Bible Study Seattle

God’s Plan is very big. VERY big. It’s hard for us mere humans to wrap our heads around what he’s doing. Genesis 1 says that God created for six days then rested the seventh. The word we have as ‘day’ is yom in the Hebrew (Strong’s 3117), which is not always translated ‘day’ depending on context. In Genesis 2:17 Eve tells the Serpent that in the day they eat the fruit they will surely die. Did Adam & Eve die the day they ate the fruit? No. Adam died 930 years later! So we have to be careful how yom is translated. Likewise for God: Is he not still resting? That tells us that the seventh ‘day’ is more than 6,000 years long so far! Chances are very good that the first six ‘days’ of creation were more than 24 hours apiece. Furthermore, we know that within God’s rest he will send his Son to reign for 1,000 years. “and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.” Revelation 20:4

Moses tells us in Psalm 90 that a day is as a thousand years or as a watch in the night. A watch is 3 hours, so it must also be true that a day can be eight thousand years! God also has a preference for seven day cycles. (Or seven months, or seven years). The Messiah was to come 70 times 7 years after the decree to rebuild. “Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the wrongdoing, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.  So you are to know and understand that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with streets and moat, even in times of distress.” Daniel 9:24-25

So it is not a stretch to speculate that the ‘days’ of creation were 7,000 years apiece. God’s rest day is 6,000 years followed by his Son’s reign for 1,000 years. Scripture tells us that the last enemy to be destroyed is death and then the Messiah will hand the kingdom back over to God the Father. “then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to our God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.  For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.  The last enemy that will be abolished is death.  For He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is clear that this excludes the Father who put all things in subjection to Him.  When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.” 1 Corinthians 15:24-28

Is it possible that God’s rest day is 8,000 years? Christ will reign for the seventh ‘day’ of 1,000 years, but a 50th 1,000 year ‘day’ will follow – the Grand Jubilee. For if each ‘day’ of creation is 7,000 years, seven ‘days’ total 49,000 years. That would encompass 49 smaller 1,000 year ‘days’ followed by a 50th 1,000 year ‘day’. Time will tell. The Jubilee differs from the Sabbath in that all family property is put back where it originated. This hints that not all the work of redemption will be complete at the end of Christ’s 1,000 year reign. Again, time will tell. Of course Christ will also be ruling during the Jubilee so this may be a semantic difference.