The Great Disappointment

I talked about what I'm going to cover today in the sermon a number of months ago. I talked about what we were doing on Beyond Today television program on this subject. And then I realized, I talked about it, talked about the story a little bit, but never gave the sermon that I said I would give. I want to talk about a time in American history and how it ties into some beliefs that we have. A time known as the Great Disappointment. And, you know, get any good history book and you'll find at least a paragraph about the Great Disappointment in the United States history. The Great Disappointment happened in 1844. Tens of thousands of people—this wasn't a small movement. I mean, you're talking about a nation that's not, you know, it's a fraction, maybe a tenth of the size of the United States now. And tens of thousands of people thought Jesus Christ was coming back. They sold their farms, shut down their businesses. Many of them actually had spent months before, secluded, studying their Bibles, preparing for Christ's return. And they actually went out and dressed in white, many of them, went out into the woods. The whole congregation got together and, you know, built a fire, waited for him to come back because he was supposed to come back on a certain day. And he didn't come back. People sat on their rooftops. And it became known as the Adventist movement. Now, we know about the Seventh-day Adventist, but the Adventist movement was a whole lot bigger than Seventh-day Adventist. Seventh-day Adventist actually came out of this movement. As people waited for the coming, or the advent of Jesus Christ, and it became known as the Great Disappointment because there was a huge—just throughout the Eastern part of the United States— there was this huge disappointment. It is estimated as many as a million people didn't join the Adventist movement, but they were sort of waiting at home just in case. But they know at least 50,000 people were involved there. I remember you're looking at a nation of probably only 30 million people at the time. This is a big movement. It all started with a man named William Miller, who in 1931 told his neighbors, I figured out when Jesus was coming back. And he told his neighbors, and his neighbors sort of—some of them bought into it, and they started to spread it. And, you know, he finally published a book—actually started this book back in the 1820s. It was in the 1830s that he began to get a following. And he actually published a little book called Evidence from Scripture and the History of the Second Came of Christ about the year 1843. And his little book started—people started to buy it. They wanted it. Churches started giving it out. And not just, you know, in Baptist churches started giving it out, some Methodist started giving it out. Hey, wait a minute! What we learned, what we thought about Christ's return isn't correct. And I'll tell you a little bit what they believe, most of them. And actually it's what most—the majority of Christians believe today outside of the evangelical community. There was a different concept of the return of Jesus Christ in Christianity at the time. So, all through New England, he began to do these teachings. And he came across a man named Hines.

And Joshua Hines was a Baptist minister. But he was also an expert at communication. And Joshua Hines created charts, and he actually created two magazines, one in Boston, one in New York, and started to publish these magazines, all based on Jesus is coming back somewhere in 1843 or 1844. And people started to get the magazine. And his charts made so much sense. They were all kind of descriptors on it, and it was laid out, and people started believing it. Especially throughout Boston and New York, because that's where he published his magazines. Other churches now began to take his magazines and create tracks. And of course, that's how churches spread the message back in the 1830s and 40s, were tracks. And they started giving out tracks. You know, so you could be walking down the street in Philadelphia, and people would be giving you tracks. Or it started to spread down through the South. And you'd go to every major city, and there's tracks on how Jesus is coming back. They started camp meetings, and traveled throughout New England and down through Pennsylvania, those areas. And they started getting people to come to these tent meetings, and huge numbers would show up. And they would say, Jesus is coming back, we have to be prepared. You have to prepare your life. So eventually, he narrowed it down. That between March 21st, 1843, and March 21st, 1844, in that year he was coming back. So you can imagine, that was a very exciting year for Adventist. Because every day they got up and said, it's today the day. It's today the day. March 21st was especially exciting because he was supposed to come back before midnight. Thousands and thousands of people stayed up all night. One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. And he's not coming back. So you can imagine, that's why it's called the Great Disappointment. They were waiting and he didn't come back. Well, William Miller comes out and says, I got it wrong, okay? He is coming back, I just messed up on the dates. And then he announced, okay, in April of 1844, it's later. It's later. So others then created a new date. They took a scripture from a back-ick and one from Leviticus put him together and said, he's coming back with the Day of Atonement in 1844. Well, the Day of Atonement in 1844 came and he didn't come back. That disappointment was so great that you can imagine what it did to these tens and tens of thousands of Abbots. Some of them gave up religion entirely. Some of them lost their faith in God. Some of them went back to their denominations, but their denominations now had changed. Some Baptists had a different viewpoint now of the return of Jesus than others Baptists had. Methodists had a different viewpoint than other Methodists had. So the whole doctrine of Christ's return began to be argued throughout the Protestant world inside the United States.

Others just created the strangest doctrines. One group decided that William Miller was God's last great gospel preacher, so it was a thing to preach the gospel. In fact, one group created what was called the shut door policy. What happened on the day of Atonement in 1844 was God shut the door and nobody else gets to go to heaven.

The Adventists, the group that became known as the Seventh Day Adventists, because during this time period, some people from the Seventh Day Baptists had come into the Adventist movement and they said, hey, we're supposed to eat the Sabbath. So now you had Seventh Day Adventists. They weren't a group yet. They were just people who believed in the Advent and they kept the Sabbath. So they became known as the Seventh Day Adventists. So eventually they formed an actual denomination. Ellen G. White became a great prophetess in their mind in that denomination. She said, okay, okay, what happened in 1844 happened in heaven. It had to do with Jesus Christ as the high priest. So now they created a whole new doctrine explaining what actually had happened. Something really did happen, it just didn't happen on earth.

People desperately tried to figure out what was going on. Many Adventist groups began to have, people began to have visions and prophets popped up all over the place. One man claimed that he came in the spirit and power of Elijah. His name was Snow. And he said all the leaders of the world had to listen to him. And nobody would listen to him. No one would even invite him. No one wanted to talk to him. And it's hard to tell what happened in his life. Some of the accounts he was insane at the last part of his life, we don't know. Prophets popped up all over the place. Different groups popped up all over the place. They fractioned until the Adventist movement became centered in a couple of denominations. Baptists and the Seventh-day Adventists. But the Seventh-day Adventists, the whole group of them said, we can't follow Eligie White. And so they created the Church of God's seventh day. We trace our history back through the Church of God's Seventh-day. So this is actually part of our history. So this is interesting. This is part of our history. And this is how we came along, the United Church of God, or any group that came out of the World Wide Church of God. Because the World Wide Church of God at its beginning was made up mainly of people from the Church of God's Seventh-day. So you have this history that goes clear back to 1844 when Jesus didn't come back.

What I want to do today is use this story as a launch, launching into just a handful of basic scriptures about Jesus' return. Because one of the things that came out of the Adventist movement was a different theological, doctrinal viewpoint of the return of Jesus Christ. Yet, understand, the major teaching in Christianity in the 1840s was what's called amillennialism. Amillennialism still is the primary teaching of the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church and many of the old-line Protestant churches. In the United States, we have been so affected by what happened in 1844, because you talk to the average evangelical, right, or the average Baptist, and they believe what? Well, they believe there's going to be a tribulation and Jesus comes back and sets up the millennium meal for a thousand years. That's not what most Christians actually believe, and it's not what was believed by almost anybody in 1844.

Amillennialism, it's due by Augustine, is the belief that the kingdom of God was brought to the earth by Jesus at his birth.

And that the thousand years, the thousand years, is an allegory. It's not a real amount of time. Now, there was a time, I have to admit, in around a thousand AD, from a thousand to about 1100 AD, 1200 AD, there was a lot of argument that maybe it was a literal amount of time, and that's why they launched a crusade to go down and try to take Jerusalem back, because Jesus had to come back at the end of the thousand years.

If he established the kingdom, but it's birth, and it's a thousand years long, we've got to take Jerusalem, so Jesus can come back. But, of course, he didn't come back. So they went back to the Augustinian hay. The thousand years is not literal. The thousand years is not literal. So, in this belief, the church is the kingdom.

And this is why Catholicism was one of the reasons why they gave themselves the power to do some of the brutal things they did. They are the kingdom, enforcing God's ways on the earth. So if they have to torture you to make you to convert, that's okay, because you've got to get people into the kingdom. See? This is part of the theology behind even the violence that they did. So, you and I live in a world where all these evangelicals believe in the alliterable millennia. That's not the normal throughout the last 1,500 years.

That's not what the average Christian believes. It's not what they believe today. If you're a Catholic or Lutheran, not sure about the Anglican church, you'll have to look it up. But we believe that there is a literal thousand years. Now, understand, to believe in amylitialism, you also have to do something else.

You have to believe that all the promises made to ancient Israel now apply to the church. Ancient Israel, and specifically the Jews, are no longer to be considered God's people in any way, shape, or form. It's one of the reasons why good Catholics and Lutherans could participate in the Holocaust in World War II. It was ingrained in them that they were the murderers of Jesus and therefore have no value as human beings, unless you could force them to convert to Christianity. So the promises made to ancient Israel null avoid. They are now allegories of promises made to the church.

So when the descendants of Abraham, the physical descendants of Abraham, are promised the land when the Messiah comes, right? Amylitialism says, no, heaven is promised to the saints who are the spiritual descendants of Abraham. See, it's all allegorized. Now, if you talk to people who believe in millennialism, true millennialism, they all believe that promises made to Abraham's physical descendants are distinct from the promises made to the spiritual descendants.

That the Israelites and the Jews do get that land back when the Messiah comes, just like the Old Testament says. And the saints get the kingdom, right? See, there's two tiers to this. Amylitialism has no... The Jews and Israelites have no part in the kingdom. None.

What's what? So this is a very important doctrine because this is a minority doctrine, even though you and I... You know, you could turn on the television and find a minister preaching premillennialism all the time in the United States. And that still was probably a minority belief in the United States, let alone the world. And it sure was a minority belief in 1844. What happened when he didn't come back, the Adventists began to look at the Scripture and say, where did we go wrong?

And as they began to look at the Scripture and say, where did we go wrong? Many of the Adventists came to certain conclusions. And I'm going to go through some of those conclusions. First one. Christ's second coming will be visible. It's not going to be a secret thing. Everybody disappears. And it will be preceded by an event called the Tribulation.

He said, well, I know that. But think about it. If you lived in 1843 and you knew that, you couldn't have bought into what William Miller was teaching. But why did everybody buy into it? Because it wasn't what was taught in Christianity. The Tribulation is an allegory. The Tribulation is all the time period between the birth of Jesus and his return. Matthew 24. Just read a little bit of Jesus, all of it.

Prophecy here. The big difference here between Millennialist and Amillennialist is that Millennialists believe that, yes, there's allegory in the Bible, and yes, there's symbols in the Bible. We can look at the symbols and know some are symbols. But prophecies are to be studied literally. In other words, they have literal application. In the Amillennialist belief, prophecies are primarily symbolic and have a limited literal application. That's a huge difference of how you view the Bible, isn't it?

So we approach the Bible with prophecies have allegory in it, they have symbols in it, but we're looking for, they all have a literal application, a literal fulfillment. The thousand years are not a symbol of a period of time, it is the period of time.

Matthew 24, 29.

Now, when we study the Olivet Prophecy, the coming of Jesus Christ is visual to the world, and it is preceded by the Tribulation. The Tribulation is not a symbol of the time between the birth of Jesus and His return. We know that if we just look at verse 21. For then, remember the Olivet Prophecy starts at the first part of chapter 24, it goes all through chapter 24 and 25 of Matthew.

They ask Him, what won't be like before you come? So He's talking about very specific. He talks about all these events that begin to accumulate and accumulate. And as they accumulate towards His return, He says, this is the Tribulation, this is the bad time. And then, so at this time, not throughout this time period, but at this time when all these events are taking place, for then there will be great Tribulation, such as not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.

He says, now this Tribulation is worse than any other time. So this is very specific. And He's talking about His return. He's answering what will it be like when you return. In fact, He says in verse 22, unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened. Jesus said, before I come, I have to come when I do, because if I don't come then, humanity is going to destroy itself.

That wasn't even possible to the last few decades. I think possible. So part of what the Millerites had missed was the idea of the Tribulation. But once again, they were coming into this with an amillennial viewpoint. And they said, well, there's something wrong with amillennialism. But they couldn't figure it all out. They didn't have all the... Miller never put it all together. So the first thing, and these are very simple points we're going through today, but we need to remember sometimes the simple things.

Is that Christ's turn is visible to the world, and it's preceded by a time that's the worst time in history. I have people ask me all the time, are we in the Tribulation yet?

Oh, no. These are good times, folks. This isn't the Tribulation. It's not even begun yet. I mean, World War II was a whole lot worse than now. Most of the Middle Ages were worse than now. 400 years of really bad times. No, no, we're not to the Tribulation yet. The events will accumulate. It wouldn't take much to start it, but we're not there yet. First point. Second point.

Jesus doesn't come just to take people away. By the way, as the Millennialist grew and started to study the Scripture, they came to a problem. They understood the Tribulation has to come first. God will not let his people go through the Tribulation was the mindset. So they came up with a new teaching in the 1890s, so really is when it came popular, and really hit in 1903 with the publishing of the Scofield Bible, reference Bible. Anyone know what the new doctor was? The rapture.

You've got to fix a problem. You see, we're looking at a growth of an idea. Does it start to seem...no, it doesn't work. What's been taught for over a thousand years in Christianity doesn't work. So we have a problem with the rapture too. Well, I'll give a sermon sometime in the next, I don't know, six, eight months. It's a need to come up with the rapture. Why they came up with it, and there was a need to come up with it, but why it doesn't fix the problem.

It actually doesn't fix the problem they were faced with. And why the rapture is not taught in the scripture. So the rapture isn't in the Bible, but I understand why they came up with it. It was because they were developing this prima libial idea, which is what the Bible teaches. There is a Tribulation, then Christ comes back. Why happens to the Church during the Tribulation? Well, they got it taken away. That's the conclusion they came to. And yet he had three scriptures to support them, but we'll go through them. When Jesus comes back, is it just to take people away?

It's very interesting that after Jesus' resurrection, of course, the disciples still thought he was going to set up the kingdom on the earth. That's what the scythe is supposed to do. And he didn't, and he didn't, and he didn't. So he's interacting with them now in his resurrected state, and they're waiting for him to do something.

So let's go to Acts 1. Acts 1. It's easy to look through this story and miss something here. Jesus is speaking to them. This is after his resurrection. The day of Pentecost, when the pouring out of the Holy Spirit hasn't happened yet. Verse 9 says, because he tells them you have to preach the gospel, and the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you. He's telling them. He had spoken these things while they washed.

He was taken up in a cloud, received them out of their sight. And while they stood steadfastly toward heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them. And white apparel, who also said, men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? And they waited. Well, what happens next? He's supposed to establish...well, let's go back to verse 6. Because look at verse 6. Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

Now, notice their last question that Jesus is, okay, when do you establish your kingdom? You've died. You've been resurrected. It's time. They still didn't understand what was going on. And suddenly, they watch him ascend and disappear. And they all just stand there. You know, probably say, what happens next? I mean, you can imagine what we do now. And he stands there. And then an angel appears. Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?

The same Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven. He's going to come back. He's coming back this way. You're going to see him coming back. What's interesting is where they were. Verse 12. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet. The Mount of Olives. They were standing on the Mount of Olives when this happened. And the angel said, you'll see him coming back.

You saw him leave the Mount of Olives and go up. You'll see him come back to the Mount of Olives. When Jesus returns, he's coming back to the earth. He will step foot, if you will, on the earth. What's interesting is the Bible tells us exactly where he'll be. Good Zachariah. Verse... chapter 14. Zachariah 14. Okay, so his coming is preceded by a tribulation. His coming is visible. Okay, it's visible, preceded by the tribulation. And he actually comes to earth. The Milerite people didn't quite understand that.

They thought he was coming just to simply take them into heaven. Zachariah 14. Verse 1. Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your midst. And I will gather all the nations to do battle against Jerusalem. You can tie this into the book of Revelation. We'll talk about this in a minute. The city of Jerusalem will be taken, the house is rifled, and the women ravished. Half the city shall go into captivity, but the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as he fights in the day of battle. And in that day... Now, we understand here that Lord Yahweh can either mean the Father, or at times means Jesus Christ. Who comes back according to Acts? Okay, it's Jesus. We also will read the Revelation. It's Jesus. So if Yahweh can mean either that what we have here, according to the New Testament, is Jesus. Look what it says. And on that day His feet will stand what?

On the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall split in two. And the angel said, He's coming back right here. You just say and believe He'll come back here. They had to go back into Jerusalem suffering their great disappointment. One of the reasons I want to talk about this day is every Christian who anticipates the return of Jesus Christ goes through His times of great disappointment.

He's got to be coming. He's got to be coming. I've talked to... I've been with hundreds of people over the years who are dying and said, I thought He would come back in my lifetime. Well, join Peter, Paul... No. John. They all thought that too.

Except for the last generation when He comes, which I believe is us, and He just thought that's okay because the next generation will believe it's them. Until the last generation is there, everybody's going to have their great disappointment. It's what we do with it. And that's what's so interesting about the people in 1844. There were a group of men that were motivated to go someplace else. They were motivated to pursue things like the Sabbath. They were motivated to pursue the idea that there is not an everlasting burning hell. That's one of the things that they discovered. They were motivated to say, wait a minute, what is His coming? This amillennialism doesn't work. The thousand years is literal. Israel hasn't been thrown away by God. It has been punished by God. And it started a whole new way of looking at Scripture. We come along as the beneficiary of a long period of development. We forget something we have no idea where it came from. Look at verse 12. And this shall be the plague, which the Lord will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem. He goes on and talks about how there's going to be this flesh dissolve while they stand on their feet. Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets and their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths. And this brings us to our third point. He returns to the Mount of Olives. Humanity, there will be a large group of humanity that will literally try to resist the coming of Jesus Christ. The Millerites didn't see this. They just thought He was coming. There would be whole rooftops of houses with 15 people sitting on their dressed in white, waiting. He's going to come, there will be a flash, and everybody will watch us go up into heaven. Of course, it didn't happen. And He admits the fact that not only is He coming in the Mount of Olives, but that there's going to be this resistance to it. Revelation 19. It's a little bit of a Bible study today, but just these basic ideas. I'm just giving the most basic, rudimentary viewpoint of millennialism. Now, we know that Revelation 17, 18, 19 is all about the people gathering to fight and Christ returns. And Revelation 19 is specifically about His return and how these armies gather to fight Him. And this ties directly in with what we just read in Zechariah. Verse 17, Revelation 19. And I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried with a loud voice, saying, To all the birds that fly in the midst of heaven, come and gather together for the supper of the great God, That you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses, and of those who sittle them, the flesh of all people, free and slave, with great and small. John says, And I saw the beasts, the kings of the earth, and the armies gathered together, To make war against him who sat on the horse, and against his army. Him who sat on the horse, if you read chapter 19, is Jesus Christ. Once again, this is why when we look at Yahweh in Zechariah, we see that application of Yahweh is to Jesus. And it's not always. Sometimes it's the Father. But all the New Testament prophecies, this is Jesus that's doing this.

Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet, who worked signs in the presence. Now the beast and false prophet, a millennialism really doesn't have a lot of explanation of the beast and false prophet. If you're a millennialist, they're really important because these two men show up as part of the whole tribulation process. So the beast and false prophet become very important. This is why in Catholicism, for most of their history, they've actually told people, do not read Revelation, you cannot understand it. Because a millennialism doesn't lead you to an understanding of it.

It's only an idea that the thousand years, the millennium, which means a thousand years, the thousand years is real, and there are events that lead up to it. Then, Revelation makes sense.

It says, these two were cast in like a firebird with rimstone, and the rest were killed with the sword, which proceeds from the mouth of whom it was who sat on the horse, and the birds were filled with their flesh. So the idea of Jesus fighting armies was not part of what happened in 1844. It is part of what we know as a millennialist, and a premillennialist, which means Christ comes before the millennium. With that understanding, we understand there's going to be a great war against him.

Now, when he comes back and stands on the Mount of Olives, and he destroys these armies, he doesn't go back to heaven. And this is where the prophecies of the Old Testament are so important. The prophecies of the Old Testament are about the Messiah reigning from Jerusalem.

But see, the avillennialist is some of that Jerusalem that means heaven, because Jerusalem can be, by the way, a symbol of heaven. We know that. But we have to be very careful when we see, is it literal or a symbol? And we say, most of the time, especially in the Messianic prophecies, it's literal.

So if it's literal, then he actually goes someplace. Now, let's go back to Zechariah 14 and look at this prophecy, because there's something important in this.

The Adventists, the Seventh-day Adventists, as far as I know, I haven't studied their doctors a long time, but as far as I remember, and I hope I get this right, they believe there's nobody on earth for a thousand years. They've come to the realization a thousand years is a literal time period. They go to heaven, yeah. But there's nobody else on earth.

Which now, really what that does is you have a problem with all the Old Testament prophecies. So they're taking some things literal and other things not literal. If we take them all literal, then there is somebody on earth. And Jesus Christ reigns from Jerusalem.

But you know, in Zechariah, we read this, where he comes back and fights this war. Let's go to verse 16.

Because this isn't in heaven. And this is talking about human beings. Remember, this is after the Messiah comes, after he fights this war, he stands on the Mount of Olives, and it shall come to pass that everyone who has left of all the nations which came up against Jerusalem, this isn't the saints who have been changed.

The people who came up to fight, the remnant of the world. So there's human beings. There's human beings on earth. They came up against Jerusalem, so we know who they are, we know which Jerusalem this is talking about. This Jerusalem can't be heaven, because they didn't get spaceships to try to go to heaven, wherever that is, right? They came to fight him as he came down to the Mount of Olives. So this is all very literal.

Which came up against Jerusalem, shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and keep the Feast of Tabernacles. It shall be that whichever the families of the earth, the families of the earth, who do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King of the Lord of Hosts, then there shall be no rain.

There's people on the earth who refuse to come to Jerusalem to worship the Messiah.

And the result is they're punished. It can't be in heaven, it makes no sense. I mean, they're the people of the earth. It's very literal.

So this alone, just 2 Corinthians 14 alone, has, you know, here, coupling this to the New Testament, this is Jesus, because he's the one who returns. At this point, the Father comes later. Jesus comes, there's war against him, it's visible to everybody, it's after a tribulation, he stands on the Mount of Olives, and then he's in Jerusalem, and a lot of people say, we're not going to follow him. And bad things happen.

One of the most encouraging scriptures on this is another, on the Minor Prophets, Micah.

Once again, I have deliberately picked, and I have dozens of other passages that I, you know, even in my notes, but I deliberately picked verses, the passages that are quite obvious, passages where both Jews and Christians can, oh yeah, this is millennial, okay? Or not millennial, because the Jews would say millennial. This is, this is the Messiah, this is about the Messiah, okay? These are Messianic. Micah 4.

You know, the problem we have with the term millennium, you hate the, you don't want to build usually a doctrine out of one scripture. The only problem is, we only have one scripture that says a thousand years. That's it. It's all this argument that comes over one scripture. He's here for a thousand years. But where is he? He's on the earth. Look at it says, verse 1, Micah 4. Now shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house, because mountain is a symbol. Now we do have a symbol here. But in anyone who understands Hebrew poetry knows, a mountain is a symbol of a government. Hills are like small nations, mountains are big nations. So you could say here that the government, okay, the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills, and all people shall flow to it. And many nations shall come and say, come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we shall learn his path. For out of Zion, the law shall go forth. Now Zion can be a symbol. Now Zion's a place. It's a place in Jerusalem. It can be a symbol of the church. It can be a symbol of the throne of God. But look what it says. And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, And he shall judge between many peoples, and rebuke strong nations afar off. And they shall beat their swords and the plowshares and their spears and the pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more. But everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts is spoke. He rules from Jerusalem. Now that is a central concept to the Old Testament prophecies. In fact, central to the Old Testament prophecies about the return of the Messiah is that he's on earth.

There are whole passages in different books that talk about what the society will be like, how the animals will be tamed. There's whole passages about what the agriculture will be like. And of course, what Amos said was, those aren't real. Having good agricultural means it will be a nice place to be. Having a nice society where there's children playing. Well, that just means it will be safe.

But there's such detailed prophecies.

So the Old Testament, the Messiah is coming to Jerusalem and reigning from Jerusalem. But you have to remember, the anti-Semitic view of early Catholicism was so great. They had removed anything from their teachings that they considered Jewish. And as I said, as I'm doing the study of Martin Luther, as we go over to Germany to do some programs here in July, the latter part of his life, he hated Jews so much that, because Martin Luther started to really change a lot of things in the right direction. His hatred of Jews would not allow him to find truth in the Old Testament. Not allowed. Because he was so anti-Semitic. So that prejudice kept Christianity, it kept moving it in a direction away from concepts like Millennialism. And until you, you know, you've got to realize, Millennialism was taught in the second and third centuries. From the time of Augustine to today, it's been taught very few places. You and I take it for granted, but it hasn't been taught in very many places. By the way, almost all Sabbath keepers are pre-Millennials.

The keeping of the Sabbath actually helps you understand the Millennium, and there's reasons for that, but I won't get into that today.

So he rules from Jerusalem. Now, there's another thing we know here, of course, is that when he comes, the saints are resurrected. And the saints who are alive at that time, now there's all the church. The church is changed. Those who have God's Spirit are changed into spirit beings. And this is what Paul talks about in 1 Thessalonians 4 in great detail. He talks about it in 1 Corinthians 15 in great detail.

And we have in Revelation 20 a passage that puts this in real context here. Revelation, chapter 20. So, as Jesus comes down to the Mount of Olives, when he touches on the Mount of Olives, the saints are with him. You read 1 Corinthians 15, you read Revelation 19, you put this together. As he appears, the saints are resurrected.

So I'm doing this a little bit out of order. We'd have the tribulation and the visible return of Jesus Christ. Number two, if we were doing this in order, would be resurrection of the saints. But I would do the armies gather, and he comes down to the Mount of Olives, and there's... or he comes down to the Mount of Olives, fights the armies, goes to Jerusalem. Those things all happen. But this actually happens towards the beginning of these events. Revelation 20, verse 1.

Because here's another thing he does that's part of the resurrection and part of the establishment of his kingdom. But it says, John writes, and I saw an angel coming down from heaven. Remember, this is all part of chapter 19. Chapters were not...he didn't write in chapters, those were added. But it's all part of the return of Jesus Christ. I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who was the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He binds him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him, so they should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were finished. But after these things, he must be released for a little while. If you read the rest of chapter 20, you get to the period where he is released, and then there's the great white throne judgment. A millennialist has to just sort of make this sort of mystery prophecies. Because how do you put them into a timeline when there is no timeline? But millennialists have a timeline. It is a thousand years. At the end of the thousand years, Satan is loose for a little bit. Then Satan is removed, and we have what is called a great white throne judgment. After the great white throne judgment, you have Jerusalem coming to earth. So the timeline is all fits when you have a millennial viewpoint. He says, verse 4, And I saw thrones, and then who sat upon them, and judgment was committed to them. And I saw those souls and those who had beheaded for their witness to Jesus, and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or the image, who had not received his mark on their foreheads or in their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. Many a millennialist say, well, there is only one resurrection. So those a millennialists don't believe in the rapture. There is one resurrection. There is a problem. If this is literal, there is a resurrection of the saints who rule with Christ on the earth. Where is he? He is in Jerusalem. They are with Christ for a thousand years, ruling with him on the earth, with all these people who are now coming to God and coming to Christ. And then it says, but the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. So if you are an a millennialist, you actually have to say, this is the first resurrection, is an allegory. It is not true. I mean, it is not literal. It is true. It is not literal. A millennialist say, no, it is true.

And then it goes on to explain a second resurrection that happens. That's a great one. Don't judge.

So we take this for granted, but like I said, this is not what the majority of Christians believe even today.

So they are, the saints are resurrected, and they are with Christ in Jerusalem for a thousand years. One last thing I want to bring up in conjunction with this, it really is a huge subject, but once you accept this, this timeline is literal. A millennialism is literal. The thousand years is literal. Now you have to put together something. You see, now all the Scriptures, where do these prophecies fit? If I have a literal millennium, where is the Messiah? If I have a literal millennium, where are the saints? Are there people on earth? What's going on on earth?

We also now have to deal with, the problem with that a millennialism has, is that all the promises made to Abraham don't apply to any physical descendants of Abraham, only the spiritual descendants of Abraham. Now we do know that the church is called the spiritual descendants of Abraham. Being in the church has nothing to do with your physical lineage, right? Being a physical descendant of Abraham has nothing to do with your salvation.

That's why Jesus said to the Pharisees, don't say we have Abraham as our father. He says, I can create children of Abraham out of rocks, right? So being a physical descendant of Abraham has certain blessings from God, but has nothing to do with salvation. Being a spiritual descendant of Abraham, that's salvation.

But, does that erase the physical blessings God promised them? If it does, it makes God very dishonest. Because he said to them, I will do this to your descendants, I will do this to your people, I will do this to the sons of Jacob. There's just prophecy after prophecy. And so, once we start to take this literal, we have to believe that the promise is made to the physical descendants of Abraham, those physical blessings will take place. And there are all kinds of prophecies about what the Messiah will do with Israel. Israel failed. They were supposed to be God's representatives on earth, and they failed. There'll be too hard on them. The church is supposed to be God's representatives on earth, and we don't do too good a job sometimes either, do we? And we have God's Spirit. So, there'll be too hard on those people. But they failed. But that doesn't mean God's promises fail. One of the things about millennialism is that it gives us... Remember last week I talked about God's faithfulness? God carries out His promises in spite of us. And He promised Abraham, I'm going to take your descendants, I'm going to do this with them, and this with them, and this with them. And when the Messiah comes, you look at the prophecies, He will gather them together again in the land. And they'll have to now really be My representatives. They're going to have to show everybody who I am.

Israel has a purpose in the Messianic rule. All those prophecies the Old Testament haven't been that away with are somehow applied to the church. Those people still have a point to play, a place to play. And let's just look at one of them. Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel 37, of course, is known because the first part of this chapter is the great prophecy about God resurrecting ancient Israel.

And when He resurrects them, He's going to do something special with them, in that He's going to give them His Spirit, which is the New Covenant. He promised them a New Covenant. You and I are recipients of the New Covenant because the New Covenant has nothing to do with your lineage. It has to do with repentance and turning to God. But the New Covenant is also specifically given to those people. And so what we have here in Ezekiel 37 is a resurrection of physical Israel, part of that second resurrection, where they now have a chance and opportunity to participate in the New Covenant. So that's the first part of this chapter, but I want to start in verse 15 because it's the second part of the chapter and we don't read much. Again, the Word of the Lord came to me saying, Yes, for you, Son of man, take a stick for yourself and write on it for Judah and for the children of Israel, His companions. Then take another stick and write on it for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel and His companions. Now this would have meant something at the time of Ezekiel. Israel had been destroyed as a nation. Judah was thereby with parts of Benjamin and other tribes with it. And he says, okay, what I want you to do is take two sticks. And what I want you to write, this is Judah and this is Israel. Well, they'd been two nations for a long time before Israel was even destroyed.

They'd been one nation under Saul and David and Solomon. After that, they were two nations, all through the time of the kings. Two nations. He said, I want you to take this, I want you to write on it. Now the people he's writing to, I understand that. These people were, well, we don't know what happened to them. They were scattered out and destroyed by the Assyrians and, okay, Judah's life.

Then join them, one to another, for yourself into one stick, and it will become one in your hand. And when the children of your people say to you, will you not show us what you mean by this? I mean, this thing makes sense. What do you know? Okay, you get two sticks, and one's Israel, one's Judah, and you put them together, and you tie them together, and now it's one stick. What does that mean? Thus says the Lord God, this is what you say to them, verse 19, Surely I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his companions, and I will join them with it, with the stick of Judah, and they will become one stick, and they will be one in my hand. And the sticks which you write will be in your hand before their eyes. Verse 21, say to them, thus says the Lord God, Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every side, and bring them into their own land. And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mount of Israel, and one king shall be king over them. They shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they be divided into two kingdoms again. They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions. But I will deliver them from all their dwelling places, in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them, and they will be my people, and I will be their God. Now, if this prophecy, according to Amillennialism, applies to the church, then to the people He was writing to, He was lying to them.

Think about that.

When the children of Israel say, what does this mean? You tell them, all the people of Israel Sunday will be brought back together into one nation. But I don't mean you, I mean other people. That's exactly what He kept to be saying to them. I'm telling you it will be you, but it won't be you. Amillennialism makes God lie to the ancient Israelites.

No, there's still a plan for those people. No, it's different than that. Once again, being part of the church is a whole lot better than being part of Israel. This is salvation. This is eternity. They have their shot at eternity, and it's salvation, but...

Chapter 37 tells us how this works. When does this happen? When are all these people brought back together that don't even know who they are? Verse 24, David, my servant, shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd, and they shall walk in my judgments and serve my statutes and do them. And they shall dwell in the land which I give unto Jacob, my servant, where your fathers dwelt. Where did your fathers dwell? I don't know. I can only go back to West Virginia and Pennsylvania. I don't know where they dwelt before that. How about you? These people knew where their fathers dwelt. Right? They knew what that meant. There's a reality to these words that you can't allegorize away.

And they shall dwell there, their children and their children's children forever. And my servant David shall be their prince forever. David's not even alive right now. This is a millennial... well, it's a messianic prophecy. I can't say millennial because they didn't know anything about the millennium. But it is a messianic prophecy. Notice now the next statement, verse 26. Moreover, I will make a covenant of peace with them as the new covenant that Jesus made at his death. They get a chance at the new covenant because the old covenant was going to fail because they failed. They didn't have God's Spirit. And it shall be an everlasting covenant with them, and I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the nations also will know that I the Lord sanctify Israel, my sanctuary is in their midst forever.

And to say that Israel there is the church means to make what Ezekiel says to those people a lie.

Can't be true then, because it's them. So what we see is this two-tier understanding of prophecy, all based on the promises of God. Salvation is given through the new covenant through Jesus Christ. The physical promises made to Abraham that are connected to David and the Messiah, the messianic reign, that's all part of the truth too. And that's the last point I want to make.

That God is going to fulfill those promises made to Abraham when the Messiah comes. William Miller had no concepts of that. I remember he was coming from a world which believed that Israel, physical Israel, physical Jews, those people had no meaning to God anymore.

None whatsoever.

So they had those prophecies. What do they mean?

We see all this fitting together. All this is the promises of God. God is doing exactly what he said he would do.

So what do we learn from just a short recap, then, of the concept of millennialism? One, Christ is going to visibly return to earth after a time known as the Tribulation.

Two, Christ will return to the Mount of Olives. Physically, people are going to see him there. Three, there will be resistance to Christ coming. This can be a major war. Zechariah talks about it. Well, it's throughout Isaiah, the minor prophets, and contained prophecies of this. And, of course, Matthew 24 and the whole book of Revelation. Four, Christ will rule the earth of Jerusalem, and there will be physical people on the earth. Five, the saints will be resurrected as he's returned, and they will be ruling with him from Jerusalem. And then the last point. Judah and Israel will be reunited and given their land under the Messiah as prophesied in the Olives. Anyone who waits for the return of Christ will suffer great disappointment from time to time. He hasn't come back yet. There will be a time, it's a reality. We live between the first and second comings. It's a great time to live, because we understand the Bible in a way Peter didn't understand it. Think about it, Peter didn't even have the book of Revelation.

All the things we understand, he didn't even probably understand the term a thousand years.

It had never been put in the Bible yet.

We live in a great time where God has revealed all these things. It's important to stay focused on the millennial concept. So we understand the beast, the false prophet, we understand the tribulation, we understand the greatness of his coming.

And we understand he brings solutions to humanity. He is coming to set up his kingdom on earth. Live every day, live every day anticipating that event.