When the Lord Jesus returns, He will reckon with all His servants. Those who have been faithful will be commended and rewarded, but those who have been unfaithful will suffer a loss and a punishment. What the unfaithful ones had received from the Lord will be taken from them and given to others. If we are not faithful to the Lord today, when He reckons with us at His coming back, we will lose what we received as a gift from Him; we will miss the marriage feast and the joy of reigning with the Lord as co-kings for a thousand years. In addition, we will experience some chastisement, some punishment. This is according to the pure Word of the Lord in the Scriptures. We all must take this as a clear and sober warning to be faithful to the indwelling Christ. If we abuse His grace today, we will suffer at His coming back.
We have already pointed out that the kingdom has three aspects: the reality, the appearance, and the manifestation. Now we need to see that the manifestation of the kingdom is simply the transfer of the reality of the kingdom. In the next age, the reality of the kingdom will become the manifestation of the kingdom.
What will happen to the appearance of the kingdom? At the time of the transfer of the reality of the kingdom into the manifestation of the kingdom, the appearance of the kingdom will be burned away. During this present age, the reality of the kingdom and the appearance of the kingdom progress at the same time. But when the Lord Jesus comes back, His angels will bind all the tares into bundles and cast them into the fire (Matt. 13:41-42). The tares will have done much damage to the Lord's kingdom, and He will be very angry and disgusted with them. Therefore, at His coming back He will deal first with the appearance of the kingdom by binding it and putting it into the fire. Then He will transfer the reality of the kingdom into the next age to become the manifestation of the kingdom.
Now we need to see how the Lord will accomplish such a transfer. By referring once again to the chart on pages 338-339, which shows the difference between the kingdom of the heavens and the kingdom of God, you can see that the kingdom of God is composed of six sections. Here we are dealing only with the fourth and fifth sections. In the innermost section of the fourth circle is the reality of the kingdom of the heavens. This circle is enclosed by another larger circle which represents the appearance of the kingdom of the heavens. When the Lord Jesus comes back, He will bind the appearance of the kingdom of the heavens and throw it into the fire. That will terminate the appearance of the kingdom. While the fourth section, the appearance of the kingdom of the heavens, will be terminated, the reality of the kingdom will be transferred into the next section, the millennium. After being transferred there, the reality of the kingdom will become the manifestation of the kingdom.