Why 1000 years?

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Funnily enough, it may take only be a couple of generations to fill the Thousand Years. One of the Prophecies about this time is Isaiah 65:20 which says people will live much longer in those days (this is understandable when we remember that satan is prevented from having any effect on the human race).

It says a person who is only a hundred years old will be thought a mere youth.

So a youth for Isaiah’s day was what? Say 12 to 15 years old? And an old person would have been five or six times that age?

So if we now think of a hundred as a youthful age, what is old age? Five or six hundred years.

People will be restored to the longevity of the early Old Testament, living for hundreds of years.

Perhaps this could be attributed to lack of time for genetic damage to cause life-shortening disease.

It could also be attributed to the removal of satan, possibly allowing better cures – or perhaps people will just get better naturally, because of God’s healing presence on the earth. Psalm 41:1-3 hints that God’s people “after a time of Trouble” (=Tribulation) will be restored if they get ill. (Psalms 41:3 3 The LORD sustains him on his sickbed; in his illness you restore him to full health.)

So maybe the whole Millennial age will contain a very small number of very healthy generations.

So why it is a thousand years?
We aren’t told exactly, but…
satan has to have opportunity to convict himself of his sin. The complete legal condemnation requires that satan is the agent of his own downfall. Even though he already personally condemns satan, God is Just; he has to act with perfect Justice.

Perhaps only that length of 1000 years needed for all those who have lived through the Tribulation and remember the days of satan’s interference with man to die off.

So eventually a new generation will arise, and every single one will have been born under the complete and total rule of God.

And the ultimate proof and condemnation will be when even this generation will fall straight into satan’s deception at the end of the thousand years. This will demonstrate the legal verdict on people who reject God (it is now obvious that it is really their fault) and for satan himself, who, despite being evidently beaten, just goes straight back to his old ways on being released and forms huge armies to move directly to destroy Jerusalem, which by then will be the seat of the Throne of Jesus. (See my answer: Rapture and the 1000 years )

As for judging the people we rule over (in the sense of passing judgment and prescribing sentence), I don’t see that for us during the Millennium. Our word will be law, however, as we will take our instructions direct from God. Jesus will judge, with us, at the end of that time.