32 - The Millennium

What is the millennium? When does it occur? Will Christians go through the great tribulation?

We are in the final unit of Grudem’s book, and are considering events that will happen in the future. The study of future events is often called “eschatology,” from the Greek word eschatos, which means “last.” The study of eschatology, then, is the study of “the last things.”

The word millennium means “one thousand years” (from Lat. millennium, “thousand years”). The term comes from Revelation 20:4–5, where it says that certain people “came to life, and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.” Just prior to this statement, we read that an angel came down from heaven and seized the devil “and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were ended” (Rev. 20:2–3).

Throughout the history of the church there have been four major views on the time and nature of this “millennium.” These views, along with scripture support for each, will be reviewed and analyzed in lesson 32. Our purpose is not to favor any of them over each other, but to better understand them and in turn better understand fellow believers who hold views different from our own.

Anyone who reads the Bible on a regular basis has begun to develop a “theology” of who God is and what he has revealed of Himself to man down through history. But is it organized to the point where you can confidently say “this is what the Bible teaches” on a particular topic, or do you just base your beliefs on random verses that could well be misunderstood because they are taken out of context?

My confidence in going out to share the Gospel with strangers comes largely from my study of “Systematic Theology”, which I’ll define as learning what the whole Bible teaches us about a given topic. I’m confident that I’m not misrepresenting God as revealed in his Word, and I’m confident when people make unbiblical claims about God that challenge my own beliefs. I’m increasingly amazed by the consistency of the Bible, written by so many human authors but without contradiction, that I can only conclude it was written by divine inspiration.

I’ve gained so much personally from my systematic study of theology that I’m teaching a 34-week class on it at church, based on Dr. Wayne Grudem’s books “Systematic Theology” and “Bible Theology”. I’m excited to dig deeper personally as I prepare the outlines and lessons, and I want to take as many people along with me on this journey as possible. So I am recording the class and posting the videos to my YouTube channel, and making downloadable PDF chapter outlines and audio recordings available on a Google Drive folder as well.

Care to join me? Links to my YouTube channel and shared resources are as follows:
Video: YouTube.com/c/JeffReiman
Shared Resources folder: https://tinyurl.com/yxy2kb56