Zechariah 14:9 declares, “the Lord shall be King over all the earth. In that day it shall be—’The Lord is one,’ and His name one.”
Some have offered the solution that the millennium is not literal but figurative. They say there will be no actual millennium in which Jesus rules the earth and the glorified saints rule with Him. Still others say we are already in the millennium, or that Jesus can’t come back and begin the millennium until the church has dominion over the world.
What does Scripture say? Is the millennium an actual future time period? Will we literally return with Jesus, and will He rule the world from David’s throne? The answer to all of these questions is yes! How do we know?
Revelation 20:1-8 reads, “I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea.”
The Greek word “chilioi,” which translates to “a thousand,” is used six times in Revelation 20, and is found 11 times in the New Testament. Every single time, the word is used in a literal sense. The one time the word is used in an illustration, it still carries a literal meaning: “Beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).
Peter was making the point that God dwells outside of time. He was not establishing an equation to calculate the approximate timing of the rapture or the duration of time before the millennium. The “thousand years”/“one day” comparison he made would have to be understood as literal to make any sense. This and the other usages of “chilioi” establish that the only way to interpret the term is literally. So yes, the 1,000 years is literal and not figurative.
Because we know the millennium is literal and is preceded by the seventieth seven (the tribulation), we know that it’s not the church’s dominion over the world that will usher in the millennium, for two reasons: (1) the content of our last chapter, and (2) the church’s absence during the tribulation. The church does not need to and will not have dominion over the world before Jesus can rule over it. Jesus is going to rule the world because He is God, not because the church made it ready for Him by taking dominion over it.
