Heaven on Earth - Part 1 - Part B

There's only one person who can fix the earth. It's not any politician.

It's not any party. It's only the one who made it, and the one who made it, and the one who will judge it, is the one who will remake it, and will live in it for a thousand years. By the way, can I just add a PS to that? No matter what you're going through today, no matter what your life, what you're dealing with, God and God alone can reconstruct and heal you. He can fix that which is broken. Everyone wants world peace, but no one knows how to make it happen, and it's going to take a lot of effort. Today on Connect with Skip Hytech, Skip reveals to you what will actually make world peace a reality. But before we begin, we want to let you know about a resource that helps you take your best step forward in life so you can embrace your God-given purpose. I've enjoyed watching the growth and the ministry of my friend Levi Lusko. This month's Connect with Skip resource, Take Back Your Life, the new book by Levi Lusko.

Here's Levi to tell you about it. It's all around this idea of taking back your life. It's a 40-day interactive journey to thinking right so you can live right, and it's going to be really powerful and special, I think, for people to have this. Not only is it in hardcover, which just makes me happy because I've never had a book released in hardcover, but it has a ribbon so you'll be able to keep track of your progress through these 40 days. It would be an incredible gift to someone who is looking to grow in their faith or for any of us who want to maybe kind of do an oil change for your heart, a checkup on your wellness, on where you're at.

It'll deal with internal difficulties and help you deal better with external circumstances that are challenging as we explore how we can get to the very best version of ourselves that we are meant to be. Get the book, Take Back Your Life, with a donation of $35 to connect with Skip. Call 1-800-922-1888 or online at connectwithskip.com. This hardcover book by Levi Lusko will help you take back your life. It's a 40-day interactive journey to thinking right so you can live right.

1-800-922-1888. Okay, we're in Revelation chapter 20 as we get into our study with Skip Heiting. First, and it's in your outline, is the pre-millennial view, simply stated, Jesus Christ will return to the earth before pre-millennium.

He'll come back and then set up his kingdom. We believe, or that view believes, in the personal bodily glorious return of Jesus to the earth where he will set up his throne and rule from Jerusalem over the throne of David for a thousand years and over the whole world. Now, if you were to just read the Bible without any other books, just read it simply, plainly, literally, straightforward, you would have a pre-millennial view. Even people who oppose this view will admit that.

A plain rendering will give you that interpretation. And this was once the dominant view of the early church. In fact, it's hard to find any other viewpoint until AD 190. The apostles believed this. The post-apostolic fathers believed this and wrote about it. It is the dominant viewpoint of the early church. Around AD 190, this group of theologians, scholars, down in Alexandria, Egypt, in a theological school, decided we can't take the Bible literally.

It has to be all figurative, all symbolic, and they sought to find shades of meaning below the surface of the literal text. By the way, when they did this, most of the rest of the church said that is heresy. The Bible is to be taken at face value. And many, here's just a sampling, many of the early church writers, Papias, the writer of the epistle of Barnabas, it's called Pseudo-Barnabas, I was reading this yesterday morning, that little book, fascinating, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus, all believed in a pre-millennial viewpoint.

That is, Jesus will come back to the earth bodily, physically, gloriously, and set up a kingdom. Here's a quote from Papias. You go, who on earth is Papias? Papias, tradition says, was mentored by John the apostle who wrote the book of Revelation.

He was one of his students. Papias wrote, there will be a millennium following the resurrection of the dead when the kingdom of Christ is to be established on the earth. Justin Martyr, who I mentioned, also said, quote, the city of Jerusalem will be enlarged and rebuilt just as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah have declared. And he said, virtually all authorities believe that except those gnostic heretics. So that was the dominant viewpoint, the pre-millennial viewpoint.

But not everybody holds to that. There is something called post-millennialism. Now, the terms, don't let them throw you, it's pretty easy to figure it out, post after the millennium. They believe that Jesus Christ will come back after a period of time where we, God's people on the earth, Christianize the world and present the world to Jesus Christ, present the kingdom when he comes back after a period of time, not necessarily exactly a thousand years. It's the idea that we're going to spread the gospel, Christianize the world and the world's going to get better and better and better and so good that everyone's a Christian and we will then bring the kingdom and give it to Jesus. Now, this is a viewpoint that was popular in the 19th century and early 20th century, the industrial revolution, scientific advancements had given people the idea that, hey, we are bringing in utopia.

We're really doing this. Now, it's not very popular today. That whole idea fell off and so the fair question is, well, whatever happened to post-millennialism?

Here's the answer. World War I happened to it. The Great Depression happened to it. World War II happened to it. The Nazi Holocaust happened to it. There was enough catastrophic events that caused people to go, oh, I guess the world isn't getting better and better, but rather worse and worse. Now, it's not completely gone away.

It has resurfaced. There are some and it's been repackaged in what's called dominion theology. I don't know if you've heard the term dominion theology or kingdom theology or kingdom now or constructionism or theonomy, all the same thing and it's the idea that we're going to take dominion over the earth and we're going to establish the kingdom of God. We're going to control institutions. We're going to control the White House and the Congress and the Senate. We need to be the rulers. We need to bring in the kingdom of Christ through the body politic and when we do that, we will present the kingdom to Christ as if he needed our help.

That's the idea. There is a third viewpoint and it's a popular viewpoint. It's called amillennialism. That is, there is no millennium. That is literally. It's like, you can't take this literally.

It's not really going to happen as a thousand years. It's all figurative. It's all spiritual.

In fact, listen to this. They say, the kingdom is now. You're in it.

You're in the millennium now. All of the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah's kingdom are being fulfilled in the church now. Jesus is ruling and reigning spiritually over his church. This is the kingdom. Also, this viewpoint says, oh yeah, all those promises in the Old Testament to Israel about literally having a kingdom and ruling from Mount Zion and et cetera, those are out now.

They only apply spiritually, allegorically to us, the church. There is no throne of David. There is no literal Jerusalem that will be rebuilt. So that viewpoint says, this is as good as it will ever get. Now, can I just say, if this is the kingdom age, I'm terribly, terribly disappointed. If this is the millennium, then we have a case where the book is a whole lot better than the movie. You know what I mean? You read the book, it's like, wow, that's cool.

If this is the movie, it's not a very good rendition of it. And the question I would have is, why did God spend the whole book of Revelation just to tell us what is really not going to happen? Now, by now you've probably figured out that I'm a pretty staunch premillennialist. And I take a literal approach to the Bible.

Why is that? Number one, because of the chronology of Revelation. It's a pretty straightforward book, honestly. The outline is given in the first part of it. It tells you how it's going to unfold. It tells you the structure and the timeline. Then it goes right through a chronology. Chapter six through 19 is all the tribulation period, the worst period on earth.

You can read through that and go, man, there's never been anything like that on the earth. That's the worst, just like Jesus said would happen. Then chapter 19, Jesus comes back to the earth with his people to put an end to a huge battle that takes place over in the Middle East. And all of that, chapter six through 19, is premillennial. It's before the millennium. Then if you look at chapter 21, we discover that the earth as we know it, the created order is all destroyed.

It's been tainted by sin. The earth is taken away, removed, and God creates a new heaven, a new earth, a new Jerusalem, and that's the eternal state. So sandwiched in between all of Revelation six through 19 and chapter 21, the eternal state, happens to be a thousand year reign of Christ on the earth.

If you read plainly and chronologically, it fits, no problem. Second reason is because the early church, as I mentioned, believed in the earthly, historical reign of Christ on the earth initiated by his coming. It wasn't until those Alexandrian dudes down in Egypt decided, let's allegorize the whole thing, people like Clement and Origen. And then eventually as church history went on, have you heard the name Augustine? He sort of crystallized this all millennial viewpoint and sort of sealed that as the dominant theology of the Roman Catholic Church, of the Protestant Reformation. Men like Luther and Calvin, et cetera, bought into that, unfortunately. But here's the most compelling reason to take it literally.

Ready? Because it happens to be the best way to interpret the Bible. And I'm going to explain, but I love what Vance Havner once said. He said, it's always easier to understand what the Bible actually says than to understand what somebody else thinks it meant to say. You ever had somebody go, well, I know it really says that and it's pretty obvious what it is, but it doesn't mean that, it means this.

And you go, how'd you get that? See, how are we going to say, well, we don't interpret the Bible prophecy literally, but we interpret the rest of the Bible literally. Really? On what basis? What gives you the basis to do that? What right do any of us have to have an approach to interpretation, a hermeneutic, and then depart from it? That's the important question.

I'll give you an example. Now, the angel came to Joseph and the angel said to Joseph, you're going to call his name Jesus, and he's going to save his people from their sins. Now, is that disfigurative? No, a literal baby was born and they named him Jesus, and he went on to save people from their sins. The same angel came to Mary and said, you will call his name Jesus, and he will be great and called the son of the highest. Now, is that just figurative? No, that's literal, but listen to the rest. And he will rule over the house of Jacob, that's Israel, forever.

And his kingdom, there will be no end. Is that literal or figurative? It's just as literal, and yet the Amillenist will say, well, the first part's literal and the second part's just allegorical. You can't split your interpretation. So, when we go through the Bible, at least my approach has been a grammatical, historical, contextual, literal hermeneutic, or interpretation.

And Amillenism will depart from that. Here's another question. When you look in the Old Testament, remember all those promises God offers blessings and cursings to Israel? And he says, okay, tell you what, if you really mess up, I'm kicking you out of the land. Did he mean that literally or figuratively? I think he meant it literally because they got kicked out of the land. And God said, you're going to be there for 70 years in Babylon. Was that just figurative?

No, it happened to be literally 70 years and then they came back. So, if all of the judgments to Israel have happened literally, who are we to say, yeah, but all the blessings are only figurative and spiritual and they apply only to the church? You get messed up. If a thousand doesn't mean a thousand, what does it mean?

What does it mean? And if you notice through the book of Revelation how number conscious it is, there's exact numbers given. For instance, there's seven churches. There's seven leaders of seven churches. There's 12 tribes. There's 12 apostles, all literal so far. There's one-third of mankind. There's another fourth of mankind.

There are two witnesses, 42 months, 1,260 days. There's 144,000. There's 12,000 furlongs. What do you do with all those numbers? If 12 doesn't mean 12, then what does 12 mean? And if 1,000 doesn't mean 1,000, then what does 1,000 mean?

If you just read this at face value, then there's a real kingdom for Israel in Jerusalem from the throne of David by a Messiah who's from the lineage of David and it will last 1,000 years just at face value. And that's how the early church took it. Okay, enough said on that. Okay, enough said on that. My last point will be much briefer to which some of you are going, thank you, Lord. I talked about the extent of it and the explanation of it. What about the essentiality of it? What's the big deal?

Why do we need it? There's something interesting in verse 3. He cast him, that is the devil, into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more.

Notice the word, he says he should not deceive the nations, or better put, in order so that he would not. This is a necessity to get rid of the devil for 1,000 years. Until the 1,000 years were finished, but after these things, he must be released for a little while. I know what you're thinking. Why?

Once you got him in jail, why on earth would you let him out, right? I'll answer that next week. I want to talk about the need, the necessity, for 1,000 year reign. Why would God hassle with 1,000 years on the earth? You know, why not just go directly to the eternal state? Why the extra step of the earth?

What's all that about? Sort of like the Monopoly game, you know, you get the card that says, go directly to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Why didn't God say go directly to the eternal state? Do not go to the millennium? Why not, what's the hassle of the earth? I'll give you a few reasons.

Number one, to redeem creation from judgment. I think you've noticed there's a curse on this earth. It started back in Genesis chapter three with the fall of mankind. The earth has been cursed ever since.

We are experiencing that even today. Beyond that curse of sin, the book of Revelation indicates that there's going to be tremendous, catastrophic, cataclysmic judgment that falls upon the earth during the tribulation period. If you think we've ruined the earth, wait till you see what God does with it. He decimates it. He trashes it during the tribulation period, utterly, so that the millennium will be the answer to the 2,000 year old prayer that his church has been praying.

Listen to it in the context of this morning. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That will be fully answered and has never totally been answered yet, but will be fully answered during the millennium.

The earth will be fixed. There's a great story from the early days of the automobile when a man was out in his car, a model T4, that's about the only thing on the road, and he had a lot of problems with the early models. So he broke down on the side of the road and he was out there trying to crank it. The cars were hand cranked.

I was going to say, remember that, but I don't think anybody here would. So he tries to crank it. It won't start.

He advances the spark. It won't start. He changes the plugs. It won't start.

He can't get the thing to run. Suddenly, a limousine pulls up and out of the limousine, a nicely dressed man walks over and says, could I help? The guy thinks, yeah, right. But this nicely dressed, dapper gentleman tinkers with a few things and says, try it now.

Starts up immediately. And then the man proceeds to introduce himself. My name is Henry Ford.

I designed and built this car so I know what to do when something goes wrong. There's only one person who can fix the earth. It's not any politician.

It's not any party. It's only the one who made it. And the one who made it and the one who will judge it is the one who will remake it and will live in it for a thousand years.

By the way, can I just add a PS to that? No matter what you're going through today, no matter what your life, what you're dealing with, God and God alone can reconstruct and heal you. He can fix that which is broken. It's what he does. He's a redeemer.

He's all about that. So to redeem creation from the curse. Second, all of the promises that God made to the nation of Israel have yet to be fulfilled. If you're a reader of the Bible, and I take it most of you have read through the Bible, you know that in the Old Testament there are countless promises that Israel will enjoy a period of unparalleled peace, prosperity with Messiah reigning from Jerusalem, and it will go over the whole earth.

That has never happened yet. God promised the Jews a physical and a spiritual kingdom. I think of 2 Samuel 7, the covenant to David.

Psalm 89, he confirmed it with an oath. The millennial kingdom is phase one of fulfilling that promise. This is the earthly reign of Christ from Jerusalem on the earth. By the way, there's probably more scripture written about the kingdom age than almost any other topic in the Bible.

Some even think the main theme of the Bible is the kingdom because of the amount of text that is written about it. So when the millennium is on the earth, when that's done, when that's done, then the created order as we know it, it's over. At that point, God will destroy this earth tainted by sin.

It's completely removed and away with. The Bible says that a number of places, then God will create a new heaven and a new earth, new Jerusalem, and that's the eternal state, a whole other phase. This is getting cooler the more we study about it. Finally, and quickly, the millennium is essential because it will reveal man's rebellious nature. During the millennial kingdom, and I'll just say it briefly today and we'll get into it in detail later, rebellion that will still be in the hearts of people will not be allowed to flourish. It will be kept in check. Those who will rule and reign do so, the Bible says, with a rod of iron.

You only need to rule with a rod of iron if there's the possibility of an upset. Justice will be enacted swiftly. Sin will be dealt with immediately.

It will be a reign of Christ upon the earth. Now, you and I will be in our resurrected glorified bodies, but people who are in the tribulation period who survive it and are allowed to go in the kingdom age, they're in their normal physical mortal bodies. Now you're going, oh man, that's weird. I can't think that's, how does that work?

It should not be weird to you. You have read about it in the Bible. Jesus Christ rose from the dead in a resurrected glorified body and ate meals and took walks with disciples in their mortal bodies. There was a perfect commingling of entities.

You've read about it. So we'll be in resurrected glorified bodies. People on the earth, though the longevity of the earth will be extended and people will live a lot longer, there will still be death, there will still be the possibility of rebellion, still be the possibility of sin, though kept in check.

And after the millennium's all done, when Satan is released and has his way back on this earth for a period of time, there will be a rebellion and it's going to prove something. All of this nonsense of, well, if we just had a perfect environment, we'd be perfect. I am the way I am because of my environment. It's not really my fault. Is everybody else in the world's fault?

No. All of us have a sin nature and the perfect environment of the millennium that will still eventuate in a rebellion will prove once and for all you can take man out of the slums, but you can't take the slums out of man. And only one person can change the heart of a person and that is Jesus Christ. And some will follow him during that time and some will rebel against him even after a period of perfection. So people have longed for utopia. Poets have written about it. Songwriters have sung about it. Politicians have campaigned on that promise.

It will never happen until Jesus comes. And can you hear the rain? Is that rain? Isn't that beautiful? Imagine how good it'll be in the millennium. Let me close with this.

C.S. Lewis wrote, perfect background noise for this, if I find myself having a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If you're wondering why I'm not satisfied, I've had so many relationships with people, I've tried so many different things and experiences and I'm still not satisfied, you weren't made for this world, friend. God put eternity in your hearts. That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message from the series from the Edge of Eternity. Now, here's Skip to tell you how you can help keep these teachings coming your way as you help connect others to the good news of Jesus. As we wait for Jesus to return, our prayer is, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. You know, one day that prayer will be answered in full.

In the meantime, God chooses to work through His people to further His gospel in the world. And you can partner in that work today through your gift, expanding the reach of this radio ministry and the teachings you love to more and more listeners. Here's how you can give a gift right now. Call 800-922-1888 to give.

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Tune in Saturdays at 4 p.m. Mountain or check your local listings. Be sure to come back Monday as Skip talks about the peace you'll find in heaven and the effect it will ultimately have on the earth. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection. A connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.