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The word "millenium" is an eschatological term which refers to a thousand years of fulfillment, described in Revelation, wherein Satan is bound and there is a reign of peace on the earth (Rev. 20:1-10). There are basically three variant views of what the thousand years signifies, when it will occur, and how this reign of Christ and the saints is to be achieved: pre-millenialism, post-millenialism and amillenialism.
*Pre-millenialism.*
Radically unlike the other views, pre-millenialism generally interprets the "thousand years" as a literal period of time which will occur after a culmination of specific, prophetic events in history. These events include multitudinous signs (such as natural disasters, wars, mass deception and apostacy), , a specific period of great tribulation, the rise of antichrist, and finally the second coming of Christ. The millenium occurs after all these dramatic, supernatural manifestations of good and evil have been resolved in history through these cataclysmic events.
Many premillenialists describe the millenium as a specific period of a thousand years which occurs after the second advent, when the saints rule with Christ on the earth, although much of the early church rejected this doctrine (condemned as the heresy of chiliasm, which is Greek for "thousand"). There are variations within the premillenial perspective regarding the order and meaning of the events, and the existence of a "rapture", whether the righteous dead will resurrect to reign along with the saints during this period or not, and other issues. At the end of the thousand years of peace comes the Final Judgement, and the entrance of the saints into New Jerusalem.
*Post-millenialism.*
Antithetical to the pre-mil view, the post-millenialist adheres to the notion that the thousand years is likely not a literal thousand years, but that the number is used symbolically in the Scriptures to indicate a lengthy period of time. The post-millenial position indicates the present reign and rulership of Christ through the church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.
Although the thousand years is not literal, usually, in the post-mil view, it is a finite length of time in which the presence of God's grace in space and time through the Church gradually overwhelms and minimizes the presence of evil in the world. The predominance of the good culminates and is fulfilled in the second coming of Christ, who puts all things under his feet as a process, as a process of conversion, through the grace that presently exists in the church.
*Amillenialism*
Like the post-mil view, the amillenial doctrine does not believe that the thousand years is literal, but unlike the post-mil view, amillenialists do not believe that the thousand years described in Revelation 20 indicates the rule of Christ on earth. Rather, those who have died in Christ, saved through His righteousness, reign with him in heaven, and finally in perfection after the Resurrection and the final judgement.
The amillenial doctrine posits the idea that both good and evil continue to exist in the world until the Resurrection and Final Judgement, as indicated in Christ's parable of the wheat and the tares. The kingdom of God is present in the Church, but is not progressing towards fulfillment. Christ rules His church, but He does not reign for any specific period in the world prior to his second advent.
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