Question: He started judging me as a sinner and telling me over and over "IF you read your bible... "IF you have read the bible you would know this. I guess, he said that Jesus was going to walk on earth for seven years and rule down here a perfect paradise of people even though the good ones would have already been raptured.
Answer:
It always amazes me how these deluded idiots can use that ridiculous "argument," which of course implies that their interpretation of the Bible is the only viable one. Yet, as a matter of objective reality, then EVERYONE who read the Bible would arrive at this person's interpretation if all one needed to do is "read it." Thus, the only way they can defend their position is to stupidly assume that no one else, for 2,000 years of Christian history, bothered to read the Bible. And it's hard to defend that position when you take into account a St. Augustine or a St. Thomas Aquinas, etc.—-that is, people who clearly "read" the Bible, and who have delved into the Scriptures more deeply than any member of this person's cult.
First of all, Bryan, it seems what you've run into there is a species of Milleniarism—-the belief that Jesus, per a literal interpretation of Revelation 20, will return and reign over an earthly Kingdom for 1,000 years before bringing everyone to Heaven. However, two things: I have no idea where this guy gets "seven years" rather than one-thousand years and, secondly, when disputing the error of Millenarianism, one has to be very careful, since many otherwise orthodox Church fathers (e.g. St. Ireneaus) happened to have ascribed to this rather odd doctrine–-a doctrine which was isolated to the Asian city-churches (from which Ireneaus came), and which apparently arose as a pastoral "crutch" to encourage Christians under persecution--that is, an image to assure them that the horrible injustices they suffered under imperial Roman rule would be avenged one day in the here-and-now. Needless to say, however, that, while Ephesus and other city-churches in Asia Minor subscribed to this idea, the rest of the universal Church (e.g. Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Carthage, Edessa, etc.) had no such belief, and so, like limbo, Milleniarism was eventually discarded as a faulty theolegoumenon (theological opinion).
As for what Revelation is really referring to by "a New Heaven and a New Earth," and a "New Jerusalem," that's merely a reference to the age of the Church and the Lord's Second Coming. For example, if you'll notice, in the last chapters of Revelation, the "New Jerusalem" is described as a "Bride," just as the Church is described as Christ's Bride in Ephesians 5:25-32. Thus, all Revelation is saying is that, when Christ returns in glory, so will all the Saints (1 Thess. 4:14) who have proceeded us into Heaven (i.e. the Church that is in Heaven: the "Church Triumphant"). This will signal the general resurrection from the dead, in which Heaven and the physical universe (this presently fallen world... including those of us who are still struggling to become Saints) will be unified, and then all assumed into Heavenly glory with Christ and the Saints who have gone before us (again, per 1 Thess. 4).
Mark Bonocore
The Catholic Legate
July 20, 2004