Word of Salvation – Vol. 33 No. 28 – July 1988

 

The Reign Of Christ From Heaven

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 19, Q.&A. 50 and 51

Reading: Psalms 110 & 113; Revelation 20:1-6

Singing: BoW. Ps.1-A:1,2; 1-A:3; Bow. Ps. 72; BoW. H. 8:1,7,8,9, Ps.H.469.

 

We know that Stephen was the first martyr of the New Testament Church.  The leaders of the Jewish people were driven to intense hatred when Stephen told them they were stubborn and resisted the Holy Spirit.  That hatred turned into a murderous fury when Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit and looking up to heaven, seeing the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, said, “Look, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:56).  The New Testament refers to Jesus standing or being seated at the right hand of God several times.  One such statement puts it this way:

“I pray also… that you may know…his (God’s) incomparably great power for us who believe.  That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.  And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church.” (Eph.1:18-22).

Stephen knew something of that great power of God when he saw Jesus at the right hand of God.  He knew that Jesus had ascended from earth to that place next to God, being far above all powers in heaven and on earth.  Stephen saw Jesus supreme.  He saw that all things were placed under his feet, and knew that Jesus is head over all things, for the sake of the church.

But a few minutes after this beautiful vision of Jesus in heaven as the most powerful ruler, Stephen was dragged to the place where they stoned him to death.  Did that worry Stephen?  Having seen the glory of the all-powerful Christ one minute, and being killed by Christ’s enemies on earth a few minutes later?  No, it did not seem to worry Stephen at all.  He died full of faith and with a prayer for his killers.  Could you imagine yourself in Stephen’s place and possess that wonderful comfort, as he did, of belonging to Christ in life or death?  Even without that marvellous vision that Stephen had?  For most Christians see Christ as Stephen did after death and not before death as he did.  And yet, we may see it now also with the eye of faith.  We have the teaching of the New Testament that Christ is at the right hand of God, reigning over all things in heaven and earth, and we have been told what Stephen saw.

Let us today with the first part of Lord’s Day 19 be strengthened in our faith in: The Reign of Christ from Heaven.

1.  The Time of His Reign.

2.  The Blessings of His Reign.

1.  In the first place, then, we look at the time of the reign of Christ from heaven.  How long does Christ’s reign go on for?  And when did it begin and when does it finish?  Well, it won’t finish.  Christ will reign for ever.  But we are of course thinking now of Christ’s reign on earth from heaven.  When did that begin and how long will it last?

The reign of Christ began when the Lord ascended to heaven.  As the disciples saw it, Jesus went from earth to heaven.  He went from the place that is ruled to the place where the ruling is done.  When Jesus ascended to heaven, He stepped into the control room and God the Father began to rule through the Son.  Now that is what we see as believers on earth.  The book Revelation says.  the same thing but from another point of view.  The great dragon, which is another name for Satan, was about to devour the male child which was born from a woman, by whom the Old Testament church is meant.  This child, which is Christ of course, will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre, and was snatched up to God and to His throne (Rev.12:4, 5).  When Christ entered heaven, having completed the earthly part of His work of salvation, Satan lost his place in heaven.  He was thrown out.  There was no room for both Satan and Christ.

You may wonder what Satan was doing in heaven.  Well, you must think of evil spiritual forces at work in the heavenly realms (Eph.6:12), and Satan as leader pointing out to God, who is holy, that He cannot have anything to do with the people He is saving because they are sinful.  But now Christ has gone to heaven and is there as our Saviour who has taken our sins away.  Satan’s accusations no longer have any substance, for our sins have been paid for by Christ’s blood.  But being thrown out of heaven is not the end of spiritual warfare.  Satan is now confining his operations to God’s people still in the world.  He is at present at war against the church on earth.  But from heaven Christ rules over all powers for the sake of the church.  All of God’s elect have to be brought to faith, gathered into the church and taken up to heaven where Christ is.

How long that will take, no one knows, except God.  He knows the number of His elect.  Many may still have to be born.  But once they are all saved then the end will come.  Then Christ will return from heaven and renew the earth.  The saved already in heaven will come with Christ and the saved living on earth at His coming will be changed in the twinkling of an eye.  And so all of God’s elect will be given their new glorified bodies and all will live with Christ forever on the new heaven and earth.

But Christ must rule until that time.  He will fight and overcome every evil force that tries to prevent God from fulfilling His plan of salvation.  That includes Satan.  He still fights on but he is like a dog on a chain.  He does not have a free hand.  Before Jesus’ ascension to heaven Satan had much more power.  Prior to Jesus’ reign from heaven, the world was largely in darkness and most people in the world were in the clutches of evil powers and demonic tyrants.

But Jesus’ coming to earth, His birth, death, resurrection and ascension, changed all that.  Satan was defeated when Jesus completed the earthly part of His saving work and ascended the heavenly throne.  And from heaven King Jesus sends His ambassadors all through the world, telling all peoples and nations to surrender to Jesus.  His reign has begun but Satan will fight on until the last of the elect are brought into the kingdom of heaven.  But Satan cannot frustrate the saving plan of God, although up to the final victory, he will battle on like a devil possessed.  So the duration of Christ’s reign from heaven is from when He ascended to when He returns.

We have a word for that period of time between Christ’s ascension and second coming – millennium.  Millennium is Latin for “one thousand years” and it occurs only in Rev.20.  Now the Bible makes it very clear a number of times that no one knows the time of Jesus’ coming again.  It is something only the Father knows.  If we are correct in saying that the thousand years, mentioned in Rev.20, refers to the time between Jesus’ going to heaven and coming from heaven, then it must mean that with the millennium not a literal thousand years is meant.  The millennium simply means a full term.  Elsewhere the Bible speaks of this time between Jesus’ ascension and second coming as the last days.  In 1John it even refers to the time as “the last hour” (2:18).  It must mean, therefore, that we cannot speak of the millennium, or the last days, or even the last hour, as though it is future.  It is with us now.  It began with Jesus’ rule from heaven and ends when He comes again to judge the living and the dead and brings in the new heaven and earth.  The millennium is the reign of Christ from heaven.

Now you may know that there are Christians who see the millennium as a future time.  They believe the thousand years are still to come.  There are many different viewpoints as to when a future millennium begins, what it will be like, and how it will end, but this is not the time or place to discuss all these viewpoints.  What we should note here is that a future millennium will affect the way we now see Christ’s reign and the activity of Satan.  If we are now in the millennium, then this is also the time that Jesus reigns and Satan is chained.  That view is at the back of Lord’s Day 19.  If the millennium is a future thousand years then it means Jesus is not absolute King now and Satan is free.

It is understandable that the millennium is seen as future by some, for Revelation 20:2,3, seems to teach that.  It says there that an angel from heaven seized Satan and bound him for a thousand years.  He has been thrown into the Abyss, which is locked and sealed over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations any more until the thousand years are ended.  During this time, which is seen as still to come, Christ reigns.  Reigning with Christ in this future millennium were resurrected believers who had died earlier and had gone to heaven (vs.4).  Satan will not be around for he has been thrown into the Abyss, so it will be a reign of peace and blessings uninterrupted.

However, a future millennium will mean a second coming of Christ in two stages.  The first stage is when the thousand years begin.  When they are finished, Christ will return to heaven, so a second ascension, then Satan will be set free for a short time to do terrible things, after which Christ comes again from heaven, which is then the second or final stage of His second coming.

These Christians who believe Rev.20 to be teaching this time-table are strengthened in their conviction when they see all kinds of evil things still happening in the world.  Does not the presence of evil and wickedness strongly suggest that Satan is now free to do what he wants?  It is Satan, not Christ, who appears to rule the world.  Thus armed with this conviction many see all kinds of Satanic plots and conspiracies going on at the present.  Even Christians can become devil-possessed, they say, and need to be delivered from that.  So those who opt for a future millennium are convinced that Satan is behind much of modern technology.  The computer and banking industries, as well as the super powers of the world, are carefully watched and monitored with deep suspicion.  Fellow Christians must be constantly warned and those who do not heed their warnings will sadly fall away from Christ and become pawns of Satan.

But is that the way it is at present?  Is Satan so powerful that he can plot and conspire to such lengths that Christ can only helplessly look on?  Can even the saved people of God become possessed by Satan with Christ not able to keep them?  Who rules at present, Christ or Satan?

2.  To answer all that we, in the second place, look to the blessings of the reign of Christ from heaven.  Stephen could see the risen Christ in heaven standing at the right hand of God.  Christ at the right hand of God is interpreted in the New Testament as Him having all power and authority in order to subdue all opposition to His rule.  Yet Stephen died a martyr’s death.

We learn from this how to understand the rule of Christ from heaven.  For one thing, it does not exclude suffering and death as regards the church on earth.  Sometimes the Lord delivers His people from persecution and sometimes He does not.  There are those who are miraculously healed from terminal disease, others are not.  In other words, there are times we can clearly see the Lord’s intervention, but not always.  But it is a mistake to start looking for evidences and signs of Jesus’ reign and then permit our faith to rest on these.  If faith can only be present when we with our senses experience the reign of Christ, then we will suffer spiritual shipwreck.  Faith is always a knowing and trusting what the Word of God says.  And you will find many cases of suffering, disappointments, hardships, trials and persecution in the New Testament, where the believers would have gone under if their faith had depended on visible proofs of Jesus’ reign.  As it is, they trusted in Christ as Lord and King over all powers, even when their situation did not improve.

The fact is that Christ’s reign is always for the benefit of the church on earth.  He has given us His Holy Spirit and pours out His gifts from heaven upon us.  And by His power He does defend us and keep us safe from all enemies.  But we have to learn that God works in ways that for us are often mysterious.  We may feel that personal peace and happiness are the benefits we ought to have.  But God may so rule over people and things that what happens to us strengthens our faith and that of others through trials and affliction.

But what about Rev.20?  What does it say, if the millennium is not future but present?  Well, when it speaks of Satan being bound, we must realise that this binding is not complete.  Satan is chained but that still allows him some manoeuvrability.  If Satan was really free to do as he likes, then do you think there would still be a church on earth?  Of course not!  The reason why there is a church, and why God’s chosen ones are coming to faith through evangelism, is because Satan is bound.

But this binding is not complete and for that reason there is persecution and that is why vs.4 speaks of “the souls of those who have been beheaded because of their testimony to Jesus and because of the Word of God.  These souls are Christians who died on earth when they resisted Satan and followed Christ their King.  Vs.4 goes on to say that these souls became alive and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.  The question is: where are they?  Alive on earth or alive in heaven?

Those who see the millennium as future see these souls coming alive on earth when Jesus returns in the first stage of His second coming.  But there is no mention in Rev.20 of a bodily resurrection.  These are souls.  When they died a martyr’s death on earth, like Stephen, their souls were taken up to heaven.  Strictly speaking, they never died for they received eternal life when they were saved from eternal death by Christ.  But on earth they died in the body, and in a manner of speaking they came to life in heaven with Christ.  Vs.5 calls that the first resurrection.  It is the going to heaven where Christ is.  The second resurrection takes place when Christ, in His one second coming, comes at the end of the millennium to judge the world, brings in the new heaven and earth, and raises God’s people to life in glorified bodies.  But until Jesus’ coming again, He continues His reign from heaven in this millennium period, and believers already in heaven reign with Him.

It means that those believers who also happened to be our husbands and wives, our fathers or mothers, or our children, are alive with Christ in heaven.  But our joy is not in the fact that they were our earthly loved ones who are now with Christ and in heaven.  No, the family and marriage ties were for life on this earth.  Our loved ones who were Christian on earth are in heaven with a different life than they had with us on earth.  We rejoice in that they reign with Christ.

But what does that mean?  Well, the book Revelation speaks of them doing a number of things, all glorious in character.  The souls in heaven praise Christ for His righteous judgments.  They constantly sing: “True and righteous are his judgments.”  And they sit with Christ on His throne, they stand with Him, sing before His throne, see His face.  It is a living with Christ in heaven where they have a perfect environment.  They see how Christ defends His church on earth, how He pours out His heavenly gifts to His children on earth who are still faced with perishableness and mortality.  They see how Christ provides them with faith, hope and love.  Yes, especially love, for it is the greatest of gifts.  They witness Christ protecting His church from all enemies.  That is why the saints in heaven are blessed for they are no longer plagued by doubts and struggles with sin.  They are delivered from all that, they have been perfected.  Hence they sing before the throne and worship the Lamb who has conquered and goes forth conquering until all enemies are overcome.

But does not Rev.20 speak of martyrs and what if our loved ones died not through persecution but from other causes?  Be not anxious, Rev.20 speaks also of those who did not serve Satan.  With Christ are all those who have repented of sin and believed in the Saviour for their salvation.

One day all God’s people will be together with Christ.  Believers who are still of this earthly life, will join the throng in heaven.  And those still remaining on earth at Christ’s coming will be changed instantly, and so the whole church on earth will join the church of heaven and together we will be forever with the Lord.  That is the goal of history.

It will be reached, have no fear of that, for Christ reigns.  He conquers all enemies; not one of the elect will be lost.  Christ is on the throne and Satan is bound.  Believe, therefore, in the reign of Christ from heaven.  Remember, Stephen saw the Lord at the right hand of God.  He saw this before he died.  All Christians will see it after their death.

AMEN.