The Greek verb mellō plays an important role as we interpret Scripture using the inmillennial prophetic model. It reinforces several New Testament time stamps that show the soon-coming nature of events Jesus and his apostles predicted.
Mellō has two primary definitions. It can show the certainty of a future event or action, or it can mean “to be about to, in [a] purely temporal sense.”1 It sometimes conveys other, less common, meanings.
The decision of which meaning to use is not always obvious. When doubt exists, the surrounding context serves as the final authority in determining the best meaning. As Milton Terry says, “Some words have a variety of significations, and hence, whatever their primitive meaning, we are obliged to gather from the context, and from familiarity with the usage of the language, the particular sense which they bear in a given passage of Scripture.”2
The translations often acknowledge mellō in non-prophetic texts. For example, we see its contribution here: “And a certain centurion’s servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and ready to die” (Luke 7:2; emphasis added). The English reader sees the effect of mellō in the original Greek.
This is seldom the case when mellō occurs in prophetic texts, however. Here is one example: Jesus said: “the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works” (Matt. 16:27). Mellō is present but unseen in this translation.
Literal translations are more apt to indicate mellō’s presence in such prophetic passages. For example, Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) gives this passage as “the Son of Man is about to come in the glory of his Father, with his messengers, and then he will reward each, according to his work” (Matt. 16:27; emphasis added).
The context shows the correctness of the literal translation. In his next sentence, Jesus says “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matt. 16:28). An explicit acknowledgment of mellō in verse 27 prepares the reader for Jesus’ statement in verse 28.
The Holy Spirit inspired every word of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16; cp. Gal. 3:16). We should, therefore, acknowledge mellō, even in contexts that challenge our prevailing assumptions about prophecy. This practice would conform to our belief in the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture: every word in every part of Scripture is there by God’s design.3
Inmillennialism attempts to do this and mellō, in turn, reinforces the underlying structure of this prophetic model.
Footnotes
- Henry George Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1099.
- Milton S. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics: A Treatise on the Interpretation of the Old and New Testaments, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, Academie Books, n.d.), 181.
- See, for example, The Baptist Confession of Faith & The Baptist Catechism, (Birmingham, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2010), 1:1–10. Paragraph 8 addresses the original languages.