Things We Don't Know about the Millennium

God in the Bible reveals many things about the future 1,000 year reign of Christ and the saints on earth, the millennium. It will be a time of peace, prosperity, and happiness all over the world. People will be taught God's way of life. They will be taught to obey God's commandments, and this will bring blessings. Satan will be put away and people will be able to understand the truth. The blinders will be taken away. They can be converted. God will set his hand to bring salvation to all mankind. Christ will rule the earth, with the saints, and He will rule with great power and authority. He will put an end to all war. He will administer justice.

The earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the seas are full of water (Isaiah 11:9).

The Feast of Tabernacles pictures the joy, peace, and prosperity of that millennium.

But God doesn't reveal every detail of what the millennium will be like. God does show many details. The nature of animals will be changed, for example.

Yet there can still be questions, questions that will not be fully answered until Christ returns, and it can be interesting to think about these questions and meditate about them. Some of them may make good topics of conversation during the Feast, to help focus our minds on the meaning of the Feast.

I will list some questions I have, and you may have more. As far as I know, the Church of God has not taken any definite position on these things, though I could be wrong, and readers can inform me. As far as I know, these things are fair game for speculation, as long as we do not take our speculations too seriously. We will find out for sure what the answers are after Christ returns.

How soon will God's truth and peace spread throughout all the earth? Will it start with Israel, then gradually spread over the entire globe? How long will it take? A few weeks? A year? Ten years? Nations that do not come up for the Feast of Tabernacles will have no rain (Zechariah 14:16-19), and it is hard to imagine how any nation can survive for very many years without rain.

What will be the average human lifespan in the millennium? Will most people born in the millennium live a full thousand years? With everyone taught God's way of life including the laws of health, with clean food and clean air, and with God's healing available, probably average lifetimes will be much greater than today. Adam lived almost 1,000 years.

How great will the population become by the end of the millennium? How many people will the earth be able to support during that time?

With probably the majority of people being converted, when will they be changed into spirit beings?

How much will modern technology play a role in the world economy and the lives of people in the millennium? Will most people be farmers and ranchers? Will there be internal combustion engines, oil refineries, and airplanes? Will there be electricity? Will there be computers, television, radio, and the telephone?

Will there be advances in scientific knowledge? There is much that science today does not know, things about space and time, things about fundamental particles that make up the atom, etc. Will Christ simply reveal these things, or will Christ have scientists continue experiments to learn because it is good for them to discover physical things by working?

If someone wants to sin, how far will he be allowed to go before he is stopped? Will people be allowed to harm others? Certainly there will be justice, but at what point and for what things will a person be stopped before he does the deed and what things will a wrongdoer be allowed to do and then punished for it to teach a lesson? For example, if a man wants to steal a possession of his neighbor, perhaps some money from his house, and plans to sneak in when he is not at home and at night when no one sees, will we allow him to do it, then punish him afterwards? Or will we stop him before he does it? And what if a man wants to attack a young woman? Will we only punish him after he has done the deed or will we stop him to protect the woman from harm?

If someone sins a sin for which the Bible prescribes the death penalty by stoning, will he be stoned to death? Will he be allowed to repent and be forgiven? If he is stoned to death, will he be cast into the lake of fire when he comes up in the white throne judgment? Or will he be cast into the lake of fire during the millennium?

What will the economy be like? Will there be business corporations? Will there be a stock market? Will there be banks? Will there be insurance companies?

These are some of the questions I wonder about, and I look forward to learning the answers after Christ returns. Perhaps you have wondered about some of these things. Perhaps you have different questions. You might have answers I do not have yet.

These are interesting things to think about, and thinking about them and talking about them during the Feast of Tabernacles may help us to keep our minds focused on the meaning of the Feast.


Here are links to related chapters or sections in Preaching the Gospel: 
 
The Feast of Tabernacles - the Millennial Rule of Christ, Chapter 2