One strong text for millennial teachers, as they suppose, is Acts 3:21: “Whom [Christ] the heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” A text they use to teach there shall be a thousand years in which restitution is to be made, makes no such intimation. In fact, it teaches to the contrary. Let us carefully examine it. Christ was taken up to heaven. He will some day come again. Acts 1:11. The positive teaching of this text is that the heavens will retain the Lord Jesus until everything is restored to the Father. Christ came to restore all things. Mat. 17:11. Full [pg 450] restitution for sin was made by the Savior. The Holy Spirit all through this dispensation is leading men to the blood and restoring them to the Father. The day will soon come when the Holy Spirit has gleaned out the last one and all has been restored to the Father that will be restored. This then is the full restitution of all things. Then the heavens will retain the Son of God no longer. He will come to claim his own. Instead of this text teaching that restitution is to be made after Christ's second coming, it teaches that the restitution is to be made before he comes the second time.
We will now ask the reader to read the only text that speaks of a thousand years. This is found in Rev. 20:1-10. If you will open your Bible and read, we can by the help of the Lord show you that this can not possibly mean a thousand years of Christ's reign upon the earth after his second coming. This language is figurative. Satan is an evil spirit and can not be bound with a literal chain. After the thousand years have expired, Satan is to be loosed, and shall deceive the nations. After Christ reigns here a thousand years in righteousness shall Satan be loosed and deceive the nations? Who can look forward to such an end with joy? How do you know but you will be one that will be deceived? If you are building hopes upon a millennium you are already deceived, and this deception is among the deceptions which are to come after the thousand years. This thousand years [pg 451] is in the past. This may be a startling statement to one who has been educated to believe in a reign of Christ in person here upon the earth in some future age of a thousand years' duration. Reader, will you please notice that the devil and Satan, that was to be bound a thousand years, is also called the dragon? Now the Scriptures do not always mean Beelzebub when speaking of Satan. Jesus upon one occasion, because Peter was remonstrating with him concerning his death, said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Christ did not mean to say that Peter was the devil, but he addressed him as Satan, because the devil was using him as an instrument to persuade the Savior to escape the death he came here to endure for all. So Satan and the devil spoken of in Rev. 20:2 does not refer to the personal devil, the prince of evil spirits, but to some great power antagonistical to gospel light and truth as revealed in the church of God.
Now we feel ourself under obligation to the reader to give him the correct interpretation of this binding of Satan a thousand years, and of his being loosed at the end of that period. The term “dragon” is used to represent a state power, which gives power to some religion antagonistical to the religion of the Bible. However the original and real fundamental dragon power was Rome, when she supported a heathen religion, and when the world on the whole was so under the seducing charms of idolatrous worship that it knew not the one true God and his relationship to man. The Syriac New Testament, in [pg 452] speaking of this dragon in verse two, says, “Who seduced the whole habitable world.” The binding of Satan refers to some time when the delusive charms of heathenish worship were largely cleared away and there became a greater universal knowledge of the true God. At the end of that thousand years, or long period of time, which time we have reached, the true God and the pure religion will be lost or unknown to the generality of mankind, and heathenish rites and customs and ceremonies will be the universal religion. Do we not read that at the end of the thousand years Satan shall again deceive the nations? We understand by this that the world on the whole shall be reveling in the delusive seductions of a lewd, lustful, idolatrous religion, making the times like it was in the days of Noah. Let me again say we are now entering these times, and this world is swiftly passing under awful and blinding delusions. So great are the delusions that if possible the very elect should be deceived.
The religious teachers of to-day on the whole are in ignorance concerning the binding of Satan. We will give you a sample of the ignorance of these teachers. In the Gospel Messenger of March 25, 1899, the Querist Department in answer to a question asked concerning the binding of Satan, said: “Satan will then be bound, cast into the bottomless pit, and there will be a chance to convert the unrighteous and lead them to accept Christ as the Savior.”
A subscriber in search of knowledge asked the [pg 453] Querist Department to give a scripture to prove the last clause. He received this answer: “It seems to us that it is one of those self-evident views that needs no proof. If the Bible teaches otherwise let us have the chapter and verse. The Querist Department does not pretend to know everything.”
There are many other chapters and verses that teach otherwise. “Now is the day of salvation.” “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” The wicked shall be resurrected to damnation. John 5:29.
Conclusion Of Part Second.
We have now passed the noonday. The reader, no doubt, fully comprehends why it was dark. The morning was light because the whole Word of truth was taught and experienced by the church. All were under the immediate control of the infallible Holy Spirit.
The noonday was dark because the leadings and teachings of fallible man were substituted for the Holy Spirit and Word. A thousand errors were brought in, the Word of God rejected. The faith once delivered to the saints was lost, sin and iniquity abounded and their love waxed cold. The preachers divined for money, and sought places of affluence, and thus the day was dark over them. Sectism to-day is a mass of worldliness. Infidelity abounds and every abominable work. If you desire a perfect description of sectism as it appears upon the scene to-day, read that given by the angel in Rev. 18:2.