The short period of universal judgment which we have been considering cleanses the sphere of the kingdom from everything which offends, and them which do iniquity: and ends in the coming of the Son of man Himself with power and great glory, to execute the last blow of judgment; and to reign over the world during the continuance of the kingdom. When it is established, God will have accomplished in and under His Son, His counsels and purposes as to everything which had been put into the hands of the first Adam, and by Him defiled and destroyed.
We have seen the first Adam, innocent, and surrounded with blessing, failing: losing his place of dominion over the earth, and subjecting the creature to vanity by his fall. (Born. 8. 20.) Left to himself when fallen, and outside the center of good, he fills the earth with corruption and violence, and Satan usurps the place God should have had in his mind. Afterward the three great systems, set up in the world—the Jew under law, the Gentile without law, and entrusted with supreme power, and the Church under grace—each proving a failure where entrusted to men; I speak of the Church as a witness in the world, in the place of responsibility and testimony, not as the body of Christ in heaven.
In the days of the kingdom the last Adam will be there. In His own perfect, stainless manhood, He came and stood among the ruins of a lost world, and was confronted by Satan, who had obtained his power through the lusts of the first Adam when fallen. (Luke 4) He stood in His inheritance, and found the “kingdoms of this world and the glory of them” in the hands of Satan, sin-defiled and in ruins. He took it thus, with its load of sin and defilement. He foiled and vanquished Satan in the place of his power; bound the strong man, and then proceeded to spoil him of his goods. The prince of this world came, but had nothing in Him. He went down into the domain of “him that had the power of death, that is the devil” (Heb. 2) and through death He destroyed his power. In due time He will cast him out of the heavenlies with his angels (Rev. 12); and when he has for a short period consummated his stupendous wickedness, in the revived Latin Empire, and the Antichrist, He will bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit till the thousand years of the kingdom are ended, and then He will cast him into the lake of fire. When Christ was here, He exhibited the “powers of the world to come,” or of the kingdoms, casting out evil spirits and healing man. When that day shall be here, Satan shall be in the bottomless pit, and “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped: then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.” (Isa. 35)
The creature, which was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of man when he fell, groaning and travailing in pain, waiting for that day of its deliverance, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. We read in Gen. 3, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” But of the day of its regeneration, “instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree.” “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.” Again, the sentence pronounced upon Cain, “When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength,” shall be removed; for we read of the day when God shall cause His face to shine upon restored Israel, that “then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us; God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.” (Psa. 67)
The Jew, restored, will be the center of God's recognized government in the world under Christ. Supremacy over the Gentiles established in Him, who shall rise to reign over them; Jewish royalty restored to the house of David, and priesthood in its excellence and purity made good.
Men had attempted to form a name and a center, apart from God at Babel, and had been broken into nations and tongues. (Gen. 11) Israel was the nation with regard to which they had received their inheritance; it was proposed as the center of God's government in the world. (Deut. 32:8) It became unworthy of the trust; as we read of Jerusalem, “Thus saith the Lord God, This is Jerusalem; I have set it in the midst of the nations and the countries that are round about her. And she hath changed my judgments into wickedness more than the nations, and my statutes more than the countries that are round about her; for they have refused my judgments, and my statutes they have not walked in them.” (Ezek. 5:5, 6) And the Gentile king endeavored to make a religious unity apart from God. (Dan. 3) Many have been the centers of gathering proposed amongst men to reverse that sentence of scattering pronounced at Babel by God: and as many times have they failed—God has but One! “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” (Gen. 49:10.) When He came to Judah He was rejected. “Beauty and Bands” were broken (Zech. 11); and there was no gathering of the nations. Again His name was proposed as a center, when mercy rejoiced over judgment at Pentecost, and God in grace took occasion of tongues, the sign of judgment, to let the nations bear, each in the tongue wherein he was born, of the wonderful works and grace of God. But again, His center was refused, and there was no gathering of the nations, but of a people out of them for His name and for heaven, to which the center of gathering, refused on earth, had been removed. In the days of the kingdom, of which we speak, that which we find revealed in Gen. 28 to the wanderer Jacob in a dream, of a ladder connecting the heavens with the earth (God Himself doing in grace what man had assayed to do in self-will at Babel). We see a type of the days of the kingdom, when Christ (as John 1:51 informs us) will be this link of union between the heavens inhabited by the glorified saints, and the millennial earth, when the seed of Jacob, wanderers now on the face of the earth, without land or altar, “shall be as the dust of the earth;” and when God will have brought them again into their land, and have done all that He hath spoken of. (Gen. 28:15.) The seed of Jacob will then be the head and not the tail (Deut. 28:18); and “many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, In those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” (Zech. 8:23.)
Again, Jehovah had passed over Jordan before the tribes under Joshua, in their former days, by the title of “The Lord of all the earth” (Josh. 3); but when Israel ceased to be a witness to this title, and was set aside, and the dominion transferred to the Gentile king, God assumes the title of the “God of heaven,” as we have before seen, and retains such all through the “times of the Gentiles.” But during the introductive scene of judgment which we have considered, His claims as the “God of the earth,” are again proclaimed by His witnesses. (Rev. 11) He then assumes that title fully, and the substance of the Gentiles, who desired to have the world without God, is consecrated unto the “Lord of the whole earth.” (Mic. 4:13) “And the Lord shall be king over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one.” (Zech. 14:9; see also Isa. 54:5.)
Jerusalem—trodden down of the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled—will, at that day, be restored; when the “Redeemer shall have come to Zion.” (Isa. 59; Rom. 11) It will be said to her, “Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee; and the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about and see; all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side; the forces of the Gentiles shall come to thee, the multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the Lord. All the flocks of Kedar shall minister unto thee; they shall come with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory Thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish: yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted The sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas, thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations.... For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron; I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness, violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders: but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates praise.” See also Isa. 65 “Behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people; and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. . . . And they shall build houses, and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of my people: and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble! for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them.... the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.” (Isa. 65) Jerusalem, long forsaken of Jehovah, as the beginning of Ezekiel informs us, when His glory departed to heaven, and He transferred the sword to the Gentile, becomes again the dwelling place of His glory. Ezekiel, in view of her day of glory (chap. 40-44) describes the restored city and the sanctuary. We read in chapter 43:2-5, “And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east, and his voice was like the noise of many waters: and the earth shined with his glory. And it was according to the appearance of the vision which I saw, even according to the vision that I saw when I came to destroy the city and the glory of the Lord came into the house and, behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house.” And again, “The name of the city from that day shall be Jehovah-Shammah,” or “the Lord is there.” (Chap. 44) “At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord: and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem” (Jer. 3:17), and this in the day when Israel and Judah shall be one nation in the land.
Her people shall be all righteous, as we read, Isa. 4:3: “It shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is left among the living in Jerusalem.” And again, “Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hand, that I may be glorified.” (Isa. 60:21.) The law shall be written in their hearts. “After those days, saith the Lord I will put my laws in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jer. 31:33.)
The notions also shall all call upon the name of the Lord. When He has executed the judgment which delivers the remnant of His people, we read, “Then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent.” (Zeph. 3:9.) Again, “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.” (Psa. 22:27.)
The unconditional promises to the fathers will then be fulfilled in grace, and brought in, as we have seen, by judgment. Psa. 105 is prophetic of this, and offers thanksgiving to Jehovah, and calls upon, the seed of Abraham, and Jacob, to whom they had been made, to sing unto Him, and glory in His name. For “He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth. He hath remembered his covenant forever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations, which covenant be made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance.” (Ver. 7-11.) We may remember that in considering the past history of the nation we saw that these promises have never yet been fulfilled: the people having taken their inheritance under law-lost it. They will be made good to them in sovereign grace, and, as verse 7 declares, by judgment, evidencing most clearly their still future application.
The knowledge of the Lord and of His glory shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea and the throne of God, and His righteous government shall be known in the world. “Judgment will have returned to righteousness.” (Psa. 94:15.) And “righteousness and judgment shall be the habitation of his throne.” (Psa. 97:2.) Christ will be the Prince of this world, and Satan bound, who is its prince now. Obedience will be paid to His manifested power, and when this obedience is not observed, excision will be the result, which, if it takes place during the continuance of the kingdom, it will be recognized that it is by the judicial nets Of God's government; and all will go on peacefully and happily. Satan will not be there to act on men and tempt them to sin. We find the principles of Messiah's government in the land in Psa. 101-” A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person. Whoso privily slandereth his neighbor, him will I cut off; him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer. Mine eyes shall be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me ... He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house; he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight. I will early destroy all the wicked of the land; that I may cut off all the wicked doers from the city of the Lord.” We have excision the result of sin also in Isa. 65:20, where we read, “The sinner living an hundred years old shall be accursed,” that is, if cut off it will be recognized as excision for sin in the government of God. The kingdom of Israel will be the earthly center of the administration of God's government in the world. “He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment. . . He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. . . The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents and the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him. . . . There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon: and they of the city shall flourish like the grass of the earth. . . Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name forever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen.” (Psa. 72) Again, “Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. . . Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever.” (Isa. 32)
Thus far we have briefly seen the earthly blessings of the kingdom. We left the saints of the heavenlies, who had been received up at the coming of Christ to heaven, as well as those who had been martyred during the crisis of judgment which introduced the kingdom, seated on thrones at His manifestation, to reign with Him for a thousand years. Let us now look at the heavenly blessing of the kingdom. In Rev. 21:9; 22:5, we find a description of the millennial display of the heavenly Jerusalem to the world. The prophet sees her “descending,” (not descended; that she never does) out of heaven from God. What the saints should be in this day of trial lights in the world” (Phil. 2); the Church is in the heavenly places to the world in the day of glory, reflecting all the glories of God and of the Lamb; the seat of the heavenly administrative power of the kingdom (“know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?”); her heavenly character and position, and yet her connection with the millennial earth is revealed—clothed with divine glory, such as that of Him who sat upon the throne in chapter iv. Angels are the willing door-keepers of that secure city, which is the chief fruit of the travail of Christ's soul. It has the fullness in perfection of administrative power towards and over the world; twelve gates, for the gate was the place of judgment. The varied displays of God's nature, under the figure of precious stones, which shone in creation (Ezek. 28), and in grace, in the high priest's breastplate (Ex. 28), here shine in glory. The city and its street is formed in divine righteousness, of which gold is always the fitting emblem, and holiness of truth, “like unto clear glass.” The Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple and its light. The nations (spared through the judgments on earth) walk in the light of the celestial city, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor to it (never “into” it); they own that the heavenly kingdom now established, and the heavens themselves, are the source of blessing to the earth. “The Lord shall hear the heavens and they shall hear the earth;” and they own that “the heavens do rule” (Dan. 4:26.) No evil of man or Satan is there, and nothing enters in that defiles or makes a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. The river of God and the fruits of the tree of life are for the refreshing of the Lord's redeemed; no tree of responsibility is now there, but one tree, which is the tree of life, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations of the world. The city is the vessel of grace to the world at that day—grace characterizes her; as the royal supremacy of the restored earthly sanctuary, and city of Jerusalem, is ever preserved; for we read, “The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish.” (Isaiah 60:12.)
Thus we find all that has been ruined and defiled by the first Adam, made good in the day of the kingdom, in and under Christ. The three great systems set up by God, and destroyed by men, established in glory. The Jew in earthly supremacy and blessing; the Gentile subordinately blessed around, governed in righteousness, and the Church of God in the heavenly glory; the center of the administration of kingdom, and the vessel of grace to the world; the river of God. (Psa. 66) His stream of blessing, ever full of water, has ever been dried up in its outflow in this world, not as to its source, but as from time to time God formed a channel for the blessing in and towards the world; it has been corrupted, and He has been forced to remove the pure stream to other courses, ever intent upon the blessing of man; the channel having proved itself unworthy of the stream. In Eden it took its rise in the beginning when the dispensation proposed was one of earthly good, and it divided into four heads, to bear to the world the riches of such a dispensation. Soon, however, as we know, its channels became corrupted, and there was found no place for such blessing to flow, and so the sources were stopped, and channels obliterated by the waters of the flood.
Again, when Israel was redeemed, and God amongst them, the river took its rise in the rock which was smitten for His people in the wilderness. “They drank of that spiritual rock which followed them,” during the forty years' journey, till they were safe in the land. Then, in the daily and yearly round of feasts and gatherings to Jehovah, the people was refreshed with the waters of Shiloah, which ran softly amongst them—of the river “the streams whereof made glad the city of God.” (Psa. 46) But again the channels were corrupted, so that when He, who was their source, came to visit that one family, whom He knew of all the families of the earth (Amos 3:2), and whom He had chosen to form the objects of the outflow of the river of God, and to be its channel to the Gentile world, He found it had so corrupted itself that He could not own it or permit it to defile the stream; and so, again, the source was transferred to another place, and the world became fully, what it was to Him and what it has been ever since to His people, “a dry and thirsty land where no water is.” (Psa. 73)
The source was now to be the glorified Son of man in heaven; and the dispensation one of spiritual blessings in the heavenlies; and the channel of the blessing, His members on earth. We read in John 7, where the Lord passed by and could not own the channel (the yearly returning feasts), which had rendered itself unfit for the river of God: “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)” Faithless as His people have proved themselves in this dispensation, and much hindered as the stream has become, still it flows on and will never be exhausted or dried up. “He (the Holy Ghost) shall abide with you forever.”
But the day is coming when it will be not only a dispensation of spiritual blessings in heavenly places, but one of earthly good as well. When there will be one glory of the celestial, and another of the terrestrial. When all things, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, will be gathered together in Christ. When the Lord “will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel” (Hos. 2:21, 22), the seed of God. The river of God will then have a twofold source—in heavenly and earthly blessing, its source in the heavenly glory will be the heavenly Jerusalem—the Church of the glorified: “The pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeds out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb in the midst thereof.” (Rev. 22:1.) And the source of the earthly glory will be the sanctuary of the earthly Zion, when living waters will flow out of the restored Jerusalem, for the blessing of the Gentiles and of the millennial earth. “Behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward,” &c. (Ezek. 47; comp. also Joel 3:18, Zech. 14:8.) And Christ will be the true Melchisedec, a Priest on His throne; the link between the heavenly and the earthly glory. The true feast of tabernacles will be kept both by Israel and the Gentiles, but also by the saints in the heavenlies, after the harvest or ingathering, and the vintage of judgment, at the end of this age. “And it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations which come up against Jerusalem, shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.” And the nations that refuse to go up, will not partake of the refreshing streams of the river of God. The Lord hasten the day in His time.