Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: These days a lot of attention is being generated on the subject of end times and what God has in store for the future. And so on today's edition of Ask Pastor Mike, we're diving into a scriptural discussion about the Millennial Kingdom here on Focal Point.

Dave Drew: And welcome to Focal Point. I'm your host, Dave Drew. And today, Pastor Mike Fabarez helps us get a clear understanding of what scripture really says about the Millennial Kingdom and God's plan for the future. Whether you've been carrying your own questions about this topic or have barely even heard about it, today's talk is sure to be eye-opening. So let's join executive director Jay Wirten and Mike Fabarez as we step inside the pastor's study for today's edition of Ask Pastor Mike. Jay?

Jay Wirten: Thank you, Dave. I am here with Pastor Mike, and Pastor Mike, we've had a lot of questions that have come in about the Millennial Kingdom over the past couple of months. So I've compiled those all together, and I want to ask you some of the questions that our listeners have been asking. But I thought it might be a good time to start with: what is the Millennial Kingdom? Where will it be? What's its purpose? And maybe we can start there.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Sure, and that's a great question. Millennium is a word that means a thousand, and that's just what it means. And it's repeated that there will be a thousand-year period—the word is enlisted there six times, a thousand years, in Revelation chapter 20. And that particular description of it is a good description.

I mean, let me just look at it here. Satan is going to be bound for a thousand years. He's going to be thrown into a pit. It's going to be shut, it's going to be sealed. He's not going to deceive the nations anymore until the thousand years is ended. So it goes on to talk about more detail, but right there, you know this is a good thing. This is a good time, it's a good period, and it lasts for a thousand years.

And a lot of people have tried to say, well, maybe this is just symbolic or some analogy, but it seems as though with the repeated combination of the words "thousand years," right? Those two words, that we're talking about some period of a thousand years in the future. And it fits so well with so many other things in scripture. But it's a time of peace, and it's a time of no response negatively from the enemy.

The demon, the tempter, the dragon—he's thrown out, he's put away, he's sealed up. He doesn't deceive the nations. So this is an unprecedented reality we haven't had. I mean, Genesis 3, we picture human beings in the garden and immediately they're confronted with the tempter. Well, we're going to see life without the tempter. We're going to see the world without the tempter, and Satan is going to be seized for a thousand years.

Jay Wirten: Where is this Millennial Kingdom going to be?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: On Earth. That's the description there in Revelation 20. We've got a time period that is going to start to piece together how this all fits in my theology. But it is a time period on the earth before the restoration of a new heaven and a new earth. What we have is a restoration of the world and the nations and the political system as we know it, but this is before the eternal state.

And that's really where this all fits in the book of Revelation. Even if we just had that, we can lay out that between chapters 6 and 19, we have something called the tribulation, the great tribulation, as Jesus put it in his preaching—a tribulation that the world has never seen and nor will it ever see again. It's the most horrible time of all.

And then in chapter 20, we have this time of peace. We have this time called the thousand-year period. And then in chapters 21 and 22, we have the eternal state. So this is where it fits. It's still on earth, but it's the last period on earth before God builds a new earth, as 2 Peter 3 says—a new heaven, a new earth. Everything's going to be destroyed and completely redone, and we'll have an eternal state set up.

And that's what the Bible talks about a lot—the eternal state, eternity. Well, eternity doesn't start until chapter 21, but stuck between the tribulation and the eternal state is one chapter that describes in the first half this thousand-year period where you have no Satan. And that's a good thing.

Jay Wirten: Won't the earth be in a shambles after the tribulation period? Like living in a war zone? Will there be any kind of restoration there?

Yeah, well, that's the point: restoration. I mean, even when the preaching of the apostles in Acts 3, for instance, talked about the fact that there has to be a restoring of all things that the prophets spoke about. And all of those things that were spoken about by the prophets—and that's the word that's used, translated into English there in Acts 3:21—the restoring of all things.

Of course, there's a cleanup operation that takes place because, just like when the prophets were saying this, in the foreground was the immediate cleanup operation after Babylon had come in and destroyed Judah. The house of David was in shambles. But God was going to bring them back through Ezra and Zerubbabel and Nehemiah in that post-exilic period.

And yeah, it was a cleanup operation. It was a restoration. It was a fixing of a house in shambles, but it was turned around, I mean, in record time. Even in Nehemiah's day, we built the walls in 52 days, we see that. The kind of rebuilding that's going to take place, yes, it will be in a shambles initially.

But the good news is, the one who's causing the biggest mess—the dragon, the ancient serpent, the devil, Satan, that's what he's called all there in Revelation 21—will be tied up, sealed up, chained up. He will not have a part in this, and Christ will be ruling and reigning. And now we're going to clean the place up. Just after any hurricane, a typhoon, a tornado, whatever—yeah, it can be bad, but it doesn't take long to clean this up.

And it's going to be cleaned up without any Sanballat and Tobiah, if you know that reference, because when they were trying to clean up Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, they had a lot of enemies. They had a lot of naysayers. We won't have any of that there in the beginning of this thousand-year period.

Jay Wirten: So what is the purpose of the Millennial Kingdom?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I think the purpose of the Millennial Kingdom, from my understanding of scripture, is the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel. And I'd be less apt to believe that all the things that God said about Israel being in charge of everything, being in charge of all the other nations, and all the statements we see throughout the prophets—I could start to be like some of my good friends that have a different view on this and say, well, that's all just symbolic and it really is all fulfilled in the church.

If it weren't for a handful of passages, and some of them right there in the book of Romans, where it speaks about the fact that God is going to restore Israel when the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled. When he does his work in this world, even as Jesus said in Luke 19 and Luke 21, he's going to have a day when after this work of advancing the citizenry of the kingdom with an evangelistic effort toward the Gentiles, God is going to bring Israel—national Israel, the descendants of Abraham—back into what he analogizes in Romans 11 as an olive tree.

And we're going to have Israel now back in its place, and as it says there in Romans chapter 11, he quotes the prophet Isaiah and says, "The deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish all ungodliness from Jacob. This will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins." And there is going to be a banishment of sins. If you just even look at that phrase in that particular quotation from Isaiah, all the prophets really have a theme where there is absolutely a holy reign of the Messiah on the throne in Jerusalem, and that Jerusalem is the head of all the other nations.

And God fulfills his promises, and it's said in such clear ways about distinctive Israel—genetic Israel, biological Israel—being an entity that God is not done with. Their enemies, as he goes on to say in that passage, because of the gospel, they reject Christ. They're spiritual, religious, theological enemies. But as regards God's promise, his election—they're beloved for the sake of the forefathers. And the gifts and the calling of God and the prophecies you could add to that, and everything God promised, they're irrevocable.

God is going to do what he said he's going to do, and I believe he's going to do it in a very literal way in fulfilling his promises of the nation of Israel in this world where people are still subject to death, where things are still happening in the old order of things. God fulfills his promises to that nation. Not everyone will agree with that, I understand that, but in my study of this and knowing that God has promised that Israel will not depart from him as being a nation—the descendants of the children of Jacob, of Israel—they're not going to go away.

If they do, the moon would be gone and the sun would be gone, and he just says this is not going to happen. They're always going to be a nation before him, and that he is going to have them in a special place in this current era before the new heavens and the new earth ruling and reigning. And so when I read Revelation 20, there's a period for it. It's a thousand-year period. And he's going to do it.

And we see so many great promises in the Old Testament that haven't been literally fulfilled, but I believe that's the place when it will happen because ungodliness is going to be banished from the earth. And we're going to have a time where Satan is chained and sealed and put away, shut up as it says—he'll be shut up in this place—and we'll have good and righteousness reigning for a thousand years.

Jay Wirten: You mentioned it briefly, but could you just give a quick rundown of how you see the end times unfolding in your understanding of the Bible?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Yeah, well, my view on the end times is that right now we are in a period where, though the Jewish apostles asked Jesus, "Is now the time you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" That was what the apostles asked him there in Acts chapter 1. He said, "No, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons." He didn't say I'm not going to do it. He said, "All that expectation that you have about reading those prophecies literally, it's not now." Not for you to know the times or seasons, but it's time for you to go and make disciples of all the nations. Be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, ends of the earth.

So that is what Jesus referred to as the times of the Gentiles. That's what Romans 11 refers to as the times of the Gentiles. We're in that time now. God is doing a new thing—a mystery, Paul called it—where he's building this thing called the church. It's made up of Jew and Gentile. We're all in this thing now, evangelistically reaching people for Christ. And when that is done, when the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, then God is going to prepare Israel by taking Jacob, Israel, through a time of trouble.

And that's what the prophets call it in the Old Testament: the time of Jacob's trouble. A time of great tribulation, Jesus said, as Daniel—as I understand Daniel 9—that 70th week of Daniel where God is going now prepare his people. And they're going to be distinctive from all the 12 tribes of Israel. Revelation chapter 7, the idea of these 144,000 individual Jewish descendants from all the 12 tribes of Israel—they're there, they're chosen, and they're utilized as missionaries.

And we call them saints in the book of Revelation—the people that are rightly aligned to the Messiah and they're sharing the message everywhere all around the world in this tribulation period. When the tribulation period comes to an end in Revelation 19, Christ comes back to save his embattled people, Israel, and anyone else who associated with Israel during that time as they put their trust in the Jewish Messiah. That's called the Battle of Armageddon. He comes back and he destroys the nations that are encircling Israel.

And so we've got time of the Gentiles, church age, we've got this great tribulation period, we've got a great battle that takes place at the end of that period of time, and then we have the ushering in of the Millennial Kingdom in Revelation 20. What I may have missed that some of you were looking for is the taking up of the church. We all have to believe in the rapture of the church because it's in the Bible. The question is where does that fit?

And I think it fits before the 70th week of Daniel. I think it fits before the great tribulation period. Not because I'm trying to get out of the trouble of tribulation—we've got plenty of tribulation in the world, but it comes from the world. In the book of Revelation, the tribulation comes from God. The word tribulation flips; it means to be pressed upon. And it's painful, a painful word, to be pressed upon.

And the world presses upon the church age now, the time of the Gentiles now—we are being pressed upon and persecuted and there's tribulation because of the world's opposition to us because of Christ. In the great tribulation, God is pouring out his thlipsis, his pressure, his pressing upon the world and bringing wrath and judgment on the world, I believe, while he is getting—in the time of Jacob's trouble—Jacob, Israel, ready for the Messiah.

And they embrace the Messiah in mass. That last generation receives and embraces Christ as they ought to and as they should have throughout the whole church age, but largely rejecting Christ. And then Battle of Armageddon, the establishment of the Millennial Kingdom, and then we get into all that we see in Revelation 21 and 22, and that is the eternal state.

New heaven, new earth—this new earth's going to come out of heaven, the city of the New Jerusalem like a bride adorned for her husband, and we'll set up an eternal kingdom that is forever a place where there's no more dying, which we see in the Millennial Kingdom. Satan is going to be released at the end of the Millennial Kingdom. Of course, he's very active in the tribulation period. And there's death during the Millennial Kingdom as well.

All those things are gone in the last two chapters of the Bible when we have an eternal state where there's no death, there's no crying, no disease, no mourning, no rebellion. Satan is put away not just for a thousand years but forever.

Just a clarifying question: does the seven-year tribulation run concurrent with the Millennial Kingdom, or is it consecutive?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I think the seven-year period is preceding the Millennial Kingdom. And I'm stuck with that because they're described in very different ways, and one is happening after the next. It's sequential, it's not concurrent.

Jay Wirten: So who is going to be in the Millennial Kingdom?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Well, it talks about the people that have died during the tribulation period coming to life, and they've got eternal bodies now and they're ruling and reigning with Christ in the Millennial Kingdom. I would just read it. Let me look it up here real quick. "I saw the thrones and those seated on them"—this is Revelation 20 verse 4—"and those to whom were given authority to judge or to rule. Also, I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image, had not received the mark on their forehead or their hands; they came to life and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years."

So the reigning class reigning with Christ for a thousand years is going to include the people that were executed, died, were martyred in the tribulation period. And it also will include those in the church age, as Jesus clearly said, "You follow me in this age"—during that time of him building the church—"you're going to rule and reign with Christ." It's repeated in the first three chapters of the book of Revelation, particularly chapters 2 and 3. You're going to rule and reign. You're going to sit on Christ's throne and you're going to reign.

Matthew 19, the 12 apostles are promised they're going to be sitting on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. Well, they're Christians in the church age, right? They're people that are going to be leading the first generation of the church, but they're going to be ruling and reigning in glorified resurrected bodies in the Millennial Kingdom. And us, right? Even us in 1 Corinthians 6 talks about you ought to be able to solve all the conflicts within your church because you're going to be judging angels.

There's going to be a time when we are all assuming positions of leadership. Even Jesus's parables about taking charge of five cities or taking charge of ten cities or taking charge of two cities. There's a leadership and a ruling and reigning that people that have come to Christ between the time that this church age has begun and the time of the people getting saved through the tribulation—they will have resurrected bodies.

But you say, who's going to live in that Millennial Kingdom? Well, it's got other people that have survived. The whole point of Revelation 19 is that Jesus comes back to save the living Jews and all those faithful to the Messiah at that great battle in Megiddo, in the Battle of Armageddon. That remnant that has been saved, physically saved, we now are going to see populate the Millennial Kingdom.

And when I say populate it, I mean, yeah, the people that are living in unglorified bodies will be procreating as it says in the Old Testament. They're going to have babies, and if a baby dies at a hundred, for instance, we read in Isaiah 65 it's like we would mourn them as the loss of an infant. So we've got long periods of time that people are living. I'm assuming back to the Genesis model of people living into the 900s.

And you have people being given in marriage and procreation. But that means that we've got then on the Millennial Kingdom, in the Millennial Kingdom, we have people with resurrected bodies ruling and reigning with Christ, and people with unresurrected bodies. They're subject to death, they're subject to procreation, getting married, having children. How can that be, people say? Well, I say think back to when Jesus was resurrected.

After his resurrection, he's coming and having meals with the apostles. He's showing up and he's saying, "Touch me, I'm not a ghost." Ghosts don't have flesh and bones as you see that I have. John 21, he comes and has breakfast and broils fish and sits there and chews on broiled fish for breakfast with Peter and the apostles. It's like, there's no problem with a glorified body having full-blown normal fellowship and interaction with unglorified bodies.

But that's the model we're left with, if I'm understanding this right—and I know there's different views on this, but I believe that we're going to have within the Millennial Kingdom for a thousand years glorified and unglorified bodies in two different groups of people. And they're going to get along just fine, just like Jesus did with his disciples after his resurrection.

And then as we get after that, when that's all done, when Satan is released and there is a short rebellion and God judges and brings in the great white throne judgment to judge all of the dead in that second resurrection, then what we're going to have is an eternal state ushered in where there will be no one with an unglorified body. Everyone will have to have a glorified body because the eternal kingdom, as it's put in 1 Corinthians 15, you can't have a mortal inherit the immortal kingdom, the eternal kingdom. So we're going to have everyone in that stage when the world is remade in an eternal state. We're going to have everyone there in an eternal immortal resurrected body.

Jay Wirten: So everyone in the Millennial Kingdom will have a physical body. Some will be glorified, some will be unglorified—we'll call it for now. And are there any other distinctions between those two classes of people? I'm assuming the glorified people, the way you described it—glorified bodies—are the ones that were taken up before the tribulation.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: That included them and then also who I said, who we've just read in Revelation 20, were killed and martyred during the tribulation period. So what we have is that taking place. The first resurrection is a category of resurrections. A category of resurrections begins with the taking up of the church, the harpazo, the taking up of the church of the rapture, which I believe is before the tribulation period.

And it ends, that first resurrection, with those that are resurrected right before the Millennial Kingdom is inaugurated. So the distinctions between the two are not only that some will be procreating and subject to death, but also that they will not be subject, if you're glorified during that period of time, to the temptation that's going to happen at the end of the tribulation period.

Satan is going to be released and he's going to tempt them. And I tried to tackle this—and you know the book, you've read it, the book I wrote called *10 Mistakes People Make About Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife*. I had a chapter in there about "Won't I possibly be able to sin away my position of being saved in the next life?" And I answered the question from a biblical perspective—the answer is no.

It's kind of a complicated and multifaceted argument, but much like the angels now who have been through that time of testing cannot now—we can't make new demons from the angelic class. The elect angels are elect; they did not fall, they did not follow Satan, and they're never going to be subject to temptation the way that they were before that temptation took place.

And in the glorified state, I think there's many parallels of what I call a post-innocent reality where they will not, after that period of having gone through in our case conversion to Christ and now glorification, we're not going to be subject to the wiles or the temptations of Satan in our glorified state. So there's a distinction there.

And within the glorified folks, there's a distinction, as Jesus often said, between the level of authority that those Christians have—the followers of Christ that are in glorified bodies. Some will serve in high-ranking positions. I mean, think of the 12—they're sitting over the 12 tribes of Israel. I mean, that's like the upper crust of the leaders of the kingdom.

And then there'll be people that are governing and leading in all different kind of capacities. But in terms of the two categories, yes, some are subject to death—the unglorified folks. They're also subject to temptation at the end when the dragon, the tempter, is released. And they have a point of decision, if you want to put it in human terms, that they're going to face at the end of this Millennial Kingdom when it says in that passage in Revelation 20 that he's going to be released.

And I'll just read it: "When the thousand years are ended"—this is Revelation 20:7—"Satan will be released from his prison, he'll come out and deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth." We're going to see all of this multitude of rebellion at the end of the thousand-year period. But then, as it goes on to say, he's going to judge them immediately. This is going to be a short time, I hope it's super short, but it's going to be a short time of rebellion and the folks are going to have to then stand either with Christ or without him.

Jay Wirten: Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. I think that was a very thorough discussion on the Millennial Kingdom, and I trust that will be a benefit to our listeners. Back to you, Dave.

Dave Drew: Big questions deserve careful biblical answers, and that's exactly what Pastor Mike delivered today. You've been listening to an edition of Ask Pastor Mike here on Focal Point. To find more teachings from Pastor Mike, head on over to focalpointradio.org. You'll also want to download the Focal Point app, packed with tools and messages to keep your study going all week long.

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Did you know that you can put your questions directly to Pastor Mike? Ask Pastor Mike Live airs every Tuesday through Thursday at 1:00 PM Central, and you can join the conversation by calling in during the show. To find out more, go to focalpointradio.org/live. Well, I'm Dave Drew, and we'll see you back here next time for more from Pastor Mike Fabarez right here on Focal Point.