(in black from my sister Ruth)

REVELATION 20:1-7 -

       6 times in 7 verses the Holy Spirit has said “1,000 years.”

       “…An angel…seized the dragon…who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into a pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were ended,…

       “Then I saw…those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus Christ…they came to life again, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.  The rest of the dead did not come to life again until the thousand years were ended….blessed and holy is he who shares in the first resurrection…they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with Him a thousand years.

       “And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison…”

__________________________________________

       Does this mean a literal 1,000 years?  Consider:

1.  The Holy Spirit’s repetition of the number.

2.  The amount of detail in the passage (far more than

       is quoted above): the Holy Spirit tells us many

       things about this time period.  There is nothing

       vague about His description.

3.  The word used for “one thousand” is very specific.

       There are a number of words used in the New Testament referring to “thousands,” but there are really only two words, only one meaning an indefinite amount; the rest are very specific.  The numbers in Strong’s are as follows:

a. 3463 - meaning “very many,” from 3461, meaning “lots, many,” an indefinite number.  etc.  These 2 words are used 3x each, for a total of 6x, referring to large numbers of things.

       Mt. 18:24: “10,000 talents”

       Acts 19:19 - “50,000 pieces of silver”

       I Cor. 4:15 - “10,000 instructors in Christ”

           “    14:19 - “10,000 words in an unknown

                              tongue”

       Rev. 5:11 - “10,000 x 10,000 and thousands of

                            thousands”

       Rev. 9:16 - “200 thousand thousand”

b.  The general word for “thousand” is 5507,    “chillioi” (khil’-ee-oi) - after that, the words

       refer to specific numbers of thousands:

       1. 5505 - “1,000” - the specific word for 1,000 is              “chillias” (khil-ee-as’).

       2.  1367 - “2,000” - Mk. 5:13 - herd of pigs

       3.  5153 - “3,000” - Acts 2:41

       4.  5070 - “4,000” fed by Jesus - Mk. 8:9

       5.  4000 - “5,000”         “           Mt. 14:21

       6.  2035 - “7,000” who have not bowed the knee

                        to Baal” - Romans 11:4

       There is also a military term, 5506, “Chillarchos”

(khil-ee’-ar-kos), meaning the commander of a thousand men - a chilliarch (colonel).

       The Church Fathers, judging by their comments on Revelation 20, believed in a literal period of 1,000 years for Christ’s earthly rule.

Conclusion: 

       When God refers to “1,000 years” six times in 7 verses in Revelation 20, apparently that is exactly what He means.

You have heard my rant on this. Sure, the word, in English, is exactly 1,000 like our one thousand that we use in our Quickbooks accounting and on our digital calculators. But, my contention is that the Hebrew word, in the Hebrew context, in the Hebrew literary style means more like our English "umpteen" in many places in scripture. That in a lot of places where we see the x,000 number or x0,000 - it is an estimate, not an exact count with 4-5 significant digits.

I also refer you to the reference in the 10 commandments where the antecedent for 1,000's (plural) is "generations" and not an individual who loves me and keeps my commandments. Are you ready to place thousands of generations of time between Sinai and the Great White Throne Judgment at the end of the 1000x365dayx24hr Millennium? And if so, why would God put such a huge breadth of time between the 4,000 year lead up to the Ascension - and this little tiny 1,000 year period at the end?

If He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, who owns them on hill# 1001?

Part of the challenge here, is that 1000 means thousand in English, in our culture. And even though 1000 might mean thousand in Hebrew language and culture, there might also be another associated meaning in its Biblical use and context. I'm sure we have all kinds of similar words/ideas in english language and american culture.

For instance: Do the words black, colored, darkie, Negro, and nigger -- all mean the same thing in our dialect? Even where you live and what year you use these words -- maybe even tone of voice -- will affect the meaning.

Hey, I could go on and on. To cut to the chase, what really matters behind your objections about 1000 years, comes down to the core issue:

Which men does God hold responsible, in our generation, to punish crime; and what ethical authority will He use when He judges their faithfulness in punishing those crimes?

God may have had a different standard between Noah and Sinai, or between Sinai and Ascension, or between Ascension and the end of this "age"/"dispensation" or possibly during the Millennium/1000 years -- if it is different than now.

The radical assertion of the "theonomists" is that definitions of crime and punishment haven't changed that much since Noah. And if they had, how would we know what the new definitions were? It goes without saying, that this is a whole-Bible rationale. If the Bible says things have changed from punishment A to punishment B, well, alright.

But the apparent assumption of American Evangelical freedom-of-religion thinking is that -- since the Incarnation, definitions of punishment have busted wide open, and God's intention now is that human freedom should prevail. The Majority should decide what the punishments should be. That civil polity is most to be desired which follows what the Electorate, or popular opinion -- thinks the Punishments should be.

I have found that this supposed philosophic position is like a Fog which quickly dissipates under scrutiny. If challenged, it turns out that nobody really believes it. They think and talk like that is the way it should be and that everybody would want it that way -- but under analysis this is not really the ethical authority principle that people use in their thinking. Partly because it is impossible and self-contradictory. If you mean by Democracy, that the Will of the Majority (WeThePeople) is the authority that defines right/wrong, sin/crime/punishment -- you will see that this simply cannot work operationally.

If this was true, here are the corollaries:

• Whatever King or President or Emperor, Congress, Parliament, or Committee decides to recommend into law shall be judged right or wrong, just or unjust - by majority of public opinion. If the legislation is "wrong" -- soldiers and policemen are responsible to punish king/committee according to whatever the ethical authority (will-of-the-people).
• If yesterday's majority opinion is different than today's - we need to retroactively punish those who were responsible for the miscarriage of justice. They (yesterday) were punishing the innocent and rewarding the guilty, and now there should be retribution.
• No father or pastor can teach what the sons and daughters should advocate to their friends and progeny, nor what is right to vote for in Elections, nor what kind of civil officers to vote for (based on announced political philosophy of candidate) -- until after the Election notifies everyone what the Will-Of-The-People defines for crime and punishments.
• We must wait until after the Election to tell us whether we should consider the new Election sovereign over the Old Election or vice versa.

By now, you should be getting my drift that this rationale is irrationale(sp) and contradictory and impossible to implement. Shouldn't voters who vote to punish the innocent and reward the guilty be punished or ignored? How shall we proceed if we have to know what is ethical before we vote for it, but defining what is ethical has to wait until after the "election"?

What if the "election" does not give a true and accurate summation of what the Majority thinks the crimes and punishments are supposed to be? What if Majority thinks it is not a good idea to go to the polls and vote ("it only encourages them"), or what if an unscrupulous minority finds a way to hinder the Majority from getting to the polls? What if an unscrupulous minority hijacks the vote-counting process so that it is impossible for anyone to know what Majority really thinks?

Even if you have an election, is it really possible to get an accurate assessment of what the true majority believes to be right? And even if you did, what difference would it make? Would the Lord Jesus Christ use Public Opinion with pertinent date/time stamp matching the day you lied/cheated/murdered in order to judge you according to your works - at the last judgment?

I think the whole majority-as-ethical-authority meme is completely impossible, self-contradictory, and greatly to be feared. I submit that what is really happening in people's brains, is that each individual is thinking, "we shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (sovereignly deciding - out from ourselves what is right and wrong)".

The only problem is that it is patently obvious, if men are responsible to punish other men by taking away life, liberty, or property in restitution -- that they must have an authority higher than any individual man's whim about the just definitions of what constitutes a crime and it's appropriate degree of punishment.

Am I right on this? To me, this illustrates the necessity of submitting to the Revelation of God for our definitions of crime and punishment. It does not seem logically possible to constitute ethical sovereignty from one man, many men or any man.

From this I deduce, that, not only is personal theft from another man a sin, and a crime punishable by forced restitution (usually double, and backed by indentured servitude, and - upon contempt of court - capital punishment) but also -- stealing in company of other thieves makes you liable for your proportion of restitution.

From that would also follow liability if you are benefitting from someone else stealing, to the degree that you know they are stealing. Even if you don't know, you will not hold legal title to whatever property you obtain from them -- if your thief did not hold legal title to that property.

A further corollary is the principle of the guilty bystander. If you observe a crime, you are responsible to witness on behalf of the victim, be it God or man (Lev 5), and to give a true witness, lest you become liable for perjury/false witness and "blood be on your head" (Dt. 19).

Now, in light of this, how should we think about the civic responsibilities of Men, 20 years old and upward? Then we can answer our secondary question:

Will it different in the age between Noah and Moses, Moses and David, David and Jesus, Pentecost to beginning of Millennium (if those two are different starting points, which I believe they are not different), and on through the time that Jesus supposedly sits bodily in the physical city of Jerusalem in Israel. Have you ever thought how things would be any different if He was bodily here? What would the police forces look like? What would the soldiered armies look like?

Eager for your thoughts.