(Continued: What We Believe)

The people over whom Christ and the church will reign will be the descendants of those who will be put on the right hand at the judgment of the nations, as seen in Matthew 25:31-46. These people will be here in the flesh, and they who are put on the right hand of Christ in this judgment of the nations will propagate their species, and they will be normal human beings. They still will have their old nature; but Satan and the demons at that time will be incarcerated in the pit of the abyss and will not be able to deceive the nations during the thousand years of our Lord's reign, (Read Isaiah 2:1-4; Micah 4:1-8; Psalm 48; and Isaiah 65:17-26).

The Millennium, with the Lord Jesus Christ himself ruling and reigning, will be the earth's real golden, era, concerning which the poets have written and the prophets of God have spoken. The "vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be" of which the poet Tennyson dreamed will be a reality. "And many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, 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 Jehovah from Jerusalem ... 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" (Isaiah 2:3,4) —"Earth at last a warless world"!

Satan, who will be bound at the beginning of the thousand-year reign of our Lord, will be released at the expiration of that time, for a little season. He will go forth and deceive the rising generation that will not, at that time, have accepted Christ and His salvation. Thus there will be a huge movement that will arise, at the instigation of Satan, against Christ and His government. These unregenerated people will defiantly make a march against Jerusalem from the four quarters of the globe, in an attempt to intimidate Christ and embarrass His government. When they make this march on the capitol of the Holy City, fire will come down out of heaven, consume them, and blot them from the face of the globe.

Immediately after this the judgment of the great white throne (Rev. 20:11-15) will be set, before which all of the wicked, who will be raised, will be brought for judgment. The "book of life" will be there together with the records of each individual.

Every person who is born is written into the book of life; but only those who accept the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation have their names inscribed in the Lamb's book of life. Whenever a man passes out of this life, without having accepted Christ, without having been born again, his name is erased from the book of life. It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this comes judgment (Heb. 9:27). Thus all who come before the judgment of the great white throne will realize that their names were blotted out of the book of life because they did not accept the salvation provided by the Lord Jesus Christ. There will also be recorded in the books the record of the lives of all who are thus arraigned. After the judgment of the great white throne the wicked will all be banished from the presence of God and the glory of His might. They will walk in the darkness of the everlasting punishment prepared for the Devil and his angels.

At the judgment of the great white throne the present material, physical universe, which will have been repaired and patched up in order that there might be a Millennium, will pass away (Rev. 20:11). God, who created a world out of nothing, can reverse the process and make it return to a state of nothingness.

Then will be ushered in the eternal order—the eternal heavens and the eternal earth—which will follow the Millennial Era, and which will last throughout the ages of the ages. The eternal Jerusalem will come down out of the eternal heavens and will rest upon the eternal earth.

The new Jerusalem, spoken of in Revelation, chapters 21 and 22, is an enormous affair, and is in violent contrast with the millennial Jerusalem. This latter Jerusalem will, with its suburbs, according to Ezekiel's prophecy (Ezekiel, chapters 47,48), be a city ten miles wide and ten miles long. It will therefore cover one hundred square miles. But the Jerusalem of the eternal order (Rev., chaps. 21, 22) will be a city fifteen hundred miles long, fifteen hundred miles wide and fifteen hundred miles high. This indeed will be an enormous affair.

Since God has a sense of proportion, we may judge that the eternal earth upon which the eternal Jerusalem will rest will have a vastness far beyond our powers of imagination to conceive. The present earth is nothing at all—only an infinitesimally small particle—in comparison with that eternal earth of which the eternal Jerusalem will be the capital. In this eternal Jerusalem the saved from this earth will be forever and ever with God.

It will be here that we shall live in the mansions which our Lord has gone to prepare for us (John 14:2).

We shall be rewarded according to our works, not only in the Millennium, but throughout all eternity. Those who take their talents and pounds and use them to the glory of God will reign over the cities in the Millennium. They will likewise reign over cities in the eternal order. Great are the rewards and the bliss awaiting the faithful, true children God!

What are we doing in laying up our treasures in heaven? Jesus said, "Stop laying up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but keep on laying up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal ..." (Matt. 6:19,20, lit. trans.)