2A-True Christians preparing for the millennium -BestBiblesPlus.htm--Jesus’Main Message WheatOrWeeds.htm
THE TEACHING OF JESUS +(1) Parable of the Wheat and Tares (2) Parable of the Pounds
His disciples
touching their mission-The
Teaching of Jesus- Matthew
28:19, 20; Mark 16:15;
Luke 24:46-48; Acts 1:8 CROSS
REFERENCES: Acts 2:1-4 Luke 24:48; John 15:27 Acts 8:1,5,14 Romans 10:18; Colossians 1:23
The Millennium Not before the
Advent-The Plus
more-ChristianitySimplified.htm-2Tim3-16-17.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
(MILLENNIUM, PREMILLENNIAL
VIEW)
Start— Jesus’ Disciples--They were to be His witnesses and
carry His message to the race, but He does not promise the race will
receive their testimony, or that men will generally accept His salvation. On
the contrary, He explicitly forewarns them that they shall be hated of all men,
that sufferings and persecutions shall be their lot, but
if they are faithful to the end their reward will be glorious. But
world-wide evangelism does not mean world-wide conversion. The universal offer
of salvation does not pledge its universal acceptance. In His instructions and
predictions the Lord does not let fall a hint that their world-wide mission
will result in world-wide conversion, or that thereby
the longed-for Millennium will be ushered in. But there is a time to come when
the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters the sea, when
teaching shall no longer be needed, for all shall know Him from the least to
the greatest. Our dispensation, accordingly, cannot be the last, for the
effects stated in that are not contemplated in the instructions and the results
of this. To the direct revelation of Christ on the subject we now turn. In two
parables He explicitly announces the general character and the consummation of
the gospel age, and these we are briefly to examine.
(1)
Parable of the Wheat and Tares (Matthew
Happily
we are not left to discover the meaning and scope of this parable. We enjoy the
immense advantage of having our Lord's own interpretation of it. Out of His
Divine explanation certain most important facts emerge:
(a)
The parable covers the whole period between the first and second advents of the
Saviour. The Sower is
Christ Himself. He began the good work; He opened the new era.
(b)
The field is the world. Christ's work is no longer confined to a single nation
or people as once; it contemplates the entire race.
(c)
His people, the redeemed, begotten by His word and Spirit, are the good seed.
Through them the gospel of His grace is to be propagated throughout the whole
world.
(d)
The devil is also a sower. He is the foul
counterfeiter of God 's work. He sowed the tares, the
sons of the evil one.
(e)
The tares are not wicked men in general, but a particular class of wicked
brought into close and contaminating association with the children of God.
"Within the territory of the visible church the tares are deposited"
(Dr. David Brown). It is the corruption of Christendom that is meant, a
gigantic fact to which we cannot shut our eyes.
(f)
The mischief, once done, cannot be corrected. "Let both grow together
until the harvest." Christendom once corrupted remains so to the end.
(g)
The harvest is the consummation of the age. This is the culmination of our age;
it terminates with the advent and judgment of the Son of God. He will send
forth His angels who will "gather out of his kingdom all things that cause
stumbling, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast
them into the furnace of fire ..... Then shall the righteous
shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
Here,
then, we have the beginning, progress and consummation of our age. Christ
Himself introduced it, and it was distinguished for its purity and its
excellence. But the glorious system of truth was soon marred by the cunning
craftiness of Satan. No after-vigilance or earnestness on the part of the
servants could repair the fatal damage. They were forbidden to attempt the
removal of the tares, for by so doing they would endanger the good grain, so
intermixed had the two become! The expulsion of the tares is left for angels'
hands in the day of the harvest. This is our Lord's picture of our age:
a Zizanian field wherein good and bad,
children of God and children of the evil one, live side by side down to the
harvest which is the end. In spite of all efforts to correct and reform, the
corruption of Christendom remains, nay, grows apace. To expel the vast crop of
false doctrine, false professors, false teachers, is now as it has been for
centuries an impossibility. Christ's solemn words hold
down to the final consummation, "Let both grow together until the
harvest." In such conditions a millennium of universal righteousness and
knowledge of the Lord seems impossible until the separation takes place at the
harvest. For More Open and Study The-WheatOrWeeds.htm
(2)
Parable of the Pounds (Luke
Jesus
was on His last journey to
The
order and sequence of events as traced by the Lord disclose the same fact made
prominent in the parable of the Wheat and Tares, namely, that during the whole
period between His ascension and His return there is no place for a Millennium
of world-wide righteousness and prosperity. But Scripture warrants the belief
that such blessedness is surely to fill the earth, and if so, it must be
realized after Christ's second coming.
II.
Teaching of the Apostles.
1.
Expectation of the Advent:
There
is no unmistakable evidence that the apostles expected a thousand years of
prosperity and peace during Christ's absence in heaven. In Acts 1:11 we read that the
heavenly visitants said to the apostles, "Ye men of
"Be
ye also patient; establish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord is at
hand" (5:8). Peter exhorts to all holy conversation and godliness by the
like motive: "Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God"
(2 Peter 3:12
margin). Amid the deepening gloom and the gathering storms of the last days, Jude 1:14 cheers us with
the words of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, `Behold, the
Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon .... the ungodly.' John closes the Canon with the majestic words,
"Behold, he cometh with the clouds,"
"Behold, I come quickly." These men, speaking by the Spirit of the
living God, know there can be no reign of universal righteousness, no
deliverance of groaning creation, no redemption of the body, no binding of
Satan, and no Millennium while the tares grow side by side with the wheat;
while the ungodly world flings its defiant shout after the retiring nobleman,
"We will not have this man to reign over us"; and while Satan, that
strong, fierce spirit, loose in this age, deceives, leads captive, devours and
ruins as he lists. Therefore the passionate longing and the assurance of
nearing deliverance at the coming of Christ fill so large a place in the faith
and the life of the primitive disciples.
2.
Possibility of Survival--Its Implications:
In
1 Thessalonians 4:17
Paul speaks of himself and others who may survive till the Lord's coming:
"Then
we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air" (compare 1 Corinthians 15:51,52).
This
implies fairly that the apostle did not know that long ages would elapse
between his own day and Christ's advent. There was to his mind the possibility
of His coming in his lifetime; in fact, he seems to have an expectation that he
would not pass through the gates of death at all, that he would live to see the
Lord in His glorious return, for the day and the hour of the advent is
absolutely concealed even from inspired men. The inference is perfectly
legitimate that Paul and his fellow-disciples did not anticipate that a
thousand years should intervene between them and the coming.
3.
Prophecy of the "Man of Sin":
Furthermore,
the Thessalonians had fallen into a serious mistake (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2).
By a false spirit, or by a forged epistle as from Paul, they were led to
believe that "the day of the Lord is now present" (English Revised
Version), 2 Thessalonians
2:2. The apostle sets them right about this solemn matter. He assures them
that some things must precede that day, namely, "the falling away,"
or apostasy, and the appearing of a powerful adversary, whom he calls "the
Man of Sin," and describes as "the Son of Perdition." Neither
the one nor the other of these two, the apostasy and the Man of Sin, was then
present. But the road was fast getting ready for them. There was the
"mystery of lawlessness" already at work at the time, and although a
certain restraint held it in check, nevertheless when the check was removed it
would at once precipitate the apostasy, and it would issue in the advent of the
Man of Sin, and he should be brought to nought by the
personal coming of Jesus Christ. This appears to be the import of the passage.
Here
was the appropriate place to settle forever for these saints and for all others
the question of a long period to intervene before the Saviour's
advent. How easy and natural it would have been for Paul to write,
"Brethren, there is to be first a time of universal blessedness for the
world, the Millennium, and after that there will be an apostasy and the
revelation of the Man of Sin whom Christ will destroy by the brightness of His
coming." But Paul intimated nothing of the sort. Instead, he distinctly
says that the mystery of lawlessness is already working, that it will issue in
"the falling away," and then shall appear the great adversary, the
Lawless One, who shall meet his doom by the advent of Christ. The mystery of
lawlessness, however, is held in restraint, we are told. May it not be possible
that the check shall be taken off, then the Millennium succeed, and after that
the apostasy and the Son of Perdition? No, for its removal is immediately
followed by the coming of the great foe, the Antichrist. For this foe has both an apocalypse and a parousia
like Christ Himself. Hence, the lifting of the restraint is sudden, by no means
a prolonged process.
4.
No Room for Millennium:
The
apostle speaks of the commencement, progress, and close of a certain period. It
had commenced when he wrote. Its close is at the coming of Christ. What
intervenes? The continuance of the evil secretly at work in the body of
professing Christians, and its progress from the incipient state to the
maturity of daring wickedness which will be exhibited in the Man of Sin. This
condition of things fills up the whole period, if we accept Paul's teaching as
that of inspired truth. There appears to be no place for a Millennium within
the limits which the apostle here sets. The only escape from this conclusion,
as it seems to us, is, to deny that the coming of Christ is His actual,
personal second coming. But the two words, epiphaneia
and parousia, which
elsewhere are used separately to denote His advent, are here employed to give
"graphic vividness" and certainty to the event, and hence, they
peremptorily forbid a figurative interpretation. The conclusion seems
unavoidable that there can be no Millennium on this side of the advent of
Christ.
5.
Harmony of Christ and Apostles:
Our Lord's Olivet prophecy (Matthew 24; 25; Mark 13; Luke 21) accords fully with
the teaching of the apostles on the subject. In that discourse He foretells
wars, commotions among the nations,
These
are some of the grounds on which Biblical students known as Premillennialists
rest their belief touching the coming of the Lord and the Millennial
reign.
LITERATURE.
Premillenarian:
H.
Bonar, The Coming of the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus; Wood, The Last Things;
Guinness, The Approaching End of the Age; Seiss, The
Last Times; Gordon, Ecce Venit; Premillennial
Essays; Peters, The Theocratic Kingdom; West, The Thousand Years in Both
Testaments; Trotter, Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects; Brookes, Maranatha; Andrews, Christianity and Antichristianity;
Kellogg, Predition and Fulfillment.
William
G. Moorehead
Millennium, premillennial view-Millennium,
postmillennial view and
II.
TEACHING OF THE APOSTLES
1.
Expectation of the Advent
2.
Possibility of Survival--Its Implications
3.
Prophecy of "Man of Sin"
4.
No Room for Millennium
5.
Harmony of Christ and Apostles
LITERATURE
Divergent
Views--Scope of Article:
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International Standard Bible Encyclopedia--Introduction
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great majority of evangelical Christians believe that the
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