Millennium Superworld — Chapter 1: Looking Ahead
The Millennium—How Long?
The word millennium is a combination of mille, meaning a “thousand” and annum, meaning “year.” When we talk about a millennium, we are talking about a thousand years or three hundred sixty-five thousand days, or more than eight million hours, or more than five hundred million minutes!
To get some idea of how long a thousand years is, imagine yourself living one thousand years ago, and think how different your life would have been. A thousand years ago, there was no paper as we know it, no steel; no plastics. There were no trains, steamboats, busses or cars. There was no printing press, no oil burner, no automated equipment and no light bulb. There was no telephone, or computer, or airliner, or jet propulsion. Columbus had not yet discovered the lands across the sea, nor were the people of that day even thinking for themselves. Ignorance, error, and medieval superstitions still enveloped all. Charlemagne had only recently passed from the scene of action, and the Crusaders would soon march.
That was ten centuries ago, a millennium past.
Now what do we see as we project our thinking a millennium ahead?
We cannot do this of ourselves; we have no power to know what will happen even tomorrow morning. To learn about the Millennium that is coming we must turn to the Word of God and learn God’s thoughts and plans.
When we speak about the Millennium in this book, we will be referring to a certain thousand-year period foretold in Scripture, God’s Millennium. Webster’s Dictionary describes it as the period of time during which “holiness is to prevail and Christ is to reign on earth” and all will experience “peace and prosperity.” Sometimes called “the Golden Age,” or “Utopia,” it will be a “state or place of ideal perfection in laws, government, and social conditions.”
The dictionary speaks of the Millennium as a dream—which it may be called, so ideal are the conditions it promises, so far beyond present imagination. But the danger of a dream is that we dismiss it as unreal. “Only a dream!” we say, and turn to face what we call reality. But if we believe the Bible, we can never call this coming era “only a dream.” As someone has said, “Call it rather the promise of God. Say not that it may be true, but that it is true”—as true as if it were already reality, because God has decreed it. And what He has decreed shall be!