Paradise on Earth

3. Behold the King
Earth’s coming glory

Jesus told his countrymen, before his death, that they would not see him again until they were ready to cry "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." (Matt.23:39). The world is not ready to say that yet; the many who do not believe will not have him because they do not know him; many who do believe have inherited so distorted a view from the general formal teachings of Christendom that they fear rather than joyfully anticipate the day when He fulfils his promise to "come again." The old medieval idea that He comes as a stern and wrathful Judge intent on punishing men for their sins and taking only a minority to Heaven before burning up the earth and all that is in it ought to have been banished from Christian teaching centuries ago; unhappily it persists, and its persistence creates a barrier to the full understanding of the glorious future awaiting humankind when his Return is fully revealed.

The coming of Christ is an event to be eagerly anticipated. Says the Psalmist, "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad...let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the LORD: for He cometh...to judge the earth: He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth." (Psa.96:11‑13). An event which is depicted in such glowing terms can only be beneficial to those who experience it.

The general idea, inherited from the past, is that the Advent will be a sudden and unexpected event. The world will be going about its business, unsuspecting, when without warning Christ will appear in the sky with attendant angels, descending to earth, where He will immediately raise the dead from their graves and summon all, dead and living, before his throne for judgment. All this comes from the poetic imagery of the Bible, imagery which must be used in order to convey the spiritual truths involved to people of many different mental outlooks in many different generations. Now it is necessary to interpret the Scriptures in the light of our present understanding of the purposes of God and the nature of both the other world and this world.

The revelation of Christ to the world at his Second Advent is a progressive one, embracing a great many significant events, some in this world and perceived by individuals, some in the other world and therefore not perceived by individuals. This fact was understood by some Christian thinkers so far back as the second decade of the 19th century, when the apparent imminence of the Advent began to be advocated. At a series of conferences organised by well‑known British ministers and Church leaders from 1826 onward one of the theses, not universally accepted but finding definite support in many quarters, was that the Advent consists of two stages, a preliminary one in which the Lord would be present unknown to men in general for the purpose of gathering his Church to heavenly glory, followed by a second stage at which He would be revealed with his Church to the whole world. This view of the Advent, originating in England, was later taken up by some sections of the American Adventist movement and is now more fully developed. The modern view is that this unseen phase of the Advent embraces the whole of the last and this present century and that the returned Lord can be thought of as standing behind the scenes overruling and directing the course of world events so that the final disintegration of world power marking the actual end of the Age will come at the Divinely pre‑ordained moment when Christ will be revealed to all in the glory of his Advent and take his place as earth’s new universal ruler.

What is to be the nature of that revelation? How will men realise his coming and accept his rule when He thus appears? Is He to be manifested to the natural sight, or in the persons of some among men who are to be his representatives, or by the logic of events? We are dealing here with the impact of the spiritual world upon the material, the celestial upon the terrestrial, and so little is known about that celestial world. Modern knowledge makes it possible to think of that world and its occupants existing on a different wavelength, so to speak, so that whilst being a real world, a real environment constituting the home of real beings adapted to that environment, such beings and such environment are of necessity imperceptible to human senses. Our Lord after his resurrection did break through the barrier to manifest himself visibly to his followers, once as a gardener, again as a stranger, once to Thomas in his pre‑crucifixion likeness—and yet on the other hand, to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road in an other‑worldly glory so unendurable that Saul fell to the ground, temporarily blinded. It may be discreet to say that it is not possible to be dogmatic as to the means by which our Lord will be manifest to humanity at his revealing, only that it will be completely satisfactory and conclusive to the observers. It may well be that the most telling evidence will be the increasingly obvious fact that the evil and disruptive forces and institutions of the world are being progressively curbed and eliminated by a power which men can neither understand nor withstand. There will not be wanting, at any time during this transition period between this world and the next, men and women who know what these things mean, have been expecting and awaiting them, and will proclaim their significance in no uncertain voice.

Speaking of this time, Jesus declared (Matt.24:30) that following the "tribulation of those days" (v.29)—the catalogue of world troubles which leads up to the end of the Age, "then shall appear"—a word meaning to make evident, manifest, not necessarily by physical sight, literally "to bring to light"—"the sign of the Son of Man in heaven:...and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven..." Just what is meant by the "sign of the Son of Man" has given rise to a variety of opinions; the structure of the sentence demands that it be something in the nature of a preliminary spectacle or happening which indicates the imminence of the actual revelation of Christ to the waiting world, something which people can see or appreciate as the evidence of that which is to follow. If one tries to visualise the point in history at which this world has all but reached its end, when society as we know it is on the brink of final disruption, when the world’s politicians are on the point of giving up, then what is the outward evidence then being displayed before men that a great change is imminent? All Bible prediction in the Old Testament, as well as much Apostolic teaching in the New, conspire together to indicate the completion of a process which has an integral place in the events of the Time of the End but has not yet attained its zenith. That process is the resurgence of Israel.

Of all the strange events of the last century, the appearance and continuity of the sovereign state of Israel is the most inexplicable. Occupying a territory only the size of Wales, it has become a power to be reckoned with in the counsels of the largest nations. In a world of super‑powers armed to the teeth, it is classed by the world’s strategists as the fourth strongest military power. When Britain relinquished its Mandate over Palestine in 1948, the world waited to see the handful of Israelis pushed into the sea by an overwhelming flood of Arabs. Instead, they saw ten million Arabs defeated by two million Israelis and the new State proclaimed in defiance of the whole world. No one has been able to do anything about it. Several wars have waged against these tenacious fighters and they are still there. More than two millenniums ago the Lord said through the prophet Zechariah that He would make Jerusalem a burdensome stone to all the world (Zech.12:3); that prediction has come true. And the question has to be faced; what is the secret of the apparently miraculous survival of these people? What is the power that sustains them? What is to be the outcome?

The Scriptures are positive. Israel is to be a converted and holy people appointed to introduce the Divine Kingdom on earth and engage in a world‑wide missionary work among all nations under the guidance and leadership of the Lord Christ and his Church from heaven. They are not, as a nation, converted and holy at present, but that will come. Their present politicians and leaders, with all their good qualities and skilled administration, are politicians of this world. Before Israel becomes the converted and holy people the Lord intends, they will need new leaders, stalwart men of God, inflexibly set for righteousness, men of vision and character, turning the nation away from its reliance upon the policies and practices of this world, taking to themselves the practices of the world to come. With such men at the helm Israel will be invincible.

Is this the "sign of the Son of Man in Heaven," the immediate precursor of his revelation to the world, this unexpected and unexplainable phenomenon, the emergence of a righteous nation, led by righteous men, eschewing all human means of offence and defence, and relying in complete faith upon the power of God to protect and deliver them from all enemies? In the days of the Ten Plagues on Egypt, Pharaoh’s magicians were able to reproduce the first two plagues and so Pharaoh took no notice of Moses, but when Moses called down the third plague the magicians found themselves powerless. So, they said to Pharaoh "This is the finger of God." (Exod.8:19). So will it be at this end of the Age: the rulers of this world, taking "counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed (Christ)" (Psa.2:2) will find themselves faced with a mysterious power they can neither understand nor withstand, and they will have to say to each other "this is the finger of God.

For when Israel can be seen in the eyes of the world to stand in this position before God, the full end has indeed come and the Lord Christ almost immediately to be revealed. Other Scriptures indicate that this is when the institutions and powers of this world realise at last that the true threat to each is not from one another, but from Heaven’s forces of righteousness, and they will forget their internecine quarrels in the attempt to join in a common resistance to this power, the nature of which they understand so little, but sense it threatens their own selfish interests. John the Revelator saw in vision this event, under symbol of a Rider on a White Horse with his followers, the Lord Jesus Christ and the armies of heaven, coming forth to do battle with "the kings of the earth, and their armies" (Rev.19:19) and overthrowing them so that his beneficent Millennial kingdom can be established. (Rev.19:11‑21) The prophet Ezekiel at a much earlier time saw the same thing as it will affect the converted nation of Israel in their own land, with the world gathered against them, and the Lord coming to their aid and establishing them for ever as his earthly missionary nation with every opponent rendered powerless. (Ezek.38 & 39)

All this is going to take a long time, it may be said. It is not necessarily so. The forces that are going to bring about this great change can be gathering strength behind the scenes, unsuspected and unobserved by men, to be revealed suddenly when the time is ripe. There were two notable examples in the last century. The rule of the Czars endured in Imperialist Russia for four centuries and no one in 1917 dreamed that its day was done. Rumours reached Britain that some kind of insurrection was afoot but the British Ambassador in Moscow assured his Government at home that there was nothing in it: a rising was unlikely and if there was it would be easily suppressed. The next that anybody knew was that the Czar and his family had been apprehended, the Government overthrown and scattered, and Russia was a Socialist State. For twenty years Vladimir Lenin had been sitting in the British Museum library studying and preparing the constitution of the new republic; when all was ready that republic was proclaimed and set up in power as it were in a moment. The other instance is that of the State of Israel itself. When Britain renounced the Mandate and moved out of Palestine in 1948 it was expected by the nations that the Arab world would move in and after a certain amount of resistance organise the whole area as an Arab state. Instead of that, as the Union Jack came down the Israeli flag went up and the modern State of Israel was born. A lot of preparation had been going on for a long time under cover and when the critical time had arrived the event happened.

So with this great change which is due to occur at this end of the Age. Jesus likened it to the days of Noah, people going about their normal occupations and interests, eating and drinking, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage, heedless of the signs which indicate to the watchful that the Lord Christ is about to be revealed taking his great power and commencing his reign. And this raises the obvious question, who will be the visible leaders who will pick up the reins of government as they are relinquished by people who, however well‑meaning and sincere, find themselves powerless to cope with the problem created by a world that is falling to pieces?

That there will be such men, strong and resolute, champions of righteousness and justice, is implicit in the Holy scriptures. Isaiah, the prophet, in his early vision of the dawning Millennial Age, cried out "Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem." (Isa.2:3) A rather enigmatic passage in the Book of Micah tells of the Lord raising up shepherds and princes under whose leadership Israel shall become both a destructive force, evidently toward those whose instincts are to do evil, and a benevolent and life‑giving force, evidently to those whose impulses and motives are good and right. Perhaps the most positive pointer to the nature of these men who will stand up to direct the policies and practices of the Millennial world is contained in the foresight of the prophet Zechariah, who, having already described the bewilderment of men faced with this phenomenon of a developing righteous nation governing itself in accordance with the laws of God, goes on to say "the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the LORD of hosts their God." (Zech.12:5) Where these men come from no man will know, only that they are possessed of a strong grasp and understanding of earth’s problems, and the ability to enforce their dictates and execute their plans. When men realise that although firm, they are just, incorruptible and benevolent, there will most assuredly be a reaction in favour of the new order of things. This, however, cannot become real until these same men have led their people Israel in the supreme trial of faith when the powers of this world make their final effort to withstand the Kingdom of God.

This final effort is what the Book of Revelation calls Armageddon—a word which in popular parlance evokes feelings of dread and apprehension. In Scripture the word is associated with the events of the end of the Age, and because in popular theology that end is visualised in terms of violence and destruction, a "Last Day" in which a wrathful Christ is expected to consign trembling sinners to their doom and destroy the earth and all that is in it in a holocaust of blood and fire, the general reaction at the mention of the word is one of fear. For a word which occurs only once in the whole of the Bible it may be that its import has been exaggerated beyond its reality. Armageddon is the name given to the final battle between good and evil which brings this Age to an end and ushers in the Millennial reign of Christ. Were it a battle between two contending earthly super‑powers the resulting carnage may well justify the horrific descriptions of its nature penned by some zealous Christian students, but it is not. It is a conflict between the forces of evil of this world struggling to maintain their supremacy and the heavenly forces of the coming Christ, and because these latter are heavenly forces they will accomplish their object with weapons totally dissimilar to those of earth and without the carnage. Jesus said once that He came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them, and there is no conceivable logic in supposing He can only achieve his object of taking over the rulership of the world by wrecking the earth and destroying most of the men upon it.

There is to be a final conflict; let there be no doubt about that. The Scriptures depict it in various ways in the guise of warfare as waged in Bible times, but those are only to illustrate the principles involved. What does emerge from these pen‑pictures is that at the last the converted Holy Nation in the Holy Land will take a stand for unreserved faith in the power of God and will prosper in material things on that account—Israel’s covenant with God at Sinai provided that such prosperity would always be theirs in such case and that promise still holds—and this prosperity, together with a dawning realisation that there is some mysterious power behind this people and their leaders which is inimical to the evil forces in the world, will lead the world to take action against them. "Then shall the LORD go forth" says Zechariah of this event "and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle." (Zech.14:3). How does He fight? Let Zechariah continue the story. (14:12‑15). "Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes (sockets), and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth...and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour...and so shall be the plague of the horse, of the mule, of the camel, of the ass, and of all the beasts that shall be in these tents." One does not expect to find such assemblage of domestic animals in the accoutrements of modern warfare; neither should one expect to read verse 12 literally. Applied to the technology of modern warfare, one can see in this description the nature of the weapons of heaven. More potent by far than man’s instruments of warfare are those of God, the powers of Nature, always under his control. It only needs an unprecedented fog, spread over a vast area, enduring not for days, but weeks, and not one plane could take off, not one tank move forward, not one warship steer a course "their eyes consumed in their sockets." It only needs an electro‑magnetic storm of charged particles emanating from the sun, similar to everyday experience but of unprecedented intensity, to block every form of satellite and radio communication and control upon earth—as it does to a much more limited extent now—and everything has to stop; "their tongue consumed in their mouths." It only needs the Lord to send snow, not just a few feet for a few days, but many feet for many weeks or months, and all the armies of men will be lost to each other and immobilised; "their flesh consumed while they stand upon their feet." The whole modern paraphernalia of human warlike power rendered useless like the beasts of burden of ancient warfare described in v.15. The entire power of man trusting in material weapons revealed impotent against the all‑superior power of God, and that if God so decrees, without the loss of a single life. It would seem that something like this will be the outcome, for according to Isaiah (66:19) the very next thing to happen will be the sending of missionaries from delivered Israel to those same would‑be enemies to convert them to the reverence and worship of God.