to pass shortly” (Revelation 22:6, URV), the same words as Revelation 1:1. Revelation 22:10 repeats “the time is near” from 1:3. The two repetitions are not a pair of bookends that make everything between chapter 1 and chapter 22 near. The repetitions bring the reader back around to where the book began. How Revelation Places Its Prophecy in Time lays out the divisions:

• Revelation 1:1–18: the near present.
• Revelation 1:19–3:22: the seven churches, present and future.
• Revelation 4:1: the line, where the present closes and only the future remains.
• Revelation 4:2–22:5: the future vision.
• Revelation 22:6: the future vision closes with the words of 1:1.
• Revelation 22:7–21: the book returns to the near-present setting where it began.

So when the book says “the time is near” again at 22:10, the book is standing back in the setting of chapter 1, and the near things are the things chapter 1 introduced: the seven churches. The future vision lies between the opening and the return, set apart by the line at 4:1.

Revelation can hold both near and distant events. The question is whether the line between them is drawn by the text or by a judgment about which events history has already accounted for, and a line set by historical fit is arbitrary even when the fit is good, because the fit is the interpreter’s, not the text’s. This is why this study keeps so close to the words: so that the words lead the interpretation as far as they can. The time statement at 1:19 and 4:1 is the text’s own line, and that line belongs to the same family as the nearness statements beside it.

This study takes the book’s words for time under one rule rather than two: “shortly” and “near” mean shortly and near, and a thousand years are a thousand years. The division Revelation 4:1 makes is what lets both stand together without strain, so there is no need to change the rule when the interpretation would prefer a change. On the later date, a future reading of chapters 4 through 22 has the same kind of historical support partial preterism claims for a first-century reading, and has the text’s own time statement besides. This study therefore reads chapters 4 through 22 as mainly future, not as something coming shortly, because the text, not a tally of fulfilled events, makes the division.

Where Partial Preterism Is Right

One more thing should be said so that this article is not misread. Partial preterism is right about AD 70, and it is right where Luke’s account of Jerusalem is concerned. Jesus foretold that Jerusalem would be “surrounded by armies” (Luke 21:20, NASB 1995), that “there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people” (Luke 21:23, NASB 1995), and that “they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:24, NASB 1995). That is what happened in AD 70, and it happened in that generation, as a real and specific fulfillment: an event that actually took place and could be recognized when it did, and one precise enough not to be mistaken for anything else of its kind. Luke 21:20–24 is an accurate prophecy by Jesus, and this study does not shy away from saying so.

This study does not claim that all of Luke 21 was fulfilled in AD 70. The dividing line in Luke is “until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” The destruction of Jerusalem stands before that line. The times of the Gentiles are the delay, and after the delay Luke gives the “signs in sun and moon and stars” and “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” (Luke 21:25, 21:27, NASB 1995). AD 70 does not cover those verses.

Luke and Revelation Are Not the Same Prophecy

The difficulty is with carrying Luke into Revelation as if the two were one prediction. Revelation, written after the fall of Jerusalem on the early witness, foretells what must come to pass after the things which are. Luke can sound the same as Revelation without the two being the same; Shared Words Are Not Shared Events works through that principle. Partial preterism confuses the two in one direction when it reads Revelation by Luke. Some futurist and dispensational readings confuse the two in the other direction when they deny that Luke speaks of AD 70 at all.

The scope sets the two apart, and this study finds no contradiction between them. Luke’s account of the destruction of Jerusalem concerns “this people” in that land, not the whole earth. The future part of Revelation, from 4:1 forward, lays out a global, all-creation theme: the seals, trumpets, and bowls reach the earth, the sea, the fresh waters, and the heavens. Read in the more literal sense, meaning the way the text actually describes things, those judgments are not a localized event that happened in Jerusalem in AD 70. What human history has seen so far is nothing in comparison with the wholeness of that all-creation language.

Let Luke Be Luke

Each view has difficulties to work out on its own ground. What this article objects to is not the view but the handling of time: the words for time in Revelation are read literally where the literal sense serves and figuratively where it does not, and that handling does not hold together.

The tension comes from trying to make the nearness of Revelation harmonize with Luke, and the harmonizing gives up the thousand years and the date of the writing of Revelation. Let the harmonizing go. Let Luke be Luke. Let Revelation have the date in the nineties, and let a thousand years be a thousand years. The awkward tension is then gone. The nearness statements of Revelation are resolved in the seven churches, and Revelation itself spells out the transition at 4:1, where the voice moves from the near things to “the things which must come to pass after these things” (Revelation 4:1, URV).