Announcer: Today on Let
the Bible Speak - We continue our series on
the kingdom of Christ today with a look at one of the most
popular doctrines of our time concerning the reign of Christ, will he come to Earth to
reign for a thousand years. That's next on Let
the Bible Speak. From the churches of Christ From the churches of ChristLet k Let the Bible Speak with Kevin Presley ♪ Intro Music ♪ And welcome, thank you
for joining us today. It's a privilege to be with you
and to have this opportunity to talk to you a little
while about the word of God. You know, I can hardly think
of a famous televangelist today who does not teach that
there is coming a rapture of the church and a period of tribulation then
upon the Earth, a great battle involving Christ, and then a literal period
of a thousand years when Christ will bodily
live here on the Earth and reign over all of the
nations until the end of time. You may have read books that
picture what will it supposedly be like when the church
is taken out of the world, and the unsaved are
quote left behind. Or you have heard the well
known preachers on television and radio warn that
the political events
of our day are part of a countdown in the Middle
East to the ultimate appearing of Jesus and the commencement
of his kingdom reign on Earth. You don't have to
look very far at all to find that doctrine espoused. There are many views
of eschatology today, but what I just described is
by far the most widely accepted and popular theory in what is often coined
evangelical Christianity. But it hasn't always been so. John Nelson Darby
from England was one of the early proponents
of this end time theory, and it was popularized in
America by C.I. Scofield, who published his famous and widely used Scofield
Reference Bible in 1909. And it was largely due
to the influence of he and his new study notes
that the doctrine known as dispensational
premillennialism began to cross denominational lines
and became the dominant theory among the evangelical community
concerning the end of time. Dwight L. Moody was an
incredibly influential preacher and was one of the early ones to embrace and preach
dispensationalism across America and
around the world. Now today, it's hard
to think of a popular and well known preacher who doesn't preach some
form of premillennialism. The theory hinges upon a
literalistic interpretation of prophecy, both
in the Old Testament and in the New Testament
book of Revelation. In fact, the major
proof text is found in Revelation 20
beginning in verse one. So let's read the first
10 verses together. The word of the Lord says, "And I saw an angel
come down from Heaven "having the key of
the bottomless pit "and a great chain in his hand. "And he laid hold on the
dragon, that old serpent, "which is called
the devil and Satan, "and bound him a thousand years, "and cast him into
the bottomless pit, "and shut him up and
set a seal upon him "that he should deceive
the nations no more "'til the thousand years
should be fulfilled. "And after that, he must
be loosed a little season. "And I saw thrones,
and they sat upon them, "and judgment was
given unto them. "And I saw the souls of
them that were beheaded "for the witness of Jesus
and for the word of God "and which had not worshiped
the beast neither his image "neither had received his
mark upon their foreheads "or in their hands, and
they lived and reigned "with Christ a thousand years. "But the rest of the
dead lived not again "until the thousand
years were finished. "This is the first resurrection. "Blessed and holy
is he that have part "in the first resurrection, "on such the second
death hath no power. "But they shall be priests
of God and of Christ "and shall reign with
him a thousand years. "And when the thousand
years are expired, "Satan shall be loosed
out of his prison "and shall go out to
deceive the nations, "which are in the four quarters
of the Earth Gog and Magog "to gather them
together to battle, "the number of whom is
as the sand of the sea. "And they went up on
the breadth of the Earth "and compassed the camp
of the saints about "and the beloved city, "and fire came down
from God out of Heaven "and devoured them. "And the devil that deceived
them was cast into the lake "of fire and brimstone where
the beast and the false prophet "are and shall be tormented day
and night forever and ever." And if correctly read,
so reads a great portion of Revelation the 20th chapter. And I wonder, is this passage teaching that
a millennial kingdom of Christ is yet to come
here on this Earth? Well we're gonna take that
topic up in our study today, so we hope you'll
stay with us for that. We'll be back in just a moment. - If you would like to dig
deeper into the Word of God I'd like to provide you
with a great opportunity to do that and it's free. Hope to hear from you today enrolling in our Bible
Correspondence Course. You don't need to feel
overwhelmed by the Bible. If you don't know how
to study the Bible or where to begin
in reading the Bible this course will help
get you on track. It will answer some
very, very important and fundamental
questions about the Bible and what the overall
message is about. When you enroll in the course we send out the first lesson. You take the time
to read through it and answer the questions,
you send it back to us, we'll check it and
send it back along with the next lesson
in the course. You do it in the
privacy of your home at your own pace and
again it is free. So let us hear from you today and we will enroll you in the
Bible Correspondence Course. Dispensational premillennialism
is based upon the idea that all of Earth's
history can be broken down into seven periods of time, beginning with the age of
innocence, then conscience, then human government, then
promise, then law, and so forth. And when we come to
the New Testament, we supposedly have the
dispensation of grace, otherwise known
as the church age, and we're waiting on the
final era of time to commence, and that is what
proponents of this doctrine call the kingdom
age, or dispensation. In other words, we're waiting
on the kingdom to come, it has not come yet. They tell us that Jesus came
to Earth 2,000 years ago preaching the kingdom. The problem is the
Jews rejected it, and since they rejected it, he delayed the kingdom
until a yet future time, and he instead
established the church, and we're living in that
era where we, as gentiles, can enjoy the blessings of God. But we're told that God
really has two plans. He has a plan for the gentiles, and that God still
has a plan in place to set up the Jewish
kingdom and reign over it from the city of Jerusalem. The theory says that when the
redemption of the gentiles is complete that the Lord will
secretly rapture the church out of the world, and that will be the beginning of a seven year period of
tribulation on the Earth. The anti-Christ will arise, darkness will reign
over the Earth, but at the end of
that seven years, Jesus will return
with his saints, and a great battle
will take place at the valley of Megiddo
in the Middle East. That Jesus will win the
battle, he'll bind the devil, and he will reign from Jerusalem over the whole Earth
for a thousand years. And at the end of that
literal 1,000 years, Satan will be loosed,
he'll unleash his fury, and try one last time
to get the upper hand, but the last judgment
of God will come. Satan and his forces will
be cast into Hell forever, and eternity will begin. Now, you've likely
heard some version of that scenario
many many times. But is it what
the Bible teaches? Many televangelists preach
that theory regularly. Many books that
you can buy in just about any religious bookstore
advance that theory. There was a series of books
written a number of years ago called the Left Behind series
that advocates that theory. But does that match what Jesus and his apostles said
about the Kingdom? Now if time permitted today, we could go through the theory of dispensational
premillennialism point by point, and we could look word by
word, phrase by phrase, and verse by verse
at Revelation 20 and learn a great great deal. But the whole argument
really comes down to a couple or three major
points of contention. So in our limited time,
we'll deal with those. Number one, how do we
interpret Bible prophecy, such as what we
have in Revelation? Is it to be read literally, or is it to be looked
at figuratively? Number two, are the Jews
still God's chosen people? Does God still have a plan
for the fleshly Jewish nation? And number three, what do
plainer passages in the Bible, non-symbolic or figurative
passages in the Bible, what do they say
about the kingdom? Now you see how we answer
those questions will tell us whether or not there's any
truth to premillennialism. So let's think about
these three questions. First, how are we to
interpret prophecy and specifically the
book of Revelation? Now many people,
including preachers, have a field day with the
Revelation given to John when he was on Patmos. And if you don't
consider the timeframe, style, and purpose of the book, well your imagination
can easily run wild. In the very first
verse of the book, it is called the Revelation, which comes from the
word apocalypses. That means an unveiling. It is the apocalypse, and it belongs to a
specific kind of literature that was popular leading
up to the first century among the Jews. Now there were many of
these types of writings. Some of them were
inspired and included in the Old Testament, such
as the book of Daniel. And then there were many uninspired apocalyptic
type writings. These were all visions
that were steeped in signs and symbols that were intended
to convey a greater message. Now don't lose sight
of that definition of this kind of literature. They were all one type
or another of a vision. They were all steeped in
symbolic language and signs that were intended to
convey a greater message. Now in the case of Revelation,
it was written in code, so to speak, in order to
smuggle a message of hope to the rest of the world
that its Roman persecutors would not be able to understand. And Revelation
signaled their victory over the crushing
forces of Earth. But if it had fallen
into the hands of the emperor and
the Roman authorities, well they would have
decimated the church for suggesting such a thing. So Revelation was written
in the symbolic language of an apocalypse that
Jews in the early church would be very familiar
with its language, its signs, its symbols. They would understand
it, but the Pagans, specifically the
Romans, would not. What that means is that
the specific prophecies of Revelation are not to
be seen as literal events, but rather as symbolic
of something else. Now how could a person
read the book of Revelation and not immediately recognize
that the things spoken are not literally what
they're pictured as, but that they
represent something? In the 20th chapter alone, where the proof for a
literal millennial kingdom is supposedly found, we read
several figures or symbols that virtually no
one takes literally. For example in verse two,
the devil is called a dragon. Well is he really a
dragon, or is that a figure that Jesus used to represent
the devil in their minds? It says in verse four that
those who were beheaded for Christ's sake
reigned with Christ. Well does that mean that if
a person was not martyred, and more specifically
by beheading, that they cannot be
part of Christ's reign? Well of course not,
that's a symbol. The dragon, the serpent,
the chain, the key, the bottomless pit, and
the numbers in Revelation, especially the
numbers that we find all throughout apocalyptic
type literature, they're all symbols
that are employed to draw a larger picture
for the persecuted church of the first century. 1,000, for example,
is not to be taken as a literal quantity any more
than 144,000 in chapter 14. Now the Jehovah's Witnesses try to make 144,000
a literal number. And some who argue with
them, it's very ironic, some who argue with them
over that then turn around and try to make Revelation 20 mean a literal 1,000
year reign on the Earth. The number 1,000 is likely
a symbol of completeness, and this reign of
Christ isn't talking about a literal
Earthly government, because Jesus said in
John chapter 18 verse 36, "My kingdom is not
of this world." It's not like Earthly kingdoms. It doesn't have the
characteristics of
an Earthly kingdom. Didn't originate
with this world, and it's not headquartered
here in this world. Revelation 20 is simply talking about the unfettered
spread of the gospel. And as long as the gospel exists and is preached in this world, you see Satan has no
power over your heart and mind that you
don't give him. That is a critical point. As long as the gospel exists
and is preached in this world, Satan has no power over
your heart and mind that you do not
surrender to him. There is no excuse
for being deceived as long as we have access
to the word of God. Now there may come a time, and it seems this may be
what John is talking about when he says that Satan will
be loosed for a short season, when faith will virtually
vanish from the Earth, but this is all
symbolically referring to the Christ's mastery
over sin and evil through the reality and
availability of redemption to the whole world who will
turn to Jesus and be saved. And so I hope that if you did
not see our last two studies about the nature of the
kingdom and the timing of the kingdom that you'll
go back and review those. Look them up on our website
or order the transcripts and study those, because
it's critical to understand that in view of
Revelation chapter 20. So number one, prophecies
like Revelation are written in symbolic,
not literal, language. The premillennial
theory about the kingdom requires a literal reading and
interpretation of Revelation. But number two, are the Jews
still God's chosen people? Now you know that's really
the crux of the matter. What dispensational
premillennialism suggests is that God has two
different plans or programs for two different
groups of people. The promises made to Abraham
in Genesis and later expanded to David in Second Samuel, those are physical promises
for the racial Jews or the Jewish nation, and then the church in this
age has received other promises from God that are spiritual,
so says the dispensationalists. So God is supposedly
working these two plans, one for the church,
one for the Jews. And this church age
that we're living in is sort of like a
parenthesis in God's plan. The church is a stopgap
measure that came about after the Jews rejected
Jesus and is here until Jesus comes and fulfills the plan
pertaining to the Jews. And premillennialism
says that God will deal with the
Jews in the millennium, that when Jesus comes
and sets up his kingdom, the Jews will finally have all of the promises of
Abraham fulfilled, and the Old Testament system
of worship will be resumed and the temple reestablished, and even animal sacrifices will
be resurrected in Jerusalem during this purported
era to come. That's really what
the pure doctrine of dispensational
premillennialism says. Well a few things about that. First of all, according
to the Old Testament, all of God's promises to
Israel were fulfilled. The nation promise
was fulfilled. God made them a nation. The land promise was fulfilled. God brought them into the
land that was promised. Solomon reigned over
all of the promised land according to First Kings
chapter four in verse 21. The seed promise was fulfilled in the birth of Jesus
through their lineage. So you see, none of God's
promises were left unfulfilled. But we should also remember
that their enjoyment of God's promises to
Abraham was conditional, and all of God's promises
to us are conditional. Premillennialism says the
promises were unconditional, that despite the
Jews' rejection of God that he will still fulfill
all of the promises made thousands of years ago. But friend, God placed
conditions on those promises, such as the promise
to give them a land, conditions that ancient
Israel did not keep. Deuteronomy 28 in
verse 63 says that "it shall come to pass
that as the Lord rejoiced "over you to do you good
and to multiply you, "so the Lord will rejoice
over you to destroy you "and to bring you to not, "and ye shall be plucked
from off the land "wither though goest
to possess it." You see, the promise of
the land was conditional. According to Second Chronicles
36 verses 14 through 17, they did in fact lose the land, because they didn't
obey the Lord. Now they had a kingdom,
the Jews had a kingdom, and they lost it. And not only is
there no prophecy of a Jewish kingdom to be
found in the New Testament, the Bible teaches that
upon God casting them off as his people that the promises were given to the
new Israel instead. And thus we read in Galatians
three beginning in verse 26, what is this new Israel? What is the new Israel as
compared to the old Israel? Well listen to Paul. He says, "For ye are all
the children of God "by faith in Christ Jesus. "For as many of you
as have been baptized "into Christ have put on Christ. "There is neither Jew nor Greek. "There is neither bond nor free. "There is neither
male nor female. "For ye are all one
in Christ Jesus, "and if ye be Christ,
then are ye Abraham's seed "and heirs according
to the promise." well there you have it. Now preachers may try
to explain it away, but friend that's
what your Bible says. There is no such thing in God's
sight as a Jew or a gentile. We are all one in Christ
Jesus in this era of time, that is those who
are in Christ Jesus by being baptized
into Christ Jesus. Now number three, the
whole debate boils down to what we studied in our
last two times together. When did the kingdom come,
and what is the kingdom? Is the kingdom yet to come, or are we in the church
age and still waiting on the kingdom as the
premillennialist alleges? Is the kingdom a literal
Earthly kingdom to come, or is Christ reigning in
the hearts of his subjects from the right
hand of God today? Well let's quickly
notice these comparisons. Number one, Christ is
the head of the church, Ephesians chapter
one in verse 22. And Paul says that he
is king in his kingdom, Colossians one in verse 23. He's head of the church
and king in his kingdom. Both depict authority. Number two, one is
baptized into the church, according to First
Corinthians 12 and 13, but also one is baptized
into the kingdom, John chapter three
in verse five. Number three, the church is
an everlasting institution, Ephesians three in verse 21. Daniel said the kingdom would
be an everlasting kingdom, Daniel two in verse 44. Number four, the church is
identified with the washing of regeneration in Titus
three in verse five. Yet the kingdom of God is
identified with the times of regeneration in
Matthew 19 in verse 28. The communion is observed in
the church until he comes, Paul said in First
Corinthians 11 verse 26. And yet Jesus said the
communion was to be observed in the kingdom, Luke
22, 29 through 30. So it's observed in the kingdom. Jesus said it would be observed in the church until he comes. If he doesn't, if the
kingdom doesn't come until Christ comes, then you
have a contradiction there. Number six, the
parables of Matthew 13 have long been understood
to refer to the church. But all seven of those parables are said to pertain to
the kingdom of Heaven. Number seven, the parables,
or rather the church, was established in the
lifetime of the apostles when they received power
from the Holy Spirit, according to Acts chapter two. And yet Jesus said the
kingdom of God would come in the disciples'
lifetimes with power, Mark chapter nine in verse one. And finally, the church of
Christ is called the Israel of God in Galatians
six in verse 16, and then the kingdom
is also referred to as that same Israel of God
in Matthew 19 and verse 28. Well that all tells us the
kingdom of God has come. It is a spiritual reign now. As long as the gospel
is preached and
obeyed in this world, and listen friend,
premillennialism says that Jesus will take up his reign when
he comes back to Earth. But Paul said when Jesus returns and the resurrection
takes place, he'll lay down his rule
and deliver up the kingdom to God the Father who
shall then be all in all, First Corinthians 15
verses 22 though 24. Friend, the doctrine of
dispensational premillennialism is an imaginative doctrine
that does not square with the plain
teachings of the Bible concerning King Jesus
and his kingdom. Won't you enter the
kingdom of God today by obedience to the
gospel of the Lord Jesus. - If you would like to dig
deeper into the Word of God I'd like to provide you
with a great opportunity to do that and it's free. Hope to hear from you today enrolling in our Bible
Correspondence Course. You don't need to feel
overwhelmed by the Bible. If you don't know how
to study the Bible or where to begin
in reading the Bible this course will help
get you on track. It will answer some
very, very important and fundamental
questions about the Bible and what the overall
message is about. When you enroll in the course we send out the first lesson. You take the time
to read through it and answer the questions,
you send it back to us, we'll check it and
send it back along with the next lesson
in the course. You do it in the
privacy of your home at your own pace and
again it is free. So let us hear from you today and we will enroll you in the
Bible Correspondence Course. Well in our series
on the kingdom, we've talked about the kingdom
and how it is already come to Earth, what the kingdom is,
the nature of that kingdom. And we have, from the Bible, dispelled the notion of a
literal millennial kingdom that is predicted to
come to Earth one day when Jesus comes again. If you would like transcripts
of this series of lessons, we'd be happy to send
them to you free of cost. We'll be happy to send them
to you, just let us hear from you and request the series
on the kingdom of Christ. Or if you want this
particular lesson alone, then ask for the lesson Is a
Millennial Kingdom Coming?, and it will be on its way. All of our materials
here are free. We don't harangue you for money. In fact, we never ask for money
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Lord will bless you as you seek to know
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