Is the 1000 year reign literal?
by gavindlt 14 Replies latest watchtower bible
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stan livedeath
Yep
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Sea Breeze
Yes, it is literal. However, Catholics and 1/3 of Evangelicals believe it is symbolic. That position is called amillenial. It started with Augustine around 400 AD. Early church leaders all believed it was literal.
This is THE biggest reason the WT experienced so much success early on.... most Christians hadn't heard the "kingdom message" as explained by WT and they ended up getting duped into rejecting the new covenant "for the forgiveness of sins" described in Mt. 26: 27-28.
A literal Kingdom is embraced by 2/3 of all Evangelicals. However, the Kingdom message is still primarily a future message that will be preached during the Great Trib.
The message during the church age (age of grace) is to be reconciled to God:
2 Cor. 5: 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not [a]imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
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Jeffro
aqwsed12345:
The only correct and now almost universally accepted interpretation among Catholic exegetes sees the entire earthly life of the Church in the thousand-year reign of Christ and His saints, which essentially means the same as the forty-two months, one thousand two hundred and sixty days, and three and a half years mentioned in other visions (11:2; 12:6, 14).
Well that’s obviously wrong. At least it meant I didn’t need to read the rest of the rambling post. The 42 months, 1260 days and 3.5 years all allude to the period from 66-70CE constituting the Roman response to the Jewish revolt, and do not correspond to the imaginary future 1000 years.
The 1000 years could have been intended as literal but was more likely hyperbole. As a fictional trope, there’s not too much value in trying to assess whether it’s ‘actually’ a literal period.
The JW view is particularly broken, since the period is supposed to begin when Satan is bound but also when Jesus becomes king. So in their messed up chronology it would ostensibly have started over a hundred years ago, but also not started yet. This glaring error is largely because they have Jesus’ presence and the great tribulation explicitly in the wrong order.
For other JW errors about the 1000 years, see What does the Bible really teach about the 1000 years?
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Jeffro
(Some of the more astute readers might note that the thousand years begins when others also rule with Jesus rather than just Jesus himself becoming king. They might then argue for a protracted period between Jesus’ presence and the start of the thousand years. However, whilst the source material allows for some amount of time between those events, everything in the New Testament indicates that the imaginary destruction of Rome (‘Babylon the Great’) and establishment of God’s kingdom after the great tribulation were expected to occur in relatively quick succession. Additionally, because Matthew and Mark explicitly place Jesus’ presence after the great tribulation, the JW belief is in any case irreconcilable.)
See also: