02.13. The Millennium: When, What and Where?
XIII THE MILLENNIUM: WHEN, WHAT AND WHERE?
I
IT has been thought best that the previous chapters should be supplemented by one on the Millennium. Considerable has been said on that subject as we have progressed, but nothing in the way of a sustained or continuous treatment such as would interest and instruct a beginner in the study of prophecy. The word "Millennium" is a combination of two Latin words,mille,a thousand, andannus,a year, and means a thousand years. In its Biblical or theological use, it finds its origin in Revelation 20:1-7, where it is employed six times in speaking of such coming and momentous events as the binding of Satan in the bottomless pit, "that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled," and the resurrection of the saints who shall reign with Christ over the earth during the same period.
However, while this is the only place in Scripture where the "thousand years" is named specifically, yet nevertheless the period itself is identified in many ways throughout the Bible. Indeed, the Fleming H. Revell Company once published a goodly-sized volume by the distinguished Bible scholar, Dr. Nathaniel West, entitled, "The Thousand Years in Both Testaments," from whose opening pages we quote the following:
"What we find in the New Testament as its outcome in respect to the ages and the kingdom, has already lain in the bosom of the Old Testament from the beginning. The closing part of the New Testament (Revelation 20:1-7 for example) is but the full flower of which the opening part of the Old Testament was the precious seed, the kingdom, one and the same in essence all the way. Nothing appears in the later revelation that was not hid in the earlier; nothing in John that was not in Moses. . . . Such is the organic and genetic character of revelation and of prophecy, that if ’the thousand years’ are not in Moses, the Psalms and the Prophets, they have no right to be in John."
II The task would be fascinating to trace from the beginning the prophecies of the Bible which point to that "good time coming" which we call the Millennium.
Take the earliest of all, in Genesis 3:15, where it is promised that the Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. In a former chapter it was shown that this "Seed" is Jesus Christ, and the "serpent," Satan, the bruising of whose head means the destruction of his power longer to hurt men. This at once parallels the verse in Revelation, which speaks of him as being bound and shut up in the bottomless pit a thousand years. His final doom is not reached even then; but if for a thousand years he is restrained from doing evil in the earth, think what that will mean in the peace and happiness of mankind! This is one of the features of the Millennium.
We pass to that other promise, attached to the call of Abraham in Genesis 12:3, "in thee all the families of the earth shall be blessed." We saw in former studies the extent to which "all the families of the earth" are already blessed in Abraham, whose Seed is Jesus Christ; but we also saw that this was only a part of that blessing which is yet to be, and which approaches nearer its fulfillment in that same Millennium.
Hastening to the time of David, Abraham’s kingly offspring, we listen to the Messiah saying in the second Psalm, "I will declare the decree: Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." This points to the same period, and shows us our blessed Lord reigning over the whole earth, with all of the peace and righteousness upon the earth which that implies. The prophet Isaiah comments upon this reign, saying, "He shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither decide after the hearing of his ears; but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth, " The blessing extends to the animal creation too, for we remember the familiar words of the same prophet, "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" (Isaiah 11:3-6).
Israel, or the Jew, will be specially favoured at that time, for, as Amos says, "In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David [i. e., restore his kingdom], and I will build it as in the days of old. . . . Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof; and they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God" (Amos 9:11-15).
III The joyous refrain is continued in the New Testament, and Jesus, in view of His coming crucifixion and death, instructs His disciples concerning self-denial, saying: "What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? . . . For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father and his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works." The second coming of our Lord is thus declared to be one of the features of the Millennium, and naturally the great feature; for, as we have seen previously, it is His coming alone that can introduce that period or make it a possibility. But He is coming to judge His people and to dispense to them the reward of their fidelity, which will make it a happy time for them. In the Acts, Peter refers to it. He exhorts the unbelieving Jews who crucified their Lord to repent and be converted, that their sins might be blotted out. And then he adds: "That so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus, whom the heavens must receive until the time of restoration of all things, whereof God spake by the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since the world began." It is the time of the" restoration of all things," and yet not all things absolutely, but all those things of which the holy prophets have spoken, and which a consensus of their writings shows will be brought to fruition in the Millennium, when Jesus comes again (Acts 3:19-21). Of course, the Epistles hold much of the same thought, but that thrilling revelation through Paul in the eighth of Romans challenges our attention first. He is comforting believers under "the sufferings of this present time," which "are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." And then he uses these words, so often quoted, but so little appreciated in their bearing on millennial conditions:
"For the earnest expectation of creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." This passage parallels that already quoted from Isaiah, pointing out that the earthly blessings it portrays are vitally associated with the resurrection of the saints.
Thus, not to prolong this running comment any further, we are brought once more to Revelation 20:1-7.
IV The reader is asked to carefully read this passage, and then answer the following question: Suppose it had now passed before your eyes for the first time, and suppose you were entirely free from any bias of mind concerning it, what would it naturally suggest to you’ Would it not seem to teach at least eight things:
(1) That Satan will be bound and shut up in the bottomless pit a thousand years;
(2) That during this period the nations will not be deceived or misled by him;
(3) That thrones of judgment shall be occupied by risen saints and martyrs;
(4) That these shall live and reign as kings and priests with Christ;
(5) That the rest of the dead shall remain in their graves until the period is ended;
(6) That this is the first resurrection;
(7) That there is no more death for them that partake of its blessedness;
(8) That at its close Satan shall be loosed again.
Thisis the Millennium.Thisis the kingdom of the Messiah on this earth, which is predicted throughout the Old Testament. If we are intelligent in the Scriptures,thisis what we mean every time we pray, "Thy kingdom come."Thisis how almost the whole Church understood these prophecies for the first three centuries of the Christian era. As another says, "It was not until Christians began to mistake the world’s patronage of a corrupted Christianity for the commencement of the Millennium[i.e., at the fourth century in the days of Constantine], that they adopted those spiritualizing theories of interpretation which made these prophecies teach something else." And what is that "something else" which they are thus made to teach f Namely, that the resurrection and the reigning of the saints and martyrs in this passage merely designates a revival of their spirit in the earth. They say it merely means the universal spread and predominance of the principles of Christianity for which they suffered. But, as the English writer quoted above asks: “How could such a revival or predominance of the principles of the martyrs be a reward forthem,while as to their bodies they are still in the grave’ Is this the reigning with Christ which is to more than compensate for their suffering with Him? We think not." Of course we are not now speaking of the eternal age. We are not speaking of the period following the Millennium, when, according to 1 Corinthians 15:24-28, Christ will deliver up "the kingdom to God, even the Father." When that time comes, "then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." But we are distinctly taught that His preceding (millennial) reign continues until then, and it is of this (millennial) reign that this present chapter treats. This is the reign promised to every one "that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end," to whom He will "give authority over the nations" (Revelation 2:26) and they "shallreign on the earth"(Revelation 5:10). In the eternal age they cannot have authority over the nations on the earth, for there will be no nations in the present sense of that term; and as for the earth itself, it will then have fled away, and "there was found no place for them" (Revelation 20:11). But a further word of explanation is necessary to the effect that the reigning of Christ and His saints over the nations of the earth does not involve their possession of fleshly bodies like our present ones, nor their actual habitation on the soil of the earth.
Christ’s resurrection body is an indication of what the resurrection bodies of the saints may be. He could pass in and out of closed doors. He could be present and could vanish in an instant. He could ascend up into heaven, or remain upon the earth at His will; and the same is likely to be true of the saints, as we gather from 1 Corinthians 15:42-49. And as to a habitation on the soil of the earth: Does not King George reign over India with his throne in England, and does not President Wilson exercise authority over the Philippines from a capital at Washington? Why then should there be difficulty about the saints exercising dominion on the earth from their location in the air with Christ’ The air, it should be remembered, is one of the "heavenly places" (Ephesians 1:3; Ephesians 2:6; Ephesians 3:10; Ephesians 6:12), and there are we to be "forever with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:17). It is from that vantage ground that the present god of this world exercises his power over the nations of the earth (Ephesians 2:2) ; and what is to hinder the saints of God doing the same, when they with Christ shall occupy that domain from which He shall have been cast out (Revelation 12:7-12)?
V To sum up, the millennium is a thousand years of peace and righteousness, of prosperity and plenty, to be realized upon this earth. It will follow the second coming of Christ, at which time the Church, which is His body (Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 3:1-4), shall have been caught up to meet Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18). But though the saints will thus have been translated, they will not be deprived of a share in that blessing and its glory, for they shall reign with Christ on the earth, having authority over the nations. This blessing not only follows but is consequent upon the second coming of Christ, and for the reason outlined above, that He will then bind Satan and cast him into the bottomless pit, that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years are ended. The binding of Satan is associated with the divine judgments that shall fall upon the disobedient nations, and the subjection of those nations to the rule of Christ. The earth then shall be governed righteously; Israel shall be converted; idolatry shall cease; all false religions and false worships shall be put away, and, the material and animal creation sharing in the benefaction, the waste places shall "break forth into joy," and "all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God" (Isaiah 52:10). But one thing more. When we speak of Christ subduing His enemies by power, and of the Millennium being introduced by His coming and His judgments, we must not forget the name and the work of the Holy Spirit. As we are reminded by another, so far as the conversion of souls is concerned in the millennial age, or any other age, the Holy Spirit is the agent by which it is accomplished. As soon as the Antichrist arises in power, and even before Jesus comes in judgment on him and the nations under his leadership, the Holy Spirit is promised to a faithful remnant in Israel. "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord" (Isaiah 59:19-20).
It is significant that this work of the Holy Spirit does not render unnecessary the personal coming of the Redeemer, and that it is in connection with that coming and as a forerunner of it that the Holy Spirit is thus named. Moreover, Scriptures might be multiplied to show that this same gracious agency shall continue to abide with Israel throughout the whole of the millennial period. See, for example, Isaiah 39:11-15; Isaiah 44:2-5; and Zechariah 12:10. But Joel goes still further and teaches that in that day the Holy Spirit shall be poured out "upon all flesh" (Joel 2:28-29).
We think that an accredite8 student of prophecy is right when he says that "the judgments which accompany the Lord’s return will have purged out the obstinately wicked of that generation, while the survivors, awed by those judgments and compelled to bow to the scepter of Jesus Christ, will, by this universal outpouring of the Holy Spirit, be generally turned in heart to the Lord."
"Generally," be it observed, but not entirely or universally. Every soul of man will not be converted, and regeneration will be as necessary then as now, if one shall enter into the Kingdom of God. But in a sense or in a degree which until then the earth never will have known, it will be a time when “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together" (Isaiah 40:5).
QUESTIONS ON THE LESSON 1.What is the meaning of "Millennium"?
2. What is its Biblical origin?
3. Is Revelation 20:1-15 the only place where the period is referred to in the Bible?
4. Give in your own words the quotation from Dr. West.
5. Identify two early promises of the Millennium in Genesis.
6. Quote one each from the Psalms, from Isaiah, and from Amos.
7. Where in the Gospels are found the words quoted from Jesus?
8. Expound Acts 3:19-21 in your own words.
9. With what great event are the earthly blessings of the Millennium vitally associated?
10. Name the eight features of the Millennium in Revelation 20:1-7.
11. When were the spiritualizing theories of the Millennium adopted, and why?
12. In what are these spiritualizing theories summed up?
13. How does an English writer reply to this?
14. How is the millennial age distinguished from the eternal age to follow?
15. Does the earthly reign of Christ and His saints involve their possession of fleshly bodies and actual residence on the soil?
16. Illustrate your answer to the above.
17. In what sense is the" air" employed in 1 Thessalonians 4:17?
18. Sum up the teaching on the Millennium thus far.
19. What relation does the work of the Holy Spirit bear to millennial blessing?
20. Quote Isaiah 59:19-20 and Joel 2:1-32.