Verse 7 And when the thousand years are expired. The period of the thousand years designated in the Revelation 20:1-3, is the origin of the idea of the millennium,--an idea which, under various modifications has prevailed very extensively in the Christian church. The word millennium means simply a period of one thousand years, as the word century expresses a period of one hundred. Some have supposed that the language here used teaches the resurrection from the dead of individual martyrs of former times, and their reign upon the earth with Christ, who will then return in person to this world again; and that the time when this period shall commence, is to be pretty accurately determined by means of calculations based on the various predictions of this book. Others, on the other hand, going to the opposite extreme, suppose that only some indefinite period of ordinary prosperity is intended,--such, for example, as that which occurred in the time of Constantine, when persecutions ceased, and the civil power of the Roman empire was, for a time, the friend and protector of Christianity; and between these two extremes, there is scarcely any conceivable hypothesis which has not been framed and defended. On sober reflection, however, two points would seem to be clear, in reference to this prediction; first, that it is intended to convey to us the idea that a period of great and long-continued prosperity awaits the cause of Christ, before the great final consummation,--a period during which this world shall be the abode of piety, peace, and happiness; and, secondly, that the language in which the prediction is clothed is such as purposely to withhold from us a knowledge of the time in which God designs that it shall be fulfilled, and of the circumstances which will attend and characterize the fulfilment.