Things to Come - Part Four

THINGS TO COME - Part Four

 

1. The setting up of the Kingdom.

2. The character of the Kingdom.

3. The liberation of Satan.

4. The final judgment and eternal state.

 

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After the Tribulation, in the Battle of Armageddon, Christ is going to return to the earth. When He came for believers, you remember, He met them in the air. Now He returns to the earth, and His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:1-4). He will take the Antichrist captive, and will cast him, and those who worshipped his image into the lake of fire (Revelation 19:20). Then He will set up His Kingdom here on earth.

 

That will be a very wonderful Kingdom, and it will be set up by the power of God. The Lord Jesus will not be meek and lowly then, but glorious and powerful (Isaiah 9:7; Daniel 2:44; Zechariah 2:11). The Lord Jesus will rule with a rod of iron (Psalm 2:9), which means that He will be very severe with evil. If any man sins, he will be punished right away.

 

The Kingdom will be a happy time for all who love the Lord. Then all the world will be made beautiful. There will be no more desserts, for they will all be turned into gardens (Isaiah 51:3; 35:1). The wild animals will be tame (Isaiah 11:6-9). No one will be hurt in those days. Best of all the Lord Jesus will be there all the time, where men can see and talk with Him, but we will already have our new bodies like His which we received when He first camé to take us to Heaven. There will be no wars then nor any fighting or quarreling. The capital of the world will be Jerusalem, and the Jews, who then will all be Christians, will be the chief people of the world, and the rulers.

 

Satan will not be free to tempt men then, for at the very beginning of the Kingdom he is bound and cast into the bottomless pit for a thousand years (Revelation 20:1-3). He will not be allowed to deceive the nations any more for those thousand years. During the Kingdom, when anyone does wrong, it will be wholly his own fault, for he will not be tempted by Satan. There will be wrongdoing, for men will still be sinners, but the Lord will always punish immediately, and there will not be crime and sinning to the extent that there is today.

 

At the end of the thousand years, God is going to give one final test to men. He allows Satan to come out of his prison house for a little time (Revelation 20:7). Immediately he will go out to tempt and deceive people and try to gather them together against the Lord. Men’s hearts are so bad that even after a thousand years of righteousness on the earth, they will be tired of what is good, and will join Satan against the Lord. But when they gather together to fight against the Lord and those who are His, God will destroy them (Revelation 20:8-9).

 

Then comes the last great judgment. Satan is cast into the lake of fire where the Antichrist already has been for a thousand years. A great white throne of judgment will be set up, and all the dead—those who have died without believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, beginning way back with Cain, the first unbeliever, will be brought before God for judgment. None of the believers will be judged, for Christ bore their judgment at the cross. All those whose names were not in the Lamb’s book of life will be judged, according to their works, and they will be cast into hell with Satan. The saved will be in Heaven with God for eternity.

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