The 1,000 Year Reign of Christ

“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.”  Revelation 20:6

There is so much in scripture that is fascinating to read about.  The 1,000 year reign of Christ, or as is also known as the “millennial reign”, is just one of these fascinating prophecies, but also a quite mysterious prophecy that is written in types, shadows, and symbols as is much of the book of Revelation.  Some folks do not take this to mean a literal 1,000 years because God’s timing is different than man’s.  They base their belief on II Peter 3:8:  “…that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”  Some believe that the millennial reign is entirely spiritual.  Many others take the 1,000 years literally because scripture says that it is a 1,000 reign.  How long it actually is doesn’t matter because Jesus will be the Ruler over all, thus, to me, each day will be special whether there is one or 365,000 of them.

The question arises, what will transpire during this reign as Christ rules the world in righteousness and truth?  (That will certainly be quite different than what we are subject to these days).  Scripture gives us no information as to what will occur during the millennial reign of Christ other than He will reign in peace and righteousness, and those who have received Him as Lord and Savior will reign with Him.  I don’t know about you, but that is difficult for me to imagine that I would be able to rule alongside the King of kings and Lord of lords.  I certainly don’t feel qualified to do that, but because Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross justified me before the Father, any help that I can give in ruling over the entire world will only be because Jesus is ruling through me just like He lives His life through me in this world.  (Again it will be quite different for the righteous to rule rather than the wicked.)

According to Charles Swindoll, noted Bible expositor, in his book “Insights on Revelation”, during the millennial reign, earth’s inhabitants who survived the tribulation will carry on life as before, marrying and having families.  The children of these survivors will be born in sin just as children are now due to the sin inherent from Adam and Eve’s transgression.  In order to be right with God, they will have to repent and receive Christ, just like folks do now.  During the thousand years, many generations will be born, all with the need to be saved in order to live eternally because their bodies will pass away just like now.  But, also like today, many will be rebellious and refuse Christ even though they may make an outward show of piety, but inwardly they will have a darkened and hardened heart.  Satan will have been locked up for these 1,000 years and unable to deceive the nations (Revelation 20:3), thus proving that men and women don’t need the devil to urge them to sin.  As the movie title says, “I Can Do Bad All By Myself”.  Therefore at the end of the 1,000 years, the earth will be populated with the saints who inhabit a resurrection body, never to die again, and humans who were born during the latter end of the 1,000 years (we don’t know how long the life spans of folks will be during the millennial period), consisting of some who will be believers and some unbelievers.  (I believe that there are a lot more unbelievers in our day than believers, and it may be the same during the thousand year reign.)

Also at the end of the 1,000 years, Satan will be allowed to be freed from the bottomless pit into which he had been cast by God, and where he had much time to plot and plan his revenge.   Once freed, he will spend whatever time that God allows him to deceive the nations and gather his army (Revelation 20:8).  Satan’s army will consist of those who were still living and had rejected Christ at the end of the millennial reign along with Satan’s demons.  Satan will no longer be masquerading as anything but the devil, the one who was called Lucifer.  We don’t know how he will appear, but I would suspect that he would be a very scary and ruthless individual.  Since most of his army was born after the seven year tribulation period, none would have the memory of all the horrible chaos that occurred at that time.  Because Satan will deceive them, I imagine that they would not completely understand the magnitude of their rejection of Christ until it will be too late.  The 1,000 year reign of Christ would be so peaceful, and I suppose no one would be in need, thus we wonder why many would even consider rebelling against Jesus.  It all goes back to Adam and Eve.  They lived in a paradise with every need met, but yet they rebelled because they listened to Satan rather than to God, and thus all people born since that time are born with a sinful and rebellious heart.  That’s why God sent Jesus to make atonement for all those who would repent and believe in Him.

Once God’s enemies finally gather with Satan and plot their attack, they will surround Jerusalem, but they will not be able to draw a weapon, throw a bomb, fire a bazooka, or even make threats because God will send fire from heaven and consume every one of them (Revelation 20:9).  They won’t know what hit them.  It will happen in an instant.  All evil will be gone forever.  The earth will be rid of all hatred, violence, anger, suffering, and pain.  The bodies of all of God’s enemies will be gone, and their souls will be banished to Hades to await God’s judgment and the second death, which is the eternal banishment to hell for all those whose names were not found written in the Book of Life (Revelation 20:15).  Satan will be cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10) never to roam the earth again in search of souls to conquer.  When will all of this happen?  No one but God knows, but it will happen exactly as Jesus said.  It could be very soon or many years away, but there’s no time like the present to be prepared.