Reigning with Christ Now – if only we would know it.
In the prophecy of the war to come, John the Revelator sees the judgment in various “sections”. They are called pericopes. These are little narratives of the same events, sometimes overlapping in progression, sometimes told from heaven, sometimes, earth.
There is a similarity with the “Day of the Lord” judgments in ancient Israel and Judea. These happened after Israel split into two kingdoms. This was due to people vying for power. The Northern kingdom was still called Israel. They soon abandoned righteous living and fell further and further into wickedness. Judah, the Southern kingdom was slower in her decline. But decline into wickedness she did. God gave both kingdoms time and warnings to repent. But finally first Israel and then Judah were judged.
Although the tribes were scattered away from the Promised Land, the remnant of faithful ones eventually returned. And throughout the prophecies about these events, we hear repeatedly of God’s plan to restore everything and everyone.
These Old Testament judgments were of a similar pattern to what happened to ancient Israel in 70AD. The Roman Jewish war put an end to natural Israel as the Promised Land. The whole temple, sacrificial system was physically destroyed and the whole land left desolate. But as we have seen, the followers of Jesus who had been spiritually regenerated, escaped to further establish the ekklēsia of Christ.
The pattern for those who went away from God’s family into sin was corrective judgments. We mustn’t despair because of the unbelievers who died. Even while suffering persecution from apostate Jews, Paul prophesied, “and so all Israel shall be saved,’ Romans 11:26.
What is to be “killed off” is not people created in the image of God. Rather it is the sin nature that is to be crucified. It is the soul that is required of us. The spirit (of each human), that human essence, is what Christ died to regenerate.
To this end, punishment is finite and corrective. The cruelty of the rich Jew in Luke 16 must be fully paid for. Exacting justice. Not eternal. No more. No less than must be reimbursed by the standards of God’s just law. “You will certainly not get out until you have paid the last penny,” Matthew 5:26. The “gulf” set between the family of God and those who choose not to be in it cannot be crossed until the last penny is paid but the individual or by Jesus Christ. Nowhere does the Bible say God’s mercy and love ceases at the point of physical death. He will bring everything under Jesus’ feet.
This is because Jesus has brought an end to law by fulfilling it for every person – when they bow their knees in grateful acceptance of Him. “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. “ But even death is now no more. It was the last enemy to be destroyed in 70AD, bringing, as we have shown, an end to soul sleep. Even physical death has lost its sting as our spirit leaves our mortal body. I pray, you reader will soar at that time to be forever with the Lord and His wonderful family.
So, let’s look again at this end of the (Old Covenant) age:
In Revelation’s pericopes we see beasts as the bad guys of this war to end the vestiges of Old Covenant law and herald what the Jesus and the apostles called, “the age to come”. We know the witnesses to the truth are the good guys in this “end of the age /s” saga – Revelation .
We recall that wild “beasts” in the Bible generally represent unregenerate nations and national heads (kings, rulers). We see this clearly explained in the book of Daniel in the dreams. When we see the word “kings”, we understand that this means rulers. And in the book of Revelation, the “beasts” are not about the world at large as we know it today. The beasts in the apocalypse (Chapter Eleven here) symbolise the apostate nation of Israel / its high priest / Herod. Later we see Babylon ride a “beast” which will be the rulers of the known world at that time, Rome, and in particular, we can identify Vespasian and his son, Titus who finished the job of destroying the Jerusalem temple.
So, beasts are kings / Caesar / heads of state which are not part of God’s Kingdom, the Spiritual Israel / New Jerusalem. Given natural Israel at the time was supposed to be a theocracy under the law, but had fallen under Rome, we see the apostate priesthood and Rome’s man, Herod as these kings or nations.
This is clearly seen in the apostles’ prayer in Acts 4. The prayer refers to David’s Psalm 2 where the “kings of the earth” and “rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ.” We generally think of this phrase as international governing heads of state. However, the apostles apply the words of this well-known Psalm, not to the world at large, but to the worldly kings / rulers of Israel (then under Roman rule) who had just threatened the apostles. These also are named as “both Pilate and Herod”, and by Peter in Acts 4:5 and 8 as “rulers of the people and elders of Israel”.
Why had the kings of the land (note, this is not the whole earth), just threatened Peter and the believers? Simply because they miraculously healed a lame man in Jesus’ name. These believers were to be persecuted continually during the time leading up to the Roman Jewish war. Jesus had promised them that. They needed to endure as in the letters to the churches in Asia Minor. They too, were suffering as the empire situation heated up. In histories of the time, we can read of these “wars and rumours of wars” uprising in the Germanic peoples, the Gauls (modern day France). We recall that this empire in its heyday extended north to Britain, down to Egypt, and eastward to Morocco and as far west as the Caucasus. Neither was Jewish zealotry limited to their own land in those days. There were uprisings across the empire and it was the Jewish leaders who were the ones to persecute new believers in Christ. This was why Jesus’ letters repeated the need for endurance to the end. But we need to ask, the end of what?
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:11 that “the end of the ages has come”. This is a past tense into present expression in English. In other words, “We are at the end. It has happened and will now end.” The use of the word “mello” in the Greek gives the sense of immediacy.
This is also used by Peter in 2 Timothy 4:1
“I do fully testify, then, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is about to judge living and dead at his manifestation and his reign” (Young’s Literal Translation).
The Wuest NT translation agrees, using the words that God “is on the point of judging the living and the dead”. And with such a reason, also urges Timothy to endure in all godliness. It’s the same message the seven churches basically receive in Revelation. Endurance is the aim because of the tribulation they were experiencing and the future rise of it into the Roman-Jewish war, amidst an empire of nations in turmoil. We can read about this in Josephus, but also, there are more detailed accounts of the other nations in the Roman Empire in turmoil, in “Tacitus: The Histories, translated by Kenneth Wellesley 1964.
So, we are not in the last days. They have come and gone. We are in the messianic age. Life can be much more now than back then; whatever society and the media may tell us. We are reigning with Christ, if only we would know it.
We note that Revelation 20, when the saints first take on their new creation (resurrection “zoe” Life – seated in heaven) we hear that Jesus “must reign” in that same heaven, until His enemies are under His feet. After the Day of Atonement, we see a different situation – in this, the Messianic age (depicted also in the OT prophets) the enemies are already under His feet. Satan (which means the enemy) is now in torment. (Rev 20:10 see also Matt 8:29).
Yet “churchianity” continues with dispensational beliefs, with its fear of these false “anti-Christ” beings arising. It infects the church with a sort of siege mentality. This is why I understand that the “church” as an institution, cannot sustain what they call “revival” – by which I hope they mean new creation life in Christ – because legalism still has a foothold. They may even have a great measure of truth and be in God’s will regarding those measures. But to deny the end of the Old Covenant has come in judgment and look for another “end” which we see is not in the Bible, means a half-life – and we all know how a half-life degenerates in an escalating way downwards. The fulfilment of Christ and what He promised is denied.
Yet we do not want to be found denying Him, or His Word and Work.
What holds us back is what initially coloured our translations of the Bible. That is Greco-Roman culturally imposed lens that was later used politically, beast-like to control the populace in Europe.
When we drop The Roman and the King James mis-translations with carnal concepts of the Word that came in – then, and only then will we emerge from our Old Covenant paradigms /practices. Then we shall emerge into the glorious liberty and dominion of God in Jesus Christ. With such real love then of our neighbours and one another, the ekklēsia will quickly get the job done in her community.
