End Times - Week 22

Class Outline:

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Thursday Evening Bible Study

Series:  the End Times - Bible prophecy about future events and periods

Teaching Summary for Week 22

The Kingdom and the Covenants

 

Part 5.  The New Covenant

The New Covenant is an unconditional, eternal, literal  covenant, based on the shedding of blood,  whereby the Lord re-affirms the promises to Abraham of future blessings  for Israel and all the nations of the earth.  

The significance  for Eschatology

The Bible foresees a future literal fulfillment of the New Covenant.  This guarantees certain things about Israel’s future:

1. Israel must be planted in the promised land and receive it as her permanent possession.
2. Thus, Israel must be preserved as a nation and a people.
3. Israel must receive a national conversion marked by the forgiveness of sins and a new heart.
4. These things must take place after the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, returns to earth with His Second Coming.
5. Israel must experience the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to ensure their full obedience and full knowledge of the Lord and His will.
6. Israel must receive bountiful material blessings from the hand of the Lord.
7. The city and the temple must be rebuilt, and Jerusalem will be the center of a regenerated glorious earth.
8. The Messiah who shed His blood to establish the New Covenant must personally come back to earth to perform the regeneration, salvation and blessing for the nation of Israel.

These events are all future, and are all promised in the New Covenant. 

When Israel receives all of these blessings, the promised kingdom will be ushered in.

 

Summary

We have now completed our series on the Lord’s unconditional Covenants with Israel.

These covenants as a group testify to seven great features of Israel in the end times:

1. A nation forever
2. A land forever
3. A King forever
4. A throne forever
5. A kingdom forever
6. A New Covenant forever
7. Great blessings forever

 

Part 6.  The future Messianic Kingdom in Old Testament prophecy

The Old Testament prophets wrote extensively about the future Messianic Kingdom.  In fact,  the future Kingdom is referred to by nearly every Old Testament prophet.

We can see this in detail in the handout from page 442 of “Things to Come” by Dwight Pentecost.

Just about everything we know about the Millennial Kingdom itself we learn from the Old Testament, and especially the writings of the Old Testament prophets.

The prophetic material in the New Testament deals primarily with the events leading up to the Millennial Kingdom and what comes after the Kingdom (ie, the eternal state).

We now turn our attention to the facts about the Kingdom that the Old Testament prophets describe.

These facts can be grouped into two categories:  (1)  the government in the future Kingdom, and (2) the blessings of that Kingdom.

The following material comes primarily from the book by Alva McClain titled The Greatness of the Kingdom, Chapters XVII and XVIII.

The Government in the future prophesied Kingdom

This is a subject that receives extensive treatment in the writings of the prophets.

The Form and Nature of the government:

1.  The form of government will be a monarchy.  Its ruler will be a King, who will sit upon His throne, and the government will rest upon His shoulders (ISA 9:6-7; JER 23:5-6;  MIC 5:2).
2. The government will be a theocracy = directly governed by God. The King will be Emmanuel, God with us. (ISA 7:14).   He will also be human, by birth the rightful heir of David. (  And He is God’s King, established on His throne by the supernatural power of the God in heaven (DAN 2:44; DAN 7:13-14)
3. All  functions of government will reside with this Mediatorial King.  He will rule as judge, lawgiver, and king.  (ISA 33:17-22).
4. The government will be virtuous.  The prophets use four great words to indicate these principles:  truth, holiness, righteousness, and justice.  (ISA 11:1-5; JER 33:6; JER 33:14-17; ZEC 8:3).
5. The judgments of God will be immediate and tangible to all men.  This particularly applies to the Gentile nations.  (ZEC 14:17-19; ISA 26:9).
6. The King’s throne will also be a throne of grace and mercy. ( ISA 16:5; ISA 40:9-11).
7. The city of Jerusalem will be the capital of the Messiah’s worldwide kingdom (ISA 2:1-4; JER 3:17).

 

The Organization of the Millennial Kingdom

The Messianic Kingdom will be administered through an absolute monarchy with a definite chain of command and lines of authority.  The absolute monarch will be the Person of Jesus the Messiah.    He will delegate authority through His chain of command.

1. The Messiah-King will be the head of the government. (ISA 32:1; ZEC 14:9).
2. Second in rank under the King will be the resurrected David, who is given the  titles of king and prince.  He will be a king because he will rule over Israel, but he will be a prince in that he will be under the authority of the Messiah King. 

ISA 55:3-4

3 " Incline your ear and come to Me.

Listen, that you may live;

And I will make an everlasting covenant with you,

According to the faithful mercies shown to David.

4 "Behold, I have made him a witness to the peoples,

A leader and commander for the peoples.

NASU

JER 30:8-9

8 'It shall come about on that day,' declares the Lord of hosts, 'that I will break his yoke from off their neck and will tear off their bonds; and strangers will no longer make them their slaves. 9 'But they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.

 

EZE 34:23-24

23 "Then I will set over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he will feed them; he will feed them himself and be their shepherd. 24 "And I, the Lord, will be their God, and My servant David will be prince among them; I the Lord have spoken.

NASU

EZE 37:24-28
24 "My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd; and they will walk in My ordinances and keep My statutes and observe them. 25 "They will live on the land that I gave to Jacob My servant, in which your fathers lived; and they will live on it, they, and their sons and their sons' sons, forever; and David My servant will be their prince forever. 26 "I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever. 27 "My dwelling place also will be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. 28 "And the nations will know that I am the Lord  who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever."'"

NASU

EZE 45:21-22

21 "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall have the Passover, a feast of seven days; unleavened bread shall be eaten. 22 "On that day the prince shall provide for himself and all the people of the land a bull for a sin offering.

 

EZE 46:1-3

1'Thus says the Lord God, "The gate of the inner court facing east shall be shut the six working days; but it shall be opened on the sabbath day and opened on the day of the new moon. 2 "The prince shall enter by way of the porch of the gate from outside and stand by the post of the gate. Then the priests shall provide his burnt offering and his peace offerings, and he shall worship at the threshold of the gate and then go out; but the gate shall not be shut until the evening.

NASU

EZE 46:16-18
16 'Thus says the Lord God, "If the prince gives a gift out of his inheritance to any of his sons, it shall belong to his sons; it is their possession by inheritance. 17 "But if he gives a gift from his inheritance to one of his servants, it shall be his until the year of liberty; then it shall return to the prince. His inheritance shall be only his sons'; it shall belong to them. 18 "The prince shall not take from the people's inheritance, thrusting them out of their possession; he shall give his sons inheritance from his own possession so that My people will not be scattered, anyone from his possession."'"

NASU

HOS 3:4-5
4 For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred  pillar and without ephod or household idols. 5 Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king; and they will come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days.

NASU

The debate centers on whether the “prince” and  “David” in these passages refer in type to our Lord Jesus Christ, or literally to the historical David.

 

Dwight Pentecost, in his book Things to Come (page 499), gives four reasons why it is best to conclude that these passages point to the historical David resurrected from the dead.

 

1. Christ is never called David in the Scriptures. Rather, He is called the Branch unto David, Son of David, Seed of David, Root of David, and Root and Offspring of David.
2. The Lord calls the historic David “my servant, David” many times.
3. In HOS 3:5; EZE 37:21-25; 34:24; JER 30:9, and ISA 55:4, Jehovah is clearly distinguished from David.  If “David” were referring to Christ, no distinction would have been needed.
4. There are statements concerning the prince in Ezekiel that preclude this title from referring to Christ.  The prince is said to offer a sin offering for himself. Christ could not do this because He was sinless.  The prince is engaged in acts of worship. Christ receives worship.  Finally, the prince has sons and divides an inheritance with them.  Christ is never said to have sons.

 

3. Third in rank will be a group of nobles,  princes, and judges.  They will govern the nation of Israel under the authority of David.   This nobility will consist of resurrected Jewish saints. 

This subject demands careful treatment.  Certain details will be filled in when we get to the New Testament. 

We begin with the prophet Daniel next: