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If you’ve spent any time in evangelical churches, you’ve probably encountered wildly different readings of the Book of Revelation. Some people treat it like tomorrow’s newspaper. Others think it was entirely fulfilled in the first century. Still others throw up their hands and say it’s all symbolic. And if you grew up in a church with a prophecy chart on the wall, you might assume that the Left Behind version is the only game in town.

It isn’t. The church has been reading Revelation for two thousand years, and faithful Christians have landed in very different places. Confessional Reformed and Presbyterian churches have generally recognized this, welcoming amillennialists, postmillennialists, and historic premillennialists to their pulpits — while drawing the line at dispensationalism, not because of its millennial position per se, but because it functions as a theological system that reshapes how one reads the whole Bible in ways incompatible with covenant theology.

That kind of charitable firmness — holding convictions without unchurching brothers who disagree — is the spirit I want to model here. What follows is a survey of the four major interpretive approaches, a note on why dispensationalism raises deeper concerns, and a case for why I believe one view handles the text better than the others.

The Four Schools

Preterism — “Most of This Already Happened”

Preterists believe that the bulk of Revelation’s prophecies were fulfilled in the first century — particularly in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the fall of the Roman Empire. The beast, the tribulation, and the fall of Babylon all refer to events the original audience either experienced or was about to experience. Partial preterists (the orthodox kind) still affirm a future return of Christ and final judgment; they simply believe the dramatic middle chapters of Revelation are behind us.

What they get right: Preterism takes the original audience seriously. When John writes that these things “must soon take place” (Rev. 1:1), preterists let “soon” mean soon. That’s not nothing — it’s a genuine exegetical strength. Revelation was a letter to real churches, and those churches needed to understand it in their own lifetime.

Where it struggles: The cosmic scope of Revelation’s later chapters is hard to fit into first-century events. The fall of Jerusalem was catastrophic, but was it really the final defeat of death? The new heaven and new earth? The lake of fire? Partial preterism handles this by pushing chapters 20–22 into the future, but the seams can show. This view is most commonly paired with postmillennialism — the belief that the gospel will progressively triumph throughout history before Christ returns.

Historicism — “It’s a Map of Church History”

The historicist view reads Revelation as a prophetic timeline stretching from the apostolic age to the Second Coming, with each seal, trumpet, and bowl corresponding to a specific era or event in Western church history. This was the dominant Protestant view from the Reformation through the 19th century, and the Reformers loved it — because it let them identify the papacy as the Beast.

What they get right: Historicism affirms that Revelation speaks to every generation, not just the first or the last. It also gave the Reformers genuine courage, assuring them that God had foreseen the corruption of the church and was working through history to reform it.

Where it struggles: No two historicists can agree on which events correspond to which symbols. The system requires constant revision as history unfolds, and it’s hopelessly Eurocentric — as if God wrote Revelation exclusively for Western Christendom and forgot about the church in Africa, Asia, and South America. This view has largely fallen out of serious scholarly use and is maintained today primarily by Seventh-day Adventists.

Futurism — “The Best Is Yet to Come (and It’s Terrifying)”

Futurists believe that while chapters 1–3 address the first-century churches, the bulk of Revelation (chapters 4–22) describes events still in our future — a great tribulation, the rise of Antichrist, the return of Christ, and a literal thousand-year earthly kingdom. This is the most popular view in American evangelicalism, and it comes in two very different forms that need to be distinguished.

Historic premillennialism is the older and more restrained version. It teaches that Christ will return before a literal millennium, but it does not require a pretribulational rapture, does not sharply separate God’s plan for Israel from His plan for the Church, and reads Revelation with genuine sensitivity to its symbolic and literary character. This view has ancient roots — Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus all held something like it — and it has had able modern defenders such as George Eldon Ladd. Historic premillennialists can and do hold to covenant theology, and confessional Reformed churches have generally welcomed them to their pulpits.

Dispensational premillennialism is a different matter — not because of its millennial timing, but because of the theological system underneath it. Dispensationalism, as developed by John Nelson Darby in the 19th century and popularized through the Scofield Reference Bible, the Dallas Theological Seminary tradition, and the Left Behind series, builds on several commitments that create structural problems for how one reads the whole Bible.

What futurists get right: Futurism takes the spectacular, earth-shaking imagery of Revelation at something close to face value. If the judgments of the seals, trumpets, and bowls haven’t happened yet, you don’t have to strain to find historical fulfillments. It also preserves a vivid, urgent expectation of Christ’s return, which is genuinely biblical.

Where it struggles: If chapters 4–22 describe events thousands of years after the seven churches received John’s letter, what was the letter for? Why would John tell persecuted believers in Ephesus and Smyrna that events two millennia away “must soon take place”? The time indicators are a real problem for futurism. Additionally, the track record of futurist prediction-making (from Hal Lindsey to Y2K to countless failed Antichrist identifications) has done real damage to the credibility of this approach.

A Note on Dispensationalism

It’s worth pausing here to explain why dispensationalism raises concerns that go beyond the millennial question itself. The issue is not that dispensationalists are less sincere or less committed to Scripture — many are deeply devout believers. The issue is that dispensationalism introduces theological commitments that reshape how one reads the entire Bible, and several of those commitments are difficult to reconcile with what Scripture actually teaches.

The Israel/Church distinction. Dispensationalism maintains that God has two fundamentally distinct peoples — Israel and the Church — with two distinct programs running throughout history. The Church is a “parenthesis” or “mystery” inserted into God’s plan when Israel rejected the kingdom offer, and God’s promises to ethnic Israel remain to be fulfilled in a future millennial kingdom. But the New Testament consistently presents the Church as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel, not an interruption of them. Paul calls Gentile believers “Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29). He describes the Church as being grafted into Israel’s olive tree (Rom. 11:17–24). Peter applies Old Testament Israel language directly to the Church: “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Pet. 2:9). The wall of separation between Jew and Gentile has been broken down in Christ (Eph. 2:14–16), creating “one new man” — not two parallel programs.

The pretribulational rapture. Dispensationalism teaches that Christ will secretly return to rapture the Church before a seven-year tribulation, and then return again publicly at the end of the tribulation. This two-stage return has no clear support in the text of Revelation, no attestation in the history of interpretation before the 19th century, and depends on a reading of passages like 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 that most exegetes — including historic premillennialists — find unpersuasive. The New Testament consistently presents the return of Christ as a single, visible, glorious event.

A hermeneutic that drives theology. Perhaps most fundamentally, dispensationalism operates with a hermeneutical principle — that Old Testament promises to Israel must be fulfilled “literally” to ethnic Israel in a future earthly kingdom — that functions as a grid placed over the entire Bible. When the New Testament authors interpret Old Testament prophecy in ways that don’t fit this grid (as they frequently do — see, for example, how Acts 2:16–21 handles Joel 2, or how Acts 15:15–17 handles Amos 9), the dispensational system has to explain away the New Testament’s own interpretation. That’s a significant problem. The New Testament should interpret the Old, not the other way around.

None of this means dispensationalists aren’t brothers and sisters in Christ. They are. But it does mean that dispensationalism as a system introduces interpretive commitments that pull in a different direction from the covenantal reading of Scripture that the Reformers recovered and that the Reformed confessions enshrine.

Idealism — “It’s About the Whole Story”

Idealists read Revelation not as a timeline of specific events — past, present, or future — but as a symbolic portrayal of the ongoing conflict between Christ and Satan, the Church and the world, that runs throughout the entire period between Christ’s first and second comings. The best versions of this view (sometimes called redemptive-historical idealism) don’t deny that the symbols had first-century referents or that there will be a real, future consummation. They simply insist that the primary purpose of the book is to reveal patterns and realities that are true in every age. This view is the natural home of amillennialism — the belief that the “thousand years” of Revelation 20 symbolizes the present reign of Christ from heaven over His church.

What they get right: Quite a lot, in my view — which is why I’ll say more below.

Why I Land Here

I’m convinced that the amillennial, redemptive-historical reading of Revelation is the most exegetically responsible position available. Here’s why.

It does justice to the genre. Revelation is apocalyptic literature, a genre that communicates through dense, layered symbolism drawn from the Old Testament. When John sees a lamb with seven eyes and seven horns, no one thinks he’s describing a literal animal. The entire book operates this way. An interpretive approach that honors the symbolic character of the genre — without evacuating it of real meaning — is simply reading the book the way it was written.

It respects the original audience and every audience since. Unlike futurism, which struggles to explain why first-century Christians would care about events millennia away, and unlike preterism, which can leave later generations with a museum piece, the idealist approach allows Revelation to function the way it appears designed to function: as a pastoral word to suffering saints in every age. The beast is Rome. The beast is also every totalitarian regime that demands ultimate allegiance. Both are true simultaneously.

It handles Revelation 20 with integrity. The amillennial reading of the millennium — that it represents Christ’s present reign and the binding of Satan at the cross — fits naturally with the rest of the New Testament’s teaching. Jesus said, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out” (John 12:31). Paul declared that God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame” (Col. 2:15). The binding of Satan is not a future event; it’s a finished work that limits his power to deceive the nations during the church age, even as he continues to rage against the saints.

But the strongest exegetical case involves the phrase “the first resurrection” itself. Meredith G. Kline — one of the most brilliant Old Testament scholars in the Reformed tradition — demonstrated in a 1975 article that the word “first” (prōtos) in Revelation 20 does not merely mean “first in a sequence of the same kind.” In Revelation 21, the “first heaven and first earth” pass away and are replaced by something “new” — not a second version of the same thing, but a qualitatively different reality. “First” in Revelation marks what belongs to the present, passing age. “The first resurrection,” then, is not the first of two bodily risings; it is the believer’s entrance into life with Christ in the intermediate state — the souls living and reigning with Christ in heaven — which belongs to this present age and gives way to the consummate, bodily resurrection at Christ’s return. As Kline showed, this reading is confirmed by the interlocking of “first resurrection” and “second death” in the same passage: premillennialists rightly acknowledge that the “second death” is qualitatively different from the first (spiritual death, not merely a second physical dying), yet inconsistently insist that the “first resurrection” must be the same kind as the second.

This isn’t a clever trick of spiritualizing. It is careful attention to how John actually uses his own vocabulary — and it has been embraced and extended by scholars like G.K. Beale, Vern Poythress, Dennis Johnson, and Sam Storms.

It preserves genuine eschatological hope without speculation. Amillennialism does not deny the future return of Christ, the bodily resurrection, or the final judgment. It affirms all of these with full conviction. What it refuses to do is construct an elaborate prophetic calendar that Scripture doesn’t actually provide. Christ will return. The dead will be raised. Every knee will bow. We don’t need to know the geopolitical sequence of events leading up to that day — we need to be faithful until it arrives.

It reads the whole Bible as one story. The amillennial, covenantal reading of Revelation sees the book as the climax of the single story of redemption that begins in Genesis. There is one people of God, one covenant of grace, one King on the throne. Revelation doesn’t introduce a new program for ethnic Israel alongside the Church. It reveals the Bride of Christ — drawn from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue — as the fulfillment of everything God has been doing since He called Abraham.

A Word of Charity

Let me close with this: good and godly people disagree on these matters. I think the best Reformed and Presbyterian churches have modeled something worth imitating — welcoming amillennialists, postmillennialists, and historic premillennialists to their pulpits and elder boards, not because eschatology doesn’t matter, but because these are differences among people who confess the same Christ, submit to the same Scriptures, and affirm the same system of doctrine. As one denominational Q&A helpfully put it, “We are not a one-emphasis church. The whole Bible is our only rule of faith and life. And as to the ‘thousand years,’ they are mentioned only in the first seven verses of Revelation 20, though their implications reach into both the Old and New Testaments.”

Premillennialists, postmillennialists, and amillennialists all confess the Apostles’ Creed. They all affirm that Christ is risen, that He reigns, and that He will come again. The differences are real and worth discussing — but they are differences among family members reading the same Book under the authority of the same Lord.

I hold my amillennial convictions with confidence, but I hold them with open hands. The Lamb is on the throne regardless of which millennial view is correct. And on the last day, I suspect none of us will have gotten every detail right — but all of us who trusted in Christ will find that the ending is better than any of us imagined.

Soli Deo Gloria

~ john