Other Facts
The National Association of Free Will Baptists says there's no rush to celebrate the new millennium. In The Detroit News on 12 May 1999, an article states that the denomination won't mark its arrival until 1 January 2001:
" NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The National Association of Free Will Baptists says there's no rush to celebrate the new millennium.
The denomination won't mark its arrival until Jan. 1, 2001.
"We always like to be different," joked Melvin Worthington, executive secretary of the denomination based in Nashville.
Different? Maybe. Accurate? Definitely.
Some 1,500 years ago, the monk Dionysius Exiguus was directed by Pope John I to compile tables of dates to help local Roman priests and bishops determine the correct date for Easter.
Dionysius counted the year of Jesus' birth as 0001, not 0000. Thus it follows that the second millennium ends with the year 2000, and the third starts with 2001.
Official keepers of time at the U.S. Naval Observatory and England's Royal Greenwich Observatory concur. Yet most Christians will mark the arrival of the millennium Jan. 1, 2000.
"The number resonates in people's minds," says Darren Sherkat, associate professor of sociology and religious studies at Vanderbilt University.
Not, however, for the Free Will Baptists, a fundamentalist Baptist denomination started in 1727 by a group in North Carolina who broke off from the Calvinists. Unlike the Calvinists, they believed it's possible to forfeit salvation by sinning.
The denomination now has about 215,000 members, primarily in the Southeast.
Worthington said the church's millennium-related plans will likely include a series of workshops to renew faith, and efforts to attract new members, particularly among immigrants. "
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