Back On Earth

In the last blog we saw that Scripture says we reign over the earth during the millennial reign of Christ. But what about Revelation 19, where it says Christ and the armies of Heaven make war while riding on white horses? If you read the chapter carefully, it never says we actually come to earth. Verse 15 says that Christ strikes the nations with a sharp sword out of His mouth. This is the same “weapon” of heavenly declarations described in Psalm 149:6.
 
Do we really think that the second person of the Godhead would have to come to earth to fight on a literal horse with the weapons of mankind? As God the Father did at Creation, Christ simply speaks and God’s will happens. And we get to add our declarations of agreement right along with Him.
 
Consider the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” described in Revelation 6. The scene recounts the opening of the first four seals of the heavenly scroll. In Matthew 24, Jesus tells us that these seals are part of the signs of this present age, and what He called the beginning of sorrows and the tribulation of those Days. He warned that the tribulation would come immediately after the Abomination of Desolation, which we now know was the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.
 
The four horsemen have been during Satan’s bidding to steal, kill, and destroy during the Church Age. Have we seen literal horses during this time? Certainly not. So it makes sense that Jesus and His Warrior Bride would use the same method of spiritual war in the heavenlies.
 
So do we ever come back to earth in our glorified, immortal bodies? And if so, when? It’s quite reasonable to expect that individually we may come to earth and be seen just as angels do now. Jesus likewise can appear in some bodily form even though He is seated at the right hand of the Father in full glory.
 
Yet there is an appointed time when we do come back. But it is probably not in the way most believers think. First, we don’t come back to this earth as we know it. We come after God has created the new heavenlies and the new earth. We come back to Earth 2.0! Second, we come back with Christ in the form of the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem.
 
John describes what he saw in the Revelation: Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God (Rev. 21:9-11a). The Church, the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, is a city!
 
In this unique setting, we reign as joint-heirs over the ever-expanding Kingdom of God. We live together with our Bridegroom for all eternity. As Psalm 23:6 prophetically declared, surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives, and we shall dwell in the House of the Lord forever!

---