01.03.09. The Millennial Kingdom

Part III. Chapter IX. THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM In the transfiguration—which is distinctly called “the Son of man coming in His king­dom” —we have a miniature presentation of the millennium. Moses and Elias, who appear with Christ in glory, prefigure respectively the risen and the changed saints translated and brought into one company at the appearing and kingdom of our Lord; while the disciples who stand with­out the cloud and behold His glory are typical of those in the flesh, the Jews and the nations, who will still be left on the earth after the rapture of the saints. What relation to this globe will the transfigured Church hold in the millennium? Some have maintained that she will be forever removed from this sphere, the world and its in­habitants being burned up together as soon as the Church is taken away. Others have held that while the ungodly will be utterly consumed at the appearing of the Lord, the earth, purified and renewed, will become the eternal and exclu­sive abode of the saints. Either view is extreme, as judged by a full collation of Scripture. It is plainly declared in Revelation that the saints shall “reign over the earth;” but that they will be absolutely bound to it, as now, by terrestrial gravitation, does not follow. “They that are ac­counted worthy to obtain that age and the res­urrection from the dead . . . are angel-like, —isaggeloi, —and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection,” (Luke 20:36). Surely, here is a suggestive hint for us. Angels visit this earth and mingle with its inhabitants; they have tan­gible forms, and accept material food, and exer­cise gracious ministries for those in the flesh, and yet they reside in a higher sphere. So may it be with the sons of the first resurrection, —in perpetual contact with the earth, but not inhabit­ants of it. Instinctively we turn for light on this subject to our Lord’s forty days between His ris­ing and His ascending. Though now in the res­urrection body, He associated as familiarly as ever with His disciples: at one time holding high dis­course with them concerning the things of the kingdom; at another eating in their presence of the broiled fish and honeycomb; today directing that cast of the net into the Sea of Galilee by which the multitude of fishes was enclosed, and tomorrow announcing the great commission in the mountain of Galilee by which the draw-net of worldwide missions was committed to His Church; and all the while maintaining that strangely double life in which He was now han­dled and inspected to prove his body to be literal flesh and bones, and now mysteriously withdrawn like a vanishing specter. Here is revelation in a mystery concerning the glorified saints and their relation to the millennial earth. For the life of Christ is the life of His Church in epitome.

Reasoning from these hints, we gather that the millennial Church may hold a relation to the earth as close as that which we now maintain, and a relation to heaven as intimate as that which the angels enjoy. Perhaps there is more than poetry in the prophet’s delineation of the Mes­sianic glory, (Isaiah 40:31): “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint: “celestial flight alternating with terres­trial travel, and each alike unwearying. 1

What a realistic element in the promised vic­tory of the saints it is that they shall enjoy their triumphs in the very sphere where they suffered their defeats! This is according to the divine purpose. The millennium is called “the times of the restitution of all things” (Acts 3:21). The steps in this restitution move slowly and stead­ily; but, because it is a restoration, each step for­ward is really a step backward towards the purity and perfection of the primitive paradise. All that was involved in the fall will be involved in the recovery: the soul restored to God by regen­eration; the body restored to the soul by resur­rection; and the earth restored to man by regen­esis. Thus the rainbow arch of redemption bends back and touches the earth from which it springs, — “the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which should follow,” both have their scene in the same material world. And remembering that the ex­alted Head and the mystical body have an identi­cal destiny, we see how much is suggested by this fact. Christ returns in glory to the point of His earthly departure: “His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east,” (Zechariah 14:4). In His transfigured body He may now survey the literal scenes of His humiliation: Gethsemane, where He sweat great drops of blood; and Golgotha, where “by wicked hands He was crucified and slain;” and the garden where He lay for two days buried. Heroic poetry, in its most presumptuous flights, has never dreamed of such a vindication for defeated warriors as this, —tri­umphing in a deathless body on the very field where the dead body was mutilated and en­tombed. And our Redeemer comes not alone in His victorious entry upon the earth: “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment upon all, and to con­vince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him,” (Jude 1:15). Christ’s confessors, who, being reviled, re­viled not again, but committed themselves to Him that judgeth righteously, may tread again the very judgment halls where they listened in silence to the hard speeches of ungodly sinners who condemned them to death; may stand on the very spot where the earth once drank up their witnessing blood, or tread underfoot the very soil with which their martyr-ashes once mingled. Will the glorified Church hold relation to mor­tal men still living on the earth? They who deny this, and suppose that the whole human race will be swept from the globe and destroyed at the coming of Christ, quote words of terrific import for such a view (2 Thessalonians 1:7). But if we balance Scripture with Scripture, the conclusion is otherwise. For not only is it taught that the advent judgments fall especially on apostate Christen­dom (Matthew 13:40-41), but with equal clearness that Christ’s coming issues in the conversion of Israel, (Zechariah 12:10; Romans 11:26), and through Israel in the conversion of the Gentiles (Romans 11:12-15; Isaiah 60:1-22). We conclude, therefore, from a wide collation of Scripture, that after the transla­tion of the Church, two classes will still remain living on the earth, —the Jews and the nations. And as the glorified saints have now become “kings and priests unto God,” they must exer­cise rule and ministry over some besides them­selves, and over whom but these? Here Scrip­ture is clear and harmonious with itself. Im­manuel now takes “the throne of His father David,” that He may “reign over the house of Jacob forever.” But He is not alone in His kingly rule over Israel. Of His risen saints it is written that “they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” His glorified Bride sits by Him in His throne, Queen-consort with her en­throned Lord; nearer to Him than any other as “the wife of the Lamb.” Now is fulfilled that Scripture which cannot be broken: “Verily I say unto you that ye which have followed Me in the regeneration,” — the regenesis, paliggensia, “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” (Matthew 19:28). In this dominion of the risen saints there doubtless is order and precedence according to the degree of suffering and loss endured for Christ. The apostle band would seem to have especial preeminence; next the martyr company, whose long waiting for the avenging of their blood is at last rewarded; and saints and be­lievers of all generations, who have been counted worthy to obtain that age and the resurrection from the dead. Israel is still in the flesh, though converted, purified by long trial, and brought at last into loyal subjection to Messiah. Through her as a redeemed nation, and through her ex­alted city as capital of the world, the Son of David will now extend His blessed sway to the ends of the earth. “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the na­tions, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,” (Isaiah 2:4). At length, through this benignant consummation, the righteous gov­ernment for which the suffering nations have sighed will have been reached. The last attempt at human rule, like all before it, will have miser­ably failed, and men, despairing of self-help, will finally be prepared to accept the benignant rule of God, that perfect theocracy in which Christ the Lord shall be King over all the earth. We have said in a previous chapter that election is not the end of grace, but the means to a vastly higher end. This ultimate purpose here comes into view. The elect Church glorified with her Lord, and the elect nation Israel restored and converted, now take up the work of universal re­demption. Have we pondered the deep suggestiveness of the apostle’s saying: “He hath raised us up together, and enthroned us together with Him, in order that He might show forth to the ages which are coming the exceeding riches of His grace in His goodness towards us in Christ Jesus,” (Ephesians 2:7). 2 The garnered wealth of redemp­tion, the holiness, and faith, and love gathered up from generations of chastened experience, and now displayed in the transfigured Church, —what may be the impression of this upon the generations of the age to come? At last the Son of God is fully manifested in “the manifes­tation of the sons of God.” He has come “to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believed,” (2 Thessalonians 1:10), —the raised and enthroned Church being as a mirror in which His majesty is reflected and displayed. Now will be seen “what is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” (Ephesians 1:18). And we may believe that, as the Queen of Sheba was astonished at the splendor of Solomon, and at­tested her admiration by rich gifts, so the gen­erations yet unsubdued to Christ at the opening of the millennium, may be filled with wonder at the exhibitions of redeeming grace now visible in the perfected Church, and at the riches of His forbearance as manifested in converted Israel, so that they shall be moved to take up, con­cerning Immanuel, the beatitude of this admir­ing queen: “Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants which stand continually before thee and that hear thy wisdom. Blessed be the Lord thy God which delighteth in thee to set thee on the throne of Israel: because the Lord loved Israel forever, therefore made He thee king to do judgment and justice,” (1 Kings 10:8-9). These triumphs may not be gained at once; but they will be effected with a rapidity of which we as yet know nothing, so that literally a nation shall be born in a day. For two new conditions will now be brought in, —condi­tions utterly unknown since the fall of man: the binding of Satan and the universal outpouring of the Holy Ghost. Let us try to conceive of the astonishing changes which will thus ensue in the complete repression of “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” and in the unrestrained operation of the Spirit of truth and holiness now poured out upon all flesh. What will have now come to pass is not simply an exchange of malign influences in the earth for more benign, but the actual dethronement of “the god of this age,” and the unhindered reign of Christ in his stead. Thus there is a complete reversal of conditions: “the Prince of Peace” holding absolute sway in the dominion where the “Prince of the power of the air” has so long triumphed. Now will be ushered in the real golden age of which the weary nations have so long dreamed, —the true Sabbath-keeping for which the people of God have waited. If our readers have been inclined to put a mark of in­terrogation against any of our millennial anticipa­tions, we have only to remind them that when the chief apostle bounds forward in thought to this period, and speaks of its “far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” (2 Corinthians 4:17), his language becomes well-nigh untranslatable, he so joins hyperbole to hyperbole —kaq uperbolhn eiV upepbolhn — in his effort to express its transcen­dent blessedness. “The uniquely beautiful, the eternally true, the highest good, must be fittingly made manifest upon an earth whereon they have been so long ignored; and as that earth has so long crowned with thorns its lawful King, it must contemplate Him yet once again in His full beauty. It is this blissful period to which proph­ecies like Isaiah 11:6-9, Isaiah 35:1-10, Isaiah 60:1-22; Isaiah 65:1-25, and others appear to us to point. It will be the time in which the kingdom of God rules upon earth. Purified by suffering and conflict, the Church of God now shares in the triumph of its Head: the Bride finds her rest, after her long wanderings in the desert, on the bosom of the Bridegroom. It now becomes apparent that the kingdom of God is in reality a power in every domain with which it comes in contact, and that the highest manifes­tation of the truth calls forth a life such as with­out this is nowhere found on earth. In a word, it is the time of the Christocracy ever more tri­umphantly unfolding itself; the realization of the Ideal, of which the old Theocracy in Israel was only the shadow; a realization, however, which in nothing detracts from the universalistic char­acter of the Saving Revelation now brought to completion.” 4 The relation of the three classes of men in the millennium has been compared to the threefold division of the tabernacle. The Bride of Christ, the glorified Church, is the Holy of Holies, ex­alted into equal fellowship with her Head. 5 Con­verted Israel is in the relation of the Holy Place, and the nations which come up to worship Jehovah stand as in the court of the Gentiles. Only we must be reminded how completely the veil of the Holiest is now rent asunder, so that as the millennial triumph advances all peoples are em­braced in the light of God’s favor. The cloud of glory—symbol of Jehovah’s presence—was first contained within a narrow ark in the wilderness; then, as the Temple of Solomon was dedicated, it filled the whole house, so that “the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud,” 2 Chronicles 5:14); in its final outreach it will em­brace the world in its effulgence, and the whole earth will become a Holy of Holies. Then will the kingdom of God be fully consummated; the blessed predictions of righteousness and peace contained in the seventy-second Psalm will be no longer chanted only in the music of the Levites, but they will be set to the measures of literal accomplishment, and sung out in the strains of triumphant experience: “All men shall be blessed in Him; all nations shall call Him blessed.” At length, in a restored creation, will Messiah see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. Thus will the Psalm of redemption be finished: “And let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen, and amen. The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended,” (Psalms 72:20). But we have outrun our argument, and must return to what has been passed over.

Beside Jew and Gentile and Church of God, there is still another sharer in the millennial re­demption; a dumb partner who is yet to find utterance when “the hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” “Often” says Goethe, “have I had the sensation as if Nature, in wailing sadness, entreated something of me, so that not to under­stand what she longed for cut me to the heart.” We understand what her longing is, and what is to be God’s final answer to it. “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, . . . waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body,” (Romans 8:23). Earth bears the wound received through man’s transgression, and the brute cre­ation travails in anguish with fallen humanity. Deep as is the mystery of punishment for sin, the punishment of no sin, as witnessed in animal suffering, is even more inexplicable. “In Adam all die:” not only all persons but all things. But as man and creation fell together, so must they rise together in the time of redemption. Earth will then lay off her soiled week-day garb and put on her Sabbath dress, and, with her singing robes about her, take up again that anthem which was heard when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake, thorns and briers shall it bring forth to thee,” (Genesis 3:17-18), is the sentence which for six thousand years has re­mained as a sign and testimony to God’s judg­ment upon sin. But then: “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off,” (Isaiah 55:13). The beauty of holiness and the eternal harmony of redemption must be displayed where the dishonor of sin has been most visible. Therefore this globe, which has so long served as a grave for man fallen, will now serve as a temple for man upraised; yea, more, as Anselm says: “The whole earth, which carried in its lap the body of the Lord, will be a paradise.” With such predestined glory before her, what wonder that Nature should be found taking her place with Christ and the Church as an eager expectant of the Advent? If we could bring out the full original of that passage, “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the mani­festation of the sons of God,” (Romans 8:19), we should behold a delineation so graphic that, as Godet has said, “A sculptor of any imagination and genius might carve a statue of Hope from it.” The picture is this: “Nature, an unwilling slave to vanity and corruption, stands, impatient of her bonds, with uplifted head, scanning with longing eye the distant point of the horizon from which she looks for help, her hands stretched out to grasp and welcome the redemption into freedom and perfec­tion which she yearns for and confidently expects.” 6

It is necessary to emphasize this truth of the rehabilitation of the earth on philosophical as well as on spiritual grounds. For we know not how to vindicate the ways of God to sober thinkers, if this material world is to end in catastrophe in­stead of regeneration. A vague shadowy heaven beyond the stars, to which man as a bodiless im­mortal spirit is to be finally transported, has lit­tle meaning or attraction for the ordinary mind. And we are free to say that such a conception is a triumph of Gnostic philosophy over scriptural revelation, —the philosophy which finds man’s highest happiness in release from this material body, and therefore, logically, the race’s high­est attainment in deliverance from this material world. While this notion is widely prevalent in the Christian Church of our day, we deny that there is anything inspiring or victorious in it. 7 Instead of the apostolic prayer for the perfection of our “whole spirit, soul and body at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” it places our hope in the dismemberment of this human trinity: it proposes a truce with the grave, willingly sur­rendering the body to its possession, provided only the soul may be eliminated in the dissolv­ing chemistry of death, and float away to some realm of happy shades. Instead of rejoicing in the beatitude, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth,” it makes haste to yield all right and title to this globe, if only the saints may be released from its gross environments, and soar to worlds unknown. Even so lofty a thinker as Edwards gives full sway to this idea in his “History of Redemption,” where, speaking of the end, he says: “Thus Christ’s Church shall for­ever leave this accursed world to go into the high­est heaven, the paradise of God. . . . When they are gone this world shall be set on fire and turned into a great furnace, wherein all the enemies of Christ and His Church shall be tormented for­ever.” Is this an alluring conception of redemp­tion, that in its final issue it will have turned what was made to be a Paradise for man’s delight, into a purgatory for his torment? We should call this the apotheosis of divine failure, rather than the crown of divine redemption. Yet it is the logical outcome of that philosophy which considers the spiritual to be everything, and the material nothing. We hold that it is infinitely honoring to the Creator to believe that in the end He will be found tabernacling in a restored world, from which He has wiped away the last vestige of sin, and in which He has silenced the last discord of rebellion. 8 If the problem of hu­man destiny is to be worked out to a successful issue only on some yonder side of creation, and in such unknown terms and quantities that even the spiritual Christian cannot comprehend it, how impossible it will be to justify God’s dealings to men! In treating of the doctrine of future life, it may be questioned whether modern theology has not so far withdrawn from a sober and Scriptural materialism as to be carried into an atten­uated, and for the most part incomprehensible, spiritualism. We believe, on the contrary, that in setting forth the judgments and rewards of the future, God has expressed them in conditions which even the men of this world may under­stand if they will. That there must be a baptism of judgment-fire for the earth, preparatory to this anointing with millennial joy, is plainly revealed. How difficult it is to explain the predictions of Scripture on this subject, we need not say. “The day of the Lord” of which Peter writes— “in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” —is evidently a long period, embracing the entire age, from the second advent to the close of the millennium. It is within this era that these burning judgments occur. But the fire is for purging, and not for annihilating, since the announcement immediately follows: “Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness,” (2 Peter 3:13). In the prophecy of Isaiah we have a glimpse of this re­newed order: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind,” (Isaiah 65:17). Now Jerusalem is seen restored and made a per­petual joy in the earth; a warring creation has been tamed, and the wolf and the lamb are found peacefully feeding together. But though life is wondrously ameliorated and prolonged, so that one a century of age is counted an infant, — “The child shall die an hundred years old,” —immortality has not yet been reached for the whole race on earth. The goal of death has been pushed far onward, but not abolished; and though for the risen Church death has been swallowed up in victory, it still has dominion over men in this globe during the millennium. But looking on to the end of this millennial period we behold the final and perfected order in which mortality, with all its sorrowful accom­paniments, has at last been swept away: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away: and there was no more sea,” (Revelation 21:1). Now the climax of blessedness has been reached for the world and all that dwell therein. As the opening of the millennium witnessed the bridal of the Church with Christ, its close will witness the bridal of the earth with heaven. Then the redeemed were caught up into the clouds to cele­brate their nuptials with their Lord; now the Lord comes down to our globe to celebrate the nuptials of the earth and sky: “And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away,” (Revelation 21:3-4). From all we have thus considered, our infer­ence is, that the redemption of the earth will begin with the return of the Lord from heaven at the opening of the millennium; but will only be perfected at the end of that period, when death shall be forever abolished, and there shall be no more curse. The millennial kingdom is thus redemptive, not only for the race, but for the earth, —the final chapter in the great res­toration which is to usher in the eternal state. Though far surpassing all which we now know in blessedness, the millennium will not be a fault­less condition. Sin and sin’s agencies will still have a certain sway; for Satan will yet once more incite rebellion before being finally and forever cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:3-10). But after that the eternally perfect, the faultlessly holy, condition will be reached. Of this condition we can as yet only catch transport­ing glimpses, and speak in stammering accents. It is the time when God shall be all in all, and the whole world brought into unwavering obe­dience to His will. The long-suffering Church forever married to her Lord; Israel, once hated and forsaken, now made an “eternal excellency, a joy of many generations;” the Gentiles, who long lay at the gate full of sores, carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom; and the world, with all its reconciled inhabitants, lying forever on the breast of God.

“Earth, thou grain of sand on the shore of the Universe of God; thou Bethlehem, amongst the princely cities of the heavens, —thou art, and re­mainest, the Loved One amongst ten thousand suns and worlds, the Chosen of God! Thee will He again visit, and then thou wilt prepare a throne for Him, as thou gayest Him a manger cradle; in His radiant glory wilt thou rejoice, as thou didst once drink His blood and His tears and mourn His death! On thee has the Lord a great work to complete!”

Endnotes:

1 “Captain Credence lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, Immanuel came with colors flying, trumpets sounding, and the feet of His men scarce touching the ground.” [Bunyan’s Holy War, 17.]

2 “That God in the future order of things, that is, in the kingdom of God, —in which the glory of the faithful, which is hidden here below, will be made visible to all, —may manifest the overwhelming richness of His grace.” [Olshausen’s Para­phrase].

3 “That which ceases by the binding of Satan is the cohesive power of evil, by which it has been able to become an historical and motive principle in the development and in the life of na­tions, by which it has proved itself a ruling power on earth. In­stead of that now comes in the development of the power of the glorified Church of God.” [Karsten].

4 Van Osterzee, Christian Dogmatics, p. 799.

5 “How beautifully does the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 4:5) suggest the Bridal relationship of Christ to His Church in the millen­nium! The shekinah glory has returned: ‘A cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night.’ And now it is said, not as in our common version: ‘For upon all the glory shall be a defense,’ but ‘Upon all the glory shall be the marriage canopy.’”

6 Dr. Samuel Cox on Romans 8:19.

7 It is a one-sided spiritualism which can conceive of no perfectly consummated blessedness save in a heaven distant as far as possible from this earth. Infinitely more acceptable, and more worthy of God, is the Biblical conception that this earth, too, which, through sin laden with the curse has been made the scene of grace, has, as well as other worlds, a peculiar destina­tion to accomplish in the realization of God’s adorable plan; and that the gulf shall entirely cease to be, which at present exists between heaven and earth.” [Van Oosterzee, Image of Christ, p. 491.].

8 “Upon two distinct grounds we may believe that the earth will ultimately be made new, —First, that having been brought under the bondage of corruption, not of its own will, but by the sin of man, it is embraced in the scope of redemption; it is to enter into the liberty of the glory of the children of God’ (Romans 8:21). Second, that God having made man, body and soul, and appointed the body to be an essential element in humanity, He will so order the material world that it shall min­ister in the highest degree to all his needs. If the body be raised into a higher condition through resurrection, there must be a corresponding change in its material environments, the new creation serving as a means to higher knowledge of God, and to the continual enlargement of man’s conception of His power, wisdom, and goodness.” [Rev. S. J. Andrews, God’s Revelations to Men, p. 361.]