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How many people live in a time to see a millennium change? Since Adam, there has only been five (or six). I always do a year in review at this time of the year. This year I could have done a year in review, or a century in review, or a millennium in review. Because I will never have the opportunity to do a millennium in review again, I opted to do a millennium. I want to discuss some of the major events of the millennium. I have done much research. I want to give you my top events of this millennium. I want to look at some things that have made life better, and some that have been destructive to life. Some have obvious spiritual qualities. Some not so obvious. The one thing we know is that the Lord reigns.

1. Calendar 1582
    The first event I want to discuss is the calendar. This discussion may dampen the "build-up" we have been given, but to understand the ways of God better, we need to comprehend a few issues about the calendar.
    A month was originally calculated by ancient peoples as the time between two full moons, or the number of days required for the moon to circle the earth (29.5 days). Every empire had their calendars which always included the names of planets or their gods. The Romans named the days of the week in honor of the sun, moon, and various planets. In 45 B.C. Julius Caesar ordered a new calendar and changed the names of several months such as the month Quintilis to Julius (July), after himself. The month Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August) in honor of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, who succeeded Julius Caesar.
    Today we use the Gregorian calendar. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII decreed an eleven day adjustment and included a leap year. In 1752 the British also adopted January 1 as the day when a new year begins. The Soviet Union adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, and Greece adopted it in 1923.
    The Gregorian calendar is also called the Christian calendar because it uses the birth of Christ as its beginning point. Dates are designated AD (Latin anno domini, "in the year of our Lord") and BC (before Christ). Although the birth of Christ was originally given as December 25, 1 BC, scholars now place it about 4 BC.⁽¹⁾
    The point I want to emphasize is that so much importance has been placed on the new millennium when actually we have been in the new millennium for about four years. Also, there is not a correct way of determining today's accurate date. Plus, it seems that if God was going to use a calendar that he would use his own calendar.

There are a couple of thoughts. The Lord God does not operate his universe on our Gregorian calendar. He never has and he never will. If he operated it on any calendar, it would be the one he commanded the use of in Exodus 12:1-2. If that was the beginning of calendar time, then we are now living in something like the year 3490 according to the calendar that the Lord God commanded. If we wanted to go all the way back to creation (Gen 1) and begin time, then we are in something like the year 5760 (3761 BC plus 1999). As we see, there is no millennia change in the Lord's calendar. Much unnecessary importance has been placed on the change of the Gregorian millennia calendar change. It means nothing to the Lord.

2. Crusades 1095
The millennia began with war called "the Holy Wars" or the "Christian campaign." It was a two-hundred year war between Christians and Muslims over Jerusalem. In 1099 the Christians took Jerusalem. But battles continued there and throughout the Middle East, and in 1244 the Muslims regained the city.
Why is that important? Had the Christians won control of Jerusalem, they would have eventually given it back to the Jews who would have rebuilt the temple and restored blood sacrifices that Jesus came to destroy. That temple will never be rebuilt.

4. Black Plague / Bubonic Plague 1348
The disease killed a third of Europe's inhabitants. Boils would from on the neck, underarm, and groin areas causing death. No one knew why. Because people had no idea where the disease came, the Catholic church said it was seen as God's punishment for sinners. But when priests took sick, and half the Roman Catholic's clergy died, that theory weakened. That thinking is the thinking of religion. The Lord is not in the judging business (Luk 9:52-56). Man does not need God to judge them. We bring upon ourselves what we call judgment (Gal 6:7-8; Rom 1). The commandment of the New Testament is love (Joh 13:34; 1Jo 2:7-10; 2Jo 1:5).
The Black Plague forced doctors to dissect human bodies and led the way to what we understand about anatomy today. It was discovered that the disease was transmitted by fleas carried by rodents. Naturally, new methods of insect and rodent controls came upon the market.

5. Banking 1407
Coins as currency have been traced back to the seventh century. But it was not until 1407 that paper IOU's became a form of exchange. Heavy coins, gold, and silver, were deposited into the hands of "moneychangers" who were then those of wealth and well known in the community. In turn, the moneychangers gave pieces of paper stating the necessary gold and silver was available at their business. This set the way for today's checking, credit cards, and electronic debits and credits.

6. Gutenberg Bible 1455
Throughout history, the ability to read and write had been confined mostly to tiny elites of nobles, priests and scribes. But in the 15th century the middle class became literate in Europe. The reason was a man named Johann Gutenberg began to mass produce Bibles. That began an information epidemic that continues today. Gutenberg did not invent printing. He took a procedure that was already working in China and Korea, refined it, and brought it to Europe.

7. Global Civilization 1492
Four times Christopher Columbus tried to find a route to Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic. When his quest ran aground against another continent, he simply insisted Cuba was part of China. Columbus stuck land at San Salvador Island in the Bahama Islands on October 12, 1492. Global civilization had begun. Because of that trip, I live in the greatest and most blessed nation today.

8. Martin Luther 1517
The Roman Catholic church taught indulgences (release from the temporal penalties for sin through the payment of money). The ministers of the Catholic church promised forgiveness of sins in exchange for donations. Martin Luther, though raised a Roman Catholic, lived in a monastery for years, and ordained by the Catholic church, saw through his personal studies that man is "saved by grace through faith." He began to teach that Christians are saved not through their own efforts but by the gift of God's grace, which they accept in faith. On October 31, 1517, Luther made public his Ninety-Five Theses.⁽⁴⁾ It is generally believed that Luther nailed these theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg. The Vatican labeled Luther a heretic and excommunicated him from the Catholic church in 1521. Because of the power of the Catholic church, Luther and his followers were declared political outlaws. Their money and land holdings were taken by the Catholic church and the Reformation began.
Could anyone imagine what church would be like if Luther had not moved in his convictions? Because of Luther, I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I give because I love to give and not because I can buy my way out of hell or my relatives out of purgatory. Much of what we experience in jubilance and fun today in church was because Martin Luther stood his conviction in 1517.

9. Tobacco 1535
The French explorer Jacques Cartier first smoked the mysterious weed along the St. Lawrence River. He observed some native Americans smoking and was intrigued. Cartier could not have imagined the impact tobacco would have in the centuries to come. The native Americans had used tobacco for thousands of years. The plant was brought back to Europe where it was promoted to be medicinal and would heal everything from gonorrhea to the whitening of teeth. It was the first successful crop for exportation. Its use spread around the globe and mass production was in full swing by the end of the 1800's. It was in 1964 that the U.S. Surgeon General declared that instead of a medicine it was a cause of cancer and other diseases. Today it is determined that about three million people a year die of tobacco-related illnesses. Tobacco use is not a sin, but it certainly is not intelligent.

10. Toilet 1596
"When you consider the contributions that plumbing and sanitation makes to the quality of our lives, then much of the other things that we do just seems so much less significant." No one is eager to talk about what goes on in the toilet, but as the little boy said, "Everyone poops." It was in 1596 that a practical "water closet" with a flush valve was invented. This set the way for not only indoor plumbing, but also waste disposal systems. Until then the nearest waste disposal was a tree, or hole, a stream, or river. In the city, human waste was simply dumped out the window. In developing countries, indoor plumbing is still somewhat unavailable and in many foreign cities, raw sewage runs down the street.
I am thankful for the toilet and all that connects to it.

11. The Clock 1656
The hour glass, sundial, and water clock had been used for centuries. The dead weight clock came along in the fourteenth century. It was the Dutch came up with a pendulum clock that revolutionized time keeping. Punctuality became possible. Today punctuality is a virtue.

12. The Microscope 1674
Man could see tiny bugs in water and stars in the sky. They could look into a blood cell and saw that life really was in the blood.

13. Machine Age 1769
With the invention of the steam engine came the machine age. Suddenly there was a way to power ships, power drills for mining, and textile mills. Soon this power would power railroads. Women and children went to work. The quality of living improved. There was more productivity which equated to more money and better living.

14. Declaration of Independence 1776
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . ." Never had any nation been founded on such principles. It was written, but not truly believed. Of course the declaration led to the War of Independence and to the founding of a nation called The United State of America. That nation, founded on the Biblical principle that all men are created equal, was destined to become the greatest, most powerful, most prosperous nation that had ever existed. "I'm proud to be called an American!"

15. Canned Food 1812
Canned foods have affected all of our lives. A French brewed discovered that if he heated food and put the food into a sealed bottle, the bottle would seal airtight preserving the food for years. Later the method was applied to tin cans. Canned foods changed life from the war fronts to mission trips. It continues today to influence our lives greatly.

16. False Religion in America 1820-1879
    Every major false religion in America began to develop from the years of 1820-1879. John Darby began the flood when he founded his Plymouth Brethren in 1820. Joseph Smith organized the church of Latter-Day Saints in 1830. William Miller began organizing the Seventh-Day Adventism in 1843. The Fox sister began "National Spriitusalist Association of the U.S. of A" (Spiritism) in 1863. Mary Baker Eddy published her bible beginning Christian Science in 1875. Charles Taze Russell published the first issue of the Jehovah's Witnesses magazine, The Watchtower, in 1879.
    Few of us have been significantly affected by any of these except by the teaching of the Plymouth Brethren and John Darby. John Darby propagated an escape rapture of the church, a seven year tribulation, followed by a thousand year reign of Christ. Within this teaching was the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem and the reinstating of animal sacrifices. This false doctrine quickly spread from England to France, Switzerland, Italy, and the United States. The Plymouth Brethren church is seen as a "sect" in history. Following is a quote from Encarta Encyclopedia.
    Plymouth Brethren, Christian sect founded in Dublin in the 1820s. The first church to be organized (1831) in England was at Plymouth. The movement rejected the formal ritual of the established church and preached the second coming of Christ. Churches soon appeared throughout the British dominions; in some parts of the continent of Europe, particularly France, Switzerland, and Italy; and in the United States. The British clergyman John Nelson Darby became the most prominent leader of the sect, and the Brethren on the continent of Europe were generally known as Darbyites. The Brethren believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible and have no ordained, salaried clergy. They prefer to be called simply Believers, Christians, or Brethren. According to the latest available figures, the sect has about 1100 churches and 98,000 members in the U.S.⁽⁵⁾

17. Photograph 1826
In 1826 Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce took the world's first photograph. It was a ghostly picture of a courtyard that had a granary and a pigeon house. From that beginning, photography changed our perspective on the world. The invention has allowed us to see images of faraway places. Better still, we can see the faces of previous relatives and grandchildren. It also gives us the ability for them to see our images.

18. Drinking Water 1829
When man begin to accumulate in number, pollution always follows. This is never more apparent than in drinking water. In 1854, physician John Snow, though ignorant of bacteria carried in water, traced an outbreak of cholera to a pump near a sewer. The filtration of drinking water (plus the use of chlorine) began. This could be the most significant public health advance of the millennium.
We can bring this into a spiritual position. There is a lot of pollution in the word given in churches today. Many believer have spiritual cholera. We need a purification system.

19. Railroad 1830
The ability to move armies or merchandise greatly determines the success of a nation. On September 15, 1830, the world's first fully steam-driven railway began its journey in Britain. There were railroads, but they were drawn by horses. This train could run at a 30-mph clip. It was the day of the iron horse. The railroads sent the industrial revolution into overdrive, stimulated trade, and built cities. In the U.S. they ferried settlers westward, uprooted Native Americans and attracted thousands of Chinese and Irish laborers who stayed on after the spikes were driven.

20. Sewing Machine / lay-a-way 1830
The sewing machine made 200 stitches per minute, while a man made only 30. This automated the garment industry. Singer made sewing machines affordable by offering the first lay-a-way plan. For five bucks down, one could take home a $125 machine and pay off the rest in monthly installments with interest (that's really not lay-a-way. That is credit.). This opened the garment industry. People young and old were able to have more jobs, but have affordable clothing.

21. Rubber 1839 (A true American dream and story)
There are today some 40,000 products today, including electrical casings, tennis balls, condoms, erasers, and tires. Rubber is indispensable in our modern lives. Columbus watched natives bounce rubber balls in the late 1400's.
Goodyear was determined to make rubber valuable. Thus making himself wealthy. He was heavily in debt, but still determined. He began mixing raw rubber with everything from witch hazel to cream cheese. In 1839 he accidentally spilled a drop of rubber and sulfur on his burning stove. He had discovered the process of vulcanization. The business boomed. Cars were soon to be invented. But Goodyear failed to secure the rights to his discovery. When he died, he left behind the brilliancy of his idea and a $200,000debt, which in the 1800's would be a million today..

22. Anesthesia 1846
At the time when screams accompanied medical treatment and whisky was the only way to dull pain, a dentist named William Morton administered ether to his patient. The patient felt no pain and the surgery of a tumor in the jaw was successful. Anesthesia opened new arenas for the surgeon.

23. Women Vote 1848
Women had always been received as somehow lesser than men. Women were not allowed to vote, but could bear children and cut firewood. In 1848 that began to change. Feminism was expressed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote and signed the "Declaration of Sentiments." Women received the equal right to vote.

24. Civil War 1865
The U.S. Civil War ended in 1865. It transformed the lives of missions of black Americans and set the nation on a new course. It was a war that literally caused brother to fight against brother and father against son. It was a war of principles and equality. 600,00 were lost, but something changed in the heavenlies.

25. Telephone 1876
Alexander Graham Bell,a 29 year old American, said through a can like microphone, "Mr. Watson! Come here! I want you!" That apparatus changed communication forever.

26. Electric lighting 1879
Serious scientific study and research began in the 1600's. Benjamin Franklin spent much time in electrical research. His famous kite experiment centered on atmospheric electricity. It was not until the work of Thomas Edison that electricity became a practical need for the home. Edison invented the lightbulb.

26. x-Rays 1895
A German named Wilhelm Röentgen placed a tube with a wire attached to either end inside a black box, switched off the lights in his lab and turned on the electrical current. Holding up his hand before a screen, he saw the shadow of bones. Within months physicians were using the new technology to look at broken bones and bullets in wounded soldiers.

27. Radio 1901
Guglielmo Marconi only 27, in Italy, transmitted a radio signal about a mile and a half. The beginning of wireless communications had begun. Radio, television, cellular phones, space communication would all follow.

28. Airplane 1903
On a stretch of sand near Kitty Hawk, N.C., two bicycle mechanics achieved one of humanity's maddest dreams: For 12 seconds the possessed true flight. Before dark, Orville and Wilbur Wright kept their wood-wire-and-cloth Flyer aloft for 59 seconds. The advances came fast. In mere years man was flying across the Atlantic Ocean.

29. Pentecostalism 1906
Charles Fox Parham declared in 1901 that speaking in tongues was a sign of baptism in the Holy Spirit. William Joseph Seymour, a black preacher who listened to Parham through an open door in his Houston Bible school. Seymour, in Los Angeles, received and taught the baptism in the Spirit. Within two years of founding a mission in an abandoned church on Azusa Street, his multicultural ministry sent missionaries to 25countries.
Seymour took doctrine and walked it out. He proved that people still hungered in their hearts for a personal Biblical relationship with God. Talking in tongues, shouting, swaying, falling out, healing, prophesying and the acceptance of these began on Azusa Street in Los Angeles California.

30. Plastic 1907
Leo Baekeland, a Belgian-born inventor, hit upon the right combo of phenols and formaldehyde. One great asset of plastic was versatility. It is used in everything from telephones to toilets, ashtrays to airplane parts. Today plastic is a $260 billion industry that employs 1,381,000 worldwide. It's a plastic world we live in, and that's not always bad.

31. Ford 1908
Henry Ford began the automotive age. He produced an automobile that would cost $850. It was called the Model T. It was the first affordable car. Ford introduced the moving assembly line. Soon cars altered travel. The ability to travel decided the fate of nations.

32. Birth Control 1914
Margaret Sanger was the sixth of 11 children. She had seen the strains childbearing put on women. She founded the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in 1923, the first doctor-staffed birth control clinic in America, where contraceptives and advice were distributed.

33. World War I 1914
The assassination of a heir to the throne in Hungary, Archduke Ferdinand, set off a disastrous chain of events among the powers of Europe. No one can truly understand how that one assassination could lead to nearly nine million soldiers killed in war. It was an average of 5,600 each day. World War I was the first modern war, the first to make wide use of some of the ghastly weapons of destruction we know today. Machine guns, submarines, tanks, and war ships were implemented.

34. Penicillin 1928
Scottish physician Alexander Fleming noticed that a small amount of mold growing destroyed a bacteria culture. He named the mold Penicillin. Fleming's discovery revolutionized the treatment of infections previously considered incurable--pneumonia, rheumatic and scarlet fevers, syphilis, tetanus, etc.

35. Television 1928
Live from General Electric's radio laboratories in New York, it's . . . a guy removing his glasses. And then putting them on again. Then blowing a smoke ring. It was the world's first television broadcast--into three homes. The combination of sound accompanied by moving images had bee transmitted. The broadcast of the 1947 World Series clinched television's growing importance. By the end of the 1950s, nearly 90 percent of U.S. homes could boast at least one TV set. The world no longer needed to be imagined--now it could be seen and heard.

36. Hitler 1933
The millennium's monsters, first place must go to Hitler. the ruler who made genocide a multinational industry--Adolf Hitler. What Hitler did boggles the mind. Freight trains carried Jews to human stockyards across Nazi-occupied Europe. Jews were worked to death, shot or gassed; corpses incinerated or processed into soap. Hitler's becoming Chancellor of Germany sparked history's most destructive war. A hypnotic orator, Hitler an evolution pinnacle were the Germans at the top. The German's were destined to subdue or destroy all "inferior" races--particularly the Jews, whom Hitler blamed for most of humanity's ills. Tremendous prejudice and dreams of glory brought Germany to a place convinced that they could conquer the earth. After WWII began in 1939, only six years later, the Axis countries were vanquished. Over 60 million people were dead. Six million Jews had been murdered in systematic slaughter.

37. Atomic Bomb 1945
Two bombs to end World War II. The first, on August 6,1945 which leveled most of Hiroshima and annihilating some 80,000 people in a blinding flash. The second bomb fell upon Nagasaki three days later, killing 40,000. It took three years of top-secret work called the Manhattan Project. Those closest to the blasts were vaporized, leaving bright silhouettes on blackened ground. Others perished slowly, radiation flaying them and devouring their organs. Cancer added to the toll, which eventually approached 200,000 in Hiroshima. Colonel Paul Tibbets named the B-29 "Enola Gay" the night before delivering the A-Bomb. Human beings now had the means to exterminate humanity. The mushroom cloud from the bomb rose 20,000 feet. It continues to cloud over politics and culture today.

38. Space Travel 1957
The Russian astronaut Vostok was the first man put into space orbit. The U.S. was not far behind as in 62 John Glenn orbited the earth. In 1969Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. More missions--Discovery, Endeavour, Galileo-- are going on now.
We are leaving this millennium and moving into the next. What will we find out there this millennium. Do we really think we re the only ones in a universe that is expanding at the speed of light?

38. Cloning 1996
    Dolly the sheep, unlike any other mammal that has ever lived, is an identical copy of another adult and has no father. She is a clone, the creation of a group of veterinary researchers. Doctor Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, transferred the nuclei from various types of sheep cells into unfertilized sheep eggs from which the natural nuclei had been removed by microsurgery. The eggs were then implanted into sheep that carried them to term, one of which culminated in a successful birth.
    Cloning humans would mean that women could in principle reproduce without any help from men.
    Wilmut plans to use the patented cloning technique to produce animals that will secrete valuable drugs in their milk. But what are the possibilities? Negatively, women could reproduce without the necessity of a man, but they would all be female (at this point). There is the possibility of organ duplication and perhaps eventually, immortality.

What will have happened and will be happening one thousand years from now? Can we even imagine. Had the Crusaders been told in the year 1050 that man would be walking on the moon, visiting mars, and cloning animals could they have imagined? It is exciting to simply think of the possibilities, if we can think at that distance.

2. The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, Fifth Improved Edition, Exodus chapter 12