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study, with its allegorization, opening the door wide to human opinion and error. A
further example of this can be seen in the amillennial treatment of the two resurrections
of Rev. 20: The first is held to be spiritual, taking place at the salvation of the sinner;
the second, the general physical resurrection of all the dead of all time. It is well to note
the comments by Dean Alford on this passage in his Greek New Testament, and he had
no leanings toward the dispensational viewpoint:
"It will have been long ago anticipated by the readers of this commentary, that I
cannot consent to distort its words (that of the passage) from their plain sense and
chronological place in the prophecy, on account of any consideration of difficulty, or any
risk of abuse which the doctrine of the millennium may bring with it. Those who lived
next to the apostles, and the whole church for 300 years, understood them in the plain,
literal sense, and it is a strange sight in these days to see expositors who are among the
first in reverence of antiquity, complacently casting aside the most cogent instance of
consensus which primitive antiquity presents. As regards the text itself, no legitimate
treatment of it will extort what is known as the spiritual interpretation now in fashion. If,
in a passage where two resurrections are mentioned, where certain psuchai ezesan at the
first, and the rest of the nekroi ezesan only at the end of a specified period after the
first--if in such a passage the first resurrection may be understood to mean spiritual
rising with Christ, while the second means literal rising from the grave--then, there is an
end of all significance in language, and Scripture is wiped out as a definite testimony to
anything. If the first resurrection is spiritual, then so is the second, which I suppose none
will be hardy enough to maintain; but if the second is literal, then so is the first, which in
common with the whole primitive church and many of the best modern expositors, I do
maintain, and receive as an article of faith and hope" (The Greek New Testament in loco).
These are sane and weighty words, and there is no doubt that Dean Alford has the
majority of sound scholars with him. Hardly anywhere else is the futility of amillennial
interpretation shown up more than in its handling of Rev. 20:
The amillennialist may call the pre-millennialist's views of the future "carnal" and
"unscriptural", but he needs reminding that spiritual things are not necessarily better than
the material. There is such a thing as spiritual wickedness (Eph. 6: 12). When God put
Adam and Eve into the garden of Eden, was this carnal because it was material and on the
earth? And when the earthly part of God's kingdom is realized and becomes like Eden
again, is this to be dubbed carnal? The literal material and earthly is not to be avoided
per se for this savours of the Gnostic abhorrence of the material, and any approach to
this Satanic system of error, so prevalent in the early centuries of Christianity, must be
avoided at all costs. The basic and dispensational approach to the Scriptures, keeping
these in balance, will save us from this. Such a method of interpretation is sane and
reverent, honours the Word of God and allows it to speak with all its authority, and is in
no sense a system foisted upon it.
We return to a point we have already stressed, because of its extreme importance. All
Scriptural interpretation must finally be Christological, in other words, the Lord Jesus
Christ must be the centre and circumference of it all. To get bogged down with
interpretive, doctrinal or dispensational details and to miss Him is to miss everything.
The great redemptive purpose of the ages is centred in Him (Eph. 3: 11), and the time is
yet to be when every being in heaven, and earth and under the earth will give Him His
rightful place and acknowledge Him as Jehovah and Lord (Phil. 2: 9-11). Our main task