3214.- The Millennium by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 9, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 31.

3214.— The Millennium

By Editor

Please explain the one thousand years of Rev. 20:1-3. Does it mean 360 thousand years, or literal years?

The one thousand years of Rev. 20: 1-3 are evidently literal years. The Biblical history of the world gives about six thousand years of man's probationary time upon the earth. It was one of the laws of God inherent in man and in the earth that the Sabbath should be kept. The Sabbath of the earth was every seventh year according to the instructions which He gave to His children in Judea. They failed to keep the Sabbath themselves and the Sabbath of the earth as well. Hence came the seventy years during which time the land of Israel lay largely desolate until the earth should keep its Sabbath. See 2 Chron. 36: 17-21, and Jer. 25: 8-11.

The people of the earth generally have disregarded God and His laws from the very beginning of earth's history. The last thousand years of the reign of sin the earth shall lie desolate even as did Palestine the seventy years. During this thousand years the children of God are in heaven; the wicked are in their graves; Satan and his angels are here upon this desolate earth. The same period of time is mentioned in Isa. 24:22 as "many days," after which the wicked will be visited. This is the second resurrection. Following that comes the second death. All these things are much more fully told in a tract entitled "The Great Day of the Lord," Bible Students' Library, No. 65; price 2 cents.