For those who are deemed worthy to be immortalised with Christ, the prospect of the Millennium is so marvellous and so satisfying that it defies imagination.
For such (and we begin on the lowest plane of all) there will be the experience of perfect physical health. “The Lord shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his own glorious body” (Phil. 3:21).
If this wonderful mechanism which is now the instrument of our brain and its senses is a “vile body,” what will be the physical quality and power of the redeemed? “He giveth power to the faint ; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall : But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and not be weary ; and they shall walk and not faint” (Isa.40:29-31).
No more toothache, indigestion or rheumatism ! Never again any fear of ailing health or insidious disease ! Through Christ the conquest of pain and death is complete, and the joy of effort—physical or mental—will be an uncloying pleasure.
That day will also be a time of wondrous reunion. Again Mary and Martha will greet Lazarus: again the Shulamite will embrace her child and the widow of Nain rejoice not only in her son but also in her husband (note Matt. 22 :30) .
It is to be remembered, however, that then the possessiveness of family life will be swallowed up in happy membership of a larger family — the great multitude of the redeemed which no man can number. So there will be other reunions besides those of husband and wife, mother and son. David will meet Jonathan and renew one of the sublimest friendships of all time, and Jonathan’s words in I Sam. 23:17 will be literally fulfilled.
There will also be meetings long looked forward to but hitherto made impossible by this mortality’s limitations. The prophets, who in old time had searched diligently for the full meaning of their own inspired utterances concerning the sufferings of the Christ and the glory that should follow (I Peter 1 :11) will then be able to rejoice in the presence of the One who was the centre and focus of all their spiritual aspirations. The Transfiguration of Jesus with Moses and Elijah was a fore-taste and assurance of this future blessing.
But inasmuch as that Transfiguration was witnessed by the disciples, there is here also the intimation, scarcely needed, that those who have come to Christ in later days will also be able in the coming age to share in the fellowship of God’s Great Men—they will see not only Moses and Elijah but also Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God and not be thrust out (Luke 13:28).
“And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.”
Imagine, then, the sublime privileges which these words imply—to be able to hear from Joseph’s own lips of the tense excitements of his re-union with his brethren, to let Isaac tell in his own words the story of his tumultuous feelings as he suffered himself to be bound on the altar which years later was to be the site of a cross, to live again with Ruth and Naomi the anxieties and the joys of their return to Bethlehem, to go to Paul with a Bible and a query: “What exactly did you mean by these things hard to be understood in your letter to the brethren in Rome ?
Yet above and beyond all these happy experiences will be the presence and fellowship of Jesus himself. No room now for vague unsatisfied longings for a few of the countless books that might have been written about him (Jno. 20:30 and 21:25) and banished forever are the keen regrets at the Lord’s Table that he who promised to be so nigh, should yet, through sheer human weakness, remain so far away.
Once again Mary will sit at his feet, drinking in every word. Once again the leaders of Jewry will talk with him and hear his question: What mean ye now by this Passover service ?; and marveling at his understanding and answers they will worship. Once again at Cesarean Philippi Peter will make, on behalf of all, his great confession of faith and will know no subsequent rebuke. Once again there will be a Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem to a universal acclamation; never again the grumble: “Lord, rebuke thy disciples for their gladness at the promise of thy coming.” Once again the beloved disciple will lean on Jesus’ bosom as he eats and drinks anew with his redeemed in his kingdom.
And they will be like him, for they will see him as he is (I John 3 :2)—like him, not only in the change to a glorious incorruptible nature, but also in the inner sense of a complete authority over the power of sin. Gone forever is the endless gnawing struggle against unworthy impulses, gone is the depressing experience of an endless succession of ignominious defeats at the hands of the enemy.
These have triumphed through the Blood of the Lamb and are with him day and night in his temple. As the lame man entered the temple walking and leaping and praising God, so will these express a like spiritual exultation that they have at long last been cured of their lameness.
What activities can the saints of God expect to enjoy in their new, curse-freed world? It would be not only unreasonable but positively scriptural to expect that with their immortality there will also be imparted a perfection and fullness of knowledge. The Lord himself declared that they are to be “equal unto the angels.”
Now it can be confidently inferred from several passages of Scripture (it will form an interesting and profitable exercise for the reader to see how many of these he can compile!) that the angels are limited in understanding, even though immortal. Consequently, it is reasonable to expect that one of the joys of the coming age will be the steady and limitless growth in understanding of the wonders both of the natural creation (including other worlds than our own Psa. 8:3,6) and also of the spiritual realm.
Much study, which is now a weariness of the flesh. will then be an unfailing satisfaction. Scientific contrivance and the joy of discovery, which is today “a sore travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised there with” Eccles. 1:13, will then be an unalloyed pleasure.
More than this, the redeemed are to be “kings and priests unto God” (Rev. 5:12). This word “king” carries the clear idea of rulership and dominion, even as the twelve apostles are to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28).
But what of the “priesthood” of this Millenial Age? Concerning priesthood, the attention of many has been focused too closely on the duty of sacrifice, to the exclusion of another equally or even more important function: “a priest’s lips shall keep knowledge” –he was the appointed instructor of the people in the Law of God.
Such an office will be more important than ever in the New Era. Then the people, now deaf and impervious to the Word of God, will give ear willingly to the word of instruction, “He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths.” And who will be better fitted than the immortalised saints of Christ for such work?
Once again Jesus will bid his followers: “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.” There will be campaigns in China and Central Africa. Catholic South America and the Mohammedan Middle East will hear the Word with gladness. The materialism-ridden centres of this world’s rotten civilisation—New York, London, Moscow—will respond to a message preached with a power and a grace unknown amongst men since Jesus preached in Copernican. Truly life in Christ’s Kingdom will be far from dull.
And to all these things should be added the big imponderable Truth expressed in the Song of the Redeemed. It is “a song which no man can learn but those which are redeemed from the earth” (Rev. 2:17). Translated into fact what do these symbols mean ?
They suggest spiritual developments in the redeemed which are beyond all powers of comprehension as long as we continue in the days of our flesh. Talk to a man blind from birth about colour or light and you speak a foreign language. Talk to a man who is tone deaf of the thrills of a Hallelujah chorus and he assents vaguely and wonderingly but without a vestige of understanding.
Can it be that all men and women are born with some wonderful faculty which they have never been able to employ ? Like the blindness of the man who has never known sight, this seventh sense has been atrophied from birth. And only with the healing touch of the Great Physician will it be called into play.
The blind men Jesus healed moved within a matter of seconds into a new fuller, happier life in which they saw men as trees walking, and clouds as lambs playing, and sunsets warming the heart into praise of God, and lilies of the field more wealthy than Solomon, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.
All this and more awaits those who await the coming of the king. It is a world that cannot be described now, a song which cannot now be sung, a name which at present no man knows.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One