Many Christians believe that Christ will return to the earth in glory one day (the Second Coming) and usher in a marvelous era known as the Millennium, a thousand-year period when Christ will rule on the earth and Satan will be bound until a brief period at the end of that era. Revelation 20 is one of the key texts on this topic. We read of resurrected righteous people living and reigning with Christ during that era (Rev. 20: 4). Mortal saints are on the earth during this era, with Christ in their midst. Wow, what an amazing time that will be. Think of all that we will learn, all the great mysteries that will be cleared up, all the great insights into life and the universe and the Creation and the things of God and man that will be shared with us as we live with and learn from Christ year after year! Think of how He could bless us just with a few words of wisdom on health care issues such as cancer treatment and prevention--is it too much to think that the Master Healer won't offer such blessings to us through His knowledge in that time of joy?

I hope such thoughts and dreams do not offend you. I hope you are in the camp that rejoices at such possibilities and would gladly welcome the chance to sit at the feet of Christ and learn from Him. That its, to learn new things from him, with new information and new answers that go beyond our hopelessly limited current understanding. New things that are revealed. Or do you think that Christ will have to pretty much be silent during that era, just smiling at us perhaps but pretty much expecting us to just turn to Genesis when we have questions about the cosmos and the Creation or to Leviticus and Deuteronomy when we have questions about health care? When we are tempted with a desire to know something more, perhaps we will find comfort by pulling out our tattered paperback editions of Dale Crowley's 1948 volume, The Bible Has All of the Answers. Of course, we'll always have Wikipedia, if its servers and databases survive the chaos of the end times.

Well, I hope that's not your view of the Millennium. That would be a far less bright Millennium than the one I believe awaits us. Christ wasn't silent while serving as a mortal on the earth, He wasn't silent immediately after His Resurrection when he showed Himself to many believers, He wasn't silent during his 40-day ministry a short time later (though not a word of all that He taught and revealed is recorded in the records of the Bible). He wasn't silent when He visited the Book of Mormon peoples in the New World who recorded His words and became further eye-witnesses of Christ, and we proclaim that He is not silent in our day. You may not believe our claims about revelation to modern prophets and peoples in the ancient Americas, but if you believe the Bible, I hope you can envision a Millennium in which the Christ who dwells on the earth is not a silent Christ, but one who can continue to speak and teach and reveal great truths that will bless us throughout that era and beyond.

God, the Ultimate Authority and the Source of all wisdom and knowledge (God, not a static printed volume), has much more to say to us someday, and that means that there are many great and wonderful things yet to be revealed. If you can envision a Millennium in which Christ continues to bless us with teachings and revelations, then perhaps you won't be so offended at the very idea of any additional revelation, now or in the future, besides what has been assembled and published in the Bible. Perhaps you might even understand a little more why we LDS folks have the following as one of our 13 Articles of Faith (this is the 9th):

We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

Perhaps you will join us in looking forward with joy to receiving more revelation, instead of bristling at the thought and grumbling about "denigrating" the Bible by suggesting it does not contain all the knowledge we could ever need or chanting something about the sin of adding or subtracting from the Word of God. God, of course, is free to speak and reveal more anytime He wants, but we mortals have no authority to change the words of God: that is John's meaning in Rev. 22:18-19, something Moses already explained in Deut. 4:2, right before he added many more words to his scriptural record. Adding scripture is something God has his prophets do all the time, with no indication that the revealed word would ever permanently end, not in our day and certainly not in the Millennium. Further prophets and added revelation is something that is not only possible but actually prophesied in the Bible (e.g., Rev. 11 has modern prophets prophesying in the last days in Jerusalem; see also Isaiah 2 and Matt 23:34), and is something that Christians should look forward to with joy.

I hope you join me in looking forward to many more great things yet to be revealed! And frankly, I hope we don't have to wait until the Millennium for some of that. Call me crazy--or call me LDS. Yeah, I know, synonyms....
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