Opus 2025-012: Keep Reading

I have a friend who has a lot of strange doctrines.  He feels the same about me.  We keep trying to straighten each other out on certain parts of the Bible.  We were on the end times, a favorite of his, and he quoted verses the talked about the 12 apostles sitting on thrones and judging in the kingdom.  We looked the verses up and that seemed what they were saying.  After we hung up, my mind started coming up with, “Wait a minute, what about...”  I needed to look at that again.  I did a search for the two words “twelve” and “thrones” and came up with two sources.  I believe the one in Matthew is the one quoted to me.  There is a similar idea in Luke.  In Matthew it seemed clear from this that Jesus is talking about the twelve apostles ruling the twelve tribes.

Matthew 19:28 (KJV) And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Luke is similar but throws in the word “kingdom” which is also a favorite of my friend.  I imagine he did not share Luke with me is that it ends up working against his position.

Luke 22:30 (KJV) That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

In my mind there was a bit of tension with that thought as I vaguely remembered verses in Revelation.  So I looked up the verses dealing with the “thousand years” and the “thousand year reign of Jesus”, and so forth and looked for who would be sitting with Him.  Revelation did not seem to match with what Jesus was describing.

In Revelation I found it seems to have more than just twelve apostles sitting on thrones and reigning with Jesus for the thousand years,

Revelation 20:4 (KJV) And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

I did a search on the word “twelve”.  As expected, it was very frequent in the Old Testament so I narrowed it down to the New Testament and still got over 60 references.  I narrowed it down to Revelation where I got a quantity I could work with.  As I look through the references to twelve in Revelation, I saw the number twelve was never associated with 12 apostles.  This does not negate the conclusion presented from the gospels, Revelation does not say they were not there.  It doesn’t support it either.  The problem was with other points my friend was making.

It seems to me in my memory he somehow felt it was significant to say we don’t have priests anymore and how Peter was talking about the royal priesthood by quoting Exodus.  Priesthood is just a Jewish concept and does not fit with Christians.  His question had to do with the legitimacy of the writings of Peter but I found that it came up in my reading on the twelve and the kingdom.

Here I see a reference that would go against that.  Notice this is just two verses after the other passage I referenced in Revelation.

Revelation 20:6 (KJV) Blessed and holy [is] he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

It seems to be saying that in the thousand year kingdom there will be priests of Jesus.

It is things like this that make me unfocus on eschatology.

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