A Thousand Years With Christ

Raymond Brown, the late and much cherished New Testament scholar, once shared with me how frustrated he felt whenever he heard or read Bible teachers making too much of too little in the texts. Ruefully, he went on to illustrate his concern by referring to the bewitchment of theologians by a strange tradition which spoke about a coming thousand year reign of Christ on earth. (Revelation 20: 4-6) Later, in his one volume Introduction to the New Testament, noting that only two verses in the whole of this book mention the milennium at all, Father Brown wrote in a characteristically understated way, “there has been an enormous, indeed an extravagant growth, from small beginnings.” (p. 801)

Has there ever! From the humble musings of Justin and Tertullian in the 2nd and 3rd centuries through the pious certitudes of John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren of the early 19th to the boisterousness of Hal Lindsey and of the Left Behind novels in the late 20th, chiliastic ranting about the end-time has been the in thing for every Bible-pounding, fire-and-brimstone, viciously angry preacher and writer worth his and her share at the offering and royalty troughs. Speaking eloquently about these matters, or at least loudly, pretty much guarantees success in today’s Christian marketplace, and jihadist Muslim clerics aren’t doing so badly at it themselves.

The problem is that Revelation’s reference to the 1000 reign is so shrouded in ambiguity that it not only interferes with the cause of the book itself --- the unveiling of humankind’s future in God --- it undermines that cause altogether. For example, it has seduced people into spending embarrassing amounts of time and energy trying to figure out whether the reign starts before or after the rapture, de-forming theology into low comedy. (Who could have imagined that grown men and women would one day devote even half a breath to the merits of “pre” and “post” milennialism?) More worrisomely still, it annuls Paul’s hardest won and single most important affirmation of faith --- that we are saved by grace --- by conjuring the end-time as a time of judgment according to one’s deeds. 

As for the end-time itself, Paul remained content simply to reassure people that Christ would come again, as and when God chooses, and that it will not matter how short or how long the wait might be: living or dead, Jesus’ followers will be with him forever. (1 Thess. 4:14) During his earthly life, Jesus, too, retained a healthy scepticism about preaching the end-time with too much specificity. (Mark 13:32) To be sure, a lot of troubles do await us before we get to history’s end, but then again, what else is new?

Writing perhaps around the time of Revelation, the author of 2 Peter appears to have kept more of his wits about him than John did, even as he also struggled with the Diocletian reign of terror against the Christian community. He does not regale us with visions of Satanic legions in the heavens and underworld, or of an anti-Christ now among us, or of chained and unchained beasts whose movements in and out and up and down are governed by a thoroughly put-out God’s hastily distributed calendar of doom. Instead, he reassures believers anguishing over how long they must suffer for their convictions and commitments with the reminder that the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, but rather that he continues to be patient with us, so that “all should come to repentance.” (3:9)

It was in this context of offering reassurance that the writer of 2 Peter drew upon his own understanding of just what a “thousand years” means in the Bible. It meant to him exactly what it meant to the Psalmist: “for in your sight a thousand years are as the passing of one day or as a watch in the night.” (Psalm 90:4) God’s time is not like our time, and when we begin to understand this, we will become more patient with the ways He is working his purposes out. Yes, the writer goes on, there will come a day of the Lord, on which day “the whole universe is to dissolve.” (3:11) Then, however, will come new heavens and a new earth (emphasis mine), “in which justice will be established.” (vs 13) Just as in John’s vision of a new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. (Rev. 21:2)

Magnificent! And without Satanic seductions, a final battle on the plain of Megiddo, lakes of fire and sulphur, and a Doomsday Book. The Lord is near, but his calendar is set diffferently from ours. In the meantime, though, his message remains brilliantly clear: fear not.