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We have covered the earthly ministry and the heavenly ministry of Christ. Now we come to the kingdom ministry. In the earthly ministry Christ wrought the processed Triune God into His believers, making them a group of God’s chosen people joined to God in the organic union of His life. This ministry was concluded in John 20:22, when Christ in His resurrection came back to His disciples and breathed Himself as the life-giving Spirit into them. Afterward, He ascended to the heavens, and now in the heavens in His ascension He accomplishes His heavenly ministry to raise up the churches and to build up the Body of Christ.
For the accomplishment of God’s economy, there is still another part of His ministry. This is the kingdom part of Christ’s ministry. The kingdom is a great thing God promised to His people. But according to the Old Testament terms, the coming kingdom of Christ that He will bring to the earth for one thousand years, will be an age of restoration. All of God’s creation, due to Adam’s sin, became fallen, rotten, and corrupted. Such a fallen universe needs a restoration to bring it back to God’s original created situation (cf. Isa. 11:6-9). Although this is a part of Christ’s kingdom ministry, this is not what our focus should be.
The kingdom ministry of Christ is to deal with all His human opposers. This earth is full of the human opposers of Christ. Eventually, Antichrist will be the concluding issue of these human opposers. He and his armies, the nations, will fight directly with Christ. God’s Christ is the One appointed by God, but Antichrist is the opposing one raised up by Satan. Satan will raise up a false Christ, Antichrist, to oppose God’s anointed One, Christ.
The angelic powers do not deal with these human opposers. That is not according to God’s principle. According to God’s principle, Satan is an angel and belongs to the angelic opposing party, so God would not use any human to deal directly with Satan. It must be an angel. But Antichrist and his armies are all human opposers, so Christ must have a group of human beings to be His army (Rev. 17:14; 19:13-14). These human beings will be the overcomers.
Christ wrote epistles to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 to call out the overcomers. A number will answer that call. In Christ’s second coming, He will gather all His believers to the judgment seat, which He will set up in the air. Christ will then judge all the believers to discern who the overcomers and the defeated Christians are. Then He will award His overcomers with His kingdom, to enjoy the co-kingship with Him in which they will rule over the nations and participate in His joy. The kingdom will be a great joy to the Lord. He will have been despised by His human opposers for two thousand years, but eventually He will gain a group of human beings to stand with Him, and these human beings are the overcomers.
Christ will discern the overcomers and award them with His kingdom for them to enter into His co-kingship and joy. Then He will marry all the overcomers collectively as His bride, His counterpart, who will be exactly the same as He is to match Him. This bride matching Christ will be Christ’s army to fight with Christ, not against Satan but against Christ’s human opposers: Antichrist, the false prophet, and all the nations. At this time Satan will be bound, not by any human but by an angel. The angelic opposer of Christ needs an angel to bind him and put him into the abyss for one thousand years (20:1-3). This will clear up the opposers of Christ from this earth and give Him the way to set up His kingdom to rule over all the remaining nations for one thousand years.
The last five items of facts (from I. J. to I. N. in chapter 8) reveal Christ’s kingdom ministry, beginning from the coming back of Christ to Christ’s judgment at the great white throne over all the dead. These facts are full of revelations, but most people see only the facts. I hope that we would pray, “Lord, all the facts related to Your second coming bear revelations, and I need to see them. Show me these revelations.” In this chapter I am not presenting the facts but the revelations.
The first thing that Christ will do in His kingdom ministry is to judge His believers at His judgment seat (2 Cor. 5:10).
He will reward His overcoming believers with His kingdom that they may enter into the millennial kingdom to partake of Him as the tree of life (Rev. 2:7) and to share His joy and His kingship (Matt. 25:21, 23; Rev. 20:4, 6). In Revelation 2:7 Christ promised those who overcome that He will give them to eat of the tree of life. The enjoyment of Christ as the tree of life in the kingdom is a reward. But the enjoyment of Christ as the tree of life in the New Jerusalem in eternity will be a common enjoyment to all the believers.
Christ will discipline His defeated believers with the punishment in the millennial kingdom that they may be put away from His glory and enjoyable presence to a place of darkness for their discipline (Matt. 25:30) that they may mature in His life for them to participate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth after the kingdom age.
Who will you be? Will you be the overcoming saints or the defeated believers? I am doing my best to be an overcomer, but whether or not I will make it depends upon His discernment, His judgment. Paul said that although he was conscious of nothing against himself, he was not justified in this, because we have to wait until the Lord comes to judge (1 Cor. 4:4-5). That judgment will be at the judgment seat of Christ in the air. Thus, before us today there is a warning and a reward.
Today’s Christianity never touches such a point. They help you only to be saved and to do good and to try to be right with God and with man. They never open up the Word to show that there will be a time for Christ’s kingdom ministry. Only the overcoming ones will join the Lord in a positive participation in His kingdom ministry. Who will be an overcomer? No one can say definitely that he is or is not an overcomer. But day after day we should do our best to live a God-man’s life, which will make us the real overcomers of Christ. If we do not live a God-man’s life, we surely are defeated believers.
A God-man’s life is a life that is conformed to the death of Christ by the enjoyment of His power of resurrection (Phil. 3:10), and a life that lives Christ and magnifies Christ by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (1:19-21a). Such a life qualifies us to be the overcomers. Day by day I check with myself concerning whether I am conformed to the death of Christ in certain things. Sometimes I have to say, “Lord, forgive me; in this matter I didn’t bear the cross. In this matter I didn’t allow the cross of Christ to break my self-centeredness. Lord, I am too self-centered.” With us nearly everything is self-centered; nearly everything is “me.” Even in the church life, everything is “me.” In the work, everything is “me.” In the leadership, everything is “me.” “Me” is always first. This is not a life that is conformed to the death of Christ. If we do not live such a life, we cannot participate in His power of resurrection, nor do we know the bountiful supply of the Spirit of the suffering Jesus and the glorified Christ.
The above points from the book of Philippians are crucial. Paul says that whether he lived or died meant nothing to him as long as he could magnify Christ. Then he says that to magnify Christ needs us to live Christ, and to live Christ needs us to participate in the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Are we living such a life today, a life of a God-man, so that we can be qualified as His overcomers?
Christ will marry His overcoming believers as His bride (Rev. 19:7-9). He will recognize only His overcoming believers in the coming age. He will erase your name out of the book of life if you are a defeated believer, not for eternity but for one thousand years of discipline (see 3:5 and footnote 3, Recovery Version). To do this is not to reject your eternal security. You are eternally secured. But for a period of time, for one thousand years, your name will be erased from the book of life. As Christians, we are saved ones whose names are written in the book of life today and for eternity. But if we do not live an overcoming life today, our names will be erased from the book of life for one thousand years.
The Lord said, “Everyone who confesses in Me before men, the Son of Man will also confess in him before the angels of God; but he who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8-9). To be secured, saved eternally, is of God’s grace. But to be disciplined for one thousand years is according to God’s righteousness. Look at your living today. Could the righteous God justify you?
Today thousands of believers do not know anything concerning the thousand-year kingdom of Christ with the possibility of reward or discipline. But this light has been shining among us for about seventy years. This light was brought to us through Brother Watchman Nee. I learned of him and have also put out some books on the kingdom (see A Brief Definition of the Kingdom of the Heavens and The Kingdom).
D. M. Panton said that many promise you a ticket into the thousand-year kingdom. But when you go to the gate of the kingdom, the gatekeepers will tell you that your ticket means nothing and that you cannot enter. Even to enter into the New Jerusalem, you have to pass through the eyes of the angels through whom the law was ordained (Rev. 21:12; Gal. 3:19). You must be a person in Christ with His two layers of secretion, the secretion of His redeeming and life-releasing death and the secretion of His life-dispensing resurrection, to make you a real pearl. Then the angels who ordained the law will justify you and let you in.
In His kingdom ministry Christ will defeat Antichrist with his partner, the false prophet, and the nations who follow them in rebelling against God in the war at Armageddon (Rev. 19:11-16). His newly married bride, as His army, will fight together with Him (v. 14; 17:14). Christ and His bride-army will defeat Antichrist and his followers and cast Antichrist and the false prophet into the lake of fire directly (19:19-21). These two will be the first who will be thrown into the lake of fire, even before Satan. In the meantime, Satan will be bound for a thousand years and cast into the abyss (20:1-3). Then the millennial kingdom of Christ will begin (vv. 4, 6). In the millennial kingdom Christ will reign with all His overcomers as His co-kings, and all the kings will enjoy the same joy that Christ does. This is mentioned by the Lord Himself in the parable given in Matthew 25:14-30. This chapter needs a lot of study. Otherwise, we will not be able to receive the light and see the revelation.
The second thing that Christ will do in His kingdom ministry is to judge, on the throne of His glory, the nations (the living—Acts 10:42; 2 Tim. 4:1) who remain at that time: some as goats will be condemned to perish eternally, and some as sheep will be justified to enter into eternal life (Matt. 25:31-46). When Christ comes back, the first good people in His eyes will be His believers. Then He will judge them to discern the overcomers and the defeated ones. Later, He will judge the nations who are left after the war at Armageddon to discern who are the sheep, the good ones, and who are the goats, the bad ones. He will throw the goats into the lake of fire. Then Christ will send the good ones, the sheep, into eternal life, not the life itself but into the blessing of the eternal life, to be the nations who will remain around the New Jerusalem. The nations who remain around the New Jerusalem will be these sheep.
Christianity’s theology teaches differently from this. They teach that the sheep are saved ones and the goats are false ones. One day if those of us in the recovery are faithful to the Lord, the truths, the real theology, in the Lord’s recovery will defeat all the theology in today’s Christianity and expose it to the uttermost. As a little slave of the Lord burdened to speak for Him, I must tell people the truth. I must be honest and faithful to what my Lord has shown me. What we have seen depends upon the foregoing faithful interpreters of the Bible. They have passed on their seeing to us, and this has become our seeing. Thus, the recovery’s theology is the genuine theology of all the foregoing faithful interpreters.
At the end of the millennial kingdom, Satan will be released and will deceive the nations again to rebel against God; the nations will be devoured by fire from heaven, and Satan will be cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:7-10). The rebellious nature of fallen man will remain in man until the end of the millennial age. At the end of the kingdom, God will temporarily release Satan, who will seduce the nations again to fight against God. Then they will be devoured by fire from heaven, and Satan will be cast into the lake of fire.
Through all the above judgments Christ will clear up all the opposers of God from the earth; this consummates His kingdom ministry. Without such a kingdom ministry, how could the earth created by God be cleared up to be good for God’s kingdom? There is the need of such a kingdom ministry of Christ to clear the earth from all the opposing factors of man plus Satan.
After the millennium Christ will be at His great white throne to judge all the dead throughout the generations and cast them into the lake of fire (vv. 11-12, 15). Thus, Christ will clear up the entire universe, preparing the way for the new heaven and new earth to come.
The new heaven and new earth will come, in which the holy city, New Jerusalem, is manifested for God’s eternal enlargement and expression (21:1-2).
