What Comes NextThe coming events in order, and where Israel, the nations and the church will stand

From today to eternity

Many Christians meet Bible prophecy in pieces: a sermon on the rapture, a chart of the seven years, a debate about the thousand years. Each piece makes sense on its own. Set side by side without their order, they seem to contradict each other. One passage says the Lord comes without warning (1 Thessalonians 5:2), and another lists the signs that will come before Him (Matthew 24:29-30). One says He comes for His people (John 14:3), and another says He comes with them (Zechariah 14:5).

Those passages describe different events, and Scripture gives the order in which they happen. With the order in place, the contradictions disappear, and each passage takes its own place in the sequence. The map below is that sequence. Pick any event to go to it; each one is taken up below in the same order.

Not everyone is in the same place

Prophecy also depends on knowing who is meant. Scripture does not treat mankind as one crowd. Paul divides the people of his own day three ways: “Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God” (1 Corinthians 10:32). Inside the church the line between Jew and Gentile is gone: “you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Outside the church that line still stands, and in prophecy it governs nearly everything.

Paul’s three groups describe the world today. Across the coming events three more appear: those who believe after the church is gone, the remnant of Israel, and those who died in faith before the church began. That makes six groups to keep apart.

Each group goes its own way through the coming events. Pick one and follow it from today into eternity.

A forecast with a track record

Anyone can make predictions. The test God gave Israel for telling a true prophet from a false one was whether his predictions came true.

²²When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.

Deuteronomy 18:22 · NASB95

Daniel can be held to that test. Three of his chapters (2, 7 and 9) together span history from his own day to the kingdom of God. Much of what they foretell is now history, and every part that can be checked came true. One part, the first sixty-nine of Daniel’s seventy weeks, was fixed to the month. The parts still ahead come from the same prophet, given by the same God, and they deserve the same confidence.

Four kingdoms and a stone

In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon dreamed of a great statue: a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay. A stone cut out without hands struck the statue on its feet, crushed it, and grew into a mountain that filled the earth (Daniel 2:1; Daniel 2:31-35). Daniel explained that God had shown Nebuchadnezzar “what will take place in the latter days” (Daniel 2:28).

The fourth kingdom, unnamed in the text, is the power that followed Greece and ruled when the Messiah came: Rome. Each of the first three fell to the next in the order the dream gave.

⁴⁴In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.

Daniel 2:44 · NASB95

The stone strikes the feet, not the legs. The kingdom of God does not replace Rome at its height; it comes down on the fourth kingdom’s last, divided form. That form has not yet appeared, and when it does, it will be the last human kingdom before Christ’s.

The ten horns and the little horn

About fifty years after Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, in the first year of Belshazzar, Daniel saw the same four kingdoms as four beasts (Daniel 7:1-7). The fourth was unlike the others, dreadful and extremely strong, and it had ten horns. Another horn, a little one, came up among them, uprooted three, and spoke great boasts. The angel explained the horns:

²⁴As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings will arise; and another will arise after them, and he will be different from the previous ones and will subdue three kings. ²⁵He will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law; and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time.

Daniel 7:24-25 · NASB95

A time, times and half a time is three and a half years, the same period Revelation counts as forty-two months and as 1,260 days (Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14; Revelation 13:5). That period is the second half of the seven years. The little horn is the man the New Testament calls the man of lawlessness (2 Thessalonians 2:3) and the beast (Revelation 13:1-8): the Antichrist. His end is fixed in the same vision. The court sits, his dominion is taken away, and the kingdom is given to the saints (Daniel 7:26-27).

The Antichrist arises from the old Roman Empire

The little horn rises out of the fourth kingdom, and Daniel 9 adds a detail that settles which people he belongs to: “the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary” (Daniel 9:26). The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in A.D. 70, so the coming prince belongs to the people of Rome’s empire. Its heart was Europe, and that is where he will arise, coming up among ten rulers and subduing three of them (Daniel 7:24).

Seventy weeks, counted in advance

Late in the exile, Daniel read in Jeremiah that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years (Daniel 9:2). He knew those years were nearly over, and he prayed, confessing Israel’s sin and asking God to restore His city. While he was still praying, Gabriel came with an answer that reached far beyond the return from Babylon.

²⁵So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. ²⁶Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.

Daniel 9:25-26 · NASB95

The weeks are sevens of years. Seventy of them are 490 years (Daniel 9:24). Seventy sevens of days, under a year and a half, would not reach from the decree to the Messiah.

The length of the prophetic year comes from Revelation, which measures half of the seventieth week three ways: as 1,260 days, as forty-two months and as three and a half years (Revelation 11:2-3; Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14). 1,260 days in forty-two months is thirty days to the month, and 1,260 days in three and a half years is 360 days to the year.

The sixty-nine weeks end at Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem

The clock starts with a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem itself. Earlier decrees concerned the temple. The one that authorized rebuilding the city was given by Artaxerxes to Nehemiah, “in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes” (Nehemiah 2:1): Nisan, 445 B.C. Nehemiah’s request was explicit: “send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it” (Nehemiah 2:5).

Seven weeks and sixty-two weeks are sixty-nine weeks, 483 years. At 360 days a year that is 173,880 days. Counted from Nisan 445 B.C., they end in Nisan, A.D. 32. That spring Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, presenting Himself as king exactly as Zechariah had foretold: “Behold, your king is coming to you; … humble, and mounted on a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). Within days He was crucified. Messiah the Prince had come, and He had been cut off.

Jesus held Jerusalem responsible for knowing the time. As He came down the Mount of Olives He wept over the city, and foretold its destruction “because you did not recognize the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:44). Thirty-eight years later the Roman legions leveled the city and burned the sanctuary, as Gabriel had said they would.

A.D. 33 rests on a Friday cross that Scripture rules out

Many chronologies place the cross in A.D. 33, because in that year the Passover fell on a Friday, and they assume a Friday crucifixion. Scripture does not allow it. Jesus gave the length of His burial Himself: “so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40), and a Friday afternoon to a Sunday dawn is not three nights. John explains why the bodies had to come down before evening: “that Sabbath was a high day” (John 19:31), the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, a Sabbath whatever the day of the week. With a high Sabbath and the weekly Sabbath both between the cross and the empty tomb, three nights fit a crucifixion earlier in the week. Without the Friday, the main argument for A.D. 33 falls away, and the count to A.D. 32 stands.

Why the seventieth week waits

Sixty-nine weeks ran out on schedule. The seventieth did not follow. Verse 26 places two events after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah cut off and the city destroyed (Daniel 9:26), and only then does verse 27 give the seventieth week on its own. Had the seventieth week followed at once, it would have ended by about A.D. 39. But verse 26 puts the city’s fall before that week, and the city did not fall until A.D. 70, thirty-eight years after the cross. So the seventieth week did not follow the sixty-ninth at once, and the gap between them has now lasted nearly two thousand years.

Jesus Himself announced the pause. In the last week of His ministry He said to the city, “Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!” He told Jerusalem it would not see Him again until it welcomed Him with the greeting of Psalm 118:26 (Matthew 23:38-39). Hosea records God speaking of such a withdrawal, and the words fit this pause:

¹⁵I will go away and return to My place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.

Hosea 5:15 · NASB95

That pause is the present age, and it falls within what Jesus called “the times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24). Paul explains what God is doing in it: “a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26). Meanwhile the nations rule, and the church, Jew and Gentile in one body, carries the gospel as Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20) while He intercedes for it at the Father’s right hand (Hebrews 7:25).

The church caught up

The rapture, the next event on the map, needs no sign before it, and the New Testament asks believers to live as people who may be called up any day (1 Thessalonians 1:10). On the night before the cross, Jesus made His disciples a promise:

²In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. ³If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

John 14:2-3 · NASB95

Paul describes how He will keep that promise. The Thessalonians were grieving for believers who had died, afraid that the dead would miss the Lord’s coming. Paul told them the dead would lose nothing:

¹⁶For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 · NASB95

This is the rapture. The word comes from the Latin translation of “caught up”, and it describes what happens: every member of the church, from Pentecost to that day, is taken to meet the Lord. The dead are raised first. The living are changed without dying, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (1 Corinthians 15:52). Both receive bodies fit for eternity, because “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50).

Christ’s coming for His church and His coming to the earth at the end of the seven years are different events with different purposes. Set side by side, they cannot be one event:

Kept from the hour, not through it

The rapture comes before the seven years, and the reason is what those years are. They are God’s wrath from the first seal, which the Lamb Himself opens (Revelation 6:1). That wrath is poured out on a world that has rejected God’s Son, and the church is not appointed to it.

⁹For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,

1 Thessalonians 5:9 · NASB95

To the faithful church at Philadelphia Jesus promised more than protection in the coming trial: “I also will keep you from the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth” (Revelation 3:10).

Paul shows the same order from what happens on earth. The man of lawlessness cannot be revealed while something restrains him: “only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way” (2 Thessalonians 2:7). Only God can hold back evil of that kind, and the restrainer is best understood as His Spirit, who in this age indwells the church. When the church is taken, the restraint goes with it, and the lawless one steps forward.

Genesis foreshadows the rapture: a believer taken alive without dying, and a city’s judgment held until the one righteous man was out of it.

How long passes between the rapture and the start of the seven years, Scripture does not say. The man who will enforce the covenant has to be revealed and rise far enough to impose it, and that could take a few months or longer. What Scripture does make plain is the order: the church goes first.

The rapture has no sign of its own, but it comes before the seven years, so seeing the conditions for those years come into place suggests that the rapture is near. That case is argued in Compelling Reasons for the Soon Rapture.

Rewards and a wedding

While the seven years run on earth, the church stands before its Lord.

¹⁰For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

2 Corinthians 5:10 · NASB95

This judgment does not decide anyone’s salvation. Everyone who stands there is already saved. It weighs the life each believer built on the foundation, which is Christ, and it gives or withholds reward (1 Corinthians 3:10-15).

The church is the bride Christ is waiting to receive (2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:25-27), and after the judgment comes the wedding. John hears heaven announce it near the end of the seven years: “the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready”, clothed in fine linen, “the righteous acts of the saints” (Revelation 19:7-8). A few verses later the armies of heaven follow Christ out, “clothed in fine linen, white and clean” (Revelation 19:14). The bride who was married in heaven comes back to the earth with her husband.

A covenant starts the clock

The seventieth week does not begin with the rapture. It begins with a covenant.

²⁷And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.

Daniel 9:27 · NASB95

The “he” is the person last named before it: “the prince who is to come” (Daniel 9:26). The verb behind “make a firm covenant”, וְהִגְבִּיר (vehigbir), means to make strong or to prevail. It describes a covenant he imposes and enforces on the many, Daniel’s people Israel (Daniel 9:24); he need not be the one who drafts it. An agreement already on the table would serve. The day he enforces it, the last seven years begin.

The whole seven years are the Tribulation. Jeremiah saw them as the worst days Israel would ever know, and also as the days of its rescue:

⁷Alas! for that day is great, there is none like it; and it is the time of Jacob’s distress, but he will be saved from it.

Jeremiah 30:7 · NASB95

For a while the covenant seems to work. Israel has peace, and the temple and its sacrifices are running again: John is told to measure “the temple of God and the altar, and those who worship in it” (Revelation 11:1). But the peace is false. Isaiah rebuked the rulers of Jerusalem in his own day for boasting of a covenant made to keep disaster away, and God’s answer to them fits how this covenant will end too: “Your covenant with death will be canceled, and your pact with Sheol will not stand” (Isaiah 28:18). The world’s confidence fails before the covenant does. Paul warned, “While they are saying, ‘Peace and safety!’ then destruction will come upon them suddenly” (1 Thessalonians 5:3), and God’s wrath does not wait for the covenant to be broken: it begins under the peace, with the first seal.

The first half is already wrath

Jesus reserved the name “great tribulation” for the second half of the seven years (Matthew 24:21). That does not make the first half mild. Revelation 6 opens it with the seals: a conqueror, war that takes peace from the earth, famine, and death given authority over a fourth of the earth (Revelation 6:1-8). The fifth seal shows the martyrs, and the sixth shakes the sky itself.

¹⁵Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; ¹⁶and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; ¹⁷for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

Revelation 6:15-17 · NASB95

The Lamb Himself breaks every seal (Revelation 6:1). The judgments that follow are His wrath from the first one, and they run on through the trumpets to the bowls, three series of seven, until the wrath of God is finished (Revelation 15:1). Scripture does not mark exactly where among the judgments the midpoint falls.

God seals 144,000 and sends two witnesses

God does not leave the world without a witness. Before the judgments go further, He seals 144,000 of Israel, “from every tribe of the sons of Israel” (Revelation 7:4). Two witnesses prophesy in Jerusalem “for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth” (Revelation 11:3).

The two witnesses’ ministry best fits the first half. Their 1,260 days begin while the temple is still in use (Revelation 11:1-2), and the temple is defiled at the midpoint (2 Thessalonians 2:4), so their ministry begins in the first half. Its 1,260 days are the length of that half, and the beast kills them when their testimony is finished (Revelation 11:7), once his own forty-two months of authority have begun (Revelation 13:5). A ministry that runs from the covenant to the midpoint fits all three marks.

The abomination in the holy place

In the middle of the seven years the coming prince, the Antichrist, breaks his covenant. He stops the sacrifices and sets up the abomination that Daniel foretold (Daniel 9:27). Jesus made that moment the signal for Israel. When they see the abomination of desolation Daniel spoke of standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15), there is no time left to lose:

¹⁶then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains. ¹⁷Whoever is on the housetop must not go down to get the things out that are in his house. ¹⁸Whoever is in the field must not turn back to get his cloak.

Matthew 24:16-18 · NASB95

Paul describes what stands in the holy place. The man of lawlessness “opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4). His false prophet has an image of him made, gives it breath so that it speaks, and has everyone who will not worship it killed. No one can buy or sell without the Antichrist’s mark (Revelation 13:15-17). An image that speaks, and has everyone killed who will not worship it, was hard to imagine until recently. Whatever means the false prophet is given, machines that talk, see and recognize faces now make that detail easy to picture.

Israel finally sees the man for what he is. Those who heed Jesus’ warning flee, and God shelters them. Revelation 12 pictures Israel as “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Revelation 12:1): the sun, moon and stars of Joseph’s dream of Jacob’s family (Genesis 37:9). The woman “fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days” (Revelation 12:6). That refuge is commonly placed in the region of ancient Edom, which Daniel says will escape the Antichrist’s hand (Daniel 11:41).

The Great Tribulation

From the abomination to the end of the week, Jesus gives the time its name:

²¹For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. ²²Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.

Matthew 24:21-22 · NASB95

The beast is given “authority to act for forty-two months” (Revelation 13:5), and power “to make war with the saints and to overcome them” (Revelation 13:7). The bowls of wrath are poured out on the earth. And Israel goes through the fire. Zechariah measures the cost:

⁸“It will come about in all the land,” declares the LORD, “that two parts in it will be cut off and perish; but the third will be left in it. ⁹And I will bring the third part through the fire, refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are My people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’”

Zechariah 13:8-9 · NASB95

That is God’s purpose for Israel in the seven years. He is bringing Israel to the point where it has no hope left but God, so that the nation that rejected its Messiah calls on His name.

Israel is not the only people God brings to faith in these days. With the church gone, multitudes believe in the course of the seven years. John is shown “a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues” (Revelation 7:9), and is told, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14). Many of them pay for their faith with their lives.

Here is how the two halves compare:

The King comes back

When the armies of the world are gathered against Jerusalem (Zechariah 12:2-3; Revelation 16:16), heaven opens.

¹¹And 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. ¹²His 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. ¹³He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. ¹⁴And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. ¹⁵From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty.

Revelation 19:11-15 · NASB95

He comes back to the place He left. The angels told the disciples on the Mount of Olives that Jesus “will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11), and Zechariah names the spot: “In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives”, and the mountain splits in two (Zechariah 14:4). He does not come alone: “Then the LORD, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him!” (Zechariah 14:5). The church, caught up before the seven years began, returns with Him.

The battle is brief. The beast and the false prophet “were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone” (Revelation 19:20), and their armies fall. Satan is bound and locked in the abyss “so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed” (Revelation 20:3).

The remnant looks on Him

God’s purpose for Israel in the seven years, to bring the nation to call on His name, is reached the day the Messiah appears. The remnant that survives sees Him, and recognizes Him.

¹⁰I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.

Zechariah 12:10 · NASB95

Every survivor believes. This is what Paul meant by “and so all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26): not every Jew who ever lived, but the whole nation that is left when the Deliverer comes. Jesus told Jerusalem it would not see Him again until it welcomed Him (Matthew 23:39), and now it does.

The nation enters the new covenant Jeremiah promised: “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jeremiah 31:33). At last Israel becomes what God called it to be at Sinai, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).

Raised in order

The resurrection of the righteous does not happen all at once. Paul gives its order: “But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23). Revelation calls the raising of the righteous “the first resurrection” (Revelation 20:5), and it comes in stages.

1. 1

   Christ, the first fruits

   He rose first, and His resurrection is the pledge of all the rest (1 Corinthians 15:20).

2. 2

   The church, at the rapture

   The dead in Christ rise first, and the living are changed with them (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

3. 3

   Old Testament believers, at the return

   Daniel was told that at the end of the unequaled time of distress “many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake” (Daniel 12:1-2), and was promised his own place among them: “you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age” (Daniel 12:13). Isaiah had said it before him: “Your dead will live; their corpses will rise” (Isaiah 26:19).

4. 4

   The martyrs of the seven years, at the return

   John sees those beheaded for their testimony, who refused the beast and his mark: “they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:4).

The resurrection at the return raises believers only. Daniel’s verse also speaks of others who wake “to disgrace and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2), and Revelation shows that their raising comes a thousand years later: “The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed” (Revelation 20:5). Those who died without faith are raised then, for judgment.

Who enters the kingdom

Before the kingdom opens, the survivors of the nations are judged.

³¹But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. ³²All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; ³³and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. ³⁴Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

Matthew 25:31-34 · NASB95

No unbeliever enters. Those who come in are the believing remnant of Israel and the believers from the nations who lived through the seven years. They enter as they are, in mortal bodies. Alongside them are the glorified saints who came back with Christ or were raised at His return. So the kingdom has two kinds of citizens.

The citizens in mortal bodies show that the rapture and the return cannot be one event. If every believer were caught up at the return and every unbeliever were destroyed, no one would be left in a mortal body to populate the kingdom. Because the church goes first, and believers of the seven years survive to enter, the kingdom has people to fill it.

Two counts past the end

Daniel’s last chapter adds two numbers that run beyond the seven years.

¹¹From the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. ¹²How blessed is he who keeps waiting and attains to the 1,335 days!

Daniel 12:11-12 · NASB95

The abomination is set up at the midpoint, 1,260 days before the end. Counted from the same moment, 1,290 days reach thirty days past the return, and 1,335 days reach seventy-five days past it. Scripture does not say what happens on the 1,290th day. It does say that whoever reaches the 1,335th day is blessed. By then the wrath is over, and the blessing is best understood as entering the kingdom.

The kingdom on the earth

Revelation 20 names the length of the kingdom six times: a thousand years (Revelation 20:2-7). It is the reign God promised long before: “But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain” (Psalm 2:6). Jesus rules the world from Jerusalem, and “from Zion will go forth the law, even the word of the LORD from Jerusalem” (Micah 4:2).

³Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they train for war.

Micah 4:3 · NASB95

With Satan bound and Christ on the throne, life on earth changes. People live long lives again, as in the days of the patriarchs: “for as the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people” (Isaiah 65:22). Even the animals change: “the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat”, and “they will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain” (Isaiah 11:6-9). Every year the nations go up to Jerusalem to worship the King and keep the Feast of Booths (Zechariah 14:16).

Israel lives in the land God swore to its fathers, divided again among its twelve tribes (Ezekiel 47:13-14), and fills the role God gave it. The nations will seek out the Jews to learn of God:

²³Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’

Zechariah 8:23 · NASB95

Satan released

At the end of the thousand years, Satan is let out of the abyss (Revelation 20:7). He finds an army waiting. Children born in the kingdom, Jews and Gentiles alike, have lived their whole lives under the perfect rule of Christ, and many of them have never believed. He gathers them “for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore” (Revelation 20:8).

The revolt is crushed at once. They surround “the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them” (Revelation 20:9). The devil is thrown into the lake of fire to join the beast and the false prophet, and he is tormented there forever (Revelation 20:10).

The great white throne

Then come “the rest of the dead” (Revelation 20:5): everyone, from every age, who died without trusting God.

¹¹Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. ¹²And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. ¹³And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. ¹⁴Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. ¹⁵And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Revelation 20:11-15 · NASB95

No one who trusted God stands here: “He who believes in Him is not judged” (John 3:18). The books record every deed, and the deeds are judged justly, but no record of deeds can save. Those who did not trust God face their sins unforgiven.

All things new

Then God replaces the creation that sin corrupted. John sees “a new heaven and a new earth”, and the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God (Revelation 21:1-2).

³And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, ⁴and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:3-4 · NASB95

The city needs no sun or moon, “for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). Every believing group this study has traced (the church, Israel’s remnant, the Old Testament believers and the believers of the seven years), together with those born in the kingdom who believe, ends in the same place: with God, as His people, forever.