The year 2,000 will bring more and more predictions about the end of the world. My mailbox already has received many. You may be sure that all kinds of people will be telling your that the end of the world is at hand, that all the signs predicted in the Book of Revelation are present. Many people will be disturbed by such predictions since they know so little about the Book of Revelation and about these signs.
Millenarianism is the belief that Christ will return before the Last Judgement, to establish a kingdom that will last 1,000 years. The martyrs and the just will come to life and reign with him.
This millennium will be one of peace for all the just for all the just because Satan will be in chains. Only at the end will there be a fierce battle before Christ finally defeats Satan decisively.
These views are based on a literal reading of the Book of Revelation 20:1-15.
Predicting the end of the world seems like a never ending fashion for religions. The Secrets of Enoch (written before the year 70 AD) talks about the history of the world resembling the history of creation
Creation took seven days; the duration of the world will be 7,000 years, one thousand for each day. The Resurrection of Christ initiated the sixth period, so the Second Coming and the beginning of the millennium or thousand years of Christ's peaceful reign would start with the year 1,000.
That view was occasionally repeated down through the early history of the church and appeared very strongly again right before the year 1,000.
Many waited and waited on New Year's Day in the year 1,000, certain that the end was at hand. A real bacchanal broke out when days passed and nothing happened. Still, the whole year 1,000 was a trying one for Christianity, full of prophets with conflicting theories about the Second Coming.
Every so often in the history of the church millenarianism would creep up again. Such theories became common during times of plagues and persecutions. Many of the churches founded during the time of the Reformation, especially those taking a literal interpretation of scripture and not one respecting the literary genre of the book in question, adopted some aspects of this thinking.
Sometimes one hears religious leaders lament that the Book of Revelation is in sacred scripture. The early church could have saved us all much trouble had the omitted the book, we hear semi-facetiously.
But there is a reason for its existence in scripture. Earlier we Catholics called it the Apocalypse, but apocalyptic literature is not a literary style that we are accustomed to.
Such literature was common in Jesus' day. He is most cautious about trying to determine the date of the end of the world and encourages us to be ready at any time, since we do not know the day nor the hour.
The book is full of symbolic descriptions, many of which no longer seem to be clear to 20th century readers. So often the allusions are very recondite, referring to people living at that time but long since forgotten.
Emperors and rulers had code names, a system that protected the Christian writers and readers. Events were also referred to obliquely and used as symbols for more universal truths.
We might call it resistance literature, it was meant to strengthen the faith and courage of a people under persecution. It assures the reader that the power of God as manifest in Jesus Christ will triumph over all evil. It is an exhortation to stand firm against all adversity. It is also a good reminder that God created this world and all of us on it for a higher destiny, that of sharing finally with him eternal life forever.
In that Catholic tradition the period of 1,000 years is not taken literally. It is the equivalent for us of a long time. We believe it began with the Resurrection-victory of Jesus Christ which permits us to share in God's divine life in baptism. The reign of death and Satan was thus conquered.
We continue to celebrate the reign of Christ (Christ the King) and we believe that all the saints are with him and also with us his Church (the Communion of Saints). Now we cannot be separated from Christ and from the other believers.
We know that the battle between good and evil never ceases but that Christ is on the side of good and will triumph. His is our assurance of victory.
We await, too, the Last Judgement. We do not know when that day will come. God had not revealed it to us and all attempts to calculate it from the symbols of the Book of Revelation are only guesswork-and poor guesswork at that.
When you receive literature telling you when the end of the world is coming, throw it in the wastebasket. Do not become part of the hysteria that will develop around the year 2,000. It usually is not a healthy phenomenon.
Use the year 2,000, instead, as a reminder of God's providence in your lives and the need to live fully each day as baptized people should, seeking, namely, to be God's instruments in building a kingdom of love and goodness.
We will be judged on the last day, not on the accuracy of our predictions, but on the goodness of our lives.
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