What will take place during the 1000 year Kingdom Age?
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FIRST RESURRECTION – “WHO GOES INTO KINGDOM:”
GENTILE BELIEVERS
I don’t claim to have any special revelations, and I don’t think I teach The Bible that much different than a lot of men who are far more important and educated than I am. But I trust that I am able to make it a little easier to understand. We have been talking about the Kingdom the past few lessons. Christ has returned, the Tribulation has run its course, and I think the questions that come into everybody’s mind are, “Who is going to go into the Kingdom? Are they going to be flesh and blood? Will they be having families? Will they be reproducing?” And the answer to all these question is, absolutely! This Kingdom will be on the earth, and will be `Utopia,’ (that’s the word the secular world likes to use). So let’s take a few references out of the Old Testament to show that this Kingdom idea has been on God’s mind from the very onset of the Book it-self, but especially after the call of Abraham.
I stressed many months ago that the Abrahamic Covenant you see was the Covenant between God and the Nation of Israel. He would make them a special, separated nation of people. He would put them in a geographic area of land and then, at the appropriate time, He would come to be their King, and set up the government. That comprises the Kingdom that everything is looking forward to.
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Revelation 20:6
“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection:… but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.”
Now the question came up in our last coffee break. That in verse 4, it sounds like just Tribulation people will reign and rule with Christ, and I was glad that someone caught that. Because that is probably true, but again you have to take Scripture with Scripture, and you can’t make a doctrine, or identify anything with just one verse. Come back to Revelation Chapter 5, and here we have a verse that I would say includes all of us believers in verse 10.
Revelation 5:10
“And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and (what) we (an all inclusive word) shall reign on the earth (with Christ).” We can also look at Chapter 19 verse 7:
Revelation 19:7
“Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb (remember the Lamb is to married to the Body of Christ) is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.”
Revelation 19:8
“And to her was granted that she (the Body of Christ, the Church) should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.”
Go over to verse 14 in this same Chapter. Here we are now included in this army that is coming with Christ at His Second Coming.
Revelation 19:14
“And the armies (Heavenly congregation) which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.”
Now can you tie all of that together? Not only are the Tribulation saints going to be included in that reigning and ruling with Christ for a thousand years but we are also included. Since we are talking about the Church Age believer in the Kingdom as this Kingdom will come on earth, come back to the Book of Colossians. Now Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles does not dwell a lot on the Kingdom, not nearly as much as the Old Testament does, and the Gospels as they pertain to Israel. But nevertheless we are involved in the Kingdom. Don’t think for a moment that we won’t be. In Colossians Chapter 1 (and again I’m going to run out of time in the middle of a subject). But if the Lord tarries there will be another lesson, and if He doesn’t, we won’t need it. Here in this passage Paul has been praying for the Colossi Gentile believers.
Colossians 1:12
“Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet (or prepared us) to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath (past tense) translated us (you and I as believers) into (what?) the kingdom of his dear Son:”
We are already members of the Kingdom. But always remember, where is the Kingdom tonight? In heaven, in the Person of Christ. When He was on the earth John the Baptist approached Jesus and what did He say? “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Why? Because the King was at hand. So when the King went back to glory, then the Kingdom is again in heaven (and we don’t refer to Him as the King in the Church Age, but as Savior and Lord.) But always remember the Kingdom won’t stay in heaven, but will come back to the earth, and Paul says, “We will be with Him. Part and Parcel of that Kingdom.” So we are indeed a part of this coming Kingdom, which will then be on the earth.
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BEMA SEAT: GREAT WHITE THRONE:
NEW HEAVEN AND EARTH
Let’s recap our last lesson for a moment about who will go into the Kingdom. First we will have the remnant of Jews that God is going to protect during the last 3 1/2 years of the Tribulation. They will be Jews that we read about in Matthew 24 that were escaping to the mountains at the mid-point of the Tribulation. They were a cross-section of the population of Jerusalem, from children and young pregnant women to retired older people. They will be the seed stock to repopulate the Nation of Israel. Second, there will be the survivors that believed the Gospel of the Kingdom as presented by the 144,000 that survive the Tribulation. They too will be a cross-section of society. This group will be Gentiles and will be the seed stock to repopulate all the nations, except the Nation of Israel. This Kingdom Age will last a thousand years and there will be only believers in this Kingdom. Satan will be locked up, the earth will be like the Garden of Eden. There will be no sin there. And Christ will be the absolute Ruler, a benevolent Dictator if you want to call Him that. It’s going to be a glorious time. There will be no sin, sickness, or death, and you will have a population explosion that the world has never seen before. We also know that since the curse has been lifted, there will be no more pain in childbirth, which I think will encourage large families.
Regarding other aspects of the Kingdom, I’ve had many people ask me if they will see their dog or cat again in heaven (they want me to say yes)? But I have to say, “Not the one you had here.” But there will be animals in the Kingdom. I’m sure that among those animals, people will have pets. I’m a dog lover myself, and have loved dogs ever since I was a kid. I had one for 15 years and I sure got attached to her. But I know I won’t see that little black dog in the Kingdom economy. But there will be animals. That is why I had you turn to Isaiah Chapter 11. We touched on this in the last lesson, so let’s just review a little. I like to show everything from Scripture. If I can’t show it from Scripture then it’s just my own idea. But when you can, I trust you will read it and believe it as this is the inspired Word of God. I take it literally. When you take the Scriptures literally you satisfy a lot of questions (and why not take it literally). If you read the account of Washington and his men crossing the Delaware on that cruel winter day, back there in the early days of our nation, do you spiritualize that and try to dream up something totally different? Of course not. You take it literally, and you take it so literally that you can almost feel the cold and pain they went through. And you need to do the same thing with Scripture. Don’t read and then try to dream up something that it must have meant. Just say, “This is what it says, and I believe it.” So looking at the animal part of the Kingdom again, let’s go to verse 6:
Isaiah 11:6
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid (baby goat); and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”
Can you picture all of that? Just take it literally. The animal kingdom as we know it today would be in total opposition. That lion would eat that little calf in a second. But here they are lying down together. Do you see the difference? I’m always trying to get people to read their Bibles carefully. Don’t just read it to be reading it. Here we have wild animals all of a sudden cohabiting with domestic animals! And unbelievable as it may seem, who is in the midst of them? A little child. Immediately you should ask yourself, “Where does this child come from?” Well, like the children today it came from parents, a father and a mother. Let’s read on:
Isaiah 11:7
“And the cow and the bear shall feed (together); their young ones shall lie down together: and (now here is the secret of the whole thing) the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”
Now let’s compare Scripture with Scripture. Come back to Genesis Chapter l. This is why I say the Kingdom will be a reversion back to the Garden of Eden, before the curse came in. Now the comparison. Isaiah says the day is coming when these wild meat-eating animals are going to eat the same diet of grasses that cattle do today. In Genesis l:28-30 we read (here God is speaking to Adam):
Genesis 1:28-30
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, `Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’ And God said, `Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat (or food).'” Now verse 30:
“And to every beast of the earth (that also includes the animals we read about in Isaiah), and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: (or food) and it was so.”
You won’t see God give permission (I don’t think even to the animal kingdom) to kill and eat meat for food until after the flood. Noah was then instructed that he could kill and eat the meat of these animals. But definitely before Adam sinned, none of the animals could eat meat, only green herbs. So that is what is here in Isaiah 11. The whole animal kingdom, including the most ferocious, carnivorous meat-eating species are going to change their diets and live peaceably with animals they once would have eaten.
Isaiah 11:8
“And the sucking (or nursing) child shall play on the hole of the asp, (which of course was a very poisonous serpent) and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ s (adder’s) den.”
Here we have had three children mentioned in just two verses. The inspired Word of God tells us that when this Kingdom is set up there will be human beings coming in at the front end of the Kingdom who are going to reproduce. They have to. We know by the time we get to the end of the thousand years, there are multitudes of people on the earth. We will be looking at that in a later lesson. Where did they come from? They came from believing parents who started at the beginning of the Kingdom.
Coming out of the Old Testament we came to the time of the Cross, and now we are in that undetermined period of time known as the Church Age. It will end when the Church is Raptured, or called out. And then began that seven-year period of time called the Tribulation. After Christ returns at the end of the Tribulation we come into this thousand years of what we call the Kingdom Age. It will be on earth in which these things will take place that we are reading about. All through this period of human history everything has been under the curse, and we have no question about wild animals and their behavior, and children should never play with them. And then at the end of the last lesson and I recapped at the beginning of this lesson who would be going into the Kingdom. All of these people I showed you will be different than you and I. We will have our new resurrected bodies, flesh and bone. These believing survivors of the Tribulation will have the same bodies that they had before – flesh and blood. They will then be the parents of these children we just read about with the wild animals in verse 6 and 8 of Isaiah Chapter 11. Let’s look at verse 9:
Isaiah 11:9
“They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain (a mountain in Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, is a Kingdom. Always look at the text): for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”
Let’s look at some more Old Testament references of the earthly Kingdom. Go to the Book of Amos Chapter 9 (in our next lesson I’m going to explain the opposition to this line of teaching about a literal earthly Kingdom that will come on the earth. We call this opposition Amillenialism). Hopefully we’ll show you that we are not throwing you a bunch of smoke, but that we can rest assuredly that even in the very early days of Christianity they all held to this view of an earthly Kingdom that someday would be on the scene. We have a lot of people who watch and are in my classes, who are handed books that are in opposition of the earthly Kingdom, the Book of Revelation and so forth. Now look at Amos 9:11,12:
Amos 9:11,12
“In that day (in other words when Christ is setting up His Kingdom) will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: That they (Israel) may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen (Gentiles), which are called by my name, saith the LORD that doeth this.” In verse 13, Here it is:
Amos 9:13
“Behold, the days come (when this Kingdom is finally set up), saith (Who?) the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper (what does that mean? Intense reproduction, remember there will be no curse, so they won’t have to put up with weeds and insects, fungus and moles, and pests and all the things that hinder good crop production), and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.” And God goes on to say that with His dealing with His people Israel, as we have here in the Old Testament:
Amos 9:15
“And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.” Go to the Book of Zechariah, Chapter 14 verse 8:
Zechariah 14:8
“And it shall be in that day (when the Kingdom is in operation), that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem: half of them toward the former sea (the Mediterranean sea), and half of them toward the hinder sea (Dead Sea): in summer and in winter shall it be.” In order to pick up on this you have to go back to Ezekiel Chapter 47. Ezekiel sees this same river, beginning in verse 1:
Ezekiel 47:1
“AFTERWARD he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward: for the forefront of the house stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under from the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar,” Notice this river has it source under the temple in Jerusalem. Now verse 8:
Ezekiel 47:8-10
“Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea (that is the Dead Sea): which (when these waters) being brought forth into the (Dead) sea, the waters shall be healed,”
“And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither (from the temple area): for they (the waters of the Dead Sea) shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh.” Now look at verse 10:
“And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it (this is the Dead Sea, and we know that from the term Engedi) from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea (the Mediterranean), exceeding many.”
When we were in Israel, we stopped at the oasis of Engedi at the Dead Sea and some of our group went swimming. Someday, this will again be fresh water. In Matthew Chapter 19, here again is the promise of this coming Kingdom when Peter says to the Lord:
Matthew 19:27,28
“…Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, `Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.'”