Ruling The Earth Forever

Ruling the Earth Forever

Excerpted from “The Heavenly Singers and Their Song” Sermon #2321, July 14, 1889

When you look back over the course of your life, you may find it hard to imagine that God would choose you to one day be a ruler of the Earth. But if you are redeemed by the blood of Christ, he declares that to be your destiny.

I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. 2 Timothy 2:10-12

Spurgeon • It is redemption that makes us kings. We cannot realize our kingship to the full extent here below, though we do in a measure.

There is a poor man here who has but one room to live in. He has no money in his pocket tonight, yet he is a king in the sight of God.

There is one here, perhaps, who used to be a drunkard. He could not overcome the evil. He signed the pledge, wore the blue ribbon, and so on, but still he went back to the drink. By the grace of God he has got his foot upon it now, for he has a new heart and a right spirit. That man is a king; he is a king over his drunken habits.

There is one here who used to have a very fierce temper. It was hard to live with him, but Christ has made him a changed man. Now he is a king, ruling over his temper. It is a grand thing to be made a king over yourself.

There are some who have dominion over millions of others, who have never ruled themselves. Poor creatures! Thank God if he has given you the mastery of your own nature. That is a glorious conquest, yet this is only the beginning of what is in this song of Heaven (Revelation 5:9-10).

And then they say, “You have made us priests.” Christ has made every one of his people a priest, and every child of God is as much a priest as I am. And I am certainly a priest—a priest unto God to offer the spiritual sacrifice of prayer and praise and the ministry of the Word.

There is something to be expected: “They shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:10).

When that day will come, who can tell? But when it comes, the dead in Christ shall rise first. Arising at the midnight cry, they shall quit their beds of dust and silent clay, and the saints who are alive and remain shall join them.

“The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended” (Revelation 20:5). Then shall be a time of the saints’ reigning upon the Earth. Their lives shall be regal; their delights, their joys, and their honors shall be equal to those of kings and princes—no, they shall far exceed them.

Do you and I expect to reign upon the Earth? It will seem very odd to one who is very poor, obscure, perhaps ignorant, but who knows his Lord, to find that Christ has made him a priest and a king, and that he shall reign on the Earth with him and then reign forever with him in glory.

But it would be perfectly monstrous if we were to assert of some persons, and of some here present, that they would reign on the Earth. The man who lives for himself shall never reign on the Earth. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5), not the men who, in their selfishness, trample down everybody else with iron heel. You shall not reign on the Earth—you have lived here simply to hoard money or to make a name for yourself or to indulge your passions or to revenge yourselves upon your fellow men. You reign, sir? You? God’s prison house is the place for you, not a throne.

But when he has made us meek and humble and lowly and reverent and pure, then we shall become fit to be promoted to this high calling of being priests and kings for Christ unto God in glory, and even here on Earth in the day that is coming.

I wish that everybody here would take to searching himself as to whether he is likely to be of that blessed number. Do you with joy accept Christ as your mediator? Do you see clearly how worthy he is to be the mediator? Have you been redeemed from among men? Have you been taken away from old associations? Have you broken loose from habits that held you a slave?

Has God brought you into a New Heaven and a New Earth? Has he given you any measure of reigning power over yourself? Do you live as a priest, serving God continually?

If you are obliged to keep on saying, “No, no, no,” to all these questions, then what shall I say but, “Come to Christ”? May you come to him tonight! May he tonight begin in you that blessed process that shall make you fit to be partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.

Alcorn • Human kingdoms will rise and fall until Christ sets up a kingdom that forever replaces them, where mankind rules in righteousness. In the context of earthly kingdoms, the Messiah’s triumphant future reign is spoken of: “He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (Daniel 7:14, NIV).

The church father Irenaeus writes, “In the messianic kingdom the martyrs will reclaim the world as the possession which was denied to them by their persecutors. In the creation in which they endured servitude, they will eventually reign.”^a

In his parables, Jesus speaks of our ruling over cities (Luke 19:17). Paul addresses the subject of Christians ruling as if it were Theology 101: “Do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? . . . Do you not know that we will judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:2-3, NIV). The form of the verb in this question implies that we won’t simply judge them a single time but will continually rule them.

If Paul speaks of this future reality as if it were something every child should know, why is it so foreign to Christians today?

Jesus said to his apostles, “I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:29-30, NIV).

This is an astounding statement, one that should cause us to pause in wonder. Christ is conferring a kingdom? To human beings? But it is not just his apostles he promised would rule. Paul, speaking not to apostles but to Christians in general, says, “If we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:12, NIV).

Mankind’s reign on Earth is introduced in the first chapters of the Bible, mentioned throughout the Old Testament, affirmed by Jesus in the Gospels and by Paul in his letters, and repeated by John in the Bible’s final chapters. With so much emphasis placed on this topic in Scripture, it’s something we should not ignore—yet remarkably many Christians do.

Keeping in mind that crown and throne, both, indicate a ruling authority, consider the following examples from one small portion of the book of Revelation:

If you remain faithful even when facing death, I will give you the crown of life. (2:10, NLT)

To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations. (2:26, NIV)

I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. (3:11, NIV)

To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. (3:21, NIV)

The twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne. . . . They lay their crowns before the throne. (4:10, NIV)

Earth is our land, our kingdom to govern, granted by our Father to Adam and Eve and their descendants. It’s a kingdom once lost by us to a usurping pseudo-king, Satan, but which was won back for us by the mighty valor of Christ, who shed his blood to purchase our freedom—and with it our original inheritance, the Earth.

This is the drama of redemption. If we fail to understand our status as God’s children and heirs and rulers of the Earth, we will fail to comprehend God’s redemptive work. But if we understand our role in God’s plan, we’ll realize that he would not deliver us from Earth to live forever in a disembodied realm. In fact, the inheritance God grants us is the very same Earth over which epic battles have been fought since Satan’s first attack in Eden. Our inheritance is not only physical but also eternal: “The blameless spend their days under the LORD’s care, and their inheritance will endure forever” (Psalm 37:18, NIV).

Many people have told me they’re uncomfortable with the idea that mankind will rule the Earth, govern cities, and reign forever. It sounds presumptuous and self-important. I would agree—if it were our idea! But it was not our idea; it was God’s. And it’s not a minor or peripheral doctrine; it’s at the very heart of Scripture. This is God’s plan and his promise, so if we’re still uncomfortable with the idea, we’d better learn to get comfortable.

I love Spurgeon’s illustrations of ordinary people whom God has designed to be royalty. I once gave one of my books to a delightful hotel bellman in Atlanta. I discovered he was a committed Christian, and he said he’d been praying for our group, which was holding a conference at the hotel. Later I gave him a little gift—a rough wooden cross. He seemed stunned, overwhelmed. With tears in his eyes he said, “You didn’t need to do that. I’m only a bellman.”

The moment he said it, God spoke to me. This brother had spent his life serving, and he had come from a line of people who had been slaves for many generations. It will likely be someone like him I’ll have the privilege of serving under in God’s Kingdom. He was “only a bellman” who spoke with warmth and love, who served, who quietly prayed in the background for the success of a conference in his hotel. I saw Jesus in that bellman, and there was no “only” about him.

Who will be the kings of the New Earth? I think that bellman will be one of them. And I’ll be honored to carry his bags.

^a Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 52.