The Earth to Be Uninhabited and Unvisited for a Thousand Years
By
Benjamin G. Wilkinson
The word "millennium" is a familiar expression these days. But the conflicting views concerning the conditions dominant throughout that memorable thousand-year period are almost without number. Can the truth of the matter be determined? Is it possible, among this babel of theories, to ascertain the correct one? Read carefully this able presentation of the question by Dr. Wilkinson. This series of five articles began in our issue of September 12. They deserve more than a cursory reading.
THE great war that broke forth over the earth in the autumn of 1914 will seem but a small event in the eyes of earth's inhabitants, compared with the greater catastrophes yet to come. Just as a mighty earthquake is preceded by rumbles and crashings that awake a terrified humanity, so will the resurrection of the dead, which marks the beginning of the thousand years, be preceded by an unrivaled time of trouble.
The coming of the millennium will be preceded by just such amazing revolutions. "At that time," says Daniel the prophet, "there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time. . . . Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake." Dan. 12: 1, 2.
Great and disastrous will be the devastations produced by the ravages of men, but more fearful still will be the ruin wrought by the ushering in of the seven last plagues. The imagination pales and wanes and faints in the attempt to realize the withering effect of these, the greatest of God's judgments. The prophet Joel in vision, eight hundred years before the first advent of Christ, beheld this final visitation of the Almighty's wrath; and he begged that the scene might be torn from his eyes.
Seven Unparalleled Devastations
LITERATURE does not contain language, neither do the rest of the Scriptures, equal to that which is given in Rev. 15: 1: "And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God." Then follows the description of those tragic judgments. Over land and river, sweeping across ocean wave, eating their way into the human flesh, and changing out of their natural course even the sun and the atmosphere, sweep on the final seven devastations. On every side, ruin and horror meet the eye. The earth itself is torn to pieces as the doom blast of the last trump announces the return of Christ.
Earth's inhabitants will awaken from unhappy delusions when they learn that the return of Jesus is no secret visitation. Not out in the desert places, nor in the quiet chambers, unseen and unheard by any one except the favored, will the Lord Jesus Christ come, but in terrific majesty, with power equaling that pouring forth from the fire clouds of the sun, and enveloping the earth in floods of splendor.
"For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Or, as the Gospel by Luke puts it, "For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in His day."
Asked to Be Crushed by Rocks
"BEHOLD, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him," says John the revelator, "they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him." If any have been deluding their world-loving hearts into believing that the Saviour will come again with hands outstretched in blessing, receiving with infinite kindness both friend and fiend alike, they are mistaken. Weeds go to seed, and in multiplying, thus ruin the ground. So likewise do the wicked. They, like weeds, have in God's arrangements been appointed to be cut down.
This is the mighty vision which John the revelator sees in his sixth chapter: "And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every freeman, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" Rev. 6: 15-17.
The guilty consciences of the wicked cry out before they are hurt. They know well enough beforehand, even as Belshazzar did before any one read for him what the bloodless hand was writing on the banqueting pillars of Babylon, that eternal doom is impending.
The second coming of Jesus Christ is not a day to be desired for the wicked. It is "as if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?" Amos 5: 19, 20. Or, as another prophet says: "The slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground." Jer. 25: 33.
His Coming Spells Death
As if to make assurance doubly sure—as if to warn us so that there never could be any excuse—John the revelator returns to this great and alarming fact that the coming of Christ spells death to the wicked: "And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that Thou shouldst give reward unto Thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear Thy name, small and great; and shouldst destroy the earth." Rev. 11: 18.
Widespread desolation is everywhere. "The cities of the nations fell," said John. "And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent." And to show that men are still unrepentant, the revelator adds, "And men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great." Rev. 16: 19, 21.
Uninhabited a Thousand Years
FOR a thousand years, this terrestrial ball will swing, desolate and uninhabited, around and around its mighty orbit of over 586,000,000 miles, until once again, at the end of the millennium, the Creator lays upon it His beneficent hand; and then will come to pass the prediction of the apostle that "I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away."
The word used in Genesis to describe the earth at first, before its creation, is in the Greek of the Septuagint Abusos. This is exactly the same word used in Revelation 20, where John says that Satan was bound a thousand years, and cast "into the bottomless pit."
The twentieth chapter of Revelation, the great millennium chapter of the Scriptures, pictures forth the desolations of its thousand years. Just as when the Lord Jesus left Jerusalem for the last time, He turned to look upon it, and said, "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate," so, for a thousand years, Satan is bound to this "bottomless pit" by a chain of circumstances.
Not with a Literal Chain
THE chain by which he will be bound will not, of course, be a literal chain of iron. We read, in reference to the encounter of Christ with the madmen in the tombs, that oftimes men had sought to bind them with chains, but they had broken the chains asunder. If iron bands were broken asunder by the ordinary demons influencing humanity, how could it ever be possible to bind the prince of demons with any such thing? But do you see the child there who is about to break that chair? I can do one of two things to bind him: I can bind him to a post with some enchaining cord, or I can take the chair away from him.
The second coming of Jesus Christ destroys everywhere the wicked, so that they lie like refuse upon the ground. The righteous living, as well as the resurrected saints, He takes back with Him, to be introduced to596
Satan’s Enforced Vacation
(Continued from page 3) the mighty universe of His own creating; and thus, aside from Satan and his fallen angels, the earth is desolate. So Satan is bound.
A man has laid a beloved wife away in the grave, and returns home after the saddening funeral. When he reaches the door of the house, there is no sweet smile to give him a welcome. In the midnight hours, he wanders through the rooms, and as the moonlight streams through the windows of what once was his happy home, he exclaims aloud, in unmistakable grief, "This is desolation."
Falls into His Own Pit
HOW many homes to-day has the devil made desolate! Throughout the space of six thousand years, how many homes has he, with his cruel hand, cursed by the silence of eternal desolation! Just as he made humanity suffer, so shall he suffer. And the solitude and desolation that he inflicted upon suffering humanity, he himself will experience throughout that thousand years.
Moreover, there is another reason why God should enchain the devil to this wasted and riven planet. The writer recently traveled through one of the countries of the East. He asked a native merchant who was sitting in the seat with him if his countrymen felt any resentment in their heart against the people who had taken from his nation some of her territories.
Pulling a cigar from his mouth, he replied: "We have only one thing against them. Why didn’t they take the whole of our territory, and give us a good government?"
Reserved for a Glorious Destiny
YOU may travel for miles and miles in that country without seeing a tree, a hut, or a living being — anything but the falcon as he wings his lonely flight upon the mountain5top. The country is going to ruin. What is the matter with her? — She needs a new government. By a desolate earth, God will demonstrate over and over again to an understanding universe, throughout a thousand years, what would have been the results if Satan had succeeded in usurping His government.
Before, in further study, we follow the righteous as for a thousand years they continue their mission in regions of unutterable splendor, we will say good-by to old earth.
Roll on, old earth, as you pursue, year after year, your appointed course! The moonlight shall steal over the hills and mountain tops, and witness to your solitudes. The wicked shall sleep upon your dusky, silent bosom, unwept, ungathered. Tenderly the Father will keep watch over this habitation, yet preserved for a glorious destiny.
And now, as this terrestrial planet is left to roll on a thousand summers and a thousand winters, uninhabited and unvisited, we turn our attention to the future of the righteous.
