THE MILLENNIUM

All of us in God’s Church understand that the Feast of Tabernacles points to Jesus Christ’s millennial rule over this planet Earth. That rule will start soon after Jesus Christ’s return, and it will last for 1000 years.

This is a teaching that the Church in this present age has understood and accepted since Mr. Armstrong’s early years in the Church. As long as any of us in God’s Church can remember, we have understood that at His second coming Jesus Christ will establish a perfect world for 1000 years.

It is therefore somewhat surprising to me how many people in the Church still don’t understand some of the most profound aspects of Christ’s rule during the millennium. So let’s examine two of the things about the millennium that some of us probably already understand, but which so many people in most Church of God groups still have considerable problems understanding.

Almost all wrong ideas about the millennial rule of Jesus Christ can be led back to people trying to establish the millennium "in our image", meaning that they try to extrapolate our present circumstances in this present world into the ideal environment during the millennium.

We look at what we are used to in our world, and then assume that therefore the same factors must apply during the millennium. But what is "normal" in our world today isn’t necessarily normal at all when God will be ruling!

It is easy to overlook that many of the things that we look upon as "normal" are in reality a part of the penalties that God has imposed on rebellious humanity in the course of the past approximately 6000 years. From God’s point of view those things are not intended to be "normal".

Let’s start by looking at how long we human beings live.

We know that in our age today any age over 80 years is a good age. And a very small percentage of people even end up reaching 100 years of age. Now many of you who have read my past articles have probably read in some of those articles that those human beings who live over into the millennium will live for the whole 1000 years. And those who are born in the year 100 of the millennium will live for the next 900 years, etc. You have perhaps also read in some of my articles that during the millennium people will not die, except for those who rebel against God. After all, death was instituted by God as a penalty for disobedience.

Most of the people who are today scattered throughout the various organizations of the Church of God don’t understand this. They cannot grasp that God will give people a 1000-year physical lifespan. After all, today it is impossible for any human being to live that long, right? Today it is utterly absurd to think that anyone could live for 1000 years, right? And why would God possibly want human beings to live that long anyway? Why not just test them for 50 years or for 100 years, and then change them into spirit beings?

Let’s consider an analogy. Different people get different amounts of vacation time from their employers. Some people only get one week every year, while other people may get four weeks or more of vacation time every year. Let’s suppose that with your job you just get one week every year, while my employer gives me four weeks every year.

Would you ever say to me:

The answer in this situation is:

Now obviously, no employee would turn down additional vacation time at full pay. But that is what people who want to opt for shorter physical lives during the millennium are doing; they are turning down additional vacation time at full pay. They are trying to shorten a time of enormous blessings.

When God offers people 1000 years of life in paradise-like circumstances with mind-boggling blessings from God at every turn, why would any human being say: can’t we hurry this up a bit? Wouldn’t 100 years be generous enough so that we can move on towards our goal of becoming spirit beings in the Family of God? Do we really have to live for 1000 whole years before we can move on?

Would a happy, healthy 6-year old boy who lives in a happy family environment, and who has plenty of happy peer interactions with other happy 6-year olds, and who enjoys all of the mildly challenging situations his parents provide for him day after day, and who every night goes to sleep looking forward to what tomorrow may bring ... would such a child really say: why can’t I become a fully mature adult within the next four weeks, so I can engage in all the adult activities and responsibilities of life? Why can’t I just get this childhood thing over and done with? Or would he wake up day after day with an unquenchable thirst for more knowledge and more understanding and more excitement?

Life under the rule of Jesus Christ is going to be exciting and enjoyable and satisfying and fulfilling on a scale that no human beings have ever experienced. For those during the millennium who willingly and joyfully submit their minds to God, physical life is going to be so enjoyable and so exciting that they would like it to carry on for a long time.

They know that they have all future eternity in God’s Family ahead of them, once they "grow up"; and they will not be in any hurry "to get through their childhood", so to speak. Jesus Christ will be like the parent who wants to make life for His children as interesting and exciting and enjoyable as He possibly can, and the children will be very appreciative of the love and concern and guidance that Jesus Christ will provide. And they will experience immense joy and happiness.

For God those 1000 years are like a day. And when we human beings are really enjoying ourselves time just seems to fly. Have you ever noticed that? So for people in the millennium who are really enjoying their lives in utopian conditions life will just be flying by. Recall that when Jacob served Laban for seven years, those seven years seemed "but a few days" to Jacob (see Genesis 29:20), because of the love Jacob had for Rachel. Have you ever noticed that when life is exciting, then things always seem to go much faster than we would like them to go?

That’s the way life will be during the millennium; that’s what life will be like when Jesus Christ will rule over mortal human beings. And that will also be what life will be like in the immortal Family of God for all future eternity ... that time will just seem to be flying by, because every aspect of our lives will be so enjoyable and so fulfilling.

When I attended my first Feast of Tabernacles in England in 1967, 50 years ago, one minister in one sermon speculated about how during the millennium after the first 100 years or so at every Feast of Tabernacles Jesus Christ would announce the names of those who were about to be changed from mortal human beings into spirit beings. The idea was that throughout the millennium the number of spirit-born members of God’s Family would increase every year.

It is not possible for anyone to become a spirit-born member of God’s Family during the millennium. For one thing, there are no positions of rulership available during the millennium. For another thing, people who submit to God during the millennium are not equal to anyone in the first resurrection. And they will not be put on a par with those in the first resurrection before the millennium has ended. (i.e. by "on a par" I am referring to "also being changed into spirit beings" and not to actual status within God’s Family.)

God is very meticulous in making people like Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and David and Peter and Paul, etc. wait until everyone for the first resurrection has been selected by God. Nobody goes ahead of anyone else in the first resurrection. Paul’s statements in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 regarding "the dead in Christ shall rise first" is talking about a split-second. For all practical purposes everyone in the first resurrection is changed into a spirit being at exactly the same time, certainly within the same minute, much like twins are really the same age.

So when God is so careful to make those who have already been selected for the first resurrection wait until everyone else for that resurrection has been selected, then God will obviously also follow the same approach with the following stage for the development of the Family of God.

It would be extremely unfair to let some people become members of God’s Family in the year 150 or 200 of the millennium, simply because they happened to be born 800 years before some other people, who would only be born 50 or 100 years before the end of the millennium. The time during the millennium at which people happen to live does not influence the time when they will have the opportunity to become spirit-born sons and daughters of God. So people can live 800 or more years apart, and they will both have to wait until the end of the 100-year period for those in the second resurrection, before they will be changed into spirit beings. And they will not really be "waiting", because for them time will just be whizzing by. The 100-year period will be especially exciting for all those who have lived through a part of the millennium, because they will get to meet and interact with people who had lived in an age before their time.

All those who are trained and tested by God under the same conditions will also become a part of God’s Family at the same time as everyone else in that group. And since all the people in the millennium and the people who come up in the second resurrection and who then live for 100 years, live under the same conditions, therefore they all become a part of God’s Family at the same time. Paul refers to all those people as "the end ones" (KJV reads "the end") in 1 Corinthians 15:23-24. And in Revelation 7:9 the same people are pictured as "a great multitude which no man could number".

So the bottom line is: During the millennium no physical human being will be changed into a spirit being. And neither will any human beings die during the millennium, except for those who rebel against God.

Consider the rebellion during the millennium when God destroys five-sixths of the armies of Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal (see Ezekiel 39:1-7). After that army is destroyed there will then be people working full-time for seven months to bury the remains of that rebel army (verse 12). After that period of seven months travelers will be required to set up a mark wherever they find an isolated human bone (Ezekiel 39:15). The clear intent is to ensure that every single human bone is buried. During the millennium Jesus Christ will not want one single human bone lying around anywhere.

Now what would possibly be the point of being so meticulous in keeping an eye open for any human bone that had previously been overlooked, if at the same time people are actually regularly dying of old age? Currently, in the year 2017, over 150,000 people die around the world every single day (and over 300,000 babies are born every day). What if during the millennium the worldwide population once again approaches current numbers ... would that mean that then 150,000 people would supposedly die every day?

Why would Jesus Christ possibly be concerned about having every single human bone from one particular group of people buried, when 100,000 people or more are supposedly once again dying of old age every single day?

When you carefully think through Jesus Christ’s detailed instructions to ensure that every single human bone from members of that rebellious army is buried, then you should understand that this instruction is based on the premise that during Jesus Christ’s millennial rule nobody will die (the rebel army excluded); there will never be any human bones for anyone to lay eyes on (apart from the bones of the rebels). Human bones defile a land; they make it unclean, and the land must then be cleansed (see Ezekiel 39:16).

The principle underlying the instructions to bury every single human bone is that human beings will not be dying during that period of time (except for those rebels).

Consider also what the Apostle Peter said in Acts.

Here is this verse.

"Restitution" here means "restoration", and "world" here means "the age". Peter is here saying that since the beginning of "this age", which age began after the flood in the days of Noah, God’s prophets have stated that there must be "a restoration of all things". And God is really the One who spoke through His prophets. The actual restoration goes back to conditions at the time of Adam’s creation, but God’s prophets have been speaking about this since the time of Noah.

Now here is the point we need to understand:

So in order to understand what will happen during the millennium, we need to ask: what are all the things that changed after Adam and Eve sinned?

One thing that changed was that death entered the picture!

God had very clearly told Adam that "in the day you eat thereof you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Death was a penalty for sin. And it had not been God’s original intention that human beings would ever die. If Adam had not sinned, then he also would not have died a physical death ... that was God’s original intention. This is something Paul understood very clearly.

Death for us human beings only entered this physical existence because "one man" had sinned. Instead of trying to spin this verse or to read something into it that isn’t said, let’s just believe what Paul said! Death entered our human existence because Adam sinned. If Adam had passed that test and not sinned, then human beings would not have needed to die, at least not those human beings who would obey God and live by God’s laws.

Before that "one man" (i.e. Adam) sinned, death for mankind was not a part of God’s plan. I don’t mean that it would have been impossible for man to die. Potentially man could certainly have died from the moment that God had created Adam. But before Adam sinned it was not God’s intention that man would experience a physical death. Human beings could have continued to live right up to the time when God would have "translated" them into spirit-born sons of God.

That’s what Paul is basically saying in Romans 5:12. Why is that so difficult to understand? Probably because God isn’t real to most people.

When Paul says "and so death passed upon all men", Paul is saying "and in that way death passed upon all men".

Death is a penalty, the penalty for sin. That’s what Paul also pointed out in Romans 6:23. When there is no sin, then there is also no penalty. So when there is no sin, then there is no death.

To the Corinthians Paul said:

Death is "an enemy" and death is also "a penalty". The reason death is "destroyed" is because from then onwards there will be no more sin. The penalty is only totally eliminated when the cause for that penalty has also been totally eliminated.

Now during Jesus Christ’s rule death will never be applied as a penalty for sins, except for when there is an open rebellion against the Government of Jesus Christ (see again Ezekiel 38-39). To prevent the death penalty ever having to be invoked, outside of that blatant rebellion, Jesus Christ will during the millennium see to it that "your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, This is the way, walk you in it, when you turn to the right hand, and when you turn to the left" (Isaiah 30:21).

If during the millennium Jesus Christ did allow human beings to turn away from the right way of living, then Christ would also at some point have to impose the death penalty upon such individuals. By stopping them from walking down the road of sin, it means that there is no need to impose the death penalty on anyone (except for the rebels of Ezekiel 38-39) during the entire period when people will "hear a word" behind them when they are tempted to sin.

In simple terms:

During the millennium Jesus Christ will prevent people from sinning so that the penalty for sin never needs to be imposed on anyone (the rebels excluded). This ensures that all people can continue to live until the end of the millennium, at which time Satan will be loosed for a short period to initiate a division between the wheat and the chaff. And then vast numbers of people will die (Revelation 20:8-9).

It seems very obvious to me that when God created Adam and Eve, God was prepared for the possibility that human beings might never have to experience death. Creating them as physical and potentially mortal beings meant that God provided for the possibility but not necessarily the inevitability of letting human beings die. God had prepared for both options.

We also need to understand what it means to say that God (i.e. Jesus Christ during the millennium) is ruling. When God rules then there is no death. Theoretically having people die while Jesus Christ is ruling would seriously interfere with Christ’s rule. It would imply that Christ is powerless in the face of inevitable death for those over whom He is ruling. But death has no power in the presence of Jesus Christ. And during the millennium Jesus Christ will never go to any funeral because some righteous person had (theoretically) died of old age.

So here is what we need to understand: During the millennium death is not an option. And during the millennium being changed into a spirit being is also not an option. And so living till at least the end of the millennium is really the only option.

Consider also that giving people a 1000-year lifespan is hardly different from what God gave to Adam and to people right up to the time of Noah. So "the restoration of all things" really demands that people be given a potential lifespan of 1000+ years. Our shortness of life today is the result of numerous penalties that God has imposed since the time of Adam. When Jesus Christ removes all those penalties during the millennium, then a lifespan of 1000+ years will not be out of the ordinary. And the people who joyfully submit their minds to God’s will and to God’s way of life will come to expect long, productive, exciting, enjoyable lives, without having to die.

So we need to get away from our way of thinking regarding how long people will live. Simply because today only a tiny fraction of people ever reach age 100 years, that doesn’t mean that 100 years is "a good age" by God’s standards. And we should not expect people during the millennium to age as rapidly as we do today in our polluted world.

Now let’s look at one other major facet of life during the millennium.

All of you who have in the past read my articles about money understand that money will not exist in the millennium. But it is amazing how difficult a concept a moneyless society is to grasp for people in many of the Church of God groups today.

Money is normal for us, and we have a hard time picturing life in a world where money does not exist. Our lives virtually revolve around money, and we need money for almost everything we do. And so it is not surprising that money is the single most coveted item in the whole world.

Everything we do requires money. We need money to buy the food we eat. We need money to pay for traveling to other places, and even just for getting around (gas for the car, fares for trains and buses, etc.). We need money to buy warm clothes for winter, and to keep our houses cool in summer. We need money to pay for all our entertainment activities. Almost everything we do has in one way or another a monetary price-tag attached to it.

The greatest reason why the majority of people go to work is in order to obtain money from someone else, be that the employer or the client or the customer, etc. People will do almost any kind of work, just to be paid some money for doing it.

Money is the ultimate incentive for most crimes. Money represents power, and so the richest people are typically also amongst the most powerful people.

The Apostle Paul was instructing Timothy regarding how Timothy should look after God’s people. And Paul said the following:

In my December 2015 article "God Hates All Forms Of Pride" I thoroughly discuss this verse. As it stands here in the KJV the focus of Paul’s statement is "the love of money". But that’s not what Paul was focusing on. In the Greek text which Paul wrote, the word order is different, and the correct focus is "the root of all evil".

Even the grammatical structure of our English translation here reveals that there is something wrong with the English text. The antecedent for the expression "which while some coveted after" would imply that people coveted "the root of all evil". But that is not what they coveted. They coveted money.

So here Paul was not defining "the love of money". No, Paul was really defining what is "the root of all evil". And, as explained in my article, a more correct translation of this verse based on the word order of the Greek text should read:

Now let’s think about this for a while. Here we are told that virtually all evil can in one way or another be traced back to money. "The love for money" means "the desire for money". Now as long as money exists, the human mind can desire it and lust after it and put out enormous efforts to get it, doing whatever it may take to get it. The human mind can work for it, gamble for it, steal it, take enormous risks to get it, etc.

But what happens if money doesn’t exist?

It is pretty difficult to desire money when the concept of money doesn’t exist in any form. When the concept of money doesn’t exist in any form (i.e. no trading or bartering either), then one very powerful root for all evil has been eliminated. During the millennium Jesus Christ will not promote any roots of evil.

All roots of evil need to be eradicated as much as possible. And this root is easy to remove: just abolish the whole concept of money, which is the standard-bearer for the "get-way of life", as Mr. Armstrong used to call it. That standard-bearer simply cannot exist during Jesus Christ’s millennial rule. It needs to be abolished. And it will be abolished.

For those who believe that money will be used in the world tomorrow, here are some questions:

1) Would such money during the millennium consist of metal coins, or would it be paper money, or would it be seashells or some pebbles or some other physical item? What would that money look like?

2) Who would produce that money during the millennium ... human miners who dig down into the earth to get the metals, as well as lung diseases from breathing in the dust in those mines? Would people use explosives to break down the rocks? Would they use toxic chemical processes to produce the pure metals for their coins?

3) Who during the millennium would control just how much money is in circulation? Would there be banks or financial institutions involved? Or would people walk around with their little bags of silver and gold, and then buy whatever they wanted to buy?

4) Who would produce goods that they would want to sell to people who have money to buy their goods. What if people want your goods, but they only have about 10% of the money you have set as your selling price ... do you tell them to come back when they have more money? Or do you accept their 10% as a down-payment and expect them to pay you the other 90% over a period of time? How would that work? Or do they go into debt to get the goods you have produced?

5) Will people during the millennium be willing to sell their time and work for other people, so that they can then get some money from their employers? All employment for money is a form of slavery, from God’s point of view. Further, what will be the real motivation of people who seek work for payment ... will it be a desire to get money? Every employee is a slave who must do what his employer tells him to do. So employees are not really free.

The existence of money forces us to think selfishly!

It forces us to focus on what we want to get, and what we want to get in turn determines what we are prepared to do. Some things people might not be willing to do for a low monetary return, but if that is changed into a much higher monetary return, then people might be swayed to do those things after all.

If there is a monetary price attached to anything, then it forces us to think: is this worth the money I must pay for it? Or is it too expensive? Can I afford this even when it is too expensive, because I really want it? In all these things I have to think about myself, and not about the seller and whatever his needs might be. A monetary price on anything unavoidably reinforces "the get-way of life". If I have more money, then I can get more. And if I don’t have money, then I can only get less than other people who do have money.

And here is the most important point:

Oh yes, we may ask God to give us "our daily bread", but we really know that we’ll have to take money down to the grocery shop so that we can then come home with all the food items we want to have. And if we don’t take any money with us, then we won’t get the food items either. So in order to go to the grocery store, we don’t need God, we just need money.

So here is what God says about the millennium.

It should be easy to recognize that we are here dealing with a mistranslation. In English the word "buy" means: to acquire by payment, to obtain in exchange for something. But in this verse it is explicitly stated that there is no payment, and nothing is to be given in exchange for what will be received.

So the verb "buy" in this verse is obviously a mistranslation!

The Hebrew verb here translated as "buy" is "shabar". And this verb "shabar" is formed from the noun "sheber", which means "food" in general and "wheat" or "grain" specifically. So the Hebrew verb "shabar" literally means "get food" or "get grain". So consider this: this Hebrew verb "shabar" is in the KJV translated 15 times as "buy" and 6 times as "sell".

In English we don’t have any word that means "to buy" and also "to sell" at the same time. That’s because we view the two extremities of the one transaction as opposites. When an item changes ownership, then we have the seller at the one side, and we have the buyer at the other side. The one transaction requires both a buyer and a seller. And if someone is not prepared to sell something, then you can’t have a buyer for that something. Similarly, if nobody is willing to buy an item, then you don’t have a seller for that item either.

But that’s not how the Hebrew verb "shabar" is used. The focus of "shabar" is that "somebody receives food to eat". That could be because that person bought the food for money, or it could be because that food was given to that person without any price attached to what was given.

So the appropriate way to translate Isaiah 55:1 is:

This is a glimpse into life during the millennial rule of Jesus Christ. Now why do you think these people will receive food and wine and milk without having to pay any money? Why does it say that during the millennium people will not need money in order to eat and to drink?

Notice the expression "without price". Do you know what that means? It means that during the millennium things will not have a monetary price! That is what God is telling us right here. And the expressions "no money" and "without money" tell us that during the millennium money will not exist.

That’s what things will be like during the millennium. It will really be a case of praying "Father, please give us our daily food today", and God will provide bumper crops so that there will not be room enough to store those crops.

Now there is no room in this picture for anyone to ever have to buy anything. It is a picture of God providing everything that a God-fearing people could possibly need. There is no place for money anywhere in this picture. How could a people to whom God gives and gives and gives, to the point that the people couldn’t possibly store it all, then turn around to their fellow human beings and say "I will sell this to you for so much money"?

Will people during the millennium not try to emulate God’s spirit of generosity, and likewise be willing to freely give to other people the things those people need or might like? God will be teaching people a lesson in selfless service and in extreme generosity; so how can those same people then demand a price for what they can easily give to others?

But that is something we don’t really need to be taught. Instead, selfishness is something we need to learn to overcome. And eradicating the whole concept of buying and selling and trading and money will go a good way towards learning to overcome our selfish tendencies, because the total absence of that way of thinking will change people’s focus towards God’s way of thinking.

In God’s sight there is no place for "I will give you this if you will give me that". That type of thinking is anathema to God. And it must also become anathema to the people who will live during the millennium. God will expect people to learn and to embrace "the give way" of thinking.

Right, we have now considered just two changes that will occur in the world tomorrow, namely:

1) People will not die during the millennium.

2) The concept of money will be abolished.

Those two things all by themselves will have staggering ramifications and consequences. For example:

1) Nobody will come and clean your house or work in your garden or on your farm in return for a wage or salary you would pay them. Nobody will work in your shop or your factory or plantation to help you produce huge quantities of widgets that nobody has any money to buy from you.

2) There will be no office buildings and no office jobs for anyone.

3) No doctors, lawyers, policemen, civil servants, businessmen, factories, electric appliances, guns, etc. (For a more complete list check out all the categories listed in the Yellow Pages of a big city like New York or London, because all those jobs and professions won’t exist.)

4) No elected government officials (i.e. politicians) and no elections.

5) No radio and television stations, no advertising industry, no printing industry.

6) No hospitals and no doctors and no old age homes.

7) No transport industry, no planes and no cars and no trains.

8) No banks and no financial institutions and no stock exchanges and no insurance companies.

You yourself can probably add another dozen categories of professions and trades that will then be obsolete.

Now when you add into this mix some of the other things that will also change during the millennium, then we are starting to approach the type of existence that God had intended for man before Adam and Eve chose to reject God’s way of life. Some of the other things that will change include:

1) God will give all people everywhere one pure language (Zephaniah 3:9). Then everyone on earth will speak the same language. And there will only be one "dialect" worldwide for that one language. By simply listening to people speak, you will no longer be able to tell what part of the world they have come from, because that "dialect" will be uniform worldwide, patterned after the way Jesus Christ will speak. That condition will help to remove the barriers between "us" and "them".

2) No animal will hurt anyone. All animals will be peaceful and harmless (see Isaiah 11:6-9; Isaiah 65:25).

3) God will always provide rain in due season (Leviticus 26:4; Deuteronomy 11:14).

4) God will instantly answer the prayers of all repentant people (Isaiah 65:24).

5) As far as the long lifespan is concerned, we know that some trees live longer than 1000 years. See Isaiah 65:22.

When all these things are put into effect during Jesus Christ’s 1000-year rule, then we’ll be approaching the point of "the restitution of all things" (see Acts 3:21 again).

It is going to be a vastly different world and different existence from the one we have right now. And it is a mistake for us to try to picture the world tomorrow in terms of some of the things we have in our world today. It is the hailstorm of the seventh plague (see Revelation 16:21) that will see to it that nothing from our present civilizations will survive into the time when Jesus Christ will rule.

And we should understand that Jesus Christ is not going to establish a world based on anything that the first approximately 6000 years of human existence have produced. Everything will be established the way God had originally, before Adam sinned, intended things to develop.

It will indeed be "The Wonderful World Tomorrow".

Frank W Nelte