What is the purpose of the thousand-year reign of Christ?

It is a very remarkable passage, showing us the object of the mediatorial kingdom of the Son of man, namely the maintenance of righteous government by power, during a period of a thousand years, by Christ as man: on the part of God and then, when all things shall be subdued to Him, and death destroyed, the kingdom will be delivered into the hands of God, and the Son Himself as man will cease to rule as the exalted Man, and become subject Himself to God as man in the new heavens and the new earth, where righteousness will dwell eternally.

The millennium will be the vindication on this earth of all God's ways in righteous and holy government. How necessary is this! In this world His authority has been repudiated, and every thought of His has been abused in men's hands. How appropriate then that here in this world there shall be manifested for the complete cycle of a thousand years the perfection of all His thoughts and arrangements when once taken up and put into execution by Christ.

(3) But the Kingdom is not always going to be of hidden character. Ere long the king whose right it is to reign will come to take charge of the earth to administer the principles of God, viz., righteousness, peace and joy to the erstwhile unrighteous, warring and sad world. Before doing so He will snatch up His people of era No. 2, to be forever with Him, to be associated in His rule in era No. 3, and in the subsequent eternal state, where righteousness is not merely dominant, but the essential element of its constitution, so that unrighteousness is inconceivable. The Kingdom will then come by observation! Every eye will see the King coming in His glory. But before instituting the era of the universe of bliss, He will purge the earth of every vestige of man's waywardness. Evil men and their works will be brought under inexorable judgment. There will be a period of a thousand years of perfect administration, popularly alluded to as the millennium, when the attributes of God will be fully demonstrated. Where man has made ruin of God's fair creation for six thousand years in sin and rebellion, there will be a perfect exposition of God's character for one thousand years, proving that God has not been without a remedy for the ills of mankind. All the resources of God are concentrated in Christ in Whom all fulness is pleased to dwell. Everything will be subservient to His will.

We have seen the heavenlies cleared of Satan and his angels; the earth cleared of its wicked kings; the beast and the false prophet cast into the lake of fire; and now we have the binding of Satan. (Rev. 20) Victory is complete! the hidden source of all the evil is bound in the abyss for a thousand years. The blessed Lord takes the kingdom. "The kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever." (Rev. 11:15.) This is the millennium — Christ openly, manifestly governing, and Satan bound. These are the two grand features of that blessed period, and by which it is distinguished from all former dispensations.

What a mighty change! what an immense relief to this groaning earth! Satan and his evil angels banished from the abodes of men: Christ reigning, and His risen saints associated with Him on the throne of His heavenly and earthly glory. Then shall come creation's day of boundless blessedness so constantly spoken of in the Old Testament. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose; the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. The mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk and honey. The wild beasts of the field shall become gentle and harmless as the lamb, and warfare and strife shall cease from amongst the children of men. Thus will God reverse the history of man; He will heal his sorrow, relieve his misery; crown him with health, peace, and plenty, and spread joy throughout the restored creation, according to His estimate of the cross of His beloved Son. In that day it will be seen and acknowledged that the cross of the Lord Jesus is the foundation of the wide-spread scene of millennial glory and blessing. Colossians 1:20.

There are three ways in which Christ will fully reveal and glorify God — grace, government, and glory. The first He did in His humiliation; the second He will do in the millennium; and the third throughout eternity. Thus the millennium will be the revelation of God in government for a thousand years. All language fails to speak of what its blessedness must be. Satan no longer free to tempt men, and the goodness of God displayed in blessing men; the heavens above, Israel and the Gentiles below, the earth, the sea, the lower creation — all brought under the government of Christ — all embraced in His wide dominions; and all to the glory and praise of God by Him.

The millennium is specially for the glory of the Lord Jesus as Son of Man. The world had rejected Him. Now by His own might He rules over the nations with a rod of iron until every enemy is subdued, and peace spreads her wings over the world, and nations shall no more learn war, then all is prepared for the outshining of His glory. Every blessing is poured down upon the earth, and the earth responds in the full yield of her fruits. Israel will have fulness of blessing. "For Jehovah shall comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places, and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of Jehovah; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody" (Isa. 51:8). And these natural blessings are the evidence of their moral condition. All will be taught of God, from the least of them to the greatest of them. As rebellion and iniquity had marked them before, so in that day holiness will raise them above all nations, and their metropolis shall be called "Jehovah-Shammah." In His holy mountain ferocious beasts become tame, children lead them; asps lose their venom, infants play with them (Isa. 11). "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea." Israel in their destined place, blessing goes out from them to the surrounding nations. The holy mountain is the greatest effect of the King's presence, but the glory radiates to the outermost circle, the inanimate creation rejoices in it, the places where judgment lay heavy join in the song which creation, freed from the bondage of corruption, will then raise. "And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith Jehovah, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine and oil; and they shall hear Jezreel" (Hosea 2:21-22). This is the order of millennial blessedness, and though specially addressed to Israel, and having special application to the mercy that meets their sinful condition and God's judgment upon them, yet it gives the channels of blessing for the whole earth. Isaiah speaks of Jehovah as sitting upon the circle of the earth (Isa. 40); here Jehovah is in the circle of the heavens, and displaying His beneficence with a largeness unknown before; dispensing His blessings through the gradations of rank and order which the government of glory will then have established. He waits, as it were, to hear the heavens, and they become media for communicating fruitfulness to the earth, or, as it is beautifully and poetically said, the corn and the wine and the oil call upon the earth, and the earth hears and brings forth her increase, as witness that the curse is removed. Yea, it is so removed that the corn and the wine and the oil hear Jezreel.

But he adds, "then, cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father." The special kingdom put into His hands as Man is to he delivered up. Nay, He takes it only for the purpose of bringing everything into subjection to God. That which He taught His disciples to pray, that the Father's kingdom might come, is that which He accomplishes in power by taking Himself the kingdom. It is not for eternity, it is not even for a long period of time, and those who would tell us that the millennium is in fact but the commencement and threshold, as it were, of His kingdom, which is to continue for a long, perhaps indefinite period after it, mistake altogether the purpose of the kingdom itself. The One who takes it is, in it all, the Minister, as He ever was. He takes it, not for His own glory, but for the Father's glory. God indeed must honor the One who has glorified Him, and will put every enemy under His feet. That is right and necessary, but His own thought in it is that He must accomplish that which is in His heart; He must be, as Isaiah expresses it, "the Father of eternity." He must bring things into that condition in which they will abide eternally. Having accomplished this, for Him all is accomplished. He desires no kingdom separate from that of the Father; while, on the other hand, the throne will be ever "the throne of God and of the Lamb." It will never cease to be characterized by the One who now sits upon that throne.

Thus the subjection of all things to Him risen is already true to faith, according to the use made of Psalm 8, while at His coming from the right hand of God His enemies will be made His footstool, and He will rule in their midst. To this last answers the necessity of His reigning till He put all the enemies under His feet, death's annulling included at the last. It is what scripture calls the kingdom, during which the Lord is to reduce all rule and all authority, and power, and then render it up to Him who is God and Father. (Ver. 24.) This will be at the end of the thousand years' reign, which reign is characterised in verse 25, verse 26 adding what will be at its close. Verse 27 states the universality of His present title, as bound up with His resurrection; as verse 28 the eternal condition, when the universe has been subjected in fact, and the Son Himself shall be also, to Him who subjected it all to Him, in order that, not the Father exclusively, but God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) should be all in all, instead of the kingdom of man in Christ exalted and reigning. Thus is the lie of Satan met by the truth, grace, righteousness, and glorious counsels of God: man in Christ governing all first; and finally God all in all, where righteousness needs not to rule, but can dwell in endless blessing and peace.

We are taught also in Hebrews 10:12-13, that Christ is seated at the right hand of God, waiting till His enemies shall be made His footstool. We may well wait if Christ is waiting; but we wait in suffering and conflict. He is waiting to reign, and then He will cause full blessing to flow forth for His own, whether in heaven or on earth, and will banish evil from both.

Then there is another point. Suppose the times we have been anticipating had arrived. Suppose the church had been caught up to be in glory with her Lord, and Israel, again in their own land, had gone through their last dreadful tribulation. Suppose that the Gentile oppressors of Israel, when just ready to swallow them up, had been destroyed by the coming of the Lord, attended by his church, in glory — the coming of the Lord and all saints with him; — suppose multitudes of the wicked of all nations destroyed, and the whole nation of Israel re-settled in their own land; — suppose this whole nation, and all the survivors among all Gentiles, converted by the out-pouring of the Spirit upon all flesh — suppose all this, I say, — what should hinder the inhabitants of the earth corrupting themselves as men have always done? What should hinder them relapsing into all the sin, and bringing upon themselves afresh all the sorrow, of which the world will then have been completely rid? Man was innocent and happy; but he fell. The world was once desolated by judgment, and re-peopled by the eight persons who descended from the ark. But how soon they corrupted themselves afresh? Israel has once been redeemed by the mighty hand and out-stretched arm of God; but what a history of backsliding and sin succeeded that deliverance! David's reign and Solomon's were happy days for Israel. The one subdued their enemies; the other reigned over them in peace, and built that magnificent temple in which God was known and worshipped. But the revolt under Rehoboam, and all the dark history of both nations till the captivity, was what ensued. The church was formed at Pentecost, and bright and lovely were the fruits of the indwelling Spirit, which for a season were exhibited. But how short that season! And how dismal the history of the corruption and degeneracy which have followed! And why not immediate failure and continued apostacy in the millennial age, as in all preceding ages? There are two answers to this question. Had there been no answer but that God has so willed it, and made known his will, this for faith would have been sufficient. But he has condescended to explain to us how it is. In the first place, Satan, who has wrought all the mischief hitherto, will be bound, and will be allowed to do no more till the thousand years are finished. It was Satan who deceived our first parents in Eden. It was Satan who corrupted the world after the flood. It was Satan who was Israel's great enemy, withstanding the purposes of God concerning them; and beguiling them when he could not shake these purposes. It was Satan who sowed tares among the good seed that the Son of Man had sown: and all the evils which pollute and afflict the church are but the crop which his seed has produced. But in the millennium Satan will be bound. Revelation 20 is explicit as to this. Figurative language is used there, I grant you. But what is denoted by the figure of a great chain and a key, and a mighty angel using them to bind Satan in the bottomless pit for a thousand years? Has the language no meaning because it is figurative language? No words could more clearly express the forcible restraint under which Satan, the great deceiver and usurper, will be placed during the millennial reign. "A liar, and the father of it;" and "a murderer from the beginning, who abode not in the truth," are the characters given to him in Scripture. And what could be expected from the reign of such an one for all these thousands of years, but the dire results which have actually followed? But he will be bound, so that he shall deceive the nations no more till the thousand years are fulfilled. Then, secondly, the place hitherto filled by Satan and his angels for purposes of evil, will, throughout the millennium, be filled by Christ and his glorified saints for purposes of blessing; and the reign of Christ will be a reign of righteousness throughout. It not only begins with desolating, destroying judgments, taking away the obstinately wicked, while the Spirit of God bows the hearts of those who survive, and makes them submissive to Christ's yoke: it is a reign of righteousness from first to last. Is it meant by this that there is no goodness, no grace? Surely not. It is full of grace, full of goodness. What can it be but grace that makes the nation which crucified Christ, yea, the very city where his blood was shed, the centre of blessing to the whole earth? What can be such a triumph of grace as this? And surely it is grace that will bow the hearts of the Gentiles, and bring them to realize, under the reign of Jesus, the fulfilment of that word to Abraham, "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." But here is the difference. Grace introduces believers into blessing now — blessing of a far higher order than that of the saved population of the millennial earth.

Thrones are seen next by the Seer. "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them and judgment was given unto them." Daniel also saw thrones in connection with the judgment of the beast, but nothing is said of those occupying the thrones in Daniel's vision. Here we have the complete revelation, and several times the blessed statement is made that Christ and His saints shall reign with Him for a thousand years. The new age in which all things are put in subjection under His feet, the personal reign of Christ, in which all His redeemed people have a share, begins. It will last a thousand years. Six times we read of the thousand years in this chapter. Because this coming age will last a thousand years it has been called by the Latin word "millennium." Not a few have made the astonishing declaration that such a period of time during which Christ and His saints reign over the earth has but little foundation in the Scripture.

It is quite true that the only place in which the duration of such an age is given is this great final book of Revelation. And that should be sufficient for any Christian to believe in such an age of a thousand years. However, this age of unspeakable blessing and glory for this earth is revealed throughout the entire Bible. The Old Testament contains hundreds of unfulfilled promises of blessing for Israel, the nations of the earth and even for all creation, which have never seen even a partial fulfillment. Isaiah is full of such promises. In the New Testament there are also passages which clearly teach and point to such an age of glory for this earth. Read Matt. 19:28; Acts 3:19-21; Romans 8:19-23; Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20; Phil. 2:9-11. What awfully disheartening pessimism it would be if we had to believe that the terrible conditions prevailing on the earth now, conditions which have steadily become worse, were to continue and that man's work is to remedy them and produce something better. This earth has a bright and glorious future. Nations will some day no longer turn, as they do now, their plowshares into swords, but change their swords into plowshares. Righteousness and peace will surely kiss each other and creation's curse and travail pains will end. Mercy and truth meet together.