One Day as a Thousand Years 2 Peter 3:8 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO

One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, 2 Pet 3:8.  This is God’s prophetic calendar.

Oftentimes, preachers teach that 2 Pet 3:8 means that God took up to a thousand years to accomplish everything that He did on each of the “days” of creation.  However, Genesis says that each “day” of creation was a literal “evening and morning,” which makes them, by definition, 24-hour days.  So, this verse is not a reference to how long it took God to make everything he created.  These days are not a thousand years each.

In actuality, though, the days of creation do have some relationship to this verse.  You will notice that the whole context of 2 Peter 3 is the time “from the beginning of the creation” to the “new heavens and a new earth,” (2 Pet 3:4, 13).  If we take the six days of creation and assign each day a 1000-year period, we get a perfect timetable of man’s history.  Furthermore, if we assign 1000 years to the seventh day when God “rested,” we can identify God’s prophetic calendar.

The following table shows a thousand years compared to each day of creation.

There are some interesting parallels between what happened on a few of the days of creation and what happened in history.  For instance, the sun was created on the fourth day.  Likewise, at the end of the fourth 1000-year period, Jesus was born. Jesus is perfectly typified by the sun (Ps 19:1-6; Mal 4:1-2).  On the sixth day of creation, God made man.  The number of man is 6.  At the end of the sixth thousand years, the “man of sin” shows up (2 Thes 2:3). He is the antichrist and his number is 666 (Rev 13:18).  On the seventh day, God rested. Likewise, the seventh 1000-year period is a period of rest (Heb 4:5-8) while Jesus rules this earth for 1000 years (Rev 20).  If this timetable is right, Jesus is due to return very soon!!!

We find other evidence in the Bible that this timetable is indeed right and very significant.  For instance, by this method we discover that the resurrection of Lazarus pictures the physical resurrection of Israel at the second coming of Jesus.  In Jn 11:6-39, we detect something strange. Jesus was notified of Lazarus’ illness but decided to tarry 2 days before going to him. By the time he arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead 4 days.  Using God’s timetable, here is what we find.

At times, these 1000-year periods are represented in the Bible by a year instead of a day (Num 14:34; Eze 4:6).  One such case is in Lk 13:6-10, where the Lord gave a parable of the fig tree, which pictures the break between the Old and New Testaments.  In the parable, a man came three years seeking fruit on the tree and found none. The dresser convinced the man to let him dig around the tree and dung it.  If it didn’t produce fruit in the fourth year, then he would cut it down.  Fig trees in the Bible are always typical of self-righteousness.  For example, the first time a fig tree showed up in the Bible, its leaves were used to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness.  Consequently, by this parable, we can locate the time when God provided his own righteousness in Jesus Christ, instead of man’s self-righteousness, which is only filthy rags (Rom 10:3-4; 2 Cor 5:21).

Another discovery from this timetable is the time of the work of Christ in the Church Age and during his millennial reign.  In Lk 13:32-35, Jesus sent a message to Herod that “I do cures to day and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.”  He also said, “I must walk today, and tomorrow, and the day following.”  Here’s what we see on the timetable.

One more time we find the time of the Second Advent and the restoration of Israel (Rom 11:25-26). In Hos 6:2 the Bible says, “After two days he will revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.” Here is how this looks on the timetable.

The significance of doing this study is that it points to the approximate date of now for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.  So, that must mean that we are at the very end of the Church Age and awaiting the imminent rapture of the Church.  It could literally be ANY DAY NOW!!!! Are you ready???