The Millennium!

God's children will rule and reign over the survivors of the Battle of Armageddon for 1000 years.

The world today is such a mess and there are such messers running it! In fact, in all the 6,000 years that man has been trying, he has never been able to save himself. Man's plans have never succeeded and never will!

Any System, whether it be Capitalist, Socialist, Communist, Democracy or Dictatorship, whatever it is, is going to be a flat failure without God!--And although man's final one-World government which is soon to arise under the Antichrist will purportedly be the greatest, most powerful, most ideal government he's ever had, man's ultimate creation, it will turn out to be the most horrible, hellish, heinous government of Satan himself, Hell on Earth, the worst government the World has ever known!

Man's most ideal government is going to fall flat on its face!--But then God is going to step in and really straighten things out! For only the direct and forceful intervention of God Himself through the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to mete out His violent Wrath upon the wrong-doers, to save His Own children from His enemies, and to set up His Own Kingdom of totally righteous and authoritarian rule here on Earth, will ever bring a reign of true perfection, with peace and justice for all!

As you recall from our last chapter, immediately after Jesus' return and our Rapture and Resurrection to be with Him, the Church, His born-again children, will join the Lord in that wonderful Wedding Supper of the Lamb in Heaven, while the wicked will be suffering the Wrath of God on Earth, where they will finally gather together under their Satanic, Devil-possessed, Antichrist leader to actually attempt to war against Jesus Christ Himself and His resurrected Heavenly forces in the horrific Battle of Armageddon!

In this final great battle of Armageddon, the forces of God gain a glorious victory over the forces of Satan and destroy him, or at least defeat him, and his Antichrist Devil-man and his False Prophet and his whole kingdom! Then we, the Saints of God, along with our King Jesus Christ, will take over this World as it now is--this present World--and we will organise it and rule it and run it the way it should have been run if man had yielded to God!

The Bible says that this amazing period will last for one thousand years and therefore it is known to Bible Prophecy students as the Millennium, which is Latin for a thousand years. The Scriptures are just full of descriptions of this beautiful Millennial period, and in fact, more is said about it than about the First Coming of Christ!--It says more about the Second Coming of Christ and His rule and reign on the Earth as its King, its Messiah, than it does even about the First Coming!

--Because this is the purpose of it all! This is the marvellous Happy Ending of it all! Therefore God's Word gives us a very literal, exact description of what it's going to be like under the marvellous rule and personal visible reign of Christ here on Earth, and, as you'll see, it's going to be absolutely wonderful!

Armageddon survivors!

We learned in our last chapter that when Jesus returns to earth for the Battle of Armageddon, there's going to be a great slaughter and a great destruction, according to God's Word.--Nevertheless some are going to live through it!--There will be survivors! And during the Millennium, it is these survivors whom we are going to rule and reign over and teach and train, to show how the World should have been run and to be an example to the Universe of what kind of government man could have had if he had only obeyed the Lord.

His Word says, "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection (The Rapture): On such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years." (Rev.20:6) Jesus also promised to His faithful ones, "He that overcometh, and keepeth My works unto the End, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron." (Rev.2:26,27)

So who are these people that His Word says will form whole nations during the Millennium, over whom we, the saved born-again Saints of God, are going to rule with a rod of iron?--Well, it's obvious that many of the unsaved are going to survive the Wrath of God and the Battle of Armageddon and live on into the Millennium! Granted, either they must be pretty tough or they must live a pretty charmed life or the Lord must be extra merciful to them to allow them to live through all that!

Perhaps at Armageddon the Lord and we are going to slaughter the very worst ones, the absolutely irreparable ones, the reprobates, the totally unchangeable ones, the worst ones of all, those who really worshipped the Devil and the Antichrist and did all those horrible things!--Perhaps they'll all be slaughtered during that horrible warfare!

Then we're going to give the rest of them, those who deserve it and are worthy, another chance. The Lord will set up His Kingdom here on Earth for a thousand years to try to salvage what He can and who He can and give them another chance, or perhaps their first chance, to see the actual Kingdom of God and hear His voice and His laws and His rules and His Words and repent!--To believe and receive and repent and accept Him as their King!

"Thy kingdom come, Thy Will be done in earth, as it is in heaven!" (Mt.6:10)

It was in Revelation, chapter 19, that we read John's magnificent, marvellous description of Jesus Christ's coming with the hosts of heaven to defeat and destroy the Antichrist and his fiendish forces at the awesome Battle of Armageddon. So following the chronological order of events, in Revelation 20 we're given an amazing glimpse into the Millennium period:

"And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that old Serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the Bottomless Pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season." (Rev.20:1-3)

The Devil will be bound and cast as a prisoner into the bottomless pit for a thousand years, with nobody left to run his business! We'll be rid of him, thank God! For a thousand years he will no longer bother us and no longer lead his legions and his demons across the face of the Earth to plague the World and its citizens! And it is during this thousand years, while the Devil is in prison in the heart of the Earth, in the Bottomless Pit, that the Saints, including all the new arrivals who resisted the Antichrist and rejected the Mark of the Beast, choosing rather to give their lives than to deny Christ, will live and reign with Christ for a thousand years:

"And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgement was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the Beast, neither his Image, neither had received his Mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. They shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. But the rest of the dead (the unsaved) lived not again until the thousand years were finished." (Rev.20:4-6)

During the Millennium, Jesus is going to reign and rule in person using us as his instruments! So our work--and I hope you won't be too disappointed--will not be over with the resurrection and the Rapture! We're still going to be busy, ruling and reigning with Jesus!--It's all very literal!

But many people get all theoretical and they get hazy ideas, dreamy ideas about all of this, that after Jesus returns we're all going to be way off somewhere in some place called Heaven or something. Well, Heaven is not going to be way off somewhere, it's going to be right here on Earth, a Heaven-on-Earth during the Millennium! We're going to rule and reign with Christ right here on Earth over the unsaved nations and the unsaved people who are left, who were not destroyed by the judgements God heaps upon the Antichrist kingdom.

Everyday, millions of Christians all over the world pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven!" But I'm sure most of them don't really appreciate the tremendousness of that statement in the Lord's Prayer and how literally it is going to come true and be fulfilled! It's actually going to be like Heaven, Heaven on Earth, with God's Will being done and His Kingdom come--on Earth as it is in Heaven! And we will be His officers, enforcing His Will as we rule and reign over the Earth with Him!

But most of the church people don't seem to realise how real the Millennium is going to be! They've got that imaginary picture of just floating around aimlessly on a cloud playing a harp or something! They don't realise how real and practical and down-to-Earth it will all be!

The prophet Daniel described the takeover of this world's governments by Christ's Millennial kingdom in his famous vision in Daniel, Chapter 2. He saw a great image, which represented History's various great World Empires, being destroyed by "a Stone which smote the image upon his feet", smashing it to pieces which are blown away like the chaff!--"And the Stone that smote the image became a Great Mountain (Kingdom), and filled the whole Earth!" (Dan.2:34,35)

"For in the days of these kings"--the ten toes of the image, the ten final government leaders who fully cooperate with and yield to the Antichrist (See Rev.17:12-14)--"shall the God of Heaven set up a Kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the Kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever!" (Dan.2:44)

One of these days very soon, the King is going to come back to claim His Kingdom!--The Kingdom of the Most High shall come and shall destroy all the anti-Christ kingdoms of the World! Jesus is going to come and destroy'm all! And He's going to restore the World under us and we're going to rule and reign over it with Him!

God will then sweep away all this world's kingdoms, but not all the people!--Many of them will still be here, but we'll be ruling over them.--"And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a Kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. But the saints of the Most High shall take the Kingdom, and possess the Kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever!" (Dan.7:14,18)

Whether man likes it or not, God is going to be supreme and Jesus will reign from shore to shore and we will rule and reign with Him with that rod of iron! Then wicked man will be forced to do what's right and forced to obey for a thousand years!--"And judgement was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the Kingdom. And the Kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the Kingdom under the whole Heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him!" (Dan.7:22,27)

Right now the ungodly and Antichrist powers of this world treat us as aliens, and banish us and exile us and even drive some of us from our own countries, forcing us to be refugees and fugitives from their injustice. But then, under the supreme reign of Christ Himself, the pitiful little bands of persecuted Christians and believers and children of God are going to inherit the Earth and the Kingdom of God on Earth and run and govern it by love and the power of God!

We will no longer be the poor, persecuted, hounded few of the poor little bedeviled sects or cults or whatever they want to call us!--We will then number in the millions and the billions, and we are going to rule the Earth with Jesus Christ over our God-damned enemies who have tormented us and persecuted us and hounded us from country to country throughout the Earth, until the very end of the Great Tribulation when they virtually drive us clear off the Earth and we're all Raptured up to be with Jesus!

So don't worry, we're going to have a country to call our own one of these days, thank the Lord! In fact, it'll all be our country then!--Because our country will be a World-wide, Earth-wide, Kingdom of God on Earth! All the countries are going to be ours in that day when Jesus comes!--And our former enemies and persecutors will be our guests! They will be the men without a country, because it will be our country!--And they'd better behave, too, or they'll not only be without a country, but without an Earth!

No longer will reign the cruel, selfish, dog-eat-dog philosophy which gives the world to the strongest and the mightiest, in which might is right, as it is run today by rebellious, disobedient and perverted man!--But it will be given to those who really have the right to govern because of what today's reprobate man considers weaknesses: Love and meekness and forgiveness and faith in God and His Word!

These weakest and meekest will become the most powerful influences on earth, the most powerful people, who will rule the World with both love and a "rod of iron" of loving force to compel the nations to submit to the laws of God and to recognise His authority and to obey His rules of life, love, health and happiness for a reign of "peace on Earth toward men of good will".

Then and only then, under the supreme and powerful rule and reign of Christ and God's children, will all wars finally cease and the World at last be governed fairly and well with true justice, liberty, peace, plenty and happiness for all! Hallelujah!

"And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain (kingdom) of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the Mountain of the Lord, to the House of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem!" (Is.2:2,3)

Jesus christ is going to set up His throne in Jerusalem and make it His Millennial capital!--Not the Prime Minister of Israel's, not the Antichrist's, not the Devil's--but God's! And from there He will rule and reign over the Earth, and we shall rule and reign with Him!

"And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more!" (Is.2:4)--Complete disarmament at last! That will be the World's first real genuine disarmament, beating their weapons into instruments of peace!--Hallelujah!

At last there will be peace on earth which shall never end under the reign of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Prince of Peace Himself! Today's wicked and vengeful men of war will be stopped at last as God "destroys them that destroy the Earth"! (Rev.11:18)--Those who brought war and conflict to the Earth! Only then shall the men of peace and the God of peace and the Prince of Peace rule and reign and bring final "peace on Earth"! (Lk.2:14)

Then "all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. For the Kingdom is the Lord's: and He is the Governor among the nations. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the Earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire!" (Ps.22:27,28 ; 46:9) He's going to stop all this war business, He's going to break the arrows and the swords and the shields and the bows, etc. All those chariots and planes and tanks and missiles and bombs and all that are going to be burned up, thank God!

Jesus told his disciples, "The kingdom of God is within you" (Lk.17:21 ), and this is true for all of us who know and love the Lord--we already have Heaven on Earth in our hearts! But the problem is, there is still Hell all around us! But in that day He's going to wipe away all this Hell on Earth, and He's going to set up His Kingdom of peace and righteousness and fairness and justice and goodness and mercy and love! And that's going to literally be Heaven on Earth!--His Kingdom won't only be within us, it will be all around us!

"The Lord most high is a great king over all the earth."--In the Millennium!--"He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet! For God is the King of all the Earth: sing ye praises with understanding! God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of His Holiness." (Ps.47:2,3,7,8)

"The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor." (Ps.72:3,4)--The World is going to see a righteous Judge at last, a righteous King, a righteous Ruler, Who will have a righteous government!--No more corruption, vice, crime, payola, bribery or crooked judges and crooked politicians, but a righteous government and righteous, just justice for all!

"He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the Earth." (Ps.72:6,8)--The Kingdom of Christ on Earth is going to completely cover the whole World! "For the Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers. The whole Earth is at rest, and is quiet; they break forth into singing"! (Is.14:5,7)

There'll be no more big powers and oppressed poor!--Only the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, Heaven on Earth, fairness and justice for all and eternal happiness forever!--"Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him: all nations shall serve Him. And blessed be His glorious Name for ever: and let the whole Earth be filled with His glory; Amen, and Amen!" (Ps.72:11,19)

The reign of Jesus Christ during the Millennium is going to be a mixture of Heaven on the earth that now is, and over the unsaved who now are, or who will be at that time. It will be a reign of Jesus Christ and His children over what is left of this World and its unsaved populations. We, the born-again, saved, resurrected saints will be in our new supernatural bodies, but the rest of the World, those who have been spared and blessed enough to survive into the Millennium, are going to still be in their old natural bodies. Therefore life is sort of going to go on as usual in a lot of ways for them!

The Millennium will be almost like an extension of this age now, because the World and its people will still be living in time. But to us who are resurrected and raptured at the Coming of Christ, time shall be no more! (Rev.10:6 .)--We will not be bound by time any longer! But those who still remain on the Earth, having survived the horrors of the Wrath of God upon the wicked, will still be bound by time.

The earth will still be living in time.--The unregenerate, unsaved people who survive the holocaust of God's Wrath, first of all the Antichrist's wrath and then Armageddon and Christ's Wrath--who by some miracle manage to survive it, who are blessed by being allowed to survive it--will still be bound by time and space here on Earth just as we were before we left with Jesus.

But for us, time shall be no more!--And in some ways, space will be no more! In other words, we will not be bound by time or space! We will be able to just wish ourselves anywhere and we will be there with the speed of thought!--And of course we'll only wish to do God's Will and we will be messengers of His Will.

But the normal, natural people are going to be the same then as they are now!--Human beings still in their mortal bodies whom God's blessed by allowing them to live through the horrors that preceded.--And they're going to feel blessed, too, when they realise that they managed to be Millennial survivors! But they will live almost exactly like they are living now: They'll still have to go out fishing, they'll still have to raise food, they'll still have to make clothes, they'll still have to live in a normal natural World--in fact, the same World they're living in now!

The natural men are going to be just what they are now, only they will be under our government. So for them, things are going to be exactly like they are today, except for one big difference: We'll be the top dogs, the officers, the supreme rulers! We'll be in charge, Jesus and His Kingdom will be the government, and we'll be His governors, His officers, His leaders, His rulers of the World! "We shall be kings and priests unto God," He says (Rev.1:6), and we will rule the Earth!

So in some ways, the Millennium will be almost like a repeat, like a movie you've seen before, but there will be quite a few big differences!--Mainly, that we're going to be running the World instead of them, and we're going to have a lot of supernatural help and advantages! We'll have supernatural bodies and wisdom and skill and power and protection and we'll change a lot of things for the better!--PTL!

Post-Armageddon clean-up campaign!

In order for the Lord and us to establish a nice, beautiful, good, clean heaven on earth, we'll first have to clean up the hell on earth that the Antichrist and his demon-possessed people left behind!--And the horrible slaughter left behind by God's Own judgements and our Battle of Armageddon against them! So there will certainly be some cleaning up to do! In Israel alone, it's going to take seven months just to bury all the dead, and seven years to clear away all the wreckage of the instruments of war, to clear away and burn the weapons and vehicles of war, etc.!--Seven years to clean up the rubble, debris and wreckage left behind by the terrible Battle of Armageddon! (Ez.39:9,14 .)

So that will be our first job during the first seven years of the Millennium: Directing the worldlings and the survivors in this big clean-up operation! It sounds like it will be a pretty big assignment and a tough job, and I'm sure it will be!--But with supernatural bodies and supernatural power and the wisdom of God and the Lord's direction, organisation and Heavenly government, I'm sure it won't be too difficult for us!

It'll be a wonder that the Lord and us will ever be able to straighten things out!--But we will, according to His Word! PTL! "And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations. And ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves." (Isa.61:4-6 .)

Back to the Garden!

Another major change that will occur during the Millennium is that the curse will be partially lifted, which will mean a lot of different and better conditions, thank the Lord! The Earth will be like it was during the days of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden! The curse and the results of the curse will be removed and things will be partially restored to pre-curse conditions.

The earth will blossom like a rose and all God's creation will be in perfect peace and beautiful harmony and at peace with one other.--No more of man's cruelty toward man, no more of man's inhumanity to man, but all will be peace and beauty, like the Garden of Eden restored!--Heaven on Earth once again as it was in the Beginning, but even better, because we'll have Jesus! PTL!

"For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited." (Is.35:6,7 ; Ez.36:34,35 .)

"Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof!" (Ps.96:11 .)--Are the Heavens rejoicing and is the Earth glad today? Paul tells us that the whole Earth is groaning today, not rejoicing!--"The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, waiting to be delivered"! (Rom.8:22,23 .) The whole Creation, in a sense, is under the curse of sin and the Devil and his demons and his pests and vipers and thorns and thistles and sin and sickness etc. But in the Millennium, it will be partially delivered and greatly restored!

"Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice!" (Ps.96:12 .) Nowadays, whenever you hear the wind blowing through the trees, does it sound like the trees are rejoicing?--It's more of a moaning, sighing sound, sometimes almost enough to give you the willies! You never hear it sounding happy, do you? Well, I don't know how the Lord's going to do it, but when He comes and takes over the World, the trees are going to be glad and rejoice!--They will actually sound happy!

Did you know that right now, all the sounds in nature are in a minor key and have a little sad note to them? Even the birds are grieving over what man has done! All nature, Paul says, is groaning and grieving over the sins of man. All of God's creation is groaning, and man's certainly doing some groaning too! Well, the day's coming when the field and the trees are going to rejoice!--"Before the Lord: for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the Earth: He shall judge the World with righteousness, and the people with His truth." (Ps.96:13 .) Hallelujah!

At last the Lord is going to redeem the earth and cause the beautiful Garden of Eden to blossom again as we rule and reign with Christ for a thousand years! The natural unsaved people who survived the Tribulation and Wrath-of-God periods will be so amazingly blessed to be able to live during this Millennial period at all, as the Earth will be relieved of the curse and the curses that have beset it, including the thorns and the thistles and the brier and all kinds of beasts and critters and creatures that are poisonous, even the poisonous flowers and grasses and so on. All these cursed things will be eliminated!

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"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den." (Is.11:6-8 .)

You never hear about a wolf lying down with a lamb nowadays, do you?--Unless the lamb is inside the wolf! Or a leopard lying down with a kid, a little baby goat?--They usually lie down with the kid inside of them too! And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together?--Usually the lion is tearing'm apart and eating'm! Neither have you heard about a little child leading them all!

Well, there was a day before the Flood when animals were the pets of man and he could talk to them and they could talk to him!--Man and the animals were at peace with each other. They didn't fight and they didn't kill and they didn't eat each other as they do today. Well, the day is coming again when there will be peace between man and the animals and you'll be able to call them by name and they'll come running like your dog or your cat, like pets, playfully. Even a little child will be able to play with them, think of that!

So it's evident that a great deal, if not all, of the curse is going to be removed. The animals will go back to being herbivorous again and won't eat each other, much less us! Isn't that beautiful? Apparently man won't eat flesh then either, we'll all be herbivorous again! Both man and beast will return to vegetarianism during the Millennium, because apparently they won't need the extra strength of animal flesh to survive. The curse will have been at least partially removed and man will no longer be suffering the ill effects of whatever it was that shortened life after the Flood.

From creation until the Flood, man was strictly vegetarian, because God said specifically at the time of Creation that He had given them every green thing, the herbs and plants and so on, to eat--just vegetables--no meat or flesh of any kind. (Gen.1:29,30 .) But after the Flood, that pre-Flood cloud covering that enveloped the Earth disappeared and those deadly cosmic rays began to come through. Instead of living eight, nine hundred or a thousand years, all of a sudden their lifespans were greatly reduced, as they are today. And man's body apparently needed extra help to survive the ravages of both the judgements of God and the toll of sin, so God mercifully gave him meat to eat. (Gen.9:2,3 .)

Of course the sceptics always make fun of these Scriptures about "the cow and the bear shall feed, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox." (Is.11:7 .) They say, "They couldn't possibly do that, they're carnivorous beasts, that's impossible, blah blah, blah blah!" Well, nothing's impossible with the Lord! (Lk.1:37.) And I have such confidence in this Book, the Word of God and the Words of Jesus and every book and every Chapter and every verse in it--I have proven so many of them to be true and have found none of them to ever fail or to be false--that I believe it means exactly what it says and that's exactly what's gonna happen! Because if they're not going to eat each other or eat us anymore, what are they going to eat?--They're going to have to graze like the ox and the calf!

"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain (kingdom): for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea!" (Is.11:9 .) Since there's nothing that will hurt nor destroy, there will be no venomous insects or beasts or serpents or scorpions or any of those Devil's pests!--I think a lot of them will probably just be completely eliminated! But those that will still be here will become our pets!--Not pests! Even the once-deadly asps and vipers will almost be like toys for the children to play with!--No bite, no sting, no poison, no venom!

There will be no more thorns or thistles or any of the sort of thing that came after the Fall of man when God said the ground would be cursed and produce thorns and briars etc., to keep fallen man busy and out of trouble. (Gen.3:17-19 .) This, of course, will be a great blessing to the natural flesh-and-blood men of the Earth who are still going to till the land and build houses and marry and be given in marriage, etc. No doubt they will proclaim, "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other! Truth shall spring out of the Earth; and righteousness shall look down from Heaven. Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase!" (Ps.85:10-12 .)

What a wonderful place to live!--The curse will be removed, all viciousness gone, and all killing and hurting stopped! That's why I know that there aren't going to be any more cars there, no automobiles: "For nothing shall hurt nor destroy in all His holy mountain!"--Cars are one of the greatest destroyers of mankind today and kill more people than anything else.

The only forms of transportation that are going to be left will be the God-given, God-created, God-ordained ones--horses, camels, mules, wagons, etc.--which were good enough for the World for more than five thousand years before they ever heard of anything else! Most of the World lived in peace and plenty without all these God-damned, gasoline-powered, pollution-spouting, environment-hurting and life-destroying automobiles!

in the Millennial Kingdom of Jesus Christ there won't be any of these stinking automobiles belching fumes anymore, or any of these big smokey smoke-belching factories! So they won't have to worry about oil anymore! They're not going to have all of this modern destructive machinery and smoke and oil and nuclear power and whatnot! The World is going to go back to animal transportation and carriages and wagons etc.! They'll sure appreciate the animals then! Perhaps for transporting heavy loads of raw materials, foods, etc., they'll go back to sailing vessels, powered by God's Own good clean winds and currents!

The world's going to go back to those beautiful days with only the beautiful creation of God around them and the wonderful creatures of God to help them plow and power and transport what little they have to supply their meager needs, even as the poor of the World still do to this very day in the most remote parts of the Earth!

In fact, today's poorer, so-called "under-developed" nations are going to be a lot better off! They're going to be the ones that will be ahead of things then, the Third World. They'll already have their beasts of burden and oxcarts and wagons, and even their sailboats! The Third World will hardly know that anything has even happened! Life is not going to change very much for them, except it's going to be better, because they won't be oppressed by the First and Second World anymore!--Everything's going to be much better! PTL!

There will also probably be much less disease, much less sickness, etc., because in Isaiah it says that if someone dies when he's 100 years old, he'll be considered merely a child! "There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old." (Is.65:20 .)

Life is obviously again going to be lengthened to great longevity, as it was before the Flood, when men lived to be nearly a thousand years of age! If somebody died at the age of 100 you would have thought, "Poor fellow, just a babe!" And that's what it means in that Scripture, "for the child shall die an hundred years old."--In other words, anybody dying at 100 will be considered just a child!

The people over whom we rule will still be living in their natural physical bodies and will still be having children, still dying and so on. But because the curse will be removed and things will be so natural and it will be such a slower pace, they're going to live like they did before the Flood.--Everybody will live like Methuselah!--For a thousand years! (Gen.5:27 .) So the people who enter the Millennium alive are going to look like they're almost the same age at the end of the thousand years! They just won't seem to grow old anymore, or very little.--How wonderful!

It appears that the Millennium could be an additional period of grace for those who didn't have a chance to really hear the Gospel or really know the Lord during this life, perhaps even because of our own failure and the failure of the Church to reach the whole World with the Gospel, or at least to reach everybody we should have.--Particularly lots of children and young people who never had a chance and never knew any better, maybe lots of natives in the deepest jungles who never heard, or in the wildest wilderness--to give them a chance to hear and see and know the Lord!

But during the Millennium, everyone will be reached!--"For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." (Hab.2:14 .) How do the waters cover the seas?--Completely! So the World will be completely covered with the knowledge of the Lord and the righteous Kingdom of Jesus Christ! Hallelujah!

So it sounds like this thousand years of the Millennial rule and reign of Jesus Christ on earth will be another testing time for those worldlings who remain, the unsaved who survived the horrors that have gone before whom God has blessed with another chance, or perhaps their first chance. They may have never really heard the Gospel before, they may have never really felt the Love of Jesus before or known God's Will or His ways before! So it will be a time of learning His laws and His ways and His Love.

It's obvious from the Bible's description of the Millennium that the survivors from the age of man will be given another chance to obey through the personal rule and reign of Christ and His Children and the universal knowledge of the Lord and His Love. In fact, I think that's what the whole Millennium is all about, to give these people such a chance, otherwise there would be no point to it! If it's as some of the churches teach, just to give us a chance to wreak vengeance on our enemies and be mean to all the people who were mean to us, what good would that be?

If it's just to show how the world should have been run and just to demonstrate what man will be like under us and the angels and Jesus personally and just to kind of show-off, what purpose would there be to that?--Unless it's going to save souls or make some people better in some way or improve things somehow.

During the Millennium, His Word says that "He will destroy in this mountain (kingdom) the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations." (Is.25:7 .)--What vail?--The vail of misunderstanding, the vail of unbelief, the vail of non-comprehension of spiritual things.

In the face of the visible rule and reign of Christ on earth, His personal appearance to man, His Second Coming in mighty power and glory, His wiping out of the Antichrist and his kingdom and the imprisonment of Satan, and His obvious visible rule and reign of firm love with a rod of iron, forcing people to be good whether they like it or not, I think some are going to believe and receive who perhaps never heard before! And maybe there will be some who might even have heard, but didn't understand or couldn't believe until they saw something.

After all, that's pretty strong, powerful persuasion!--To see the Coming of the Lord and His taking over the reins of this Earth to rule and reign--that's pretty strong persuasion and enough to convince almost anybody to believe and receive! So I think the Millennium will be the time when God gives what I would call not a second chance, but a first chance to a lot of people who didn't have a chance before, because the church failed and even we failed to give'm all the Gospel!

"For in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness. The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. Behold, a King shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgement. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it!" (Is.29:18,19 ; 32:1 ; 40:5 .)

Everyone on earth will see His glorious power and kingdom, and everybody will believe then!--He even says, "And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord." (Jer.31:34 .)

There won't be any unbelievers then, but I'm afraid there will still be some unreceivers who won't yield and won't obey and will still be stubborn and disobedient and rebellious and iniquitous and wicked at heart and defiant--still! It's obvious from the Scriptures that there will be many who will receive it and obey and will be blessed of the Lord!--And others who will still rebel.

So it looks to me like the Millennium is going to be another testing time or trying time, a proving ground. We, the saints, who heard the Gospel and voluntarily received the Lord, will be running things under the direct supervision of the Lord. And all of the people who survived the Tribulation, the Wrath of God and the Battle of Armageddon, we're going to govern and rule over and judge and organise and teach them!

We won't have to say "Know the Lord!" because everybody will be able to see Him and they'll all know He's there! But they'll need to know a lot of other things, and we're actually going to be doing a lot of what we're doing right now! Our main job now, as Jesus put it, is "Feed My Sheep!" (Jn.21:15-17 .)--They'll all "know the Lord" and will actually see that He and His Kingdom are real, but they may not know Him as well or as personally as we do, because we already knew Him in this life and learned to know Him well and communicate with Him and love Him and live with Him and serve Him throughout this life.

So I think it will be part of our job to re-educate them and train them in the ways of the Lord! They're going to be just as human as you and I are right now.--They won't be any more supernatural in their intelligence or in their mental capacities or their learning capacities or the ways they have to learn than we are in this present age.

And the scriptures definitely confirm that the Millennium is going to be a period of learning for them: "Many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Micah 4:2 .) How will He teach them His ways and give them His Word?--The same way He's trying to teach and feed them now!--Through us, His children, His "kings and priests"! (Rev.1:6 .)

"He shall rule the nations with a rod of iron!" (Rev.19:15 .)

In spite of all that visible evidence of the power of God and the people of God and the Government of God and the Son of God, Jesus Christ Himself personally ruling the Earth in the flesh from His capital at Jerusalem, there will still be people who won't like it!--The really carnally-minded and evil-minded people will still rebel against the Lord!

Sad to say, some of the people who survive into this wonderful period of the Millennium will be so stubborn and so rebellious of heart and mind and so Satanically and diabolically conditioned that, even with the Devil and his demons gone, they're going to still be of the same evil mind just naturally--natural carnal evil men! Even without the help of Satan or his devils, they're still going to be mean and we're still going to have to deal with them!

Even though the Devil and all his demons will be bound in the bottomless pit during this thousand-year period of what is going to be like heaven-on-earth, there will still be plenty of devils left behind in human form, human beings who are devils at heart and who still reject the King of kings and His Kingdom, who still resent our rule over them and their punishment and just deserts which we mete out to them, and who still rebel against our reign and power--sometimes whole nations which will rebel and refuse to obey the commandments of Christ and the dictates of His Kingdom and His officers.

That's why we'll have to rule with a rod of iron! He said He will dash the nations and their power to pieces, into shivers like a piece of pottery! (Ps.2:8,9 .) It's going to be an enforced rule, a strong iron dictatorship over the wicked. It will have to be, otherwise the wicked would never obey! So it's going to be a tough, hard, strong, forceful government!

"God is love" (1John 4:8), and today He's showing His love to the world--His patience, His mercy, His longsuffering, His forgiveness! He's showing love to the World to try to get them to love Him! But the day is coming when, if all else fails and they reject His Love, He will rule them with a rod of iron and of force!--Not because His Love failed, for Love never fails! Jesus never fails, God never fails, and God is Love, so Love can't fail! (1Co.13:8 .)

But the Christ-rejecting, love-resisting wicked of this world failed!--It's they who failed to receive His Love who cause the failure, their own failure!--The fall of the kingdoms of this Earth and the final collapse of their last great one-World Government, etc.!--Because they rejected the Love of God and the Love of Jesus Christ! So since they failed to appreciate His Love and to obey Him in love voluntarily, He is going to rule the World with a rod of iron, of force, and they are going to be compelled to serve and worship and obey Him whether they like it or not!--By force!--The force of the great God of Heaven and His Kingdom on Earth and His great World Dictator, Jesus Christ!

Talk about a dictatorship, talk about authoritarian rule, talk about totalitarianism!--The Earth has never seen and there will never be any totalitarianism as total as is going to be the Kingdom of God on Earth and the rule and reign of Jesus Christ over the World through us! That's going to be the most total, totalitarian government the World has ever known--absolute dictatorship!

They will all be compelled and forced to obey whether they like it or not!--Absolutely no democracy, absolutely no freedom of man, of wicked man!--No more wicked democracies with wicked majorities voting for wicked governments and wicked rulers in a wicked World--but a completely total totalitarian dictatorship of the righteous with Jesus Christ as Dictator!

So although in some ways life is going to be pretty normal and not so greatly changed for the natural men of this World, there is going to be one very big difference!--There will still be free will and there will still be choice, but God will not let man have his wicked way! If they choose to go their own way and try to rebel--Bam!--God is going to swat them with a rod of iron!--Bam, whammy, zap!--Whatever you want to call it!--And they'll get it quick!

Because the only thing the truly wicked and rebellious ever understand is force and violence and the rod! And God is really going to lower His rod upon them! He's going to lower the boom on them, as they say, and He's going to punish them for their sins. And we, you and I, are going to be the instruments of His punishment, the officers of His Law who are going to carry out His judgements against those who have troubled and tribulated us! For He says clearly and plainly that we shall rule and reign with Him as He rules on the Earth with a rod of iron!

"He that overcometh, and keepeth My works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of My Father." (Rev.2:26,27 .)

We'll be endued with tremendous supernatural powers to rule over them! We will be the power, we will have the force! And exactly what that rod of iron will be, God only knows! But there are instances in the Bible where people were made immobile, they were blinded, they were devoured by fire from Heaven and all kinds of things when God wanted to stop'm!--We'll have the kind of power that you see in some of these sci-fi movies, only we won't need any little ray-guns! We'll just look at them or think or point our finger at them or whatever we want to do! And they won't be able to touch us or do a thing!--We will be the power and the government in control!

We will have bodies like the angels of God which can appear or disappear at will, travel with the speed of thought or have such a rod of God's power that they can destroy God's enemies by the millions if they so choose, with the lightning of God! There will be no more crime, no more vice, no more drugs, no more riots and no more war!--Just perfect peace, total perfect peace under the iron-rule dictatorship of the Lord in which you and I will be His supermen with superpower!--Absolute Law and Order, with redistribution and sharing of the wealth and lands, etc.--Not at the point of a gun, but at the point of a rod of iron!

So the Millennium will be a period of dealing with such people and punishing them and forcing them to obey--whether they like it or not!--Or destroying them if they absolutely flatly refuse and cause us too much trouble!--That's the dark, sad side of the picture. But the happy side is that many in that day, having seen, will believe and will bow and will yield and will obey and will receive with gladness the Kingdom of God on Earth, and will become its happy citizens and members and cooperate and help us to rebuild and to reconstruct and to clean up, rehabilitate and give the World its last chance for salvation.

It's obvious from the Scriptures that, during that time, some people and nations will submit and obey and yield to the Kingdom of God on Earth, and therefore will be blessed.--But others will rebel, and therefore will be punished! "And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem"--survivors from the Battle of Armageddon--"shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles." (Zech.14:16 .)

"And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain." (Zech.14:17 .) This is going to be such a literal Kingdom on Earth and the wicked are still going to be so literally wicked that some of them are actually going to refuse to come up and worship, think of that! But if they don't obey and they don't do what they're supposed to do and they don't come up to pay homage to the King and the Kingdom of God, etc., He's going to withhold the rain from them and give them all kinds of diseases and plagues, just like He did the ancient Egyptians!--Any country that won't do what they're told to do is going to have nothing but trouble!

So there will definitely still be free will and choice during the Millennium. They won't have to submit and obey, they can rebel if they want to, but they'll be punished! And although the curse will be largely lifted and it's going to be a lot nicer World then--beautiful, wonderful, virtually Heaven-on-Earth in a way--there will still be some people there who don't belong in Heaven!--Therefore there will still be individual curses on individual people or nations who, even under those circumstances, will refuse to obey.

So again, it looks like the Millennium will be a testing time to give the survivors of Armageddon a chance to choose between the Kingdom of God and the sin already in the World since Adam and Eve!--That's the whole idea, to give'm a final test and chance! They're going to have a thousand years of another chance and mercy and goodness and peace on Earth and the very presence of Jesus Christ Himself!--Perfect government, plenty for all, peace on Earth!--A rule of Love as well as a rod of iron!--Love for those who obey, and the rod of iron for those who don't.--A thousand years to prove the Love and mercy and power of God!