The Earthly Kingdom of Jesus Christ, Part 1

Selected Scriptures

We're coming to the close of our series on prophecy, and tonight we come in our sequence to the last great facet of what we have been covering in prophecy.  We come to the earthly kingdom of Jesus Christ.  Now as we begin our study, we're going to be looking in Revelation 19 and 20.  But to begin with from the very remotest point of antiquity from the furthest historical point in time, men have longed for and men have asked about the possibility of a utopia.  An age in which righteousness and peace should prevail in the world and which oppression and war should cease. 

Poets have written about it.  Folk singers still about it.  Politicians promise it.  Prophets forecast, and the world cries for it, but nobody ever brings it.  But if you study the Bible, you again will find that the promise of God is that there will be such a utopia.  And on the record of past performance we can believe what God says, if not, poets, folk singers, politicians and would be prophets.

God says there will be an earthly utopia.  And there will be a king who will make it that and the king's name is Jesus.  It will be the final phase of God's rule on earth.  Now this particular age of blessedness is not just hinted at in the Bible, it is in many ways the theme.  This particular kingdom, the thousand year earthly kingdom comes under various titles.  For example, it is called in Matthew 19:28 the regeneration, and it certainly is the rebirth of the earth.

It is called in Acts 3:19 the times of refreshing.  It is called in Acts 3:21 the times of restitution.  It is called in Philippians 1:6 the day of Christ.  It is called in Ephesians 1:10 the fullness of times.  The concept of an earthly kingdom in which God rules directly on earth through the Messiah Christ comes in many different terms in the Bible.  It's a repeated promise. 

Now the coming earthly kingdom is just one phase of God's rule in the world.  God has always mediated His rule on earth.  One way or another, God always mediates His rule.  When man fell in the very beginning, God still mediated His rule on earth.  He mediated it through conscience.  Originally, man was the king of the earth.  Adam literally ruled in the earth.  And then he fell and conscience became king and God ruled through man's conscience.

The conscience proved to be an inadequate thing.  Every man going his own way and so God instituted human government and God mediated the rule through human government.  God designed to control man through the use of government and He instituted capital punishment.

And then God mediated through the patriarchs and the men who really were the kings of the early years were Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph.  Following them, God again mediated His rule and He mediated His rule through the judges and the prophets and the kings.  And these were specially chosen people who maintained God's ethics and God's morality and God's truth in the world.  Then God sent His king.  But as the indication is His king was rejected.

Now we're living in an age when God mediates His rule through the believers.  The Holy Spirit in the world and in the believer.  God is now mediating in this world through us.  We are salt and we are light.  But there's coming a day when God is going to mediate His rule directly through that man whom He has chosen even Jesus Christ.

And so I say then that the kingdom, this would be the kingdom right here, is the last phase of God's rule on earth.  God has always ruled through one of these media.  But lastly, He will rule through the actuality of Christ on the earth.  That is the final phase. And it's interesting that in the kingdom period all that was lost in the fall is restored.  That's why it's called the times of restitution or the regeneration.

Christ then is coming to recapture paradise lost.  When Jesus comes and the kingdom comes it is going to be paradise regained.  Now in the biblical doctrine of the kingdom of God we have the Christian philosophy of history.  If we understand...there's two kingdoms, you need to understand this.  God's universal kingdom means He rules the universe.  That's just a great big general term for God's rule in the universe.

But then there is the term, and these are terms used by Alba McLean which have been picked up by most Christian theology, teachers, and students.  The second kingdom is His mediated kingdom or His mediatorial kingdom.  In other words, He has a very general universal rule, but He has a direct rule which He mediates.  That means there's a mediator.  He has somebody rule in His place on earth, whether it was Adam or whether it was conscience or patriarchs or prophets or kings or judges or whether it is the Holy Spirit in the believer or whether it is Christ.  That is His mediatorial work and it has to do with His kingdom on earth. 

Now when we look at the mediatorial kingdom on earth, we see the Christian philosophy in history. History is just God's rule starting with Adam and going right through until Christ restores the place that God intended man to have as king of the earth.  Now it all ends, we believe, in the kingdom of Christ on earth.  There has to be a restitution for the fall.  There has to be a recovery of the mess that the earth is in.

Now it's interesting and I want to give you this because I think we ought to be aware of it that there are many different views about this kingdom.  And I don't stand here representing all of Christian theology by any stretch of the imagination.  A good portion of it, yes.  Personally I believe those who are right, I represent.  But I have to say there are other opinions and I want to just give you an idea what they are.

There are two opinions at least that believe that future kingdom is strictly spiritual.  One group says when it talks about a kingdom it just means Christ's general rule in men's hearts or God's general rule in men's hearts.  So anything about the kingdom could mean any kind of spiritual rule in anybody's heart.  You couldn't narrow it down to a thousand years.  You certainly couldn't necessarily narrow it down to an eschatological thing.  That is something to happen at the end of time.  It's just a general big sweeping thing.

There's a second group that say no the kingdom means the church.  We are that earthly kingdom and that's it.  It's just a spiritual church.  Nothing literal, nothing physical on earth, not a real reign of Christ on earth, just as He reigns in the church.  But secondly, there are two other groups that say it is not spiritual, it is physical.  And this is the liberal end of theology that's even further out than the last group.  There's some evangelical men in the last group.  But this is the liberal group.  They say that the kingdom promised in the Bible is purely social.

That it is a result of a social economic and kind of political evolution and it...we're just going...the world is going to get kind of a lot better and politically and economically we're going to bring in a sort of physical kingdom.  And there's another group that says that the kingdom is nothing more than the nationalistic political rise of Israel.

So there are at least two groups that slap it in the spiritual dimension and two that throw totally into physical, we stand in the middle, not to compromise but we think that's scriptural.  We say the kingdom is, yes, spiritual.  It will be the reign of Jesus Christ in men's lives.  Yes, physical.  It will be the literal reign of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem on earth.  And so we would then take that particular view that says it's spiritual and physical.  It is the sovereign rule of God mediated on the earth through the actual person of Jesus Christ who will be here. 

Now we said the Lord is going to take the church away, stay seven years and bring them back and set up His kingdom.  And we actually believe that He will return.  We say in our last few studies that He's going to come back and His feet are going to stand where?  On the Mount of Olives, that's pretty clear to me.

There are all kinds of people who want to explain things away.  I'd rather just take it at the fact that it's...God has communicated what He wanted us to know.  Now when Jesus returns at His second coming, the church has been raptured, seven years later He comes back.  It is then that He sets up this final phase of God's kingdom on earth.  Paradise regained.

Now as we come to Revelation 19, we have some of the features outlined for us and we'll go as far as we can in understanding these various features tonight.  And I won't even list them all.  I have at least six point down here and I'm just going to give them to you one at a time because you'd only be confused if I was to rattle them all off.

The first thing, and I'm just going to give you characteristics of the kingdom and I hope when we're done you'll understand that it has to be earthly and it has to be spiritual as well, not just politically.  The first point that we want to understand in Revelation 19 is the rule of the Son.  Point one, the rule of the Son.

The first characteristic of the kingdom is that it is the rule of Jesus Christ on earth.  The kingdom begins when the Son arrives.  Now the time of the kingdom, you say when's it going to happen?  I can tell you exactly when the kingdom is coming.  You didn't know that, but I can.  It's right in the scripture.  It's in Matthew 24:29.  Just listen, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days."

Now when is the kingdom going to come?  Immediately after the tribulation, "then the moon will not give us light, the stars will fall from heaven, then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory and He shall send His angels with a great sound of the trumpet to gather together His elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other."

Now here it is that Christ gathers all the elect from one end of heaven to the other and He comes in glory.  And it happens immediately after the tribulation.  When does the rapture happen? Before the tribulation.  So the time of the kingdom is at the second coming of Christ following the tribulation.  Now just to give you a picture of what the king looks like when He arrives, let's go back to a familiar passage in Revelation 19:11.

Now Christ and the church have been in heaven for seven years during the tribulation, but all of sudden it's time for the kingdom.  The tribulation is going to come to an end.  And verse 11 says "I saw heaven open and behold a white horse and He that sat upon him was called faithful and true and in righteousness He doth judge and make war.  His eyes were like the flame of fire.  On His head were many crowns and He had a name written that no man knew but He Himself.  He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood and His name is called the Word of God."  And we know who it is, Jesus Christ.

"And the armies that were in heaven followed Him upon white horses clothed in fine linen, white, and clean.  And out of His mouth goes a sharp sword that with it He should smite the nations and He shall rule them with a rod of iron.  And He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.  And He hath on His vesture on His thigh a name written King of Kings and Lord of Lords."

Now that indicates He's coming to reign.  Now you say who is this?  Well, first of all His names show us who He is.  He is called in verse 11 faithful one and true one.  He is called in verse 13 the Word of God.  He is called in verse 16 King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  He is the coming king none other than Jesus.

But not only do His names show us who He is, so does His appearance.  It says His eyes were as a flame of fire.  And, of course, this speaks about His righteous judgment.  It says upon His head, in verse 12, were many crowns.  His right to rule.  The king above kings.  His vesture was dipped in blood, not so much His own blood as the blood of those that He has conquered.  And not only His name and His appearance tell who He is, but so does His activities.  He judges and makes war, verse 11.  He descends from heaven, verse 11.  Verse 14, and He leads armies with Him.  And you see the sharp sword that goes out of His mouth in judgment.

This has to be a coming king and it has to be Jesus Christ Himself.  At the inauguration then of the kingdom on earth, watch this, at the inauguration of the kingdom on earth our Lord will come down from heaven.  Now listen, He will come exactly as He said He would, personally.  Acts 1:11, "This same Jesus shall so come in like manners as you've seen Him go."  He will come personally.

Two, He will come visibly.  In fact, the whole world is going to see Him and they're going to be so scared they're going to cry for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them to hide them from His face.  He is going to come gloriously in power and great glory.  And He is going to come with hosts of angels, according to Matthew 24 and 25.  And with the saints already raptured, Revelation 19:14.

Now who's going to be with Him?  The saints who were raptured from the New Testament age and also the saints of the Old Testament and their spiritual bodies will return with Him.  You say well, how do you know that's us?  1 Thessalonians 3:13, a wonderful verse don't ever forget it.  It says this, "At the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints."  All who were in heaven, the spirits of the Old Testament saints and the resurrected glorified bodies of the raptured church will all be coming because He is coming with all His saints, you see.

There won't be any saints left out.  And certainly the promise to the church is this in 1 Thessalonians 4:18, that once we go to be with Him, "so shall you ever be with the Lord."  So where He goes we go.  He comes, we come with Him.

And so Christ comes and He arrives on earth and He ends the tribulation in the holocaust that is described in verses 17 to 21.  "The birds of the air are called together to have a great supper."  And the Lord comes down, of course, in terrible destruction, verse 19, "saw the beasts and the kings of the earth."  That's the antichrist, the beast. "And their armies gathered to make war against Him that sat on the horse and against His army.  And the beast was taken with Him, the false prophets that wrought miracles before Him with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast and them that worshiped his image.  These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone."

"And the remnant was slain with the sword of Him that sat on the horse, which sword proceeded out of His mouth and all the fowls were filled with their flesh."  By the very word of His mouth He destroys the ungodly across the face of the earth in His return.  I guess it is nothing could be more ironically appropriate than for God to permit the military assembly in Palestine to be wiped out because that was the very land where a satanically inspired world once passed judgment on the very king that is going to win that very victory.

And while all the previous judgments, watch this, in the book of Revelation have been carried out by angels, this one is carried out by the king Himself.  This is the final devastation of the world at the end of the tribulation.  And so Jesus is the one who returns.  The rule of the Son is what the kingdom is all about.

God is going to rule through Jesus Christ.  Every Old Testament prophecy on the kingdom, this is exciting, every Old Testament prophecy about the kingdom anticipates Christ's kingly office.  No prophet ever views the kingdom without seeing the Messiah as the king.  Psalm 2:6, the Father says "Yet have I set my king upon the holy hill of Zion.

You remember that 2 Samuel 7:16 when David was given the great promise from God that "from Him would come a king who would reign an eternal kingdom."  And that was the seed of David the Messiah.  Jesus, even at the very beginning when He first came, came as a king.  He was born a king.

In Luke 1:32, the angel said to Mary, "He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His Father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever and of His kingdom there shall be no end."

The Bible always anticipates Christ as the king.  And you know when the world rejected Him, they rejected Him as king.  They didn't want Him as king.  In Mark 15:12, Pilate answered and said unto Him, "What will you then that I do unto Him whom you call the king of the Jews. And they cried out again, crucify Him."  And you remember that they were loud and clear and saying we have no king but Caesar.  He came as a king.  He was born as a king.  He told Pilate on another occasion "to that end was I born."

He was meant to be God's king.  He offered a kingdom.  He said "repent the kingdom is at hand."  But He was rejected as the king.  He even died as a king.  What did they put on His cross?  Jesus of Nazareth, what?  King of the Jews.  And beloved believe me when He comes back again, look at it, Revelation 19:16, "He will come back as a king."  The Old Testament prophecies, the word of God on the arrival of Jesus, all of it points to the fact that He is the king.

There is coming a utopia, believe me.  Now I'm an optimist, a biblical optimist.  There is coming a utopia.  But there's only one individual who can make that utopia happen, and that is the king whose right it is to rule and it is none other than Jesus Christ.  He is the king.  Once rejected, He comes again as king.  And believe me there's going to be an absolute character to His kingdom.

There are not going to be any options when He comes again.  In Isaiah, there are several passages that are powerful, but one that we all know well and I review it only for you to remember is this.  "For unto us a child is born.  Unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon His shoulder.  And His name shall be called wonderful counselor.  The mighty God or God champion, the Father of eternity, the Prince of Peace."  Now watch, "Of the increase of His government in peace there shall be no end upon the throne of David and upon His kingdom to order it and to establish it with justice and with righteousness from hence forth even forever."

And just in case you think it won't happen, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.  God will bring His kingdom and His king will be Jesus.  You say, but Jesus was killed.  Yes, but is alive and He has been since He rose from the dead and He'll be returning.  He is the king.  So the first feature of the kingdom is the rule of the Son.  And my we could study multitudes of Old Testament passages that point this out.  I've only barely skimmed the surface.

Second point, the kingdom will then be characterized by the removal of the serpent.  First of all, the rule of the rule of the Son, secondly the removal of the serpent.  Who at this point in time is the king of the earth?  Satan.  Now if Jesus is going to come to reign, the thing He's going to have to do is dethrone the existing monarch.  And for that we come to Revelation 20.

As the kingdom begins, there's one rebel left to get rid of, Satan himself.  You know, the Lord has been getting rid of the rebels right up to this point.  Many of them were destroyed at Armageddon.  You can see that right in 19:21.  And you say well, weren't there some Gentiles that didn't get killed at Armageddon?  Sure there were plenty of them.  But you know what happened to them, we covered that in our message some weeks ago on the judgment of the nations.  All the Gentiles that were still alive after Armageddon were gathered into a valley created by the Mount of Olives, remember?

And there they were gathered into the valley of decision and they were judged and if they were not believing in Jesus Christ, they were cast into everlasting punishment.  So they have been dealt with.  The rebels according to Ezekiel 20, the rebels in Israel have been purged out.  "Fallen angels have already been defeated and cast down."  And that happened in Revelation 12, didn't it?  When Michael the archangel and his holy angels through them out of heaven.  And they're already defeated foes.

The beast, the antichrist, the false prophet, they've already been cast into the lake of fire, verse 20.  There's only one rebel really left and it's Satan himself.  And if the kingdom is to be totally Christ's, then the ruler of this world must be vanquished.  There could never be a thousand years of peace and righteousness on earth while the great enemy of God was still at large.  And so God removes Him.  The defeat came at the cross.  The final sentencing comes here.

Look at verse 1.  "And I saw an angel come down from heaven having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand."  Now here comes another judgment angel.  All through the book of Revelation you have judgment angels carrying out the judgments.  And here comes another one and he has a key to the bottomless pit.  You know, I...we see all these little pictures of Hell and we always see that Satan is kind of presented as the proprietor.  And we hear people even talk as if Satan was the proprietor of Hell.  Satan is not the proprietor of Hell.  He's just one who's incarcerated there.  The person with the keys is God Himself.

And so God dispatches an angel with the keys and He has the key to the bottomless pit.  Now that is not Hell proper, that is the word in the Greek, abysas.  It is the word which could translate abyss.  You say well what is the abyss.  That is the place, now watch, that is the place where demons are bound.  Now there was some angels that sinned in Genesis 6, stay with me.  And you remember what their sin was?  Cohabitating with women and trying to produce some kind of a strange unredeemable hybrid and God destroyed it all in the flood.  But these angels were thrown into a pit and bound there.  And so there was a place for bound demons.

Now that's exactly where this angel is going to stick Satan.  He has the key to the abysas.  To the abyss.  And now you'll notice that the beast and the false prophet in 19:20 were cast into the lake of fire, that's Hell.  But these demons were in the pit. And so Satan is to be bound and thrown not in the final Hell, Satan's going to get to the final Hell, there's no question about that.  That's in, I think its Matthew 25:41 gives us an indication of that.  "Depart from me you cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels."

So he'll get there eventually, but for the thousand year kingdom, he is going to be stuck in the abyss with the rest of the bound demons.  Now I want you to notice this thing.  It says that the key was possessed by this angel.  Do you know there's an interesting thing in Revelation 9, that angel opened the pit another time.  And you know what he did that time?  He didn't put anybody in.  He let them all out.  In Revelation 9, the angel unlocked the pit and all the demons came out.  Why?  Because in the midst of the tribulation God let Hell have its day on earth and the demons ran all over the earth.  But now the angel unlocks the pit not to let them out, but to put somebody in.

And I like the fact that he has a...not just a chain in his hand, but a great chain.  You know, demons can make short work of chains.  Read Mark 5, remember the mad man in Gerasenes, they kept putting things around him.  First rope and then all kinds of different things, and finally chains and what did he do to all of it?  He broke it.  But this is a chain that he can't handle.  Verse 2, "And he laid hold on that dragon, that old serpent," nothing new, you think people in this world who have this big Satan worship kick think they would...they think they've discovered something new.  "He laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent who is the devil and Satan and bound him a thousand years and cast him into the abysas and shut him up and set a seal on him that he should deceive the nations more till the thousand years shall be fulfilled and after that he must be loose a little season."

Now Satan is bound for the thousand year kingdom.  Jesus is going to rule on the earth and He's going to rule without rivalry.  So Satan is incarcerated.  Now notice him by his name.  He's called the dragon.  That refers to his bestial cruelty.  His oppressive powers.  He's called that old serpent, the same one that was in Eden, nothing new.  He's called the devil, which diabolist means a slanderer, a liar.  He's called Satan.  That means accuser.  And he's the one who always accuses the brethren, night and day before God, Revelation 12:10 says.

Well, the rule of the Son and the removal of the serpent, and this is victory of Christ over His foe.  Now you say, you know, isn't that wonderful, Satan is going to bound for all that thousand years.  Will there be sin in the kingdom if Satan isn't there?  People always ask this question.  Will there be sin in the kingdom?  Of course there will be sin in the kingdom.  You say why?  Because you don't need Satan to sin.  You have a sin nature.  You can bind Satan and all you're doing is destroying the hierarchy of his rule on earth.  That doesn't really have a whole lot of effect on what a sinner does.  You say well, how did sinners get into the kingdom to begin with?  Watch, those people who are saved people, who are alive when Jesus returns, He won't kill them.  He won't destroy them.  There will be living Jews and there will be some of those Gentiles, right, who believe in Jesus Christ who are the sheep Gentiles, Matthew 25.  They will be alive.  They will go into the kingdom alive.  They will be righteous and they will be holy, but they will be saved sinners, right?

And they'll still have sin natures and they'll still sin, just like you and I do as Christians.  So there will be sin.  And you know we always want to say oh the devil...you know, that's a cop out.  Every time you say oh Satan's...Satan made me do it.  Oh that it...what a cop out.  You know, I heard people...I hear this all the time.  People say oh the demon of lust it is bothering me.  Get away, get away Satan.

You don't need any demon to lust.  John says the lust is of the flesh.  You don't need any demon to mess you up in the area.  You'll do fine without them.  That's the point.  So in the kingdom, you're going to have all the same things, there just won't be any structure.  There won't be any overall organization, there won't be any plotting going on at a higher spiritual level.

Now he's thrown into the abyss, seven times the word abyss is used.  In Revelation it always refer to the place where fallen angels are imprisoned and Satan is going to go there.  Now you know it's interesting that way, way back even in Isaiah's day, the prophets of old knew that this was going to happen to Satan.  Isaiah Chapter 24, one of the most interesting verses in scripture.  "It shall come to pass in that day," that's a great day of the kingdom, "that the Lord shall punish," watch, "the host of the high ones that are on high and the kings of the earth on the earth."  The host of the high ones, demons.

"And they shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit and be shut up in the prison and after many days shall they be visited.  Even Isaiah new that demons are going to be incarcerated.  But only for a time, then they're going to be visited by God and transmitted into Hell, finally.

But Satan is going to be bound.  Now notice at the end of verse 3 that it says that he's going to be loosed for a little season and we'll see the significance of that in a minute.  Have you ever thought about this, the Lord's Prayer, the disciples' prayer, Matthew 6?  Think of this, "thy kingdom come."  Now you remember that don't you?  That prayer is a prayer for the kingdom.  "Thy kingdom come," then it says, "deliver us from evil."  And the Greek is deliver us from the evil one.

The only time that you'll ever be delivered from the evil one is when the kingdom comes.  That's why that prayer says "thy kingdom come," "deliver us from the evil one."  That goes together.  When the kingdom comes, the evil one is set aside.  But believe me the kingdom with all that it's going to be is also going to be a great demonstration of human depravity isn't it?  It's going to show once and for all that the devil didn't make you do everything that you did wrong.  And that excuse, "oh the same one in the garden, the serpent beguiled me."  See?  That's the cop out ever since Eve.

Well, the next feature in the kingdom, the rule of the Son, the removal of the serpent, the third one, the reign of the saints.  What's going on in the kingdom with us who are there and with those who are in physical bodies alive?  And incidentally there are going to be saints that are going to be translated in their glorified bodies and they're going to be ones in physical bodies an