Scripture references are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless stated otherwise. The Millennial Kingdom of God will begin at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ when He descends onto the Mount of Olives with His resurrected Elect, the Bride of Christ. Just prior to Christ's return, the earth will go through the horrific period of the Great Tribulation, as discussed in the previous chapter 'The Second Coming of Jesus Christ'. The Bible indicates that the great majority, up to two-thirds, of the earth’s population will die in the Great Tribulation. Jesus Christ will intervene to cut short the days of the Great Tribulation with its devastating effects on human life, otherwise no people will survive to enter Christ's Millennial Kingdom. Matthew 24:22 And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened The Bible indicates that only one third of the earth’s population will survive the Great Tribulation to enter Christ’s Millennial Age in their physical bodies. The current population of the world is approximately 6.6 billion. If the Great Tribulation were to start in the next few years, we would be talking about an enormous number of people, approximately 4.4 billion, who would not survive it. Matthew 24:22 above says that for the Elect’s sake those days will be shortened. The Elect in this verse is not referring to God’s Elect believers, who will rise to meet the returning Jesus Christ in the air, as they are already saved and guaranteed a place in the First Resurrection. There is no need for Jesus Christ to shorten the days of the Great Tribulation in order to save them. So what Elect does this verse refer to? It is important to understand that there are two types of God’s Elect who will enter Christ’s Millennial Kingdom. There are those Elect who will enter the Millennial Kingdom in their resurrected immortal saved bodies, as the risen Bride of Christ, and they will rule and reign with Jesus Christ during the Millennial Age. The other type of God’s Elect are those who will enter the Millennial Age in their fleshly mortal unsaved bodies having survived the Great Tribulation. These fleshly Elect, both Jews and Gentiles, are not yet believers at Jesus' return, otherwise they would be included in the First Resurrection. God has understood and determined right from the foundation of the world that there will be three distinct groups of people who will survive the Great Tribulation. These are Elect Jews, Elect Gentiles (the Sheep) and Non-Elect Gentiles (the Goats). The Surviving Jews The Bible is clear that only a third of the Jews will survive the Great Tribulation. Zechariah 13:8-9 8 "And it shall come to pass in all the land," Says the LORD, "That two-thirds in it shall be cut off and die, But one-third shall be left in it: 9 I will bring the one-third through the fire, Will refine them as silver is refined, And test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, And I will answer them. I will say, 'This is My people'; And each one will say, 'The LORD is my God.'" The current worldwide population of Jews is approximately twelve million of which around six million live in the land of Israel. This means that if Jesus Christ were to return now, eight million Jews would be killed in the Great Tribulation and only four million Jews, as God’s Elect, would enter the Millennial Age in their fleshly bodies. It is no wonder that the Bible calls the Great Tribulation the time of Jacob’s trouble, which will be worse than any previous time in the history of Israel and the world. (Jeremiah 30:7, Daniel 12:1, 7) All those surviving Jews will ultimately receive their Messiah and every one of them will be saved during the millennial rule of Jesus Christ, as confirmed by the verses above Zechariah 13:8-9. Israel becomes the leading and blessed nation in the Millennial Age Jesus Christ is coming back to sit on the throne of David, to restore the Kingdom of Israel and to fulfill the covenant made to Abraham, which is to make Israel a great nation of blessing. Jesus Christ, the Holy One of Israel, will bless Jews abundantly and Israel will become a leading nation of great blessing to the whole earth in the Millennial Age. Jeremiah 23:5-6 5 "Behold, the days are coming," says the LORD, "That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; A King shall reign and prosper, And execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. 6 In His days Judah will be saved, And Israel will dwell safely; Now this is His name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." The Millennial Jews will occupy the full extent of the Promised Land, which God promised to Abraham “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates”. The Bible says repeatedly that God will bring a remnant of His people back to their own land where they will dwell safely and know their God. This can only be fulfilled in the Millennial Age, when all the surviving Jews will dwell in the land of Israel as promised to Abraham. The Surviving Gentiles Matthew 25:31-32 31 When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. One of the first tasks Jesus Christ will undertake when He returns to this earth is to judge all the surviving Gentile nations, and separate them as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. When the Bible refers to the nations, it refers to the Gentile nations only with the exclusion of God’s chosen nation Israel. Thus, the sheep and the goat nations referred to in the verse above are people from the surviving Gentile nations, which survive the Great Tribulation along with the surviving Jews. The Sheep, like the surviving Jews, are God’s Elect, and they will also all be saved before they die in the Millennial Age. Matthew 25:34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, 'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The Goats are not God’s Elect. They will all die as unbelievers in the Millennial Age and afterwards they will face the age-to-come Lake of Fire judgement of God, during The Great White Throne Judgement Age. Matthew 25:41 Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting (aionios, meaning age-to-come) fire prepared for the devil and his angels.' The Millennial Ezekiel Temple In the Millennial Age, the first task for the surviving Jews will be to bury millions of dead bodies. These are the bodies of people who will die during the great battle of Armageddon, just before the return of Jesus Christ. (Revelation 16:14, 16, Ezekiel 39:11-16) It will take seven months to bury all of the dead in the land of Israel. The most important project for the surviving Jews will be to build the Millennial Temple to the exact dimensions as given in Ezekiel Chapters 40-46. There can be no doubt that the Ezekiel Temple is a literal physical temple. God inspired Ezekiel in 573 B.C. to write down hundreds of precise measurements such that exact architectural plans of the temple can be produced. We believe that the Ezekiel Temple will be the third temple to be built in Jerusalem. Solomon built the first temple in 957 B.C. It stood for 371 years before the Babylonians destroyed it in 586 B.C. Zerubbabel built the second temple in 516 B.C. Herod the Great renovated and improved Zerubbabel’s temple. This temple stood for 586 years before the Romans destroyed it in 70 A.D. Some Christians believe that a third temple must be built in Jerusalem, before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, in order to fulfill the prophecy given in the scripture 2 Thessalonians 2:4. However, we believe that the prophecy about the son of perdition who ‘sits as God in the temple of God’ has already been fulfilled in 70 A.D. when Titus invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the second temple. Therefore, the Ezekiel Temple will be the third temple and not the fourth temple to be built in Jerusalem. We know that a number of Orthodox Jewish groups have serious plans to build a third temple on the traditional site of the first and the second temple, the Temple Mount. However, the problem is that this is the same site where the Muslim mosque ‘the Dome of the Rock’ presently stands. We can be sure that Jews will not build the third temple before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ because Jesus Himself prophesied that not even one stone of the temple shall be left upon another before He returns to this earth. Matthew 24:1-2 1 Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple. 2 And Jesus said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down." Of course, these words refer to the second temple. However, the clear message given in Jesus’ prophecy above is that Jesus did not envisage any temple standing in Jerusalem at His return. Please note that Jesus was speaking these words to His disciples in the context of His Second Coming at the end of this present age as confirmed by the following verse. Matthew 24:3 Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?" The prophecy of Jesus about the total destruction of the temple was not completely fulfilled in 70 A.D. when Romans destroyed the temple because there are still many stones of this temple lying one upon another that remain intact. This prophecy can only be fulfilled at the actual return of Jesus Christ when the whole earth will undergo a cataclysmic transformation of the earth’s surface in preparation for the Millennial Kingdom of God as discussed in Chapter 10 ‘The Second Coming of Jesus Christ’. The ‘abomination of desolation standing in the holy place’ spoken of in Matthew 24:15, Daniel 9:26-27 and Daniel 11:31, refers to Jerusalem itself, and not to a temple. The Gentile armies will surround and enter the Jewish Holy city, Jerusalem before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ as confirmed by Jesus in Luke 21:20 There are a number of reasons why a literal physical third temple will be built after Jesus Christ returns during the Millennial Kingdom of God, but let us first understand the most important reason for the building of the Millennial temple. Matthew 25:31 When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. This verse says that Jesus will sit on the throne of His glory when He returns to this earth. Where will this throne of His glory be located? Ezekiel 43:6-7 6 Then I heard Him speaking to me from the temple, while a man stood beside me. 7 And He said to me, "Son of man, this is the place of My throne and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel forever (owlam)...” In this verse the Hebrew word for ‘forever’ is owlam, meaning an age, which here refers to the thousand-year Millennial Age. The Ezekiel temple of Christ’s Millennial Age will be the place of Christ’s throne of His glory, and it will be His dwelling place. The Bible says that the glory of Jesus Christ will come into the inner court of the temple by way of the east gate and will fill the temple. Ezekiel 43:4-5 4 And the glory of the LORD came into the temple by way of the gate which faces toward the east. 5 The Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the LORD filled the temple. The building of the temple will indeed be the most important construction project in the Millennial Age for all the Jews who survive the Great Tribulation. Why animal sacrifices are required in the Millennial Age In Ezekiel, we clearly read that Jews will be required to keep the Law of Moses including making animal sacrifices in the Millennial Age. (Ezekiel 45, 46) This is very hard for Christians to understand because the book of Hebrews clearly says that Jesus Christ, through His own sacrifice on the cross, has done away with the need for animal sacrifices. All Christians agree that it is only the shed blood of Jesus Christ that has the power to take away our sins. So, why then would God reintroduce animal sacrifices in the Millennial Age? Many Christians reconcile this apparent contradiction by saying, “During the millennial reign of Jesus Christ, the animal sacrifices will be object lessons that look BACK in remembrance to what Jesus has done for us on the cross, similar to the way the Old Testament sacrifices looked FORWARD to what He would do on the cross”. We find this explanation inadequate and unsatisfactory. One thing we know for sure is that the Bible does not contradict itself. The key to understanding the reason for animal sacrifices in the Millennial Kingdom of God is to appreciate that God has kept the Israelites as a distinct nation, separate from the Gentile nations, both racially through the descendants of the line of Jacob, and religiously through the Mosaic Law. The Law of Moses is always important to a Jew, whether he is an unconverted Jew or a born again believing Jew. In the Millennial Kingdom, the surviving Jews and their children will not, all at once, together become born again believers. We know that repentance and faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is an individual and personal matter. This is why the Jews who are not yet born again believers will reintroduce their traditional practice of animal sacrifices in the Millennial Ezekiel Temple. There can be no doubt that once a Jew becomes a born again believer, he will no longer be required or want to observe animal sacrifices. However, this does not mean that the Law of Moses is no longer relevant for him or that it becomes abolished. All born again believing Jews in the Millennial Age, will be free from the legalistic observance of the Law of Moses. Of course, this is also true for Jews who are born again believers in this present age. However, the Law of Moses is not done away with for believing Jews as they keep it in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. (Romans 7:6) This is why all Jewish festivals like the Feast of Tabernacles and the Day of Atonement will still be kept by all Jews in the Millennial Kingdom whether they are born again believers or not. The Bible is clear that in the Millennial Kingdom, all surviving Jews and their children will ultimately accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour, but first each one of them will need to repent and be ashamed of his or her sins. Ezekiel 43:10 "Son of man, describe the temple to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities..." The Jews, like the Gentile Sheep, will need to repent of their sins, and this will be on an individual basis as God opens each person’s heart to the gospel of Jesus Christ, in God's own time and order. Until a Jew repents and accepts the sacrifice of Jesus Christ through God given faith, he will continue to observe animal sacrifices to cover his sins, as required under the Law of Moses. Christ’s Millennial Kingdom of God – A Paradise on Earth The Bible is abundantly clear that Christ’s Millennial Kingdom of God will be a time of great blessing for Israelites and all the nations on earth. Wasteland transformed to a Garden of Eden Isaiah 35:6-7 6 ...For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, And streams in the desert. 7 The parched ground shall become a pool, And the thirsty land springs of water; In the habitation of jackals, where each lay, There shall be grass with reeds and rushes. Ezekiel 36:34-35 34 The desolate land shall be tilled instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass by. 35 So they will say, 'This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the wasted, desolate, and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited.' Isaiah 51:3 For the LORD will comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places; He will make her wilderness like Eden, And her desert like the garden of the LORD; Joy and gladness will be found in it, Thanksgiving and the voice of melody. Isaiah 55:13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree, And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: And it shall be to the LORD for a name, For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. A World of unparalleled Peace Micah 4:3-4 3 He shall judge between many peoples, And rebuke strong nations afar off; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore. 4 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 has spoken. The Earth shall be FULL of the Knowledge of the Lord Isaiah 11:9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. The Nature of Wild Animals Transformed Isaiah 11:6-8 6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, The leopard shall lie down with the young goat, The calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze; Their young ones shall lie down together; And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play by the cobra's hole, And the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper's den. A World of Agricultural Abundance Amos 9:13-14 13 "Behold, the days are coming," says the LORD, "When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, And the treader of grapes him who sows seed; The mountains shall drip with sweet wine, And all the hills shall flow with it. 14 I will bring back the captives of My people Israel; They shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; They shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them; They shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them." No Disability, Sickness or Disease Isaiah 35:5-6 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 6 Then the lame shall leap like a deer, And the tongue of the dumb sing... Mankind given a New Heart and Spirit Ezekiel 11:19-20 19 Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. Nations will Learn God’s Ways Micah 4:2 Many nations shall come and say, "Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths." For out of Zion the law shall go forth, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. The Saints, the Bride of Christ, honoured rulers of the Kingdoms with Christ Daniel 7:18, 27 18 But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever. 27 Then the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, Shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And all dominions shall serve and obey Him. These verses in Daniel speak about the Kingdoms referring to both the Millennial Kingdom of God and the Eternal Kingdom of God of the New Heaven and the New Earth. We read about the highly privileged position that the Saints, the Bride of Christ, will have as rulers alongside their husband Jesus Christ. It is impossible for true believers in this present Age to fully appreciate what an honour it will be. Conclusion The Millennial Kingdom of God will be a glorious Age when Jesus Christ rules and reigns with His Bride. Jesus will sit on the throne of David in Jerusalem, in a literal temple built to the exact design and dimensions as given in the Bible by the prophet Ezekiel. Christ and His Bride will rule over the mortal fleshly people of Israel and the Gentile nations who will survive the Great Tribulation, and their descendants who will be born during the Millennial Age. The Millennial Kingdom will be a time of great blessing for all nations, and the whole earth will become like the Garden of Eden. There can be no doubt that only the Non-Elect Gentile Goat people will remain unconverted and die as unbelievers in the Millennial Kingdom of God. Everybody else is God’s Elect, who are ALL Jews, ALL Gentile Sheep people, and ALL people born during the thousand-year Millennial Kingdom of God. All of these Elect people will become saved believers before they die in the Millennial Kingdom. The Bible is clear that Christ’s Millennial rule will last for one thousand years. Revelation 20:5-6 5 But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. Imagine the scene of the whole population of the earth, multiple billions of people alive at the end of this glorious thousand-year Millennial Kingdom of God. These, Christ’s millennial people, will be prepared, waiting with excitement for God to usher in the next age, which is the Great White Throne Judgement Age in God’s Plan of the Ages. They will all know that two important events will take place simultaneously at the start of the Great White Throne Judgement Age. These two events are the Second Resurrection and the release of Satan from his prison, which are prophesied in the Bible to occur at the end of the thousand-year Millennial Kingdom of God. The next chapter, Chapter 12 'The Great White Throne Judgement' explains in detail the Second Resurrection, the release of Satan from his prison and the Lake of Fire Judgement of all resurrected unbelievers. We welcome your input. 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