5 Feats Jesus Will Accomplish
During the 75-Day Interlude
The seven-year Tribulation ends with the glorious return of the King of Kings to fulfill His mission to destroy the Gentile kingdoms and establish His Millennial reign. But first, the King has a few housekeeping duties to perform. Daniel (see 12:11-12) prophesied that the Lord reserved 75 days after His Second Coming to accomplish the following five feats.
1. The Binding of Satan
Christ’s first post-Tribulation feat will be to bind Satan. He will order one of His mighty angels to accomplish this herculean task (Revelation 20:1-3). The angel will unlock the Bottomless Pit—the chasm that divides Hades into the realms of Paradise and Torments. The angel will overpower the Devil, bind him in chains, and seal his prison for a thousand years. While the Devil and his demons remain off-planet, the world will be gloriously free of the Devil’s incessant temptations and hateful persecutions.
2. The Judging of the Sheep and the Goats
The second feat Jesus will perform during the 75-day interlude is to judge those who, against all odds, somehow survived the perils of the Tribulation. It is time to separate the sheep from the goats.
While the Antichrist may have assembled the largest army ever, not everyone marched to their deaths at Armageddon. Those Jews protected in the wilderness, the 144,000 Jewish evangelists, and those Christ rescued from the Antichrist’s attack on Jerusalem would have been absent from the battle. Other Tribulation survivors, from persecuted Gentile believers hiding amid the ruins to the unredeemed marked by the Antichrist but sidelined in the fight, remain scattered worldwide.
From those pitiable remains of humanity, Christ will command His mighty angels to “gather together His elect from the four winds” (Mark 13:27). Not only will the faithful survivors in Christ be gathered, but also all survivors bearing the Mark of the Beast. As Christ stated in His Parable of the Tares, “The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness” (Matthew 13:36-43). The angels will perform a rapture of sorts, snatching up every person on the planet and then depositing them in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, “the place where Jehovah judges,” located in some yet-to-be-revealed region just outside of Jerusalem (Joel 3:2, 12). All the tattered remains of humanity will fit within that lone valley.
Once the angels complete their gathering, Jesus will fulfill His prophecy regarding the Sheep-Goat Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46). The prophecy states that once the throne of David is reestablished in Jerusalem, the victorious King will ascend to sit upon it. All the nations will then be brought before Him, and He will separate the Tribulation survivors, like a shepherd separating his sheep from the goats.
To those the King deems as sheep, namely those saved out of the Tribulation, Christ will gently gather them to His right hand. Then the King will say, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34). These faithful survivors will live on in their earthly bodies as inheritors of Christ’s kingdom.
To those the King deems as goats, namely those who swore loyalty to the Antichrist and took his mark, Christ will forcibly shove them over to His left hand. Then the King will cry, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels!” (Matthew 25:41). Christ will command His executioner angels to “Come forth!” and cast the evil followers of Satan down into Torments in Hades to await final judgment and their inevitable death sentence in Hell. “And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46).
3. The Resurrecting of the Redeemed
Christ’s third feat during the post-Tribulation interlude will involve a great resurrection of the remaining righteous dead. “Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:4). The Tribulation martyrs will live again, no longer in their intermediate bodies in Heaven, but with flesh and spirit merging into their glorified, eternal bodies.
The Bible outlines three stages of the First Resurrection. Christ’s resurrection served as the “firstfruit” stage. In the second stage, the Church Age Saints were resurrected in the Rapture just before the Tribulation. In the third stage, at the end of the Tribulation, the martyred Tribulation Saints (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23) and Old Testament Saints (Daniel 12:1-2) are resurrected. The apostle John rejoiced in this, saying, “Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power…” To those resurrected came Heaven’s promise that they “…shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years” (Revelation 20:6).
As for the resurrection of the unredeemed, namely those who throughout human history died faithless and in rebellion against God, they do not get to participate in the First Resurrection. They will remain in Torments, awaiting the Great White Throne Judgment, which occurs after the Millennial Kingdom, because “the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished” (Revelation 20:5).
4. The Restoring of the Earth
Christ’s fourth feat during the 75-day post-Tribulation interlude will be to restore the planet Earth to its pristine former state. The wrath of God, coupled with mankind’s destructive nature, had devastated the earth during the Tribulation, leaving it a desolate, nearly uninhabitable wasteland. If Jesus had not returned when He did, the planet, its people, and all the creatures that inhabited it would have been a breath away from extinction (Matthew 24:22). It will be time for the Lord Jesus to transform an almost dead husk back into a beautiful blue orb.
The time Jesus will take to restore a broken planet must be brief, for how could a kingdom be considered perfect if its sovereign reigns over a dead wasteland? The God who built a universe in six days can certainly terraform a single world in almost no time. By a word from God, the planet will teem with life once more, with conditions nearly as perfect as the Garden of Eden, because of the partial lifting of the curse.
During the restoration process, tremendous agricultural bounty will result, fulfilling: “Behold, the days are coming… when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed” (Amos 9:13). The animals will also be abundant and become peaceable: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6-9). Even the Dead Sea will spring to life, as its refreshed waters begin to teem with fish and fishermen (Ezekiel 47:8-9).
At that time, the Lord will also restore long life to those in their earthly bodies. Before the Flood, people lived to be hundreds of years old, and so they will again, “for as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of My people” (Isaiah 65:20-23). The curse won’t be entirely lifted, for those born to the surviving Tribulation Saints will still be able to choose to behave immorally, but at an awful price, as “the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed” (Isaiah 65:20-23).
How long has mankind tried to end war? During the interlude, Jesus will establish an era of true peace, ending all war in perpetuity. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4). No soldiers. No weapons. No hatred toward our fellow man. All these will be gone. Instead, the citizens of the kingdom will find themselves living idyllic lives defined by peace, righteousness, justice, and great joy. The Lord Jesus will achieve the utopian setting mankind has long been incapable of creating, and all within 75 days.
5. The Establishing of the Kingdom
With Satan’s rule over the earth through human government eradicated, Christ’s fifth and final feat during the 75-day post-Tribulation interlude will be to establish His kingdom for “the Lord shall be King over all the earth” (Zechariah 14:9). The Bible provides considerable detail about the wondrous majesty and sheer beauty of the Millennial Kingdom—the coming golden age.
What nation has ever endured the test of time? Yet when Jesus’ earthly kingdom is established during the interlude, it shall endure forevermore, for “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people… and it shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44).
Jesus will then receive a mighty anointing of the Holy Spirit. “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:2). Governmental corruption of the bygone era will be wondrously replaced by a society founded on perfect justice.
Upon His Second Coming, Jesus entered Jerusalem in victory. He will establish His seat of authority there, declaring the city the world’s capital. The mountains on which Jerusalem stands will have been raised, leading to the belief that Jerusalem becomes the highest elevation on the planet. The new nations will begin streaming to the earth’s capital to hang on Jesus’ every word (Micah 4:1-3). Humanity will begin to live in perfect harmony with their King, “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14).
The pagan Third Temple, desecrated by the Antichrist, will be no more. A fourth Temple, more massive than any previously built, will be constructed (Ezekiel 40–48). Jesus the carpenter will build the Millennial Temple Himself and, from there, rule as king and priest. The Shekinah Glory of God—the Holy Spirit Himself—will descend and dwell over the Temple as “a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night” (Isaiah 4:5).
At His Temple, the King will establish a royal priesthood by fulfilling His promises to the Jewish people. God will heal the Jewish remnant of their backsliding and bless them. In turn, the Jews will become a blessing to the Gentile world. They will become a priestly people, for “in those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you'” (Zechariah 8:23). This favored priestly position brings the Jews esteem throughout the world, and they will be honored for their service to the King. As the Lord declared, “I will give you fame and praise among all the peoples of the earth” (Zephaniah 3:17-20).
As He sets up His Millennial Kingdom, Christ’s promises to the resurrected saints will also be fulfilled. “But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever” (Daniel 7:18). Who are these saints? The Church! The glorified Christ-followers will return with Jesus Christ at the Second Coming, receive their assignments, and go on to serve the King of Kings as regents, administrators, teachers, and guides for the new generations to be born. Along with the Old Testament and Tribulation Saints, they will rule over the “sheep,” who, in their earthly bodies, will replenish humanity and begin forming new nations.
Let us pray that the Kingdom of Christ soon commences!
Resource
To learn more about Jesus Christ’s coming Millennial Kingdom and what life will be like living in it, order Dr. Nathan Jones’ book, The Coming Millennial Kingdom, published by Harvest House Publishers! To order a print copy, visit Lamb & Lion Ministries’ store. To order an e-book and audiobook, visit Amazon.
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