A Thousand Years,  ...Give or Take

There is a lot of talk these days about the third millennium. The third Christian millennium. After all, very few generations have actually had the experience of watching the calendar flip to the next 1,000 years - and even fewer remember the last time it happened.

One of the positive aspects of either speaking or writing on the subject of the new millennium is that very few people will be able to tell you that you're wrong. And even fewer will actually live long enough to know you’re wrong. There is barely a person alive that will survive even the first 10th of the new millennium.

Why then is this phenomenon so important? Why does it excite people so? Why is it so special? One reason is, as I mentioned, the fact that so few people in history have actually experienced it. If historians are correct, there have only been 40 millennia in human history. And this is only the second since Christ walked the earth.

The following are my thoughts on the new millennium... with the absolute comfort of knowing that none of you will be around long enough to tell me I’m wrong - after all it will last 1,000 years.

My focus here will be on the Christian world in the new Millennium. I heard a speaker the other night suggest that the third millennium will be, from a Christian or church perspective, more closely aligned to the first than to the second. I agree with this assumption.

In the first millennium the Christian world was, in essence, forming itself. It was, for the most part, fighting to survive. There were numerous elements working to destroy it, after all it was new and people by nature are leery of things new and different. But it, like a young child left alone, was trying to find its way. By the end of the first Christian millennium or the year 1,000 AD, the church had quite successfully positioned itself. It was not only established and rooted, but in many parts of the world its role had been reversed from the oppressed to the oppressor. It had become "the law" of the land.

The second millennium has been called the time of "Christendom". A time when Christianity reigned and monarchs and governments imposed the church’s beliefs on their people.

The question is..., How many of the people during the second millennium came to Christ through the movement of the Holy Spirit in their lives... and how many came to Christ as a result of a cloud of holy fear? How many accepted Christ because of the promise of eternal life and how many accepted Christ because of the threat of certain death?

In the first millennium, people became Christians knowing they were risking their lives by doing so. In the second millennium, many people became Christians because they were saving their earthly lives by doing so.

It has been said that Christendom is dead. Please don’t confuse this with Christianity. Christianity is alive and thriving. What has changed is that Governments and societies are no longer being puppeted or controlled by local or national churches. The expansion of Christianity is transferring back to the individual Christian as it was in the first Century AD. This puts the responsibility back on us as individuals... Each of us has the responsibility to take very seriously this thing called Faith. And a responsibility to put our Faith to work. This is why I believe that as we enter the third millennium we are more aligned with the first.

The third millennium offers us the challenges of the first ...with the experience of the second. I believe we must muster the same strength of conviction held by the first millennium Christians. We must be willing to learn from their example and be prepared to stand-up to complacency as they stood up to tyranny. We must be willing to make a stand for our core beliefs as they were willing to lie down and die for theirs. We must be willing to look the new millennium, square in the eyes, and say with full voice and authority, "I will, with the help of Almighty God make a difference - I won’t allow present day sin to swallow the next 1,000 years as it has this 1,000 years. I will, with the help of God, in my own small way - make a difference.

The new millennium is looked to with such anticipation in great part because it provides hope and a new start. My message to you is this - The New Millennium starts today. If there’s going to be change - If this is truly going to be the world people are hoping for we can’t wait until the calendar happens to change, there is nothing magic in that particular date. The date only gives us an excuse to wait, to put off until then what we know we should be doing today.

It’s a lot like a New Year's Resolution,...mine has been to lose weight. "This year will be the year", I would say to myself. "I just know it," I would say to reinforce my desire. And then I would wait until January 1st to begin. One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of January 1st’s have come and gone and I’ve only gotten bigger. There is nothing magical about the turning of a new year that provides the staying power for resolutions any more than there is something magical about the turning of a new millennium. If something should be done, it should be done now,... there is no reason to wait.

We have a choice to make today: Do I begin to be the person Christ wants me to be? Do I realize, once and for all, that I am truly a child of God and an inheritor of the Kingdom? Do I finally except the fact that I am a Spiritual Being faced with human problems and then turn to and rely on the Spiritual side to resolve them??

The Christophers tell a story of an eagle’s egg that somehow rolled into the nesting area of a "clutch" of chickens. The chickens, thinking it was one of their eggs, sat on it and in time it hatched. The new born eagle looked around and saw all the chickens so he naturally assumed that he was a chicken. He began to learn from and imitate the chickens. He would walk like a chicken, fly like a chicken, he even tried to cluck like a chicken. His life always felt uneasy, he always believed there was something more.

One day he noticed a beautiful bird flying high overhead. He asked his friends what kind of bird it was. "Oh that’s an eagle", they answered, "the king of all the birds". The young eagle looked up and said, "I wish I could be like him, soaring as he does so gracefully with the wind. "Oh don’t waste your time on foolish thoughts", his friends would say. "You’re a chicken and that’s all you’ll ever be", they insisted. The young eagle walked away very sad and never again thought of himself as anything but a chicken.

You are a spiritual being, a child of God. How you live your life is completely up to you. Will you accept the problems and pressures of this world, resolving yourself to solutions found only in this world? or will you open yourself up to the bigger you? The you that recognizes your true heritage.

The new millennium offers hopes and it offers challenges. God has been steadfast in his promises,... will we be steadfast in our responsibilities and commitments? Will we realize that if the new millennium is going to bring about changes that those changes must begin with us and in us, each of us individually. And that it begins today.

Will we look to the future and say it can never be... or will we look and say "It will be - but it’s up to me"?

The new millennium will be the greatest in the history of the world. Whether it’s the greatest disaster or the greatest success is completely determined by what choices we make today.

Let us choose to become First Millennium Christians in the Third Millennium. It will take "their" level of strength and commitment to make a difference in this, our ever changing world.

Respectfully in Christ,

Mark Price