PREFACE Thousand Year Reign of Christ

I have been requested to write about the teaching on the thousand year reign of Christ that is set forth in Rev. 20:4: “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”            

 There is a common teaching that suggest that Christ will come sometime in the future and set up a future kingdom on earth and will live and reign for a literal thousand years in a natural kingdom over the earth.  This teaching is not supported by and is strongly contradicted by the scriptures.  This current day teaching is similar to the beliefs of the Jews when Christ came to earth.  They believed he would set up a natural kingdom on earth and he would reign over the world in that kingdom forever.  When he did not set up a natural kingdom like the natural kingdoms of the earth, they generally rejected him as being the Messiah. 

In the next several essays I will set forth the teaching in Rev. 20:4.  One thing we must remember is that the book of Revelation is set forth in figurative or sign language.  The first verse says that “he went and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.”  The word, signify, means to show by signs.  The way that we can understand the teaching in the book of Revelation is by finding the meaning of the signs in the rest of the bible.  We will use this principle in studying the teaching on Rev. 20:4.

            I will be covering topics such as the following:

                        1.  Old Testament prophecies of a coming king and of a coming kingdom.

                        2.  General overview of kingdoms.

                        3.  Israel as a type of the kingdom of God.

                        4.  Time of the establishment of the kingdom.

                        5.  Nature of the kingdom.

                        6.  Government of the kingdom.

                        7.  Dominion of the king.

                        8.  Who can reign with the king and the nature of that reign.

                        9.  Significance of the 1000 year reign of Christ as set forth in Rev. 20:4.