22: The Millennium—Old Testament Millennial Scriptures (part 3)
A Study of Revelation
David Brandt Berg
1981-05-01
“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains”—these mountains symbolizing governments, God’s government over all—“and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
“And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks.” Final disarmament. That will be the real genuine disarmament, beating their weapons into instruments of peace. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:2–4). That’s a beautiful inscription also written on the wall of the garden of the United Nations in New York City. Yet all around it rages controversy and evil and war and crime.
“Enter into the rock and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty.” God’s speaking of the unregenerate, when Jesus comes. “The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan.
“And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up, and upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, and upon all the ships of Tarshish. And upon all pleasant pictures. And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols He shall utterly abolish.”—Including the Image of the Beast.
“And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth” (Isaiah 2:10–21).
God’s kingdom has already begun upon earth today in Christians who love Jesus—in you if you have Christ in your heart. He said, “For the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). You’re a member of His kingdom that’s already begun upon earth.
“In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy. When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning” (Isaiah 4: 2–4). God is going to burn it out if it takes His judgments to drive the iniquity out.
“And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud of smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defense. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain” (Isaiah 4:5–6). The Lord Himself is going to be your tabernacle and protect you.
The eleventh chapter of Isaiah: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of His roots: and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall make Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears.
“But with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth.” That’s going to be the rod of iron, the truth of God that’s going to rule the world then. “And with the breath of His lips shall he slay the wicked.” There is nothing that curbs the Devil and His crowd like the truth, the Word of God. Jesus is going to be here then. “And righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His reins.
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:1–6). You have never heard of a wolf lying down with a lamb nowadays, have you?—Unless the lamb was inside of the wolf! Or a leopard lying down with a kid, a little baby goat. They usually lie down with the kid inside too. Neither have you heard about a little child leading them all nowadays.
There was a day before the Flood when men and the animals were at peace with each other. They didn’t fight and they didn’t kill and they didn’t eat each other as they do today. That day is coming again when there will be peace between man and the animals. Even your little child will be able to play with them.
“And the cow and the bear shall feed.” Feed together, think of that, cows and bears! “Their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox” (Isaiah 11:7). “Now you’ve gone too far, telling me lions are going to eat hay! I don’t believe that.”
I have such confidence in the Word of God and every chapter and every book—I have proven so many of them to be true and none of them to ever fail or be false—that I believe every word in it, and I believe it means exactly what it says and that’s what’s going to happen. If they’re not going to eat each other or eat us anymore, they’re going to have to graze like the ox and the calf. So the lion will eat straw like the ox.
“And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp.” A little baby that’s not even weaned yet can play right on top of the hole of this poisonous little serpent called an asp, and yet not get stung or bitten. “And the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den” (Isaiah 11:8). Children will be able to put their hand into a nest of scorpions and what are today poisonous insects. Or in another place it says adders’ den, meaning a poisonous snake. The child can put his hand right into a nest of adders and play with the snakes then, like toys.
What a wonderful place to be! All the curse removed, the viciousness gone, all the killing and hurting each other gone. “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). We won’t have to be worried about witnessing anymore. We won’t have to say, “Know the Lord,” for He says “all men everywhere shall know Me” (Jeremiah 31:34; Hebrews 8:11). But I do believe we’ll still be teaching people the ways of the Lord.
“And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people”—Jesus—“to it shall the Gentiles seek: and His rest shall be glorious” (Isaiah 11:10). This is a wonderful picture of the final glorious days of this earth.
The earth will blossom as a rose, curse removed, enmity between man and the animals and the insects and the vipers removed, so that all God’s creation is in perfect peace and harmony, and man at peace with man. No longer will there be man’s cruelty toward man, no longer man’s inhumanity to man, but all will be peace and beauty—heaven on earth once again as it was in the beginning, because we’ll have Jesus.
I think Adam and Eve had Jesus then too. Who else could walk with them in the Garden in the cool of the day like a man but Jesus, the Son of God (Genesis 3:8).
“Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously” (Isaiah 24:23). “And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things.” Here is that wonderful Marriage Supper of the Lamb. “A feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.” The vineyards and wineries aren’t going to go out of business.
“And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.”—The vail of misunderstanding, the vail of unbelief, the vail of non-comprehension of spiritual things. “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.
“And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation. For in this mountain shall the hand of the Lord rest” (Isaiah 25:6–10).
Copyright © 1981 The Family International.
22: The Millennium—Old Testament Millennial Scriptures (part 1)
A Study of Revelation
David Brandt Berg
1981-05-01
I’m going to read some verses which are my favorite passages in the Bible, some of the most beautiful scriptures in God’s holy Word.
The reason I am particularly fond of them is that they’re about the “happy ending” of the story. In much of the past chapters of this particular study of Bible prophecy in the book of Revelation, it seems as if it’s been a lot of bad news about the horrors about to come upon this world. The Bible admonishes us to be prepared for these days, and to be forewarned is to be forearmed. (See Matthew 24:33, 44.)
We’re just strangers passing through; this is not our home. We’re strangers and pilgrims, and this is why God says He’s proud to be our God. He’s not ashamed to be our God, for we confess that we are only strangers and pilgrims here. We seek a city whose builder and maker is God, which someday will come down out of heaven from God to this earth (Hebrews 11:13–16).
At the end of that mighty Battle of Armageddon, of the forces of God against the forces of Satan on earth, we, the saints of God, along with our King Jesus Christ, will take over this world as it is now—this present world—and we will organize it and rule it and run it the way it should have been run if man had yielded to God. But this time, yield or no, God’s going to run it with a rod of iron (Revelation 2:27).
Whether man likes it or not, God is going to be supreme and Jesus shall reign from shore to shore, and we shall rule and reign with Him with that rod of iron. Then the unsaved who remain will be forced to do what’s right and to obey for a thousand years. They will have the amazing blessing of being able to live at all during this millennial period in which the earth, though it is this same earth upon which we live today—not the new heaven and the new earth, but the present earth—it will be relieved from the curses that have beset it. The thorns and the thistles and the briar and all kinds of beasts and critters and creatures that are poisonous, even poisonous flowers and grasses, will be sanitized and made harmless.
Even the unsaved who have survived the Tribulation and the wrath of God and the Battle of Armageddon—and it’s quite a survival to manage to survive all three of those—will be allowed to live during this beautiful paradise-on-earth, millennial period.
The Devil will be bound in the heart of the earth in the bottomless pit for a thousand years, and we will rule and reign with Jesus on this present earth for one thousand years to try to teach the survivors righteousness, to try to show them where they failed, to try to point out what the mistakes were, to try to show them how much better it would have been if they had yielded to Jesus and let Him rule and reign in their hearts as we do today.
We already have the Garden of Eden in our hearts. We already have paradise restored in our hearts, those of us who have received Jesus Christ as our Savior and our Lover and our King and our God, who has forgiven us our sins and brought us peace and love and happiness such as we have never known before. We already have the Garden of Eden in our hearts, but then we will have the Garden of Eden worldwide—the curse removed, even a measure of death removed. People will live for a thousand years as they did before, and if you die at a hundred years of age, they’ll consider you just a child (Isaiah 65:20). Think of that.
This is a part of the beautiful happy ending. The Bible is full of descriptions of that beautiful millennial period. It says more about the second coming of Christ and His rule and reign on the earth as its King, its Messiah, than it does about the first coming.
This is the purpose of it all, the marvelous happy ending of it all! This is our reward for loving Him, receiving Him, believing in Him, and preaching Him, telling others about Him, spreading the Good News of His love everywhere.
Jesus was the one responsible for it all, who loved us enough to give His own life for us and take our punishment, the punishment of our sins on Himself on that cross, on that tree, so that we could be forgiven and restored and become citizens of His kingdom, the kingdom of God on earth of the King of kings in the heavenly kingdom.—First of all, the Millennium, and later the new heaven and new earth.
What are the two books that are the most messianic books in the Bible?—The ones that talk more about the Messiah and His kingdom, that marvelous millennial kingdom on earth and the kingdom that goes on forever after, than any other books? We have to go back to the Old Testament to find them: Psalms and Isaiah, by two great prophets. “Prophets?” you say, “I thought David was just a king.” David was a king, but he was also a priest of his people. Foremost and above all, he was a prophet of God who wrote the beautiful Psalms of David. In the Psalms, he describes time and again the marvelous coming kingdom of Jesus Christ.
First, he starts with the Antichrist kingdom and the Battle of Armageddon, the forces of good against evil. (This could also apply to the Battle of Gog and Magog at the end of the Millennium.)
Psalm 2: “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” That’s what they will say during the Great Tribulation. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.” God gets the last laugh! “Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.”
Despite all they can do, He has set His king upon the hill of Zion. Jesus will someday return to this earth and He shall stand first upon Mount Zion. God’s Word says it will cleave in two when He stands there, like a great earthquake, and cause a very great rift or very great valley (Zechariah 14:4). That great hill that the Jews and the Muslims are fighting over, guess who’s going to get it?—Jesus. And when He does land on it, it’s going to split wide open.
“I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me”—speaking now to Jesus—“Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” He’s going to give us the entire earth, all of it. “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
“Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.”—If you don’t want to be broken. “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.” Do you put your trust in Jesus? Then you’re going to be safe. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right with you.
“The Lord is king for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out of His land” (Psalm 10:16). That’s what’s going to happen then. “Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion. When the Lord bringeth back the captivity of His people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad” (Psalm 14:7). The true Israel of God, those who have received Jesus the Messiah, the Christians.
“I have set the Lord always before me: because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.” There’s going to be a resurrection. “For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Psalm 16:8–10). There are many prophecies regarding the first coming of Jesus, but these are the ones about His second coming.
“I will declare Thy name unto my brethren: and in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee.” Before this, they were worshipping the Antichrist; now they’re going to have to worship Jesus, whether they like it or not. “They shall come and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done this” (Psalm 22:22,27,31).
The good news! We had to tell you the bad news first, all about the Antichrist and his reign of terror and the Tribulation and the judgment and Babylon and the horrors, and then Armageddon. But now comes the victory, the heaven on earth.
“Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle! Lift up your heads, O ye gates: even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory. Selah” (Psalm 24:7–10).
The Muslims have a prophecy that when Jesus returns, He will come through the gate called “Beautiful” and take over the city of Jerusalem and reign as the Messiah and King of kings. Therefore one Arab ruler many years ago didn’t want Jesus to come and take the kingdom away from him; he was afraid He might come during his day. So he walled up the gate “Beautiful” there in Jerusalem.
To this day it is still sealed, because God prophesied that no man should go through that gate again. A prophet prophesied this centuries ago when at that time it was one of the most popular gates of Jerusalem on a well-traveled highway that ran through that gate into the city. But God prophesied by His prophet Ezekiel many centuries earlier that it would be closed and never opened again until the Lord of hosts Himself, the King of kings, Jesus, would come and pass through that gate (Ezekiel 44:2; 43:1–4).
Praise God, the day is coming when “He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46:9–10).
“O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph. For the Lord most high is terrible; He is a great King over all the earth.”—In the Millennium. “He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet. For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of His holiness” (Psalm 47:1–3,7–8). All of these marvelous predictions of the coming kingdom of Christ upon earth.
“I will make Thy name to be remembered in all generations: therefore shall the people praise Thee for ever and ever” (Psalm 45:17). For “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the scepter of Thy kingdom is a right scepter. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (Psalm 45:6–7). What wonderful prophecies of the coming kingdom of Jesus! I turn the pages here in the Psalms and on almost every page I find another prophecy about this marvelous millennial kingdom of Christ.
“Our God shall come and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him. He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people. Gather My saints together unto Me; those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice. And the heavens shall declare His righteousness: for God is Judge Himself” (Psalm 50:3–6). That’s the way it’ll be when Jesus comes.
“Through the greatness of Thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto Thee. All the earth shall worship Thee, and shall sing unto Thee; they shall sing to Thy name” (Psalm 66:3–4). “O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for Thou shalt judge the people righteously”—not all judges today judge righteously—“and govern the nations upon earth. Selah. Let the people praise Thee, O God; let all the people praise Thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase: and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him” (Psalm 67:4–7).
For “Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive: Thou hast received gifts for men”—the greatest being salvation—“yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them” (Psalm 68:18). God is even going to be good to the wicked who will—some of them—survive all the horrors of hell of the Antichrist and the Tribulation and the plagues of the wrath of God and the Battle of Armageddon to finally come into this millennial period through which we will rule and reign over them with Christ with a rod of iron for a thousand years.
“Give the king Thy judgments, O God.” This is Psalm 72, and almost the whole psalm is a prediction of the Millennium—“and Thy righteousness unto the king’s son.” Who is the king’s son? Jesus. “He shall judge Thy people with righteousness”—that means Jesus—“and Thy poor with judgment.” The world is going to see a righteous judge, a righteous king, a righteous ruler at last, who will have a righteous government. No corruption, no vice or crime or payola or bribery or crooked judges and crooked politicians, but a righteous government and righteous justice.
“The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear Thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations” (Psalm 72:1–5).
Don’t think that something’s going to happen to destroy the sun or the moon or the earth! God didn’t make this creation to be destroyed. He’s going to have to destroy the surface of the earth and burn it up because of the pollution of mankind and its wickedness, but He’s not going to destroy the ball, the planet earth, or the sun or moon. They’re going to continue to shine upon the earth.
We won’t need them in the holy city that comes down from God to the earth. There’ll be no need of sun or moon or stars there. Jesus will be our sun. But outside on the earth where others are still learning and still being healed, they’ll still need sunlight and moonlight and the stars, and God will be merciful to them. But that is the new earth and new heaven, which comes after the Millennium.
“He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In His days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” Here it’s speaking of the kingdom of Christ on earth, how it’s going to be over the whole world.
“They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before Him and His enemies shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents.” The British. “The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.” The Saudi Arabians are going to become Christians.
“Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him: all nations shall serve Him.” There won’t be any religion then but Christianity; there won’t be any kingdom except that of Jesus Christ. “For He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and the needy and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in His sight.
“And He shall live, and to Him shall be given of the gold of Sheba. Prayer also shall be made for Him continually; and daily shall He be praised. There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon. And they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth.” That is, of the great city of God. ( To be continued)