THE KINGDOM

Of course, there are a thousand great years between our return from heaven with the Lord and that throne of judgment for the unbelievers. And this Kingdom Age, this great millennium, is the true reward of the church. We should go back and examine it.

The Kingdom will be quite a different age than we have now. Things will be socially "upside down". It will be sophisticated to be a Christian then, and downright foolish to be an unbeliever. The King Himself shall reign in Jerusalem with us, the Queen.

We must turn to the Old Testament for knowledge of the Kingdom, since that's where Jesus got His teaching. There was no New Testament, of course, at the time the Lord taught the disciples "the things pertaining to the Kingdom", but the great passages of Isaiah and the other prophets make clear this magnificent age of God's triumph. The New Testament assumed that everyone understood the Kingdom, since it had been already explained in the Old, and it virtually began with the Sermon on the Mount - the explanation of how one gets into the Kingdom and how the law of the Kingdom will be. The Beatitudes (Matt. 5, etc.) continue to inspire us as to that idyllic age of God's total sovereignty over the earth.

Isaiah's passages ring with beauty:

But with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and He shall smite the earth with the rod of His month, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked.

And righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His reins.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.  And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 

 

And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den.  They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11: 4-9)

Nowhere in the Bible is the Kingdom ore concisely and more beautifully described than in Isaiah's very brief Chapter 12. We quote it in full:

And in that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me.

Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; He also is become my salvation.

Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.

And in that day shall ye say, Praise the Lord, call upon His name, declare His doings among the people, make mention that His name is exalted.

Sing unto the Lord; for He hath done excellent things: this is known in all the earth.

Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee.

Isaiah 9: 6-7 will be fully realized ("Unto us a child is born.").

We could go on and on in the other prophets with the marvelous descriptions of life on earth in the presence of the King. The theme of it will be the constant company of Jesus, the total triumph of the saints, and absolute justice and mercy throughout all the earth. This, again, is the reward of the true church.