The Millennium: The Great Theological Divide - Part A

God tells us about the future. Granted, not everything about our future, but he tells us what we need to know about it. One of my favorite verses is Deuteronomy 29, 29, which says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God. Those things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.

The Bible is full of answers, but we're not told every detail in full. And today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip begins his message about the end times millennium and shows you what's most important for you to know about. We're glad you've tuned in today. Connect with Skip is all about helping listeners like you strengthen your walk with Christ and grow strong in God's word. We want to invite you to connect others like you to the life-changing power of the gospel with a gift to help keep these teachings you love on the air all around the world. Your support helps keep this broadcast going and growing for you and many others as we expand into more major U.S. cities. Just call 800-922-1888. That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate.

That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Thank you. Okay, let's turn to Revelation 20 as we tune into what Skip has for us today. So there was a guy who was lost in the Sahara Desert and it was getting pretty hot. He was very, very thirsty, desperate for water. He saw something in the far distance.

He was hoping that it would be water in the distance. So he gets up closer and closer and he discovers that there's a man sitting there, an old man sitting on a chair with a table and on the table were neckties. And the man, the guy says, I'm dying of thirst. I need water. Please, you have water. And the old man with the necktie said, I'm sorry, I don't have any water, but would you like to buy a tie?

This one would go particularly nice with the shirt you're wearing. The guy said, you idiot, I'm dying of thirst. I don't need a tie. I need water. And the old man said, look, I don't have water, but to show you what a nice guy I am, if you just go in that direction, five miles over the sand dune, you'll come to a restaurant.

My brother owns it and operates it. There you can find water. So the man sets off over the sand dune. Three hours later, comes crawling back and the guy at the table said, what, you didn't find the restaurant?

The guy who was thirsty said, I found the restaurant, but I couldn't get in without a tie. So moral of the story is this, whatever your future holds, you better be prepared for it. And the best way to be prepared for your future is by getting the right information from the right source. We have the right information and the right source right here in the Old and the New Testament. God tells us about the future. Granted, not everything about our future, but He tells us what we need to know about it.

One of my favorite verses is Deuteronomy 29, 29, which says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever. I want to talk to you today about one particular aspect of the future, and that is the millennium. You've heard that term, the millennium. To be clear, I'm not going to talk about millennials.

I'm not going to get down on that age group that so many like to do today. I'm going to talk about the thousand-year millennial reign of Christ on the earth. I'm not going to go into detail about the nature of that time, the character of that time.

We don't have time to do that, and I will do that at a future study. What I want to talk to you today about is the reality of that time, the actuality of it, because a large number of people, including believers, a large number of believers deny that it will ever exist. Now, ever since the beginning of humanity, people have longed for utopia, a perfect world, Shangri-La, a perfect society. Poets have written about it, singers have sung about it, politicians have mused over it. In fact, Plato's seminal work called The Republic, he wrote about the ideal polis, the ideal city-state that would be governed by a king who was also a philosopher like himself. Thomas Moore, in 1516, came up with the name utopia. He coined the word utopia. He wrote a work called Utopia about a fictional island that had the perfect geopolitical, economic, legal system. He called it Utopia. And he wrote a book called Utopia. And every now and then, politicians come on the scene and they promise that they will bring utopia.

One such politician was named Adolf Hitler. He promised that his Reich, his imperialistic republic, would cover the earth and last for a thousand years. Mao Tse Tung also promised that the revolution would dominate the world for a thousand years. People have always looked forward to that utopia. Even to this day, you see bumper stickers that say, visualize what? World peace.

Visualize world peace. Well, the Bible actually predicts that there is coming a time where this world will experience world peace. In fact, Jesus even told us to pray for it. He said, when you pray, pray our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

However, this whole matter of the millennial kingdom has become a theological battleground. This is why John Walvoord, and I love reading his writings. He taught eschatology for 50 years. He spoke here at this church before he went to heaven. John Walvoord said, few verses in the Bible are more crucial to the interpretation of the Bible as a whole than the opening verses in Revelation chapter 20. So we're going to look at Revelation chapter 20, and what I want to do simply is this.

I'm going to give you three markers, three pillars. Think of them as three lights to align your eschatological ship by, and the words are chronology, theology, and necessity. I'm going to give you a chronology of end time events.

I want to talk about the theological stance that different people have about this, and then the necessity. So first of all, chronology. Let's begin by reading Revelation 20 beginning in verse 1. Then, then being after chapter 19, the events there, then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old who is the devil and satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were were finished.

But after these things, he must be released for a little while. And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection.

Over such, the second death has no power. But they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years. Now when the thousand years have expired, satan will be released from his prison. The theme of Revelation chapter 20 is pretty easy to figure out.

The phrase is mentioned six times. A thousand years. A thousand years. That's where we get the word millennium. The theme of chapter 20 is the millennial kingdom of Christ.

It's very precise. It says a thousand years. That's where we get the term millennium. Mille annum.

Latin words. Millennium. A thousand years. There was a young theology student who was taking an exam and the first question on the test was, what is the millennium? And he was scratching his head trying to figure out what it was and so he said the millennium is the same as the centennial only it has a lot more legs. Well that theology student got confused between a millipede and a millennium. A centipede and a centennial. One has a lot more legs. Sort of the same idea.

One has a lot more years than the other. But back to our reality here. Whatever you do with this kingdom, whatever you say it is, you have to at some point deal with the chronology of the book of Revelation. So we're going to throw up a chart so that you can see it.

I'm not usually one with or I don't sport many charts but we thought this was helpful and by the way this is going to be on the website so you can download it and have it for later. Those of us who interpret the bible literally, by the way we do interpret the bible literally, our approach to scripture is that it means what it says. We have a grammatical historical contextual hermeneutic, that is we read it plain and straightforward and then make application.

Those of us who do that have no problem doing this, making a chart of chronology. Those who spiritualize the text, allegorize the text of scripture have a huge problem doing this but then again they have a problem with prophecy anyway. They have a problem with prophecy in general.

In fact the reformed view which constitutes a lot of Protestant Christianity says everything in the book of Revelation is not going to happen. It's not literal. It's not chronological. It's all allegorical.

It means something other than you might think it means. Let me give you the chronology of the book of Revelation. If you were just to open it up and read it verse by verse, chapter by chapter and took it in chronological order, it's fairly straightforward and fairly unambiguous and simple to understand. It begins with a vision of Jesus Christ in chapter one.

Chapter two and three is a personal word of Jesus Christ to seven congregations in Asia Minor. Then in chapter four, John is taken up into heaven with a trumpet-like voice of an angel to the throne of God. Now that gets your attention when I, you know, the voice says, come up here. He hears the voice of an angel.

It sounds like a trumpet. Suddenly he is in heaven. That sounds strangely like 1 Thessalonians chapter four. The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God. The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So John is taken up into heaven.

Everything John sees from that point on is from a heavenly perspective. Chapters two and three, the focus is on the church, the church, the church, seven different congregations. The word church appears 19 times in the first part of Revelation. From chapter four all the way to the end, the word church is not mentioned once because there's tribulation on the earth. So back to the chart, you'll notice that I haven't read, you are here.

This is where I'm putting you. You are definitely in the church age somewhere because the rapture hasn't happened yet. So I'm putting you toward the end of the church age because I believe you are. I believe this is where we are and where the next event on God's calendar at some point is going to be the eminent translation of the church. We call it the rapture, the rapture of the church. After the rapture of the church is a seven-year tribulation period. This seven-year tribulation is cut in two. First are years of more or less peaceful times followed by really bad times, the last three and a half years, the great tribulation. The seven-year tribulation is also known as the 70th week of Daniel because it finishes off the prophetic timetable of Daniel chapter nine.

Don't worry, we're going to do a whole message just on that in this series. So the tribulation period, back to the chronology of the book of Revelation, is from chapter six of Revelation all the way to chapter 18 and partly into chapter 19. During that period, judgments take place on the earth. There are seven seals in Revelation 6 and 7, seven trumpets in chapters 8, 9, 10, and 11. There are seven bowls of wrath poured out on the earth, Revelation chapter 16.

One set ushers in another set, ushers in a final set. Those judgments are progressively intense and when God is finished with those judgments, God is finished with judgment on earth, period. After that takes place, after the seven-year tribulation, Jesus returns to the earth in Revelation chapter 19.

We are with Him in that event. When Jesus comes back to the earth, all the signs will have been fulfilled mentioned in Matthew 24 that we looked at last week and Revelation chapter 6 through 19. Basically the same events but just extrapolated and explained in Revelation. When Jesus returns to the earth, He comes back to end a battle that is going on, a catastrophic battle introduced in Revelation 16 as the battle of Armageddon. The carnage of that battle on the battlefield is detailed in Revelation chapter 19. By the way, there are two songs that you're familiar with that I want you to get yourself listening to.

I want you to get yourself re-familiar with or familiarized again. One is called the battle hymn of the republic, right? You know that song, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord but listen to the lyrics. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.

He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on. That was written in the civil war by Julia Ward Howe. She lifted it all out of Revelation chapter 19 when Jesus comes back. Another song to reacquaint yourself with is joy to the world the Lord has come. We sing it at Christmas time.

Isaac Watts wrote it. When he wrote it, he was not thinking of Christmas. He was thinking of the second coming that would lead into the millennial kingdom.

So get yourself familiarized with that and when you sing it again, you'll sing it with a whole different meaning. So rapture of the church, tribulation period, return of Jesus Christ to the earth. Once he comes back, he then sets up his millennial kingdom, Revelation chapter 20. We are told six times it will last a thousand years.

We will rule and reign with him. When that's done, when that thousand years of peace on earth is done, then the present universe as we know it will be done. The millennial kingdom will be a restored earth, a rejuvenated earth, a renovated, rebuilt, whatever re-words you want to use.

It will be reconditioned. Very, very different than what you and I know now. At the end of the millennium is a final judgment of unbelievers also in Revelation 20 called the great white throne judgments for unbelievers only. Then God will destroy the present earth and heavens and create a new heaven and a new earth. That's Revelation 21 and 22 which says, and I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth passed away. So that's the chronology of revelation.

It's pretty simple and straightforward. No need to spiritualize any of that. Chronologically, the millennial kingdom fits between the return of Christ and the eternal state. Now, the book of Revelation chapter 20, they don't give you all the details of this kingdom. Other books of the Bible do.

Many other books of the Bible do. But this just gives a summary form of the millennium. All we learn from Revelation chapter 20 is that it comes after the return of Jesus to the earth. We learn that Satan is bound during that time. Somebody say hallelujah. Number three, that God and his people rule for a thousand years and that when it's all over, Satan is briefly released.

I know you're wondering why. We'll get to that in just a minute. So the details of the kingdom, the nature and the character of the millennium are not given here.

It's just given in summary fashion. But there are many, many other explanatory texts in the Bible where a literal kingdom is promised. All the way back to 2 Samuel chapter 7 where God promised it to David, a kingdom. And Psalm 2 and Isaiah 2 and Isaiah chapter 11, Isaiah chapter 30, Isaiah 35, Isaiah 65, Jeremiah 23, Jeremiah 31, Jeremiah 33, Ezekiel chapter 34, Ezekiel chapters 40 all the way through 48, Daniel chapter 2, Daniel chapter 7, Hosea chapter 3, Joel chapter 3, Zephaniah chapter 3, and Zechariah chapter 14.

And that's just a smattering. It is one of the dominant themes in the Scripture, a coming righteous kingdom. It has many names. We call it the millennium because of Revelation chapter 20. In the Old Testament, it's simply referred to as the kingdom. Matthew chapter 19, Jesus referred to it as the regeneration when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory. In Acts chapter 3, 19, it is called the times of refreshing. In Acts 3 verse 21, it's called the time of the restoration of all things. Ephesians chapter 1, it is called the dispensation of the fullness of the times. Now, right now, look back here.

You are here. Right now, this is the church age. In the church age, God is calling His people out of the world. It's a spiritual kingdom. It's not a literal, actual, physical, earthly kingdom. It's a spiritual kingdom. He is calling His people out of the world.

The word ekklesia, church, means to the called out ones. So He's calling us out of the world. In the millennium, He won't call us out of the world.

He will rule the world with us. The church is a spiritual kingdom. The millennium will be an earthly kingdom, during which time, by the way, there will be massive topographical, geological, climactic changes on the earth.

Isaiah especially details this. The millennial kingdom essentially is Garden of Eden 2.0. Garden of Eden 2.0, Garden of Eden 1.0 was a long time ago in the very beginning.

It was just one little geographical place somewhere in the Middle East in the Persian Gulf. It will be all over the world. It will be Eden 2.0.

It will be paradise regained. That's a question on many minds, and that's why Pastor Skip Heitzig spent many months in 2023, presenting 26 full-length messages in his The End is Near series. The second coming of Jesus Christ dominates the Bible. Next to the subject of faith, the coming of Christ in the future is the most discussed topic in the book. To complement this excellent series, a study guide from Skip is now available. This study guide is over 100 pages in length and covers all 26 messages in the series. The End is Near study guide includes notes, summaries, and questions for group or personal study.

We need to understand the times, and this study guide will aid in this effort. With your gift of $50 or more to connect with Skip Heitzig, you will receive a copy of The End is Near study guide from Skip's in-depth 26-part series. Your gift will support the production and expansion of the Connect with Skip broadcast. Call 1-800-922-1888 or go online to connectwithskip.com. That's 1-800-922-1888 or connectwithskip.com. Join us again tomorrow as Skip concludes his message, The Millennium, The Great Theological Divide. Make sure you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ. The only one who can fix the earth, there's no president who can fix this earth, oh we got that candidate in, he, no he won't, no she won't, no they won't. The only one who can fix the earth is the one who created the earth, and he will. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.