Transcript
I got onto my computer yesterday and developed a quasi-visual, I would say. And then my computer wouldn’t print it. And I was just about to get very desperate when Luis walked in the door. I wasn’t expecting him in the office. And he solved the problem for me.
And so the overhead or the view here is part of the compliments of Luis as well as of myself. Let’s start with the material at the top. You notice we have an arrow going up. And this is to indicate what we call the rapture of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ coming back at the very beginning of what we call the Tribulation Period and taking believers up into the air to meet Him in the air as described in First Thessalonians chapter 4.
I think most of us are familiar with that. Although there are many people who teach that once the church is caught out of the world we go back to heaven with Christ, it’s pretty hard to find any indication of that in the Bible. And it is probably better to conclude, for various reasons, that we will be with the Lord in the air, concealed behind the clouds of heaven.
It may seem to you that that’s a long time to be in the air, seven years. But I think we could make a very good case that it won’t seem like seven years to us. But for the moment take that on faith. And if you have a question about it later, feel free to ask it.
But in any case, at the beginning of the final period of world history the Lord Jesus Christ comes back to take all Christians to be with Him. And we meet Him in the air. Then begins the period we know as the Day of the Lord. Actually the Day of the Lord, as we learn from Second Peter 3, goes to the end of the thousand years. I don’t have an arrow indicating that, but it does do so.
And the first period of the Day of the Lord period we know as the Tribulation, which is divided into two three-and-a-half-year periods. The last three and a half years of this seven-year period are often called the Great Tribulation. But it seems evident that there will be many judgments from God upon earth during the first three and a half years as well as during the last three and a half years.
At the end of the seven-year period, you remember that the beast and the false prophet collect the armies of all the nations of the world. And they mobilize and assemble in the valley of Megiddo in Palestine. And they come down to Jerusalem with the intention of fighting with the Lord Jesus Christ when He returns.
And Christ is suddenly revealed from heaven in His glory with His angels. And so we indicate here, of course, that Christ wins the Battle of Armageddon. The next thing that appears to take place, by the way, if you please observe that after the Battle of Armageddon the beast and the false prophet are placed directly in the lake of fire. Go see more of that at a later moment.
Now the Lord Jesus Christ has come to earth. He sits on the throne of His glory as described in Matthew 25. And the judgment of the sheep and the goats takes place as we read it in that particular passage. It is probable that the judgment of the sheep and the goats takes place during that seventy-five-day period that we notice in the Book of Daniel.
And to get ourselves once again acclimated to that, look at the second level of material. The judgment of the sheep and the goats, Matthew 25:31-46. The sheep should be identified as victorious Christians who persevere to the end. We suggested in the last discussion that there’s reason to think that unfaithful Christians will die during the Tribulation Period.
So the only Christians who survive will be those who have been faithful spiritually. And the Lord Jesus says to these people, “Come and inherit the kingdom that God has prepared for you.” And so they go into the kingdom. They are glorified. That seems to be the meaning of the statement, “For the righteous will enter into eternal life.”
And they co-reign with Jesus Christ. The goats, however, are the unsaved people who are still alive at the end of the Tribulation. And they are cast immediately into the lake of fire. This is not their final judgment, because the final judgment of all the unsaved people comes at the end of the thousand years.
But this is what we might call a preliminary hearing. And on the basis of this hearing they are assigned to the lake of fire. Later their whole life will be reviewed at the Great White Throne.
Now if you will notice from the reading of the passage there is, of course, no mention of children in this passage. But we have to assume that after the judgments of the Tribulation have been completed there will be some children alive from various nations around the world. And they will be unsaved and below the age of accountability.
We talked about that last time. We don’t really know what the age of accountability is. But whatever it is, it is the age at which God begins to hold people responsible to believe in Christ for salvation. We deduce that these children go into the Millennium in their natural bodies. That they grow up, marry, have children, and repopulate the earth.
We have to have somebody doing this, because the evidence is very plain from the word of God that by the end of the thousand years we’ll have a whole bunch of people who are still in sinful bodies who will participate in the rebellion that is led by Satan.
We also have a mention of death occurring in the Millennium.
So somebody who lives in the Millennium, some people who live in the Millennium, live in the Millennium in natural physical bodies. The most natural assumption that we can draw is that these begin with the unsaved children who survive the Tribulation.
It can be suggested, but we have no proof of this, that in order to repopulate the kingdom God may raise to physical life again all of the children of all the centuries who have died below the age of accountability. I’m sure you realize that if that were to happen there would be millions and millions of children.
They would come back to life in the same way that Lazarus came back to life. They wouldn’t have glorified bodies. They’d be subject to dying again. Or like the son of the widow of Nain came back to life. He died again, of course, and so on.
But they would have the opportunity, these children, of growing up in the kingdom in a far better environment than they would have grown up had they survived and not died before the age of accountability in the past. You remember that Jesus said one time to His disciples, “Let the little children come unto Me and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God,” or “of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
Now if you can imagine that the world is being repopulated by all of the children who have died throughout all of the ages of history who fell below the age of accountability, you look at that kingdom. Would you not say it’s the kingdom of little children? Though it may well be that it’s not only the children who survive the Tribulation but the children who have died throughout the centuries before the age of accountability.
But that’s a guess. I’d like to emphasize that we don’t have definite evidence of that. That’s one way that God may deal with the question, “What happens to children who die before they have the ability to choose to seek God and trust Christ?” We don’t know the answer to that. And this is one possible answer.
So this is the middle of the chart. Up above this, more detail on the judgment of the sheep and the goats. Let’s go back up to the top chart. We finished the Tribulation Period. The Battle of Armageddon is over. The judgment of the sheep and the goats is now over. The sheep enter into the kingdom.
And the Millennium, or the first thousand years of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, begins. And it is ruled by Christ and His co-heirs. That is, those who co-reign with Him. And this would not just simply be those who co-reign with Him from the Christian Church but Christians of all the ages, believers of all the ages, people like Abraham and Isaac and David and Isaiah and those people, as well as the individuals who are called sheep in Matthew 25.
All of those who have gained the right and privilege of co-reigning with Jesus Christ will co-reign with Him in His kingdom during the thousand years. Now, as Luis said last time we were discussing this, they also reign forever and ever with the Lord Jesus Christ. But we’re not carrying our discussion any further than the thousand years.
Now for a moment look down at Hades or the lake of fire, that which is underneath the lines on the diagram. Hades, we could make a case, I think a very strong case, to me a compelling case, that Hades is in the center of the earth. And this is where all the unsaved people are today who have died in the history of the world.
The lake of fire, however, is apparently another place. We are not told where it is. But it is the eternal abode of the lost. So far as our information goes, the first individuals ever to be thrown into the lake of fire are the beast and the false prophet who are thrown directly into the lake of fire. They bypass Hades.
Then it seems apparent that at the judgment of the sheep and the goats the goats were also banished to the lake of fire. “Depart, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” That is probably a reference to the lake of fire.
On the other hand, as we learn from Revelation 20, the devil is not put there yet. The devil is put into what the Book of Revelation calls the bottomless pit. That’s an English translation of a word, abyssos in Greek, which really means a very, very deep pit. It doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t have a bottom.
And it is very likely that we should identify that with Hades, because if Hades is in the center of the earth it’s very, very, very, very far down there. So I think we may conclude that the devil during the thousand years is put into Hades.
Let me note something here. People who go to Hades, everybody who goes to Hades goes there only temporarily. That’s like going to the county jail. And when their sentence is up they go to their permanent abode, which is the lake of fire.
So the beast and the false prophet, that’s all for them. The goats, that’s all for them. The devil, however, is going to be released after the thousand years are over. And you’ll notice I have an arrow going up to the end of the thousand years.
According to Revelation chapter 20 he goes out to the four corners of the earth. But amazingly, from our point of view, after a thousand years of the rule of Jesus Christ over this world there will be thousands and thousands of people who want to rebel against Him and who will follow the devil.
And he will raise an army. And he will lead the army down to Jerusalem, the capital city. And once again he’s defeated. God rains down fire and brimstone on the army and they are destroyed. And then the devil is cast into the lake of fire.
And then, following the thousand years, there is the final judgment of all the unsaved at what is called the Great White Throne Judgment. We read about it in Revelation chapter 20. Please notice that at this judgment everybody’s life is reviewed. They’re judged according to their works.
Lots of people have died, lots of unsaved people have died, and they thought that they were entitled to go to heaven because of their works. And they are not entitled on that basis. Nobody is entitled on that basis. And the judgment of the Great White Throne will show that everybody is guilty.
But notice, if you will read Revelation 20 carefully, they are not sent into hell because of their works. They are sent into the lake of fire because their names are not written in the Book of Life. In other words, they don’t have everlasting life. “Whosoever’s name was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.”
This is the final hearing for everybody. And God has the record of everything they’ve ever said or done. And people who think that they have made it to heaven on the basis of their good works are in for an amazing and tragic discovery that they haven’t made it at all.
That’s why we preach the gospel to people: not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
If a person goes into eternity thinking that their works are going to get them there, they’re not going to get there. That’s the plain and simple fact. And that will be the experience of the Great White Throne.
That is followed by eternity in which we have a new heaven and a new earth, new heavens and new earth. That’s beyond the scope of this discussion. But as you can see this carries our discussion through the end of a thousand years and through the final judgment of the lost.
Now our real subject matter in the three discussions has been the question of the co-heirs, those who co-reign with Jesus Christ. So that brings us down to the bottom of the page. And we want to talk about the co-heirs. They co-reign with Him during the thousand years.
And I think we can show that they do so also for all eternity. But nevertheless we’re looking at the thousand years primarily. It is evident from the Bible that there are two conditions for reigning with Christ. The first of these conditions is perseverance to the end.
Now I’ve got various men prepared to read the relevant passages here. And if you want to turn to them you can, or you can just listen as these men read. We’re asking Carlos to read Second Timothy 2:12.
If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us.
You notice the key expression here: “If we endure, we will also reign with Him.”
I believe I asked you for Revelation 2:26-27. Right there, Joe, would you read that to us?
And he who overcomes and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations. He shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the potter’s vessels shall be broken to pieces, as I also have received from My Father.
Thank you. Notice what that says. It says he who overcomes and keeps My works to the end, to him I will give power over the nations. It’s saying in a different way the same thing that we read in Second Timothy 2:12.
If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. Obviously if we take the two passages together what we have here is a call to endure in our Christian life and in our service to God, doing the works that God wants us to do.
So one of the conditions for co-reigning with Jesus Christ is to keep on keeping on to the end, whenever the end comes, whether in death or whether it comes by the coming of the Lord. So condition number one: perseverance to the end.
Please notice that although a person can go to heaven by simple faith in Christ, if he drops out of the Christian race he drops out of the possibility of gaining this wonderful and splendid reward.
Now there are also character qualifications for co-reigning with Jesus Christ. And there are three passages that indicate this. And here I may remind you that we are understanding the word “inherit the kingdom” as functionally equivalent to co-reigning with Christ.
Inheriting a kingdom is different than living in a kingdom, just as inheriting a house is different than living in a house. You can live in a house that you don’t own, that you don’t have any real authority over. But once you inherit it, it’s your house.
And the same thing is true in the kingdom. You can live in a kingdom without having any authority there. Those who have the authority are those who own the kingdom. And so Christ owns the kingdom and His co-heirs own the kingdom along with Him.
So with the expression “inheriting the kingdom” we should understand something like co-reigning with Christ.
Now the first passage here is First Corinthians 6:9-11. I think I asked Joel for this. Right, Joel, would you read this?
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
I guess I meant to ask Mike. Mike, would you look with me for this?
You know that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
I believe I asked Juan to read Galatians 5:19-21.
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Now let me say a few things by way of comment on these conditions. As I think many of you know, my very, very good friends were tragically killed in an automobile accident a week ago this past Thursday. They were very dedicated Christians, very generous and hospitable Christians.
And it occurred to me that I can illustrate inheritance from them, because he left the business behind. He has four grown children, the oldest of which is the daughter, and then there are three sons. Now I don’t know the terms of the will, but it’s obvious that the children inherit the business.
And I’m assuming, because I didn’t know anything about Dick’s will, that all four of the children inherited a portion of the business. They may all have inherited an equal portion or they may not have. It would have been within Dick’s prerogative to cut any of them out of a share of the business.
I think you would understand that if he felt, for example, that one of his children didn’t deserve to participate in the business in the future, he could have left the business to three of his children or to two of them or even to one of them. That wouldn’t change the fact that they were Dick’s children. You understand? They’re his children permanently.
But their heirship is dependent upon what Dick decides they ought to have. And if I may put it this way, the kingdom of God is God’s family business. It’s His business. And His Son, who has already died and been raised to life, will inherit the whole thing.
You remember the words that were spoken to the Son and recorded by the writer of Hebrews, speaking of the Son: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore God, even Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your companions.”
You are going to have an eternal throne as God because You’ve loved righteousness, You’ve hated iniquity. And because he did it perfectly, his happiness is greater than the happiness of his companions, our partners in that.
But please notice the Lord Jesus Christ inherits the kingdom also in Psalm 2, where we have record of Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. God says to Jesus, “Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for Your possession.”
And when the right day comes the Lord Jesus Christ will turn to God the Father and say, “Would you give it to me now?” And so Jesus is going to inherit a kingdom over all the earth. The King of the Jews, of whom we were hearing this morning, is to be the King of the entire world.
Now he has those who will co-reign with Him, who will share in this inheritance to the degree and to the extent that God considers them fit to do that. And by the same token, if the conditions for inheritance are not met, although a person may be a child of God and eternally saved, he can be excluded from this particular privilege.
“If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.” But the obvious converse of that is, if we don’t, we won’t. “He that overcomes and keeps My works to the end, to him I will give power over the nations.” But if we do not overcome and do not keep his works to the end, then we don’t need to expect to get power over the nations.
So we’re talking here not about eternal salvation but about heirship. We’re talking about the immense and marvelous privilege of entering into the government of the world when the Lord Jesus Christ reigns over all mankind.
Now in addition to the requirement to persevere there’s also a requirement to develop character. And we’ve read three passages that are the three listed here on your sheet that tell what kinds of qualities in individuals that unfit them can eliminate them from co-reigning with Jesus Christ.
As I was thinking about this, and this is one of the points on which we, I don’t think we nailed this down as firmly as we should, I was thinking about my mother. And you’ll forgive me for giving you a personal illustration here. But I think that I can make clear what I have in mind by telling you this.
My dad, as I’ve often said, is probably the most genuinely unselfish person I’ve ever known. And believe it or not, I cannot think of a single major decision he made during all the time I knew him that I thought was selfish. He basically was deeply committed to God. And he made decisions based on what was good, what was right in the sight of the Lord, and what was good for his family.
My mother was a very loving, caring, and wonderful woman. But she was not his equal in unselfishness. I believe she would admit that if she were here today. And so as I grew up I realized in my own childlike way, and as an adult, that my father was more unselfish than my mother.
However, as many of you know, during the closing years of my father’s life he was virtually an invalid. He couldn’t go places. But he was, I guess at the end he was legally blind. He could hardly do anything for himself. When he got up at night and went to the bathroom he had to have someone go with him. My mother did it.
And my mother took care of him. I don’t remember how many years that was, but she took care of him. She was there. Did everything for him. And I remember her calling me a year or two before my father passed away. And she said, she says, “When you come home,” she said, “we need to have a talk about whether we need to put Dad in a nursing home.”
She says, “I’m not sure how much more I can handle and whether I’m able to handle it from now on.” But you know, when I got home she didn’t say a word about it. She went right on with it to the day of his death.
And then in one of my visits home, one of my last visits home, I remember sitting with her in the living room. And she said to me, she said, “Things,” she said, “I did the best I could to take care of your father. But,” she said, “I don’t think I did a very good job.”
And I said to her, “Mom, you did a wonderful job.” And in my opinion, I said to her, this was the finest period of your career as a wife. And I really meant that, because she had built her entire life around taking care of my dad. Talk about a helpmeet. She was a helpmate.
And then I remember the last time that I visited her in the home. She was sitting on the couch and I was sitting in the rocking chair that my dad used to sit in. And she was talking to me about her life. Now it had been a little over a year since my dad had died. And she missed him.
And she was struggling with how to make her life useful now. You might think that after taking care of a virtual invalid for all that time that she might think to herself, “Okay, I don’t have to do this anymore. How can I enjoy myself? I’m going to get out, do some things that I haven’t been able to do for years.”
She could easily have thought that way. But she wasn’t thinking that way. She was really thinking, “How can I serve the Lord?” And she told me some things that she had begun to do in the direction of serving the Lord.
At the time I did not know that was the last conversation I would ever have with her. But I remember how deeply impressed I was by the fact that now, I think I could say with all honesty, she had become every bit as unselfish as my dad. She was no longer, if none of the whatever traces of selfishness there might have been, they were basically gone.
And what she was concerned with was the work of the Lord and making her life useful for the Lord. And as I thought back on that, we could have read to her the three passages that we have read here on the number two: First Corinthians 6, Ephesians 5, Galatians 5:19-21.
And listed all of those negative things. And not one of them would have fit her. Not one of them would have fit her. It doesn’t mean my mother had become sinless, you understand that, that she never did or said anything wrong. But these things were not a part of her character any longer.
And she was completely sold out to the Lord. I mean, with how she was going. Mind you, she was 89 going on 90 in a couple of months and still thinking about how she could serve the Lord.
And as I thought back on that, I tell you what, I think my mother was ready to co-reign with Jesus Christ. She had endured to the end. And God had shaped and molded her character. And I have not the slightest doubt that when the kingdom comes she will indeed be one of those who co-reign with God’s Son.
And I didn’t know it at the time, but God was finished with her. This was the finished product. What I saw there in Fayetteville, Arkansas, sitting on the couch, was God’s finished product of His finished work with my mother.
It seems to me that the application that we should draw from all this is that we need to let God finish His work with us. God is in the process of transforming us into the likeness of Jesus Christ. And God is in the process of trying to eliminate from our lives, from our character, from our behavior, all of the things that we have read about as disqualifying features for those who might wish to co-reign with Jesus Christ.
And we’ve got to let Him do it. We’ve got to let Him finish the work. And if you persevere in living for God, if you persevere in walking with God, if you are open and responsive to the word, God will get you ready to co-reign with His Son.
Now we all know that we have some Christians, we all know some Christians who don’t even come to church. Am I right? They know some saved people who don’t even bother to come to church. They’re shooting themselves in the foot. No chance, unless they get back to God as quickly as possible, no chance that God’s going to be able to do with them what he wants to do with them so they can co-reign with Him.
We also have some Christians who come to church occasionally but are not much with it. Am I right? They’re not really fully committed. They’re not really fully serving the Lord. And they also are resisting the process that God is working on them to get them ready for the role that He would like them to have in His future kingdom.
So what I want to say to all of you this afternoon before we open it for discussion is, above all things be sure that you are letting God do everything in you and with you that He really wants to do in and with you. Because you not only need to persevere to the end but you also need to become the kind of person that is qualified to rule in the kingdom of God.
You know, our music often contains this truth. And we sing it without recognizing it. One verse that we sing very frequently is,
“When He shall call from earth’s remotest corners all who have stood triumphant in His might, O to be worthy then to stand beside them and in that morn to walk with Him in white.”
And someday he will call from the furthest corners of the earth, from every race and nation, from every age, those who have stood triumphant in His might. And it should be our ambition to be among those people.
I think one of the songs that probably captures this as well as any is the one about being a soldier of the cross.
“Shall I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while others fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas?
Since I must fight if I would reign, increase my courage, Lord. I’ll bear the cross, endure the shame, supported by Thy word.
In the name of Christ the King, who has furnished life for me, by courage shall win the promised crown. Whate’er my cross, those are things we all...”