So... let me ask you a question, then.
Luke 1:28-33, an Angel (earlier identified in the chapter as Gabriel, the same Angel that appeared until Zacharias) appears and tells Mary that she's going to have a Son, that she should name Him Jesus, and that He would be given the Throne of David.
At the time, the Throne of David did not exist because Israel was being ruled by Rome and Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD and they've not had a king since, thus no Throne.
Gabriel did not mean God's throne (where Christ now sits at His right side), because he specified David's throne and that He would reign over the house of Jacob. This has not happened yet since Israel has not had a king (and therefore, no throne) since Old Testament times.
So... are you calling Gabriel (or worse, God) a liar, or are you claiming that he (or He) meant all of this allegorically? God says what He means, and means what He says. If He meant the Throne in Heaven, He would have specified that.
Jesus, as the King Messiah,
does rule from David's throne. Jesus won't become king later, He is king
now.
No, I don't believe that when the Lord returns He is going to live in a palatial building and sit on an actual chair in Jerusalem. I think that is fundamentally contrary to everything our Lord taught concerning God's kingdom.
Instead, what was specified, was David's throne which only pertains to Israel and the Jews.
If there necessitates a specific, physical chair for Jesus to sit on that belonged to David I think there's a problem. Instead what the throne of David signifies is Jesus' rightful place as king, and specifically that the Messiah would be from the line of David. Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus is the Son of David, the Root of Jesse, the King who would come and deliver Israel and restore all things. That's who Jesus is, even right now, not what Jesus will be. Jesus
is the Christ, Jesus won't only be the Christ in the future. Jesus
is the Son of David, not just the Son of David later.
And why would He specify 1,000 years instead of saying "For Eternity" if it were allegorical?
The number 1,000 frequently indicates a very large but unspecified number. In the Psalms we read that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills; but that doesn't mean that God doesn't own the cattle on hill 1,001--it means everything belongs to God.
I'm not saying the Lord's reign is eternity, but rather the thousand years speaks of Christ's reign--Christ is reigning right now. According to Amillennialism it is from when He ascended until His Parousia.
It seems strange to me to treat a number in the least literal book in the entire Bible as literal. I don't see a good reason to take the thousand years any more literally than I do of multi-headed monster carrying a prostitute or four weird guys on horseback. The Revelation is an apocalypse, that is its literary genre, in the same way the Psalms are poetry and the Proverbs are wisdom literature. Attempting to read the Revelation of St. John literally is like treating the Godzilla movies like documentaries.
And then you got the problem of Daniel Chapter 9.
He specifies that it will take 70 weeks [of years] to fully rebuild Israel, but then says that "seven and threescore and two" weeks [of years] from the time the call to rebuild Israel (445 BC IIRC? Something like that. It works out exactly 38 AD and it is theorized that the Gregorian Calendar is 4-6 years off which fits exactly if you assume Christ was 32 when He began His ministry) until the time of the Messiah would come.
.....wait there's still a week [of years] left, right?
That's generally how Dispensationalists try and read the text in Daniel 9. Let's try this:
"
Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time. After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease; and in their place shall be an abomination that desolates, until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator." - Daniel 9:24-27
To understand what the text is talking about it may be good to look earlier,
"
in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years." - Daniel 9:2
What are the words given to Jeremiah? Well in Jeremiah 25:12-13
"
This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste."
And Jeremiah 29:10-11
"
For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."
The text outlines several things: seven sevens until the anointed prince (Cyrus), and sixty-two sevens for the rebuilding of the nation until a coming prince, Antiochus IV Epiphenes (the same as the king of the north elsewhere in Daniel), who brings destruction and ruin to the people, making a covenant for the final week; the decrees of Antiochus and the Seleucids prohibited the Jews from practicing their religion, and the Temple was defiled--indeed the abomination that causes desolation with the sacrificing of swine in honor of Zeus in the inner sanctuary.
Christ told us what that was (in fact He said to look up Daniel in the Olivet Discourse).
Jesus refers back to Daniel to help indicate what people should look for when it came to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, which took place in the year 70 during the Roman-Jewish War. The Olivet Discourse is not a prediction of "the end times" it is chiefly a prediction about the coming destruction of the Temple, and only near the end of the Discourse does He talk about His own coming which, He says, will be as in the days of Noah with people going about their business--when the Lord comes, He comes in judgment, like when the flood came and took the wicked unaware ("two will be in a field, one will be taken, and the other left")
-CryptoLutheran
