We have covered the earthly ministry and the heavenly ministry of Christ. Now we come to the kingdom ministry. In the earthly ministry, Christ wrought the processed Triune God into His believers, making them a group of God’s chosen people joined to God in the organic union of His life. This ministry was concluded in John 20:22, when Christ in His resurrection came back to His disciples and breathed Himself as the life-giving Spirit into them. Afterward, He ascended to the heavens, and now in the heavens in His ascension He accomplishes His heavenly ministry to raise up the churches and to build up the Body of Christ.
For the accomplishment of God’s economy, there is still another part of His ministry. This is the kingdom part of Christ’s ministry. The kingdom was a great thing God promised to His people. But according to the Old Testament terms, the coming kingdom of Christ which He will bring to the earth for one thousand years, will be an age of restoration. All of God’s creation, due to Adam’s sin, became fallen, rotten, and corrupted. Such a fallen universe needs a restoration to bring it back to God’s original created situation (cf. Isa. 11:6-9). Although this is a part of Christ’s kingdom ministry, this is not what our focus should be.
The kingdom ministry of Christ is to deal with all His human opposers. This earth is full of the human opposers of Christ. Eventually, Antichrist will be the concluding issue of these human opposers. He and his armies, the nations, will fight directly with Christ. God’s Christ is the One appointed by God, but Antichrist is the opposing one raised up by Satan. Satan will raise up a false Christ, Antichrist, to oppose God’s anointed One, Christ.
The angelic powers do not deal with these human opposers. That is not according to God’s principle. According to God’s principle, Satan is an angel and belongs to the angelic opposing party, so God would not use any human to deal directly with Satan. It must be an angel. But Antichrist and his armies are all human opposers, so Christ must have a group of human beings to be His army (Rev. 17:14; 19:13-14). These human beings will be the overcomers.
Christ wrote epistles to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 to call out the overcomers. A number will answer that call. In Christ’s second coming, He will gather all His believers to the judgment seat which He will set up in the air. Christ will then judge all the believers to discern who the overcomers and the defeated Christians are. Then He will award His overcomers with His kingdom, to enjoy the co-kingship with Him in which they will rule over the nations and participate in His joy. The kingdom will be a great joy to the Lord. He will have been despised by His human opposers for two thousand years, but eventually He will gain a group of human beings to stand with Him, and these human beings are the overcomers.
Christ will discern the overcomers and award them with His kingdom for them to enter into His co-kingship and joy. Then He will marry all the overcomers collectively as His bride, His counterpart, who will be exactly the same as He is to match Him. This bride matching Christ will be Christ’s army to fight with Christ not against Satan but against Christ’s human opposers: Antichrist, the false prophet, and all the nations. At this time Satan will be bound, not by any human but by an angel. The angelic opposer of Christ needs an angel to bind him and put him into the abyss for one thousand years (Rev. 20:1-3). This will clear up the opposers of Christ from this earth, and give Him the way to set up His kingdom to rule over all the remaining nations for one thousand years.
The last five items of facts (from I. J. to I. N.) reveal Christ’s kingdom ministry, beginning from the coming back of Christ to Christ’s judgment at the great white throne over all the dead. These facts are full of revelations, but most people see only the facts. I hope that we would pray, “Lord, all the facts related to Your second coming bear revelations, and I need to see them. Show me these revelations.” In this message I am not presenting the facts but the revelations.
The first thing which Christ will do in His kingdom ministry is to judge His believers at His judgment seat (2 Cor. 5:10).
He will reward His overcoming believers with His kingdom that they may enter into the millennial kingdom to partake of Him as the tree of life (Rev. 2:7) and to share His joy and His kingship (Matt. 25:21, 23; Rev. 20:4, 6). In Revelation 2:7 Christ promised those who overcome that He will give them to eat of the tree of life. The enjoyment of Christ as the tree of life in the kingdom is a reward. But the enjoyment of Christ as the tree of life in the New Jerusalem in eternity will be a common enjoyment to all the believers.
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