The World and the Word

                                               The Wheat and the Chaff

Christ will appear at the battle of Armageddon to put an end to the horrible Tribulation period and to save Israel from total destruction by the armies of the Beast and the False Prophet. Christ will establish righteousness over the earth in the beginning of His millennial reign, but it will not end that way. Although Christ will have cast the Beast and the False Prophet alive into the lake of fire, and He will have sent an angel to chain the Devil in the bottomless pit, evil will still maintain an influence in the earth. Revelation 19:20; Revelation 20:1-3. Toward the end of the millennial reign of Christ, God will loose Satan from his prison to allow him to lead an evil army, who will already be willing to receive his leadership, against Christ in God's final war against evil. God will destroy this evil army with His fiery wrath which is also the lake of fire. Revelation 20:7-10. In this final battle, God will succeed in purging all evil from all of His creations so that He can recreate the heavens and the earth to be eternally righteous. II Peter 3:10-13; Revelation 21:1-5.

God will establish the millennial reign of Christ for a specific purpose. God will eliminate the influence of all the leaders of evil from the earth in order to use the righteousness of Christ to guard the earth so that He can learn exactly how evil emerges from the bottomless pit to cause righteous humans to turn to evil. According to Ezekiel 28:15, God suddenly discovered evil in Lucifer which had to have existed prior to Lucifer. But according to II Thessalonians 2:7, how evil got into God's creations remains a mystery to Him. According to Isaiah 45:7, God did learn that evil somehow uses the cover of darkness that God created to surreptitiously enter His creations. But with Christ guarding the consciousnesses of all humans during His millennial reign, God will learn exactly how negative consciousnesses; that is, demons, can emerge from the bottomless pit to cause righteous humans to turn to evil. God will have to learn this evil method of influence over His creations so that He will know how to purge all evil from all of His creations and forever block it from ever being able to enter His creations again.

The Apostle Paul wrote in II Timothy 4:1 that Christ's final Judgment will be "at His appearing and His kingdom." Christ has appeared and will appear many times throughout human history, but Paul meant by this verse that Christ will establish His eternal appearance and His eternal reign over His purified and recreated, eternal heavens and earth. Paul wrote in Colossians 1:18 that a time will come when Christ will "have the preeminence." This phrase can only mean that God the Father will allow His Son to recreate the heavens and the earth after He has purged it of all evil. Christ will become the eternal King over His righteous earth and all of His resurrected and recreated living humans that will inhabit the earth. Colossians 1:15-20; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; Revelation 22:11-12.