Some people are looking forward with anticipation and excitement to what they believe will be a newness of some sort at the beginning of the next millennium. Others are wary, uncertain, and a bit anxious about what lies ahead. Puncturing the balloon of mystery and uncertainty, the Editor of National Geographic says: "A period of one thousand years carries no inherent significance of its own. After all, it is only because we come equipped with ten fingers and our ancestors used them to create base-ten math that a thousand equals a thousand as we know it. If fingers plus toes had been used as the basis for our math system, a 'millennium' would have 8,000 years in it.... a thousand years, or two thousand years, is simply a cold mathematical entity—until we humans begin draping it with banners of hope and wrapping it in shrouds of remembrance." Bill Allen, "From the Editor," National Geographic, January 1998
We can begin
to see life as God
knows it.
The Bible gives us this millennial perspective: "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." II Pet. 3:8 A Bible commentary offers an explanation to help us resolve the difference between God's frame of reference, so to speak, and man's: "God's æonologe (eternal-ages measurer) differs wholly from man's horologe (hour-glass). His gnomon (dial-pointer) shows all the hours at once in the greatest activity and in perfect repose." Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, A Commentary on the Whole Bible, p. 1493
