Fellow Believers,

As you have no doubt learned by now, we did not actually enter a new millennium on January 1. This is just the closing year of the 20th Century; the Third Millennium won't begin until AD 2001.

But that isn't totally correct either. The letters AD stand for the Latin words that means the year of the Lord. When this system of counting the years from the birth of Christ was introduced, a mistake was incorporated. Subsequent evidence has shown that the Lord was really born in 7 BC. In other words, we are now already many years into the real Third Millennium.

What does all this have to do with us? Well, as "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (II Peter 3:8), and "a thousand years in thy sight are...as a watch in the night" (Psalm 90:4), we are now in the early part of the third day in one sense, and of the third watch in another. All of which means that the Lord's return is very close at hand.

For one thing, we read in Hosea 6:1,2: "Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight." The latter statement is a clear reference to the last day, when we believers will all rise to meet the Lord in the air.

In Luke 12, for another, the Lord likens Himself to a master telling His servants to watch and wait for His return from a wedding. He says in verse 38: "And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants."

When in the third day or the third watch might Christ return? A clue can be found in Exodus 19. There God told Moses, a type of Jesus, in verses 10,11: "Go unto the people, and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their clothes, And be ready against the third day: for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai." And then we read in verse 16, "And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud..." Note that it was in the morning of the third day that the Lord came down in clouds of glory.

So was the Lord's resurrection. In fact, Mary Magdalene went to the sepulchre so early that third day that John 20:1 says that it was yet dark. And I Corinthians 15 indicates that the bodily resurrection of Jesus prefigured ours at His coming.

Yes, we may not know the day or the hour, but there is no doubt that

Tom Holt, Editor
NLDeditor@cs.com

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