Prophecy Chart Series: The Second Coming

Lee Brainard

Tim Moore: We want to talk about the contrast between the Rapture, which is a promise made to the Church, that we’re all awaiting, our snatching away or being caught up, and yet we know that there are other promises. Actually, many of the signs point to this other promise of Christ returning to Earth. In Israel, on Mount Zion, there on the Temple Mount, from throne of His father David. What do you look forward to? What will He do when He returns?

Lee Brainard: I am looking forward to… We have one government, one religion, one economic system, and it’s all coming right from the heart of God.

Tim Moore: One King!

Lee Brainard: The person of Jesus.

Tim Moore: Yes!

Lee Brainard: Exactly! Can you imagine what it’s going to be like to living in a world where all the laws are straight from the Scriptures, are common sense?

Tim Moore: Oh! Having served in legislature, I can only imagine, but I look forward to that as well.

Olivier Melnick

Olivier Melnick: But things are happening so fast right now. We can’t keep up. I mean, you do programs on, you know, current events and there’s something new every day.

Nathan Jones: You can’t keep up.

Olivier Melnick: I mean, you cannot keep up.

Nathan Jones: And that’s why I long for the peace of the Millennial Kingdom. What are you looking forward to once Christ sets up His kingdom?

Olivier Melnick: Seeing Him face to face.

Nathan Jones: Oh, yes! Yeah.

Olivier Melnick: Guest Just seeing Him face to face. And I don’t even know how I’m going to react to that.

Part 2

Tim Moore: I thrill every time I read from Revelation 19:11-19. So let’s go ahead and read that. I think it’s so important, and I’ll start out with the first two or three verses and then we’ll kind of try to trade places here.

John writes: “And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True. And in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire and on His head are many diadems, and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood and His name is called the Word of God.” Now, we’ll stop right there just to say: Who else could this be but Jesus Christ? John wrote about, “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was God, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This is Jesus Christ in all His radiant glory, coming forth out of Heaven.

Nathan Jones: And I love these descriptive words of Him! He’s faithful! You can always depend on the Lord. He’s true! He never lies. He always tells the truth. And in a world that suffers from corruption and injustice, He’s got, “In righteousness, He judges.” And this is interesting! He wages war. He doesn’t sit back. He’s not a peacenik. He’d love to be peace. He’s the Prince of Peace. But when there’s evil, it has to be fought.

Tim Moore: It has to be fought! And I think sometimes we here on Earth, even as Christians, tend to be too passive when it comes to sin. Well, this brings us to the next passage. Why don’t you pick up there in verse 14?

Nathan Jones: Okay! “And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean,” we know who they are now, “were following Him.” On what? “White horses,” interestingly enough. “And from His mouth,” this is the King of Kings, “comes a sharp sword so that with it He may strike down the nations and He will rule them with a rod of iron as He treads the wine press of the wrath of the rage of God the Almighty. And He has on His garment and on His thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”

Tim Moore: I can only imagine the glory of following Christ with all this stampede of horses, with all the saints that will witness His coming to Earth. We’re going to be right there with Him, Nathan.

Nathan Jones: And it says here that His mouth has a sharp two-edged sword, which the Bible interprets for us is His Word! When He speaks, things happen.

Tim Moore: And we know from earlier in chapter 19 and in 18 that the armies that are gathered there in the Valley of Megiddo, what we call Har Magedon, and we know that many of those armies have come to rebel against the Antichrist, he’s gone to wage war with them, but all of the armies of the Earth are in rebellion against Jesus Christ. So when He comes, He will speak a Word that that sword sharper than a two-edged sword coming out of His mouth, and that Word alone will defeat those armies.

And so reading on in verse 17, “Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out with a loud voice, saying to all the birds which fly in midheaven, ‘Come, assemble for the great supper of God.'” This is not to be confused with the Marriage Supper because it goes on to say, “So that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and slaves, and small and great. And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and the armies assembled to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army.”

You know, a lot of people think that this battle of Armageddon will be a great clash of arms and that’s really the picture you get whenever you watch anything produced by Hollywood. But Scripture describes it completely differently. As we said, it will be the quickest and easiest battle, dare I say, in all of history because Jesus will utter a Word and that army will be destroyed.

And some people actually think that what we read in Revelation 14 was a preview of the outcome of this battle, because it says, describing the battle scene there, that the blood would flow up to a distance of 200 miles, as deep as a horse’s bridle. This is a tremendous onslaught. But now we move to the fate of the Beast and the Antichrist. And so what happens to these two nefarious characters, according to Revelation 19:20?

Nathan Jones: Yeah, what’s interesting is that sword of the mouth of the Lord, He speaks and the armies unravel at the molecular level before Him. Which means, Tim, that those of us following the Lord back to fight aren’t going to get to fight. We have to sit in Heaven, or in the sky, I should say, in the heavens, and watch this happen because this is Jesus’s and Jesus’s alone battle. Nobody else will help Him. He alone defeats them.

So we got this beast, which is the Antichrist, the one world ruler who kills billions, and his False Prophet. And verse 20 says, “The beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who did the signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were thrown alive into the Lake of Fire, which burns with brimstone, and the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sits on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.”

Tim Moore: Well, we see that the beast and the false prophet are seized and they are bound and they are thrown into the Lake of Fire. We’re going to talk much more about the Lake of Fire in a little bit later, but for right now we get to this period when Satan himself is to be bound. And, Nathan, there’s some controversy, I don’t really understand the controversy, on how long this period is because over and over and over again in chapter 20 of Revelation, we’re told exactly how long Satan is bound and how long Christ will establish this earthly kingdom on the Earth, and I think you have written something about that.

Nathan Jones: Oh, yes! Well, Christ’s Kingdom is coming. So what we see with the Lord’s return is the very fact that the answer to Daniel’s prophecy about the end of the time of the Gentiles. In other words, the Jewish people aren’t in control, the Gentiles, the focus has been on them in the Church Age. But the Lord prophesied a time when the time of the Gentiles would end. This is it! The return of God, the last final Gentile empire and emperor, the Antichrist, have been defeated, they’re sent into the Lake of Fire. But then we get into chapter 20 and it’s going to start talking about Christ’s Millennial Kingdom.

Tim Moore: Yes!

Nathan Jones: For a thousand years, the Lord’s going to set up a kingdom of peace, righteousness, and justice, which is a prelude to the Eternal Kingdom, which will go on forever. But you’re absolutely right. Six times in chapter 20 it says, “A thousand years, a thousand years, a thousand years.”

Tim Moore: What do you think God meant by that?

Nathan Jones: Ah, it must mean that right now we’re living in the Millennial Kingdom and the Tribulation.

Tim Moore: No!

Nathan Jones: And you see how people kind of twist that to mean nothing?

Tim Moore: He meant a thousand years!

Nathan Jones: It says it. Yes!

Tim Moore: It says it six times.

Nathan Jones: Yes!

Tim Moore: Well, we’re going to talk about that Millennial Kingdom in great detail in our next episode, but today we want to focus on this binding of Satan for just a minute. There are some people, Nathan, that claim, “Satan is already bound because he was defeated at the cross.” And our answer is, “Yes, he was defeated.” In other words, the victory was sealed at the cross. But Satan is not bound right now, otherwise he wouldn’t be nipping at my heels, he wouldn’t be deceiving the nations. And all you have to do is look around and, brother, the nations are very, very deceived right before our eyes.

Nathan Jones: Absolutely! Well, God made the universe, He made the Earth, it was His, but He gave the title deed to Adam. But when Adam and Eve sinned, they lost it and gave it to Satan. That’s why Satan, during the temptation of Christ, could offer the world to Jesus. But when Jesus died on the cross, He got the title deed back. So we’ve been waiting for Him. Though he’s, Satan you could say was defeated at the cross, his defeat is still to come. Matter of fact, we’re still going to have a thousand years before he’s totally defeated. So we’re at the end of the Antichrist and False Prophet, not at the end of Satan just yet.

Tim Moore: Not at the end of Satan just yet. And I think it’s very important, folks, that even before we get to this Millennial Kingdom, we recognize that this promise of Christ coming, the promise that He will reign on the Earth, is a promise that is given first and foremost to Jesus Christ, arguably second to the Jewish people. You know, even the apostles, when Jesus told them He was about to die, they said, “Well, but I thought you were going to establish Your kingdom!”

After His resurrection, in Acts 1, they’re still asking, “Is it now that you’re going to establish Your kingdom?” “It is not for you to know the times of the epoch,” as He responds to them, “but it will be coming.” And so this is when we arrive at that glorious moment when we stand on the Mount of Olives. I know you’ve been there overlooking the city of Jerusalem, the Eastern Gate, the Temple Mount. And I will read, “Behold!” This is in chapter 14 of Zechariah. “Behold a day is coming for the Lord when the spoils taken from you will be divided among you. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravaged, and half the city exiled. But the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.”

So that’s the setup as to what we’ve just been describing as these armies gathered against Jerusalem under the authority of the Antichrist. At some point he hears a rumor of kings from the North and East coming against him, and so he goes to fight them at Armageddon. But many of these armies are still there in Jerusalem, as Nathan just said. And then verse three, “Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as when He fights on a day of battle. In that day His feet will stand.” Where? “On the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem in the east, and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south.”

Back in the day when the old city wall was rebuilt by Suleiman the Magnificent, he declared that the Eastern Gate should be shut off so that a Jewish Messiah could not enter in. And he even declared that a Muslim cemetery should be planted right in front of that gate. You can still walk through it to this day because no Jewish holy man would dare walk through a Muslim cemetery. Well, this describes how Jesus does away with both the cemetery, blows open the gate, and goes right in to reign there on Mount Zion from the throne of His father David.

And I’ll skip down to verse nine. And it simply says, “And the Lord will be king over all the earth. In that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one.” Nathan, I get a chill every time I read that verse. And when I’m on the Mount of Olives, it’s my favorite place in all of Israel because I can just envision what we’re going to witness with that great cloud of witnesses on horseback as Jesus Christ returns to that spot.

Tim Moore: And that reminds me of why our ministry is called Lamb & Lion Ministries. Jesus came first as a suffering Lamb to die for the sins of the world, but He’s coming back as a conquering lion to defeat evil and set up His kingdom.

Tim Moore: You know, it is such a wonderful promise. And sometimes I think we as Gentile Christians look at Scripture with a lens that prioritizes the New Testament. And let’s be frank, that’s where the Gospel appears most prominently. But it is woven throughout the Old Testament and there are other promises all through the entire Word of God that we need to rejoice and celebrate over. Some of those promises made to us, yes, but others made to Christ. Some made to the nations, to creation itself, some made to Satan. And so we want to see all of those promises fulfilled.

Nathan Jones: Now if you go to Psalm 24:7, you had mentioned about Suleiman the Magnificent sealing up the Eastern Gate. Which is funny that he thought he could keep the Messiah out and instead he fulfilled prophecy because verse seven says, “Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O you gates, and your everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.”

Tim Moore: You know they call it the Golden Gate. That’s what it was called in ancient times. And then it was sealed, and so now we call it the Eastern Gate or the Sealed Gate. But it is the gate that awaits the arrival of the Great King. And so I just thrill at the idea of being able to worship Him forever and ever. I thrill at the idea of Jesus defeating all of His foes. I thrill at the idea of Jesus binding Satan so that he cannot nip at my heels. Of course, he won’t be able to do that when we’re in Heaven in our glorified bodies, but he will not be able to deceive the nations for a thousand years.

And Nathan, as I said, we’re going to talk more about the Millennium next week. But just as a preview, why, after a thousand years, do we believe Jesus is going to release Satan for a brief period of time?

Nathan Jones: Well, if you don’t mind, let’s read 20:1-3 because it’s one of the victory chapters. You know, Satan has caused so much destruction on the world.

Tim Moore: Yes!

Nathan Jones: Let’s read about his defeat here. It says, “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of that dragon, that serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were finished.” And then the part you mentioned. “After these things, he must first be released for a short time.”

There are verses that talk about how the nations will see Satan and be like, “Is this the guy that caused so much trouble?” I mean, we picture this, you know, Herculean-type dragon, breathing fire, lots of power. But when he is reduced down, when he’s defeated, we’ll look at him and we’ll think of him as a worm. Pathetic! It’s like, “This is the guy that caused so much trouble?” Will be chained up and chucked. Now the Bible doesn’t say what happens to the demons, but since there’s no demonic activity in the Millennial Kingdom, nor are demons released at the end, it is believed that the demons will be like the Antichrist and False Prophet.

Tim Moore: Yes!

Nathan Jones: Also be thrown in the Lake of Fire.

Tim Moore: This is a promise made, in this case, to Satan. We’ve already seen the promise to Jesus be fulfilled, the promise that He will reign from the throne of His father David. And that is replete in the Old Testament and even the New, and we’ll touch on that more in the week to come. But right now we see that the promise made to Satan has a ramifications to the nations. They are promised that they will no longer be deceived during this thousand year reign. Why? Because Satan is bound.

And so you say, “Well, who are the nations?” Well, that’s going to be the people that are separated, sheep from the goats, and the mortals that go into the Millennial Kingdom in their mortal bodies. The sheep, representing those saints who endured the Tribulation, they will repopulate the Earth. There will be no sin whatsoever tolerated on the Earth. What a glorious time that will be. But then finally Satan will be freed. So, let’s jump ahead just a bit through the millennial period. Why will Satan be released after that thousand years of being bound?

Nathan Jones: Okay, before I answer that, just if folks are looking for the Sheep-Goat Judgment on our Prophecy Chart, that’s Matthew 25, if you’re looking for that reference. At the end of, after He defeats His enemies, He sends the angels out to gather those who are left on the Earth. And Tim, not many. They’re in the valley. They fill one valley, the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And that’s why some people get the Rapture confused and say, “It’s the end of the Tribulation.” Because they see that gathering as the Rapture. It’s not. It’s a gathering of everybody on the planet for judgment. It’s who is going to get to live on into the kingdom, right?

Building up to the answer to your question here is that those who are the sheep, the righteous, those who’ve accepted Christ as Savior and live through the Tribulation, will go on into the Millennial Kingdom. They will be the citizens, they in their earthly bodies will reproduce. It’s been estimated by the end of a thousand years in an almost utopian setting that there could be up to 20 billion people and they will be living in an almost perfected society. We’ve got many, many children born during this time period who can see Jesus face to face. They know the difference between good and bad. They’re almost like toddlers in their innocence.

Tim Moore: Yeah!

Nathan Jones: And what does God do at the very end of the Millennial Kingdom? He releases Satan. And Satan immediately, we read, goes out into the breadth of the world and he starts deceiving these children.

Tim Moore: Yes!

Nathan Jones: And that’s been one of the big mysteries of the Bible. Why would God, it sounds like, inflict something that evil against a bunch of innocents? Well, are they innocent? The sin nature wishes to rebel against God. And all it takes is the same lies that Satan told Eve in the garden. “Hey, you can be gods one day. That guy up in Jerusalem, He doesn’t know what He’s doing. Follow me, we’re going to overthrow Him, and I’ll let you do whatever you want. You want to lust and murder and kill, you do it. I’m going to let you do it.”

And so, they’re not innocent anymore. They know the difference between right and wrong, and they choose the wrong. And one of the biggest tragedies in the entire Bible, it’s still future, is it says, “Like the sands of the sea, they follow Satan in an attempt to overthrow Jesus.”

Tim Moore: You know, I think this is going to put to rest once and for all, as if we have not seen evidence of this already, the question as to whether mankind strays and commits acts of wickedness and evil due to nature or due to nurture. There are so many in our society today who say, “Well, people commit the crimes because they’re raised in a bad environment or they came from a bad home.” And they have a laundry list of excuses. But He never gives an excuse or a tolerance for sin. Sin is sin. And this demonstrates that in the heart of man is a propensity to stray away from the Lord.

Nathan, you and I have said, even as a believer prone to wander, we feel it ourselves. And so in this particular case, yes, Satan comes with the same lies he perpetrated in Genesis. He first says, “Did God really say?” In other words, “Are you sure you understand what He told you to do and not to do?” And then he outright declares God is a liar. And finally he plants the temptation of, “You can be like God.”

Nathan Jones: He’s been defeated. He’s been cast into a prison for a thousand years. And as soon as he gets out, he goes immediately back! Like, he’s obsessed. We see that in society, these people, even though it destroys them, they’re obsessed with the thing. Verse seven. “And when the thousand years were finished, Satan will be released from prison. He’s going to come out and deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, he’s going to gather them together for war. And the numbers like, again, the sands of the seashore, they came across the broad plains of the earth, they surrounded the camp of the saints, which is the beloved city, the Jerusalem, Yahweh Shema will be called at that time.”

And since there’s no war in the Millennial Kingdom, God sends down fire. “Fire came down from heaven and devoured them.” This is the end of Satan here. I love it! Verse 10! The victory! “The devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the Lake of Fire and Brimstone where the beast and false prophet are also. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” The future is dependent on Christ’s victory, and with the Christ victory assured through prophecy, He’s the spirit of prophecy, then we know that we can relax a little and put our faith and trust in God.

Tim Moore: And so I think that even as we would turn back to the Prophet Joel, we read in 3:14, “Multitudes, multitudes in the Valley of Decision. For the day of the Lord is near in the Valley of Decision.” All of us in this life are essentially living in a time of decision. And so if you have not decided to put your trust in Jesus Christ, folks, in a nutshell, you have chosen poorly. This is a fate we would not wish on anyone. It is a fate so horrific that God was willing to sacrifice His own Son to ensure that anyone who believes in Him will receive salvation and can avoid those horrific judgements.

Well, before we wrap up for today, let’s hear a perspective on some of the things we’ve discussed about the love and mercy of God as opposed to the outpouring of wrath that awaits Satan and his demonic hoards from some respected colleagues of Lamb & Lion Ministries.

Carl Broggi

Tim Moore: Just recently, a very popular Christian spokesman, at least in this country, has come out to say he doesn’t believe that hell will be an everlasting period of punishment. What does Scripture have to say, not only for Satan, but for those who have rejected Christ in this lifetime?

Carl Broggi: Well, it’s interesting because the word for eternal life, eternal death, and the eternal God is the same Greek adjective. So to say that God is not eternal is to say that Heaven’s not eternal, to say that Hell is not eternal. And the Lord described it as, “A place where the fire is never quenched and the worm never dies.” Worm needs a place in which to find its home and it will be resurrected, unsaved bodies. But God’s provided a way of escape for anyone who will call upon the name of the Lord Jesus. But it is eternal when the devil, at the end of the thousand years, is cast into the Lake of Fire. The first two recipients is the Antichrist and the False Prophet. And it says he’s cast in there with them and they were cast in there a thousand years before. So it’s never ending!

Josh Davis

Tim Moore: Well, Josh, obviously a lot of Amillennialists and Preterists like to say that Satan is bound right now. He can’t really run rampant over the Earth.

Josh Davis: Right!

Tim Moore: What do you say to those who believe that there’s no coming binding of Satan?

Josh Davis: Well, as you just said, look around at the effects of sin and evil, and this world is certainly not getting better. And we know that post-millennialism and ideas and concepts like that, that the world’s gradually going to get better, amillennialism. You know, when World War II hit, that did a death knell to a lot of that kind of teaching and people realize this world is not getting better gradually, it’s getting worse. Evil men and seducers will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. And we’re seeing that. But then in the very next verse, it tells us, “Continue.” We must continue faithfully following the Lord, even in this evil age that we live.

Part 3

Tim Moore: Well, if we’ve whet your appetite today about all the things that await in the Final Days of the Earth in Jesus’ Second Coming, please know that there’s many more resources available here at Lamb & Lion Ministries. We have Wrath and Glory, a tremendous preview of what awaits when Jesus returns. We have God’s Plan For the Ages. And of course our Revelation Study Guide, which touches on all of Revelation. And Nathan, you have some other resources that point to what awaits in the Millennial Kingdom.

Nathan Jones: Sure! The book here, The Mighty Angels of Revelation, will teach you about the 72 angels or groups of angels, as well as the Book of Revelation. It takes you through that. And with The Coming Millennial Kingdom is a book all about what your life will be like living in the Millennial Kingdom. So we offer a lot of information here at Lamb & Lion Ministries, a lot of resources to help you grow in your faith in Jesus Christ. You know, Tim and I, we only have a short amount of time to share, but if you want to dive deeper, then these resources will really bless you.

Closing

Tim Moore: We ended our tabletop discussion today at the place that awaits every person who has rejected the love and mercy of God, the Lake of Fire.

Nathan Jones: Much of Revelation addresses the calamities that will be poured out on the Earth and its rebellious inhabitants as the wrath of God is unleashed during the Tribulation. But even that dreadful time is limited in its scope because it’s only going to last for seven years.

Tim Moore: We have prayed that you will ensure that your name is written in the Book of Life by embracing Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord right now. Just confess to Him that you are a sinner in need of salvation and place your trust in Him. Scripture promises that all who call on the name of Jesus in believing faith will be saved.

Nathan Jones: And if you are saved, we hope you’ll join us in longing for Jesus to come and rescue us from that wrath to come.

Tim Moore: If you have been made new in Him over the course of this series, please let us know. We would like to rejoice with the angels in Heaven over your new life in Christ. And if the Lord tarries, until next week, Maranatha and Godspeed!

End of Program