The Kingdom of God The Final Instrumentality In The Great Scheme of Human Redemption, continued

But another and a different prospect appears when we turn to the Scriptures; when we contemplate the coming of the kingdom of God:--

"The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Hab. 2v 14).

When the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, it follows that the ignorance and barbarism of the present time will have vanished. But how is this result to be practically attained? The machinery of the kingdom of God is the answer. When the governments of the earth have been overthrown, and divine authority established with firm hand in every part of the globe, it will be an easy matter to enlighten and emancipate the "people, nations, and languages" that will render allegiance to the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. This is done by a process which will afford pleasure and honour to the rulers of the age, while conferring benefit on the subject people. The centre of activity is Jerusalem, as in the case of the gospel in the first century. "At that time," says Jeremiah, chapter 3v 17, "they shall call Jerusalem THE THRONE OF THE LORD, and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart." Here is a turning from evil on the part of the nations as the result of their subjection to Jerusalem, when occupied as the throne of the Lord. What is the connection between the two things? How does the one result from the other? The answer is, because from Jerusalem emanates a teaching and a law which, divinely administered, works an intellectual, moral, and social reformation. This is evident from the following testimony :--

"And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of HIS WAYS, and we will walk in HIS PATHS for OUT OF ZION SHALL GO FORTH THE LAW, AND THE WORD OF THE LORD FROM JERUSALEM. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isa. 2v 3, 4).

Jerusalem, once more the centre from which divine illumination will irradiate, will be so this second time, on a larger and grander scale, and with more glorious results:--

"And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. AND HE WILL DESTROY IN THIS MOUNTAIN THE FACE OF THE COVERING CAST OVER ALL PEOPLE, AND THE VAIL THAT IS SPREAD OVER ALL NATIONS. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall He take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God: we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord, we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation" (Isa. 25v 6-9).

The feast is to be provided in Mount Zion; this is the reason why the nations gather there to partake of it. Their gathering, however, will not be simultaneous. "God is not the author of confusion," says Paul: the aggregation of the world's populations in such a comparatively small neighbourhood would certainly involve confusion. The prophetic testimony shows that there will be a pilgrimage from all parts of the earth from one year's end to the other in which all nations will take their turn. It will be periodical, and take place in every case once a year, as is evident, from Zech. 14v 16, 17:--

"And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up FROM YEAR TO YEAR to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that who will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, even upon them shall be no rain."

This annual pilgrimage will be fraught with many blessings. To individuals it will be annual relief from the routine of common life (which routine, at the same time, will be vastly less laborious, both as to the duration and manner of occupation, than the present modes of life), and an annual refreshing physically by travel, and spiritually by contemplation of the objects of the journey, and by the actual instruction received at "the city of the great king." Nationally, it will be a yearly riveting of the bonds of happy and contented allegiance that will bind all people to the throne of David, occupied by his illustrious son--Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, and King of the Jews. This glorious epoch in the world's history finds the following fore-shadowing from Psalm 102v 13-22:--

"Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion; for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof. So the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glow. When the Lord shall build up Zion, HE shall appear IN HIS GLORY. He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord. For He hath looked down from the height of His sanctuary: from heaven did the Lord behold the earth: to hear the groaning of the prisoner: to loose those that are appointed to death; to declare the name of the Lord in Zion, and His praise in Jerusalem, when the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the Lord."

Thus will the earth become filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and thus will be realised the petition, "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." Then for the first time will be fulfilled the prophetic song of the angels, chanted at the birth of him who is to be its accomplisher, "GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST, AND ON EARTH PEACE, GOODWILL TOWARD MEN."

"And the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Death will continue during the thousand years preliminary phase of the kingdom--not among the rulers, Jesus and the saints, who are immortal, but among the subject nations who continue as they are now, the death-stricken descendants of the first Adam. "The child SHALL DIE an hundred years old" (Isa. 65v 20). Death may happen at a hundred years, but, even then, a man will be considered a child. As for an "old man," the term will never be applied to any one that has not run his centuries, as of old. By reason of the certainty of life, and the stability of the new order of things in the hands of Christ and his brethren, the houses they (Israel) shall build, they shall inhabit; the vineyards they shall plant, they shall eat the fruit of (Isa. 65v 20, 22). It will not happen as it frequently has happened in past times, that the work of their hands has been enjoyed by others, even as Moses foretold to them, saying, "Thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein; thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof" (Deut. 28v 30). As the days of a tree (which flourishes for centuries) shall be the days of Jehovah's people; they shall wear out the works of their hands.

But more blessed still shall be their rulers and the rulers of the nations; for they shall not die any more (Luke 20v 36), and they shall inherit the land for ever. But, ultimately, death will be abolished in all the earth. Its subjugation, however, comes last in order: all other enemies are got out of the way first; and then the greatest and most formidable is removed for ever. On what principle? Seeing that all the saved pertaining to this and past dispensations will be admitted to eternal life at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and associated with him in the government of the world, on what principle are the mortal subjects of Messiah's reign to be dealt with, so as to admit of their participation in the glorious gift of immortality? We are admitted to the answer in Rev. 20. We shall quote entire that part of the chapter which relates to the point in hand, verses 7-15:--

"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city; and fire came down from. God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."