What is the Lord’s millennial kingdom going to be like?
We’ve looked at the Tribulation in chronological order, including Armageddon and the Lord’s Second Coming. We looked at the great day of the resurrection, Christ judging Israel and the Gentile nations.
Then we began deep dives into the Lord’s millennial kingdom starting with a big visualization of what it will look like. We also looked at animal life in the kingdom.
Today, we’re going to look at the humans. We have two types of humans in the kingdom. We have resurrected kingdom saints, all the believers from time past in the OT, the Gospels, all the Jewish believers who died during the Tribulation, they’re all resurrected and living in their glorified bodies freed from the presence of sin and filled with the Holy Spirit. They’ve all been given rewards and positions of prominence in the kingdom.
There is also another group. The human mortals, if you want to call them that. These are the Gentile believers who survived the Tribulation. The Lord called them the sheep nations that He judges at His Second Coming. All those Gentiles who got saved and survived the Tribulation are allowed into the kingdom, just as they are. in their mortal, sin-corrupted bodies. And they will have children. Their children will have children, and these normal, shall we say, mortal humans will make up the Gentile nations in the kingdom that we read so much about in prophecy.
They may be considered Gentile nations, but you remember what the Lord said about the sheep nations. The Lord said that there are other sheep who are not of this fold. They’ll be brought into the fold, and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd (John 10:16). In other words, all those Gentile believers who survived the Tribulation and are allowed into the kingdom at the judgment of the nations, they are brought into the fold. At the beginning of the kingdom, they may be recognized as Jew or Gentile, but they are all still considered to be part of God’s one fold, as any proselyte would be considered part of the fold of Israel while at the same time still viewed as a Gentile.
But those dynamics will change over the years. Generations will grow up in the kingdom. Kids won’t appreciate how good they have it. Plus, because of the curse of sin in their flesh, many will want to rebel, to live in the flesh, while refusing to accept the reality of life in the kingdom. They’ll lie to themselves about everything they’re seeing and experiencing in the kingdom, especially the truth of who Christ is. They aren’t even influenced by Satan and the demonic. These are just normal people choosing to yield to sin in the flesh despite the literal presence of God on the Earth.
One of the takeaways for me about studying the kingdom is the power of sin in the flesh. These people are living in the presence of God Himself, and some will refuse to accept what they are seeing, hearing, experiencing, without even Satan’s influence, and they would rather choose to reject God and live in the flesh. Amazing.
These kids growing up in the kingdom will know nothing of what life used to be like on the Earth when WE were here. They’ll have to be taught that. Despite how good they have it, they are still going to sin. They are going to rebel and reject Christ so much so that by the time Satan is loosed, there will be so many people organized against the Lord to fight Him, they will be as the sand in the sea, which goes to show how much the flesh hates perfect righteousness.
Whole nations will collectively misbehave. You know the Lord sets up Jews over those Gentile nations (Rev. 2:26-29) and some of them won’t like that. Some of them will rebel. And the Lord will rebuke that entire nation. In fact, the Lord would say in Isa 60:12 For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. If you don’t like how the Creator of the Universe setup His Earth and His kingdom, if you don’t like how He’s ruling over your nation, He’ll just wipe your nation off the face of the Earth.
And you don’t want to die in unbelief. You are already in Heaven on the Earth. It’s not like there’s some better life waiting for you somewhere else. This is it. The Creator of the Universe is here. He’s not going to tolerate your rebellion. You can either serve your Creator or die. It’s up to you. It’s amazing when you really think about it.
But at the beginning of the kingdom, it’s all different. All these believing Gentiles who make up the sheep nations, they’re in love with the Lord. They’re thrilled beyond words to be given entrance into the kingdom. And the first thing these people will discover when they enter the Lord’s kingdom is that there is healing and long life that the world hasn’t seen since Adam.
Isa 35:1 The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. Isa 35:2 It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God. Isa 35:3 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. 35:4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you. Isa 35:5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Isa 35:6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. Isa 35:7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. Isa 35:8 And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. Isa 35:9 No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: Isa 35:10 And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Isaiah is all about the Assyrian invasion and the first half is made up of six woes upon Judah and Israel for its endless corruption and idolatry, which has led to this judgment of God upon them. Arno Gaebelein would point out that alongside all those six woes, Isaiah gives the people of Israel some comfort with promises of future blessing. A king is to reign in righteousness. There will be peace on Earth. Israel’s land will be desolate until the Spirit’s poured out from on high. The wilderness shall be a fruitful field (32:13-20). The people will be restored and regathered and brought into the Promised Land to dwell there forever. And they’ll all come singing praise loudly. “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
Another way of looking at Isaiah is that the narrative starts small and just keeps getting bigger and bigger in its scope. First, he talks about Judah in the first six chapters. Then he talks about the ten tribes of Israel in the next six chapters. Then, he talks about all the major kingdoms in his day. Then the whole world is in view. Then in chapter 34, he’s talking about the great tribulation, and then, here in chapter 35, we’re given the climax to that whole narrative, a big comforting portrait of life in the millennium.
The Lord structured the book this way to give a real impact to this payoff in chapter 35, to give a real unforgettable portrait in our minds about the future kingdom. So when you read chapter 35 in its context, you’ll remember what’s said. And what do we learn here? The sin-curse will be lifted off of nature. The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It will be as if nature itself is singing with joy at the return of the Lord to the Earth. So comfort the weak. Be strong and fear not because God will come. God will save you. God will take vengeance upon all His enemies, and after judgment and ruin there will be restoration and glory, and here in chapter 35, we’re being given a glimpse into their future glory.
Long Life to Humans
And one of the points he makes here is that physical healing and long life will be restored to mortal humans. He says, Isa 35:5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Isa 35:6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing... It’s not that these passages are allegorical or spiritual in some way. It’s not that the people were spiritually blind but now they see. If they were spiritually blind, they would’ve never been saved and allowed into the kingdom. God means what He says here. The blind will see. The deaf shall hear. The mute shall sing, and the lame man shall leap as an hart (as a deer), which are expressions that speak to the exhilarating joy they’ll be experiencing when they enter the kingdom.
A lot of these people who survived the Tribulation, I’m sure, are not going to be in the best of shape. They’re gonna be hurting. They’ve become blind, deaf, paralyzed. They hurt all over. As soon as the Lord gives them entrance, miraculous healing for all of them. There is such exhilarating joy, the mute will sing. The once paralyzed man is now leaping like a deer, like a wild stag. The Lord would say in Jer 30:17 For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD; because they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after. Every hurt believer will be healed.
The reality for most saints is that they’ll be enjoying the kingdom in their glorified resurrected bodies. They won’t ever be hurt. They won’t ever need healing. They won’t have to worry about anything. I suspect there will be some believing Jews who will survive and be allowed into the kingdom just as they are in their mortal bodies, but primarily, healing and long life will have to do with the Gentile mortal humans who survived and their children. We all already knew that healing would be an integral part of the kingdom because we had already seen many be healed in the Gospels when the kingdom was at hand.
And now we’ve now come full circle in Isa. 35. We’re talking about life in the kingdom by looking at prophecy in the past, which was performed by Christ when He was here on the Earth. Christ performed the very miracles Isaiah predicted. Those miracles foreshadowed life in the kingdom. Those miracles also demonstrated that Christ was, indeed, the Messiah, and those miracles proved beyond any doubt that the kingdom truly was at hand.
If the kingdom was at hand, there would have to be miraculous healings by the Messiah because anyone who knew the book of Isaiah knew that a core feature of the kingdom is going to be healings… Ironically, when Isaiah wrote about healings in chapter 35, he wasn’t trying to teach a spiritual lesson with these types of healings that would take place.
However, when Christ performed those healings, He was also teaching spiritual lessons. When He cast out devils, He was demonstrating their spiritual condition in bondage to Satan and that He is the One who would ultimately deliver them from Satan’s grip. When He healed the lame and the blind, He was demonstrating Israel’s spiritual impotence and blindness, and how the Lord, as their Messiah, would help them to stand on their feet in full confidence of their relationship with Him, ready to serve. For the blind, He didn’t merely heal their physical infirmity. He was also showing them that, as their Messiah, He would open their eyes to the truth. When the Lord turned the water to wine or did the miracle with all the fish for the disciples in John 21, both miracles depicted Israel’s spiritual poverty and the ability of Christ to fill Israel’s joy up to the brim and to supply sustenance far in excess of their needs.
Now we’ve reached that point in our studies where the kingdom is now established, where all that had been foretold, all that had been foreshadowed during Christ’s earthly ministry, has now to come to pass. And this miraculous healing of all their physical infirmities, isn’t a one-time event when the kingdom begins.
Miraculous healing is a permanent feature of the kingdom.
There will be miraculous healing throughout the entire thousand years. These mortal humans in their sin-corrupted flesh, they will do dumb stuff. They will get hurt. They will be healed miraculously. How? We know the Lord can do healings, but I suspect that He’ll empower all His resurrected saints to perform healings. Plus, we’re told, as we covered last week, that the leaves of the Tree of Life would be used for the healing of the nations. Someone gets hurt. They go home. They eat a Tree of Life salad. They’re right as rain.
There will also be times when someone will do harm to someone else. That person who was harmed will be healed. That person who committed the crime will receive righteous exacting judgment for the wrong that was done.
You also have the fact that because people in their sin-corrupted flesh are having children, some of those babies will be born with infirmities. They will be healed.
I can’t help but wonder if that will be a job for some of the Jews in the kingdom. A Jew gets resurrected. When he’s judged along with the rest of Israel, he doesn’t get a high-ranking position in the kingdom. His job is to just go with someone else from city to city and heal people. He doesn’t have to worry about where he goes. He doesn’t worry about crime. No harm could ever be done to him. He won’t be tempted by a corrupted mortal. His job is to just be on the front lines with all these mortal Gentiles and he glorifies God by healing them.
The lives of these people will be deeply affected by those moments of healing just as people were deeply affected in the Gospels. That would be so much fun! Say, for example, you’re a mother who just gave birth. You discover the child is deformed. You’re weeping. You cry for help. And a couple of Jewish kingdom priests in their glorified bodies show up. They’re glowing. You know just by looking at them that God is with them. They’re joyous. That joy is infectious. Being in their presence gives you a sense of peace. Hope. Faith. You can see on their faces great concern and love for you and your child, and you know that the Christ they represent must also feel the same way about you. Just being in their presence makes you feel this deep sense of the power of the One they represent, the power of encountering someone in a pure state of righteous holiness. You can’t help but feel humbled. In awe. They lay hands on the child. There is prayer to the Father. And that child is instantly healed. There is joy, weeping. They all pray together praising God for what had happened. They don’t want the priests to leave. “Stay. Talk with us. Have you been to Zion? What’s it like?” The priests will tell them things and teach them the ways of righteousness of the Lord and those people will never forget those words for as long as they live, in almost a thousand years.
The miracles we read in the Gospels foreshadow the millions of impactful, God-glorifying miracles we’ll be seeing commonly in the kingdom.
“There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed” (Isa. 65:20).
What exactly does this mean? Let’s try to tackle this phrase by phrase.
First, Isaiah says, “There shall be no more thence an infant of days…” What does he mean by that? Life in the OT was often described as a lengthening or shortening of days. Moses told Israel that thou shalt keep therefore His statutes… that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the Earth (Deut. 4:40). Or, inversely, you better not disobey God lest your days be shortened. Under the law, under the if/then principle, a shortening of life was a curse, and a lengthening of life was a blessing.
Thus, when Isaiah writes, “There shall be no more thence an infant of days” he’s not saying that there won’t be infants in the kingdom. He’s saying that there will not be an infant who shall not fill up his days, or who will be short-lived. No infant will ever die in the kingdom.
Everyone in the kingdom is blessed with supreme quality of life. All babies will live through all the days of their infancy even though they have the sin curse. Thus, babies in their infancy will never have illnesses leading to premature deaths. They will all be blessed with quality life, a youthful vigor, even though they still have sin in the flesh.
The next phrase is “nor an old man that hath not filled his days.” The fact that these mortal humans in the kingdom are aging would indicate that the law of sin and death is still operating in their bodies. The law of sin and death is a spiritual law about the consequence of sin, the corruption of sin that brings about the death of the body, which is followed by the second death, the ultimate consequence of sin, unless that person gets saved before they die.
In the kingdom, these mortal humans will age because of sin, just like us, and they’ll ultimately die because of sin, just like us. But the point of this passage is that, in the kingdom, the quality of life for old people will be vastly superior. He says, “nor an old man that hath not filled his days,” which is similar to the expression no more thence an infant of days. In other words, old people will not be experiencing the pains of old age like we experience now, nor the steady physical decline of their bodies. Why? Miraculous healing will be a common feature in the kingdom.
But there will come a point when their lives will end because of sin. The point is, a person may be 800 years old but they won’t be feeling it.
The next phrase is, “for the child shall die an hundred years old.” There are a number of points to be made about this.
First, the most common point people make is that someone who is one hundred years old is still considered a child. If you’re still a child at one hundred years, then how old is an old person in the kingdom? I’d suggest as old as Adam. 800-900 years old.
Second, the phrase says, “for the child shall die an hundred years old.” The fact that he says shall die gives me pause. I think most people look at this expression and they think Isaiah is prophesying of a moment in the kingdom when a child will die at 100 years old and he’s using that to illustrate the fact that 100-year-old people are still considered children. And therefore, there is the possibility of an early death in the kingdom. It is possible for a child to die in the kingdom, but someone who dies at a hundred is still considered a child.
However, notice the contrast here between “There shall be no more thence an infant of days” vs. “the child shall die an hundred years old.” They’re both statements of fact. “There shall be no more” and “the child shall die.” They’re both definitive kingdom laws. This will not happen in the kingdom, and this will happen in the kingdom. No death for infants and a certain death for the child at a hundred years old.
How do you explain that?
I’d suggest the intent is that there will be no death for infants, just as the verse says, and every child will be reckoned dead when that person reaches 100 years old. That person is no longer considered a child once he/she has crossed 100. That person is then considered by all a full-grown adult in the kingdom.
Turning 100 is the time for a bar mitzvah in the kingdom.
You are a child until you reach 100 years old. Then, like the old man for us, the child for them must be reckoned dead and gone. That’s what I think that expression means.
It has also been suggested, and it makes sense to me, that this could mean that in the kingdom, every person is guaranteed at least 100 years to live on this Earth. That’s possible. But the bigger point I think Isaiah is making here is that the age of accountability will be 100 years old in the kingdom, which helps to also explain the last expression in the verse. “…but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.”
You have two things happening to people who turn one hundred years old in this verse. The child dies, and the sinner is accursed. Put together, I think these two expressions are telling us that the age of accountability in the kingdom is 100 years old. It’s when you turn 100 that the child is reckoned dead. It’s when you turn 100 that you then become accountable to the Lord reigning in Zion. If you are a rebellious sinner at 100, in that you don’t appreciate anything about the kingdom, you want to rebel, you want to live in the flesh, do your own thing, and you refuse to accept that Christ over there in Jerusalem is the Son of God, then you shall be considered a sinner who will then become accursed by God. Accursed does not mean killed but considered wicked and therefore separated from the flock, cast out, exiled, banished.
How does that work? What does that look like? We’ll find out.
But the fascinating thing to me about this verse is that all these expressions are connected to each other. The “no more infant of days” is connected to the “old man that hath not filled his days” in that neither the baby nor the old person will experience a rapid physical decline in their bodies that will lead to death. The infant will fill up his days. He’ll live through his days without sickness. And the old person will live out his days without the pains of old age.
You also have the connection between “no more infant of days” to the “the child shall die an hundred years old” which is also connected to “the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.” The infant will not die. The child will die at 100, because that is when a person becomes an adult in the kingdom and accountable to God, which is also why “the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.” All of this likely means you’re guaranteed at least 100 years of life in the kingdom, you had better get your act together in those 100 years.
Isa. 29 is all about the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians and yet, Isaiah gives the readers some comfort about the future. One of the first expressions we’re going to read is “in that day,” which was often used by Isaiah in almost every chapter. In that day was about the Day of the Lord and was usually an indication that he was about to bring comfort to the readers about some future blessing, whether it’s comfort in the Lord’s vengeance during the great Tribulation or some future blessing they’ll be experiencing in the kingdom.
Look at Isa 29:18 And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness. Isa 29:19 The meek also shall increase their joy in the LORD, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
I love these passages for a number of reasons. In that day, the Day of the Lord includes the Lord’s judgment of the nations, and when He judges the Gentile believers in that day, the deaf hear the words of the book.
What book is he talking about? The Pentateuch, the law. Whereas in chapter 35, I think we were given some pretty straightforward passages about healing, here, we have some spiritual allusions. The Gentiles who were once deaf to the law, will now be able to hear the words of the book, because in the kingdom, the Lord has brought those believing Gentiles into the one fold. And the Mosaic law does not go away in the kingdom. The law will still be used to teach these new generations of mortal Gentiles growing up in the kingdom that they’re sinners in need of redemption. The glorified resurrected saints will obey the law perfectly. The mortal humans will fail miserably.
They can’t simply acknowledge that they’re living under the authority of Christ in Zion. They have to repent and accept Him for who He truly is as the Son of God. They need to worship Him. Because this kingdom isn’t going to last forever. Some bad stuff is going down after a thousand years. There will be the Great White Throne judgment. There will be a new Heaven and a new Earth. You need to accept Christ if you want to have an eternal life with God after the millennial reign. Thus, in a spiritual sense, the mortal Gentiles who were spiritually deaf to His law, God has now opened their ears to hear about the rightness of God’s ways exemplified in the law, their hopelessness in achieving righteousness on their own under the law, and their need for redemption through faith in Christ, and now those once deaf Gentiles around the globe will hear God’s will.
Then Isaiah tells us that the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness. When these believers were toward the end of the Tribulation enduring by faith the thick blackness that had covered the Earth, now the Lord has removed the darkness, and those who once could not see are now by God brought out of obscurity and out of darkness to witness the very revelation of His Son.
I loved Isa 29:19 The meek also shall increase their joy in the LORD, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. I love this statement about the meek. Meekness isn’t weakness. It’s strength under control. There is already joy in living a life of meekness. Knowing the truth, having that truth at your disposal, living your life in light of the truth, that is power, power that can be used in the right way to help others embrace the gospel and be transformed. There is joy living that life of meekness. And here, Isaiah says the meek also shall increase their joy in the LORD. That joy the meek are already experiencing in life will be increased beyond all comprehension in the kingdom. Why? Because in His presence is the fulness of joy (Psa. 16:11). No one today can comprehend the depths of joy you will feel being in His presence.
Then Isaiah says that the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. Those who had nothing will rejoice, because being in His presence they now have everything they could ever possibly need.
SUPPLY OF GRACE 