Roosters Crow, Owls Hoot: On the Dynamics of Apocalyptic Millennialism

Summary

A rooster and a bat were waiting for the light.

The rooster said to the bat, I await the dawn.

But you, why do you want the light?

Talmud Sanhedrin, 98a

The Millennial Perception in Apocalyptic Time

Millennialists view a dramatically different world from the gray complexities we denizens of normal time have come to live with. They pay close attention to human suffering, and its causes, evil, injustice, oppression. The religious among them believe that a benevolent and omnipotent God, or gods, or ancestors, do exist and intervene in the saeculum. Among the most common variant, monotheists, a God of Justice and his disciples on earth await his Day of Judgment; he allows evil to flourish as a test. For them the unhappy anomalies that most sweep under their mental rugs, occupy the heart of the matter. God's unwillingness to intervene in history stems not from indifference or incapacity, but from a desire to test us. Then at last, on a great Judgment Day—Doomsday—the evil will get their just punishment and the good, their just reward.

Indeed, so great and dramatic a transformation will take place on this Day, that the world will then enter a wondrous period (conventionally 1000 years—mille anni, millennium) of justice, joy, fellowship, and abundance. Here the rapacious social world will turn upside down. Here the lamb shall lie down with the lion and get a good night's sleep.