A Time of Prophecy
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cast into a pit and shut therein for a thousand years, unable to deceive the nations "till the thousand years should be fulfilled." It will be then that Gog and Magog shall be engaged in a world war; the First Resurrection of the dead shall occur, and Messianic Times will begin. Those visionary words, introducing in Christianity the notion (and expectation) of an apocalyptic millennium, were written in the first century A.D. SO, although the book names Babylon as the "evil empire," scholars and theologians assume that this was a code name for Rome. But even so, it is significant that the words in Revelation echo the words of the Prophet Ezekiel (sixth century B.C.) who had a vision of the resurrection of the dead on the Day of the Lord (chapter 37) and the world war of Gog and Magog (chapters 38, 39); it shall take place, Ezekiel stated, "at the End of Years." It was all, he said, foretold by the Prophets of Yahweh in the Olden Days, "who had then prophesied about the Years." "The Years" to be fulfilled, the count till the "End of Years." It was indeed many centuries before Ezekiel's time that the Bible offered a clue: A thousand years, in thy eyes, are but as one day that has passed. The statement, in Psalm 90:4, is attributed in the Bible to Moses himself; the application of a thousand years to a divine time measurement thus goes back to at least the time of the Exodus. Indeed, Deuteronomy (7:9) assigns to the duration of God's Covenant with Israel a period of "a thousand generations;" and in a Psalm of David composed when the Ark of the Covenant was brought over to the City of David, the duration of a thousand generations was recalled once more (I Chronicles 16:15). Other Psalms repeatedly applied the number "thousand" to Yahweh and his wonders: Psalm 68:18 even gave a thousand years as the duration of the Chariot of the Elohim.