The following is an editorial from the January 2000 issue of The Christian Science Journal

A challenge to time

Spiritual momentum and the unfolding good of the true millennium

The commonly held view of the millennium asserts that, essentially, it constitutes a calendar period of one thousand years since the advent of Christ Jesus, and that we are presently concluding the second millennium. (And despite the popular notion, the new calendar millennium actually begins on January 1, 2001, not January 1, 2000.) But what does this particular calendar date mean to someone living in a small village in China, where their calendar is based on entirely different starting points? Or to a Bushman in the Kalahari Desert, where his people have never known a calendar? Or even to the two thousand orthodox Christian monks who live in monasteries on Mount Athos along the Aegean Sea, where they still use the Julian calendar, thirteen days behind the rest of the Christian world? When will the millennium come for the Athonite monasteries?

Dictionaries define millennium not only as "a period of 1000 years" but also specifically as "the thousand years mentioned in Revelation 20 during which holiness is to be triumphant and Christ is to reign on earth." Webster’s Third New International Dictionary further defines millennium as "a period of prevailing virtue or great happiness or perfect government or freedom from familiar ills and imperfections of human existence."

From a spiritual perspective, the millennium really has nothing to do with a specific date on a calendar. It is fundamentally a mental phenomenon. And aren’t virtue, happiness, perfect government, and freedom actually mental qualities or conditions that illustrate the tremendous promise this phenomenon holds for humanity? As Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes, "The millennium is a state and stage of mental advancement, going on since ever time was."1 Although many people may feel anxious about an approaching calendar millennium, there is absolutely nothing to fear about advancing mentally. This is a "millennium" to be welcomed with joy and thanksgiving.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy also draws an important conclusion about what is required to bring in the millennium. She writes: "If all who ever partook of the sacrament had really commemorated the sufferings of Jesus and drunk of his cup, they would have revolutionized the world. If all who seek his commemoration through material symbols will take up the cross, heal the sick, cast out evils, and preach Christ, or Truth, to the poor,—the receptive thought,—they will bring in the millennium."2

Don’t these words point to the individual responsibility each of us has to live what we believe and profess, to be an active witness to Christ, Truth, and thereby to usher in that state and stage of mental advancement that will transform our earth to heaven?

As we follow the way of Christ, we naturally become spiritual ushers for the millennium, leaving the mark of God’s love and grace on the lives we touch. And through prayer, we have the opportunity to quietly, powerfully, touch many, many lives the world over. The Christian’s work of bringing in the millennium of joy, peace, and God’s perfect government is not confined by time or space. Even if we may at times doubt our own capacity to fulfill God’s purpose, we can go forward in confidence that with God, the one divine Mind, all things are possible, and that the spirit of Truth and Love working in us individually is also working inexorably in the heart of humanity.

It is essential to release our millennial vision from the calendar, to release it from time constraints, and allow it to proceed according to mental advancement. The traditional human thought relating to the millennium has always been time-bound and time-structured. And even if the common view of a millennium represents a long time—1,000 years—it is still time-bound. It is measured from the starting point of a human birthdate and proceeds along the outline of a human calendar devised by Western culture.

The mortal, material conception of time is not the gauge of the true millennium; spiritual momentum and progress are.

Almost everything that limits experience and progress is associated in some way with the constraints imposed by a limited, mortal view of time. If we can spiritualize our consciousness of time, we will know more of the real millennial glory moment to moment. We will be demonstrating the reality affirmed in Science and Health, "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis."3 We will be at one with patience, realizing its perfect work as divine Love establishes its own perfect concept. We will not be hurried, anxious, or late for the future. We will be living now, coexistent with the eternal Mind, which is maintaining every function of man and the universe in perfect order, harmony, and purpose.

In the Glossary of Science and Health, the definition of time shows how confining and imprisoning the mortal perception can be to human experience: "Time. Mortal measurements; limits, in which are summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, knowledge . . .."4 Metaphysics challenges us to rethink the whole notion of time and to recognize the nature of reality without any mortal measurements, and therefore without the limitations of time as humanity normally perceives it.

In its interpretation of day, the Glossary of Science and Health provides a way of viewing time that spiritualizes the concept: "The objects of time and sense disappear in the illumination of spiritual understanding, and Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded. This unfolding is God’s day, and ‘there shall be no night there.’ "5

This unfolding is God’s "now." There is only now. We live and move and have our being now. And the only coherent order in God’s universe, the only divine possibility, is the unfolding of good alone. Knowledge of this fact is essential to spiritual progress, which is the divine purpose of all spiritual momentum. Understanding man’s relation to now brings in the millennium—that state and stage of purely mental advancement, or unfoldment. To live life in the present moment of divine consciousness, in the eternal now, is both an act of faith and of spiritual understanding. Faith that expresses an absolute conviction that God is forever working His purpose out in the present moment, coupled with an understanding that His creation is governed by law and is always good. God—the unchanging, unlimited good itself—blesses all of His children yesterday and today and forever, which is to say: now and now and always now. Referring to the Scripture "...one day is with the Lord as a thousand years,"6 one Bible commentary suggests, "Faith orients man to eternity, whereas scoffers remain children of time." 7 Or we might say that the scoffers and unbelievers, the materialist and the agnostic, remain prisoners of time.

Once when Jesus was preaching to his followers, he said to them: "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest." 8 Here, Jesus is showing the way of faith and understanding that frees us from the prison of mortality’s time. No matter what the physical senses tell us—for example, that good is only in process; that good is off in the distance; that good is waiting to happen and not yet here or ready to be experienced—spiritual sense tells us that the mortal measure of time has nothing to do with experiencing the reality of good. The good that God bestows is already full, complete, ever present, and ever ready to harvest—to know and to experience. The divine fruition of good is always unfolding and must continue to unfold from the nature of its infinite, timeless origin and cause. The good that God bestows is present, not past. Good is always, not sometimes. Good is ready, not waiting. Good is fully mature, not merely developing. Good is eternal, not momentary. Good is continuous, not interrupted. Good is universal, not partial. Good is here, not out of reach. Good is now, not when.

In her work Unity of Good, Mrs. Eddy casts additional light on how we can grasp this divine order of reality and break the mental constraints of time-bound perceptions. We learn that the harvest of good can never be measured or comprehended through material means or the material senses. On pages 10 through 12, Mrs. Eddy shares these insights. First she says, "To attempt the calculation of His [God’s] mighty ways, from the evidence before the material senses, is fatuous." Later, she continues: "Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the currents of matter, or mortal mind. . . . He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this change through the higher laws of God. . . . Jesus required neither cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness for perfection and its possibilities. He said that the kingdom of heaven is here, and is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest, I say, Look up, not down, for your fields are already white for the harvest; and gather the harvest by mental, not material processes."

It is through spiritual sense that we behold the timeless reality of God’s kingdom. To lift up our eyes, to look up spiritually, is to see as God sees—to see life in and of Spirit, eternally unfolding good, rising higher and higher from a necessarily boundless and immortal basis. To see the fields only in process, still growing and maturing according to material terms and conditions (which in fact would leave them yet susceptible to potential drought, blight, pestilence, and all kinds of unplanned failures), is to look down—to keep our vision focused on the dust-man and the dust-reality, the mortal and material, the finite and constrained, the time-bound and unpredictable.

For Jesus to counsel his followers not to accept in thought that they must wait four months to gather the harvest of God’s good is essentially the equivalent of his telling them not to accept that they must wait one thousand years either! To spiritual sense, it is nonsense to say there are yet one thousand years and then will come the harvest of God’s good. And it is also a misconception to say that there are yet four months, or four weeks, or four days, or four hours, or four minutes, or four seconds . . . . Good is complete and mature and perfect already to harvest. It always has been, for it truly is the same good yesterday and today and forever.

From a purely metaphysical perspective, it becomes clear that the true millennium operates according to a different construct than calendar time and solar years. As "a state and stage of mental advancement," the millennium is an entirely spiritual phenomenon, realized tangibly in consciousness according to the continuous unfolding of good, which is both now and always, yet always now. We’ve never had to wait for this millennium. We never will.

William E. Moody, Editor

1The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 239.

2 Science and Health, p. 34.

3Ibid., p. 258.

4 Ibid., p. 595.

5 Ibid., p. 584.

6 II Pet. 3:8.

7 The Interpreter’s Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1957), Vol. 12, p. 201.

8 John 4:35.

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