The
Millennium – Part 1
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all
your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths,” Proverbs 3:5-6.
“They that wait on the LORD
shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they
shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk
and not faint,” Isaiah 40:31. “Fear thou
not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will strengthen
thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my
righteousness,” Isaiah 41:10. Be
anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God,
which surpasses all comprehension, shall defend your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus,” Philippians 4:6-7. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is
stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee,” Isaiah 26:3. “For the grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever,” Hebrews 4:12.
Before we get started we’ll have a few moments of silent
prayer to give everyone the opportunity to make sure that they are in
fellowship and ready to study the Word and then I will open in prayer.
Let us pray. Father, we are thankful for this time we have
to come together this evening to focus upon Your Word for Your Word is a clear
source of stability for us and tells us that You have declared the end from the
beginning and that you are in charge of history. That no matter what may happen
within history, no matter how chaotic things may get in our own individual
lives or in nations; nevertheless, we know that You are in control. Our Father,
we are so very grateful for all that You provided for us. Father, this
congregation stands for the truth of Your Word and we seek to faithfully teach
it and also to apply it as well as to explain the gospel to those who come into
our periphery; and that is really our mission, primarily evangelism and
secondly education of those who are believers. Father, we pray that You might
help us to focus more consistently in our own lives on opportunities to
communicate the gospel to those around us; for ultimately the only hope for
this nation come through the gospel and a return to biblical values. Father, we
pray for this election that began today, at least in Texas for early voting. We
pray that You will provide good leaders for this nation as a result of this
election and we can turn back the tide that has been sliding in the wrong
direction for so long. And that we can have some strong leaders who can focus,
can lead, and can direct this nation in a way that will restore stability and
financial prosperity to this nation. We know that that can only happen on the
basis of Your Word.
And Father, we pray for Jeff, for Jim, for others who are
involved with this DM2 ministry down in Brazil over the next week of so. We
pray for opportunities for them to make the gospel clear, to teach Your Word
well, and we pray that You would keep them healthy that they would be strong, they
would be rested, and that You would watch over them. And Father, we just pray
for us tonight that we would be responsive to the teaching of Your Word,
understanding more clearly Your plans and purposes and the destiny for each of
us as we continue our study in dispensations and Your plan for the ages, in
Christ’s Name, Amen.
Tonight we are coming to the end. Open your Bibles with me
to Revelation 20 and we’re going to start working through what the Scripture
teaches about the millennial kingdom. We’re looking at the millennial kingdom
and just to give us a framework we’ve looked at church age, which ends with the
Rapture, then there is a transition period before the beginning of the
Tribulation. The Tribulation lasts for seven years. It begins with the signing
of a treaty between the Antichrist and Israel and ends with the Second Coming
of Christ rescuing Israel from total destruction, destroying the Antichrist,
and sending the Antichrist and the false prophet directly to the lake of fire,
and also confining Satan and the demons to the Abyss for the duration of the
thousand years of His reign on the earth. So this is what our focus is; it is
on this kingdom. This is really important to understand. How we view the future
impacts on how we understand the present. How we view the future in terms of
God’s plan and purpose impacts our understanding of the spiritual life today:
where we are going in our spiritual life; why it is important to live our
spiritual life and to persevere in obedience; what God is doing in us in
preparing us for our future destiny to rule and reign with Him during the
millennial kingdom.
The end of the Tribulation is sort of the culmination of
God’s judgment upon the angels and mankind for the rebellion against Him; and
then when the Lord Jesus Christ returns and establishes His kingdom we enter
into a new environment. It’s not an environment of perfection, as we have in
the Garden of Eden prior to the fall, but it is an environment where the curse
of sin has rolled back to some degree. For example, the passages we’ve studied
before: the wolf will lie down with the lamb, the child will put his hand into
a cobra’s den; and it will be a time when men will beat their swords and spears
into pruning hooks and plowshares and man will learn war no more. So it will be
a time of relative utopia. There will still be sinful men. One of the lessons
we see for the millennial kingdom is that even though
it is perfect environment; we have perfect rule, perfect government, perfect
education; we have an administration that is ruled by the Lord Jesus Christ and
administered by the resurrected saints from the Old Testament for Israel, and
from church age believers over the Gentiles; that
nevertheless, there will be problems because the people who are born during the
millennial kingdom still have a sin nature.
So one of the things that is pointed out in the millennial
kingdom is that the real problem isn’t our environment; it’s not the
government; it’s not politics; it’s not the education system; it is the sin
nature; it is that we are all basically flawed and unless we are walking in
obedience to the Lord there’s really no solution. Right now we are in the midst
of the political season, especially with the election that comes up in two weeks.
Early voting started yesterday. I hope you have all voted early and it is
already over with, but that is what we need to do to be involved, but it is the
ultimate solution. It is simply part of our responsibility and obligation as
believers during this age.
We are looking at the millennial kingdom and its role and
purpose. Among Christians we know that not all Christians, not all Bible
believing Christians believe in a literal future reign of Christ. This last
week I received an email from George Meisinger that came from a retired
Brigadier General, who has got some background in biblical truth and doctrine, who is going to a Presbyterian Church. That
raises all kinds of questions because Presbyterians usually don’t believe in a
literal millennium. He teaches a Sunday School class and wanted material from
Chafer Seminary on the millennium because he was going to be teaching on the
millennium in Sunday School. George wanted to get some material via the program
that Tom Wright has put together. George emailed me and wanted to know how to
contact Tom. Tom was able to put together some material to send to this retired
general to teach in this Bible class.
This may not be the kind of thing where you are running
into an issue in your experience of why this is important, but it is. It also
plays a role in how some Christians view politics today. There is a group of
Christians known as Christian Reconstructionists. They do not hold to a future
literal millennium as a 1,000-year reign
of Christ upon the earth. They are generally postmillennial and they believe
that the church is going to eventually have revival from the Holy Spirit and
that through this revival that the Millennium will be brought in and Jesus
doesn’t return until the end of the millennial kingdom and so that is their
focus. These folks are very much involved in a lot of education. They have been
working for forty years and producing a lot of home school material. If you or
your children are homeschoolers it is very likely that a lot of the material
that they are using, that teaches history and teaches politics, is produced by
people who are coming out of this Christian Reconstructionists postmillennial
background. That doesn’t mean the material is bad, but it means that if you’re
teaching this through a lot of this curriculum you need to have your radar on
because this will show up at different times within the curriculum. They are
also vehemently anti-dispensational and to listen to them, the next worst thing
in history to the Antichrist is John Nelson Darby, who was the theologian who
systematized dispensational theology.
There have been several debates that have taken place
between people like Tommy Ice and Dave Hunt and the Reconstructionists. One
time back in the 1980s there was a major debate that took place in the Dallas
area between them and Gary DeMar and another one who was on the
Reconstructionists' side, but they had a
huge debate. This impacts politics. Why would I bring that up? I’m not going to
be able to tie all the dots together on this, but one of the ministries that is
post-millennial just this last week or so, when this issue with the Houston
mayor came out, one of their writers put out an article, an editorial, and an e-mail, and his position was diametrically opposed
to what I explained last week. In fact, some of what I said was directed toward
correcting this notion. He had not done his homework and he was saying this is
that the conservatives are making a much bigger deal out of this. I am not sure
how this connects to his post-millennialism, but I do know that Charlie Clough
replied in a very well informed e-mail
straightening this individual out. I am just saying that this issue related to
the future kingdom of Christ on the earth is an important issue and does play
an important role within a lot of political discussion, how you view history,
and how you view what is going on in the here and now; because how you view
today is often shaped and shaded by how you view the future.
When we look at Scripture and we understand Scripture on
the basis of a literal, historical, grammatical interpretation, it is pretty
clear that the Bible presents the kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of Christ, as
a literal earthly, geopolitical kingdom. In the announcement of Jesus’ birth, the angel Gabriel informs Mary that she is
going to conceive; she is going to give birth to a Son who will be great. In
Luke 1:32 Gabriel says, “He will be called the Son of the Most High; and the
Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.” When you read that you
think that this is an earthly throne and that this has to do with David’s
literal throne where he ruled from Jerusalem. You don’t think that this is some
spiritual throne up in the heavens. So literal interpretation, the way you
would normally read this, is that this is a literal throne on the earth.
The next verse, Luke 1:33, Gabriel goes on to say, “and He
will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and His kingdom will have no end.”
Again, we take this as a literal physical kingdom. Mary doesn’t ask him, well,
what do you mean this kingdom? What do you mean the throne of David? She
understands exactly what the angel is announcing because she has read her
Hebrew Scripture and she understands exactly what he is talking about. That is
the frame of reference. We have studied this in our study in Matthew, that when
John the Baptist and Jesus showed up on the scene saying, “Repent for the
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”, people didn’t say, well, wait a minute, we
haven’t heard about this kingdom, what do you mean? They were very clear on the
concept from what they had already learned from the Old Testament. In the Old
Testament there is this presentation of a future literal kingdom.
The word “Millennium” that
we use is one of those words that are based in Latin. It is a word that means a
“thousand.” It is taken from the Latin word mille, which means “a thousand” and
theologically it is used to refer to the thousand-year
reign of Christ based on the text of Revelation 20:1-6. It is very clear in the
Greek. The word for a “thousand” is used five times. It is almost as if God is
saying: “Knock-Knock-Knock-Knock! Hello! Pay attention!
It is a 1,000 years!” Five times in six verses or seven verses He says it is a
1,000 years! It is very clear when people come along and say, well wait a
minute, it’s not really 1,000 years. So mille is a Latin word for a 1,000. In Greek the
word for thousand is CHILIOI. In the early church they were called CHILIASTS. Those who believed in a literal future 1,000-year kingdom were called CHILIASTS. We call them premillennialists. They
believe that Jesus will return “pre” or before the millennial kingdom.
How do we know that this is literal because that is the
battle, whether or not this is a literal 1,000-year
reign from a literal throne in literal Jerusalem?
1. We learn from our study of Revelation that symbols in
Revelation are all either defined in Revelation or they’re elsewhere in the
Scriptures.
See what happens is the other side, those who don’t agree
with us, would say, well, this isn’t to be taken literally. A “thousand” is
just a symbol for a long time or a period of perfection. It is not to be taken
literally as a specific number. The answer to that is that these symbols in
Revelation always speak of something that is literal and they are defined as
something literal, even though you have the woman who rides the beast; she
represents a literal geopolitical kingdom.
2. We notice is that the term “a thousand” (1,000) is used
five times in this passage, which indicates that this means something; that God
is trying to get the point across.
3. We see that there are other numerical terms such as the
1,260 days, 42 months, and 3½ years that are viewed as literal in the book of
Revelation. In fact, when we look at Revelation 7 we are told that there will
be 144,000 selected from the twelve tribes of Israel. And then John says, it
will be 12,000 from the tribe of Judah, 12,000 from the tribe of Levi, 12,000
from the tribe of Benjamin, 12,000… and he goes through the whole list of each
tribe and lists all twelve tribes and says there’ll be 12,000 from each one. He
really is driving home the point that those numbers should be taken literally
not the 12,000, just some sort of ideal number, but that each one of those
twelve tribes will have 12,000 selected who are sealed for a specific mission
during the Tribulation period.
So since the other numbers in the book of Revelation are
presented as numbers we should take literally, when we get to Revelation 20 the
number 1,000 should not be taken as symbolic. It should be taken as literal.
4. The basis for belief in the millennium is in Old
Testament prophecies (and promises and covenants). The only thing that we have
that states the length of time for the kingdom as 1,000 years is the Revelation
20 passage. But there are dozens and dozens and dozens of passages in the Old
Testament that predict a future literal geopolitical kingdom on the earth based
in Jerusalem where the Messiah reigns over the earth from Jerusalem.
So as we look at the verse let’s just walk through a little
bit, Revelation 20:1, John says, “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven,
having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.” The
bottomless pit is the abyss.* Remember when we were studying in Matthew just
two or three weeks ago and we studied the episode where Jesus casts the demons
out of the two Gadarene demoniacs and they’re
questioning Him: Are you here already or are you going to send us into the
abyss? The fact that they’re asking shows that they understand that the next
thing that is going to happen to them judgment-wise
is that they would be confined to the abyss. This is where Satan will be
confined and even though Satan is the only one who is mentioned in Revelation
20, based on the fact that in all the gospels they all record this conversation
that Jesus has with the Gadarene demoniac and that is their concern: Are we
going to be going into the abyss now? So
that is clearly their destiny. Somebody asked me this not long ago and was
wondering if just Satan or Satan and the demons were confined. At that time I
didn’t click to what was being said with the Gadarene demoniac conversation,
but having gone through it I think that is exactly what happens. It is that
Satan and all of the fallen angels that have followed him are confined in the abyss until they are released at the end of that
1,000 years.
Revelation 20:2-3, “He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent
of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for
a thousand years and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and
set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the
thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released
for a little while." Then in
Revelation 20:4 we read, “And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment
was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for
their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshipped the
beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on
their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ
for a thousand years.” Revelation 20:5, “But the rest of the dead did not live
again until the thousand years were finished and shall reign with Him a
thousand years.” (Revelation 20:6)
When we read that how many people here think that a
thousand years just means a long time? It is not to be taken literally? I mean,
if you just look at the terminology it would be that way, but you have a large
group of people who come along and say that this not to be taken literally.
They are what is known as amillennialists, which is kind of an odd word in
terms of its creation because that prefix “a” comes from Greek. “Mille” comes
from what language? Latin. The alpha privative, which is what it is called, comes from Greek. So you take
a Greek prefix, which basically means “not.” It is like the English prefix
“un.” You take a Greek prefix and attach it to a Latin word. So somebody just
made it up. It’s a strange little word. It is called “amillennialism” which
means no millennium, no 1,000-year
earthly kingdom. And for these folks, they believe that 1,000 is merely a
symbolic number.
The chart here shows how they view the kingdom. They view
us as being in the kingdom right now. Now when you look at those descriptions
of the kingdom where the wolf and the lamb lie down together and the child puts
his hand in the cobra’s den, and people are beating their spears and their
swords into pruning shears and plowshares; it is pretty obvious that if this is
the millennial kingdom in any way shape or form, something is really, really
wrong! Unless, of course, you are an idealist and you really believe in the
United Nations because that verse from Isaiah 2 that talks about beating your
swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks is carved over the
entry of the United Nations building. That verse (Isaiah 2:4) is talking about
the real genuine military peace that the Messiah will bring to the world.
But if you are a utopic liberal, and I repeat myself, if
you are a liberal and all liberals are utopic, that is essential. They don’t
believe that people are essentially bad. Then you really believe that mankind
and government can improve the earth and bring in the kingdom. That idea is
very close to the postmillennial idea. There is a liberal and a conservative
view of postmillennialism, which we will get to a little later on. But the
liberal view of postmillennialism from the 19th century was that we
were getting better and better in every way and that we could bring in world
peace. That was destroyed on the fields of Flanders in World War I (WWI). WWI was
such a horrible bloody violent vicious war that it destroyed all of that
optimism, so much so that theologians wrote that postmillennialism was dead
after that. It has reared its head again, but from a conservative viewpoint.
Amillennialism is a view that there is no literal kingdom
and what they have is a spiritual kingdom and that is this blue shaded box here. “Christ is reigning from His throne now in
heaven” and that runs coterminous or runs at the same time as the church age.
So, according to them we are in the kingdom; Jesus is ruling; the kingdom is in
your heart and Jesus is ruling from heaven. They view the “First Resurrection”
that Revelation talks about as being spiritual. That is what happened when you
trusted Christ; you were resurrected. You went from being spiritually dead to being
spiritually alive, so that they don’t interpret Scripture literally. Then at
the end, sometime in the future, Jesus is going to return to the earth. They
have no Rapture, nothing like that at all. Jesus just returns to the earth and
this is the “Second Resurrection” and all judgment will take place at that
point and then we just go into eternity with the new heavens and the new earth.
That is basically the amillennial position. They see us living in the kingdom
right now, but it is not a literal earthly political kingdom for them because
they don’t believe in literal interpretation.
Zion, which used to refer to
Israel, Mt. Zion. That Mt. Zion has sort of shifted its reference a few times.
Mt. Zion originally referred to the old city of David, which is just south of
the Temple Mount. Now it refers to the mountain just to the west of the old
city of David, and generally it is applied to Jerusalem as a synonym sometimes
or to all of Israel; but in the Old Testament it always refers to
the Jewish focus, especially the Jerusalem focus in God’s plan. But for the
amillennialists Zion
no longer means Israel or anything related to literal physical Israel; it
refers to the church. They make no clear distinction between Israel and the
church; that Israel was the church in the Old Testament and the
church is Israel in the New Testament. Israel is no longer a term that refers
to those who are physically biologically related to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is their non-literal interpretation that shows up. They don’t
make a distinction between Israel and the church and so we are in the kingdom
now, and we are the kingdom, and God no longer has a plan or purpose for
Israel. They also teach that if these passages like Revelation 20 teach that
Satan is going to be confined during this 1,000 years. If we are in that 1,000
years and this is just a symbolic number, then Satan is bound right now. Satan
is not alive and well on planet earth as Hal Lindsey termed it in the title of
his book. They believe that Satan is bound right now, but their concept of
being bound just means that he is not quite as powerful as he was before; they
change the meaning of the word “bind.” As we see, amillennialism changes or
spiritualizes the plain meaning of Scripture.
What is interesting is that amillennialism is somewhat
related to postmillennialism because both of these views have their origin in
Covenant theology and Calvinism. Now before you really go too far with that, a lot of premillennialism has
its origin in a Calvinistic framework as well, but not the covenant aspect of
Calvinism. So postmillennialism,
emphasizing that word “post”, means that Jesus comes back at the end of the
millennium. He returns after the millennial kingdom. So that means that they
view, even though they see that life may even get much, much worse on this
planet, that eventually as God the Holy Spirit works in the human race, the
church will emerge victorious. They are very optimistic. In fact they will
refer to us as pessimillennialists because we see things just getting worse and
worse until the Tribulation, and how
much worse can it get than the Tribulation. So you guys are just a bunch of
“pessimists” and they are optimists. They’re optimillennalists, they believe in
a utopic view that somehow the Holy Spirit is going to work and improve culture
and improve society. That is why these guys are producing so many, in some
cases really good works on the law from the Old Testament, on a biblical view
of society and culture and politics and law. These guys produced some great
works on American history and that is because they believe that this will
become a model pattern for this future improvement that comes biblically.
We have to be careful. These conservative
postmillennialists try to be biblical, but they still have a non-literal interpretation. But they do produce some
good material related to history and culture and law. It is just the framework
in which they put it that has to do with this utopia. They do view a future
utopia that the church will bring this in, bring in the kingdom, and bring in
world peace, but it is not the liberal view of it, but it is still the same
idea. And it is not until all this gets brought in by the church that Jesus
will return. For them the church age is not identical with the kingdom. The
kingdom gradually comes in towards the end of the church age and they would
probably say they were somewhere in this area right here in the middle of this
graph and not toward the end of it. They see a continual progress. I don’t know
about that. I don’t see much of a progress over the last 2,000 years, but they
do. Like the amillennialists they see the first resurrection as spiritual
conversion and then the Second Coming is when there is the Second Resurrection
and then all judgment takes place and then into eternity. So there are a lot of
similarities.
What’s interesting is as a baby boomer
I recognize that the baby boomer generation, and that is a technical term. It
refers to everybody born from January 6th or 7th, 1946 that is exactly nine months
after the end of the war in Europe. If you look at the demographics on births,
on January 6th it goes like this (arm motion upward). I mean it just
takes this leap because everybody got really excited and celebrated when the
war in Europe ended. And made a lot of babies! And that is why it is called the
baby boom. That graph goes sky high and stays sky high until 1963 and then it
drops like a rock, and so all those born between about January 6th
or 7th until 1963 are considered baby boomers.
Baby boomers were characterized by a lot of different things, but one of them
was we’re characterized by a lack of respect for authority generally speaking;
that they were a rebellious generation. But when you go to seminary you are
really restricted in how you can manifest your rebellion. If you went to Dallas
Seminary one of the ways you would manifest rebellion, during the time that I
was there, is that you would become a hyper-Calvinist and you would throw away
your dispensationalism and you would go covenant or go amillennial.
If you were at Westminster Seminary, which was sort of the
Calvinist counterpart to Dallas Seminary, then you would throw away your
amillennialism and you went postmillennialism. That was sort of the time when
postmillennialism was reborn and everything grew very rapidly and the influence
of people like Rufus Rushdoony and Gary North and a number or the others really
began to grow and take root. So that is just a little bit of a historical
perspective. I remember when I first went to seminary you hardly heard the term
postmillennialism. In fact there was a book written by this guy, Loraine
Boettner, who was a postmillennialist. I remember Randy Price saying you need
to get this book because it is the only book in print on postmillennialism. He
recommended Boettner’s book and this is what Lorraine Boettner says in that
book: “That view of last things which holds that the kingdom of God is now
being extended in the world through the preaching of the gospel and the saving
work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of individuals.”
The postmillennialists don’t view this as a political end
crusade. They are not trying to do it through politics. Some people have
misrepresented them that way because Christian Reconstructionists tend to be
very involved politically, but they don’t see that the politics is the way to
bring in the kingdom. I just need to make that clear so it’s not
misrepresented. The idea of postmillennialism has quite a history. Back at the
turn of the last millennium, not long after that, there was a huge fervor of
eschatological expectation when they were approaching that first millennium.
You think Y2K stirred up a lot of excitement, well when it was Y1K they thought
that Jesus was coming back and everything was going to happen and Revelation
was going to come true and it didn’t happen. There was probably more
disappointment then than there was in A.D. 2000 when Y2K didn’t actually take
place.
One of the major figures at that time, who lived from A.D.
1135-1202, so that would be in the 12th century, was a man by the name of
Joachim of Fiore who was an early exponent of a postmillennial scheme and he
tried to present sort of a periodization of history based upon the Trinity. He
said in the OT the first age is the age of the father when mankind lived under
the Old Testament. The second age is the age of the Son, the period of grace
that was covered in the New Testament. And then now, the third age is the Age
of the Holy Spirit, which he said began in his lifetime, around AD 1260; and during that age all of the
world would be converted and then Jesus would come back. He’s got sort of a
rudimentary postmillennial system.
The real father of postmillennialism was a Anglican
clergyman by the name of Daniel Whitby who lived from A.D. 1638 until 1726, the
end of the 1600s early 1700s, and he wrote quite a large number of books one of
which is called A
Treatise on the True Millennium. He taught that after the world was
converted then the Jews would be restored to the land. You had a lot of
postmillennialists in the 1700s and even in early 1800s who were very pro
Israel. Whitby was very pro Israel and believed in a future restoration of the
Jews to the land. So a lot of the theologians and pastors that were a part of
British restorationism in the 1700s were postmillennialism up into the early 19th
century, but then as an emphasis on a literal interpretation became more
consistent in the 19th century, Anglican clergy shifted away from
postmillennialism and amillennialism to premillennialism. One Anglican
theologian by the name of J. C. Ryle commented that probably half the Anglican
clergy, half the English clergy in the 19th century were
premillennial, and of course all of them would be very pro-Israel and very pro
Jewish. They were postmillennial but they were pro Jewish, whereas the modern
iteration of postmillennialism is very much out of a different covenant
theological strand and they are not as pro Israel and as pro Jewish as Whitby
and those in the 19th century.
Now we come to premillennialism. This is a chart showing
premillennialism. We are now living in the church age. We believe we are sometime near the end of the church age. The
Rapture will occur then the Tribulation takes place. This ends with the Second
Coming of Christ, which precedes the millennial kingdom, and then that ends
with the great white throne (judgment).
So the first resurrection is the resurrection of the dead, which are Old Testament
saints and the dead Tribulation saints. The first resurrection actually comes
in two stages. One occurs with the rapture of the church. The rest of it occurs
at the end of the Tribulation period. Then we have the millennium and the
second resurrection, which is the resurrection of the dead unbelievers at the
end of the millennial kingdom and the great white throne judgment. This is the
picture of these three different approaches to the millennium. So what do
premillennialists believe?
a. Premillennialists believe that a literal interpretation
of the Old Testament covenants and promises to Israel in the Old Testament
require an earthly kingdom, a physical earthly geopolitical kingdom.
b. They believe also that the millennium is the last of the
ages in time.
The millennial kingdom will end with the destruction of the
present heavens and the present earth and there is a creation of the new
heavens and new earth and we go into eternity. The messianic kingdom is literal
and forever. It has two stages: Stage one is the 1,000-year reign of Christ on the earth, there is the
judgment, and we go into Stage two, which is on into eternity.
c. Eternity will not come in until the millennium is
complete according to passages such as Isaiah 65:17; Isaiah 66:22; 2 Peter
3:13; Revelation 21:1. So eternity does not come in until after the great white
throne judgment.
d. The millennium will be characterized by the binding of
Satan and the severe limitation of sin. There will be a rigorous government
that will impose harsh penalties on criminality and sin in that arena. There
will be a righteous rule upon the earth and it’s characterized in Scripture in
several places that the Lord Jesus Christ rules with a “rod of iron.” This
isn’t going to be some sweet little liberal Sunday School Jesus who is patting
everybody on the head. It will be a very strong righteous rule during the
millennial kingdom.
e. Revelation 19-21 must be interpreted sequentially. These
events take place one after the other. These are not just presented as random
snapshots, but there is an order of events:
i. Christ returns in Revelation 19. That comes first.
Remember there weren’t any chapter divisions in the Greek Text.
ii. Following Christ’s return Satan will be bound for a
thousand years.
iii. Saints are resurrected at that time, the Tribulation
saints are resurrected to reign with Christ for the thousand years, Tribulation
saints and Old Testament saints. They will be resurrected. Remember, church age
saints are already resurrected at the Rapture before the Tribulation.
iv. Satan is released at the end of the thousand years or
near the end of the thousand years and he will lead a final revolt against God
in what is called the “Gog and Magog” revolution. So this is different from the
Ezekiel 38-39 invasion of Gog and Magog into Israel. Those are two different
things.
v. The devil is then cast into the lake of fire. The devil
and the demons are cast into the lake of fire in Revelation 20:7-10.
vi. The unbelievers of all time will be resurrected to
stand at the great white throne judgment, Revelation 20:11-15. God will rain
down fire and brimstone and completely destroy this army that Satan raises at
the end of the millennial kingdom and they are just going to be incinerated,
instantly vaporized by God at the end of the millennial kingdom. Then all
unbelievers are resurrected and we have the great white throne judgment in
Revelation 20:11-15.
vii. Following that,
God creates a new heaven and new earth, Revelation 21.
When you look at this literally and you look at the fact
that there is an order of events here that is logical, and then it helps to
recognize that this is talking about a future literal kingdom that will be upon
the earth. It is not something that is happening now. All of that had to do
with point e, which had to do with the order of events. Back to point f:
f. None of the variations of amillennialism or
postmillennialism can adequately account for the sequence of these events in
the book of Revelation.
They so allegorize or spiritualize what the Scripture says
that that sequence of events is not explainable by them. And finally in this
overview or this summary:
g. The premillennial position puts the literal return and
reign of Christ within human history and it is visible to the world. This is a
demonstration of God’s grace and God’s judgment. So we are not merely believing
in some just sort of general spiritual victory near the end but it is a belief
that God will specifically and genuinely intervene in the course of the world
to bring about justice and peace.
That God isn’t just off somewhere in heaven; and that is
important to realize as believers because we live in a postmodern world that as
a result of the influence of modernism, which denies revelation and
authoritative revelation. They have so created a division between the so-called
religious or spiritual and the everyday here and now that the religious isn’t
supposed to affect/effect or impact the physical and the real. In other words,
the religion, what you believe on Sunday morning should have nothing to do with
your politics or your economics or how you vote in the voting booth and those
things need to be kept separately.
If you pay attention to what is being said in this debate
over this HERO ordinance and the referendum and the petitions it is very clear that
that is how the mayor understands this situation. They are asking for sixteen
different types of communication. They took one out. They said we don’t want
sermons, and as I pointed out Sunday morning, the term “sermon” does not have a
technical legal definition. The term “speech” does not have a technical legal
definition. These are not terms that are distinguishable. So when they ask for
any kind of verbal communication with the congregation how is that
distinguishable from a speech or a sermon? And so by saying, well we took the
word “sermon” out, because “sermon” has to do with spiritual things, but we
just want to know about their “speeches” and the kind of instruction they gave
to the congregation. It is just smoke and mirrors. It is a head fake for people
who don’t know very much and cannot think very clearly. Trust me, the mayor
knows exactly what she is saying; she is not a dummy. I mean this respect for
the mayor that I hear, oh, well, she really didn’t see those subpoenas and she
doesn’t understand the significance. If I were her I would want to slap them silly
except they’re trying to help her, but the reality is that she knows exactly
what has been going on because they are engaged in a fishing expedition and
lawyers cannot use subpoenas to fish for any kind of information they want;
they’re restricted by that. So it is going to be interesting to see how this
plays itself out.
But what we see here is that God of the Bible is involved.
He is intricately involved in every aspect of our lives. He is concerned about
how we spend our money. He invented economics. He’s concerned about how we
sing, what we sing; He is concerned about food. He is concerned about every
detail in life. He is concerned about our relationship, He is concerned about
politics; He is concerned about all of these things and there is information
about all these things that are in the Word of God. He is not just off
somewhere unengaged with what is going on in human history. He many not be
directly revealing Himself in this church age, but He is nevertheless just as
involved. We see that He will eventually be involved at the end of the
millennial kingdom and bring judgment to bear. Let’s have an overview of the
Kingdom of this millennial or messianic kingdom, Revelation 20:1-10. First of
all we need to look at a couple of different terms. When we talk about it as a
kingdom it emphasizes Jesus’ reign as King. There is a rule. There is a domain
and there is someone in charge who is considered a king. That is a fulfillment
of the Davidic covenant. The term millennium emphasizes the length of the kingdom,
so let’s just break it down in terms of the different categories that we’ve
had. I think I have eight or nine different categories here related to how we
distinguish a dispensation:
1. There is usually a steward, someone or a group that is
responsible for God’s administration. God will administer the age on the earth
through that individual or that group. So the person through whom God will
administer the kingdom is Jesus Christ, as the Greater Son of David who will
rule over the earth. He has sort of a dual aspect to His rule, one is that he
rules over the earth and the second is He rules over Israel and over Jerusalem.
2. The term “kingdom” emphasizes His (Jesus’) reign as King
in fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. God’s promise to David that David’s
descendant would rule over Israel forever and ever.
3. Responsibility. The responsibility of the believer, the
earthly believers during the millennial kingdom, is to the King and His laws.
The law during the kingdom is not the same as the Old Testament Law. That was
related to the Levitical priesthood. It is going to be different in the
millennial kingdom. It is not the same. There will be some similarities, but
there are some specific differences. So there is a responsibility to obey the
King and to obey His laws.
4a. The test in the millennial kingdom will relate to
accepting Jesus as Messiah.
Remember, those who survive the Tribulation as believers
will enter into the millennial kingdom with mortal bodies and they will marry
and they will procreate and their children will inherit sin natures.
Everything else is going to have
the curse rolled back, but their nasty little sin natures are just
going to be as bad as yours and mine so not all of their children are
guaranteed to be believers. There will be many who will be unbelievers and it
seems from the language, it is difficult to understand, but it does seem from
the language in the prophets that no Jew will reject Jesus as their messianic ruler and Savior in the same way that no Jew
rejected God’s provision for their deliverance under the tenth plague in Egypt.
From all of the information we have biblically and extra biblically no Jew lost
his life during that tenth plague because they all believed. Just because they
all believed doesn’t mean God makes them believe. It is not a volitional
violation. It’s that they all are going to respond; whereas in this
dispensation and in the OT dispensation a lot of the Jews were characterized in
the Scripture, both Old Testament and New Testament, as being stiff-necked and
rebellious. Apparently that aspect of their culture is going to pretty much end
with the battle of Armageddon and not going to be a characteristic in the
future. I can’t explain how that works; I can just tell you that is what the
Scripture says.
4b. All the new humans that are born are going to have sin
natures and they are going to need to be saved.
5. The failure is that there’s going to be a minority. When
I say that it is going to be a large minority, 49.9% is a minority; right? We
don’t know how large that minority is, but it will be a huge number according
to Revelation 20 that will be seduced by Satan into a rebellion and they will
follow him when he is freed at the end of that thousand years. They will follow
him in a rebellion against God.
It shows that the problem isn’t the culture; the problem
isn’t the education or economy or any of these other things we blame now.
Everybody says, well if everybody would just quit smoking we’d all be healthy;
if we got rid of slavery then we would have a perfect environment; if women got
to vote we’d have perfect environment. No, it still doesn’t work. Okay, if
everybody would just quit drinking and we got rid of demon rum then everything
would be great! And that is what motivated progressivism. It’s utopianism. If
we can just cleanup society; if we can just have a perfect education system; if
everybody could just vote; if everybody could just run across the border of the
Rio Grande and come into the United States then we’re going to have a utopia!
Those aren’t the problems. The problem is sin. The problem is rebellion against
God.
So what we see is that through the 1,000 years of perfect
government, perfect environment; there won’t be any hunger, any plagues,
illness, war, famine; yet the sin nature still revolts against God because
people choose to reject God.
6. Grace will be displayed in that all of God’s covenant
promises to Israel will be fulfilled. The Abrahamic covenant will be fulfilled;
the Davidic covenant will be fulfilled; the New covenant will be fulfilled; the
Land covenant will be fulfilled. All of these covenants will be fulfilled and
it will be a time of unprecedented prosperity and peace and welfare on the
whole planet because we have a righteous government and a righteous ruler.
7. There is a judgment factor that those who reject the
gospel will be judged.
So this lays out the parameters and the characteristics of
the millennial kingdom. Now one thing that I would add is:
8. How does this fit with the angelic conflict? It helps
resolve the angelic conflict because it demonstrates that the major issue is
volition. This was Satan’s primary sin. He chose to go against God and he
couldn’t blame it on anything else. When Adam and Eve sinned it was their
volition. They couldn’t blame it on anything else; of course they tried. Eve
said well it was the serpent. Adam said it was the women. They all tried to
blame something else. What is demonstrated is that in
the millennial kingdom it’s man’s problem; it is a volitional issue and that is
the basic issue. This brings the angelic conflict to its final resolution.
Now next time when we come back we are going to continue
talking about the background for the millennial kingdom because it is directly
related to understanding all of those covenants before; so we will tie that
together. Father, thank You for this opportunity to look at these things this
evening, to see Your plan and purposes, how things are going to resolve
themselves and how it’s only in the millennial kingdom that all of those
promises, everything that is stated and promised and prophesied in the Old Testament
is finally brought together, tied together, and Your plan and purposes for
history are finally resolved. Father, we pray that we might never forget that
the major issue in history is volition and the focal point should be the cross;
that Christ died for our sins so that we could have everlasting life only by
believing in Him and Him alone and we pray this in Christ's Name. Amen.