Syllabus of Dispensational Errors

Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1864 issued a proclamation under the name “Syllabus of Errors” to list a number of errant viewpoints that were contrary to Catholic doctrine. I am using this title in a tongue-in-cheek way to issue my own list of errors in the prophecy scheme usually followed by the Dispensationalists. Please note I am one of those people myself, believing in the pre-tribulation Rapture, the premillennial return and thousand year reign of Christ, etc. I respect my teachers; however, it pains me to see some significant errors in the usual panorama of events. What follows is my humble effort to amend the usual narrative.

Standard Dispensationalist Outline of Prophecy:

Daniel’s 70th week, preceded by the Rapture, is a literal 7 year Tribulation period, concluding with the Battle of Armageddon and the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ, the judgment of Sheep and Goats, Satan bound during the 1,000 year reign of Christ, Satan loosed for the final battle with Gog & Magog, Great White Throne judgment, New Heavens & New Earth (Eternal State), New Jerusalem descending from heaven.

Within that outline I have issues with three of the Dispensationalists’ component concepts and timelines.

1. Many of them view the “Day of the Lord” to extend from the Rapture through the Tribulation and Millennium.

2. They place the “Gog & Magog” invasion of Ezekiel 38-39 somewhere in or around the Tribulation.

3. For them the “New Heavens & New Earth” and the “New Jerusalem” appear after the Millennium.

These three are interrelated, like dominos. The first domino is the New Earth. Because it appears in Revelation 21 following the Millennium in chapter 20, they assume the New Heavens & New Earth follow the Millennium chronologically.

The second domino is the Day of the Lord. Their Day of the Lord interpretation appears to stem from II Peter 3 where the New Heavens & New Earth appear after the Day of the Lord.

2PE 3: 12-13 “looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God (Day of the Lord, vs.10), because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.”

If the New Earth is immediately after the Day of the Lord as implied here in II Peter 3, and the New Earth is also after the Millennium (per first domino in Rev. 20-21), then the Day of the Lord must be lengthened to go through the Millennium.

The third domino, that the Gog-Magog invasion of Rev. 20 at the end of the Millennium is different from the God-Magog invasion of Ez. 38-39, is asserted because they believe that the Old Earth is burned up and the New Earth (eternity) begins immediately after the Millennium, so there is not time to burn the weapons as fuel for seven years. Also the descriptions of the two invasions do not match exactly.

I contend that each of these domino items is misdefined or misplaced and that the error regarding the New Earth is the cause of the other two errors.

In my view the New Heavens & New Earth is created at the beginning of the Millennium, the Day of the Lord is the final portion of the Tribulation only, and the Ez. 38-39 invasion of Gog & Magog is the same event as the Gog & Magog invasion of Rev. 20 at the end of the Millennium. I will attempt to support my view from relevant Scriptures.

New Heavens & New Earth

This phrase occurs only 4 times in the Bible: Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22, II Peter 3:13 and Revelation 21:1. The New Testament examples should be referring to the completion or fulfillment of the prophecies in Isaiah.

The context in Isaiah is clearly the Millennial period. “Consequently in the prophecies of the Old Testament the eschatological idea of the new Cosmos does unquestionably (emphasis mine) coincide with the millennium.” Delitzsch, Isaiah, Vol. II p. 493.

In Isaiah 65 the conditions presented on the New Earth are always associated with the Millennium:

ISA 65:20 “No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days; for the youth will die at the age of one hundred and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred will be thought accursed.

ISA 65:25 “The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox; and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will do no evil or harm in all My holy mountain,” says the LORD. Also Isaiah 11:6-9.

Isaiah 66 brings the New Earth into conjunction with the world-wide judgment of God which precedes the era of blessing: ISA 66:14-16 “But He will be indignant toward His enemies. For behold, the LORD will come in fire and His chariots like the whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire. For the LORD will execute judgment by fire and by His sword on all flesh, and those slain by the LORD will be many.”

This corresponds with the Apostle Paul’s picture of the 2nd coming of Christ at the end of the Tribulation. 2TH 1:6-8 “For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.”

The New Jerusalem also corresponds with Isaiah’s picture of the Millennial period. In Revelation 21:1-2 the New Heavens and New Earth is inaugurated with the descent of the New Jerusalem out of heaven. Dispensationalists say this is a chronological progression from the Millennium described in chapter 20 to the eternal state in chapter 21. However, some of the characteristics of the New Jerusalem are also depicted in the book of Isaiah and are therefore Millennial:

ISA 60:19 “No longer will you have the sun for light by day, nor for brightness will the moon give you light; but you will have the LORD for an everlasting light, and your God for your glory.

REV 21:23 And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. See 22:5 also.

ISA 65:25 “The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.” See Rev.22:3—no curse.

ISA 66:23 “And it shall be from new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all mankind will come to bow down before Me,” says the LORD.

REV 21:24-26 “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it;”

ISA 66:24 “Then they will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched; and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind.”

REV 22:15 “Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.”

Further, the vision of the Millennial Temple in Ezekiel 47 & 48 also has elements that correspond to the New Jerusalem—the river of life (47:4-5), the tree of life (47:12) and 12 gates for the 12 Patriarchs of Israel (48:30-34). This further ties the New Jerusalem to the Millennium

I submit that the association of the New Earth with the Millennium in Isaiah and the Millennial Temple with the New Jerusalem with Ezekiel show that the New Earth/New Jerusalem in Revelation should be placed in the Millennium because of the similarities. In other words Revelation 21 with the New Jerusalem is a further explanation of the Millennium rather than an event coming after the Millennium. It is accepted that other parts of Revelation don’t proceed chronologically, such as chapters 12-15 interrupting the progress of the judgments with more details of the characters. Why not here as well?

If the standard view is correct, the Church returns with Christ in Revelation 19 and disappears during the Millennium. To remedy this, Dispensationalists conjecture that the New Jerusalem partially descends from heaven and hovers over the earth during the Millennium. If you have to make up things to support your theory, how strong is your theory?

To let a supposed succession from the Millennium to the eternal state in Revelation 20 to 21 control your understanding of Isaiah puts you in the awkward place of explaining away the obvious Millennial context in the prophet Isaiah. You have to say the prophet didn’t understand the difference between the Millennium and the eternal state and merged them together. This is true as far as it goes, since the prophets’ view of what we call the Millennium was indefinite time for them. Their concept of eternity was “ages upon ages”. Only in Revelation is a definite period of 1,000 years revealed. I think the distinction between the Millennium and the eternal state is not supported in Scripture. I don’t find any references that make this distinction.

Further, it is more appropriate for the New Earth to usher in the Millennium instead of following it, because at the end of the Day of the Lord (the Tribulation) the earth is a smoldering ruin that has to be renovated. Peter seems to be drawing his inspiration in II Peter 3:10, 12 from the passages in the prophets that tell of the destruction of the earth:

2PE 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.

ISA 51:6 “ Lift up your eyes to the sky, then look to the earth beneath; for the sky will vanish like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants will die in like manner; but My salvation will be forever.”

Many passages in Revelation reveal the extent of the devastation of the Day of the Lord, where the dry land is burned up and the waters are polluted with blood.

The Gog & Magog invasion at the end of the Millennium produces serious destruction as well, but does not result in a new earth, because Ezekiel 39 indicates that life activities continue on while the land is purified.

Gog & Magog

Applying the New Earth to the Millennium period removes most of the difficulties used against placing the Ezekiel 38 Gog & Magog invasion at the end of the Millennium.

In the first place a huge problem is removed when you overlay the Ez. 38-39 invasion with the Rev. 20 Gog & Magog invasion. Why in the world would the Ez. 38-39 invasion have no counterpart in Revelation and why would the Rev. 20 invasion have no antecedent in the Old Testament? In terms of hermeneutics it would certainly be more likely that the two references are to the same invasion.

In the second place the entire context of Ezekiel 34 onward is Millennial.

EZE 34:28 “They will no longer be a prey to the nations, and the beasts of the earth will not devour them; but they will live securely, and no one will make them afraid.

Ezekiel 36 and 37 portray the physical rebuilding and spiritual rebirth of Israel.

EZE 36:24-27 “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

EZE 36:35 “They will say, ‘This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.’

EZE 37:12-14 “Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. “Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. “I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and done it,” declares the LORD.’ ”

EZE 37:25-26 “They will live on the land that I gave to Jacob My servant, in which your fathers lived; and they will live on it, they, and their sons and their sons’ sons, forever; and David My servant will be their prince forever. “I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever.

The regathering of Israel today is in unbelief; it is not the regathering envisioned by Ezekiel. Israel will be dispersed again during the Tribulation and regathered the final time when they recognize Messiah and enter into the everlasting covenant of peace (New Covenant) during the Millennium.

Chapter 38 continues the same context of a regathered, secure people.

EZE 38:8 “After many days you will be summoned; in the latter years you will come into the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel which had been a continual waste; but its people were brought out from the nations, and they are living securely, all of them.”

The fact that the only reference to Gog & Magog in Revelation is at the end of the Millennium explains why the commentators can’t figure out where to place it otherwise. Pentecost and Lindsay put it in the middle of the Tribulation, Walvoord puts it somewhere in the first 3 1/2 years, while LaHaye puts it before the Rapture and Missler after the Rapture but before the Tribulation.

The Day of the Lord

The Day of the Lord is supposed by many Dispensationalists to be an extended period that includes both the Tribulation and the Millennium.

According to Walvoord the Day of the Lord “will begin at the Rapture and will include the period of trouble preceding the second coming of Christ and the establishment of God’s kingdom in the earth. The Day of the Lord also will include the millennial kingdom.” (Prophecy Knowledge Handbook, p.486) While admitting the DOL is primarily about judgment, they feel pressure to include the Millennium because, as noted earlier, in II Peter 3 the New Heavens & New Earth come into view after the Day of the Lord. If the New Heavens & New Earth appear after the DOL (per Peter) and after the Millennium (based on Rev. 20 & 21), the Millennium must be part of the DOL scenario. So you have the DOL running from the Rapture through the Tribulation and the Millennium until the new Heavens & New Earth.

If we are thinking biblically, we will see that the DOL is a limited time of wrath at the end of the Tribulation.

The uses of DOL in the Old Testament are exclusively about judgment. Here are some examples:

ISA 13:9-11 “Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, cruel, with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation; and He will exterminate its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises and the moon will not shed its light. Thus I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless.”

EZE 30:3 “For the day is near, even the day of the LORD is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations.”

JOEL 1:15 “Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.”

ZEP 1:14-15 “Near is the great day of the LORD, near and coming very quickly; Listen, the day of the LORD! In it the warrior cries out bitterly. A day of wrath is that day, a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.”

The Millennial reign of Christ is a time of blessing, not of judgment. It is not included in the Day of the Lord.

Regarding the DOL beginning with the Tribulation, or even with the Rapture, that is disproven by Paul in II Thessalonians 2:1-4. The believers in Thessalonica were being taught falsely that the Day of the Lord had already come. Paul argued that they could not be in the DOL because the Antichrist had not been revealed. Since the Antichrist is revealed at the mid-point of the Tribulation, the DOL could not be before that revealing.

I believe the 7 year period called the “Tribulation” should be divided into three parts following Jesus’ description in Matthew 24. First is “the Beginning of Sorrows,” covering the first half of the Tribulation. This corresponds to the first four trumpet judgments of Revelation 6. Next is the “Great Tribulation” (verse 21) when the Antichrist takes his seat in the Most Holy Place and launches the great persecution of God’s people. At the last minute, before they are exterminated, God intervenes with the “Day of the Lord” judgments culminating in the second coming of Jesus Christ. The DOL commences with the “sign of the Son of Man” in Matthew 24:30, and in Revelation 6:16-17 it is “the great day of their wrath”.

REV 6:16-17 “and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’”

So, the Day of the Lord is only the third segment of the Tribulation period. I learned this three-fold division of the 7 year Tribulation from the Pre-Wrath Rapture folks, though I don’t accept their placement of the Rapture between the end of the “Great Tribulation” and the beginning of the Day of the Lord.

As pointed out earlier, I believe the Millennial context of the New Heavens & New Earth passages in Isaiah is decisive for our understanding of when they occur i.e., as a renovation for the Millennium. When correctly understood, II Peter 3:10-14 supports this (New Heavens & New Earth follow the Day of the Lord) without interposing the Millennium into this passage.

Correcting the errors doesn’t mean that all questions are automatically answered. Here are some remaining questions:

1. We know that on the New Earth there is no more sea. How then does the sea yield up its dead for the Great White Throne judgment at the end of the Millennium?

2. If the earth burns up and is made over at the end of the Day of the Lord, where do mortal humans who survive the Sheep and Goats judgment go, while they wait for the New Earth? It seems they will require oxygen to breathe all the while.

3. More humans will be born during the Millennium. After 1,000 years the rebels are destroyed, but nothing is said about what happens to the rest of mortal humanity who did not rebel. Do they then live forever as Adam would have if he had eaten the fruit from the tree of life?

4. It is not clear to me how the ethnic identities and locations of the nations carry over into the Millennium if the earth has been made over, especially since the entire earth will become habitable.

5. The residents of the New Jerusalem include angels, Old Testament saints and the Church of the Firstborn (Hebrews 12:22-23). The Church is portrayed as a bride by Paul. In the New Jerusalem the Bride is enlarged beyond the Church, so then the Church will not exclusively be the Bride of Christ?

6. Several different groups are pictured as reigning during the Millennium. They are: Israel, the Church, and the Tribulation martyrs (Revelation 20:4). It’s not clear to me what the hierarchy is, or who reigns over what.

7. I don’t understand the Ezekiel 40-48 Temple and its relation to the New Jerusalem. Ezekiel gives many details about a Temple that is so large that the present Jerusalem could not contain it. It is presumed to exist during the Millennium. This temple shares some characteristics with the New Jerusalem as noted earlier. Yet, there is no temple in the New Jerusalem. How do the two concepts work together?

8. This leads to another question. In this Temple the sacrificial system of Moses is preserved including guilt and sin offerings, EZE 46:20 “He said to me, ‘This is the place where the priests shall boil the guilt offering and the sin offering and where they shall bake the grain offering.’”

In Hebrews it clearly states that such sacrifices should cease after the once for all offering of the Lamb of God: HEB 10:2-4”Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?”

There are other passages implying that the Eternal (New) Covenant will make Israel more zealous to keep the laws and commandments. EZE 36:27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

Do the Jews in the Millennium have a different perspective on the Law than the Church, which views it as obsolete (Hebrews 8:13)?

Addendum

There is one more item to be added to my “syllabus of errors”. It is not another domino, but there are other misunderstandings about the New Jerusalem besides when it descends from heaven.

1. There is a misunderstanding about its shape. It is common to say the shape is a cube. The other possibility is a pyramid, which I believe is correct. In Matthew 21:42 Jesus quoted from Psalms 118:22:

“The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone.”

In the Hebrew the chief cornerstone is “rosh pinah”, the “head of the corner” (King James). What is indicated is that the cornerstone is also the capstone. The only shape where this is true is a pyramid. The capstone is then in the shape of a pyramid, which is why the builders would reject it, because it wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the building.

Jesus also said, MT 21:44 “And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”

Anyone who falls on the pointed top will be broken to pieces, and whomever the flat bottom falls on will be ground to dust.

Jesus is the capstone of the pyramid. The pyramid shape represents the community of the saints with Jesus at the head. This concept was revealed in antiquity. Pyramid temples expressing religious aspirations are known throughout history.

2. There is a misunderstanding about the non-physicality of the New Jerusalem. It is not a physical building or city; it is a symbol or spiritual picture of the community of the saints dwelling in the immensity of the love of God.

In Revelation 21:9 John writes: “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, ‘Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’”

Revelation 21:10 follows immediately: “And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”

There it is, plain as the nose on your face, the bride is the city. Therefore, the glory of the city is the glory of the bride, the Church.

According to Revelation 21:2:

“And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.”

It seems impossible to view this as a physical object. Try to imagine the absurdity of a 1400 mile pyramid (or cube) wearing a wedding dress. Does it have high heels and a veil?

The building materials of the city are notable:

REV 21:14 And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

The building stones are people! The Church is portrayed by Peter and Paul as the Temple of God, a building composed of living stones.

1PE 2:5 you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Paul makes the concept of a spiritual temple very clear. That is what the New Jerusalem is.

EPH 2:19-22 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

In Ephesians Paul used spatial terms to describe the enormous dimensions of the love of God:

EPH 3:17-19 “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge…”

I believe that is what the immense size of the building indicates.

One final thought--flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the City is the “river of the water of life”, Revelation 21:6, 22:1, which the believers drink from. This is undoubtedly what Jesus offered the woman by the well in Samaria, John 4:10-14. He made it clear that this river is the Holy Spirit, not the H2O you drink and bathe in. The “river” is the life force proceeding from the throne that animates the universe, portrayed as a river of fire in Daniel 7:10: “A river of fire was flowing and coming out from before Him.” We are not talking about a physical city with a physical river. The river is spiritual and so is the city.

Rick Wakefield

EZE 47:4-5 “Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, water reaching the knees. Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, water reaching the loins. Again he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not ford, for the water had risen, enough water to swim in, a river that could not be forded.”

REV 22:1 “Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb,”

EZE 47:12 “By the river on its bank, on one side and on the other, will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither and their fruit will not fail. They will bear every month because their water flows from the sanctuary, and their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.”

REV 22:2 in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

EZE 48:30-31 “These are the exits of the city: on the north side, 4,500 cubits by measurement, shall be the gates of the city, named for the tribes of Israel, three gates toward the north: the gate of Reuben, one; the gate of Judah, one; the gate of Levi, one.

REV 21:12 “It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names were written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel.”