WORDS YOU NEED
TO
KNOW WHEN IT COMES
TO THE
END
OF THE
WORLD
WHEN AND HOW THE KINGDOM COMES How long is a thousand years? When it comes to the end times, it all depends on who you ask. Near the end of his visions on the island of Patmos, John glimpses a glorious angelic being. The angel bursts forth from the heavens with a chain and a key in hand. Suddenly, a dragon appears as well—the same dragon who had slithered into Eden as a serpent and who whispered temptations in the Messiah’s ear in the deserts of Judea. The divinely-empowered angel seizes the dragon, chains him, and hurls him into a bottomless pit where he will remain for “a thousand years” (Revelation 20:1-3). Throughout this span of a thousand years, the souls of martyrs and faithful witnesses live and reign with Christ (Revelation 20:4–5). In Christian theology, this thousand-year reign has become known as the “millennium,” from the Latin terms for “thousand” (mille) and “year” (annum). But this notion of a millennium leads to a long litany of difficult questions: Are these ten centuries intended to be taken as a precise time-period or as a symbol of something greater? And when in human history does the chaining of the dragon take place? Has it already happened? Or is this event yet to come? Will Jesus physically return to earth before the millennium or afterward? How you reply to these questions depends on the perspective that you took on some of the earlier questions in this chapter. Are you reading the biblical apocalypses from a futurist perspective or more idealistically? More as a historicist or as a preterist? Do you see covenantal continuity or dispensational discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments?
© Linda Armstrong
Over the past two thousand years, these differences in interpretation have resulted in four primary perspectives on how time will end. All four views agree when it comes to every essential truth about the end times: Someday, Jesus will return to set the world right; God will resurrect all humanity, and Jesus will be their judge. Yet each view takes a very different perspective on how the return of Jesus relates to the millennial kingdom. 67