“And darkness shall turn into dawning, and dawning to noon-day bright; and Christ’s great Kingdom shall come on earth, the Kingdom of love and light”
— comes from the hymn “
We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations” (H. Ernest Nichol, 1896).
I hold Dr. Steve Irvin in the highest esteem and respect; now retired, I miss fellowshipping with him and Claudia at Field Forums. His essay, Why Premillennialism Matters in the Alliance, is a careful and heartfelt defense of our founders’ conviction that the Christian and Missionary Alliance was born from a deep expectancy of Christ’s return. His argument is faithful to the DNA of our movement—rooted in A. B. Simpson’s passion for the gospel and for the Second Coming as the crown of the Fourfold Gospel.
Yet the lens through which I now view this hope has widened. While I affirm the spirit of Simpson’s premillennial urgency, I believe the time has come to describe it more fully in covenantal, Hebraic terms. I understand the “millennium” not as a detached chronological reign but as the consummative travail of history—the sabbatical transition in which the saints, through endurance and holiness, participate in the final repair of creation.¹ This early writing of mine on the Messiah Ben Joseph and Ben David appoaches the discussion with more detail.
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1. From Chronology to Consummation
Where classical premillennialism reads Revelation 20 primarily as a prophetic timetable, I read it as the sabbatic destination or consummation of the covenants. The “thousand years” symbolizes completeness, yet it also marks a literal passage of sacred time in which heaven’s rule breaks—often in accelerated ways—into the world through suffering faithfulness. It is not an era of rest after tribulation but an age of redemptive strain, when creation groans more intensely toward renewal (Rom 8:22).
Simpson’s theology, as Paul King has shown, already anticipated this “overlapping of the ages”—the now and the not yet interwoven in daily mission.² In that overlap the believer lives under two horizons at once: the travail of this present age and the dawn of the age to come. That tension may itself be the millennium in covenantal form.
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Where classical premillennialism reads Revelation 20 primarily as a prophetic timetable, I read it as the sabbatic destination or consummation of the covenants. The “thousand years” symbolizes completeness, yet it also marks a literal passage of sacred time in which heaven’s rule breaks—often in accelerated ways—into the world through suffering faithfulness. It is not an era of rest after tribulation but an age of redemptive strain, when creation groans more intensely toward renewal (Rom 8:22).
Simpson’s theology, as Paul King has shown, already anticipated this “overlapping of the ages”—the now and the not yet interwoven in daily mission.² In that overlap the believer lives under two horizons at once: the travail of this present age and the dawn of the age to come. That tension may itself be the millennium in covenantal form.
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2. The Saints’ Prevailing in Suffering
In Revelation 20 the “blessed and holy” who reign with Christ are those who “had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus.” The millennial reign therefore begins in martyrdom, not triumphalism. It represents the consummative vocation of the saints—to overcome evil not by escape but by witness.
In Revelation 20 the “blessed and holy” who reign with Christ are those who “had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus.” The millennial reign therefore begins in martyrdom, not triumphalism. It represents the consummative vocation of the saints—to overcome evil not by escape but by witness.
Here my view deepens Irvin’s conviction: the saints do not wait for a political reign but embody the reign of the Lamb through their participation in His sufferings as His witnesses. The millennium may thus be seen as a period of shared travail through which covenant faithfulness is vindicated.
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3. Immanency as Presence, Not Merely Timing
Franklin Pyles recovered the note of immanency as Simpson’s heartbeat—the sense that Christ could return at any moment. From my perspective, that same immanency becomes ontological as well as chronological. The Sar ha-Panim—the Prince of the Presence—is already among His people, consummating history from within.³
Thus, the imminence of His coming does not diminish the nearness of His presence; it intensifies it. The Lord reigns now through suffering love until His appearing completes what His Cross began.
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Franklin Pyles recovered the note of immanency as Simpson’s heartbeat—the sense that Christ could return at any moment. From my perspective, that same immanency becomes ontological as well as chronological. The Sar ha-Panim—the Prince of the Presence—is already among His people, consummating history from within.³
Thus, the imminence of His coming does not diminish the nearness of His presence; it intensifies it. The Lord reigns now through suffering love until His appearing completes what His Cross began.
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4. Gog and Magog and the Final Purge
I still affirm a literal sequence: the final rebellion of Gog and Magog (Ezek 38–39; Rev 20:7-10), and its many battle on many fronts which I believe there is much evidence we are even in, leads to the historical climax of this consummative travail. It is the Edomic rebellion’s last gasp—the world’s final refusal of divine order—met not by annihilation but by purification.
I still affirm a literal sequence: the final rebellion of Gog and Magog (Ezek 38–39; Rev 20:7-10), and its many battle on many fronts which I believe there is much evidence we are even in, leads to the historical climax of this consummative travail. It is the Edomic rebellion’s last gasp—the world’s final refusal of divine order—met not by annihilation but by purification.
The fire that falls from heaven is the cleansing flame that prepares creation for the eternal Sabbath. They are therefore not post-millennial anomalies but the culmination of the saints’ prevailing, the last crisis through which covenant justice is revealed.
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5. Toward the Messianic Consummation
The result is not merely a restored chronology but the eventual healed cosmos. When Messiah appears, He brings the Messianic Consummation—the union of heaven and earth, Israel and the nations, Creator and creation. What Simpson called premillennial and what Irvin defends as our identity, I now understand as the Pre-Messianic Age: the season in which the Body of Messiah bears His wounds until the day those wounds become glory.
The result is not merely a restored chronology but the eventual healed cosmos. When Messiah appears, He brings the Messianic Consummation—the union of heaven and earth, Israel and the nations, Creator and creation. What Simpson called premillennial and what Irvin defends as our identity, I now understand as the Pre-Messianic Age: the season in which the Body of Messiah bears His wounds until the day those wounds become glory.
Our mission remains the same—to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom to every nation so that this travail may reach its end—but our vocabulary grows more covenantal: less about sequence, more about faithful participation in the consummation of all things.
The final years leading to this sabbatical consummation will not be marked only by tribulation but also by unexpected reconciliation. As the sixth millennium wanes, Jews and Christians—and even Muslims, adherents of other faiths, and non-religious seekers of wisdom—long estranged branches of the same covenantal tree and of humanity itself, will increasingly recognize their shared hope not only for earthly peace and justice but for the Coming One.
What began in separation will mature in mutual witness. The “overlapping of the ages” thus becomes not merely a theological construct but a lived reality: the covenantal family reuniting as history approaches its rest. This is part of the redemptive rhythm woven into creation itself—the dawning of the Shabbat ha-Gadol, when all nations ascend to Zion together.⁴
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6. Conclusion
I therefore stand with Dr. Irvin in his desire to preserve the Alliance’s eschatological core. The difference lies only in emphasis. The millennium is not the pause between ages but their convergence—the covenant’s birth canal.
I therefore stand with Dr. Irvin in his desire to preserve the Alliance’s eschatological core. The difference lies only in emphasis. The millennium is not the pause between ages but their convergence—the covenant’s birth canal.
The saints’ endurance, the world’s final revolt, and the Messiah’s appearing are all part of one redemptive motion: the Consummation. To remove premillennialism from our confession would risk dulling our hope; to deepen it into Messianic Consummation may recover its truest power.
For the hope of the Alliance has never been a charted timeline but a living cry:
“Surely I am coming soon.” Even so, come, Lord Jesus (Rev 22:20).
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Endnotes
1. “Consummation” follows the rhythm of the Hebrew calendar and the classic rabbinic schema dividing sacred history into six thousand yearsof redemptive labor and a seventh-day millennium of sabbatical rest (b. Sanhedrin 97a; Avot de Rabbi Natan 31). Each of the six millennia corresponds to the six creative days, while the seventh marks the Shabbat ha-Gadol—the Messianic Sabbath when covenantal work ceases and divine reign is revealed. This 6000 + 1 pattern situates “bringing back the King” within Israel’s temporal logic: redemption unfolds through measured time until the Messianic Sabbatical Completion, the final consummation of all covenants.
2. Paul L. King, A. B. Simpson and the Overlapping of the Ages (Alliance Academic Series, 2002), 45–63.
3. Franklin Pyles, “The Missionary Eschatology of A. B. Simpson,” in D. F. Hartzfeld and C. Nienkirchen, eds., The Birth of a Vision: Essays on the Ministry and Thought of Albert B. Simpson (Alberta: Buena Book Services, 1986), 203–215.
4. The closing span of the sixth millennium corresponds to a period of covenantal convergence—a foretaste of Zechariah 8 and Isaiah 2, when the house of Jacob and the nations walk side by side toward the mountain of the Lord. The 6000 + 1 pattern implies not only chronological fulfillment but relational repair: the long exile of misunderstanding between Judaism and Christianity giving way to unity in the revelation of the Sar ha-Panim, the Prince of the Presence. According to the Hebrew calendar in the year 2025, we stand in the year 5786 — approaching the close of the sixth millennium, the waning centuries before the covenantal sabbath of creation.
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Bibliography
Irvin, Steve M. Why Premillennialism Matters in the Alliance. C&MA (US) 2017-19.
Irvin, Steve M. Why Premillennialism Matters in the Alliance. C&MA (US) 2017-19.
King, Paul L. A. B. Simpson and the Overlapping of the Ages. Alliance Academic Series, 2002.
Pyles, Franklin. “The Missionary Eschatology of A. B. Simpson.” In The Birth of a Vision: Essays on the Ministry and Thought of Albert B. Simpson.Alberta: Buena Book Services, 1986.
Simpson, A. B. “How I Was Led to Believe in Premillenarianism.” The Christian Alliance and Missionary Weekly 7 (Nov 13 1891).
