Paul believed a significant prophetic event would happen in his near future, perhaps during his lifetime, and he based that belief on the words of Christ. Inmillennialism,1 a prophetic view based on the Olivet Discourse and 1 Corinthians 15, accounts for this perspective.
As I mentioned in my last post (here), the Apostle’s closing paragraph in 1 Timothy reveals his underlying prophetic assumptions. The Lord’s appearance forms the central part of his charge to his young friend: “But you, O man of God … pursue righteousness … until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing” (1 Tim 6:11, 14).
A cluster of juicy prophetic grapes surrounds this stem. In this post, I will glance at three of them.2
Making Alive
Prophetic grape #1: God making all things alive in the messianic age.
Paul says, “I charge thee, before God, who is making all things alive” (1 Tim 6:13 YLT). This statement oozes wine of prophetic significance. Jesus said the messianic age was the time of His “giving life” to the world and contrasted this age to the Mosaic age:
Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. (John 6:32–33)
The Lord made the same contrast a short time later:
What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. (John 6:61–63)
The Mosaic age was the age of “the flesh,” and the messianic age is the age of “the Spirit.” The old age contained living things, but Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). This abundant life is in the messianic age.
Paul learned this lesson from the Lord and made the same contrast between the Mosaic age and the messianic age. In his second letter to the Corinthians, he says, “[God] also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6).
The “Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing” (1 Tim 6:14) would end the Mosaic age and fully inaugurate the messianic era. The temple would fall, and the parousia (presence) of Christ would continue into the new one (cp. Matt 24:1–3).
Paul’s “giving life” imagery in 1 Timothy 6:13 matches other pictures of this age transition. The enthroned Jesus tells John, “‘Look! I am making everything new’” (Rev 21:5 HCSB).
Elsewhere, Paul contrasts the two ages through similar imagery: “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation” (Gal 6:15).
The appearance of Christ ended the Mosaic age and fully established the messianic age in which “the Son gives life to whom He will” (John 5:21).
Manifesting
Prophetic grape #2: Christ manifesting Himself at the proper time.
Paul says Christ’s manifestation would be “in His own time” (1 Tim 6:15). This statement agrees with what Jesus said in the Olivet Discourse: His appearance would occur in His generation, but the “day and hour” were unknown (Matt 24:30, 34, 36). It would be “in His own time.”
And Paul makes an interesting follow-on statement about this manifestation and appearance. He says,
Which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. (1 Tim 6:14–16)
This statement of invisibility agrees with something the Lord said about His coming in His kingdom:
Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’” (Luke 17:20–21)
Earlier, He had said,
The Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. (Matt 16:27–28)
How can someone “see” a kingdom that comes “without observation”? The same way they can “see” the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God (Matt 26:64)—by faith and through the effects it produces in the physical world. Direct ocular sight with natural eyes is not the point.
Paul, like Jesus, says people would see Christ appear indirectly through visible events: the “great tribulation,” the abomination of desolation, the temple’s fall, the end of the Mosaic-age priesthood, and the taking away of the daily sacrifice (Matt 24:1–2, 15, 21; Dan 12:11).
This manifestation, without observation, occurred in Jesus’ generation in the day and hour God had appointed.
Defining Riches
Prophetic grape #3: God revealing the age of true riches.
Paul says, “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Tim 6:17).
A. T. Robertson says Paul means “‘in the now age,’ in contrast with the future.’”3 According to the traditional Jewish two-age model of history, this phrase means “in the Mosaic age” in contrast to the messianic age.
Thus, Paul adopts the framework that is fundamental to the New Testament: “this age” is the Mosaic age, the “age about to come” is the messianic age (cp. Rom 12:2; 1 Cor 1:20; 2:6, 8; 3:18; 2 Cor 4:4; Gal 1:4; Eph 2:2; Tit 2:12).
In my next post, I will say more about this concept. Here, let’s note that “this (Mosaic) age” was about to pass away; it would do so when the temple fell. Many Jews were laying up “treasures on earth.” Paul wanted Christians to “lay up … treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt 6:20).
The Father was giving the kingdom to His people, the age of true heavenly riches (cp. Luke 12:32–34).
Conclusion
Paul taught that the “Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing” (1 Tim 6:14) would occur in his near future, not thousands of years later. He based this teaching on the words of Christ Himself.
The Apostle’s surrounding thoughts agree with this perspective: God was—in his generation—making all things alive, manifesting Christ as the King of kings, and giving true riches to those with faith in Him and who are “rich in good works.”
Footnotes
- For a full-length account of this prophetic model, see Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020). It is available here. For a summary, see the free PDF here.
- The image in this post is Bunch of Grapes by Andrew John Henry Way (1826–1888). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US) and was released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License. The quotation is Hebrews 6:5 per Kenneth S. Wuest, The New Testament: An Expanded Translation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 521.
- A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (Nashville: Broadman, 1933), 1 Tim 6:17.
