Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Adam and Eve should not have sinned, that God's plan was for the Garden of Eden state to continue forever. They believe "a new world" is at hand in the millennium.

This means:

• Wickedness, warfare, crime and violence will be gone.

• Jehovah's worshippers will live in security.

• Food shortages will not exist.

• The whole earth will become a paradise.

• There will be peace between animals and humans.

• Sickness and disease will vanish.

• Dead loved ones will be restored to life with the prospect of never dying.

The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, rejects the idea of a millennium. Since 1932, this Lutheran church has believed this statement from its Web site:

"We reject every type of millennialism, or Chiliasm, the opinions that Christ will return visibly to this earth a thousand years before the end of the world and establish a dominion of the Church over the world; or that before the end of the world the church is to enjoy a season of special prosperity; or that before a general resurrection on Judgment Day a number of departed Christians or martyrs are to be raised again to reign in glory in this world; or that before the end of the world a universal conversion of the Jewish nation (of Israel according to the flesh) will take place.

"Over against this, Scripture clearly teaches, and we teach accordingly, that the kingdom of Christ on earth will remain under the cross until the end of the world . . . that the second visible coming of the Lord will be His final advent, His coming to judge the quick and the dead . . . that there will be but one resurrection of the dead. . . that the time of the Last Day is, and will remain, unknown . . . which would not be the case if the Last Day were to come a thousand years after the beginning of a millennium; and that there will be no general conversion, a conversion en masse, of the Jewish nation."

"United Methodists have varied interpretations and understandings of the second coming of Christ as referenced in scripture," according to beliefs listed on their Web site. "While you would find many who take a literal approach to belief in the second coming, most United Methodists would be uncertain about the meaning of the second coming."

Pastor Steve Goodier of Salt Lake's Christ United Methodist Church said his faith has no official stand on the millennium.