In the not too distant future, the entire earth will be ruled with an iron fist by one man. Dissent will not be tolerated. In fact, those few who rebel against Him will find that He will turn even the weather against them. And yet, it will be humanity's time of greatest happiness and blessing, because that man will be the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
The typical human life span will be hundreds of years – of sublime contentment. The land will be incredibly fertile and productive. There will be no war, disease, starvation or injustice. And the great enemy of mankind, Satan, will be imprisoned and impotent to "rob, kill and destroy" mankind and his works for a thousand years. It will be the Sabbath Day of the creation, when all of the created beings in good standing with Him will get to experience the very best that life on earth has to offer – very close to what it would have been if Adam's sin had not defiled it.
For those of us who believe the Bible, that is the "peaceable kingdom" that awaits Christians and Jews in the Millennial Kingdom. Even Satan and the wicked want this future but know they can't have it unless they surrender to Christ – so all their strength and will is devoted to creating a counterfeit version for themselves in the present age: a Socialist Utopia of perfect egalitarianism in which "you will own nothing and be happy" – but, of course, their version is pure fantasy, and their pursuit of it produces nothing but strife, misery and slavery.
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In Yeshua's Kingdom, "The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the goat; the calf and young lion and fatling will be together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will graze with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play by the cobra's den, and the toddler will reach into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the sea is full of water" (Isaiah 11:6-9).
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The all-important centerpiece of the Isaiah 11 vision is this two-house prophecy:
"He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; He will collect the scattered of Judah from the four corners of the earth. Then the jealousy of Ephraim will depart, and the adversaries of Judah will be cut off. Ephraim will no longer envy Judah, nor will Judah harass Ephraim" (Isaiah 11:12-13).
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In this passage, "Judah" is the House of Judah, defined by authentic Torah-aligned Judaism and "Ephraim" is the House of Israel, defined by authentic Bible-aligned Christianity. (For a detailed, Scripture-based explanation of this doctrine, see parts 9-15 of my book "The Prodigal Son Prophecy.")
Prominent in this passage is the inference of 2,000 years of Jewish and Christian sibling rivalry and hostility in between the First Advent of Christ, when the House of Israel embraced their Messiah, and the Second Advent, when the House of Judah will do so. During this "Christian Era" (CE), the "jealousy" of Ephraim is manifested in so-called "replacement theology" in which Christianity inappropriately lays claim to the full inheritance of the Abrahamic covenant, rather than just its own half. And Judah "harasses" Ephraim by undermining and negating Christianity through such things as the invention and promotion of "Secular Humanism."
These are "broad brush" contentions that do not reflect on all Jews and all Christians, but merely describe the dominant competing religious institutions of Rabbinic Judaism (and its derivatives) and Roman Catholicism (and its derivatives). Both of these human-created institutions serve as human-empowering superstructures upon but not always faithful to the foundations of Scripture they rest upon: Rabbinic Judaism empowering itself by elevating post-Tanach "Sages" to the status of Moses, Roman Catholicism doing so by asserting "the Magisterium of the Church." Both presume to maintain a wall of priests between believers and God in contrast to the biblical concept of the "priesthood of all believers" (rooted in the doctrine of salvation by faith alone) reintroduced to Christendom by Martin Luther, and shown in the New Testament Book of Hebrews (Chapter 11) to have always been true for Jews as well.
Largely behind the scenes, these two institutions have been at war for control of the world all along, with profound history-shaping consequences. But in the shadows and around the fringes of those religious titans, there has always been a remnant of both Christians and Jews who worship Yahweh through the direct study of His Word, independent (to varying degrees) from human-created traditions and practices, and respectful of two house history and prophecy. Some of these faithful few on both sides have reached across the religious divide to claim common ground as Millennialists: believers in the reunification of the two houses in the Millennial Kingdom, or MK.
The most recognizable fruit of their cross-pollination was the Hebraic Movement in Christendom, which emerged in Holland and England after the mass-exodus of Jews (and a smattering of Millennialist proto-Protestants) from the Iberian Peninsula during the Spanish Inquisition. I contend that the Hebraic Movement that then arose created, or at least heavily facilitated, both the Protestant Revolution and constitutionalism as a form of government. This topic has become my primary area of study and research over the past decade.
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The closest picture we have of two-house reconciliation modernly is the phenomenon of Messianic Judaism. Not all Messianic Jews embrace the two-house doctrine, which is ironic, because their worship of Yeshua HaMachiach (Jesus) in a Torah-grounded Judaic context, complete with ceremonial forms of the Mosaic rituals, is precisely what is portrayed in Ezekiel's vision of the Millennial Kingdom. Indeed, I have long contended that Messianic Judaism IS the religion of the MK but is not necessarily the religion of the Bride of Christ who, in glorified form, will administer with Christ the civilization of the human inhabitants of the MK. Those inhabitants who repopulate the earth after Armageddon include primarily the post-Rapture redeemed Jews who embraced Christ at the Second Advent per Romans 11 and Zechariah 12 and 14). My treatment of this topic may be found in Parts 1-8 of "The Prodigal Son Prophecy."
This is the theological perspective of my First Century Bible Church, which seeks to provide a place of common ground for Jews and Christians to discuss these matters and to build upon the efforts of prior Millennialists to voluntarily reconcile the two houses before the "tyranny" of the King of Kings makes it mandatory. What could be more pleasing to Him than that?
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