Posted by rayww on December 13, 2002, at 23:52:12
In reply to Re: The truth about science » rayww, posted by Dinah on December 13, 2002, at 18:00:32
I don't know that the world wants to believe in the Millennium because it would mean that righteousness wins and evil is overcome forever. In every dispensation the prophets have been hunted, tortured, and killed for teaching these things. Righteousness has not been popular in the earth since the beginning, just as it isn't popular today.
My opinion is that since this thousand years, beginning with the year 2000 is the 7th day, the Millennium will likely begin within the first century. My personal opinion is that it will happen within 24 years. I hesitate to get into this because most of what we understand concerning the millennium has come through modern revelation in the Doctrine & Covenants, and the Book of Mormon, and that concept offends mainstream Christianity, as Christians do not believe in revelation or in doubting, proving, or in searching for truth. They just believe. And that is good, but do modern Christians believe in Jesus Christ? And, if so, do they follow his path? Personally I don't find the power to do that in "I believe", rather in being and living (be-live) it.
I quote this from http://ldsfaq.byu.edu/emmain.asp?number=121
Christ taught his disciples to pray to the Father for the kingdom to come when his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10). Jesus declared to them that he would be sent again by the Father at the end of the world for a day of judgment and an era of paradisiacal glory (cf. Matt. 25:3146; John 5:22-29; Acts 1:38). Some early Christians appear to have anticipated the second coming of Jesus Christ and the onset of the Millennium as imminent, despite the Savioŕs caution that none but the Father knew the time of his coming, and despite both angelic and apostolic pronouncements concerning events that must precede the Millennium (cf. Matt. 24; Acts 3:1921; 2 Thes. 2:14). Numerous church leaders in the Post-Apostolic (Patristic) period, such as Justin Martyr of Rome, Papias of Hierapolis, Irenaeus of Lyons, and Lactantius, accepted the notion of a literal Millennium following the resurrection of the dead, when a visible and glorious kingdom of Christ would exist on earth. By the late third and fourth centuries, however, church fathers such as Origen (d. c. A.D. 254) and Augustine (d. A.D. 429) had transformed the notion of a literal Millennium into an allegorical or figurative one: The millennial reign of peace for them took place in the hearts of individual men and women and began with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:1620). From that time until the sixteenth-century protestant reformation, belief in a literal Millennium was regarded as unorthodox by the institutional church.
John the Revelator saw that at the commencement of the Millennium a New Jerusalem would descend to earth from heaven. Traditional Christianity has generally associated this with a renewing of the city where Jesus ministered among the Jews during the meridian of time. ....From them laws, decrees, and leadership in the kingdom of God will emanate. Thus the nuances found in Isaiah 2:3 that "out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem" telling of two locations are not redundant or merely rhetorical.The Millennium symbolizes a sabbatical in human history (cf. D&C 77:12; Moses 7:64), analogous to the role of the weekly sabbath (cf. Ex. 20:811). The millennial period is patterned after the Lord́s period of rest following the six creative periods (cf. Gen. 2:13).
Life will go on for those on earth: "And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands" (Isa. 65:2122). Righteous mortal men and women who die after the beginning of the Millennium "shall not sleep in the earth, but shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye" (D&C 101:31), and children born in this era "shall grow up until they become old" (D&C 63:51; Isa. 65:20). The devil will have no "power to tempt any man," being bound because of the righteousness of the earth́s inhabitants, and children will grow up without sin (1 Ne. 22:26; D&C 43:3031; 45:58; 101:2831).
poster:rayww
thread:1399
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20021001/msgs/1418.html