The Millennium

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 23, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 24.

SOMETIMES terms used by writers on religious subjects are objected to, because they are not found in the Bible. “Millennium” is one of these terms. Nevertheless, it is a perfectly legitimate word to use in Bible teaching, if rightly used. It is properly applied to the 1,000 years of Rev. 20: 1-5. The English Bible uses the term “thousand years.” But the Greek expression is chilia ete. “Millennium” comes from two Latin words, mille, thousand, and annus, year. It is therefore just as proper to translate chilia ete “millennium” as it is “thousand years.”

Satan was bound “a millennium,” so “that he should deceive the nations no more till the millennium should be fulfilled.” Verses 2, 3. At this same time the saints “lived and reigned with Christ a millennium, but the rest of the dead [the wicked] lived not again until the millennium was finished.” Verses 4, 5. Again we are told that the children of the first resurrection “shall reign with him a millennium. And when the millennium is expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.” Verses 6, 7.

The above is a proper use of the word. The word has obtained a secondary, theological, and erroneous use, by some supposing that this thousand years here mentioned refers to Christ’s reign of peace on this earth, when the world will be converted, and from that “millennium” has come to mean a converted world. But used in this sense, it has no place in the theology of the Bible.