The Millennium

Check out this link from Sam Storms at Enjoying God. I've only begun exploring it but it looks like a pretty good resource to start thinking about end-time ideas.

A group of brothers and I are spending some time studying out the idea of the millennium. The traditional position I've held has been that of most modern American evengelicals (does this term even MEAN anything anymore?) i.e., premillenial and I think would include the following understandings:

1. Literal - the 1000 years referred to are actualy 365 days per year as we conceive of them presently.

2. Future-oriented - we aren't 'in' it yet.

Some of the ramifications of thinking about it in this way (almost all references about what we commonly call the millennium are in Revelation 20) at least to me are:

1. Satan is currently unencumbered - he has not been chained yet

2. There are events that MUST happen after the rapture of the saints and God's punishment of the earth that include the physical earth as we know it

Some of my thoughts about eschatology in general that would deal with a 'literal' fulfillment of the millenium if the assumptions above are accurate would include:

- There will be people who surive the 'tribulation' and the 'wrath of God' - these people make it into the millenium. Some people believe this will include both Jews (saved according to Romans 11) and Gentiles (apparently unsaved???) who will repopulate the earth after the opening of the seals and the rapture of the saints.

- There are two kinds of saved people (if you follow this logic): Jews and the 'church'. Both saved by Christ but with different destinies.

MAJOR ISSUE: Christ came to save a 'people'. Not peoples. By this I do not mean he only came to save one particular ethnic group, e.g., Jews, Ethiopians, etc., but that those saved are ONLY saved by the blood of Christ-period-and their faith in that. How can there be different peoples with different destinies?

Note: All of the above, and in fact, my whole thinking about 'end-time' events is piecemeal at best.