One of the main aspects of our hope as believers in Christ is that the Lord is coming to establish righteousness on this present earth, and that when He does the overcoming believers will join with Him to reign over the earth. This will take place at the end of this age, during the 1,000 years of the “millennium,” when Satan is bound and cast into in the abyss and Christ reigns on the throne of His father David in righteousness (Rev. 20:1-10, Luke 1:32).

The Amillennial school of teaching, however, seeks to deny this hope to the believers. Instead, it teaches that Christ only reigns over the earth in the spiritual sense that is already taking place today. It denies that there will be an earthly reign of Christ with His saints for 1,000 years, believing instead that His eternal reign will follow immediately after His second coming.

From what I can tell this view seems to be growing in popularity, especially among younger Christians, even though it does so much to negate and undermine the clear teaching of Scripture, preventing believers from taking the Bible in the literal sense in which it generally should be taken.

There are many ways to show from Scripture that Amillennialism is false, and even a very, very serious error. However, a while ago I noticed something which, though it is a small point, makes this matter clear.

In the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus is casting out the legion of demons, they say to Him:

“Have You come here to torment us before the time?”
— Matthew 8:29

In the account of this same incident in the Gospel of Luke the demons also cry out, in this case as one voice,

“I beg You, do not torment me!”
— Luke 8:28

And just what kind of torment did they fear? Luke’s account goes on to tell us:

And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss.
— Luke 8:31

When we put these verses together, we see that the demons know a time is coming in the future when they will be tormented by being cast into the abyss.

And when will this be? There is only one such event recorded in Scripture: the coming millennium, the 1,000 year reign of Christ on the earth:

And [the angel] took hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he threw him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him….
— Revelation 20:1-3

According to Amillennialism, the language here is symbolic. As the verses above show us, however, that is clearly not what the demons believe; rather, they know full well that a particular time is coming in the future when they, along with their evil ruler, will indeed be tormented by being cast into the abyss, and that fact terrifies them.

In brief, the demons may very well teach amillennialism (1 Tim. 4:1), but they certainly don’t believe it themselves!

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— 18 January 2023 —