Sabbath Millennium
Definition
The Sabbath Millennium is the eschatological reading that interprets the thousand-year kingdom (Rev. 20:1-6) as the seventh millennial day of the creation week â the cosmic Sabbath following six thousand years of human history. Just as the creation sabbath (Gen. 2:2-3) follows six working days, so the seventh millennium arrives as the great millennial rest. This schema draws on 2 Pet. 3:8 (âwith the Lord one day is as a thousand yearsâ) and Heb. 4:9 (âthere remains a Sabbath rest for the people of Godâ). The Sabbath Millennium is closely related to premillennialism but grounds the millennium typologically in the creation week and Jubilee legislation rather than in a Darby dispensational schema.
Usage in the Corpus
Stephen Jones
Jones is the most developed defender of the Sabbath Millennium in the corpus. His timeline: the Pentecost Jubilee ended in 1993 (40 Jubilees after Acts 2), and since then we have been in transition to the Tabernacles Age. âWe are now in the transition into the great Tabernacles Age, which will last a thousand years. It is the great Rest Year, the Sabbath Millennium.â This is the seventh millennium â the great sabbath after six millennial working days. After this millennium (at 49,000 years â 49 Jubilees of 1000 years) follows the consummation of the apokatastasis: the great super-Jubilee. Jones founds this also in Isa. 65:17 (new heavens and new earth) as the post-millennium result. [Jones, Secrets of Time, Foreword, Ch. 3 and 11]
George Warnock
Warnock uses the language âSabbath of all Sabbathsâ for the Feast of Tabernacles as eschatological rest point: âJust as the weekly sabbath was the end of Israelâs week of toil and labor â so the Feast of Tabernacles is the end of the Churchâs week of strife and turmoil: the Feast of all Feasts, the Sabbath of all Sabbaths. âThere remaineth therefore a rest (A Sabbath) to the people of Godâ (Heb. 4:9).â The eighth day of the Feast points to the new beginning after the sabbath rest. [Warnock, The Feast of Tabernacles, Ch. 11]