“Evil in the Millennial Age?” An Exposition of Zechariah 14

A Response to a Premillennial Objection to Amillennialism

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The Issue Under Debate
I am convinced that one of the major weaknesses of all forms of premillennialism is the presence of evil in the millennial age (The Presence of Evil in the Millennium -- A Huge Problem for Premillennarians). How do people in natural human bodies pass through the events associated with Christ’s return (the general resurrection, the final judgment, and the creation of a new heaven and earth) without being raised from the dead and appointed to their eternal destiny (heaven or hell)? There is a related question also raised by the premillennial understanding of redemptive history; “how can evil exist on the earth, while Jesus rules over the nations from David’s throne in Jerusalem after he has judged the nations?” Premillennarians seek to avoid this conundrum by assigning final judgment and elimination of evil to the close of the millennial age, fully one thousand years after Jesus returns. But the millennial age is not future as premillennarians claim, it is a present reality. Christ’s return is the final consummation, the summing up of all things, not but another step on the way to the final consummation a thousand years later.

Premillennarians respond to this amillennial challenge by asserting that the presence of evil in the millennial age was foretold by the Prophet Zechariah in the fourteenth chapter of his prophecy, thereby parrying the thrust of the amillennial argument.[1] The purpose of this essay is to set Zechariah’s prophecy in its context, summarize the varying interpretations of Zechariah 14 (including premillennialism and Reformed amillennialism), then interpret the entirety of the chapter, before drawing some final conclusions.
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The Context for Zechariah’s Prophecy
Zechariah’s prophecy concludes in chapter fourteen with a remarkable glimpse of the time of the end–a day of cosmic upheaval, a time when YHWH will be acknowledged by all to be king over all the earth and Lord of all the nations. The seven-fold repetition of the phrase “on that day” throughout the final chapter points ahead from Zechariah’s time (about 518 B.C.) to the messianic age and beyond, indeed to the time of the end and the disruption of the entire created order. The scene given us in the final chapter of Zechariah is framed in the language of apocalyptic; dramatic scenes and images are used by the prophet to make important theological points. Zechariah describes a scene in which mountains split open, Jerusalem is raised to great heights, the surrounding land is leveled, and the waters reverse their course. In this prophetic oracle we are given a vision of the summing up of all things in the language of prophetic idiom (the language often used by Old Testament prophets),[2] which, in turn, is depicted in the New Testament as the day of Christ’s return, when our Lord raises the dead, judges all people, and renews the cosmos.
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Dr. Kim Riddlebarger is currently visiting professor of systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California. He was senior pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim from 1995 until his retirement in December 2020. Kim was also a long-time co-host of the popular White Horse Inn, a radio-internet talk show (White Horse Inn Archives).