What is the Millennial week?
The Millennial week is a term used by Bible scholars that refers to a particular version of interpretation in regards to biblical prophecy. The Millennial week theory is seen as a preposterous idea by many of today’s scholars. Many, but not all, biblical and secular scholars look at the idea with great disdain. And that’s stating it mildly.
Why is that? What is the Millennial week theory of Bible prophecy?
The idea was initially based on the earliest Genesis accounts of creation. The Lord created the earth and all that was on it and around it, (the universe) in six days. He rested on the seventh day as a pattern for humanity to follow.
The Millennial week
Each of those six days was an actual twenty-four-hour day but they also represented a prophetic calendar of the future. In six thousand years, mankind’s story of success and failure would finish. And then, the Lord would invite faithful believers to enter into a thousand years of rest. It amounted to six thousand years of work that corresponded to God’s initial work week followed by a one-thousand-year period of rest.
There are several Old and New Testament passages that support this theory. I will point out just a couple but first, there is the 1,000-pound gorilla I need to bring up. Today’s scientific community ardently opposes as ludicrous, the idea that the earth is only six-thousand years old. And if the Millennial week theory is true then the history of humanity must be a mere six thousand years old. That is a fact that is hard to accept with the mountain of scientific evidence. And the biblical community has overwhelmingly followed the lead of the scientists and accepted that the earth is several billion years old. I will not take the time to discuss all of the very solid evidence that supports a very old universe. In this post, I am merely bringing up the fact that the Millennial week is supported by scripture in addition to a large majority of biblical scholarship up until and shortly after the time of Christ.
What about science?
I am a huge fan of science and have struggled with the six-thousand-year theory. But there’s a huge problem we, as Christians, must deal with. The biblical chronology gives us very little wiggle room. There are only, approximately, four thousand years in the Old Testament history. And now we have another two thousand years since the birth of Christ. So who is right, the scientists or God’s Word?
Christians have fudged on this ever since some guy named Darwin went on a boat ride and drew some pictures of finches. Charles Darwin was raised in the Christian faith but later strayed from it. His own apostasy led to his theory of evolution as a way to question the Word of God. And now, his apostasy has brought about the same effect in modern Christianity. We don’t trust God’s Word. Instead, we trust godless scientists.
I’ll address many of these issues in future articles because the Millennial week theory is enormously important as we look forward to what the Lord has planned.
Here are some key verses.
These verses below are just some of the reasons we should believe that God established a six-thousand-year plan for humanity’s future.
2 Peter 3:8
Beloved, do not let this one thing escape your notice: With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
Man and Woman in the Garden
Genesis 2: 15-17
…15 Then the LORD God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.
16 And the LORD God commanded him, “You may eat freely from every tree of the garden.
17 But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”…
And in closing, I will leave you with some quotes from early Church fathers regarding this passage in Genesis. It’s very enlightening as to what they believed.
Book of Jubilees
Here is a quote from the Book of Jubilees. The book was written during the time of the Babylonian captivity.
“… Adam died, and all his sons buried him in the land of his creation, … And he lacked seventy years of one thousand years; for one thousand years are as one day in the testimony of the heavens and therefore was it written concerning the tree of knowledge: ‘On the day that ye eat thereof ye will die.’ For this reason, he did not complete the years of this day; for he died during it.”
Church father Irenaeus
And here is a quote from Irenaeus as he comments on Genesis two.
“Thus then, in the day that they did eat, in the same did they die, … for since ‘a day of the Lord is as a thousand years,’ he did not overstep the thousand years, but died within them, thus bearing out the sentence of sin. … That he [Adam] did not overstep the thousand years but died within their limit, it follows that, in regard to all these significations, God is indeed true. “
Church father Justin Martyr
This is what Justin Martyr said about the passage.
“For as Adam was told that in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years. We have perceived, moreover, that the expression, ‘The day of the Lord is as a thousand years,’ is connected with this subject.”
God told Adam he would die the same day that he ate the fruit. That could only be true if the Lord was referring to a prophetic day that equaled a thousand years. Or we could make it an allegory. We can say God didn’t really mean Adam would die that day — just sort of die. 😉
Let me know what you think.