How literal are the numbers in Revelation?

Question 10180.

How literal are the numbers in Revelation? It is one of the first questions a thoughtful reader asks, and the answer largely determines what sort of book he thinks he is reading. Sevens, twelves, a thousand years, 144,000, forty two months, 666. The book is full of counting.

My working rule is that the numbers in Revelation mean what they say, and that meaning what they say does not stop them also carrying significance.

Two mistakes with the numbers in Revelation

The first mistake is to treat the numbers in Revelation as pure symbol, so that a thousand years means a long time, 144,000 means a large number, and forty two months means an indefinite period of trouble. Once that principle is adopted there is no way of stopping it, and the book becomes a mirror in which each generation sees its own face.

The second mistake is to treat the numbers in Revelation as a code to be cracked, adding and multiplying until a date emerges. That approach has generated a long line of failed predictions and a good deal of damage to ordinary believers who trusted the arithmetic.

Between those two lies the ordinary reading. A number in a vision is still a number. When John says two witnesses, he means two. When he says a thousand years, he means a thousand years. The burden of proof rests on anyone who wants to say otherwise, and it is a burden that is rarely discharged.

The case of the thousand years

Revelation 20 mentions the thousand years six times in seven verses. The Greek chilioi is an ordinary cardinal number, used elsewhere without any symbolic freight, and the repetition is emphatic in a way that is difficult to explain if a vague duration is meant.

Those who take it symbolically usually appeal to the poetic line about God owning the cattle on a thousand hills. But a psalm is poetry and Revelation 20 is narrative sequence, with Satan bound at the start of the period and released at the end of it. Numbers behave differently in different kinds of writing, and this is not a psalm.

So I take the millennium as a literal thousand year reign of Jesus on the earth, which is what the church held before Augustine’s influence redirected the discussion. My article on the Millennium sets out what that kingdom involves.

Sevens, and why they are still seven

Seven is the most common of the numbers in Revelation. Seven churches, seven spirits, seven seals, trumpets and bowls, seven stars, seven lampstands, seven heads. In Scripture seven carries associations of completeness, going back to the creation week, and nobody disputes that the pattern is deliberate.

Here is the point that often gets missed. The seven churches were seven actual congregations in seven actual towns, on a real postal route in western Asia Minor, and you can visit the sites today. The number carries symbolic weight and refers to real places at the same time.

That is how biblical symbolism generally works. It does not float free of history. It illuminates history. So when seven seals are opened in sequence, I take it that seven judgements occur in sequence, and I take the completeness the number suggests as an additional layer rather than a replacement meaning.

The time periods agree with each other

The strongest evidence for reading the numbers in Revelation literally is the way the time references interlock. Forty two months, 1,260 days, and a time and times and half a time all appear, and all three describe the same period of three and a half years.

That is not the behaviour of a text using the numbers in Revelation loosely. It is the behaviour of a text that expects to be checked. If forty two months meant simply a season of difficulty, there would be no reason to express the same span in three different units with such consistency.

Daniel uses the same figures, which ties Revelation to the seventieth week of Daniel 9 and gives us the seven year Tribulation divided at its midpoint. Two prophets separated by six centuries produce a coherent timescale, and that coherence is hard to account for on a symbolic reading.

The 144,000

John hears the number of the sealed and gives us twelve thousand from each of twelve tribes, naming the tribes one by one. Symbolic readings take this as the totality of the redeemed, the twelve of Israel multiplied by the twelve of the apostles and then by a thousand for good measure.

The difficulty with that is the naming. If the number is symbolic, the list of tribes is decorative, and John has gone to a good deal of trouble to decorate. It is far simpler to read a specific number of Jewish believers sealed for protection through the Tribulation, which is what the passage says.

Immediately afterwards John sees a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation. If he can say when a number is uncountable, we should probably believe him when he gives one. My article on the 144,000 deals with the company in detail.

What about 666?

The number of the beast is the place where symbolic reading is most tempting, and where gematria has produced the most entertaining results. Nero, the Pope, Hitler, Kissinger and various computer systems have all been made to fit by someone with enough determination and a flexible alphabet.

John says it calls for wisdom, and that it is the number of a man. I take that to mean a literal number associated with a real individual, identifiable to those living at the time, and not identifiable in advance by us. Six falling short of seven three times over is a fitting picture of humanity attempting deity, and both things can be true.

What I will not do is name a candidate. Every generation’s identification has aged badly, and my article on whether 666 is literal sets out why I think patience is wiser than cleverness here.

Where symbolism genuinely operates

None of this means Revelation has no symbols. It plainly does, and it usually tells us so. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches, John writes, and he explains it in the text. The woman is the great city. The waters are peoples and nations.

That is the pattern to follow. Where Scripture supplies the interpretation, take it. Where it does not, read the words in their ordinary sense. A method that lets the text decide when it is being figurative is very different from one that lets the reader decide whenever the literal sense is inconvenient.

Applied to the numbers in Revelation, that method yields literal quantities with symbolic overtones, which is a good deal richer than either extreme and a good deal safer than both.

Why the question matters

Behind the question of the numbers in Revelation lies the whole approach to prophecy. If the numbers dissolve, so does the timeline, and so does the distinction between Israel and the Church, and so does the physical kingdom promised to David’s son. Interpretive method has consequences several chapters downstream from where it is applied.

It also affects confidence. A book whose numbers mean something can be studied and understood. A book whose numbers mean whatever the commentator prefers can only be admired from a distance, and most believers quietly give up on it.

Revelation opens with a blessing on the one who reads it aloud and those who hear it. That blessing assumes comprehension, and comprehension assumes that the words, including the numbers, carry their normal weight.

Numbers in the rest of prophecy

A useful test is to ask how numbers have behaved in prophecy that has already been fulfilled. Jeremiah said the exile would last seventy years, and it lasted seventy years. Isaiah named Cyrus. Daniel gave a period of sixty nine sevens to the coming of the Anointed One, and the arithmetic lands in the right decade (Daniel 9:25).

Not one of those was a symbolic gesture towards a long time. They were quantities, and they were kept. Given that record, the burden of proof on anyone who says the numbers in Revelation work differently is heavy, and it is rarely acknowledged let alone carried.

The same holds for the details of the first coming. Thirty pieces of silver was thirty. The tomb was occupied for three days. The prophecies that have been fulfilled were fulfilled with their numbers intact, which is the strongest single argument for reading the unfulfilled ones the same way (Zechariah 11:12).

This is why I keep returning to method rather than to individual puzzles. A consistent approach to the numbers in Revelation produces a coherent timeline. An inconsistent one produces a book that can be made to say anything, and history shows that it usually has been.

So, now what?

Read Revelation the way you read the rest of your Bible, in its ordinary sense, letting the text tell you when it is using a figure. You will find it far less bewildering than its reputation suggests.

And do not let anyone hand you a chart in place of the book itself. Twenty two chapters, an evening or two, and a willingness to be surprised. When did you last read it straight through rather than reading about it?

Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

Revelation 20:6, ESV