But I do know a thousand years equates to TIME.
Yes it does!
And according to Scripture once the thousand years should be fulfilled this specific amount of TIME ends.
That's just not how Scripture uses 1000! We've been over this. The moment the Hebrew authors use 1000 in a
theological context, something interesting happens. Investigate the following theological statements about God and nature, God and his people, or even God and time. They're ALL symbolic!
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."
= Is the literal futurist really going to argue that God only owns a thousand hills? What about the other million or so on Earth?
Deuteronomy 1:11 - "11 May the Lord, the God of your ancestors, increase you a thousand times and bless you as he has promised!"
= God was
only going to grow his people a thousand times - from the literal number of people standing before Moses that day? What happened to more than the stars in the sky and grains of sand on a beach?
Psalm 91:7 - "A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you."
= Is it a thousand or ten-thousand? Is it a gazillion or ten gazillion?
Isaiah 60:22 - "The least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation."
= You mean there are limits on God's kingdom - it will ONLY grow 1000 times in size from Isaiah's lifetime?
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.”
= I love this one - as I've been a soldier. The image of a Sampson having a bookkeeper counting his kills is just hilarious. "997, 998, 999, 1000 - that's it Sampson! You're done for the day! Stand down Sampson - I'm writing this down!"
Job 9:3 - "Though they wished to dispute with him, they could not answer him one time out of a thousand."
= Could Job's 'friends' actually answer his suffering 1 time in a thousand, or is the emphasis of this story that they had NO answers - only God had the authority to answer Job (and decided not to tell Job the real reason anyway. Job was just to trust God anyway, without an answer!)
GOD AND TIME SEEMS TO ALWAYS BE SYMBOLIC:-
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."
= Is the literal futurist really bold enough to insist God is only faithful for a thousand generations? A generation was 40 years - so in 40,000 years God is unfaithful!!!???
Psalm 105:8 - "He remembers his covenant FOREVER, the promise he made, for a THOUSAND generations"
= Well, which is it? Forever, or a thousand generations / 40,000 years?
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."
= Is one day with God’s people better than 1000 literal days or 2.7 years, or is this a qualitative assessment of how it is better to just invest your time with God? Is this verse actually equating ANY period of time with the wicked as beneficial to you?
Other consequences
Revelation 20 has divided Christians and warped how they read the bible - but it’s meant to be a short image of our safety in Christ during these 'gazillion years' between the Lord's Resurrection and his Return. Yet futurist end-timers have turned it into the thin edge of the wedge that sometimes breaks apart how the Old and New Covenants fit together - and sometimes even what the gospel means!
Revelation is just not a future-history as John says in Chapter 1 that this stuff was about to start “soon”, the time was “near”, he “shares in their sufferings” (literally - tribulations!) and he wants them to “take his message to heart”. That means obey it. It’s hard to OBEY a message that is not even to or about you - but about what happens in 2000 years. Most futurists have not thought about these points.
What’s worse is it futurism makes the Apostle John out to be callous and indifferent to the suffering of the church in his time. If he is not writing to them and about them, but about some so-called “Great Tribulation” way off in the future, then John is in effect saying “You think you've got problems - wait till you see what happens in 2000 years!” It’s just not true to the book - he’s dressing up the events of the time in apocalyptic language and reminding them to stay faithful because one day the Lord will return. That’s it!