Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of understanding the millennial kingdom, addressing common misconceptions about heaven and the nature of Christ's reign on earth. He clarifies that the millennial kingdom is a literal thousand-year reign where the natural and spiritual realms coexist, and that many false assumptions hinder believers from grasping the fullness of God's plan. Bickle encourages a paradigm shift to recognize the continuity between our current lives and our roles in the age to come, stressing the importance of prayer and righteousness in shaping the future. He challenges listeners to engage deeply with Scripture to prepare for their eternal assignments and the reality of living in a restored creation.

Okay, let's go ahead and look at our notes. Our studies on the millennial kingdom. Father, we thank you in the name of Jesus, and we ask you right now for the spirit of inspiration to touch our hearts, to anchor our heart in the age to come, in our role, in our relationship to you in the age to come. And we thank you for it, in Jesus' name, amen. I'm picking up where I've left off a couple weeks ago, and we're in the middle of what I'm calling studies in the millennial kingdom, which is heaven on earth. If you don't think right about heaven, then you will never think about heaven. And that's a problem in the body of Christ right now, is that so many people do not think rightly about heaven, so they almost never think of heaven. And they feel a little sad that they can't obey the command to think on things above, but they have no grid for it. They can't connect with it, because when they think of above, they think of just far away, but what the truth is, is that heaven's coming down to the earth, and the way that we think properly about heaven is when we understand heaven in its bigger context, on the earth, with the throne of God on the earth, where the natural and the spiritual realm come together. That's the way that we think properly about heaven, because then we can relate to it. Now, it's still mysterious, and there's still many dimensions we can't grasp, but it begins to be far more practical and concrete in our thinking when we think about heaven in context to the earth after the second coming. That's when heaven becomes practical. In this session, session four, we're identifying false assumptions, false ideas about the millennial kingdom, the thousand-year reign of Jesus, and just false ideas about which would be implied heaven on earth. Romans 1, just a quick review for those that are new with us tonight. The millennial kingdom is a thousand-year reign of Jesus on the earth. It's a literal thousand-year reign. And then after the millennial kingdom, the father's throne comes down to the earth. After the earth is purged with fire, then the father's throne comes on the earth. In the millennial kingdom, one of its purposes is to prepare the people and the nations for the throne of the father, not the second coming of Jesus. That's at the beginning of the millennium. But at the end of it, Jesus has prepared the way, the ultimate forerunner, for the father to come and dwell in the natural realm openly with people, with physical, material bodies. We will have physical, material bodies resurrected, yes, supernatural properties, but nonetheless, they will be physical, material bodies. And we'll be face-to-face with God on the earth, the father. Most glorious reality that we can imagine. Paragraph B, the centerpiece of God's purpose. I repeat this just so many times over the years because without this piece of information, this revelation, so much will be confusing your studies of the end times and of the age to come. The centerpiece of God's purpose is for God to bring the kingdom of God through Jesus, Jesus to come, and bring the two realms together, the heavenly realm and the earthly realm, and to bring them together upon the earth. That is the central core to what God's doing. And if you understand that, you can understand many of the verses in the Bible about the end times. If you don't understand that, then you only imagine heaven separated from the earth, and then you conclude that you're floating around on a cloud playing a harp and you have a ghost-like body, and you don't really quite know how to relate to it right now because you know it's heaven, so you have to be happy about it, but it feels a little bit boring and a little disconnected and a little bit out there, and so it's really hard to get too excited about it. But what the purpose of God is to bring the two realms together, and that's where the fullness of God is when the natural and the spiritual are fully operating together under the authority of Jesus. Roman numeral, I mean letter D, just again, I repeat this a lot as well, but for those that are new, just to get an image of how this thing works at the second coming of Christ, to connect a few dots, fill in a few of the gaps, there's three people, types of people, that are alive on the earth when Jesus appears in the sky. There's three types of people. There's the redeemed. They are raptured. Okay, there's two groups left. The reprobate, those that have taken the mark of the beast, they end up not instantly killed. Many of them are killed through the tribulation judgments, but they're rounded up, treated as criminals of the state, and they're executed. And we're talking about hundreds of millions of people. This will take an immense amount of time for this to happen. Now, that's a new idea to some folks. They just, you know, when I ask them, well, what happens to these hundreds of millions of people? Does Jesus come wave his hand and they disappear? No. Does he wave his hand and they all fall over? No. When Jesus comes, they keep living, and they have to be brought to justice, and it's a huge task, this to happen. Now, many are killed in the battle, at the end of the Battle of Armageddon, but that's all over the Middle East. There's hundreds of millions, and more than that, around the nations that are not at that battle. Then the third group of people are what I call the resistors. They're the unsaved survivors of the Great Tribulation. They didn't say yes to Jesus, but they didn't take the mark of the beast. And that, my guess, is tens of millions, nobody knows, very small percent of the human race, but still a substantial number in terms of the earth being repopulated. They will continue with their natural bodies. They will remember that as the most intense three and a half years that they could ever fathom. But they will have weathered it and made it through, and they will have natural bodies. Jesus will come. The saints will all get resurrected bodies. The New Jerusalem will come down to the earth. That's where we'll live is in the New Jerusalem. But we'll reign over the earth, and these tens of millions, whatever the number is, I don't know the number, will grow into hundreds of millions, then billions, and then tens of billions over the next thousand years, and there will be a substantial righteousness in their lives and in the nations of the earth. But it won't be perfect righteousness, but it will be substantial, be beyond anything we've ever seen in history. That kind of gives you a little bit of a beginning if you're just new with us this weekend or the last few weeks. Romans 2, now let's identify. I have 12 different common assumptions, and we're not going to cover them all. Again, that's why we give notes. We'll skip a few of them. But I want to challenge your paradigm, challenge your way of thinking, because if you get these right, your paradigm right, then the whole picture begins to come together clearly, and it gets exciting, because a lot of these chapters of the Bible that are about the end times, they begin to make sense once you approach it with the right picture, with the right paradigm. Romans 2, identifying the common false assumptions about heaven on earth or the millennial kingdom. And then again, after a thousand years, heaven on earth, it's perfect righteousness after that. It's substantial in the millennium. Then it's perfect after the millennial kingdom, after the earth is purged by fire. It's important, paragraph A, to identify these false assumptions and then replace them with truth. It's essential to do this if you're going to understand the end time chapters of the Bible. And by the way, there are over 100 chapters in the Bible of which the primary subject is the end times. That's substantial. Most believers are 99% illiterate of those 100 chapters, and because they didn't make sense to them because their paradigm is wrong, and they think, how can all these natural things be happening because there's people living and dying and natural processes happening? I thought I was in heaven with a resurrected body. How could this be the future? I don't get it, because they don't see the two realms together, because it's our future. We're going to be involved in it. Paragraph B, we must carefully, I'm giving you this challenge. It's a two-fold challenge. I want to challenge you, number one, to review all the details of Scripture about the end times, pray over it over and over again, and after you stay with it, the fog begins to lift. You stay with it, and it begins to get in focus, the clear picture. That's challenge number one. Don't be loyal to the ideas you might have grown up with. Be loyal. Make sure those ideas are rooted in the Scripture. And number two challenge, which I don't have it written here, but I have it in many places, challenge everything I say and make sure it's in the Bible. I really want you to do that. Be a Berean in Acts 17. The Bereans, when Paul came to Berea, they said, Well, Paul, we like you, but we're going to check it out in the Bible to see if you're telling us the truth. And Paul said, I like that. That's good. That's good stuff. So no matter anything that you find on these handouts or anything that's said, you check it out and make sure it's biblical before you run with it. So make sure the stuff that you came here with is biblical and make sure the things that you're hearing, make sure you can see it with your own eyes. Now, in every session, I can't prove every point because we'd be here for hours, which, of course, I would like, but it would wear you out. Okay, so we won't do that. Paragraph C. One of the primary premises that I operate with is that God's wisdom is perfect and He never changes. Now, the application of His wisdom changes, but the core principles of which God in His wisdom has related to the human race, they are timeless and they're perfect. So the principles in which God has related to natural human beings for 6,000 years since Adam in the Garden of Eden, He will use the same principles in the next 1,000 years to relate to human beings on the earth with natural bodies. And so my point is, instead of trying to figure out the great mystery of how Jesus will relate to people with natural bodies, look at history and we get a lot of understanding from history in the Bible. That's how God relates to people with natural bodies. The truth is, we already understand a lot of it. The hard part is, is understanding that that really is the way He's going to continue to relate to people. Because the idea we have, just kind of accidentally, when Jesus comes, He waves His hand, everything becomes supernatural, everything natural disappears, and now we're in a complete mystified place of no understanding because we can't grasp it. Don't go there. The way that Jesus has shown His wisdom for 6,000 years of leading the human race, many of those principles will still operate with the people, those tens of millions, those hundreds of millions that are populating the earth, He will still relate to them in the same principles. There will be some obvious different applications, but the principles are timeless because God is perfect in His wisdom and He never changes. Page two, Roman numeral three. False assumption number one. False assumption number one is that the second coming is the same thing as the rapture. They are not the same thing at all. They happen at the same time frame, but they are totally different realities. Now you think, now I'm not following you because let me kind of help you at this point. Those are two different realities that happen in the same time frame. The second coming, by definition, means Jesus comes to the earth permanently. A second coming is not Him appearing in the sky. If He appears in the sky, that's where He raptures us, He hasn't come yet. A coming requires a landing on the earth in a permanent way. So my point is, many people think about heaven and they think of it far away. In an essence, they believe in a rapture, but they don't believe in a second coming. They don't believe Jesus comes to the earth. They believe He comes in the sky, but that is not a biblical definition of a coming of the Lord. He has to come to the earth and He has to have a long-term assignment on the earth. And so if He comes, captures us, I mean raptures us and goes away forever, then we're raptured. That's what happens to the saints. We're transformed, our bodies. But He hasn't come to the earth yet. And so many believers, when you really push them, they believe in the rapture, but they don't really actually believe in the second coming. They don't picture Jesus on the earth in a physical body on a physical earth reigning over nations. So I tell them, you don't really believe in the second coming. They go, yes, I do. I go, no, you will believe in a peering in the sky to take you away. That's the rapture, but that's not the same thing as coming. Requires that He touches the ground and stays here with a permanent task. So that's assumption number one. It's a very simple point to clarify, but a lot of folks just kind of assume they believe in the second coming, and they don't. When I ask them, is Jesus coming to reign on the earth? I don't know. I know He's coming, though. No, no, you believe we're going to be captured and taken away. That's true. We are going to be caught up in the air. We're going to be given resurrected bodies, but that's only part of the truth. Jesus is coming to the earth physically and permanently, and He's going to join the two realms together, and we're going to live in the context of these two realms together forever and ever and ever, and that is exciting. It's okay if you look at your neighbor and smile, okay? Say, boy, this is kind of neat. There's a reason you like the earth. Because you were made of the dust. The very fabric of your being is the dirt, is the natural realm. And when God made us back in Genesis 1 and 2, He said it's very good. There was nothing wrong with the natural realm. Sin created problems in the natural realm, but the natural realm itself is not wrong. It's glorious, and it's part of God's eternal purpose. Okay, false assumption number two. That when Jesus returns, natural processes of life will be just suspended and done away with. Now, no one ever says that. I've never heard a preacher get up and say, when Jesus returns, everything in the natural just suspends. People don't really quite say it that clear, but that's an unspoken picture people have in their mind. When you say, think of yourself a million years from now, they're on a cloud floating somewhere, because the natural realm doesn't exist anymore. It's been suspended and been done away with. That's not how it happens. Even when Jesus comes to the earth, when He interacts with people with natural bodies, and even with us as resurrected saints, when we interact with people with natural bodies, the natural processes of life will still continue. It's like when the angels visit us, and they touch us, and they communicate with us, they understand we're living with natural processes in our life. And we'll have resurrected bodies. We will be training people. And just right when we're training them, just like some of the saints through the Word of God, they'll fall asleep. You think, wait, come on, you guys, I'm training you. Yeah, but you've got a resurrected body. We're tired. And we're a little moody right now. We're afraid, and like, well, okay. We'll come back and visit you later then. Boy, yeah, that's how it was. Yeah, I remember. Paragraph A, common false assumptions. The natural processes of life, it's a false assumption, will be suspended because of Jesus' supernatural activity. It's so intense, is the idea. It's the wrong idea. But the activity of Jesus is so intense, He waves His hand and somehow everything wrong becomes right instantly. All the cities that are destroyed in the tribulation judgments are suddenly, they pop up in perfection from the rubble. That's not going to happen. The cities will be built just stone by stone, floor by floor. The highways will be built. The vineyards will be planted. The agricultural and all the processes of life will still operate in the natural, in the Millennial Kingdom on the earth. Jesus will not only use the supernatural dimension. He will for sure use it. It will be an anointed time like no time on earth since the Garden of Eden. But it won't be only supernatural. It will be supernatural together with the human involvement and human process, natural processes. People will grow. Animals will grow. Animals will die. Friendships will be made on the earth. Beloved, we will make friendships with resurrected bodies. There will still be a human process in our resurrected state. When you receive a resurrected body, you will not become omniscient. You will not know all things. You will only know what you knew the moment before you had a resurrected body. A resurrected body does not imply that you get a computer chip of omniscience to where you know everything. When you meet somebody, they will have to tell you their name. Now, you'll remember it a lot better. You'll pay attention a lot better. You'll understand. You'll communicate a lot better. You'll feel a lot better. But still, you will meet them one by one. And you will tell other people about your new friends. And you will meet each other. And that's how you will gain knowledge line by line. I mean with a resurrected body. And we will give it to the people of the earth the same way. Line by line, we'll teach it. Many of you will have a teaching ministry in the age to come far beyond your teaching ministry right now. Paragraph B, the true principle is that natural processes are not suspended but they'll be greatly enhanced by the supernatural dimension. Now, the clearest picture we get of this is in Acts chapter 1 when Jesus has a resurrected body for 40 days. He's with the 12 apostles for 40 days. The 11 apostles, you know, yay, the 12th one coming soon. And He's talking to them for 40 days. He has a resurrected body. They have a natural body. He's eating with them. They're falling asleep. He isn't. He's teaching them about the things to come line upon line. And that's a snapshot. That 40 days in Acts chapter 1 verse 3 is a window into how the millennial kingdom will operate with you will be the one with the resurrected body teaching the others. And it will be very exciting when they learn. And you will learn as well. You will not know all things. You'll know more than you know now. But a million years from now, you'll know how little you knew the first 1,000 or 2,000 years. You'll say, I thought I knew a lot. I understand now. I didn't know very much in those first couple thousand years in the age to come. We will be excited for billions and billions of years by new discoveries, new relationships, new experiences. It's not going to be... I mean, whatever is good on the earth in principle, in God's terms of his leadership of the human race, work, in the book, in the Garden of Eden, work was not a curse. It was a blessing. It was work with frustration that's a curse. But work that has God's blessing and the sense of accomplishment and the sense of community that comes out of anointed work, you will experience that forever. And the sense of God's pleasure, the sense that you're increasing the quality of people's lives, even people with resurrected bodies, it will increase. Everything will increase in goodness. And you'll have a ministry. Your ministry for 1,000 years will be far more important than your ministry for 70 years. People get so fixated on their 70-year ministry, they completely lose sight of their 1,000-year one coming next. Beloved, we are in seminary. We are in an internship called 70 Years on the Earth. And our assignment in the age to come is directly related to our internship right here, particularly growing in meekness in love and growing in revelation of the Word. I'm not talking about memorizing Bible passages. I'm talking about having heart revelation of Jesus and His Word. Paragraph C. Jesus will rule with hands-on leadership in establishing infrastructure in every sphere of life. Can you imagine this? He will be in Jerusalem. He will have the same Jewish body He had for 33 years on the earth, but in resurrected glory. He will look the same, but in perfected glory. He'll have the same DNA, and so will you. You will have the same DNA you have right now. All the tribes and all the ethnic groups with God's full glory will operate forever in their full splendor. And it's awesome. So this man, you know, this, you know, near-six-foot man, whatever he was, on the earth, he will be the same person with the same body, I mean, with the body resurrected on a throne, talking to people, and his eyes will be bright, and he will have sometimes a serious look and sometimes a glad look, and sometimes he'll say, he'll ask questions, and he will be a real person on a throne. And the resurrected saints and the kings of the earth will come to his throne and receive assignments, and they will have consultations and dialogues, and he will delegate responsibility, then they will go to the remote parts of the earth, wherever they're assigned, and they will then implement what Jesus told them while he is on his throne in Jerusalem. There's nowhere in the Bible that once Jesus is established on his throne, and I can't prove this for a fact, but I feel strongly that it's right, that once he's installed on his throne, my assumption is he is on that throne forever, that he's not walking around in parks, the nations are coming to him, like the father is on his throne, you never see the father walking around. Once Jesus is established, that might not be true, but it appears that way, that he'll be on his throne, and the nations will all come to him, he will not go to them, they will come to him, and there will be processions continually waiting for appointments with him to have meetings, and sometimes there'll be worldwide gatherings, sometimes there'll be New Jerusalem only gatherings, where all the saints and all the angels and the guys on the earth will say, hey, can we get in? No, you can't, this is only for resurrected bodies and saints, and he will talk to us, but he will be on a throne, that's my assumption, that he'll be on, once he's coronated and set on his throne, my assumption is he'll be on the throne forever, and maybe he won't, but that's the way that I view it, and the leaders will come to him, he will not himself make sure the cities of the earth are built right, according to righteousness, he will do it through his delegated authority, just like he does now, and they'll come back and they'll say, no, that's not exactly what I wanted, he says, go think on it this way, you go wait and you pray and let the Holy Spirit tell you, and you come back and tell me what he told you, say, oh, Jesus, just come on, just tell me now, he says, no, no, this will be good for you, I want you to ask the Holy Spirit, and I want your personality to be manifest in this assignment that I've given you to bring righteousness in that city, because some folks think they'll be kind of like an automatic kind of robotic kind of thing, that Jesus relates to us now in a dynamic interaction, where our personality's expressed, and our free will's expressed, and our creative ideas expressed, and the Holy Spirit operates within our personalities, he really does, because the glory of God is manifest through all the different instruments in the symphony, all the different personalities of the human race, and he likes them, he made them, and that's the wisdom of which Jesus rules now over his people, and that wisdom isn't thrown away, where now that we're face-to-face, we have the ability to be face-to-face, now we become robots, no, that's not gonna happen, we will still think, decide, pray, the Holy Spirit will give us ideas, we'll implement them, we'll report, we'll go back and train people, we'll report back, this is, it will go on and on and on with many levels of authority over all of God's people, the authority structure will not be dismissed, there'll be many levels of authority, there'll be two or three billion saints, there won't be one level of authority, just like there's many levels of authority within the angelic ranks, just like there's many levels of authority in society now, those are not principles that the Lord throws away, the levels of delegated authority will continue, and so you'll have people over you, you'll have people under you, you'll have, I'm talking about resurrected bodies, saints, you'll have people with natural bodies that are, you are over, some of you, not everybody in the New Jerusalem will have government on the earth, only those that were faithful on the earth, I don't, I'm talking about faithful by the definition of mature in their obedience, that's what I mean, because there's one sense of which faithful is, we just said yes to Jesus and took the grace of God, and there's another thing, we followed through with obedience, mature obedience, and so there's two different ways that you could describe our relationship to the Lord, the instant free gift that we get to get into salvation and that our responsiveness and faithfulness is about responsiveness, about the faithful, and I want to work closely with him in my resurrected body, I want my internship to end well, I want to do my internship right, I want to work close to him, and I want to see a part of the earth that I want some responsibility in, and I want to walk it out in fellowship with Jesus and bring that area of the earth into mature righteousness, and that is the mindset that we have when we think rightly about heaven. Okay, this paragraph C, what's going to happen is that when Jesus comes to establish infrastructure through delegated authority in every city and village of every nation of the earth, the thing he's going to do, he's going to replace the governmental leaders of the Antichrist worldwide government with new people. See, the Antichrist governmental leaders will be, you know, they'll be from local leaders, you know, from districts and county governmental positions to mayors to senators to, you know, every level of society, all of them will be removed and people with natural bodies will be put in place and people like you will be over those people with natural bodies to train them and teach them and to interact with them in a place of authority to make sure that part of the earth is brought to righteousness. This infrastructure will include the life support systems, food, water, electricity, I mean for the people with natural bodies. They're going to need all these things and all those systems will be broken after the Great Tribulation. There'll be building projects, there'll be highways to be built, bridges to be built, buildings to be built, there'll be new inventions and technology and science with the people with natural bodies and we will be working alongside them. There'll be economic systems, law enforcement because the people with natural bodies, they will still have a sin nature, they will still sin and need forgiveness. There'll be substantial righteousness in the nations but it won't be perfect righteousness. There will be the penal system will be in force. It just will, it will be a perfect system, the environment will be perfect, all the demons will be in prison so there'll be no demons tempting anybody for the thousand years. So that's a little of the overview of what's going on in terms of our view of what we're going to be doing with the peoples of the earth. Top of page 3. There's a process involved, now this is a new idea to some, in the war tribunals. There will be war tribunals, meaning the terrible wars leading up to the second coming of Christ. Did you know Jesus returns in context to a military conflict in the Middle East? He returns and one of His mandates in returning is to end the military conflict. He's not just coming just to come, just so that we're raptured. He's coming for several reasons but one of them is to end a military conflict and there's bloodshed everywhere and then when the conflict is over, the Antichrist, the false prophet are round up, they're thrown into the lake of fire, Satan's thrown into the prison and then there's millions, I mean tens of millions, hundreds of millions, I don't know the number, of people with the mark of the beast are scattering to the nations. I think of the situation in Germany when Adolf Hitler died in 1945 and World War II was over in Europe and all the Nazi war criminals scattered to the nations and then all the allied powers, the governments were chasing them, it took them years to find them. Now we'll have the anointing of the Holy Spirit operating, it'll be a lot easier but I have a feeling as easy as God could have sent an angel to catch every one of them, He didn't. He went in natural processes to work their way out and those natural processes will be enhanced by the anointing of the Holy Spirit but my guess is there will be more of a process involved in that than we might think. Look at Matthew 25, what happens when Jesus comes? All the nations are gathered, all the leaders of all the nations and He separates the nations. Look what He does in Psalm 110, He judges among the nations, this is at the second coming, He shall fill the place with dead bodies, He shall execute the heads of many countries, Jesus will. The heads of countries once they're rounded up, they will be executed, they'll be tried first. Look at Isaiah 24, in that day Jesus will punish the kings of the earth, we're talking about the reprobate kings of the earth who were in league with the Antichrist, they will be gathered together, that will take more than a day or an hour, that will take time, I don't know if it's weeks, months or years, I don't know but there's a process involved as prisoners are gathered in the pit and they'll be put into prison, then they'll be fully punished after many days of being put in prison. Look at Isaiah 2, when Jesus comes He will judge between nations, He will rebuke many people, there will be many people brought before Him and they'll think, I mean it's the dreaded hour of their life, up to that time, they come there and they stand in front of Jesus of Nazareth, the man Jesus, He rebukes them, can you imagine what that means? That Jesus will, oh that's terrifying because He has the power, He has the keys of hell and death in His hands and He says, you resisted My will and you said no and you injured My people and He will rebuke them and it will be a severe rebuke and probably in this, there's many levels of rebukes, probably there'll be some that He's rebuking not at the same level as others. Okay, false assumption number three, that social improvements, social improvements will be instantaneous, that's a false assumption, social improvements will take place over decades, it'll take time. I believe that the reason the Millennial Kingdom is a thousand years, it literally takes a thousand years for the whole earth to have righteousness established in it and matured and tested. It's not done in one decade. Now there's a lot of good things that happen in a decade because the Lord will not violate the human process, He will allow all those millions that will become, you know, the hundreds of millions, the billions, people with natural bodies and they're having children and they're growing, He will want every one of them to choose righteousness day by day like we do now and to take their sphere of life and obey Him. Now there's no demons and Jesus is on the earth and resurrected saints are helping, I mean, there'll be a whole lot of advantage as compared to now, but still, people will still sin and they'll still say, no, I don't want to do that. Social improvements will not be instantaneous. It will require, paragraph A, a lengthy period of time for all areas of society to be totally healed. As paragraph B, this will take much time to accomplish, learning and applying what is learned will happen like it does now. You will train a person with a natural body, they will say yes, then they will do it, just like angels appear to people now or just the word of the Lord comes from just the written word or sometimes in a dream or sometimes an angelic visitation. We hear the word of the Lord and we don't always do it. Amen? We don't always do it. Even supernatural words. Sometimes the leaders of nations, they will hesitate or they won't do it fully. It will take time in all the areas of life because He's not just interested in a few areas of government. He wants the agriculture. He wants technology. He wants entertainment. He wants economics. All of those areas to be under justice and righteousness and wisdom. There are many areas of life that we'll have to have minute training in for the whole earth to have righteousness in it. But it's exciting. And we're going to be a part of it for a thousand years. Paragraph C, Jesus will set up training institutions to train in not just Bible teaching, to train in every area of life, what the Bible says. Look, it says in Isaiah 2, many people will come and say, let's go up to Jerusalem, to the house of the Lord. In other words, let's go to Jesus' throne. Let's go talk to Him. He will teach us not just about character. He's not just teaching us about righteous responses in our heart and our character. He's going to teach us His way in terms of education, economics, politics, media, agriculture, all of His ways. They'll be taught in Jerusalem, be a perpetual conference center and worship center. I have no doubt there will be technology involved in this. Nations will see, but they'll want to be in His presence. It would be absolutely awesome, beyond anything we can imagine. But He'll teach the nations. Do you know how, do you know what's involved in teaching, you know, after, you know, a couple hundred years in the millennial kingdom, because people will live to be two and three and four and five, six hundred years, their lifespan will increase as the millennium unfolds, just like when Noah's flood, you know, many people were six, seven, eight hundred years old. Then after the flood, lifespan began to decrease. Then it got down to 120 years, then down to 70. Well, it's going to go the other way around. And so, a lot of people will be three, four, five, six hundred years old. And so, therefore, the population of the earth will be very big. Food will be good. Atmosphere will be good. I'm talking about good as in healthy as well as tasty. Atmosphere will be good. Lions won't bite people. Demons will be in prison. Sickness won't abound. I mean, people will just, the human race will be big, the population of the earth. Do you know how many, do you know the logistics of having, you know, tens of billions of people or more going to Jerusalem? I mean, Jerusalem's not going to suddenly become big. It's going to be the same size it is now. The logistics of the nations going there will not be a small challenge. That will be a challenge. Billions of people wanting to go there. And, you know, that's part of the reason I'm imagining Jesus will always be there. I mean, there will always be just multitudes. Well, sorry, Jesus is in Kansas City at the IHOP conference because IHOP's going to keep going in Kansas City. It will. And for real, there will be houses of prayer in all the cities of the earth. The guys in Jerusalem say, oh, man, we came all this way. He's not even here. You're kidding. Isaiah chapter 9. Look at this. Here's what they said about Jesus' kingdom. Of the increase of His government, there's no end. And the increase of peace. Never will Jesus reach a place where His government does not increase more and the peace that's manifest to these people that come under His government, there will be no end until upon the throne of David and over His kingdom in order to order it and to establish it with justice from this time forward forevermore. Look at this. The point I want you to see, there is an increase. If it's increasing forever, that makes clear there's a process. There's an order that Jesus is giving order to His government. He's forever establishing order in it. He's establishing it and He's ordering it, which I assume is synonymous. It says to order it and establish it. They may be different nuances. I don't know. But He will be giving more order forever. Forever. A billion years from now, there will be more of creation brought under His leadership and more peace in that area. So you say, how does that work? I mean, the earth is only so big. I mean, you would think a billion years, a trillion years, whatever after a trillion. Wait. I believe we will be bringing His dominion to the entire universe. I believe that the planet earth, the throne of God on the earth, will reach out in ways I have no interest in even knowing. I say that. People go, I got ideas. I go, you know, I'm not really interested. If it's not in the Bible, it's kind of a little bit fun, but it causes more trouble than it does good, so I'm not that interested. So if you get an idea, you can go ahead and share it with your friend. Because the speculation of what we'll do on planets, that's just not where my mind is. I'm trying to figure out Isaiah and Jeremiah right now. So that's where my, I'm really locked into that. There's so much I don't know that I need to know. Okay, paragraph E. The tree of life will bring healing to the nations. Now, the tree of life is in the New Jerusalem, but the kings, it says in, I don't have it here, Revelation 21, 24, the kings go into the New Jerusalem to bring their glory of the nations. So kings, natural kings with natural bodies, millennial kings, they have access to the New Jerusalem, but that's where the healing leaves to heal the nations. Now, the New Jerusalem doesn't need healing. The New Jerusalem is perfected, but the kings of the earth that walk into it because the New Jerusalem has come down to the earth, there's something about those leaves that bring healing to nations. I don't know. I don't understand it. Again, I don't need to know those kind of details if they're not in the Scripture, but we know that these leaves that are in the city of the New Jerusalem that has descended to the earth are brought out to the nations of the earth, and the kings, I'm assuming, are the ones bringing them out, but the nations are healed by those leaves. Okay, top of page four. Now, notice here, you can read this on your own. This is the river in Ezekiel 47. Now, this river is coming. It's a river on the earth. It's coming out of the Millennial Temple in Jerusalem, a river. There's Jesus' throne. There's the temple. His throne is in the temple, and out from under the temple, a river is breaking out. It's a supernatural river. My guess is it's the same river flowing in the New Jerusalem. Anyway, that river is coming out from the throne out into the earth, the Millennial earth, and wherever that river goes, it heals everything. My assumption, and I think it's a good assumption. I can't prove it, but it's a good assumption, is that is the river that's flowing from the throne of God in the New Jerusalem. It flows right through Jesus' throne on the earthly Jerusalem. It goes out. You read that on your own. It heals the fish. It heals the water. It heals the vegetation, and you know the passage in Isaiah 35 where it says the desert will blossom like a rose. That's the desert around the nation of Israel. That's the desert where there's rivers going into. It literally blossoms profusely, and it becomes a Garden of Eden context flowing out of the healing of that river, but it takes time for this all to happen. You read Ezekiel 47, the passage there, you read the whole thing. It's a magnificent passage. It's so exciting to read this because it's what Jesus thought of. One of the reasons I love these end-time passages is because I love to think. I love to understand a little bit what He's thinking. He is so fascinating. He started with a white canvas, a whiteboard, a blank canvas, I mean. He started. He could have made it any way He wanted. He says, Father, let's have the river break out and heal the Mediterranean and the fish. Let's do that. The Father goes, Jesus, that's a great idea. And I say, Jesus, where did you come up with that idea? A river? And it goes out into the Arabian Desert and heals it? Yeah. I really like that. There's a lot of implications you don't get, Mike. We didn't really have this conversation, but just say we did. But my point is, I read Ezekiel 47 and I think of talking to Him going, where did you come up with this idea? Who would have thought of a river flowing in a desert? Great idea. Now I can just imagine the Lord saying, I didn't hear Him, but oh, you don't even know how good of an idea that is. You will be surprised how many things will be implied by that river. Paragraph G. They'll rebuild the old cities. Look at this. They shall rebuild the old ruins. Isaiah 61, verse 4. They shall raise up the former desolations, repair the ruined cities. Now a lot of people will take this verse and they'll apply it to now, which is okay, but clearly in its context it's talking about after the second coming. Clearly these verses do not apply to now, but many verses about the age to come the Lord lets us borrow them now and walk them out in part. So I believe it's right to do it as long as we know we're borrowing a passage that belongs properly in the age to come. But the point I want to bring out here is that in the age to come ruined cities are built stone by stone. It'll take decades to build all the cities of the earth. They will not be built in one minute. All the desolations of everything, the desolate lakes, the desolate seas, the desolate vegetation, the desolate atmosphere, everything that's desolate will be raised back up. I mean, what a huge statement. Paragraph H. Well, this is the verse where I talked about the desert being made like a rose. That's Isaiah 35. It's talking about after Jesus returns in the Millennial Kingdom, the sick are being healed. This passage is about the age to come. And who are these blind people that are getting healed? They are blind people that have natural bodies in the Millennial Kingdom being healed because there will be an anointing of healing. You know, you've heard testimonies, I'm sure. I've heard several of them where the angel of the Lord appears, touches somebody, and they get healed. I have no reason to doubt that the Lord will not use you to heal people in the age to come like He uses angels right now to heal people. There's no problem with having a resurrected body and still operating in healing. Jesus has a resurrected body and He will heal the sick. We'll be like Him. And these saints with natural bodies will have an anointing and heal the sick. But the point is, the sick will still be existing in the Millennial Kingdom. Blind people will still get new eyes. You say, well, are these the blind people that were the unsafe survivors? Or were these people that were in the Millennium and they were born and they were blind? I don't know. I don't know which one it is, but I know they're going to get healed, so I'm pretty happy about it. Okay, Roman numeral six. I don't realize we're running out of time here. So I'm going to touch this one a little bit and just touch a few others just maybe a minute on some of the others. This is a really important one. Really important one. The false assumption that justice that was established in this age will not last. That the justice we established now is somehow disregarded. Jesus comes and somehow it just becomes of no importance at all to the Lord. That's a false idea. Many fail to see the continuity between what we're doing in our work right now and in the age to come. The truth is, paragraph B, there's a dynamic continuity that exists between what we accomplish now in righteousness and justice and what Jesus will establish in the Millennial Kingdom. Meaning, we change abortion in America. We change the laws that enable abortion. That is a law that Jesus does not have to change when He returns. Because whatever the laws are on the books of the nations will be exactly what they are the day before Jesus comes. That's what the laws will be when He gets there. And He will, through the process of justice, change every law. He won't wave His hand and suddenly every law is changed. They will be changed according to a legal process by the government of that nation. He will honor the government of the nations like He does right now because He really gives them the authority of the nations. If they choose wrong, it brings negative consequences. If they choose right, it brings blessing. But He still will allow people to choose. He will still allow Israel to choose Him before He comes to them. So, we labor and we turn around the laws for abortion in our nation or in our city or in our state, our region, whatever. That law will not have to be reversed when Jesus returns because it's already been reversed and made right before He returns. It matters if we change things now. The Great Tribulation and the Antichrist does not... Well, by the way, the Great Tribulation is mostly God troubling the Antichrist. When people think of the Great Tribulation, they're thinking mostly of, oh, it's going to be hard on the saints. No, the devil's against the saints, but the Great Tribulation, the grand story of the Tribulation is the prayer movement under Jesus' authority releasing havoc on the Antichrist. The Great Tribulation, like I tell people, is not we're going to be gone before the Great Tribulation. You know, people say we're going to be raptured out of here before it. We're not gone before the Great Tribulation. The praying church causes the Great Tribulation because we're the ones praying in the way that Moses was praying and releasing judgment on Pharaoh. The end time church will be praying, releasing judgment on the end time Pharaoh called the Antichrist. Yes, there is a secondary element of the Tribulation which is Satan's attack against us, but the primary story, the greater story in terms of power and magnitude is God's judgments on the Antichrist. But don't imagine that the Antichrist, as powerful as his kingdom will, don't imagine he will conquer all the nations of the earth. He won't. He may have a witness. He may have an expression of power somewhere in that nation. He will not dominate all the nations of the earth. There will be places where righteousness is still going forward. I am not at all conceding or concluding that when the Antichrist establishes a real man with a worldwide government in the Middle East and Europe, I'm not at all conceding that he will dominate America. In my heart, I believe that he will oppress America but never ever dominate America. I'm not saying that as an American. I'm saying that as a citizen of the kingdom. I believe he will never succeed here. He will trouble this nation but I don't believe he will ever dominate this nation. This nation will frustrate him to a great degree because of the resistance of the resistors and because of the prayer movement and the prophets that will be protected by two oceans on each side. And that will just frustrate his abilities to stop what's going on. And I believe that God's raising up a prayer movement in this nation. I'm talking far bigger than our context here. Far bigger than our context. That is critical part of resistance to the Antichrist worldwide empire. Now he's raising the prayer movement up across the whole earth. But it's not an accident that America is protected by two oceans from the epicenter of his kingdom. And the Antichrist will bring oppression but I do not believe he will dominate this nation. I just don't believe it. And I believe that the prayer movement will be in the balance of it. My point is wherever there's righteousness established here or anywhere we are not assuming that the Antichrist is all powerful and victorious. He's not all powerful and he's not victorious. We're not talking about a defeated church and a glorified Antichrist. We're talking about a glorified church and a defeated Antichrist. That's how the story ends. And so a guy says well what good is it if we're going to depress the point of the devil is coming anyway. I go he's not going to I'm assuming he's not going to have dominion in Kansas City. I'm just assuming that. I take it really personal as a house of prayer guy in the city. I am absolutely assuming he will find Kansas City a thorn in his side to the very end. I really believe that. I'm not saying that with a spirit of a bravado type deal. I really believe there will be pockets of mercy. Geographic areas you know 5 or 10 miles to a couple hundred miles. Who knows. Where there's light and brightness and power. Just like there was in the land of Goshen in the land of Egypt when the plagues of Egypt fell upon I mean when the plagues of Moses fell upon Egypt in Goshen three million Jews were in Goshen and none of the plagues hit Goshen but they were hitting the rest of the nation. I believe that there will be pockets of mercy like Goshen all over the earth where righteousness is still going. My point being is that if we establish righteousness in an economic institution in a media institution in a legal setting that righteousness may not be turned over by darkness. And I tell you the Lord will be very pleased wherever he finds righteousness. It is absolutely worth laboring for it even with a tribulation coming because remember that you're going to be part of the cause of the tribulation. You're not going to be the victim of it. You're going to be one of the causes of it. Crying out Release your power Lord and the power and the judgment of God going against wickedness and unrighteousness. So there's a there's a dynamic continuity between the two. Okay let's go to the number seven. Roman numeral seven. Bottom of page five. The false assumption that resurrected saints will fully intermingle with those with natural bodies. Now we will live in the New Jerusalem. And we will we will intermingle in society and in government with them like angels do it now with us. We don't see them most of the time. The Bible talks about angels ministering to us we're unaware. They're around everywhere. But remember at the second coming the veil gets lifted. And the devil's in prison and all the demons. So the veil's lifted. So though it won't be you know a guy with a resurrected body living in a house to next our house our home will be the New Jerusalem. We will live in the New Jerusalem. We will work on the earth. And the New Jerusalem has come down to the earth but that's where we'll be. Our treasure will be in heaven which means our treasure is in the New Jerusalem. Which it means our assignment our residence that is our epicenter so to speak. That's our core place but we'll be ruling on the earth. And then after the kingdom the whole earth is like the New Jerusalem. I mean the glory of God is on the earth in the complete way. So we will not be intermingling fully. We will far more than I mean angels are involved with us dynamically we just don't see them. I believe we will be involved even more than angels are involved with us which is prolific but we will actually be seen. But angels don't you know they don't sleep in your house type deal. You know it's so I mean people go how does this work? And they're imagining I go no no we our home is in the New Jerusalem. Mistake of angels and how they minister to us now. False assumption number six that all the unbelievers these unsaved survivors these resistors are automatically converted. Now they'll be far more easily converted after they see Jesus in the sky with flaming fire and all the judgment of the book of Revelation. I mean they will totally be alert to just awesome things. But they will still the nations will get saved person by person. It will happen it will happen far more powerfully but don't think again the Lord waves His hand everybody is saved. False assumption number seven the assumption that everybody is automatically fully obedient to God. No. These unsaved survivors they'll get saved one by one. I mean some in mass numbers but still they got to make individual decisions. They will be discipled one by one. They will be discipled in training institutions and you will be a part of it. The sin will still exist. False assumption number eight is that God is going to release His authority in the age to come without prayer. Wrong. That's a false assumption. The prayer movement will not be obsolete in the millennial kingdom. It will be far more central than it even is now. Everything Jesus will do in the age to come will be through answer to prayer of saints with resurrected bodies and the inhabitants of the earth as well. Prayer will be in every city of the earth. There will be houses of prayer in every city of the earth. They will be glorious. The main house of prayer will be in Jerusalem. They will all be connected. You will be involved in the Jerusalem in New Jerusalem house of prayer on the throne and you will be involved in houses of prayer across the nations. However that works. But Jesus won't release His authority, His creative ideas. He won't bring prosperity to a region. He won't bring rain to a region unless they pray. Matter of fact, you know the verse, the verse that's often quoted in Zechariah 10 verse 1 which says, In the time of the latter rain, pray for rain. You know what that's really talking about? That's actually in the millennial kingdom. That the nations of the earth have to pray for rain to get it even though Jesus is ruling in person in Jerusalem. Now we can use that verse for revival prayers but that's not what it's talking about. It's talking about natural rain even after Jesus is in Jerusalem. The guy down the way has to pray for rain. Well Jesus, you're ruling. Wave your hand. He says, lift your voice and I'll wave my hand. Well, you're here. He says, I know but I want relationship with you. Cry out for rain. Jesus, send rain. I want to hear it more. Oh, I love you Jesus. There you go. That's it. I love you too. Wow. Jesus, I love you. Wow. Then the rain comes. Oh, I forgot about the rain. I love you. And the Lord says, there you go. That's why I run my whole kingdom this way. I mean that's actually somewhat true how it works. Okay, let's go to Assumption 10. Now let's skip that. Assumption 11. Just because I got to finish in 10 seconds. My time is up. Assumption 11. The assumption that because we're saved by grace, we'll all have the same degree of glory, the same garments, the same assignments, the same kind of glory in our physical resurrected bodies. We will have the same kind of dwelling places. We will all have the same capacity in our relationship with God. Absolutely false assumption. Some of you will be far closer in your community to Jesus in the resurrection than others are. Some of you will have garments with such splendor and glory far different than others. Some of you will have dwelling places with far more splendor than others in the city. We could go on and on about that. As one star differs from another star in glory, so also is the resurrection. As billions of stars, there's not one of them like the other. Not one of them is the same. Just like the stars, billions are... Some stars are a million times bigger than our sun. And there will be such vast differences in our dwellings, in our garments, in the glory in our bodies, in our relationship with Jesus, our ability to interact with Him. They will all be different based on what we do in this age. There is continuity in that. Amen and amen. So study these notes. Come on up, worship team. Because I know that some of these ideas are new and just stay with it. And I tell you, the fog begins to lift. You just at first go, now who's where now when that happens? Because when I first began to learn this some time ago, it was like I couldn't put the pieces together. I can't put them all together now. I'm not pretending to. But the fog begins to lift if you just stay with it. They're simple principles. All of a sudden, it comes into focus. And you go, this is kind of exciting. Because now I can think about my life in the age to come and I can think about the man who thought of all these. See, I'm fascinated with the man who came up with the ideas. I love his mind. I go, Jesus, you're like really interesting. That's the same as saying, I worship you. You're so interesting. He's a fascinating man. To come up with these ideas, who could have thought of them? Amen, let's stand. I want us to respond to the Lord just as our hope is stirred up. We're saying, Lord, Lord, I want to be yours. I want to live for my next assignment. In 70 years, I have my internship. I want to be faithful. I want to go deep in God. I want my eyes on my thousand year ministry, not my 70 year ministry. Beloved, let's anchor in and go deep now. And let's see where we might end up in the age to come.