The Kingdom comes
God’s wrath will issue from His Temple.
I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour at once. (Isaiah 42:14)
There will be poured on the wicked, to an extent never before witnessed on the earth, the destructive vengeance of God. Statesmen, generals, the wealthy, the famous, the poor—all who have chosen the spirit of this age and have refused the Gospel of the Kingdom—will be destroyed at the coming of Christ and His army.
The rulers of the earth will attempt to resist the government from Heaven but all their efforts will be crushed. Finally they will throw down their weapons and cry out to the mountains and rocks to hide them from the Face of God and from the wrath of the Lamb (Revelation 6:16).
To no avail. They will be sought out and killed. Every person who resists Christ will be consumed by the fire of God’s judgement.
The thousand-year Kingdom Age will be a period of judgment, war, and liberation. It will result in the destruction of those who resist Christ but also in the building up of the saints of God and in deliverance and healing of the earth and its peoples.
The Millennium (thousand-year Kingdom Age) is the period of redemption and release—redemption and release by judgment, war, and then the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the earth. It is the time of the imposition of the power of the Holy Spirit on the Church and the nations such that the knowledge of the Glory of the Lord will fill the earth—the knowledge of the righteous Person and ways of God. This righteousness will be enforced with the rod of iron that characterizes the Kingdom Age reign of Christ and His saints.
In spite of the outpouring of blessing and praise that will cover the earth during the thousand-year Kingdom Age, the nations will be governed by a rod of iron. This is because the rebellion against God has gone so deep into the personality of mankind and has been of such long duration that it will not be purged from people in a moment.
In fact, after the Kingdom Age period of the rule of righteousness and the teaching of God’s ways throughout the earth, Satan still will be able to deceive the nations and lead them in revolt against the rule of God through Christ and the saints.
After the Battle of Armageddon, Satan will be bound and locked in the bottomless pit. The saints will stand with Christ upon the earth in transfiguration splendour. It may be a highly select company of saints, as we think about the fact that only three of the twelve disciples were present with the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration.
The Lord Jesus, who by then will have manifest all authority and power in Heaven and on the earth, will delegate portions of His authority and power to His faithful disciples. They will go out from his side to their appointed realms.
As soon as the victorious saints have been enthroned in their places as spiritual overseers, the Church will begin its ministry to the saved people of the earth—people who have been protected throughout the judgments of God on the workers of sin and rebellion.
The light of the Glory of God will be abiding on the saints. The nations of the earth will flow to the Church asking for the knowledge of God Almighty, the God who came down in thunderous wrath on the vileness that had grown in the cities of the world until they had become ten times worse than Sodom and Gomorrah.
As the Church begins to minister and teach, exercising the authority and power of the Kingdom of God, the Holy Spirit will commence His work of healing the people of the land. The ends of the earth will come, seeking the Lord. The Life that is in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Tree of Life, will be supplied through the saints so the nations of the saved can partake and live.
The ministry of the Church will increase, the nations becoming more and more obedient, until the Holy Spirit is as a mighty ocean of glory covering the earth. The destroyed areas of the earth will be rebuilt.
The saints will be called "restorers of paths to dwell in," "the seed that the Lord hath blessed" (Isaiah 58:12; 60:9).
The fiercest of animals will become harmless. Sickness and death will be removed. The wisdom and blessing of God will flow to all people as they receive His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus. The nations will believe in Christ because they will see Him in the saints (John 17:21-23). All rebellion will be put down under a rod of iron, the disciplining power of the Holy Spirit that will be exercised through Christ and His saints.
This era of judgment, deliverance, reconciliation, and healing will continue until the entire Church has been perfected and is ready for its installation on the new earth as the new Jerusalem, the Wife of the Lamb.
The Presence of the Holy Spirit will increase until the Glory of God is a broad river of Divine Life issuing from the believers (John 7:38). The destruction of the spirit of the current age, this Sodom and Egypt, this attempt to live on the earth without Christ, will be total. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon and through the fervent disciples of the Lord Jesus also will be total. "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (Romans 5:20).
The Church of Christ will be delivered from the power of sin and death and made ready for its ministry to the prisoners of the earth (Isaiah, Chapter 42). The thousand-year Kingdom Age will be an age of such joy and rejoicing in God that we Christians scarcely can visualize it in our most wonderful dreams.
In view of the events that are approaching the earth, the message of the Church to the unsaved is now and will continue to be until the Lord returns: "Flee from the wrath to come. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Be baptized in His name and you will be saved in the Day of Wrath. Enter the covenant now because terrible destruction is coming from the Lord."
All can be saved by accepting the blood of God’s Lamb, Christ. No person will be able to stand in the Day that is near unless he has accepted the protection of the blood of Jesus.