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Scripture is God's word, Science is God's works
- Dec 17, 2010
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Repetition is not evidence of literary genre. In fact, sometimes it actually indicates metaphor - like the repetition of patterns going up into Noah's ark being mirrored exactly coming out - in what they call Chiastic Structure.
Chiastic structure - Wikipedia
Repetition in Hebrew can replace adjectives. They don't bother trying to say "Absolutely most Holy" - they just say it 3 times. Holy Holy Holy! Repeat until you GET IT!
Revelation is the most symbolic book of the bible, using numbers and symbols more than any other book.
Below is just a sample of all the times 1000 should be read as "a gazillion" or "the fullest number of". It's like today when people say "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money." It's an uncontested fact that the Hebrews often used a thousand in the sense of "a gazillion times" or "a gazillion men" or "a gazillion years" or even "forever".
Let's take a look.
Psalm 50: "I bring no charges against you concerning your sacrifices or concerning your burnt offerings, which are ever before me. I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens,
for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills."
(As there are over a million mountains on earth - let alone all the foothills - it would seem very strange for this verse to literally be saying God's abundant ownership of the whole world LIMITS him to just ONE THOUSANDTH of the hills on earth! That would be a VERY strange reading of the passage!)
Deuteronomy 1:11 - "11 May the Lord, the God of your ancestors, increase you a thousand times and bless you as he has promised!"
(The promise to Abraham was that his descendants would be too numerous to count - are we going to completely nerf that promise and literally say they'd only increase a thousandfold from their exact numbers that day? Of course not!)
Deuteronomy 7:9 - "Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments."
(This one basically means forever - a gazillion)
Psalm 105:8 - "He remembers his covenant FOREVER, the promise he made, for a THOUSAND generations"
(What is it? Forever, or only a mere 1000 generations? No - it's Hebrew literary repetition, where forever and 1000 are interchangeable. Conclusion? Not literal.)
Psalm 91:7 - "A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you." (I mean, is it 1000 or 10,000? How can the author be out by a factor of 10? He's not out - because it's not literal - it's saying "a gazillion will fall, NO, 10 gazillion!" It's literary, not literal.)
Isaiah 60:22 - "The least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation."
(You mean there are literal limits on God's people? I thought God promised Abraham that there would be too many, like the sand in the desert or the stars in the sky.)
Psalms 84:10 - "Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked."
(This one is saying one day serving God with the righteous is better than a gazillion elsewhere - NOT 2.73 years exactly.)
Judges 15:16 - "Then Samson said, “With a donkey’s jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey’s jawbone I have killed a thousand men.”
Job 9:3 - "Though they wished to dispute with him, they could not answer him one time out of a thousand."
(Again, it's not that they disputed with him each day and only 1 person managed to answer him every 2.73 years. It's saying "not one in a gazillion" or basically no one ever answered him.)
1000 Year Reign of Christ? So where does the phrase “1000 Year Reign of Christ” appear in scripture? The answer is it does not appear in scripture. Neither will you find the word “millennium”? Does this surprise you? Revelation 20:3-8 is the only passage in scripture that anyone can point to as referring to a “1000 year reign.” What endless variations of concocted fables have resulted! Clearly it does not contain the detail that they attribute to it.
First, it should be pointed out that scripture does not speak of “the thousand year reign of Christ.” Revelation 20:4 says, "I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded ... came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. " Notice that it’s not Christ that reigns 1000 years! It’s those who were killed for God’s sake that reign with Christ 1000 years. There are nineteen (19) Bible verses that declare that Christ’s reign is forever. Revelation 11:15 is one of the nineteen: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever." So why would Revelation 20 contradict this by saying it was only 1000 years?
It's not Christ ruling on earth for a gazillion years, but the matyrs reigning in heaven with Christ. Consider the phrase, “Jane Doe served with the governor for one year.” Does this mean the governor served for only one year? No - the governor could serve for many years. The point is not how long the governor served but how long Jane served with the governor. The governor isn’t the subject; it is speaking about how long Jane serves with him. Likewise, Revelation 20:4 is not about how long Jesus will reign, but how long others will reign with Jesus. There’s a big difference.
So what do the scriptures reveal about the number 1000? It is a number that typically signifies the idea of “immensity,” “fullness of quantity” or “multitude.” The number can represent a large number or extended period of time. This general interpretation applies both to the Old Testament as well as the New Testament.
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