SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/26/2024 11:59 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-1
“The Subjects”
Bible Reading & Meditation
Reference: Matthew 25:32a
Message of the verse: “And all the nations will be gathered before Him;”
In this first part of verse 32 we see the subjects
of Christ’s judgment and it will be “all the nations.” MacArthur writes “Ethna (nations) has the basic meaning of peoples and here refers to
every person alive on earth when the Lord returns. Although He will have taken all believers
into heaven at the Rapture, during the following seven years of the Tribulation
many other people will come to believe in Him.
During that dreadful time, multitudes of Gentiles (see Rev. 7:9, 14), as
well as all surviving Jews (Rom. 11:26), will be brought to faith in Christ.”
Jesus has made it clear that when He returns to planet
earth that there will be believers and non believers alive, (sheep and
goats). Here is the issue, and that is
that there will be two different destinations as to where these people will go,
two destinies. The believers will be
ushered into the kingdom and the unbelievers into eternal punishment (Matt.
25:46).
The believers who are alive at the end of the Tribulation
period, when Christ returns will go directly into the earthly kingdom which
will last for 1000 years. As one studies
the Scriptures concerning these people there is no indication that those saints
will experience any sort of transformation at that time. However mingling with them and ruling over
them will be the glorified saints of all ages who will then be reigning with
Christ as seen in Rev. 20:4. “Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was
given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded
because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those
who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on
their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ
for a thousand years.” MacArthur writes
about these “Although their bodies will be of vastly different orders, those
two groups of saints will be able to communicate and interact with each other
just as Jesus communicated and interacted with the disciples in His glorified
body after the resurrection.”
Ah millennialists do not believe
Christ will reign in a literal, thousand-year kingdom on earth. I guess they can read Revelation 2:4. What they consider the Millennium to be is a
figurative, spiritualized picture of Christ’s reigning on earth through the
hearts of His redeemed people. It is
difficult to see what purpose that all these resurrected believers will do in
their glorified bodies. I have always
had trouble with people who cannot understand what the Bible is saying when it
is right in front of their noses. I have
heard that when the plain sense of Scriptures makes sense, seek no other
sense. You can’t just make Scripture say
what you want it to say you have to look at what it says and then believe it.
I will close this SD with a fairly
long quote from MacArthur’s commentary. “The
final rebellion against the glorified Christ and His kingdom of perfect love,
wisdom, justice, and righteousness gives final and irrefutable testimony to man’s
natural depravity. Although their environment
will be perfect in every respect and Satan will be bound and unable to tempt or
in any other way influence men, some people will nevertheless reject Christ
even during the Millennium. The only
possible source of their sin and rebellion will be their own corrupt hearts
(cf. Jer. 17:9).
“Contrary to what some Bible
teachers and theologians claim, the idea of a literal, physical, earthly
Millennium did not originate in modern times. As the astute German theologian Erich Sauer
had well documented, belief in such a literal thousand-year earthly kingdom was
the common and orthodox view of the early church, from New Testament times
through the middle of the third century (see his Triumph of the Crucified [Grand Tapids: Eerdmans, 1951]). Early church Fathers such as Papias, Justin,
Tertullian, and Hippolytus all affirmed a literal and earthly future kingdom
ruled directly by Christ. It was only
later, as allegorical hermeneutics became fashionable, that literal millennialism
was reject in favor of a spiritualized interpretation.”
3/26/2024 12:28
PM
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