But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. (2 Peter 3:8).
Someone on a Mystic Mentoring session recently asked about this scripture, and about the seventh millennium (seventh day) therefore being a season of rest.
Personally, I don’t really hold too much to the ‘thousand years as seasons’ theory, that now we’re in the 7th millennium, we are in the season of rest. That is just adding up the years in the biblical genealogies and has little to do with reality.
But I do think rest is something which is built into creation, and it was previously revealed as one day in seven but now as all seven days. We have entered into Jesus: He is the rest and He is the fulfilment of all the promises. So we live in every day being a new day (so for me, we live in the eighth day, not the seventh). Every day is a new day, a new beginning. Every day has fresh mercies. Every day we live in rest and that is perpetual replenishment or restoration.
Light is slowing down
It does not say that a day is a thousand years, just that a day is like a thousand years. Everything in terms of time is related to the speed of light; and the speed of light has been slowing down as it has moved away from the speed of creative light. This was discovered by a couple of Christian astrophysicists, Trevor Norman and Barry Setterfield, who put together a scientific paper on the slowing down of the speed of light. It is really difficult to get a paper like that published when it has to be peer reviewed, because if it doesn’t agree with what scientists already believe then they won’t publish it. To start with, it wasn’t accepted and they were called cranks, but eventually some more mainstream scientists also discovered that light was slowing down.
They extrapolated that, at the speed of light in the beginning, seven days then would equate to something over 13 billion years now. But since it is relative to the observer, we would never know. That explains why the earth appears to be older than adding up the years in the Bible account would suggest: because it is! For man that has only appeared to be 7000 years because of the relativity of the speed of light.
So science actually indicates that the earth is not just 7000 years old, and in any case, no-one knows how long Adam and Eve lived before they fell and time really kicked in – time did not function in the same way as it does today until they stepped outside of God’s eternal now. Things changed significantly at that point on the earth.
This is not about there being a long period of evolution: I do not believe in evolution. Man was created and the animals were created, but the earth is not just 7000 years old either. Both can be true. People come up with all sorts of theories to account for any discrepancies, but I would prefer to focus on the fact that we can live in rest as a state of being (rather than just a period of rest associated with the 7th millennium).
Rest
What does it mean to be in rest? For me it is about not functioning under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and therefore not functioning in works. Rest is the opposite of works, so when we live in the rest of what Jesus has done we don’t have to work for our own redemption and reconciliation. That has been done, so we rest in it: we can just be, we don’t have to do.
Everything in religion is about doing: you have to ‘do’ to earn rest. You work for six days so you can earn your rest for the seventh day. No, we are living in perpetual Sabbath. Essentially, we are continually in rest because now, Jesus is our rest.
“Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28).
That is the key for us, living in a state of being which is not functioning in an old system of works and therefore not being deceived into having to work for God’s favour and blessing; receiving it as His children through grace and mercy, not by works.
Every religious system will get you to try to do something to earn what you already have. So you just go round and round, because you already have it and doing something won’t actually make that true, it just stops you from realising that it is already true.
Are we there yet?
It’s like when you are travelling with your children and they keep asking, ‘Are we there yet?’ In religion, it’s always ‘not yet’. For some, it will be in this period or that period a thousand years in the future – it is coming, it’s just ‘not yet’. And to get there, you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that, otherwise it won’t happen. This just messes people up, gets them into a performance-orientated way of living, and so they don’t enjoy life. They are continually striving for something that already belongs to them; and if they would just stop, they would discover what it is to receive and be at rest.
We are already unconditionally loved and forgiven and everything has been accomplished, so we can live in rest and discover our true identity as sons from that place of rest, rather than doing all the things we are doing to prove we are sons.
The restoration of all things
With religion, you get a lot of ‘shoulds’. You should do this, you should do that. There are no ‘shoulds’. There is no ‘should do’ anything, it is just being. And then everything flows from being.
If we are in the seventh millennium, then why isn’t there rest? The world doesn’t exactly seem to be in the throes of rest. For most people, things are just as bad as they were in the sixth millennium. It is not as if we have crossed over into this millennium and now everything is at rest. That really doesn’t seem to be the experience of most people.
So it is better to just focus on each individual living in rest, which will in turn bring rest to the planet. If we live in freedom, then the planet will become free (and not just the planet, but the whole of creation). So it’s about us as sons living in rest; being rather than doing. That will dial everything down so that all (all people, all beings, all things throughout creation) can begin to discover God’s original intention and purpose for them, which is what will be restored in the restoration of all things.