The Millennium — Who Reigns and Who Waits
The Millennium is the seventh day of the Grand Week — the Sabbath rest of history. It runs from 1st Nisan 2030 (3rd April 2030) to approximately 3030 AD. It is not a period of universal resurrection and reign by all the saved. The text is specific about who reigns during the thousand years and who waits.
Two Specific Groups
> Revelation 20:4 — Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
Two groups. First: those seated on thrones with judicial authority. Matthew 19:28 and Luke 22:30 explicitly identify who these are — the twelve apostles assigned to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. And the twenty-four elders of Revelation 4-5, which the investigation suggests are twelve from the new covenant and twelve from the old. Second: those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and refused the mark. The martyrs of the 1260-day tribulation. Not the general saved. These two specific groups.
The word reigned does not describe kings governing a territory. It describes a judicial function. Daniel 7:22 — judgment was given to the saints of the Most High. 1 Corinthians 6:2 — do you not know that the saints will judge the world? The millennium is the court sitting. The Books of Deeds being examined. The sentences for every person from Adam to the end of the tribulation being determined.
The Rest of the Dead Wait
> Revelation 20:5 — The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.
The rest of the dead — including the general saved of all generations from Adam to 2030 — do not come to life until the thousand years are finished. The first resurrection is specific. The general resurrection waits. This is consistent with the wheat and tares parable of Matthew 13 — the end of the age comes at the great harvest, not at the beginning of the millennium. The tares are gathered first (the wicked destroyed at Armageddon), then the righteous shine forth in the Father ‘s kingdom. The shining forth of all the righteous is at 3030 AD, not at 2030.
The Nature of the Millennial Period
Satan bound and cast into the abyss at 2030. The binding is the reversal of the fifth trumpet release, when Satan was given the key to the abyss as a permitted act. Now the key is used in reverse — Satan is locked in, not released. The earth during the millennium is governed by the twelve apostles on their thrones and the martyred saints of the tribulation. The general population living through the millennium are not resurrected saints but the survivors of the tribulation period and their descendants — the nations that enter into the millennial age.