Who will the Church Age saints rule over during the Millennial Kingdom?
[Note: This series of questions about Jesus Christ’s coming Millennial Kingdom were sent in to Lamb & Lion Ministries and answered by Dr. David Reagan, Nathan Jones, and Tim Moore on our television program Christ in Prophecy.]
Tim Moore: The Bible teaches that Jesus is going to return to this earth to reign from Jerusalem for a thousand years. This is called the Premillennial viewpoint.
Dr. Reagan: During the Millennial reign of Jesus, those of us who had been raptured and so will then be living in our resurrected, glorified bodies are going to be reigning over those who will remain in their natural bodies. So, the question begins to emerge as to just who in the world are these people we will be reigning over?
When the Rapture occurs all Church Age believers, both living and dead, are going to be given our glorified bodies. When Jesus later returns at the Second Coming, He will then resurrect the Old Testament Saints and the Tribulation martyrs, and they will, at last, receive their glorified bodies.
Tim Moore: Throughout the Tribulation period there will be people who are able to endure and who survive that horrifically horrible period of time. These survivors will then enter the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ in their mortal bodies. They will then have children, and their children will have children, and so the earth will be repopulated. And so, those living people who are still mortal will live on into the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ and they will be the ones the glorified saints will rule over.
Dr. Reagan: The survivors of the Tribulation will all be believers in Christ. There will be survivors who are not believers in Christ, but they will be condemned to death and to Hades before the Millennial Kingdom commences. But, the ones who survive who are believers, both Jew and Gentile, they will be allowed to live on into the Millennium in the flesh. Considering how wrathful Satan and the Antichrist will have been towards the Tribulation Saints, murdering as many as they could lay hold of, that is going to be a very small number of people indeed.
Tim Moore: Relative to the world today, yes, it will be a very small number, but they will repopulate the rebirthed world in very quick order.
Nathan Jones: We can read about the Sheep-Goat Judgment in Matthew 25. After the Second Coming which occurs at the very end of the seven-year Tribulation, the Lord gathers all of the Tribulation’s survivors together for judgment. The numbers are so few that they will all actually fit into the Valley of Jehoshaphat. When we are talking about survivors, we’ve got the 144,000 Jewish evangelists, there are those Jews who will be protected in the wilderness, and there will be some Gentiles spread across the earth who didn’t participate and die in the Battle of Armageddon. Still, that’s not many people at all!
Just think about what the Millennial Kingdom must be like. Jesus will quickly replenish the devastated earth, making it pristine and alive once more. The curse will be partially lifted. If you don’t have sickness and disease and the life spans run as long as a redwood tree, so like a thousand years, then what would the population be after a few hundred years? I once read one theologian who estimated that by the end of the thousand years there could be as high as 20 billion people living on this planet. With food bountiful, there would be no scarcity and want, and everybody will have plenty of food, so no starvation. Under these conditions, the world’s population will soon be prolific once more.
I just love the Daniel 7:18 passage: “But the Saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.” Once you read this passage, as I Christian you ought to shout, “Hallelujah!” because this is such a wonderful prophecy.
Again in verse 27 it says the same thing, “Then the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven,” kingdoms plural, meaning nations, “shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High, His Kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” So, we know then that during the Millennial Kingdom there will be Gentile nations. The people who survive the Tribulation will split out and form countries. The Bible references Egypt and Assyria as nations during the Millennial Kingdom. Israel of course, will become the prime nation of the world. Revelation talks about Russia during the Second Gog-Magog War at the end of the Millennial Kingdom. So, at least those four nations we know will exist again during that era.
Dr. Reagan: The Millennium will begin with people in the flesh and they all will be believers in Jesus Christ. They will begin to propagate. And, as Micah 4 reveals, the people will live as long as a tree! The indication in Scripture is that the lifespan of man will be returned to what it was before the Flood when man lived for almost a thousand years. And, when that happens, then certainly the world is going to have a tremendous population explosion and the earth will be repopulated back into the billions.
Nathan Jones: And, people won’t be limited to their 20s and 30s to having children either. They may even be having children up in their 100s and 200s. Can you imagine how many children each family will bear then? The numbers could be staggering!
In the fifth and final part of our series answering questions about the Millennial Kingdom, we’ll marvel at a plethora of amazing characteristics of life during the Millennium.
Resource
This Q&A series is also available in a video album which contains two DVD discs that feature seven television programs in which David Reagan, Tim Moore, and Nathan Jones respond to questions about the Bible and Bible prophecy. These programs are great for both individual and group study and provide an excellent starting point for discussion.
