Author : Keith Sharp
The basic premise of premillennialism is that, when the Lord returns, He will establish a thousand year, material kingdom on this earth.
The purpose of Christ’s return to the Mount of Olives will be to establish Jerusalem as the capital of His new world kingdom. The law will once more go forth from Zion (Isa. 2:3) (Dr. John F. Walvoord, Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis [1990 edition]. 195).
For this and other reasons it is very important for us to know whether or not the kingdom God promised has been established. In this article I shall seek to prove that the kingdom of Old Testament promise and prophecy was established on the first Pentecost after the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We begin in the second chapter of Daniel. In the third year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, c. 602 B.C., the king had a dream at night which troubled him greatly. None of the wise men of Babylon could tell Nebuchadnezzar either what he dreamed or its meaning. But God revealed it to Daniel, who in turn made it known to the king. Daniel informed King Nebuchadnezzar:
You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome. This image’s head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth (Daniel 2:31-35).
Then the prophet revealed to the king the meaning of his dream.
You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all- you are this head of gold. But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold – the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure (Daniel 2:37-45).
Nebuchadnezzar saw in dream four kingdoms of men. The first, personified by King Nebuchadnezzar and represented by the head of gold, was the Babylonian, which ruled the Jewish world from 605 to 536 B.C. The second, represented by the chest and arms of silver, was the Medo-Persian, which held sway from 536 – 331 B.C. Third was the Macedonian/Grecian, the belly and thighs of bronze, in power over the Jewish world from 331 to 31 B.C. Finally, the legs of iron and the feet and toes of iron and clay, was the Roman, which ruled the Hebrew world from 31 B.C. until 476 A.D.
During the days of this fourth empire, God would set up His own kingdom, the kingdom of Old Testament promise and prophecy. It would destroy these world empires of men, built upon pagan opposition to the rule of the King of heaven, and it would become a world wide kingdom and last forever. “The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.”
“Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea” (Luke 3:1-2), i.e., ca. 29 A.D., during the time when Rome governed the Jews, “John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:1-2). Thus, during the ministry of John, the kingdom was “at hand,” meaning near (cf. Matthew 26:45-46).
About six months later, “Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand’” (Mark 1:14-15). Thus, the message of Christ concerning the time of the kingdom was the same as John’s.
Roughly two years later, the Master declared, “Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power” (Mark 9:1). The Lord assured His disciples that some of them would be alive when the kingdom was present. Either the kingdom has come, or there are some 2,000 year old folks on earth somewhere! He said the kingdom would come with power.
Next we come to the end of the Lord’s ministry. He has been crucified and raised from the dead and has walked on earth another forty days. He is ready to ascend to His Father. His apostles ask Him, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6)? He replies, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” (Verses 7-8). The kingdom was to come with power. The power would come when the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles. It takes physical power to set up a physical kingdom. Spiritual power establishes a spiritual kingdom.
Now let’s skip forward about sixty years. John the apostle writes to seven congregations in the Roman province of Asia as he is in exile on the island of Patmos. He identifies himself with them by reminding them he is their “brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:9). At the time he penned Revelation, John was in the kingdom of Christ.
Go back perhaps thirty years to the time Hebrews was written. The writer exhorts Jewish Christians who are tempted to return to Judaism, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Hebrews 12:28). They were receiving the immovable kingdom.
Return five years or so earlier. Paul, from Roman prison, assures the disciples in Colosse, “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love”(Colossians 1:13). Christians were in the kingdom of Christ at that time.
Now let us return to the Day of Pentecost, as traditionally reckoned, 33 A.D., a few days after the Lord’s ascension. It is 9:00 A.M. on the first day of the week (Leviticus 23:5-16; Acts 2:1,15). The apostles are together in an upper room.
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:2-4).
The Holy Spirit came, the power came, and the kingdom of Christ was established. The kingdom of Old Testament promise and prophecy began at 9:00 A.M. on the first day of the week in 33 A.D.
With the power given them by the Holy Spirit, the apostles preached salvation in the name of Jesus Christ for the first time, and they declared it in the languages of all those present from throughout the Roman world. To this audience of devout Jews Peter emphatically declared:
Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear (Acts 2:29-33).
The promise of the Holy Spirit to David was that His descendant, the Christ, would sit on David’s throne (2 Samuel 7:12-16). Peter informed his audience this referred to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He gave his own eye witness testimony and that of the other eleven apostles that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised. Thus, He now reigns as King, in right and in fact, on the throne of David. Either Jesus Christ now reigns, or He has not been raised from the dead.
The kingdom of Old Testament promise and prophecy was established on the first Pentecost after the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
