THE EMPIRE OF CHRIST

NON-MILLENNARIANS frequently object to the teaching that there is to be a Golden Age of 1,000 years following the age of Grace, arguing that it is mentioned but once in the New Testament (Rev. 20) and that in a highly symbolical book. They accuse Pre-millennialists of building a whole system of Millennial teaching on this one reference.

Some months ago* George H. Fromow, editor of Watching and Waiting (England) listed in his magazine some thirty-six New Testament passages outside of the Book of Revelation giving clear and even more detailed characteristics of a Golden Age to come, in full keeping with the many Old Testament references to that age.

[*Published in ‘Dawn,’ September 1950.]

A large part of New Testament Scripture is an unfolding of the Old Testament, where the Day of the Lord and His Chosen Messiah, in special relation with revived Israel, is a subject that occupies so much attention. The New Testament always has this background in view and cannot be properly understood apart from it.

In no way does New Testament teaching set aside or detract from the many Old Testament prophecies of a Golden Age to come on this earth under the reign of the Messiah in His glory. It clearly shows that it is to immediately follow the period of Great Tribulation which is to be the culmination of this present age and the “times of the Gentiles.”

Let us look at just a few of these New Testament references which bear out the Old Testament prophecies showing that it is essential to the completion of the redemptive purpose that this present age of Grace be followed by the Millennium.

Matt. 6 : 10, first petition of the disciples; Prayer, which has all believers praying, not for the extension of the kingdom, but its coming, as a time when the will of God shall be universally done on [this] earth.

Matt. 12: 32 properly refers to the “age to come” (not ‘world’) in which there can be no forgiveness for the special sin of blaspheming the Holy Ghost.

Matt. 19: 28 refers to the “regeneration” when the tribes of Israel will have identity again and the Son of man will sit on the throne of His glory. Then the twelve apostles will be the judges over the twelve tribes. This is a “born again” earth, the “times of restitution” spoken of in Acts 3 : 18-26.

Luke 1: 32-33 clearly refers to the literal throne of David yet to be occupied by the Son of man. This is a sphere of authority that has especially to do with Israel, the House of Jacob and no one else.

Luke 22: 27-29 refers to the kingdom yet to come over which Christ is to rule. Eating and drinking at His table in the kingdom is in harmony with Ezekiel’s reference to the Lord’s Table in the millennial temple.

Luke 19: 11-27, the parable of the King going into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. This scene is obviously connected with the prophecy of Dan. 7 where the Son of man is invested with universal sovereignty.

Acts 1 : 6-7. The disciples, rightly taught by the Old Testament, asked as to the time when the kingdom should again be restored unto Israel. The Lord shows that it was not yet time for that, but the time was set in the Father’s authority and they had other tasks to be accomplished. Had our Lord wished to deny the conception that there is to be a literal reign on earth, He surely would have seized this opportunity to straighten out His disciples.

Acts 2: 30 shows Christ raised up to sit on the throne of David in the coming day when all enemies should be made His footstool (Psa. 110; 2: 5).

Acts 3: 18-26 showing that the heavens must receive Jesus until certain things first come to pass. His coming again is to usher in the times of restoration, the rehabilitation of the Land of Promise and all the earth.

Acts 15: 14-17 confirms the prophecy of Amos 9. After the outgathering of this present age (Acts 15: 14) and after Israel’s desolations (Amos 9: 9-10) Messiah returns to again build the Tabernacle of David which is fallen down and to bring the residue of men under His authority.

Rom. 8: 18-23 when the whole creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption to enter into the liberty and glory of the sons of God.

Rom. 11: 11-32 showing the reconciling of the world after Israel is again grafted into her own place. In that day all the remnant of Israel will be saved by looking to the Messiah who will come out of Zion in power and glory.

1 Cor. 6: 2-3 tells of the coming age when the saints shall judge the world, and even angels.

1 Cor. 15: 23-28 showing that, following the resurrection of the saints shall come the kingdom when everything shall be subjugated to Christ.

Heb. 2: 5 referring to the “world to come” (lit. “inhabited earth”) when all things shall be put under Christ.

There are numerous other passages based on the essential truth of a future earthly kingdom, among them 2 Cor. 3: 14-18; Gal. 4: 27; Phil. 2: 10-11; Col. 1: 20; 2 Thess. 1: 5-10; 2 Tim. 2: 12; Eph. 1: 21; 2: 7; Jas. 1: 18; 2 Pet. 3: 10-12, while the Book of Revelation teems with references to the coming glory of Christ, His saints and Israel on earth.

‑Prophecy Monthly.

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FOOTNOTES

In His Olivet discourse Christ informed His disciples that the increase of Lawlessness woulf be one of the signs of the end:-

“And because lawlessness shall abound the love of many shall wax cold” (Matt. 24: 12.)

THE MILLENNIUM

It is true that our Lord is about to delay the death of the universe. For the universe’s final years the evil angels are cast out of heaven; the population of the earth is to some degree restored; wildernesses are changed into fruitful fields; and by His marvellous redemption the sin-cursed earth fulfils God’s creative design of a glorious world. But sin burst out once more: war on God and His Christ “went up over the breadth of the earth and fire came down out of heaven, and devoured them” (Rev. 20: 19): no fact could be more dynamic for the annihilation of the universe. But, thank God, a marvellous future lies beyond – “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Pet. 3: 13).

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The most striking point in the eschatology of the ante-Nicene age is the prominent chiliasm, or millennarianism, that is the belief of a visible reign of Christ in glory on earth with the risen saints for a thousand years, before the general resurrection and Judgment. It was indeed not the doctrine of the church embodied in any creed or form of devotion, but a widely current opinion of distinguished teachers, such asd Barnabas, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Methodius, and Lactantius.

- SCHAFF.

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AND ISRAEL

So we read how the earth will be changed when the Kingdom comes. “The Spirit shall be poured out upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest” (Isa. 32: 15). Years ago it was forecast in Palestine. Technion Yearbook says:- “Israel is destined to be a rich industrial and commercial oasis in the virtual desert of the Levant. It is destined to be a rich industrial and commercial centre. Israel is the one nation born into the scientific age.”

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It is significant that The Jewish Chronicle (June 16, 1950) says:- “This is not an age of Christian belief; it is an age which is un-Christian. And just as there is only a remnant of Israel carrying on despite the enmity of the world, so in the foreseeable future there might be only a remnant of the Church. The Jew prays for the coming of the Messiah; the Christian will pray more and more ardently for the second coming: the paths converge.”

For Israel’s revolt against God was predicted:- “All the land shall become briars and thorns” (Isa. 7: 24). Dr. James G. Heller said of his visit to Palestine:-

“One of the most vivid impressions that followed me about the land was of the bewildering variety of thistles and thorns. Every land has its crop of them. But Palestine seemed to me inique in this regard. They were everywhere, near every village, on every hill. Even the rockiest and most forbidding areas in Judea were covered with them. And most of them corresponded in no wise to our familiar American species. They were new and exceedingly various: some like plants made of amethyst jade; others with little yellow velvet blossoms; and still others rising straight up to deep purpil spheres. Were these the heritage of exile and desolation, the citizens that had come in from the desert to cover the nakedness of the land? Even now they commingle with the crops, and hardily thrust themselves among the barley and the wheat of the Arabs.”

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“And it shall come to pass IN THAT DAY, that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people. The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God.” A remnant is going back to Palestine but that remnant is only occupying part of Palestine. The State of Israel is not occupying the land which God promised to His people. The land which God has set aside for His people will be sufficiently large to accommodate forty million people.

- MARK KAGAN.

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Shortly before I left Israel a few months ago on United Kingdom leave, I had a talk with an ordained Arab of the Anglican Church who is ministering to his flock in Israel. In the course of conversation I think he put his finger on the heart of the problem when he said:- “I believe that we both, Jew and Arab, need Jesus Christ and that only in common allegiance to Him will all our problems be solved, for He, Himself, will resolve our human problems and suspicions and fears as He leads un into a common fellowship in His supreme service.”

It may well be that Israel will be the first nation, as a nation, to recognise and accept Jesus as Lord and Messiah and lay her particular qualities at the feet of Jesus Christ in the service of His kingdom.

- CANON H. R. A. JONES.

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When a noted mathematician, Einstein, was asked “To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?” He replied:- “As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispopse of Christianity with a bon mot. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus: His personality pulsates in every word.”

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Pobjendonostow, a persecutor of the Jews in Russia, once asked a Jew what he thought would be the result of the persecutionds if they continued. The answer was:- “The result will be a feast.” The Jew illustrated from history. “Pharaoh desired to destroy the Jews, but the result was the Feast of the Purim. Antiochus Epiphanes desired to destroy the Jews, but the result was the Feast of Dedication of the Temple. Shall the present trial of the Jews be a feast of reconciliation between Israel and their Eternal King Jesus, the Son of David, and the Son of God?”

- Dansk Missionblad.

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It seemed as though the early and latter rains converged on Israel within one week in January. The “liquefied sinshine” inundated Tel Aviv and the entire coastal plain. It rained for seven nights uninterruptedly and by the fifth day 80 per cent. of the normal year’s rainfall had precipitated. Even in the usually arid Negev flash floods swamped settlements and rescue parties were unable to get through the swolen wadis. This phenomenon causes us to seriously consider the import of Joel 2: 23, “Be glad then, ye children of Zion; for the Lord causeth to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain.” For centuries “the land of milk and honey” was barren for want of rain. Since the Jewish people have been going back to Palestine, the seasonal rains have been gradually coming back, another restoration of Israel is prophetic.

-The Jewish Era.

“In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water” (Isa. 35: 6, 7).

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A writer (J. C. Van Gelderen) in The Jewish Missionary Magazine quotes an official statement issued by a Church:- “Israel sojourns amid the Gentiles as a sign and mirror of God’s judgment. But the survival of this nation, as well as the adding of individuals from this people, is an omen and earnest of Israel’s ultimate acceptance. God has yet a future for His ancient people. It remains the people of promise and the people of the Messiah.”

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The prophecies picture the Jews in great numbers returning in unbelief to the land in the latter days. They tell of the miraculous preparation of the land itself under the blessing of God in order that God might multiply upon its mountains and valleys men and beasts (Ezek. 36: 4ff35). They tell us of the tribulations that shall descend upon this regathering people, in the days of their unbelief (Jer. 30). They tell of the destroyers that shall attempt to seize the newly-descovered riches of the country and what God will do to them (Isa. 49: 17-26).

But so long as Jerusalem is “trodden down of the Gentiles” she is not “redeemed” nor can she be a “praise of the earth” (Luke 21: 24; Isa. 62: 1-10). The salvation of [the Jews and] Jerusalem will not shine forth as a lamp to all the earth (Isa. 62: 1) until the remnant of Israel has been betrothed to their Eternal King – the One whom they will recognize by the spear mark and the prints of the nails in His hands (Zech. 12: 8-11).

Before that, Jerusalem, in the hands of the Jews, will become a “cup of trembling” to all who try to take it from them (verses 1-3). Jerusalem will be “redeemed” when all Israel mourns over the rejection of the King who “visited them” long ago and the “spirit of supplication” is poured upon the house of David and “the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (verse 10). It is then that many will be asking the King: “What are these wounds in thy hands?” Then shall He answer:- “Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends” (13: 6).

Therefore [during the millennium] Jerusalem will be the City of the Great King – the capital not merely of Israel, but of the world, and all the Gentiles shall acknowledge its glory.

-Prophecy Monthly.

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