The Millennium: The Great Theological Divide - Part B

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. 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. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip wraps up his message, The Millennium, The Great Theological Divide, and shows you that the only hope for earth is the one who made it all to begin with. Now we want to tell you about a resource that will help you gain a better understanding of end times prophecy. Here are some of the titles in the End is Near series by Pastor Skip Heitzig. Israel Must Survive, Rapture Ready, and Russia's Coming Invasion. Surely the Lord God does nothing unless he reveals his secret to his servants, the prophets.

So when God is going to do something, he warns his people, he sends a sign so his people will know that he's going to do something. Skip Heitzig's teaching series now has a companion study guide available to you. The End is Near guide covers all 26 messages that Skip recently presented. We can just look at the chessboard.

The pieces are all lining up in interesting fashion. 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. All right, let's get started. We're going to be in Revelation 20 today as Skip begins. 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, was just one little geographical place somewhere in the Middle East in the Persian Gulf. It will be all over the world. It'll be Eden 2.0.

It will be paradise regained. So that's chronology. The book of Revelation has a different definite chronology. If you were just to read the book of Revelation without reading somebody's commentary or going to somebody's seminary, you would come up with the idea that Jesus Christ comes before he sets up his kingdom.

That's called a pre-millennial view. But now let me talk to you about the second pillar or the second marker and that is theology. Because some people spiritualize all of this and I'm going to explain that. Six times in seven verses it's worth just looking at those times again. Satan's bound verse two for a thousand years.

He won't deceive the nations. Verse three for a thousand years. They lived and reigned, verse four, with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead didn't live again until the thousand years was finished.

It's detailed over and over and over again. Yet some people look at this and say, well it doesn't mean that. A thousand years is just a term that means a long time. And the kingdom that is promised in the Bible and the Old Testament and you say is mentioned here isn't a real kingdom, a literal kingdom on earth. It's just a spiritual kingdom. And you'll say to them, but wait a minute, Jesus told us to pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I know he said that. But Jesus also said, my kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is not of this world.

And you'll say, I hope you'll say, you're right. His kingdom is not of this world right now. But in the future it will be of this world. It will be of this world.

How do I know that? I know that from Revelation chapter 11, which says the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever. At some point in the future, he's going to take over the kingdoms of this world.

He'll rule for a thousand years in a restored earth and then into the eternal state. Now, Jewish people have always believed that, historically. Historically, the Jewish people from the Old Testament onward anticipated a coming Messiah who would rule and reign in an earthly kingdom because God first promised that to King David.

So pious Jews every day pray a set of prayers called the Shemonasrei, which is in Hebrew, means the 18. And in those prayers they pray for the coming of Messiah, the ingathering of Jewish exiles, God to restore justice and wickedness, reward righteousness, rebuild the city of Jerusalem, and restore the line of King David. That is and has been their anticipation. Also, the disciples who were Jewish had the same exact anticipation from the Old Testament scripture.

That was in their thinking. When Jesus said, this temple, it's going down. Stones are coming down. They said, tell us, when will these things be and what is the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?

And I mentioned last week when they said you're coming, they were not thinking he's leaving and coming back. The coming meant the coming here to take over and set up your kingdom. Well, that didn't happen. Jesus died. And when Jesus died, their hopes were shattered.

And two of them were walking on the road to Emmaus. And not knowing it was Jesus, they said to him, we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel. They're still thinking earthly kingdom, earthly kingdom, earthly kingdom. Once they discovered Jesus rose again from the dead, those hopes got rekindled yet again in Acts chapter 1, verse 6. They said, Lord, listen, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

See what they're thinking about? An earthly, literal kingdom of Messiah on the earth. Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Now, if Jesus had been all millennial or post-millennial, this would be a perfect question for Jesus to clear all that up with. When they said, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He could have just said, boys, it's not really literal. It's just a spiritual kingdom.

Get that out of your heads. He didn't say that. What he said is, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in his own authority.

That sounds to me like he's saying, yes, there is a coming literal kingdom, but just not now. But let's look at these viewpoints. There's three basic viewpoints. Post-millennialism, I'm going to explain these.

Amillennialism, premillennialism. Let's begin with post-millennial viewpoint. According to the post-millennials, Jesus comes back after we establish the kingdom on earth. You go, how are we going to do that?

By preaching the gospel. We're going to effectively Christianize the world and bring in a golden age. So, we go out there, we preach the gospel, and then Jesus will come back after we have Christianized the world and we're going to kind of turn the kingdom over to him and he'll then take us to the eternal state. So, what they're thinking is this, the world's going to get better and better and better and better as we take hold of all the political institutions, the White House, the Congress, get our person in and we're going to take over the educational institutions and we're just going to change it all. Now, let me say, this way of thinking flourishes usually in places like America when times are really good. When there's no war, there's no catastrophe, you get a few more post-millennial thinkers. Say, see, see, the world's getting better. We're doing it.

We're making the kingdom. So, this became popular in the 19th century and early 20th century after the independence of the early 20th century after the industrial revolution and scientific advancements and then it sort of went by the wayside. It just like died out mostly. You say, well, what happened to it?

I'll tell you what happened to it. World War I happened to it. The Great Depression happened to it. World War II happened to it.

The Nazi genocide happened to it. So, people are like, yeah, it's not really getting better and better, is it? So, that's post-millennialism. Then there is the a-millennial view. A-millennial means no millennium.

They don't believe there is a literal millennium. This is actually a belief system of many Protestant believers. There will be no literal kingdom. It's all spiritual. It's all figurative. Basically, this is what they say.

You ready for this? The kingdom age is right now. You're in it. The kingdom age is just the church age. Revelation chapter 20 verses 1 to 10 is happening right now. Also, part of this belief is that all the promises that God gave to Israel in the Old Testament are fulfilled in the church, which is an interesting way to interpret Scripture because they will also say all the curses that God gave to Israel are fulfilled in Israel, but all the blessings that God promised to Israel are fulfilled in us, the church. It's a very inconsistent hermeneutic. So, what that means is this.

Right now, this is as good as it's going to get. This is the kingdom. God will not revive Israel. There will never be a throne in Jerusalem.

Well, I'd like to say something about that. If this is the kingdom, I'm really disappointed. If this is the kingdom age, this is a case where the book is way better than the movie because the book makes it look really awesome. As I read Isaiah 65, Isaiah 11, Isaiah 2, Jeremiah 31, et cetera, et cetera, it makes it look really good.

It makes it look really good. If this is it, I'm really disappointed. And then I wonder, why did God spend the whole book of Revelation just to tell us what's not going to happen? And when you interpret Scripture this way, in a spiritual allegorical way, you are opening Pandora's box because as soon as you say, well, a thousand doesn't mean a thousand. They just say, it just means a long time.

Well, exactly how long are you talking about? They can't answer it. So once you remove the literalness from it, then you can make it anything you want it to mean. It's a very dangerous thing. And here's what's a problem about doing that in Revelation. So often in this book, there's numbers.

There's seven heads, there's 10 horns, there's seven churches, there's 12 tribes of Israel, there's 12 apostles, there's one third of mankind, one half of mankind, two witnesses, 42 months, 1260 days, 12,000 furlongs. What does that mean? What does that mean exactly, if it doesn't mean what it says it means? See, what right do you have to say, well, we take the Bible literally except prophecy, we take everything else literally, our soteriology, our salvation, we take all that literally, but prophecy, we don't take literally. Based on what?

Based on what? See, if a thousand years doesn't mean a thousand years, it's just a figurative number, then maybe three days and three nights in the tomb is figurative. Maybe that's not literal. Maybe 12 tribes doesn't mean really 12 tribes. Maybe seven churches doesn't really mean seven churches. Vance Havener said, it's always easier to understand what the Bible says than to understand what someone thinks it meant to say.

You've all had people tell you that, right? I know it says that, but it doesn't mean that. So let me take it to the third view in theology, and that is the premillennial view. See, you're becoming little theology students here. The premillennial view, and that is the view that I hold, this is the view that we teach here, is that Jesus will come pre-millennium, before the millennial kingdom. He will return to the earth, then he will set up his thousand-year reign.

He will rule in Jerusalem on the throne of David. If you read the Bible straight forward, if you read Bible prophecy as it comes, you interpret it normally, literally, you're going to come up with a premillennial viewpoint. By the way, and this is important, premillennial viewpoint was the dominant viewpoint the first three centuries of the Christian church. First three centuries of the Christian church, it wasn't until the third and fourth century in an interpretive school called the Alexandrian School up in North Africa, where they started allegorizing the Scripture, spiritualizing the Scripture. And it was first spouted off by Origen, Origen, Adam, Antaeus, and then later on, Augustine. They spiritualized the Scripture. But for the first three centuries, the Christian church believed Jesus is coming back to this earth and setting up a literal kingdom. You find that in the writings of Papias, Pseudo-Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, to name a few. In fact, Papias, who was discipled and taught by the apostle John, so that goes back pretty far, said this, and I quote, there will be a millennium when the kingdom of Christ is established on the earth, end quote. Justin Martyr, it's about 100 A.D., said Jerusalem will be rebuilt just as Ezekiel and Isaiah declare. And he said the only ones that don't believe that are the Gnostic heretics, which were big in that day. So that's chronology and theology.

Let me give you a third marker, a third light in the harbor, and that is necessity, necessity. So look at verse three where it says, 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 finished. But after these things, he must be released for a while. First of all, when that happens, I want a front row seat because I want to go, hallelujah, when Satan is finally bound. Second, you'll notice after these things, he must be released for a little while. I know you're going to ask him, why? Why would God release Satan once he has bound Satan? Well, if you can answer why God released him in the first place, I'll tell you why he did it in the second place.

Deal? This is a conundrum, but I want to talk about necessity. Now, I just read verse three. Without this, without God binding Satan, there could be no millennium. There could be no peace on earth.

But we still wonder why. Why bother with a thousand-year reign on the earth? Why restore the earth for a thousand years, then after you restore it and live on it, destroy it, and make a new heaven and a new earth? Why?

I mean, like in Monopoly, do not go to jail, or go directly to jail, do not pass, go, do not collect $200. Why not just go directly to Jesus, comes back, sets up his eternal kingdom, period? The eternal state, new Jerusalem, new heaven, new earth. Why the millennium?

Glad you asked. Three reasons the millennium is a necessity. Number one, to redeem creation from judgment. There's a curse on this creation. The curse came in Genesis chapter 3.

It's been on the earth ever since. And even though there is a recreation, rejuvenation, reconditioning of the earth during the millennial period, reconditioning of the earth during the millennial kingdom, it's still tainted with sin. And people will choose to rebel against him at the end when Satan will be released. And so to redeem creation from judgment, the millennium will be God's answer to our prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, to redeem creation from judgment.

That's number one. Number two, it is needed for God to fulfill all the promises he made to Israel. Scriptures filled with Psalms and utterances among the prophets. David was promised the kingdom in 2 Samuel 7. It was confirmed with an oath in Psalm 89. And the promises to Israel were both an eternal as well as an earthly kingdom. There's more on more scripture devoted to the kingdom than most other subjects in the Bible.

It's a major theme in the Old Testament. The millennium is phase one, phase one. Phase two will be new heaven, new earth, new capital city named New Jerusalem. Phase one, the vestibule, the foyer, you might say, of God's fulfillment of his promise will be the millennial kingdom. So to fulfill God's promise to Israel, to redeem creation from judgment.

Third, to reveal once and for all man's true rebellious nature. Listen, the millennium is going to be a perfect environment, a sinless environment for the most part. People will still have a will and some who are born during that time will choose not to follow God's will, but they will be enforced to follow his judicial will on the earth. The Bible says we rule with a rod of iron. That implies that some people won't want to go along with it but will because Christ will be in charge. At the end of the millennium, as we saw just briefly, there will be a rebellion. If you were to go on, there is a rebellion that takes place and then that is quelled, that is destroyed.

But how often have you heard this? The real problem is that people have a bad environment. If you put them in a good environment, they'll do great. You put them in a perfect environment, they'll do great. God will give them a perfect environment for a thousand years.

It's like a thousand year experiment on humanity. At the end of a thousand perfect judicial years of Christ reigning, there will still be some who will rebel against him. Because you can take man out of the sinful environment, you cannot take the sin nature out of man unless they come to Christ.

So as we march toward the future, make sure you're wearing a tie. 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 if we got that candidate in, 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.

And by the way, he can fix your life and he can do it now. If you have not surrendered the throne of your life to the Lord Jesus Christ, you can do that. So he sets up his kingdom in you, the kingdom of God inside you as a part of you, ruling over your life, his will being done in your life. That gives you the tie to get into the kingdom.

One of my favorite sayings by C.S. Lewis, he said, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. You were made for another world. You are going to another world. And before you enjoy the eternal state of heaven, dear brother and sister, before you enjoy the new heaven and the new earth, you're going to come back to this earth for a thousand years ruling and reigning with your Savior. Can't wait.

I didn't even give you the details of it. That'll come later. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message. From the series The End is Near, find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Right now, listen as Skip shares how you can share life-changing teaching from God's unchanging word with more people around the world. God's word is filled with timeless wisdom for every area of life to lead you to an abundant life connected with God. And that's why we share these Bible-based messages online and on the air to connect you and many others around the world with Jesus through God's word. When you give a gift to support this radio ministry, you not only help reach more listeners, but you also keep these messages that you love coming to you. Will you help make that happen?

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