| The Berean Expositor Volume 38 - Page 185 of 249 Index | Zoom | |
"Yet have I set My King upon My holy hill of Zion".
Beyond this holy hill the heathen in the uttermost parts are to be disciplined with a rod
of iron, and the rebellious kings and judges of the earth are given counsel and warning.
"Lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little"
(Psa. 2: 12).
This divinely appointed centre is the theme of Isa. 2::
"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, 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" (Isa. 2: 2, 3).
First the rod of His strength shall be sent "out of Zion" where the Lord will rule in the
midst of His enemies (Psa. 110: 2). He will, as Psa. 2: 12 threatened, "strike through
kings in the day of His wrath" (Psa. 110: 5). After the Lord returns unto Zion, and
Jerusalem becomes "a city of truth" (Zech. 8: 3) "many people and strong nations shall
come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord . . . . . In those
days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations,
even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we
have heard that God is with you" (Zech. 8: 22, 23). When the glory returns to
Jerusalem and the temple is built according to the specifications given in the closing
chapters of Ezekiel, then the title of the Lord will be indeed Jehovah Shammah "The
Lord is there" (Ezek. 48: 35).
Rebellion at Close of Millennium
The Millennial kingdom ends as we have seen with a rebellious rising of the nations
which are in the four quarters of the earth, the number of which is so great as to justify
the figure "the number of whom is as the sand of the sea" (Rev. 20: 8). Rebellion
therefore was incipient during the 1,000 years. No such rebellion will mar the day when
I Cor. 15: 28 is fulfilled, but that lies beyond the limits of the Millennial kingdom and is
not spoken of in the Book of the Revelation. We may discover that much that we have
imagined belonged to the Millennium will prove to belong to the period that follows.
The day of the Lord is followed by the day of God, the Sabbath, followed by "the first or
eighth day".
If we keep strictly to the record of Rev. 20: we shall see that the so-called Millennial
kingdom is the period when the suffering overcomer who has refused to recognize the
Beast or his authority, will "live and reign with Christ, a thousand years", but nothing is
said of the bulk of the nation of Israel, except to reveal that there was also on the earth at
the same time "the camp of the saints" and "the beloved city". To a large extent this
phase of the kingdom is God's answer to the only pre-millennial kingdom known in the
Apocalypse, namely the Pre-Millennial kingdom of the Beast! When Jerusalem is