Compare the three eras: Present Age: Lifespans of seventy to eighty years. Millennial Kingdom: Lifespans well beyond seventy to eighty years but sin, death, and curses exist. Eternal State: People live forever with no presence of sin, death, or curse. This understanding of Isaiah 65 is not recent. Christians of the Second Century viewed this passage as support for premillennialism.
He did not shy away from utilizing different passages from the Hebrew Bible to strengthen his argument in favor of a literal millennium. Second Example: Zechariah 14 Zechariah —17 also supports premillennialism.
It is predicted that Egypt and other nations will be punished with drought when they do not obey the Lord as they should vv. But it does not fit the eternal state either, because of the disobedience and rebellion against the Lord that is clearly present. According to premillennialists, these conditions of Zechariah 14 can only occur in an intermediate kingdom between the present age and the eternal state.
While people from all nations are being saved in the church age, the nations themselves do not obey our Lord see Psalm 2. In fact, they persecute those who belong to the Lord. In the millennial kingdom Jesus will rule the nations while He is physically present on earth. The nations will obey and submit to His rule, but as Zechariah 14 points out, whenever a nation does not act as they should there is punishment.
On the other hand, in the eternal state there will be absolutely no disobedience on the part of the nations. The picture of the nations in the eternal state is only positive. The kings of the nations bring their contributions to the New Jerusalem see Revelation and the leaves of the tree of life are said to be for the healing of the nations see Revelation Millennial Kingdom: Jesus rules the nations on earth and punishes those nations that do not act as they should.
Eternal State: The nations act exactly as they should with no need of punishment. Let the nomads of the desert bow before him, and his enemies lick the dust. Let the kings of Tarshish and of the islands bring presents; the kings of Sheba and Seba offer gifts.
And let all kings bow down before him, all nations serve him. For he will deliver the needy when he cries for help, the afflicted also, and him who has no helper. He will have compassion on the poor and needy, and the lives of the needy he will save. He will rescue their life from oppression and violence, and their blood will be precious in his sight.
This messianic psalm appears to go beyond the experience of Solomon to that of the coming Messiah. Again, conditions are described that cannot be harmonized with our present world or the final eternal state. To compare: Present Age: Messiah is not ruling over the entire earth. Millennial Kingdom: Messiah is ruling over the earth and there is still the presence of the poor and needy who need rescue. If the church has inherited the promises of Israel, then there is no need for a special kingdom for Israel and there is no need for a tribulation.
Therefore, there is also no need for a rapture prior to the tribulation! In short, the church has replaced Israel, and inherited all of its Old Testament prophetic promises. Consequently, there is no prophetic future for the nation of Israel.
This is unfortunate because this view cannot be supported by an objective, literal reading in scripture. One of the most difficult passages for the amillennialist is Romans For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery.
Romans NASB. Here the Holy Spirit tells us that a partial hardening of Israel will continue until the fullness of the Gentiles is complete. Luke says that this period of time started at least with the destruction of Jerusalem. This means that the hardening of Israel had a starting point and has an end point in the future. This will occur at the beginning of the tribulation.
After the period of partial hardening has ended, every Israelite that is alive will be saved. Their conclusion does not have any biblical support. The amillennialist does not believe that the kingdom is both spiritual and physical.
They believe it exists in the hearts of men and women only. They teach that when Jesus ascended into heaven, He sat down next to the Father and started reigning in heaven as king. So the kingdom exists today.
While this is true, it ignores the fact that the kingdom exists now in an invisible, spiritual sense, and it will exist in the future in a physical, literal sense. For example, several Old Testament passages declare that God is already a king of a kingdom. Here is one. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting, that I might not be delivered up to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.
Jesus was simply saying that His kingdom already existed. It was spiritual. If the kingdom already existed, why did Jesus offer the kingdom to the Jewish people when He started His ministry?
Was Jesus avoiding the question? The answer is that there is a spiritual kingdom for the saints of all the ages. There is also a future earthly kingdom for the Jewish people. That is what Jesus offered the Jews. They lost it because they rejected Jesus. They were real, literal kingdoms and not spiritual ones. Each successive kingdom followed the previous one. The amillennialist misses the point that the next kingdom, an alliance of ten nations, will also be a real, literal kingdom.
The last two kingdoms do not exist yet. They are yet future! The last point we want to explore is that the amillennialist does not interpret scripture literally. He or she changes the clear meaning of biblical passages to make them fit into the amillennial view of the future. When one uses symbolic interpretation as a primary means of understanding biblical passages, one can make scripture mean almost anything.
The amillennialist routinely spiritualizes key passages. They make them symbolic and ignore the context and clear literal meanings.
The books of Daniel and Revelation are filled with numbers. Yet, amillennialist or covenant theologians consider them to be symbolic.
And I saw an angel coming down from heaven. Revelation NASB. The amillennialist does not accept this passage literally and says that Satan is not bound but hindered. Here is a quote from a well known amillennialist, William Hendricksen. He is unable to prevent the extension of the Church among the nations.
By means of the preaching of the Word as applied by the Holy Spirit, the elect, from all parts of the world, are brought from darkness to light. In that sense the Church conquers the nations, and the nations do not conquer the Church. Within a comparatively brief period Christianity spreads throughout southern Europe.
During the centuries that followed it is proclaimed everywhere so that the ends of the earth hear the gospel of the crucified One and many bend the knee before Him. The church has become international. Only the individual who lacks the historic sense. The church exerts a tremendous influence upon almost the entire complex of human life. Some maintain that this binding took place at [start of the early church]. In that case the dark ages were part of the Millennium. Some assert that the binding took place at the conversion of Constantine.
But that was the beginning of all that has led to the corruption and apostasy in the church [The Roman Catholic Church has been a major force for evil in the world, especially during the Dark and Medieval periods]. Others hold that. Satan is bound now.
Such can never read newspapers, which teem with little else than the most awful evidences to the contrary, both in crimes in the world and of corruption in the church Bullinger, E. Amillennialists argue that Satan is already bound, since they believe we are in the millennium now.
Many postmillennialists and amillennialists believe that Satan is presently bound, because otherwise it is difficult to see how the church could usher in the millennium. But Satan did not keep the Gentile nations from the knowledge of the truth before his alleged binding at the Cross.
The Egyptians heard about the true God from Joseph, and from the Israelites. The Assyrians of Nineveh not only heard the truth from Jonah, but also repented Matt. Further, in what sense is Satan restrained from deceiving the nations in the present age, since he blinds the minds of unbelievers 2 Cor.
MacArthur, John. Revelation, Moody Press, p. We should also add that Satan motivates us to lie Acts He tries to take advantage of us 2 Corinthians He is an angel of light 2 Corinthians He attacks Christians Ephesians ; 2 Corinthians He hinders ministries 1 Thesselonians He tries to lead us astray 1 Timothy He is called the god of this world 2 Corinthians and he prowls about after us.
He is the ruler of this world John ; and he is the prince of the air Ephesians Satan is not hindered today! He is aggressively active.
When one spiritualizes scripture, one can come to almost any conclusion. He or she must explain them away, change the plain sense of the passage, ignore clearly defined symbolic explanations or spiritualize them. This is a great lesson for us. When we come to scripture, we must be careful to not change the meaning in order to make it mean what we want it to say.
We must be willing to change what we believe and not scripture. In conclusion, the kingdom is spiritual today and in the future, it will come to earth and be a literal, physical, 1, year kingdom. This has been a different study. It has not been our goal to insult or be unloving to those of another viewpoint. It has been our desire to provide you with some insights into other views and to accurately present what scripture says about each one.
God asks us to accurately interpret scripture and we trust that we have. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.
Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so. Acts NASB. Jeremiah Correct Kingdom View is Premillennialism and not Amillennialism.
T he first prophecy in Daniel was about a statue made of four different metals.
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