Why Are We Called Millennialists?

There's a time in American history that's known as the Great Disappointment. I mentioned this a number of months ago, well, I don't know, six, eight months ago, because we were doing a television program where we were going to talk a little bit about the Great Disappointment. The Great Disappointment is a time in American history that culminated in an event that took place in October of 1844 on the Day of Atonement. On the Day of Atonement in October 1844, tens of thousands of people in the United States—now, remember, the United States is mainly people that are in now what we call the eastern part of the United States and through the Midwest—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the South— that's where mainly the people lived. Tens of thousands of people had sold their property, shut down their businesses. Many of them had withdrawn their children from any—if they were in a little public school. They went out that night to either their church, many of them gathered in people's homes. Some of them went to the rooftops. Some of them went out into the woods, or out into the fields, and built a little bonfire, and families would join. You just see families coming from all over the place and gathering around, many of them dressed in white because they were waiting for Jesus Christ to return.

Now, the United States had a lot less population in 1844 than now, so this number wouldn't be much now, but it was huge then. It is estimated that at least 50,000 people got together that night because they believed Jesus Christ was going to return. And it is also estimated that at least up to a million other people, which when you have a nation of maybe 30 to 40 million people, were waiting just in case, looking if Jesus Christ was going to come back that night. It's a fascinating time in American history, and it had a profound effect on certain teachings that would happen in American religion. And actually, what we're going to talk about today, it connects back to something we teach that we have been developed and we have learned, but was not a common teaching in Christianity at all in 1844. This movement started in the 1820s. A farmer named William Miller began to tell his neighbors, I have figured out when Jesus is coming back. I have it all figured out. And he would talk to them about it. He would put scriptures together, and many people got interested. And over a number of years, more and more people started spreading the story that William Miller was saying until in 1831 he wrote a little book called Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ about the year 1843. And overnight it was his success.

People started to think, you know, he's got the scriptures right here. He's put this together. And it was the beginning of a movement called the Adventist movement. Adventist means coming or arrival. Now, we think of Seventh-day Adventist, but the Adventist movement at this point was not Seventh-day Adventist. It was the coming of Christ. It was an Adventist movement. And it gathered people from all different denominations throughout the country. People came together because they were preparing for the return of Jesus Christ. And they thought he was coming back. And so Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, whatever your group was, which was the three major religions at that time in the United States, they all started to come to these Adventist meetings. In fact, what happened with William Miller, he met a man named Joshua Hines, who was a Baptist minister. But Joshua Hines was brilliant at communication. And Joshua Hines created a magazine in New York and another magazine in Boston, which were two of the biggest cities in the country, and began to just influence people there and spread throughout those two cities.

Soon, congregations all over and it started to spread down into the Midwest and down into the South, started to print up little tracts. Which was the major way that the church communicated back then because it was cheap. There was a printing press and you would create little tracts and start handing out tracts. Because Joshua Hines created charts.

Charts of history. Charts of the Bible. And you could look at the charts and it, wow, Jesus is coming back in 1843 to 1844. Somewhere in there, He's coming back.

So the movement spread and it got bigger. Eventually, He says, I've got it narrowed down. It's between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. Now needless to say, for that one year, the Adventist movement in the United States was huge. I mean, people were talking about it. In fact, it became so huge that some churches rioted. You know, if there was an Adventist tent meeting going on, they would show up and tear the, you know, like a mob. Because the Adventists were just pulling everybody out of churches and they're creating this excitement, Jesus Christ is coming back. We have it figured out. And then, March 21, 1844 came. And Jesus didn't come back.

This was the beginning of why it's called in history the great disappointment.

Tens of thousands of people, probably hundreds of thousands of people throughout the United States are devastated. Some of them have given up their congregations. They've given up their families. Because Jesus was coming back. And He didn't.

Well, one group of Adventists said, we figured it out. We got the date wrong. He comes back on the day of Atonement. They took a scripture from Leviticus and a scripture from Habakkuk and put them together in a way that I don't even begin to understand. And they came up with, He's coming back on the day of Atonement, 1844. So it kept it going. It was alive. And then the day of Atonement came, 1844. Jesus didn't come back.

Many people gave up their faith. People gave up on God. I mean, some people had literally given up. Some people went out and gave away all their possessions. He's coming back. I'm going to need these anymore because I'm going to be with Him. The movement began to fragment now.

Some people went back to their churches where they were told, you can't believe that here. Others went back. And the concept of Christ coming began to be studied differently, especially in the Baptist churches. Because you have to understand, at this point in time, the number one teaching about the return of Jesus Christ is called Amillennialism.

What Amillennialists believe, and this is still, by the way, the official teaching of the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, and many of the old-line Protestant churches, this is still the major teaching of the majority of Christians today. It will sound strange because it's not what is taught in evangelical Christianity today. So if you turn on your television or radio and you're listening to some religious program and they're talking about the return of Jesus Christ, you will hear something that is actually not what the majority of Christians believe. Amillennialism believes that Jesus, when Jesus came and was born, that was the beginning of the Kingdom of God on this earth.

And that the thousand years isn't literal. The thousand years is a period of time, it's a symbol. It's a symbol of a period of time between the birth of Jesus and His Second Coming. Like I said, it's the official teaching of Catholicism, Lutheranism, many churches still today.

But other churches began to change because of what happened in 1844. They started saying, do we really know if amillennialism is right? How did we fail? How did it that we thought He was coming? Why did William Miller's... Why did these charts seem so good? And why did they fail? They began to study it. What happened in the Adventist movement is interesting.

People began to break off into many strange concepts. One of the leaders of the Adventist movement claimed that he was Elijah, and that he had come now and his job was to go to all the leaders of the world. And of course, nobody, not even the local town mayor, would talk to him. So he ended up... The best we can figure out is he ended up sort of either senile or insane. He wasn't right at the end, okay?

People began to see visions, different interpretations. Some of them wouldn't join the Shakers. You know the Shakers up here in Kentucky? They wouldn't join the Shakers.

Others believed that William Miller was the last of the great gospel preachers, and the gospel should not be preached. It was called the shut door doctrine. It was a sin to preach the gospel, because William Miller was the man chosen by God to preach the gospel. Nobody else could do it. And so if you tried to preach to your neighbors, you got kicked out of the church. Now, in all this, one interesting thing happened. And the best they could trace it back was one woman who came from the Seventh-day Baptist. And Seventh-day Baptist became Adventist. And in some meeting in someone's house with a bunch of Adventists, she said, you know, we should be keeping the Sabbath.

And she convinced them, and they began to convince other Adventists.

And pretty soon they all sort of band together, and they became the Seventh-day Adventist. So the Seventh-day Adventist now had to figure out why Miller had failed.

So, L.G. White came along, who they considered to be a prophetess, and she said, I figured it out. On the day of atonement in 1844, something did happen. But it happened in heaven. Jesus Christ, as the high priest, took on a certain role in heaven, it did happen. It just didn't happen on the earth. So the Seventh-day Adventist said, yep, he was right, he just had the interpretation wrong. A group of Sabbath keepers said, ah, that's, no, that can't be right.

So they became the Church of God Seventh-day.

Those two churches, the Church of God Seventh-day and the Seventh-day Adventist, over the next 50 years were the two churches that spread the concept of the Sabbath. They also spread the concept, they started to figure out, wait a minute, there's no everlasting burning hell fire. Wait a minute, you don't have an immortal soul. There's a lot of doctrines that these two churches started to figure out and started to teach. When Herbert Armstrong came along in the 1920s and 1930s, he was in the Church of God Seventh-day. I'm bringing this up because the doctrine we're going to talk about today, you have to understand the history of it. We're the product of something that started in 1844. As Christians started to say, what had been taught in as the mainstream doctrine in Christianity for over a thousand years, it had failed in 1844. There's something wrong. And they began to answer the question. What I want to do is go through some simple scriptures. We're not going to go into any great detail. We're not going to go into great, hard to understand scriptures. And look at the simplicity of why we are what they call millennialists. We believe that the thousand years is literal. You say, why don't we all know that? Understand, for the majority of since about 300, 400, since Augustine, really, Augustine said, no, the thousand years isn't literal. And so at that point on, that has been the major teaching of most of Christianity. As I said, it's interesting, you'll find lots of Baptists who believe it. That's because Baptists had become Adventists. And they had to now deal with what the seven-day Adventists and everybody else did. Why did this fail? Why did this prophecy fail? What was wrong in our viewpoint? We are millennialists. We believe that it's real. The crisis is going to rain for a thousand years. Now, we do have a different viewpoint than the Adventists on that, and I'll explain why in a minute. But why do we come to that conclusion?

So let's look at a handful of scriptures that if you lived in 1844 and knew these scriptures, you would have understood that William Miller was wrong. The problem is, remember, they all looked at the Scripture as amillennialists, as do really the most of Christians today. So, for the reason of white Catholicism, they're told, don't read the book of Revelation. You can't understand it. Because you can't take anything literal, so how do you explain it? Now, there are symbols in prophecy, right? So we can't say everything in the Bible is literal, but we believe that the events are literal. That's what's important. And we start with a thousand years is literal. Once you start with that, now you have to explain it. You have to explain it. Let's look at their first point here. When I say this, you're going to say, well, I understand that, but let's transport yourself back to 1844 and say, well, yeah, this isn't part of our thought process. This isn't part of what is even taught in terms of prophecy. Christ's Second Coming will be a visual event preceded by the Tribulation.

Christ's Second Coming will be a visual event preceded by the Tribulation.

Now, if you are an amillennialist and the Kingdom of God was established on earth when Jesus was born and is completed when He arrives, the Tribulation is all the time in between there.

But we have a problem with the Olivet prophecy. Let's go to Matthew 24.

What Jesus said here in direct answer, okay, what we're reading here is the direct answer to the question, what's it going to be like before you come back? Tell us the sign of the time. Tell us what it's going to be like, you know, that we're herald when you return to set up this Kingdom on the earth. Verse 29 says, Jesus is going to come back and gather everybody to meet Him in heaven.

But, verse 29, immediately after the Tribulation. Now, is the Tribulation a specific time, or does that just is a general statement about the time between Jesus' birth and His return?

It's these kinds of questions we have to answer if we're going to defend Millennialism. Well, let's go to verse 21. Verse 21. Remember, the context is, what's it going to be like? And He starts giving all these events. This event's going to happen. This event's going to happen. And there's going to be this. Wars, rumors of wars, and pestilences. He's given them all these events, and there's going to be inside the church people are going to go into sin, and there's going to be all these problems inside the church. And then He says in verse 21, for then, okay, it's pretty specific, and then at the end of all these events, and all these events happen, there will be a great Tribulation, such as not been since the beginning of the world, until this time, no nor shall ever shall be. Okay, this is unlike the rest of history. He specifically stated, this great Tribulation is specifically unlike any other time.

And He goes on, He says, unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved, but for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened. So Jesus, in the Olivet Prophecy, specifically says that the Tribulation that we just read, He comes after the Tribulation, at the end of the Tribulation, the Tribulation is a specific time that is so bad that unless He comes, humanity would be destroyed.

That wasn't even possible to the last couple of decades.

That was even possible. So what we have here is His direct, explicit, there is something called the Tribulation.

And you will see Him coming at the end of this Tribulation. So Christ's return is visible after a time period called the Tribulation.

I'll give a sermon on the rapture here sometime in the next few months or whatever, but this is why millennialists, it's millennialists, by the way, they believe in the rapture. Amelianists don't, they don't need to, because there is no Tribulation. It has a specific series of events.

Millennialists believe in a rapture because they've got to be saved from it.

So there's a problem with... but I understand why they've come up with it.

It's a stretch of Scripture, but they come up with it for a very specific reason. Because they believe in the Tribulation, and they believe in a literal thousand years, and Christ's coming back, and what happens to the Church during the Tribulation?

That's why you find no real rapture being taught in, say, 1844.

You know, that there's a rapture that happens before the Tribulation because no one could define really the Tribulation. So the rapture, as we know it, the rapture teaching is a fairly new teaching. It came about in the late 1800s, early 1900s, in the way that it's taught today. There are forms of it, but in the way it's taught today.

So that's our first point. Okay, there is a Tribulation, and Christ comes and everybody sees it. Okay, so that's some secret thing where people just... what they thought, sitting on... in 1844, they're sitting on top of their house dressed in white because they're all going to float up and meet Him in the air. That was it! They all went to heaven.

See? So this is different.

Now, the second point. So the first point is, it's visible and we know it's after the Tribulation, and the Tribulation hasn't started yet. No, it hasn't started yet.

If you just read the All That Prophecy, you know it hasn't started yet. If you read the Book of Revelation, it hasn't started yet.

So it hasn't started yet. Now, it could happen very quickly, but it hasn't begun.

When it happens, it's going to happen real fast.

So enjoy this. Compared to the... You don't want the Tribulation. We have to go through it. But it's hard to get through it. We have to go through it. But it's horrible.

You think, these are not bad times. Believe me, World War II was worse than now.

Right? The whole world was involved in something so horrible. It was a lot worse than now.

Most of the Middle Ages was worse than now.

I mean, read them. Bubonic plague.

This is a lot worse than now.

So no, this isn't it. But we're headed towards it.

The second point we can show is very interesting. We have to... First of all, we go back to after Jesus' resurrection. And He kept talking and being with His disciples.

And teaching them, and they expected Him to establish the Kingdom on the earth. The Old Testament prophecies talk about how the Messiah will come and establish the Kingdom. Well, Jesus had died. He was resurrected. They knew who He was. He would disappear, walk through walls, start talking to them.

Okay, when does the next step happen here? Let's go to Acts 1.

Acts 1.

Here we have the last time Jesus would get together and talk with all of His major disciples. Verse 6 says something interesting. He's talking to them, and as usual, they have questions. Notice the question.

Verse 6 of Acts 1, Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, Lord, will You at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?

Okay, the Messiah is supposed to set up God's Kingdom on this earth, and Israel is supposed to be a center point of that Kingdom. Are you going to do it now? You know? Are we going to finally overthrow the Romans? When are you going to do this?

And Jesus said, no, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit, but I'm leaving now. Goodbye.

Now, you can imagine, they're now going through their great disappointment.

Every Christian, except those who happen to be there alive when Jesus comes back, are going to go through a great disappointment sometime in your life.

Were you really hoping He would come back by now?

I mean, I've sat with dozens and dozens of people over the years who were dying and said, you know, I thought I'd be there when He came back.

I'm 90 years old, and it's not going to happen.

I'll be in the resurrection.

And there's a little disappointment.

So all of us will go through some disappointment about this, unless we're the people. Now, I believe that we are the people that will be there when He returns. But what if I'm wrong?

It doesn't change anything.

It doesn't change a thing.

Prophecies are still true. Christ's return is still true.

So we all can face a great disappointment about the return of Jesus Christ. They're facing a great disappointment.

And so He goes off, and they watch Him ascend into heaven and disappear.

Verse 9, Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.

And while they looked steadfastly towards the heaven, as He went up, behold, I want to stop there, because I find this fascinating. Are you going to set up the kingdom now? No. See you later. And they watch Him go up. And it says, they're just steadfast. They're just fixed.

Well, what's He going to do? I mean, you can imagine there's silence, and maybe Peter's saying, I bet she's coming back.

What's He going to do?

Because He's supposed to set up the kingdom.

It says, And then two men, two angels, stood by them in white apparel, who also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? That must have been a hilarious sight. All these guys you stand there, stay up and just stare at Him.

Can you imagine walking by? You see these people that do this in crowded places? They stand and stare, and pretty soon people gather around and stare.

They must be looking at something.

What are these guys staring at? We've got us to send two angels and say, Hey guys, stop staring. People are looking at you, okay?

It says, The question is, where were they? There's 12.

He said, You bid here on the Mount of Olives, He brought you here specifically. You saw Him go up from here. He's coming back the same way.

Jesus Christ is returning to a place, and He's returning to the Mount of Olives.

Now, in 1844, if you understood that, you would have seen this maybe a little different. You still would have wanted to be gathered to Him, but they weren't sure what's...you know, they all thought they were leaving and that was it. Now, what happens to the earth? I'm not sure they even knew. They're pretty vague on it. Turn to Zechariah 14. When we read the New Testament, whether it's Acts or the book of Revelation or some of the writings of Paul, they all say that Jesus Christ is coming back. They all say the same thing. And that people will behold Him, people will see Him, all these events are going to happen when He comes back. And the reason I say that, this is important in Zechariah 14 because the Lord, and of course it's Yahweh here. Yahweh can mean the Father or the Son depending on the context. All the New Testament context is that the Son is returning to a specific place. All the New Testament. The Son is returning to a specific place. So let's look at what it says here. Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem, and a city shall be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished, and half of the city shall go into captivity. But the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city. And then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as He fights in the day of battle. And in that day His feet will stand where? On the Mount of Olives. He will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two. So He returns to a specific place. Okay, He's going to come in a visible way after the Tribulation, and He returns to a specific place. Now, there's a number of things that happen here as He returns to this specific place. And one of them is that large groups of human beings try to keep Him from returning to this place. Let's look on to verse 12. And this shall be the plague which the Lord will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem. Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet, their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, and their tongue shall dissolve in their mouths. It goes on and describes this terrible just plague that comes out from Christ and kills these armies that are coming against Him. And that brings us to our third point. There will be human resistance to Jesus Christ.

Armies will gather together. This isn't done in secret.

Armies will gather together and surround Jerusalem. This will be massive.

This will be the greatest battle in the history of humanity. So it's not some secret thing. Nations that will be coming together to fight each other will decide this is a greater threat and they will actually ally with each other. Some of them will be gathered to fight each other, but they will ally because of this invasion. We have this described in detail in Revelation 19.

Revelation 19.

I mean, there's a lot of scriptures that tie this all together. I'm only hitting ones that are pretty obvious. Revelation 19 is about the return of Jesus Christ. So the whole chapter is about Him coming and everybody seeing Him coming.

So we take Zechariah. They have to be all the same events.

Verse 17, Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, John says, 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 ye may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses, and those who sit on them, the flesh of all people, free and slave, both small and great. I saw the beast. Now, the beasts of false prophet are very important figures in millennialism. Why? Because millennialists believe, because we take the book of Revelation literal. I know their symbols are over, but the events are literal. There are two individuals who come along, the beast and false prophet. And at this point in time, at the beginning of the tribulation, they actually create a power that now fights against Jesus Christ. So we believe they're actual, we believe that's literal. So he's gathered, the beast is there with the armies, gathered together to make war against him who sat on the horse and against his army. If you read Revelation, the one who comes sitting on the horse, if you read Revelation 19 is Jesus Christ. It's not obvious. It's obvious.

Then the beast was captured within the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. And these two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the rest were killed with the sword which was preceded from the mouth of him who sat on his horse. And all the birds were filled with their flesh.

There is a great, horrible battle that takes place when Jesus Christ returns. In 1844, if you really would have understood that, you would have known he wasn't coming back. The armies weren't gathered around Jerusalem. These armies have to be gathered around Jerusalem. Why? Where is he coming back to? The Mount of Olives.

He's coming back to a specific place.

Now once he comes back, what does he do?

Now this gets... millennialists argue over this. To me, it's very, very simple what he does. Very clear. In fact, the Seventh-day Adventists believe that when Jesus comes, destroys the armies, the saints are resurrected, that Jesus and the saints go back to heaven, and there's nobody on the earth for a thousand years.

They think, well, where did they get that from?

Remember, the Seventh-day Adventists are forming a doctrine because amillennialism is what everybody believes and they know it's not right.

So they get sort of partway there, and they stop because they'll be there. He gets through the It's like the early 1900s, and it's like they're getting this right. They're starting to figure it out. How the tribulation works, and the millennium, and Christ's return, and, hey, there's people on this earth! Let's go back to Zechariah 14 again. Think about what we just read in Zechariah 14. The Lord, Jesus, comes, and He stands on the Mount of Olives, splits in two, and there's a war going on. There's this battle going on. And then He pours out a plague on all those who are gathered against Him. So now He's there. What does He do now? Does He go to heaven? That is the conclusion Ellen G. White came up with. Does He go to heaven? Well, let's go here to verse 16. Now remember, how you define all these scriptures is based on whether you see them as descriptive of literal events, or you see them as symbols of something else. If they're allegories, then they have a different meaning. If they're literal events, then Jesus does stand on the Mount of Olives, and He does, He sure are these. So then the next thing we're going to read has to be a literal event, too. You understand? If it's all literal, which that's how we see it, it's literal, then something happens here. And as you come to pass, then everyone who was left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem, okay, the nations who came against Jerusalem, that's a literal thing, these armies come up. Christ has killed them, many of them. But the ones that are left, oh, there's people left. There's human beings still alive on the earth. This isn't the saints. These are the people who gathered against Him. So it's quite clear. The people gathered against Him shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. There shall be that whichever of the families of the earth, it doesn't say in heaven, whichever of the families of the earth who do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Lords, on them there will be no rain. You don't need rain if you're in heaven. So you have to come up that this is an allegory, or you take it as descriptions of true events. If it's a description of true events, then all of Zechariah fits. And where is Jesus? He's in Jerusalem. Jesus is in Jerusalem ruling over the earth. Now, understand, any Jew, if you asked Him where the Messiah is going to be, He's in Jerusalem. Because that's what all of the Old Testament prophecies predict. They all predict that the Messiah will be ruling in Jerusalem. So, a millennialist had to do something. They had to say all the Old Testament prophecies about Israel no longer apply to Israel. They apply to the Church. Now, you can find in the Bible, or sometimes Jerusalem is used as a symbol of God's throne. It can be a symbol of God's Church. But the overall use of the word Jerusalem is a city in the Middle East. So, the Old Testament prophecies predict that He is going to be in Jerusalem. A millennialist had to say no, He's not. Understand the effect that Augustinian theology had on the development of Christianity. All the prophecies, all the promises made to Abraham, all of them, applies to the Church. Because why? Paul said that we are, you know, if we are Christians, we are the children of Abraham. Which is true. There are spiritual children of Abraham. So, what they did is they erased any concept of physical children of Abraham. They had to go. And so what became the official teaching up until 1962 in Catholicism is that if you are born a Jew, you are by act of birth the murderer of Jesus Christ. You are by the act of birth the murderer of Jesus Christ.

The Lutherans took the same stance. This is why in the late 1930s, millions of good Catholics and good Lutherans who had never heard anybody in their lives could round them up and put them in concentration camps.

They are the murderers of Jesus. And to kill them is to do God a favor. All the promises made to Jews in Israel, God's wiped them out. He's given them to the Church.

And that was the teaching of Christianity, the hardcore teaching of Christianity, since Augustine until...and it still is today among the majority. Now, the majority now would not say you should kill Jews, okay? Give them credit. But that's how they were able to come to that conclusion.

So understand, amillennialism, just like millennialism, has results to its thinking. And amillennialism led to Jews have no place in God's plan.

So Jerusalem isn't really Jerusalem. Millennialist, we believe Jerusalem is Jerusalem.

So Jesus is on the earth. He steps on the Mount of Olives. He lands on the Mount of Olives. And then he goes and rules from Jerusalem, which is our fourth point. It's got a Micah 4, and this is throughout...I mean, the whole Old Testament is filled with Jesus reigning...I mean, the Messiah, who we know as Jesus Christ, reigning from Jerusalem.

Verse 1 of Micah 4. Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's host...now, here we do have a symbol. The Bible is full of symbols, but it's not one giant allegory. All prophecies of one giant allegory. If you study Hebrew poetry, a mountain is a kingdom. Small hills are little countries. It doesn't even have much to figure out if you just look at it in context in English. The mountain, the government, the kingdom of the Lord's house shall be established on top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills. And people shall flow to it. Many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up into the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. And He will teach us His ways. We shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Ah! Out of Zion, out of Jerusalem. Now it's true, Zion can be a symbol of the church. It can be a symbol of the throne of God. But when you see very specific wording like this and you put them all together, this is actually talking about the place of Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples. He's going to be judging people. And rebuking strong nations afar off. They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nations. Neither shall they learn war anymore. But everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts is spoken. He is going to rule from Jerusalem.

So there are people on the earth for a thousand years, which we believe is literal. We believe that Christ coming to the Mount of Olives is literal. We believe that Him in Jerusalem is literal. We look at the temple that's described in Ezekiel, the Messianic temple, and don't believe that that's just some kind of fuzzy dream. It's going to be a real temple.

So we take all these prophets and we say, no, that's literal. That's real. You just have to understand that has not been the norm throughout the history of Christianity from Augustine, and is not today the norm among many.

Now there's another event here, a fifth event, that actually happens towards the beginning of these events. But I put it here because I wanted to show what Jesus is doing. But the other event is that the saints are resurrected. And that's where in 1844 they had it right. The saints are changed, they're alive, and others are resurrected. They had that part right. And they were waiting for that change. 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul talks about that change. Well, let's go to Revelation 20. 1 Corinthians 15, Paul talks about that change.

Like I said, this is why when you get into issues like this, that the concept of the rapture formed.

How do we have a resurrection and how do we have people of God in the tribulation?

So they had to come up to create an answer for it.

Revelation 20. Now we just read some of Revelation 19, which is all about the return of Jesus Christ coming on a horse. Everybody sees Him. He fights these armies. And He comes to the Mount of Olives. Verse 1, Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in His hand. So this is what happens when Jesus comes down and fights the armies. He's coming down through the atmosphere. People are seeing Him all over the world.

And He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. Literal thousand years. And He cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were finished. But after these things, He must be released for a little while. Now by taking this literal, understand, we now have a whole other set of beliefs that are attached to this. When we go through Revelation 20, 21, and 22, we say, oh, okay. So after a thousand years, He's released. And then there's the great white throne judgment, which is talked about in this. And then in chapter 21 and 22, there's a lake of fire that destroys the earth, and then the new heaven and new earth come, the throne of God comes to earth. We put that all together as a literal set of events that's going to happen. We celebrate these events in the Holy Days. But we have a unique viewpoint of the Holy Days because we understand that they reveal the plan of God.

Verse 4, And I saw thrones, and they who sat on them, and judgment was committed them. And I saw the souls of those who were beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark when their foreheads were in their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. Well, if we've already proven He's in Jerusalem, then where are the saints? They're not in heaven. They're with Him in Jerusalem on this earth. There are people on this earth. I mean, the first thing it seems to be is trying to convince them to come to the feast of the Abrahamites.

To convince them that, yes, this is the Son of God. Yes, He represents the true God. And your gods were wrong. And Allah was not the true God.

Or Buddha. We have to convince these people.

He says, and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years, but the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Oh, there's two resurrections! We take that literally. There's two resurrections. One is the spiritual resurrection of the saints, and the second resurrection is the great white throne judgment.

To a millennialist, this is all just sort of allegory of what God is doing, but there is no literalness to a second resurrection. Or there is some real attempt to try to fix that into where it makes sense.

So let's look at this for a minute.

We take literally this thousand years.

It is a real thousand-year period. And it didn't start when Jesus was born. It is yet to start. It starts at His second coming. Now once we take that literal, we believe that Jesus has to come before the millennium. There's a whole lot of things that now fit into place. He has to come. He has to be seen. He has to resurrect the saints. He has to stand on the Mount of Olives. He has to destroy the armies. He has to go to Jerusalem. He's going to have to build a temple. The saints, the church, is going to be brought into His government to rule the earth. And there will be lots of people left after the Tribulation. He's going to heal the nations. And He's going to heal the environment. That's a whole other interesting thing He's going to do. Because the environment will have been just unlivable after what's going to happen in the Tribulation. He's going to heal the environment. We see that, by the way, in Zechariah 14. Because they healed the environment.

He is establishing now God's government on the earth. Now, this leads us to one last point I want to make about millennialists.

A millennialist do away with all of God's promises to Israel.

Many millennialists say, well, there must be two plans of God. You know, one the church and one with Israel. And they'll even have...they'll break it down into two ways of salvation. One through the church and one through Israel. There is only one way of salvation. One. Anettis through Jesus Christ. Being a physical Jew or a physical Israelite has zero to do with salvation.

Zero! That's why Jesus said to the Jews of His day, Wait a minute, wait a minute. Don't tell me that Abraham was your father. I could create children of Abraham with rocks. That doesn't save you. It never could save anybody. And that's what the Old Testament shows us. Being chosen by God as His people without His Spirit doesn't save you.

Salvation is through Jesus Christ and through the church. So I really want to stress that. Because the church is made up of people of all different backgrounds, deliberately on purpose by God.

Because it's not by your physical birth that you receive salvation. That's a false teaching. It's a false belief. That the Jews had, they believed by active birth they were saved because they were Jews. Well, you had to be circumcised. If you're circumcised, you got it!

No, we understand you. You must receive God's Spirit and God must live in your life.

You must repent.

You must be baptized. That means you become part of the church. So what do we do now? Because there are promises made to the physical descendants of Abraham and promises made to the church. The Amillenianists say, well, you can't count anything that was given to the Israel. That now belongs to the church. The problem is, if you are a physical descendant of Abraham and he says to you a promise in Isaiah and you read it and say, oh God's made this promise to me. No, he's lied to you because he didn't intend to give it to you. He's going to give it to the church later. You see the problem? God says to these people, I will do this. The people that received the books, the people who received the letters, read it and he says, I will do this to you. And then the Amillenianists say, well, he didn't mean to them, he meant it to us.

How can you trust God to say anything?

So we have to understand that God is carrying out the spiritual promises to Abraham through the church. And he's carrying out the physical promises to Abraham through Israel. What does that mean? At the return of Jesus Christ, something very important happens. Let's go to Ezekiel 37.

Many millennialists will say that Ezekiel 37 was fulfilled in 1948 because all of Israel and all of Judah was brought back together into what we call the nation of Israel today, in the Middle East. A couple problems. One is, Ezekiel 37 begins with a physical resurrection.

Where do you put a physical resurrection? I mean, the resurrection is the saints' return of Jesus Christ. It's a spiritual resurrection. So where do you put a physical resurrection? The only answer is the second resurrection.

Remember, those are the first resurrection. It says the second death has no power over them. It doesn't say that about the people in the second resurrection because they're still physical. The second death still has some power over them. So we have a second resurrection that is a physical resurrection. So we look at, and we have a very unique viewpoint of this, we look at Ezekiel 37 and we say this is the second resurrection.

When Israel, the promises made to Abraham, the promises made to Abraham, to his physical descendants, are being fulfilled. They are resurrected and they are given an opportunity to have God's Spirit given to them, which means they are now given an opportunity to become part of the New Covenant. Salvation was never offered to the masses of Israelites of the Old Covenant. It was never offered to them. It was offered to only those who received God's Spirit, which was not the majority. So what we have in Ezekiel 37 is a remarkable understanding, okay, those people, which would now mean, well if it happened to Israel, it's going to happen to everybody.

Everybody comes up in the second resurrection and is given some opportunity to come into a relationship with God. They're given an opportunity to participate in the New Covenant. Now let's jump down to verse 15 because this is the context of this. Again, the word of the Lord came to me, came to Ezekiel, saying, As for you, Son of Man, take a stick for yourself, and write on it for Judah, for the children of Israel, his companion.

Then take another stick and write on it for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and all the house of Israel and his companions. Then join them into one another, for yourself into one stick, and they will become one in your hand. Now, he's writing in a time period where Israel has been destroyed as a nation. Judah exists. Israel is destroyed as a nation. Now, remember I always say, what did it mean to the original audience? Ezekiel is told to go out so that all these people see him, and this is going to be talked about through all the land.

Here's what I want you to do. Take a stick, carve Judah on it, and all the Israelites connected with them, and Israel and all the Israelites connected with them. They know what that means. And then take and tie it together until it becomes one stick. And they're going to say, that makes no sense. Israel has already been destroyed. This makes no sense. What are you trying to tell us? Verse 18, And when the children of your people speak to you, saying, children of your people, this is a specific message to a specific people, will you not show us what you mean by this?

Say to them, thus says the Lord God, 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 make them one stick, and they will be one in my hand, one in God's hands. And the sticks on which you write will be in your hand before their eyes. Then he shall say to them, thus says the Lord God, surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations where they have gone, will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land.

And I will make them one nation in the land, and on the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be over them all. And they shall no longer be two nations, and they shall no longer 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, which they have sinned, and will cleanse them, and they will be my people, and I will be their God. To apply this to the church, God's lying to the people Ezekiel's talking to.

No, there is a plan. Israel was supposed to be God's representatives to the world. Hey, you too can come into this relationship with God. Instead, they saw it as a special privilege and drove people away from God. And God says, no, someday you will do what I chose you to do.

Now the saints are resurrected at Christ's return. But remember that all the Old Testament prophets, he's talking about the Messiah bringing together Israel. And remember what the disciples said to Jesus, when are you going to bring your kingdom and raise Israel up? They still see it as an Israel-centered kingdom. It's not an Israel-centered kingdom. It's a Messiah for the world kingdom. And they're supposed to be the teachers. So you have the resurrected saints, and when Jesus comes back, this part is going to start to happen.

Look what it says in verse 24. David, my servant, shall be king over them. Well, David's not resurrected yet. A resurrected David. And of course, the house of David, by the way, includes the Messiah. Now this is just more than David the king. It implies him. I mean, it includes him, but David's going to rule over them. And they shall have one shepherd.

They shall also walk in my judgments and deserve my statutes. Then they shall dwell in the land I have given to Jacob, my servant, and observe where your fathers dwelt. Their fathers dwelt. I know where my fathers dwelt. I can only go back a few hundred years. They knew exactly what he was talking about.

Their fathers dwelt. And they shall dwell there. They, their children, and their children's children forever, and my servant David shall be their prince forever. Moreover, I will make a covenant of peace with them, 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 forever. My tabernacle also shall be with them. Indeed, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. The nations also will know that I the Lord sanctify Israel, and my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore. There is still a plan for those physical descendants of Abraham.

I can tell you something. It's actually better to be a spiritual descendant of Abraham. They have to enter into a spiritual relationship where they become spiritual descendants of Abraham, too. You see what I mean? Being a physical Abraham of the descendant of Abraham doesn't get you into eternal life. But there's promises made to those people. He's going to carry it out. This is actually, should be a great comfort for us.

That God's going to carry out exactly what He said He would do. The Messiah's going to come exactly like He said He would, and He is going to bring those people together to be teachers on the face of the earth.

But the saints are the ones who are changed. Those people will have to become spiritual descendants of Abraham in order to receive their salvation. But don't discount the physical promises He made to those physical descendants, either. We can't discount that. A millennialist can. But when we take these prophecies to be literal, we cannot. He is going to do this. So we can see clearly a number of things that the Millerites in 1844 did not grasp, but began to be questioned now that this great failure had happened.

And they began to, people began to doubt a millennialism. They began to, this doesn't work. This doesn't add up. What happens? These things should be taken exactly what He said. The thousand years is a real time period. Once you decide that, now you have to put the prophecies together. What do we learn? Well, Christ is going to visibly return to the earth after a time known as the Tribulation. So we have to be looking for the Tribulation. And events will lead up to that, and we will see it happen.

Two, Christ will return to the Mount of Olives. He's actually coming to a place where He left from, and where the angel said, oh, you saw Him going up. He said, come back the same way. Three, there is going to be human resistance to Christ coming. There's going to be a huge war. Four, Christ then will rule the earth from Jerusalem. He will build a temple, and physical people will exist still. And some of them just aren't going to come up to the feast tabernacles.

I can understand why. If you're an Egyptian, you're probably a Muslim. It's like we couldn't have been that wrong. It's going to take a couple years to figure out, yeah, I guess we were wrong. It would be hard for them to be that wrong.

Five, the saints will be resurrected and rule with Him on earth. That's our calling now, to be prepared for that job, whatever job that Christ has for us. You and I weren't just called for salvation. We were called to be prepared to serve Jesus Christ. We have a job ahead of us. Each one of us is going to be specifically prepared for, well, I don't know what it is. But whatever it is, it will be what we are prepared for. And then the last point, Judah and Israel will be reunited and be given those physical people and given their land that was promised to Abraham.

They will be restored to the land. It's interesting, throughout the minor prophets, there's this great prophecy, and almost every one of the minor prophets, even Obadiah, which is a prophecy to eat them. At the end, there's a prophecy that says, but remember, the Messiah, God is going to set up His kingdom and restore Israel to His land.

And it's huge. It's a lot bigger than what Israel has today. And they will serve Him from there to teach the world, to be the example they were supposed to be, to bring all people to God, not to be the stumbling block to keep people from God. Anyone who waits for the return of Jesus Christ will suffer a disappointment from time to time. I was hoping it would come before I was this old, right?

But it's important that we anticipate it. It is important that it's a part of our lives. We cannot let this slip from our daily vision. This has to be a motivation. If we are being prepared for that, then we must keep that foremost in our vision as our goal. We can't let anything keep us from that goal.

Keep us from where God wants to take us, what He's going to do with us, and the future that He has prepared for us. Jesus Christ is going to come back. It's going to happen. It's real. And it's going to happen just like the Scripture says. So live every day. Live every day. With that goal, that anticipation, that reality of the millennium, it is real in your mind.