An Interesting Question About the King of Kings

In steps 3 and 5, the manual explains, Jesus Christ will usher in the Millennium and rule over the earth for 1000 years. Now, I don't want to talk too much about the Millennium because it gets its own chapter in the Gospel Principles manual, and that's not the chapter I'm supposed to cover. But there is one question that I have about those thousand years.

The scriptures say that Christ will reign as "King of kings and Lord of lords." I wonder if those phrases were meant to be taken literally. There are currently many nations on the earth, each ruled by a king or a lord, or some other kind of ruler. When Christ reigns over the earth, will we be one nation, ruled by Jesus, or will we still be many nations, each with their own national ruler, but all subject to Christ's authority?

That may be what one may call an "interesting" question. On my mission, there was a General Authority who would visit every so often and would sometimes open up to a Q&A session, but I'm told that before he would do so, he would tell those in attendance that there was a difference between "good" questions and "interesting" questions, and he would only answer the good ones.

Now, I'm only mildly curious what the structure of the government will be like during the Millennium. I'm not sure it really matters, and it certainly doesn't matter yet. When the Millennium begins (once we got over the shock), we might ask how the government will be rearranged, if at all. But until then, it's not important. Whether Christ will rule the whole earth, including the church, directly or through delegation is a question for the curious, but not one that really needs to be addressed.

In fact, part of me wonders why we need to learn about the Millennium at all. Yeah, it's interesting, but what are the odds that we'll actually have a chance to benefit from that information in our lifetime? In the months and years preceding the Second Coming, wars and natural disasters will increase in frequency and intensity, ergo, the body count will rise. Of the survivors, only the righteous will survive the purge that will occur when Jesus comes. And nobody but God Himself knows exactly when that moment will be. Even if we're lucky enough to escape multiple wars and disasters and righteous enough to withstand the purge, those events might not occur until after our lifetimes anyway. On the other hand, it doesn't have to.

If we're righteous enough to live on the earth during the Millennium, we're going to be resurrected during that time, if not sooner. We'll have bodies and will be totally capable of literally living on the earth during the Millennium. While it might be too crowded for all of God's righteous children to live on the earth at once (or am I being overly optimistic?), I'm pretty confident that we'll all some at least Some time on earth then. And if you're going to visit a place, let alone live there, you'll probably want to learn about the local conditions so you can plan accordingly.

And that leads me to the real reason why this is all being taught in the first place; so we can prepare for it. Whether the Second Coming happens during our mortal lifetimes or our extended lifetimes, it's going to happen soon enough that we should start preparing for it now. And if part of the conditions during the Millennium is that Jesus Christ will rule the earth, whether directly or indirectly, I'd say that we had better get used to listening to Him.