Turning Point - David Jeremiah

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Wishing for world peace with man's long history of conflict,
don't hold your breath, at least not till Christ returns Today.
On turning point, doctor David Jeremiah sheds light on the
period of peace called the millennium, which begins immediately upon
the second coming of Christ. What will life be like

(00:26):
during that time? Listen as David introduces his message the
thousand year reign of Christ.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
And that is a subject that most people have omitted
from their study of the future. Interesting thought. Dwight Pentecost,
who was one of my teachers in seminary years ago,
one setting class that there's more information in the Bible
about the millennium than there is about any other event,
including the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the second Coming of Christ.

(00:52):
I was surprised when I heard that, and wasn't really
sure how to go about discovering it. But I did.
I studied it, and I found out that throughout all
the Old Testament and many places in the New there's
this truth about the coming Golden Age. I was so
impressed by it, I wrote a whole book about it,
called The Coming Golden Age. It came out last year,
and many you have read it and know that it's

(01:13):
about the millennium. Some people have said the millennium is
the overture to heaven, for in the thousand year reign
of Christ on the earth, we get a glimpse of
what it will be like forever when we are in
heaven and sin is banished, and Satan is banished, and
we live in a perfect environment with our Savior of
the Lord, Jesus Christ. But I want to give you

(01:34):
just a little bit of an understanding of this truth
as we study the first ten verses of Revelation twenty.
It's one of the central passages on the subject, and
we'll get into it in just a moment. So stay
with us as we delve into this interesting discussion. Friends.
We're going to New England and Canada in October, and
I love telling you about it. We'll be sailing on

(01:56):
board Hall in America Zyderdam, a beautiful ship. Yessico team
will be together. We'll have a wonderful time seeing the sights.
We live on the other end of the country, but
this part of the country is beautiful and I've been
there a couple of times. In fact, I'll never forget
I went on a cruise to New England and Canada

(02:16):
the week after nine to eleven, and half of the
people that were supposed to be on the ship didn't
show up. It was really eerie, but I still saw
all the sites, and hopefully this time will be joined
by many of you who want to come and join
us as we see the beautiful sites of New England
and Canada. Find out more about it at David Jeremiah
dot org and be one of those who join us.

(02:38):
We have a great group already signed up, but there's
room for you. I hope you'll come and be with us,
all right. This is part one of the thousand year
Reign of Christ from Revelation chapter twenty and from the
series Escape The Coming Night. Man has hoped that someday
there would come a period of time when there would

(02:59):
be peace and prosperity, when nations would no longer be
in conflict with each other, when disease would be under control,
when racial tension would be abated and political furor would
be gone. Man has looked for such an age, and
politicians have thought to advance their own fortunes by promising

(03:22):
it on occasion, but alas the Golden Age never comes,
and we have our hopes dashed upon the wars and
the terrible destruction of our day. Here in the twentieth
chapter of the Book of Revelation we find the only
occurrence of the concept of the millennium in the New Testament.

(03:46):
The word itself refers to a period of time one
thousand years in length. Verse four of the twentieth chapter says,
and they lived and they reigned with Christ a thousand years.
In the first seven verses of the Book of Revelation
and the twentieth chapter, John mentions the thousand year period

(04:07):
no less than six times. In spite of some who
have argued that since this number is found in only
one New Testament passage, you cannot insist that the thousand
year period will really come to pass, they say, because
it's only found here. Sometimes they take you to Second

(04:28):
Peter three to eight, and they say, one day is
with the Lord is one thousand years, and a thousand
years is one day. And they say that, surely isn't
a literal period of time.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
The thousand years of Revelation twenty Maybe that's figurative, just
like two Peter's thousand years is figurative. It is interesting
as someone has pointed out to note that the same
group that attempts to shorten the thousand year period of
Revelation to one day and thus do away with the
entire millennium, is the same group that wants to expand

(04:57):
the six days of creation in Genesis to thousands of
years so that they can provide for their evolutionary hypothesis.
One is tempted to ask these people, why don't you
just take the Bible as it comes and understand what
it means, because it's plain God says it's a thousand years,
and in Genesis God says it's one day. And one

(05:18):
day and one thousand years do not equate in those
two references. In the First and last book of the Bible,
doctor Renee Pash writes the following helpful words about all
of this. He said, let us notice again this fact.
The teaching of the Old Testament concerning the millennium is
so complete that the Jews in the Talmud succeeded in

(05:41):
developing it entirely by themselves. They did not even possess
the gifts furnished by the New Testament. They did not
have Revelation chapter twenty, for example. They affirmed before Revelation
was ever written that the Messianic kingdom would last one
thousand years. One should not therefore or claim, as some
have done, said Pash, that without the famous passage in

(06:04):
Revelation twenty, the doctrine of the millennium would not exist.
He said, the Jews of the Old Testament studied the
Old Testament scriptures, and they were able to put together
the kingdom age that we study here in the twentieth chapter,
without even having the New Testament. And they believed with
all of their hearts that Christ was coming someday to
set up his kingdom, that it would last for a

(06:24):
thousand years. Now, the kingdom in the Bible is called
by a lot of different things. The millennium is sometimes
called the Kingdom of Heaven. Sometimes it's called the Kingdom
of God. Sometimes it's referred to as the Kingdom of Christ.
Sometimes it's called the Times of Restitution or the Times
of refreshing, or the fullness of Times, or Hebrews two

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five calls it the world to Come. The millennium is
a period of one thousand years, and it falls in
this chapter. In the following context, we are told that
Satan is bound and sealed in the bottomless pit for
this one thousand year period of time. That's why there's
such a great period of prosperity and peace and joy

(07:09):
upon this earth. Satan is taken out of the picture.
He is concealed in the bottomless pit for the thousand
year period of time. And the Bible says, as we
read that John saw a group of people sitting upon thrones,
and judgment was given to them, and the souls of
them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus. And
those who had not worshiped the beast nor his image,

(07:31):
neither had received his mark on their foreheads or in
their hands. These people, says John, lived and reigned with
Christ for a thousand years. This is the first Resurrection.
The first resurrection of the believers takes place before the millennium.
The second Death has no power over them according to
the scripture. That means they can never be consigned to

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be separated from God forever. The partakers of the Second
Resurrection do not live until after the millennium. In other words,
there's a thousand years between the resurrection of the saved
dead and the resurrection of the unsaved dead. We don't
all get resurrected at once and then walk down two corridors.
When we stand before God at the end of a

(08:12):
thousand year period of time, the second resurrection takes place,
and that's the resurrection of all those who are not saved,
who will stand before the white throne judgment of God.
Then the Bible tells us that Satan is going to
be loosed after the thousand years for a little period
of time, and the rebellion of Gog and Maygog, which
we have talked about occasionally inspired by Satan, follows the millennium.

(08:37):
This passage, the first seven verses of Revelation twenty, is
a very important passage because it alone in the New
Testament tells us about the one thousand year period of
time immediately after the Tribulation when Jesus Christ will set
up his rule and he will reign upon this earth. Now,
if you've been with us through the study, you know
that the events are as follows. The next event on

(08:59):
the prophetic cas is the rapture of the Church, when
all those who are alive who trust Jesus Christ as
their savior, as well as those who have gone in
the grave as believers, will be caught up together to
be with the Lord, and so shall we ever be
with the Lord. Immediately after the rapture, the tribulation period
begins on this earth, and for seven years the Holocaust

(09:22):
continues until ultimately, at the end of a seven year
period of time, we come to the Battle of Armageddon,
and Jesus Christ comes back from heaven, this time not
for his saints, but with his saints, and he fights
against the armies of the nations of this planet, and
with the word of his mouth, they are all defeated.
And immediately upon the defeat of the nations of this world,

(09:46):
he sets up his kingdom upon the earth, and he reigns,
and he rules for one thousand years, and the Bible
says that we shall rule and reign with him as
his co regents, his vice regents upon the Earth. Now,
it is no secret if you've ever studied any theology
at all, that Revelation Chapter twenty is a very crucial

(10:08):
passage in the New Testament, because it is the battleground
for many who have debated the future calendar of events.
Without going into much detail, I need to tell you
that there are basically three views about this period of
time called the millennium. There are those who, at least

(10:29):
in years past, taught and believed what is called post
millennialism that was the golden age of peace being ushered
in by the witness of the church. The idea was
that we could bring in the Kingdom, that we could
go out and preach the Gospel and clean up the
world and get it fit so that ultimately, through our

(10:51):
work as evangelists and preachers and Godly influence and salt
and light, we could bring in the Kingdom, and therefore
we would still be here when the Kingdom took place,
we would usher in the Kingdom of God by our
own work. That theory says that through the preaching of
the Gospel, the world will eventually embrace Christianity and become

(11:12):
a universal society of saints. At this point, Christ will
then be invited to assume command and reign over the
peaceful planet that all of God's children have brought into being. Thus,
postmillennialists believe in a literal thousand year reign. But they
are wrong, I believe, because they teach that the world

(11:34):
situation is going to become better and better until the
Kingdom is brought in and the scripture teaches the exact
opposite of that. The scripture teaches that things are not
going to get better and better, but they're going to
get worse and worse, and that the days just before
the return of Christ will be the most awful days
the world has ever seen. It is interesting that this

(11:57):
position of postmillennialism was thought up. It was the brainchild
of a Unitarian minister whose name was Daniel Whitby. He
lived in the latter part of the sixteen hundreds and
the early part of the seventeen hundreds, and it was
a theory that flourished until the early part of the
twentieth century. And you know what happened that kicked it

(12:18):
into reverse World War One. When World War One came,
the post millennials began to ask themselves some questions. If
we're bringing in the kingdom, it seems like we're not
going in the right direction. World War One was over,
and though men wondered, the post millennial theory was still
alive until World War II came and it was quietly

(12:42):
laid to rest. As someone has written amid Hitler's gas Ovens.
During the Second World War, one man has written today
a post millennialist is harder to find than a nineteen
forty Wendel Wilkie button. So there aren't too many post
millennials around who believe the world's getting better and better
until we finally see all the characteristics of the kingdom

(13:04):
here on this earth. There are another group of folks
who are called a millennialists, but it's very simple. The
word ah. The A in front of a word negates
its meaning, So an ah millennialist is somebody who doesn't
believe there's a millennium at all. And basically, the ammillennialists

(13:24):
fall into a camp that says there is no thousand
year reign at all, and they teach that the New
Testament Church is the inheritor of all of the Old
Testament blessings concerning the millennium. In this view, for instance,
when Isaiah the prophet says that the bear and the
cow will lie down together and the lion will eat

(13:44):
straw like the ox an, a'm millennialist says that means something,
but they don't know what. But it doesn't mean what
it says because it has no meaning in the church. However,
if you're going to take the eleventh chapter of Isaiah
and say you can't take that. Look, then, how do
you know you can take Isaiah fifty three literally? How
do you know that you can understand any of the

(14:05):
Old Testament in a literal fashion? The allmillennialists have taken
all the promises that were given to the Kingdom age
and they have dumped them all in the Church age.
And if you read the Old Testament prophecies, especially Isaiah,
you will quickly come to the conclusion that if that's
happening now, it must be in some other church, because
you're not happening in the one I know we are

(14:27):
not in the Kingdom in the Church. The third view,
which is the one we embrace and the one that
we have in our doctrinal statement in position, says that
Christ will return just prior to the millennium. He will
personally rule during the glorious thousand year reign. And this
is the scriptural position. I believe it is the oldest

(14:47):
of the three views, and from the Apostolic period in
the New Testament on the pre millennial position was held
by the early Church fathers. Until this day, evangelicals have
buy and life large embraced premillennialism. Now, there are many
evangelicals who fall into the amil camp, and we don't
break fellowship with them, but we understand the dangers in

(15:10):
an allegorical interpretation of the Word of God. Now, with
our Bibles open to the twentieth chapter and our thoughts
on the thousand year reign of Christ, one of the
questions we have to ask is this. And I'm not
going to follow verse by verse as I normally do,
because I just want to give you an overview of
this period on the prophetic calendar. The first question that

(15:32):
we have to ask ourselves is why is there going
to be a millennium? Why do we need one? What
is the purpose of it? What I like to suggest
there are several purposes for the millennium. One is to
reward the people of God. The Bible says over and
over again that Jesus Christ is coming back and he
is going to reward the saints of God, and the

(15:52):
millennial reign of Christ is part of the reward. We
are going to be given the opportunity to reign in
the government of Jesus Christ on this earth, the theocracy
of our Lord as it is embraced throughout the entire universe.
You and I, who are Christians, are going to be
given a chance to serve with him, and that will

(16:14):
be part of the reward that God gives to us
for our faithfulness here in this life. Let me just
give you a whole group of scriptures, and you can
write the references down as I read them. We don't
have time to turn to them. Behold, the Lord God
will come with a strong hand, and his arms shall
rule for him. Behold, his reward is with him Isaiah

(16:36):
forty verse ten. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great
is your reward. Matthew five twelve. For the son of
Man shall come in the glory of his father with
his angels, and then he shall reward every man according
to his works. Matthew sixteen twenty seven. Knowing that of

(16:59):
the Lord, you shall receive the reward of the inheritance
Colossians three twenty four. And behold, I come quickly, and
my reward is with me Revelation twenty two twelve. Then
shall the King say, came, ye, blessed of my father
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world. Matthew twenty five thirty four. The first reason

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why there is a millennium is so that the Lord
God can have the opportunity to use that thousand year
period to reward the saints of God. And we are
going to be given authority and rulership and opportunity to
influence the kingdom on the basis of our faithfulness here
in this life. It will be interesting, will it not

(17:46):
when the Kingdom age starts to see who gets what?
But want to be interesting some of the people that
we look to now and say, my, aren't they a
mighty tool in the hand of God? And we're going
to get into the kingdom age. We're going to say,
where's Old Joe? Well, nobody knows where Old Joe is.
He's off in some corner taking care of about fourteen people,

(18:10):
because though he appeared to be faithful in this life,
he really wasn't. And he is rewarded on the basis
of the actuality of his motive, his methods, and his production.
Won't it be interesting to walk around in those days
and see who's doing what. Secondly, the kingdom is necessary
not only to reward the people of God. The kingdom

(18:32):
is necessary to respond to the disciples prayer. Have you
ever thought of that? In Luke eleven, and in Matthew
six we are told that the disciples are to pray
that we have as our pattern of prayer. One of
the guidelines was this, Thy Kingdom come. Has the Kingdom
of God come? No, it has not. In our hearts

(18:53):
is Christ the king, But that is not what the
prayer is all about. It. The prayer is that the
Kingdom of God might come, and the Kingdom of God
will come someday in that future period that we're talking about,
And one of the reasons it must come is in
order that it might be a response to every single
person who, even unknowingly, has prayed the Lord's prayer, and

(19:14):
in the Lord's prayer have prayed Thy Kingdom Come, Thy
will be done. That prayer can never be answered completely
until Jesus Christ begins to reign on this earth. The
third reason why we must have a millennium is in
order to redeem creation. In Genesis three, God cursed nature

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because of Adam's sin, and from that point on man's
paradise became a wilderness. The roses contain thorns, the tigers
became hungry meat eaters. But during the millennium, all of
this is going to change. Paul describes the transformation in
his Epistle to the Romans, which I have chosen to

(19:56):
read from the Living Bible. Paraphrase, Listen carefully, for all
creation is waiting patiently and hopefully for that future day
when God will resurrect his children. For on that day
thorns and thistles, sin, death, and decay, the things that
overcame the world against its will at God's command will

(20:16):
all disappear, and the world around us will share in
the glorious freedom from sin which God's children enjoy. For
we know that even the things of nature, like animals
and plants, suffer in sickness and death as they wait
for this great event. All the world is groaning for

(20:36):
Eden recreated. In one of these days, the curse will
be lifted, and when Christ comes to rule and reiin
on this earth, we will go back to life as
it was before the curse in Genesis three. Then I
would like to suggest to you one perhaps remote reason
for the millennium that I thought of, that perhaps will

(20:58):
cause you to understand and again the sovereign purposes of God.
We need the millennium, and there will be a millennium
to reemphasize man's depravity. You said, now, wait a minute, Pastor,
I thought that was a period of holiness and righteousness
and purity. But let me show you something that perhaps
you haven't thought through, regarding God's sovereign control over this
universe and the way things are from the beginning of time.

(21:22):
Some of you know that there is a way of
studying the Scripture called dispensationalism, which looks at periods of
time in the history of the Word of God, and
there are seven of them. The first age was the
Age of Innocence, and how did it end? It ended
in wilful disobedience. The second dispensation was the dispensation of conscience.

(21:45):
It ended with universal corruption. The third dispensation was human government.
It ended with devil worshiping at the Tower of Babel.
The next dispensation was the Age of Promise, and it
ended with God's people out of the promised land enslaved
in Egypt. The next dispensation was the Age of the Law,

(22:05):
and it ended with the creature killing the Creator Matthew
twenty seven. The next age was the Age of the Church,
and it will end in worldwide apostasy one Timothy four.
The next age is the Age of the Tribulation, and
it will end with the Battle of Armageddon Revelation nineteen.
And the final age is the age of the Millennium,

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and it will end with an attempt to destroy God himself.
According to the very chapter that we're reading, what does
that say about man left to himself? He is absolutely
totally inwardly corrupt. There is no hope for man apart
from the intervention of God. And even the millennium is
an illustration of a perfect period of time for one

(22:50):
thousand years. And I know some of you are saying, well,
if nobody goes into the millennium who's not saved, how
do sin get into the millennium? Well, these people who
go in who are saved are going to have children.
In fact, they're going to have a lot of children.
And these children are going to grow up, and many
of them are not going to embrace the faith in
this perfect age under the rulership of a king who
makes no mistakes, they will steal inwardly in their own hearts,

(23:12):
rebel and do their own thing, and sin will enter
into the millennial period, even though it will be kept
under absolute control by the king. And at the end
of that period, Satan will be loosed for a little season,
and there will be enough ungodly people on this earth
to follow him in his final revolt. What does that
say to you about Man? I never read this and

(23:33):
study it, but I'm overwhelmed at how the scripture teaches
us our incapability apart from the intervention of God in
our own lives. We should not be surprised at the
things that happen in our world when we understand the
true nature of Man. Well, I said that many years
ago when we first recorded it. If that was true,

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then how true is it today? Looking at the things
that are happening. Every day I get up and when
I turn on the news, it seems like there's a
new kind of tragedy that took place the day before,
some new attack, some new terrible thing that happens, some
new clash between the ideologies of the people in this
nation and around the world. We live in a period

(24:15):
of chaos, But that period is going to come to
an end, and I don't think it'll be long. I
think the stage is being set, and one of these
days we're going to see the resolution of all things.
We'll have Part two of the Millennium, the thousand year
reign of Christ tomorrow, and then on Wednesday and Thursday,
we're going to talk about the Great White Throne Judgment,
another important event that.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Takes place in the future. Till then. This is David Jeremiah.
I'm so honored that you join us, and we've been
doing this for so many years and you're still there
with us every day. We are blessed to have you,
and I trust you're being encouraged as well. Have a
great day, See you next time.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
For more information on Doctor Jeremiah series It Escaped the
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(25:17):
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(25:38):
details when you visit our website. David Jeremiah dot org
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is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue
the series Escape the Coming Night on Turning Point with
Doctor David Jeremiah