WE endeavored in our last paper to indicate some of the moral features of our own times, which will be found in full development at the coming of the Lord Jesus to this earth in judgment. Our object was rather to stir up the Christian reader in relation to the truth, than to explain prophetic scriptures. We will now briefly refer to a few things God tells us respecting His kingdom on earth at the time when His Son shall reign over it.
CHRIST WILL REIGN OVER THE EARTH.
This great truth is not to be spiritualized into the reign of Christ in the hearts of His own, nor into the subjugation by the gospel of the heathen. It is a reality, and will be established, as shall be all divine realities, actually and literally. The preaching of the apostles declared the kingdom, and at the conclusion of the record of their testimony lie these words, “Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Acts 28:3.)
It is a misconception of God’s ways with man, to count this age, when Christ, having been crucified as the king, is in heaven, as the time of His kingdom on earth. It is disregard of the character of the kingdom, and, we might add, of the King! Imagine a powerful king allowing sin and iniquity, unrighteousness and oppression, misery and poverty, full sway among his subjects; imagine him allowing his adversary such power that his own laws stood rejected, and his commands unknown over the greater part of his kingdom, while most of those over whom he reigned, repudiated, or were ignorant of, his name. What sort of character should we say would such a king possess? Yet on the earth at this time, evil is in full liberty, and notwithstanding this, Christ is spoken of as reigning here. No, when Christ reigns He will rule, He will be obeyed; He will not decree at the bidding of the people, but they will be subjects indeed; and what God has promised will be performed. The kingdom of which Christ will be King will be perfect.
HIS REIGN WILL BE UNIVERSAL.
When God set the first man on the earth He put earth’s rule and dominion into his hands, and the second Man, Christ, must reign till all enemies be put under His feet (1 Cor. 15:25), and thus this first purpose of God will be established in Christ. Again, God set David upon the throne of Israel, and in Solomon, his son, the glory of Israel was at its height, but when Jesus, the Son of David, shall reign over God’s nation, all the promises to the fathers, and all the prophesies of Israel’s prophets respecting the king and the kingdom, shall be fulfilled. The temple will be built in Jerusalem, which city will be the center of the earth, and the twelve tribes of Israel, now scattered and buried, as it were, in the world, will then dwell in their own land, the greatest, the most glorious of the nations of the earth. Again, God gave into Nebuchadnezzar’s hands a vaster dominion than that entrusted even to Solomon―one which embraced the whole world. (See Daniel 2:38.) The Gentile ruler was the “head of gold,” and through him was the mightiest of earth’s kingdoms. Since his day they have degenerated from the gold to silver, and from the silver to brass, and from the brass to iron, until in our times the iron is mixed with clay, with which it never combines. Christ’s will be universal rule; the kingdoms of the world will become His world-kingdom (Rev. 11:15-18), and under His scepter not only Israel, but all nations shall be one kingdom, giving God homage and worship, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters the sea. (Isa. 12:9.)
MAN, THE CREATURES, AND THE WHOLE EARTH WILL BE BLESSED.
There has been no peace of long duration in any kingdom on the earth, neither can there be until Christ comes, when not only will there be peace, but want and sickness will be unknown by all who obey Him. The Jews saw in Christ’s miracle of His feeding the poor with bread, the fulfillment of one prophecy (Psa. 132:15) respecting their promised king, and so desired there and then to place Him by force upon the throne (see John 6:15); while in the Lord’s healing all who were oppressed by the devil, and in His recovery of the sick, are witnesses of what His kingdom will be like. These “powers of the age to come,” or the coming age (Heb. 6:5), appealed to the Jew in a way the Gentile mind does not readily conceive. The earth and earth’s blessings were present to the heart of the devout Jew in connection with Jehovah’s promises to His people (Deut. 28:58-61), whom the Lord said should not suffer from the sicknesses of the heathen so long as they obeyed Him. The coming age, or the millennial age-the period of Christ’s reign over the earth will be one, in which the wonderful words of the Psalms and the prophets respecting an earth blessed by God, and man blessed upon it, will be fulfilled.
The New Testament refers to this age, but does not enlarge upon its blessings, for the New Testament teaches chiefly of heavenly things, and heaven rather than earth is the believer’s anticipation. But, speaking of the coming day, when the liberty of the glory of the children of God shall be enjoyed, the apostle tells us of the whole creation―not merely man, but the inferior animals, being brought into blessing. He thus describes the present, “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now;” and thus declares of the future, “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption.” (Rom. 8:21, 22.) God has a purpose to bless the earth in some manner, as was the case in paradise. (See Isa. 12:6, 7, 8.) In this present day, as there is in the nations within Christendom, a general cry for what is called humanity, that is, for the exercise of the uncontrolled will of the masses of men, it is well to have what God purposes respecting the future of the world before the mind. God will rebuke the will of men, and bring to naught the plans which even now are being developed for human exaltation. But since judgment is ever His strange work, He will establish the peaceful rule and the glorious kingdom so long promised, by setting His King upon His holy hill of Zion. The Christian should neither forget that God’s kingdom is at hand, nor fail to testify to the coming of the Lord to reign. Man is progressing towards he knows not what, but the Christian knows that it is to the bold, defiant repudiation of God and His Christ; and God is allowing man to shape out a state of things (of which He has spoken in ME word), and which He will overturn and judge when His Son comes again to the earth to take up the crown and the kingdom.