And God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great sea monsters, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after its kind: and God saw that it was good.
“And God blessed them, saying Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.”
Genesis 1:20-23
THE FIFTH DAY
According to Biblical record, the water and sea animals were created on the fifth day. They did not evolve from a tree or a cesspool or any other thing. God made them, each one; he spoke them into being. This image of God is very important to remember. The winged creatures and sea creatures were created the fifth day to fill the sky and the waters already created on the second day. Again, nothing was created out of turn.
At the end of Day 5, thousands of creatures flew above the earth and thousands of creatures filled the seas. Pitting sea monsters or piranhas against bluegills or catfish may have taken tiered precepts. For instance, how long did it take these creatures to establish their kingdoms? What were their lifesaving strategies? Were these precepts learned or inherent?
THE FIFTH THOUSAND YEAR
The miraculous birth of the Christ, the Son of God, Messiah, the visible image of the invisible God of creation, caused calendars to mark his birth as the starting point for the next, or fifth, thousand-year period. Imagine a young child teaching wisdom in the temple. Imagine God coming to earth in human form to redefine the world with God’s distinction. Imagine relationship rules taking precedence over laws and commands. Imagine the conflict between the lawmakers and the peacemakers. Imagine a world shaken by the voice of God when his Son was crucified. Imagine this child’s mother watching at the foot of the cross, knowing God had chosen her to deliver this King to his people, yet trying to understand how the path of this incredibly kind, warm and miraculous child was charted to such a bloody end.
His ministry, message and miracles brought hope to God’s people, but conflict to unbelieving, self-intuitive protectors of an outside influence on the powerful elite inner circle. His message mentored with love, peace and healing. His life on earth was brief, but poignant and unforgettable. He commissioned his people, his friends, to share his teachings and do the things he taught them to do with love, grace and peace to the end of the age.
This next 1,000-year period was a dark, unsettled time in many ways. Even though cities existed, nights slipped into a darkness we would have trouble comprehending. Homes were pitch black at night except for minuscule pools of dim candlelight. Evil has a tendency to thrive in the dark. And thrive, it did.
It became a time of pitting Roman Emperors and entitled Jewish leaders against the meek and humble Christ-followers, similar to pitting sea monsters or piranhas against bluegills or catfish, and definitely called for tiered precepts. For instance, how long would it take these Christians to establish God’s kingdom on earth, and what kind of horrors would they experience trying to transform the elites’ kingdoms? God’s precepts were learned through the grace and mercy of God, definitely not inherent skills. What were their lifesaving strategies?
The early church had serious disagreements among themselves, in addition to the difficulty of communicating Christ’s message accurately and in one voice. This new group of “Christians” ran into periods of severe sporadic persecution. For example, Nero blamed Christians for the great fire that destroyed 10 of the 14 city wards at Rome in 64 A.D., which apparently Nero ordered. Tacitus said Nero had the believers ‘torn by dogs, nailed to crosses, and even used as human torches to illumine his gardens at night.’
Throughout persecutions and grief, this relatively small group of Jesus believers exploded the teaching of Christianity throughout the whole Mediterranean Basin. It was an astonishing success, basically because of their incredible faith in Jesus, their Messiah, and the tremendous amount of persecution they chose to endure rather than to deny him. The whole roman empire within a number of decades was hearing the good news of Christ. Within one generation, the center of Christianity moved from Jerusalem to Rome.
In addition, there were two all-out empire-wide persecutions intended to utterly destroy the church. The first, under the emperor Decius, began in December 249. Everyone in the empire had to get a certificate from a government officer verifying that he or she had offered a sacrifice to the gods – an act that most Christians in good conscience could not do.
The second, called “The Great Persecution,” began on February 23, 303, under Emperor Diocletian. Galerius, the empire’s second-in-command, was behind this persecution policy and continued it after Diocletian’s death. For eight long years, official decrees ordered Christians out of public office, scriptures confiscated, church buildings destroyed, leaders arrested, and pagan sacrifices required. All methods of torture were mercilessly employed – wild beasts, burning, stabbing, crucifixion, the rack. But they were all to no avail. The penetration of the faith across the empire was so pervasive that the church could not be intimidated nor destroyed. In 311, the same Galerius, shortly before his death, weak and diseased, issued an “edict of toleration.” This included the statement that it was the duty of Christians “to pray to their god for our good estate.”
This tale is not only romantic but probably true. The year is 306. A young man arises in the dead of a late spring night in the imperial palace at Nicomedia in Asia Minor. He slips down to the emperor’s stables and commandeers the palace horses. He is thirty-two years old, and by all reports quite handsome. He has been a hostage. Now he is making his escape and seeking to delay pursuit.
His escape would change history, for his name was Constantine. He would become the first ruler in the western world to base the laws of the state upon the teachings of Jesus Christ. But he had to decide how far such efforts could go in a largely non-Christian society. For centuries to come, this baffling question would confront emperors, kings, prime ministers, heads of state and presidents who face precisely the same issue. And many ask if Constantine himself was truly a Christian. Or was he merely an opportunist, using the Christian faith for purely political ends? Historians would debate this question down through the centuries.
However, many facts about this man are well established. The son of Constantius Chlorus, Roman emperor in the West, Constantine was fleeing Galerius, emperor in the East. For ten years, he was held at the eastern court as a captive guest. If Constantius Chlorus should ever try to become sole ruler of the empire, the life of his son would be forfeited.
When Galerius became emperor in 305, Constantius Chlorus formally requested that his son be allowed to join him. Galerius outwardly consented but connived to make it impossible for Constantine to leave. Thus, Constantine’s decision to escape and embark on the longest continuous horseback ride recorded in the ancient world–more than sixteen hundred miles across Europe to the northeast coast of France. His biographer, Lactantius, comments that this was typical of Constantine’s intelligence, ambition, and decisiveness. He engineered his flight on the very night before he was to be hauled before Galerius to become a more explicit kind of prisoner. When Galerius awoke at noon the next day and learned that Constantine was long gone, he burst into tears.
Eusebius, another biographer and a man who knew Constantine well, tells it this way: Constantine called on God with earnest prayer and supplications that he would reveal to him who he was, and stretch forth his right hand to help him in his present difficulties. And while he was thus praying with fervent entreaty, a most marvelous sign appeared to him from heaven…He said that about noon when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, ‘Conquer by this.’ At this vision, he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle. And while he continued to ponder and reason on its meaning, night suddenly came on; then in his sleep, the Christ of God appeared to him with the same sign which he had seen in the heavens and commanded him to make a likeness of that sign which he had seen in the heavens and to use it as a safeguard in all engagements with his enemies.
This experience, whatever it was, had a remarkable effect upon the would-be emperor. After this incident, two new terms figure prominently in his thought, language and policies. One is God and the other is Jesus Christ. Perhaps even then Constantine saw, however faintly, that such wars as men fought, wars that he too had spent most of his life waging, are mere shadows of the real war: the war between good and evil that rages unseen within every soul. This was the war the Christians had always understood–the war Constantine himself would better understand in the violent personal struggles that lay ahead of him.
The scene must have been extraordinary as thousands of grizzled warriors strove to reproduce the curious sign Constantine ordered painted on their shields. It is known as “the Labarum of Constantine.” A labarum was a Roman standard carried into battle, but here a Christian monogram replaced the traditional pagan symbols. It was centered around X and P, the first two letters in the Greek word for Christ. Though his troops revered Constantine, all Christian symbols, particularly the cross, were distasteful to them. In fact, most worshipped the god Mithras, and Christians constituted barely ten percent of the population. Indeed, many Christians themselves still shrank from using the cross in religious art. Although Jesus had died on one, the cross remained a punishment for slaves and a source of gallows humor–not something to be borne proudly into battle.
But orders were orders. On the morning of October 28 in the year 312, as Constantine’s troops stood ready to assault Rome, this symbol of Jesus Christ could be seen throughout their ranks, painted brightly upon shields or hoisted high as standards. They slaughtered Maxentius’ army at Rome’s Milvian Bridge, and the next day they marched triumphantly through the city’s open gates. The Roman Senate declared Constantine to be Augustus, emperor of the West, and in a succession of victories thereafter made him sole ruler of the Roman Empire.
One of his first acts was to draft a proclamation that ended the official persecution of Christians. Called the Edict of Milan, it placed Christianity on a par with the other faiths that enjoyed freedom under Rome, in order “that we may not seem to detract from any dignity or any religion.” For the first time since the year 64, when the emperor Nero declared war on the Christians of Rome and burned them as human torches in his garden, they had a reason for hope.
The full notion of Christendom–a political world entirely dominated by Christianity–was slow to take shape, however. Not until after 380, under the emperors Theodosius I in the East and Gratian in the West, would pagan temples be forcibly closed, and all Roman subjects were required to become Christian. Nonetheless, Constantine gradually infused his empire’s legal structure with significant Christian values. He made Sunday an official day of rest. New laws forbade the practice of divination and other magic. Confiscated Christian properties were restored. Magnificent churches rose in all major cities. He moved the imperial capital from pagan Rome to a new site, specifically built as a Christian city and named Constantinople (today, Istanbul). Christian clergy administered an imperial welfare program. In time, the emperor ceased paying the traditional homage to Jupiter on Rome’s Capitoline Hill. Coins no longer bore images of pagan deities.
On August 24, 410, the city of Rome, once master of the Mediterranean, fell to Alaric and his Visigoth armies. Someone opened the city gate from within. There were barbarian invasions, economic troubles, the rise of the Eastern Empire, government corruption, the arrival of the Huns, and the weakening of the Roman legions.
Afterward, refugees showed up all around the Mediterranean world. In Palestine, Bible translator Jerome described formerly haughty women who would now be happy to work for a crust of bread. He wrote letters lamenting the fall of the imperial city. Like everyone else, he could not avoid the symbolism of the event. “My voice sticks in my throat; and, as I dictate, sobs choke my utterance. The city which had taken the whole world was itself taken…”
Augustine took a different approach than Jerome. Giving a Christian interpretation to the events, he pointed out that the barbarian invaders had spared most of the churches and that even pagans had taken refuge in the Christian churches. He noted Christians had always suffered and would always suffer in this world. To phrase it in a modern cliché, God had never promised the Christian a bed of roses. God’s Word, his ministry, message, and miracles were preserved throughout the ages by diverse, dedicated Christians, including Monks, Irishmen, Englishmen and many nameless faithful men and women.
To Augustine’s way of thinking, the fall of Rome was less important than it seemed to most of his contemporaries. What was really going on was a far deeper warfare–the war between God’s kingdom and man’s; if God’s kingdom was not clearly distinguishable in this world, it is because not everyone who says he is a Christian really is. To the heathen who blamed Christianity for the downfall of the Roman Empire, Augustine showed that pagan practices actually were at fault for the weakness of the empire.
Throughout the ages, God-believing Jews and Christians have been persecuted. When persecuted, we call out to God and draw closer to him. When we draw closer to him, he draws closer to us and provides healing, peace, protection and leads us on the path of righteousness for HIS name’s sake, Psalm 23:3. God is our father and he is full of wisdom. He said, “Do not withhold correction from the child; for if you beat him with the rod, he shall not die.” Proverbs 23:13. A wayward, rebellious child should never be left to himself. Dr. Spock demoted the world when he removed spanking a child from parents’ rights. He said parents shouldn’t spank their children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped, and we might damage their self-esteem. We’re now trapped with a generation of undisciplined, entitled young people, instead of godly men and women. “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world, but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?” Matthew 16:26.
Clearly God’s vision of capturing souls for heaven differs from our thinking. So often we hear that death is the final step a person takes. However, God reveals amazing rewards throughout his prophecy of the days of creation where each day of creation reflects a 1,000-year period. We’re just entering into the 7-thousandth year, the period of rest.
Understanding God’s prophecy in Genesis helps us understand we do not die. We are not bodies with a soul, but souls within a body which can be healed and restored beyond our imaginations. This is more clearly seen in examples of AI bodies. They are created by men, who cannot create a soul, to be mere robot servants.
If we have a relationship with God prior to death, we will automatically be restored to our physical life during the last 1,000 years on earth. This will be a time of great healing and an opportunity to travel to see Christ on the throne in Jerusalem. This will be a time where we will live to be as old as trees prior to the final judgment.
“Unlike the past, invaders will not take their houses and confiscate their vineyards. For my people will live as long as trees, and my chosen ones will have time to enjoy their hard-won gains.” Isaiah 65:22.
If we do not have a relationship with God through Christ prior to death, there is no second chance. That person will appear for the final judgment and spend eternity in hell. “And whosoever was not found in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:15.
REFERENCES
“All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s: and he is the governor among the nations.” Psalm 22:27-28
“And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority is given to me in heaven and in earth. Go, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Teaching them to observe all things whatever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen.’” Matthew 28:18-20
“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” Matthew 24:14