Clough Dispensations Lesson 9

The Dispensation of Israel – Dispensation of Law finished; Millennium

Tonight we will finish the presentation of the dispensation of the Law, I want to open it up for some questions that may have been raised. I would like to clarify the word “Law” a minute. I’ve been made aware of the fact that some people have the conception that the age of the Law that has to do with Israel is the age when God had the do’s and don’ts. In other words, He had a set of sentences describing what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. And then in the age of grace, the Church Age it’s do what you please. This has been the presentation, I think, that has offended a lot of people about dispensationalism. That’s not true. The word “Law” and the word “grace” are looking at something different than that. There’s no difference; let’s look at it this way. Here’s the age of Law and here you have 613 or something like that different commandments in the age of the Law. Now look at it this way; those commandments are simply an exposition of the will of God. So you have the will of God for the believers under the Law and you have the will of God for the believers in the Church Age. And there are many commandments you might say that correspond to this in the New Testament. So the will of God is still defined in the New Testament, it’s no less defined in the New Testament with one exception than it is in the Old Testament. But the difference is that under the Law the people were mixed; in other words, later on during Israel’s history you’d have a mixture of believers and unbelievers and during the age of the Law you had these commandments being given to unbelievers, and they were required to adhere to them by virtue of their citizenship in the theocracy. Whereas the will of God in the Church Age is given strictly only to believers. Now that’s one of the difference.

Another difference between the will of God in the Law and the will of God in the age of grace is that the will of God in the age of the Law included societal relationships, such as taxation, tithing in other words, such as your relationship with the government and so on. Those are absolutely missing in the age of grace simply because we don’t have a theocracy, simply because we don’t have the details of special [can’t understand word] government set up. So you might say in that area the age of grace is more flexible. So don’t think when we say the age of Law the will of God was spelled out and over here the will of God is not spelled out; that’s not the difference.

The difference is between the scope of the will of God; here the scope is individual and for believers; here the scope is community and national and individual. And also there’s a difference in the way in which the believers lived. In the Church Age the will of God is accomplished by the filling of the Holy Spirit. Now the filling of the Holy Spirit was not available to Old Testament believers. Exactly what was available is hard to say. We know the Holy Spirit worked in their heart. The best explanation that we have is that given by the Lord Jesus Christ when He said, and introduced the Holy Spirit as a Paraclete that would come and He said you will know Him for He has been with you and He will be in you. So evidently the ministry of the Holy Spirit under the law was “with” the saints, for reasons beyond the scope of this presentation. But the modus operandi or the means of accomplishing the will of God differs slightly from one dispensation to the next and the scope of the will of God differs slightly. And for label’s sake we’ve labeled one “Law” and the other “grace,” but it doesn’t mean that Law is just…everything’s rigid and over here everything is kind of do as you please. That’s not the point. If you have that point I think you missed the whole thing about dispensations, quite frankly.

Last time we were going on the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His relationship to the Law, and I’d like to kind of illustrate the Law by thinking of a template. Those of you who work with designs or ladies when you have patterns for sewing or something, just think of the Law as a template of some sort of shape and what it’s doing is measuring love of God. And that’s what the Law is, it’s a template so that you can put it down and see, now does this fulfill the love of God. And you fit different things; you measure your life by it. And the point was that whenever you fall one piece short, for example, again using the illustration of sewing you had a pattern, you had the cloth and it just fit except for an inch in the corner. Under the Law the point was you chucked the whole thing because James said whosoever keeps the Law and offends at one point, he might as well just break the whole thing. The Law is an indivisible unit and no matter how…there’s no degree of fitting, it either fits it or it doesn’t. It’s like in a factory when a product is being made, it either passes inspection or it doesn’t; it’s not something that 90% passes inspection. The inspector at the end of the assembly line says it passes or it doesn’t pass. And that’s the same thing with the Law; the Law is like a template and it’s there to spell out in detail what loving God means.

Now the point is, under dispensational Law nobody fulfilled this template; you could take the thousands and thousands and millions of believers that lived and test every one of their lives including Moses, David, Elijah and all the rest of them, even those saints this template did not fit; they all came short. There is only one person under the Law that fit the template, that’s Jesus Christ. And that’s what we mean when we say Jesus Christ fulfills the Law. It’s as though you had a pattern and you were measuring out a piece of material, Jesus Christ would be the only one that would fit the pattern. That is what the New Testament means when it says the Lord Jesus Christ fulfills the Law.

Last time we were working on the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Law, since He’s the last major prophet under the Law. And we said that He perfectly kept the Law. Then we said He fulfilled the typology of the Law. Thirdly we said He appealed for His kingship under the Law; in other words He built His whole platform and program on the basis of the Law. And four, we began to deal with His deity. And we said there are basically four ways of showing the deity of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Now there are more sophisticated ways than this of showing the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and this is covered in the basic’s course. But at least you should have some idea for this because every once in a while some crackpot comes up to you. I met at least three or four different kinds of these cults since I’ve come to Lubbock. But they all come with this pitch that Jesus is a prophet and a good man and a teacher but He’s not God. That’s the most crucial doctrine in the whole New Testament and you ought to be able to defend it. If you’re an intelligent believer you ought to be able to defend this doctrine, if you forget everything else, you should be able to handle this one. And my frank evaluation is I don’t think many believers, if you’re average, you won’t be able to do it. So you ought to know how to defend the Lord Jesus Christ’s deity.

We said last time one way of defending it is to show that He’s named, He has God’s name and that we showed from John 8:58, He said “I am,” and in the Greek that’s the word for Jehovah in the Old Testament. Then we said the second way of showing Jesus’ deity is His attributes. Look carefully at His life and say now look, He has the divine attributes that are only true of God so therefore He must be God. What does attributes does Jesus have that God alone has?

First we said He had omniscience, from John 2 as an example of that. He had omnipresence, John 1, Nathanael was having a picnic under the tree and Jesus saw Him, Jesus wasn’t there, so Jesus must be omnipresent. Jesus was omnipotent, we showed this from Matthew 8, comparing it with Psalm 89. So you could go through all the divine attributes and show that Jesus fits these. If the attributes are only true of God, that makes Jesus God. It’s very simple.

Now a third way of showing Jesus’ deity, we’ve shown He has the name of God, He has the attributes of God, He also does the works of God. What do we mean by the works of God? Well, for one thing He is said in the New Testament to be the Creator of all things. Turn to Colossians for a moment. Colossians 1:15-16, now verse 15 is inevitably used by every nitwit cult you can name to show that Jesus is not God because in verse 15 they say aha, do you see what verse 15 says, “Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation,” so Jesus was the first-born of all creation, He’s part of creation. And that’s the argument they use to show that Jesus is not God. Well, there are two problems with it; first of all, the word “first-born” is very ambiguous and generally, as the note in the New Scofield Bible indicates, that it does not have to do with origin so much as it has to do with position. In other words, what it means is that the Lord Jesus Christ as God-man is the head of all creation. That’s essentially…in other words, it’s a word of position.

The proof that it is a word of position and not of origin is the fact of the use of the word “image” just before it. When you have something that’s the image of God, how do you get it without violating the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” and what’s the second commandment? “Thou shalt not make any graven image.” And yet here it says the Lord Jesus Christ is the image of God. Now that either violates the second commandment or He has to be God, one or the other has to be true. So if you’re not allowed to have an image of God, Jesus is the image of God, so that second commandment forces the issue. Either He has to be God or He’s a blasphemer and you might as well just forget trying to be nice to Jesus and throw Him out; just tear your Bible in half at the New Testament and chuck it because that would be the honest way of handling the problem

Colossians 1:16 shows beyond all shadow of a doubt that Jesus is not some half-God, half-created thing. “For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth,” a pretty inclusive statement it seems to me. Well if Jesus is the One who created everything that’s in the heavens and the earth what’s there left? What’s there left to create. He’s not an angel because that would be covered in the phrase “in heaven,” and if that wasn’t clear enough, Paul goes on to say, “and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers—all things were created by Him, and for Him.” That’s the Lord Jesus Christ. Now if Jesus is an angel, like one of these cults say He is, what do you do with the word “principality and power” in verse 16? The word means angel, that’s what the word means. So if He created the angels how can He be an angel? He’s the creator of the angels.

So the Lord Jesus’ deity it seems to me is so obvious in the New Testament. So this is one work of God that He does, He creates. Another work of God is that He forgives sin. The Lord Jesus forgave sin; Mark 2 is an illustration of this. Show me another example in the Bible where a man forgave people of their sin. It’s absolute blasphemy for a man to get up and say I forgive you of your sins: what the heck is going on here? It would be like you going out here and breaking the law and I come walking up to you and say don’t worry about it, you haven’t broken the Law, I forgive you. I don’t have any authority to do that. So what’s this jazz about the Lord Jesus Christ being a prophet and He comes up and He tells people He forgives their sins and He’s not God? Where did He get the authority to forgive sin? He didn’t get any authority, God alone has the authority. And the proof of it is you just have to watch the people respond, they pick up rocks and they’re not interested in waving them at Him, they’re interested in throwing them at Him because He’s blasphemed. Now what’s the sin of blasphemy that requires capital punishment in the Old Testament. It’s making yourself God. So don’t be fooled on this, all these people come to the New Testament and think Jesus is some sort of half-man half-God; it just isn’t there.

The fourth thing, not only does Jesus have the name of God, the attributes of God, He does the works of God but the fourth thing is, and I think this is the most crucial of all, is that He is worshiped in the New Testament. He’s worshiped. Now to catch the force of this, before we go to the passages where I show you He’s worshiped I want you to see the force of what I’ve just said. What does the first commandment say? “Thou shalt have none other gods before Me.” All right, suppose I sit down and worship somebody that isn’t God; what have I done? I’ve violated the first commandment, so you’ve got to set the New Testament in the context of the Ten Commandments; it comes out okay once you do this. The Ten Commandments set you up and so you just move from the Ten Commandments right into the Gospels and you’ve got it made. You just have to realize that these people were believers in the Ten Commandments, and you just don’t go around worshiping anybody that comes in the room without having some problems if you’re in a nation that believes in the Ten Commandments and just the first commandment alone, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”

All right, now to show you that the first commandment is deliberately adhered to in the New Testament I want to go to Acts 14, to test the force once again of the idea that Jesus is worshiped as God you have to set the background on the first and great commandment, and once you see the first and great commandment, then you see this, then it’s quite obvious to you what’s happening. In Acts 14 you have a little incident here that’s very revealing about the attitude in the New Testament. Acts 14:11-18, “And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.” In other words what had happened is the apostles had gone in on an evangelistic campaign; they’d done some things here in this town and all of a sudden everybody gets excited, and they draw the conclusion, not that these guys are talking about God but that the guys themselves are God. So they’ve drawn the wrong conclusion.

Now watch what happens, Acts 14:12, “And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker.” And by the way, that tells you a little bit about the stature of Paul and Barnabas, because Mercury was a light man who was quick and fast, Paul evidently from what we can gather, from extra-Biblical sources was an older man, he was short, he was in some ways limping, he had a lot of problems health wise, and he wasn’t a very impressive person physically. But Jupiter was the impressive one. So evidently stature wise Barnabas was quite the fellow that seemed to be the strong one and that put on the biggest appearance, and Mercury was just kind of sitting off to the side. But it’s interesting that the New Testament gives you Paul as God’s man. And yet had you been there evidently you would have been impressed most by Barnabas, and yet in the history of the documents the Lord picks out Paul as His man.

Let’s look further, Acts 14:13, “Then the priest of Jupiter,” so then they go get the priest of Jupiter, “whose temple was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people. [14] Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard it, they tore their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out, [15] And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them.” Now do you see what they’ve done? The tendency was to worship the apostles and they cut it off. They nipped it in the bud before it even got started, they would not tolerate worship of a man. Acts 14 proves to you that the apostles were insistent on enforcing the first commandment. So therefore worship of a mere man was not tolerated, even by the apostles.

Now lest you say all right, that proves that Jesus couldn’t be a man, but could Jesus be an angel? Let’s see how the New Testament acts toward that; Revelation 19. The Apostle John is receiving an audio visual presentation of future things to come, and he’s got one of the most tremendous movies ever made, I presume, but the book of Revelation is just fantastic and after he sees this thing this angel is standing by him. And of course if you were seated in a dark theater and it was an audience of one, and there’s this guy in a white coat next to you, kind of shimmering, you’d have a little reaction, and John had the reaction I verse 10. “And I fell at his feet to worship him,” now I want you to remember the word “worship” because I’m going to show you something in another verse, but just keep in mind that the little word “worship” is there. “And he said unto me, See thou do it not!” Exclamation point! “I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God; for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”

Now what is it that happened there? The angel has cut off worship of himself. So now I’ve given you two illustrations from the New Testament that prove that the first commandment was enforced. First, the apostles would not permit worship of a man; secondly, angels would not permit worship of themselves. So where does that leave the Lord Jesus Christ then when people worship Him? Either you’ve got to say He allowed blasphemy to occur or you’ve got to say that He was God; there’s no other alternative. It forces you into a logical box; it’s just a cul-de-sac and there’s no way of getting out of the street. You’re just stuck there; either Jesus was God or He’s a blasphemer. If Jesus was an angel, then Revelation 19:10 tells you that He was a blasphemer because angels would not permit worship of themselves. If He’s a man, then you’ve got hung on Acts 14. So either way you get hung unless Jesus is God.

Now keep in mind the word “worship” here because the word “worship” is found in the next reference. Luke 24:52; this is the scene as the Lord Jesus Christ ascends into heaven; this is the ascension, and what do you see is the verb of verse 52? [“And they worshiped Him,”]. And who is it directed to? The Lord Jesus Christ. What have you just got through reading in Revelation 19? What did the angel tell John? Worship God, don’t worship me, and yet here you have in Luke 24:52 they are worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now is Jesus God or not? You see where it leaves you; you’ve got to say this guy’s a phony or He’s God. There is just no other logical position you can come to. And the Unitarians and your liberal people have come to this conclusion years and years and years ago, but these Johnny-come-lately cults floating around in the 20^th century think that they’ve got something new. There’s nothing new, this heresy has been with us at least, oh, it goes back to the 17^th - 18^th century so it’s nothing new. And so when a certain cult comes knocking on your door and says that Jesus was Michael the archangel, that’s been around since the year 200-300; it’s nothing new. And people were thrown out of the Church in those days for doing it, that’s what should be done today.

Let me give you two more references that show that Jesus is worshiped as God. One is in the Gospel of John, a very famous verse, John 20:28, doubting Thomas, “And Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and My God.” Do you notice in the next verse Jesus says whoops, you shouldn’t have said that Thomas, you goofed. You don’t see that in verse 29; Jesus did not stop worship of Himself, therefore He’s a blasphemer or He is God Himself. There is no other logical conclusion.

One further verse, and this you’ll be surprised, it’s the great commission; Matthew 28:19, now do you think that you can prove the deity of Christ if someone challenges you on it? You all should be able to. “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing in the name,” singular, “of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” There’s only one problem with that verse; look at it again; how man people are named there? Three people are named but it doesn’t say “names,” plural, it says “name,” singular. Name means authority. So therefore the “name” singular referred to three people, meaning the three people have the same authority. Therefore the Son has the same authority as the Father, the Holy Spirit has the same authority as the Father. So the very phraseology of the whole sentence proves that Jesus was considered at this time to be God.

Now inevitably when we finish, point four under Jesus Christ and the Law, we finished, He is God. But people always say well look, if He’s God why isn’t it more clear in the New Testament. Why is it that He doesn’t really come out all the time and make a big issue out of it? Why doesn’t He show His glory, for example, and knock everybody over if He’s God? Well, there’s a reason for that and I want you to remember this in case someone comes to you and says well, it seems to me that if Jesus was really God it’d be a lot clearer, you wouldn’t have to just go pick two or three verses out, it should be on every page of the New Testament. Well, it is if you look there, but you have to admit that it’s not quite the obvious thing. Why is it that it’s not the obvious thing?

The answer is given to us in Matthew 11:25 so if you’ll turn there you’ll see why I call this a sub-surface doctrine. In other words it’s there if you’re looking for it and if you’re not looking for it you’re not going to find it. Here is why the deity of Christ is not more clear I the New Testament. “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank The, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and You have revealed them unto babes. [26] Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Thy sight. [27] All things are delivered unto Me by my Father, and no man knows the Son, except the Father; neither knows any man the Fathers, except the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.”

In other words what Jesus is saying here is that there’s a blindness that descends on men’s minds at this point and you remember how often it was in the Gospels where the Lord Jesus Christ would heal somebody and then sometimes He’d say but don’t tell anybody about it, just keep it to yourself. And you wonder, why does He cover things up? You’d think He’d tell everybody. Now in certain cases He did tell someone to go witness about it, but other times He said just keep it under your hat, just keep quiet, because the Lord Jesus Christ made His pitch from the Law; when He presented Himself He presented Himself as the Messiah; He made the issue His Messiahship, not His deity. Now this is why. You had people dwelling in the nation of Israel on positive and negative volition. You had Old Testament saints on positive volition, you had unbelievers in Israel on negative volition. The people of negative volition in the nation had rejected God as He was known under the Law. And so therefore Jesus says you have rejected Me as I have been known under the Law, I will reject you and you will not receive the new revelation of Myself.

This is why it says in verse 25, “Father, I’m thankful that You hid these things from the wise and prudent,” referring to the people of negative volition. God actually hid His secrets from people who did not respect them. In other words, Jesus does not, like a lot of Christians, He does not cast His pearls before swine. And those who are willing to listen He tells them and if you’re not listening then you’re not going to know about it. And that’s His attitude. You’ve already known enough, He says to Israel, you’ve already know enough from the Law to accept Me. If you won’t accept Me on the basis of the Law, then forget it. And that’s why at one point in His ministry here in Matthew 12 he goes on to say, talking about the unpardonable sin, the rejection of the Holy Spirit, and then He says there’s not going to be a sign given to this generation, except the sign of the prophet Jonah. And they asked Him for a sign, show a sign Lord, and the Lord had been showing them signs, signs, signs, and so finally He gets fed up and says you’re not going to get any more signs, the only sign you’re going to get is the sign of the prophet Jonah and that’s it, period. So therefore when the Lord got to this point it was a hiddenness about His deity and it’s explained, there are other parallel passages in the Gospels, John 6 for example and John 3 is another one. So that deals with the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now the final point on Jesus’ relationship to the Law is His sending of the Spirit. John 14, the Lord Jesus Christ was going to send the Spirit. Now this goes back to something that those of you who were here when we went through the Feasts and we got to the Feast of Pentecost, remember what we talked about in the Feast of Pentecost. It’s an important point, and that is that under the Law, the Law was an external thing; here you have the Old Testament saint and you have the Law out here, the will of God. The way believers inside the nation Israel kept the Law was through some enabling ministry of the Holy Spirit, not very well spelled out. But they kept the Law but the modus operandi of keeping the Law wasn’t the Law itself. [tape turns]

… should show some of you that the age of grace doesn’t mean you do as you please. There’s a defined will of God. But then He says in John 14:16, “I will ask the Father and He will send you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever.” So now something’s going to switch; the Lord is going to send the Law and He’s going to fulfill the Old Testament typology. Now briefly summarized, what happened on the day of Pentecost when this event happened was a positive and a negative. First, what happened right? Well what happened right was that the Holy Spirit came on schedule, exactly the day the Holy Spirit was supposed to come He did come. Don’t buy this garbage that you pick up in Christian periodicals that the Holy Spirit came because they waited and tarried. The waiting and tarrying had absolutely nothing to do with the coming of the Holy Spirit. The reason why they waited and tarried was so that they would be in one place, one geographical location, that when the Holy Spirit came they’d be there to do the job He wanted them to do. That’s why they stayed together, but the fact that they stayed together and were playing marbles in the upper room didn’t bring the Holy Spirit. Now this is just some garbage cranked up by ignorant Christian editors. And I don’t know where it ever got started but there’s not one New Testament scholar I know that ever believed this. So it’s just some product of 20^th century editorials or something. So the Holy Spirit came exactly the day that He was supposed to come; He had to. It was the plan of God. Now that’s what happened right.

Now what happened wrongly? Well, first of all the prophecies of the Old Testament say, Joel 2:38-39, “I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh,” all right, look carefully; in Acts is the Holy Spirit poured out on all flesh? No, He was poured out only on the believers. And that had to be because all flesh didn’t receive the Lord. So the first thing that didn’t go right was it was not on “all flesh.” The second thing that didn’t go right, according to the prophecy of Joel, it was supposed to be the sun was darkened and the moon was supposed to stop shining. Did the sun darken and the moon stop shining on the day of Pentecost; we have no record of it if it did. So that didn’t go right. So we have negative on the astral phenomena. What else didn’t go right on the Day of Pentecost? Your old men shall dream dreams and your young people shall see visions and so on; was that the activity on the Day of Pentecost? Where do you see a vision in Acts 2. There is none, so that didn’t go right.

What did happen on the day of Pentecost? Tongues, but was tongues in Joel 2? Is tongues ever prophesied in the whole Old Testament is there ever a prophesy of tongues in connection with the giving of the Holy Spirit? Never; absolutely never! Well where do you pick up the prophecy of tongues in the Old Testament? You pick it up in Isaiah 28 and it has to do with the discipline upon Israel. Isaiah 28:11 says that tongues will come, not as a sign of blessing, but as a sign of cursing. So the tongues came on the Day of Pentecost. So here’s the ironic thing; on the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came according to schedule, but He didn’t produce the signs that He was supposed to have produced according to the Old Testament prophecy of Joel. But the one sign that was there, that wasn’t prophesied, was the sign that Isaiah warned them about, when you see this, you know the boom has been lowered, and when you see this, that the gospel is coming to the nation Israel through foreign languages, then you’d better mark it in your little notebook that this nation is under discipline. That is the purpose of tongues. So tongues has nothing whatever to do with it; tongues has to do according to Isaiah 28:11 and Paul quotes it in 1 Corinthians 14 so I’m not just getting this out of the thin air, Paul says that the tongues of the New Testament fulfill Isaiah 28:11 and we know from the context of Isaiah 28 that tongues are a disciplinary system upon Israel. So that’s why we say here at Lubbock Bible Church that tongues ceased at the end of the first century, and there’s not been a valid case of speaking in tongues since then. If any of you are in the tongues movement you have my apologies but we do not tolerate it around here.

Now the continuation of the Law. What about the Law. What about the Law as the Lord Jesus Christ comes; will the Law still be in effect? Not in a direct sense, but the Jews will be operating as they partially regather in the nation, they will be operating kind of in accordance with the Law. For example in Matthew 24:20 Jesus says the temple is going to be there; the temple is going to be there for the abomination of desolation to be in it; so the temple has got to be there. What did the Lord Jesus Christ say in Matthew 24, pray that this isn’t going to happen on a Sabbath, so they must be celebrating the Sabbath. So there are all sorts of indications that the Law, although it has been abrogated now because of the New Covenant and because of the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Law as far as the nation Israel goes is kind of a shell, a hollow shall. And as they regather in unbelief as they are doing today they are going to take pieces of that shell and observe it, even though God has not commanded them to do so.

This finishes the dispensation of the Law and I want to summarize by the things that are unchanging, besides the ones we’ve learned from the other dispensation; we’ve learned all sorts of things that we can apply and carry over. What can we learn from this dispensation? There are three great truths basically we can learn from the dispensation of the Law. The first thing is that man is a sinner who will deliberately defy the written Law of God. Now before man could say well Lord, you know, my memory is short and I can’t recall these things and so on. He could kind of excuse it away that well, it wasn’t clear to me, see I have problems with my conscience God, and all sorts of things; there could be excuses made. But when God has given the Law in His will and defined it in writing, and had it read to the people every seven years, had it taught by Bible teachers in every major city and still the people defy it, then do you see what it does to sin? It makes it more obvious. And so that’s the first thing we learned about the dispensation of Law, that man isn’t going to keep God’s Law when it’s in front of his face.

Now some of you have friends that think that all we have to do is kind of pass a little legislation and we’re going to bring in the Millennium. All you should do is look at the Bible; what has been the history? God Himself put the Law down and people didn’t keep it so what makes you think you’re going to do it. Now people say that’s a pessimistic view of history. Well, that’s tough, it’s true, pessimistic or not, that’s the name of the game. God has revealed it, man hasn’t kept it so what makes you think you’re going to do it. And that’s what I can’t understand about liberalism.

The second great truth that we learn from the dispensation of the Law and it’s outlined for us in many passages of the New Testament but man can only be kept in line by fear of punishment, and that’s the way God kept the people in line in the Old Testament and He said you get out of line and you’re going to get clobbered. And that’s the way it was, and that’s the second thing we learn from the Law, is that mankind will not behave themselves except if there’s a policeman looking right down their neck with a big stick, not emasculated by a Supreme Court that doesn’t believe in law but a strong fear of punishment.

The third great truth of the dispensation of the Law is that a perfect government needs two things; it needs a perfect set of officials and it needs a whole-hearted support at the grassroots. Without one or both of these everything goes. So to have a perfect government you’ve got to have perfect government officials and where are you going to get them? Everybody wants to concentrate power in the hands of a few people; we’re going to have a world government so everything will be run from the higher up; great idea but who are you going to put to staff the position? See, the point is that even under Israel’s economy, when God so carefully worked in nurture with this nation, they had corrupt rulers and they led the nation into despair and into discipline. How much more then a Gentile nation, that doesn’t have this extra ministry of grace, how much are we liable to poor rulers. And secondly of course they have to have a widespread citizenry that’s loyal to the basic aims of the nation.

The next dispensation is the dispensation of the kingdom, or the dispensation of the Millennium. As I told some of you I’m in the process of writing a book, I might be, of writing a book called The Bible and The Christian Citizen. And this is going to be one of the major points of this, and that is that the doctrine of the Millennium is absolutely crucial if you’re going to be oriented to the political movements of our time, because every major political movement of our day is erecting its own Millennium and you cannot understand communism, you cannot understand the appeal that communism has to the young student; you can’t understand the appeal of Herbert Marcuse for example, to the young students, you can’t understand the appeal of socialism to people unless you understand that they are supplying an inner hearts desire of men. Communism would not be where it is if men across the world basically did not supported it. In other words, the idea is like this; it’s true that you have people involved in high places that are treasonous in the sense they are selling our country out right and left; one doesn’t have to go further in history in our country to the days of Alger Hiss, and Whittaker Chambers and the horrible things that went on, and how Alger Hiss, a communist within the United States Department basically was the architect of the United Nations charter; never told to the school children, of course, but nevertheless, this is the truth of the fact. The United Nations was designed by a communist. The head of the military division of the United Nations is always a Russian general, if you don’t believe me check it out in the encyclopedia; find out who’s the head of all military forces in the United Nations since 1945. It’s a Russian general every time. Now I might see a Russian general once in a while but when you have twelve in a row it gets pretty old. [Someone says something] Excuse me, that’s right, we had one Yugoslavian.

So we’ve had this situation and that’s why you have to read and cry when you read Douglas Macarthur’s story of the Korean War and how every time the guy would make a plan North Korea would have it, and guess who was in North Korea; the guy that had just been deposed from the United Nations post, he was in charge of the United Nations army, so it was a sweet little arrangement, all done by traitors in our country.

But I [can’t understand word] to stop here and become angry at these people; this is a response we have, but I think as Christians we’re called upon to probe deeper, and ask ourselves why is it that a man of the education of Alger Hiss, why is it that a man of the education of Whittaker Chambers, of course before he converted, why is it that these men would be attracted to this kind of thing. That’s the question to ask, it seems to me. It’s true that these men are involved in plots behind the scenes but the question that bothers me is, and it seems nobody asks it is why in the first place did they want to plot. The plots wouldn’t exist unless the men themselves were somehow sympathetic to these things. What is it that drives them and attracts them to these things?

Basically it’s this: they want to solve and bring in world peace and I believe that many of these men are traitors since they are sincere to themselves. For example, I think if you took some communists and you would expose them to a lie detector test they’d pass with flying colors. You may not think so but I’m convinced they would because they have deluded themselves into thinking they really want peace and this is the only way to get it so let’s do it this way. So you have to understand the motivation that goes behind this.

The answer to this will be in this dispensation of the Millennium, so don’t think of this as something on Clarence Larkin’s dispensational chart to be rolled up and put away on a shelf some place and never looked at again. This truth is fantastic. The truth of the Millennium is one of the most pertinent truths that we can orient ourselves by in this age.

What’s the Scripture; the first item on each dispensation is the Scripture. The most comprehensive Scripture packed in one small section of the Word is Revelation 20. Then you can’t cite any specific chapter which would contain all millennial doctrine, you have to just say this: Revelation 20 plus prophetic passages scattered throughout the rest of the Bible.

Now here’s where we pick up our doctrine of the Millennium. First, let’s turn to Revelation 20 and look at it for a minute. One of the things that I will not stress tonight because I have taken you through the dispensations of the Gentiles, I’ve taken you through the dispensations of Israel, I’ve taken you on up to the dispensation of the Millennium. After we finish the Millennium we are going to start back and we’re going to pick up the Church; you might have known I left the Church out but I’m going to pick up the Church and then I’m going to redo the doctrine of the Millennium and add to it and show you the Millennium is related to both the Church and Israel. But first I want to show you how it’s related to Israel. But note just in passing, because we’re going to come back to this, how the Millennium is brought about.

Revelation 20:1, “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. [2] And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.” By the way, for those of you who do not think there’s a literal thousand years, please count with me the number of times the word “thousand” occurs in this passage. The first time it occurs is in verse 2. Verse 3, “And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled’ and after that he must be loosed a little season.” Verse 4, “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them; and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast, either his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. [5] But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. [6] Blessed and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection; on such the second death has no power, but they shall be priest s of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. [7] And when the thousand years are ended, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, [8] And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea,” etc.

Now, do you get the impression that it’s a thousand years? So this is why we call it the Millennium, mille, thousand. That’s where it got its name from, thousand years. Now would you please notice something about how it is brought it. It is not brought in by man; it is not brought in by a social revolution either of the violent sort, such as communism, or the gradual sort such as socialism. The Millennium is brought about by negative angelic conflict. In other words, the angelic conflict is licked first; after the angelic conflict is handled, then you have the Millennium. So therefore the key to the removal of the problems of history is the key to the solution of the angelic conflict, which is why we have the Church Age and why we’ll go into the Church Age.

So in order for the Millennium Satan has to be bumped and removed from the system. That is why you cannot get world peace today. Now this is not being pessimistic, this is simply stating fact, as I would get up here and say equals MC square, the dynamics of society the way it’s set up is that such that Satan’s in charge. So how do you get rid of him? Do you think Satan is going to allow world peace? He will on his terms; that’s what’s the Tribulation’s all about and you see what kind of a mess that winds up in. So don’t be deceived, any attempt at world government, any attempt at trying to bring in the Millennium today is basically a satanic attempt; it’s an attempt to do in advance what the Lord’s going to do in the future, to try to, you might say, get the scoop on the Lord. That’s basically the point. So that’s the importance, and you begin to see that the Millennium is not just some little thing on a dispensational chart. This has fantastic repercussions on your whole attitude to the social situation of our day. The Millennium must be brought about first by the annihilation of the spiritual forces that operate behind the scenes in society.

So that’s the first great characteristic of the Millennium, is that it’s a thousand years of peace and I’ll show you this peace in a moment but just get the time element. It’s a thousand year period from the time the Lord Jesus Christ descends at the Second Advent until the eternal state and the end of history as we know it.

I want to also note at this point the purpose of the Millennium. If you do not believe in a Millennium it seems to me that what you’re saying is that history has no goal. That’s the corollary to denying the existence of the Millennium. What the Millennium does for you, if you’re interested in a tremendous view of philosophy of history that has, to my way of thinking, is ten thousands more appealing than that offered by any other system in the world, is that the Millennium tells me that history is going somewhere, that history’s moving like this and all the inventions, the technological inventions that we’re making today are not junk. The technological inventions that are made today, that man can’t fully exploit such as nuclear power, for example, we can’t exploit it because of our own limitations and because of the threat of war and so on. All these fruits of man’s creativity will blossom forth in the Millennium, so technological progress is not incidental to the Christian. It’s important because every time you help this out you are essentially laying the groundwork so that when the Millennium comes and you have peace, that all of this creativity of man can blossom to where it should have been in the first place. So the Millennium is tremendously important; it is the goal of history.

So now the second characteristic; the first characteristic of the Millennium is that it’s a thousand years; we’re working on the characteristics of the dispensation. It’s a thousand years, and the second characteristic is that there’s great spirituality. Now the prophecy of Joel comes true; Joel 2:28-29, all flesh receive the Spirit of God, because the Millennium, you remember, starts out at the Second Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s the Second Advent; what does the Lord Jesus Christ do at the Second Advent? He removes unbelievers, so you start out world civilization with all believers? Now their children…this is how you get unbelievers introduced into the system; you have father and mother who are believers, a child unbeliever, and as the time goes on you gradually pick up unbelievers in the Millennium and at the end there’s a big revolt, proving incidentally, that man even in a thousand years of perfect environment, with a perfect economic system and a perfect world government still revolts. So I think after you see history spelled out you really get the idea that we’re kind of hopeless cases because even after a thousand years of God’s grace we still wind up tearing the place apart. So the second great characteristic is the great spirituality.

The third characteristic of the Millennium is a great physical environment, like that of the antediluvian world. Physically the earth is transformed. Now this, years and years ago, or even 10 years ago the idea of the world being physically transformed was kind of stupid and they’d say well, these old funny-mentalists are seeing things in their Bible again. But those of us who have a little idea scientifically of the problem of environment today will recognize that we can’t have a perfect environment unless the whole thing is purged; we’ve got too much junk in the system, somebody’s got to flush it. And God’s going to do it and bring I the Millennium. So the third great characteristic of the Millennium is that you have a tremendous physical environment. Let’s look at some passages in the Word of God to see what kind of environment we have. Turn to Isaiah 11, you see this is exactly why it is.

Now this is just a side issue. You’ll hear people today say that oh, listen, when we get together for an evangelistic campaign or when we get together to come together and have fellowship as believers, let’s not get involved in all these controversial questions; let’s just forget about prophecy and just drop the millennium and all the rest of it because after all, these are divisive questions, we mustn’t be picking away at these. Now, just suppose we follow that reasoning; suppose we drop all this. First all, beside the fact that you squash about 40% of the Bible you have the problem of the fact that what answer do you give, then, to the student radical that looks you in the eye and says well, what do you got as your goal for history? You stand there like a bean-head and say well I don’t because I don’t want to raise controversial questions. And that’s just the way people are; that’s just exactly the way Christians look to the unbeliever, when the unbeliever wants an answer and we don’t give it to them because we [can’t understand words] the controversial questions. Bologna with the controversial questions, if you’ve got the answer you give it to them, and if the other Christians don’t like it, tough. The Bible teaches the Millennium so you teach the Millennium. If a young believer needs the answer, you give it to him, whether he likes it or not and whether the other Christians like it or not.

Isaiah 11:6, now this is not symbolic language; people say oh, this is to be interpreted allegorically. Okay, let’s try to interpret it allegorically. Verses 6-11, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. [7] and the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together. And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. [8] and the nursing child shall ply on the hole of an asp,” which is a poisonous snake, “and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den,” which is another poisonous snake. [9] “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” Now will you please tell me how you can allegorize that one? What is it talking about if it’s not talking about a literal transformation in the biological kingdom. You say that’s impossible. Not if you interpret Genesis 9 literally because that’s what happened after the flood, you had a biological transformation. That was at one point in history where you’ve had at least one, you had another one…

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