Millennium: When Jesus rules the world.
- MILLENNIUM
mə'lɛ.ni.əm noun. Thousand years. - 2. One of the thousand-year periods after Christ’s birth: The first millennium, the third millennium, etc.
- 3. Where one thousand-year period ends and another begins.
- 4. [theology] Christ Jesus’s reign on earth, represented in an apocalypse as a thousand-year age.
- [Millennial
mɪ'lɛ.ni.əl adjective.]
Whenever Christians talk about being “premillennial” or “amillenial,” no we’re not criticizing millennials, the kids born after the year 2000. We’re talking End Times theories. (We’ll use other terms to criticize millennials.)
The idea comes from Revelation. In one of its visions
Shall I quote the vision? Why not.
Revelation 20.1-10 KWL - 1 I see an angel coming down from heaven, holding the abyss’s key and a large chain in its hand.
- 2 It seized the dragon—the ancient serpent, which is the devil and Satan—and bound it a millennium.
- 3 It threw Satan into the abyss, and shut and sealed it in so it couldn’t deceive the nations again
- —until the millennium is finished, after which it has to release Satan a short time.
- 4 I see thrones. People sit on them. Judgment is given them.
- They’re the souls of those beheaded for testifying of Jesus, for God’s word.
- Whoever hadn’t worshiped the Beast nor its ikon, nor took its forehead- nor hand-stamp:
- They live! They reign with Christ a millennium.
- 5 The rest of the dead won’t live till the millennium is complete.
- This is the first resurrection.
- 6 Those who take part in the first resurrection are awesome and holy.
- The second death has no power over them.
- Instead they’ll be God’s and Christ’s priests, and reign with him a millennium.
- 7 Once the millennium is complete, Satan will be released from its prison.
- 8 Satan will come out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth,
- to gather Gog and Magóg into a war. Their number is like the sand of the sea.
- 9 The nations rose up over the edge of the earth. They surrounded the saints’ encampment, the beloved city.
- Fire from heaven came down and ate them up.
- 10 The devil, their deceiver, was thrown into the pool of fire and sulfur, where the Beast and fake prophet are.
- They’ll be tortured there, day and night, age to ages.
At face value, it looks like Jesus is literally gonna reign over earth, as the human king of a political kingdom, for a literal thousand years. If Jesus returned in 1988 (he didn’t; I'm just picking
But bear in mind: This millennium is part of
Hence Christians have come up with various ideas of what it looks like, and generally I’m going over the main three. Handy-dandy chart time:
Three possible timelines of the future. That’ll make things clear as mud.
Amillennials: Those who figure the second coming is the End.
Since most Christians look at Revelation and throw up their hands in confusion, you’re gonna find most Christians are
For amillennials (or amillennialists), they go with the idea we find everywhere else in the bible: Once Jesus shows up, it’s judgment day.
2 Peter 3.8-13 KWL - 8 Don’t let this escape your attention, beloved:
- One day with the Master is like a millennium, and a millennium is like one day.
- 9 The Master doesn’t slack on his promise, like certain people operate slackly:
- Instead he’s patient with us, not wanting anyone to be destroyed.
- Instead he wants everyone to come to repentance.
- 10 The Lord’s Day will come like a thief. On it, the heavens will go away with a bang.
- The burning elements will dissolve. The earth, and the works in it, will be found out.
- 11 Considering these dissolved things, what sort of people must you be?
- What sort of holy life and religion?
- 12 Awaiting and eagerly expecting the second coming, the Lord’s Day?
- —on which the burning heavens dissolve, and burning elements dissolve?
- 13 We should await new heavens and new earth, according to Christ’s promise.
- Righteousness dwells in them.
Simon Peter sure made it look like the second coming and the end of the world take place simultaneously. So… was Peter wrong, or did John misunderstand the vision he saw? Is this
Amillennials point out it doesn’t need to be. Y’notice Peter said a millennium is like a day? (In context Peter’s trying to explain why it’s taking Jesus so very long to return to earth,
Since there are more passages about how the Lord’s Day (or the L
To amillennals, Jesus doesn’t return to give humanity any last chances. There are none. This, the world we live in right now, is our last chance. That’s why Jesus is delaying his return. ’Cause once he returns it’s judgment day. There’s no thousand-year reign of grace and peace.
As a bible scholar I gotta agree with the amillennials: The weight of the bible passages found throughout the bible, throughout
And it’s for this reason I’m never gonna suggest anyone take a “wait and see” approach when it comes to Jesus’s return: Pick your side now! After all, we never know when we’re gonna die. When it comes to death, I don’t see any second chances in the scriptures. Better be safe, than infinitely sorry.
But the reason I’m not in the amillennial camp: I can’t bring myself to totally dismiss Revelation 20.
Postmillennials: Those who figure we create the millennium.
The
Once we Christians quit making excuses, quit sinning, revive the rest of humanity around us, fix society, fix the world, and make
The idea appeared here and there over the centuries, but it didn’t really take off till the modern era. Because it’s based on modernism. I know; the label “modernism” has been slapped on so many things, it’s hard to know what anybody means by it anymore. (Most people assume I mean “getting Christianity with the times,” because modernizing regularly gets mixed up with modernism. Nope.)
Since
The world wars woke up Christians to these facts, which is why we don’t see a lot of postmillennials anymore. Or it takes the form of Christians who claim the Christian Era is the millennium—that Jesus rules the world, or at least the Christian world, right this very minute. (If so, he’s making a real mess of things!) But the view we’re already in the millennium, tends to look and function exactly like amillennialism: The world goes on till Jesus returns, and then it ends.
Premillennials: Jesus returns, and brings his kingdom with him.
Premillennials (like, admittedly, me) take our view from Revelation 20. After the second coming,
All those people who aren’t Christian, don’t know Jesus, don’t even think they wanna know Jesus? They finally get to meet him.
Put into special positions of responsibility and authority are the
These resurrected Christians will rule the world under Jesus. And finally the world will be led right. With justice and fairness. With grace, forgiveness, and mercy. By judges
Oh, it won’t be heaven. Not for another 10 centuries. But
Wait, what about judgment and wrath and all that?
There are both premillennials and amillennials whose ideas of the End have nothing to do with salvation, and everything to do with fire and bloodshed and vengeance and mayhem. It’s all their
All the fruit of the Spirit which Jesus demonstrates, which the Spirit’s trying to grow in us? Irrelevant. God’s gonna smite the wicked, and we get to watch with vengeful glee.
If you’re getting the idea I think this view of the End is twisted and sick, good. But it’s fairly common among twisted and sick Christians. They want evil people to suffer, not repent. They want sinners to die, not come to Jesus. Twisted amillennials imagine Jesus returning to kill all the wicked and destroy the world. Twisted postmillennials willingly offer to kill the wicked themselves. And twisted premillennials also imagine Jesus returning to kill the wicked, and pave his kingdom over their corpses.
True, the prophets’ writings about the L
Now, God’s prophets never state the oppressed, the needy, the Israelis, are believers. Instead they point out God’s in favor of any needy people, Hebrew or not. God objects to other nations oppressing their needy. Any needy. He plays no favorites.
When you really read these L
If God stays true to his character, even on Judgment Day, I can’t expect wrath and anger and destruction right away. Oh, those things’ll come eventually; they always do. But I’ve always recognized the millennium as a repeat of what God did in the Exodus—this time on a global scale. And better: This time with the king living among his people in person. This time with the priests not just limited to the Levites, and the prophets not just limited to the Seventy. God’s gonna show people what his kingdom was always meant to look like. Then present them the choice to accept or reject it.
I expect for many, it’ll be just what they’ve always dreamt of. And for others, for
