Many Christians, on commencing the study of prophecy and seeing something of the judgments which attend the Lord’s coming at the close of the present dispensation, feel much difficulty as to who are to form the population of the millennial earth. If, say they, the church is caught up to be with the Lord and the wicked are destroyed, who are they that are left to inhabit the earth during the millennium?
In 1 Corinthians 10:32,32Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: (1 Corinthians 10:32) the Apostle recognizes three different classes of persons: “Give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God.” Here we have the three classes of which mankind is composed. To trace through Scripture God’s purpose concerning each one is the surest way to ascertain the order of God’s dispensations and the harmony of all portions of prophetic testimony with each other. We will now look at some scriptural evidence of these things.
The Jews
To begin with, God’s purpose respecting “the Jews” we have in Genesis 12:2-3,2And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 12:2‑3) where God says to Abram, “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Of this purpose we have a further development in Genesis 13:14-16: “The Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.” In Genesis 15:1818In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: (Genesis 15:18) we have the boundaries of this land defined, and we have the earthly nature of the inheritance God designed for them still further exemplified in Deuteronomy 28. There we have the blessings promised to them in case of obedience and the curses denounced against them in case of disobedience. The blessings and curses were all of an earthly character, and how strictly and literally have they been fulfilled! Having enjoyed all the blessings Jehovah heaped upon them, the Jews proved themselves a disobedient and stiff-necked race.
God exercised great forbearance towards them, but after they had rejected and stoned the prophets, He sent His Son, the Heir of all things. Him they crucified and slew and thus sealed their doom. On this account, their city and temple were destroyed, their country pillaged, its population put to the sword, or else carried away captive. For nearly 2000 years, they have been monuments of God’s displeasure against sin, suffering the aggravated and complicated woes denounced against them.
The Gentiles
The instruments in inflicting all these woes on this guilty race have been “the Gentiles.” From the time that Abraham was called to be the father of God’s peculiar people, God did not deal directly with any nation upon the earth save the Jews. He did indeed occasionally use one or another of the nations to chastise His people, but still they — the Gentiles—remained under the awful sentence which we find in Romans 1:28: “Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.”
About the time when the Jews were carried away captive into Babylon, however, a distinct grant of power was made to the Gentiles by the Almighty. Here begin the times of the Gentiles. The power which was thus bestowed on the Babylonish king Nebuchadnezzar descended to the Medes and Persians; from thence it passed into the hands of the Grecians, and the Grecian empire yielded to the power of Rome, the last kingdom, represented by the legs and feet of the image which Nebuchadnezzar saw (Dan. 2:31-4531Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. 32This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, 33His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. 34Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. 35Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. 36This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. 37Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. 38And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. 39And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. 40And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. 41And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 42And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. 44And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. 45Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure. (Daniel 2:31‑45)). The Roman empire was eventually broken up into a number of separate kingdoms, but its power continued in these kingdoms and will continue to exist till the coming of the Lord. It is by this power that the Jews have been so fearfully wasted and so heavily oppressed. The times of Gentile power began with the oppression of the Jews, and the Gentiles will continue to oppress the Jews as long as the times of Gentile dominion last.
The Covenant Made to Israel
But these times will not last forever. God “hath not cast away His people which He foreknew” (Rom. 11:22God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, (Romans 11:2)). He still intends to fulfill the covenant that He made with Abraham their father. He still intends them to be a great nation, to be at the head of all other nations, to possess all the earthly blessings which have been promised to them, and to be the center from which these blessings shall flow to all the other nations of the earth.
The Jews are to be under a sentence of judicial blindness till a certain time: “Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate” (Isa. 6:1111Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, (Isaiah 6:11)).
After all this desolation in the land of Judea, the children of Israel are to return to it. “Lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of My people Israel and Judah, saith the Lord: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it” (Jer. 30:33For, lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the Lord: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it. (Jeremiah 30:3)). “I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land” (Ezek. 36:2424For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. (Ezekiel 36:24)).
The Oppression of the Jews by the Gentiles
We need scarcely remind the reader that “the Gentiles” are those who reduce them to such extremities. Gentile power, which began at the very first to be exercised in oppressing the Jews, will, in a coming day, in a great, general confederacy of the nations, be employed in a determined effort to crush them and blot out the very remembrance of them from the earth. And they will be permitted so far to succeed in their plans as to cut off two-thirds of the Jews who have returned to their land, and even so far as to environ Jerusalem, capture it, and lead half of its inhabitants, half of the remaining third, into captivity.
It is when “the Jews,” pressed by “the Gentiles,” are in this extremity of distress that the Lord comes, and the scene changes immediately. The despairing remnant of “the Jews” are delivered, and “the Gentiles” are visited with tremendous judgments from the Lord. “Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle” (Zech. 14:33Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. (Zechariah 14:3)).
It is upon the Gentiles that those terrible visitations of divine vengeance fall, which are uniformly represented as attending the coming of the Lord in judgment—first, upon those actually gathered together against the Lord at Jerusalem, and then upon the nations to which they belong. Many scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments attest to this, but space does not permit us to list them.
The Nations That Are Spared
We must not suppose, however, that the whole of the Gentiles are cut off by these judgments. One plain passage will be sufficient to show the contrary. “It shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see My glory. And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them [that is, the Gentiles] unto the nations of Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard My fame, neither have seen My glory; and they shall declare My glory among the Gentiles” (Isa. 66:18-1918For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory. 19And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. (Isaiah 66:18‑19)). Thus we have clearly a remnant spared from the general destruction and employed after these judgments in two important enterprises: (1) “They declare God’s glory among the Gentiles.” (2) “They shall bring all your brethren [that portion of Israel which had not been restored to their own land before the coming of the Lord] for an offering unto the Lord out of all nations, upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to My holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord” (Isa. 66:2020And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the Lord out of all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. (Isaiah 66:20)).
When all the children of Israel are thus restored to their own land, the promises of earthly blessing will all be fulfilled to them. The Lord shall make them the head indeed, and not the tail. After the Lord’s return, the remnant of the Jews will be placed at the head of the nations and prosper as no nation ever prospered before. The remnant of the Gentiles and their posterity will submit to God’s appointment in this respect, and they will pour riches and honors on the once despised and afflicted Jews. This is what is presented to us, in various aspects, in almost every passage in the Old Testament which refers to the millennial state.
The Destiny of “the Church”
But it is really with the destiny of “the Church” that we have most to do. “The church” is something altogether distinct from both Jew and Gentile. Christ came to the Jews, but they procured the assistance of the Gentiles to put Him to death. Thus Jews and Gentiles united in the commission of the blackest crime that ever man committed. But this act of highest wickedness was at the same time overruled by God, so as to exhibit the richest display of His sovereign grace. Jesus, crucified by both Jew and Gentile, was raised from the dead and placed by His Father at the right hand of power, where He now waits till His enemies are made His footstool. As long as He sits waiting there, repentance and remission of sins are to be preached through His name in all nations. Whoever receives this message of mercy instantly becomes associated with Him — associated with Him in all the reproach and suffering which He endured on earth, associated with Him in all the glory which He has at present at God’s right hand, and all the glory in which He shall be revealed when He returns to earth. The Jew receives this message of mercy, and he ceases to be a Jew; the Gentile receives it, and he ceases to be a Gentile. All who receive it, whether Jew or Gentile, are dead to all their former liabilities and to all their former, cherished hopes. They have no prospect of an earthly inheritance like the Jews; they have, or ought to have, no share in the earthly power which, for a while, is lodged in Gentile hands. They are the bride of Christ Jesus, and that world which rejected the Bridegroom may be expected to reject the bride as well. They are but strangers and pilgrims here. But just as they share their Lord’s humiliation on the earth, they will share His glory when He returns.
The church is, at present, inferior both to Jews and Gentiles in respect to earthly things, for it has no place on earth at all. But in the state which succeeds the present, as far as the Jew will be above the Gentile, so far, and further, will the church be above them both. Before the judgments are inflicted on the guilty nations of the earth, the church is caught up to meet the Lord in the air. It is after this event — after the saints have thus met their long-expected Lord, and the marriage of the Lamb has taken place — it is after this that the saints are united with Jesus in His first act of kingly power, when He comes with all His saints to deliver Israel and scatter and destroy their adversaries. And after this, when Satan is bound, when the remnant of Jews and Gentiles submit to the peaceful sway of Jesus, it is then that the saints live and reign with Christ a thousand years. Jews and Gentiles on the earth are under the reign of Christ; the church is not under His reign, but reigns with Him as a Monarch’s bride and is partner of His throne.
Those who form the church were once, all of them, either Jews or Gentiles. They are neither now. They are “the church,” the bride of Christ. The world knew Him not — it knows them not. The world rejected Him — it rejects them likewise. But when earth rejected Jesus, heaven received Him, and they also are raised together with Christ to sit with Him in heavenly places.
Bible Subjects for the Household of Faith, Vol. 1 (adapted)