The Glorious Appearing
When King Jesus Reigns on Earth
Psalm 2:6-9
We are studying about the millennial reign of Christ on the earth. It is a literal time when Jesus Himself will be back on the earth as the king. Last time we looked at how Satan is bound for a thousand years. For everything the Bible tells us to come to pass, Satan must be bound. That will introduce a time of righteousness and peace and godliness.
As long as Satan is given parameters to work, there will always be war and famine and disease and disaster, because Satan is the author of it all.
So this time we are talking about is when Jesus returns, Satan is bound, Israel is restored and the church will reign with Christ.
And I will confess to you that concept is rather hard for me to imagine because we have never seen anything like this kingdom that the Bible describes. It’s almost like a science fiction movie that imagines a perfect utopia somewhere. But God will build this perfect world and Jesus will be the King.
Think with me about
1. The Purpose of the Millennium
First of all, I would say it is a time of Triumph.
When Christ came the first time, He was rejected. The Bible said He came in to His own, His own received Him not.
He was rejected by His enemies. He was rejected by His family. He was rejected by His own people. And it is still happening today. But one day, He will return to that same earth where he was rejected and He will be accepted and embraced and exalted. See God always sets things right. It was in the world that He was rejected so it must be in this earth that He will be exalted.
Just as a companion thought to that, He lived a very lowly life on this earth, but one day He will reign on this earth. Remember what Paul said in Philippians 2? He humbled Himself and was crucified, but there waits a day when He will be exalted. The humiliation was on earth, therefore His exaltation will be on earth in the millennium kingdom. So first of all, it is a time of triumph for Christ.
It is also a time of Transition. It is a part of the eternal rule of God, but it is not the final piece. God has always ruled and His kingdom has always existed, but it is moving toward a final destination.
For all the history of mankind, it has been in the individual hearts of His followers. All the way back to Abraham, for instance. We read in the book of Hebrews that people like him were looking for a heavenly dwelling, a city built by God.
So through all the history of man up through the tribulation, the kingdom was limited to individual hearts and lives.
And then we move into the millennium and another dimension is added as Jesus is not just in our hearts, but physically in our presence. And what a wonderful time that will be.
We will worship Him as the Lamb o the throne. We will know peace and joy and fulfillment as we live and dwell in the kingdom of God.
But the tribulation is transitional. It is the time between when God lives in our hearts and when we live with Him in Heaven.
Our ultimate destination is the dwelling place of God. Life here is sweet, as the songwriter said, and there is nothing on this earth at the present time that could ever be better than knowing we are saved.
But it doesn’t compare with the millennial reign. No sin, no separation, no sorrow in the presence of Jesus Christ Himself.
And then it gets even better than that as we move into our eternal dwelling place with God.
That’s a little bit about the purpose of the Millennium. Now for the balance of our time tonight I want to talk about the prelude to the Millennium, and then next week we’ll look at some of the characteristics and other aspects.
2. The Prelude to the Millennium
There is an interesting little passage of Scripture found in Daniel 12. Now Daniel is the Old Testament partner to the Revelation. In Daniel 12, he is given a prophecy concerning the end times. And as you can imagine, he has difficulty understanding what all he is writing about and he ask, “How will all of this come to a conclusion?
Verse 8
The answer is given in
Daniel 12:11-12
Anybody want to take a shot and explaining that? We have a distinction made here between a time period of 1,290 days and 1,335 days.
The 1,290 days is a reference to the last half of the tribulation. The anti-Christ will make an agreement with Israel at the beginning of the tribulation allowing them to worship in the temple and they will take advantage of that.
But half way in, he breaks the agreement. The daily sacrifice is taken away. And he (the abomination of desolation) is set up. In other words, he places himself on the throne and demands that he be worshipped as God.
So Daniel says, when that occurs, it will be 1,290 days until the end. That’s verse 11 and that is fairly easy to understand.
But then he adds verse 12 and it talks about the blessing of making it 1,335 days. What is the significance of this 45 day period?
I think that during that interim time is a time of judgment. There are certain judgments that have to take place before the millennial kingdom can begin.
First of all there is the judgment of the antichrist and the false prophet that we studied a few nights ago from Revelation 20.
Then there is a judgment referred to in Matthew 25 as the must be the Judgment of the Nations or the Sheep and Goats Judgment.
Matthew 25:31-40
Who are these that are judged and allowed into the Millennial Kingdom? Well, they are Gentiles who were saved during the Great Tribulation. They stood with Israel, they didn't take the mark of the beast, they trusted Christ and rejected the antichrist.
And a clarification is needed here I think. We sometimes read verse 32 and it leads us to believe that it is the nations themselves being judged. But the reference is not to individual nations as much as it is the Gentile nations as a whole. It is referencing non-Jewish people. And the judgment is on the individual inhabitants of the nations.
And the result of that judgment determines who of the Gentiles will go in to the millennium. And just like a shepherd separates the goats from his sheep, so will the judgment go. On the one hand, there are those who are cursed and they are sentenced to hell.
The reason for that is they rejected Jesus. They didn’t love Him and it showed through their actions.
I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me no water. I was in prison and you did not visit me. I was naked and you did not clothe me.
And even though it is a response to the Jewish people during the tribulation, Jesus personalized it.
And those who know Christ, on the other hand, are going to recognize what is happening and respond to the needs Israel has, and Jesus will take note of that.
So there is the judgment of anti-Christ and then this judgment of the Gentiles.
That has to happen before this kingdom can begin because nothing can come in to the kingdom that defiles the kingdom.
Then, there is another judgment that has to take place and that is the judgment of the Jews.
Ezekiel 20
First of all it talks about Jesus becoming the king and judging the earth with great judgment.
Verse 33
Then it says he brings the Jews out of the land where they have been scattered
verse 34
Then Messiah judges all the survivors of Israel face to face, those who survived the Tribulation Time.
Then he judges them according to the covenant that he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
verses 35-38
So here is the judgment of Israel. Not every Jewish person will enter the kingdom, only those who are believers.
What could be a better world? A world run by Christ, a world where everybody is a believer in Jesus and what a happy world that will be. Jesus will reign from Jerusalem.
We will start out with a saved Israel, a perfect world where everyone is saved, everyone knows Christ as Savior. But as time goes on, many, many will be born in this thousand year reign of time and the result is the millennial kingdom will eventually have a population or saved person in glorified bodies along with inhabitants who are saved and in physical bodies.
And eventually it will even have those who are in physical bodies who are unsaved. That means they will have a sin nature. Will there be any temptation during that time? I don’t know, but if there is any tendency to rebel, remember, Jesus is ruling with a rod of iron and Satan is Satan is bound away so there won’t be any external temptation.
But at the end of the 1,000 years, Satan is turned loose for a little while and he goes out to deceive the nations. Again that is a reference to people in general. It would exclude the saved and be limited to those who are in physical bodies and unsaved.
And he (satan) is very successful. He will have a lot of followers because there are so many on earth who have been subjecting themselves to Christ's rule but only because He was ruling with a rod of iron, only because they were made to, not because they wanted to.
God will show once again with this experiment that human nature is ruined and human nature is depraved even when it is given the opportunity to live in a perfect environment where there is no sickness and sorrow, where there is no poverty. And in spite of all of that, human nature will be exactly the same as it is today.
We will talk a little more next time about Satan being loosed and more of what the millennial kingdom will be like.
Then we will look at the Great White Throne and finally about the new heaven and the new earth, the holy city coming down from God.
Let’s pray.
