What Is the Millennial Kingdom?

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.

The term — and the straight-through reading that yields the sequence

• The question: what is this thing sometimes called the millennial kingdom — a reference to the vision in which those who had been martyred lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years, while Satan is bound, locked up, but released for a short period when that thousand-year span concludes? What's going on during this millennial, thousand-year period — and how do you explain it? His answer starts with the term: the Millennium comes from the Latin word — it means a thousand years. It refers to the description in Revelation chapter 20 of a thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ on earth. If you take the Book of Revelation and read it with a more grammatical-historical interpretation — thinking that it's referring to literal events, although obviously the Book of Revelation is full of a lot of symbols, a lot of prophecies of the future that we don't clearly see exactly how they will be fulfilled (and presumably, as the time comes and it actually happens, people can see it unfolding) — but if you take the Book of Revelation as futuristic, and describing what's actually going to happen, true events, then here's what you would get.

Scriptures: Revelation 20; Revelation

The sequence in outline

• There will be a time of Great Tribulation on the earth. At the end of that time — which is usually seen as seven years — Jesus Christ will come to earth, with his saints, and he will destroy the armies of the enemy, the man of sin, often called the Antichrist. And then he will establish his reign on earth for a thousand years. At the end of that time, unsaved people will rebel against him; he will put down that rebellion, and that will be the end of this present age as we know it. That will usher in the last judgment, followed by the new heavens and the new earth — and of course the people of God will be in the New Jerusalem. So if you just read Revelation straight through, it appears the Millennium will be this thousand years of reign in the future. And you might wonder: well, why is that?

Why a millennium: restoration in two directions

• Here's how he looks at it. Throughout the various ages of history, God has taken people from deep sin — with the fall of Adam and Eve, and subsequently the whole human race going to deep sin — and gradually he's led them back to restoration. In the current age — which we call the church age, or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the supreme age of grace — we see people being restored to their personal relation with God, much like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, but even greater, in that we're filled with the Spirit. So in this age we have personal restoration — but the planet Earth is still not restored. So it appears that in the millennial kingdom, God will use it to restore the creation — the heaven and earth, specifically the planet Earth — to its originally intended state. He will also use this opportunity to fulfill the various prophecies for national Israel that would remain unfulfilled. And so it will be a restoration for the planet — so, between the personal restoration and the corporate restoration, then all the effects of sin will be reversed.

Who lives in it — and why it still ends in a choice

• If you follow this sequence: when Jesus comes back to earth and defeats the Antichrist and his armies — what we call the battle of Armageddon — there will still be people alive. Not every sinner will be killed: those who took the mark will be judged, but apparently there will still be lots of people who either didn't support the Antichrist, or who were against the Antichrist, or the Antichrist was not able to get to them yet — they might still be nations or areas — and so those people will be allowed to live into the Millennium. They will not be born again. We who are resurrected will return with Christ, and we'll rule and reign with him as kings and priests, so we'd be administrators in that new millennial kingdom. But there will still be people who survived from the battle of Armageddon, in that era, that will live into it — they will still be unredeemed; they will have the opportunity to serve the Lord, but they'll still have a sinful nature, so they will also have the opportunity to rebel. While the Lord is in control, it's going to be easy to obey and to follow — but at the end of the age, Satan will be released for a short time, to tempt people, just like everybody else in human history has had to face the choice to serve God or not: these people will be given that same choice. And so the Millennium won't quite be perfect — but it will be as near perfect as it's possible to rule and reign over sinful humans. But we will have Jesus Christ as the leader — so we won't be arguing about politics or government policy; we'll finally have rulers that we can trust and believe in, that will fulfill things honestly and fairly.
• So it looks like the millennial kingdom will be an opportunity — it looks like several different purposes: restoring planet Earth to God's intention; fulfilling promises to natural Israel; giving the rewards to the saints of the ages who are resurrected, who rule and reign with Christ — so maybe many of the rewards we talk about, of the judgment seat of Christ, will be fulfilled in the millennial kingdom. But then that will be the prelude to eternity.

The other two views — and where he lands

• Now, there are two other views. What he's just described is called premillennialism: that Jesus Christ will come back to earth before the Millennium, and then he will institute the Millennium. That's what a literal reading of Revelation would indicate — when he says literal, he doesn't mean avoiding all symbols; he means just taking the text straightforward, basically in chronological order: that's what you would get. Another view is called postmillennialism, which used to be quite popular among liberal Christians; that's not quite as popular today, because it says the church will usher in the Millennium: well, gradually the church will conquer the world, will bring world peace, will bring harmony, and for a thousand years the church will rule and reign in harmony, and then, it's all fixed, Jesus will come back to earth. Well, before the 20th century that was very popular — but the 20th century, about World War I, World War II, Nazism, communism: it seems like, no, humans aren't getting better and better; they're getting worse and worse. And no, the church is not flourishing and growing and covering the earth; the church is compromising. And so, for conservative Christians, not only does it seem far-fetched — if you just read the Scripture — it does seem to fit the reality of the human condition. And then there's the amillennialism (heard as 'a millennialism'), which says there is no real Millennium — it's just the rule of God in your hearts right now: so, right now the devil is bound, right now you're enjoying peace and prosperity and the kingdom of God in your hearts. Again, that disregards the literal interpretation of scripture, and also it seems rather far-fetched: while I think we have joy in the Lord, we're sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, I don't think we can say the devil is bound, and I don't think we can really say that God's rule has really been extended in the way that the Book of Revelation indicates. So I think, when it's all said and done, our hope is: we're looking for the return of Jesus Christ to earth, and he will establish his kingdom on earth — and then we'll have world peace.

Scripture index: Revelation 20; Revelation.