Also, during the thousand-year period, the Lord's own people, His elect, His Israel, whether Jewish or Gentile by race, will be reconciled to God. Most of the saved people of today have never been reconciled to God except legally through the atoning blood. Their personality has not been brought into untroubled union with God. They are not able to dwell in the Presence of the Fire of Israel. They have chosen God, and they love God after a fashion, but they dwell far from Him.

Under the workings of the new covenant, all of God's elect shall come to know the Lord from the least to the greatest. It is our understanding that the stronger believers will assist the weaker until the Bride of the Lamb, the new Jerusalem, is perfect and complete in every detail.

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of [maturity as measured by] the stature of the fulness of Christ: (Ephesians 4:13)

At the end of the thousand-year period Satan will be released from the bottomless pit so the work of the thousand-year period may be tested. Those who at that time rebel against Christ and His saints will be destroyed by fire.

The fifth stage is the thousand-year reign of Christ and His saints. The sixth and final stage in the putting down of all rebellion is the new heaven and earth rule of Christ. Christ and His Bride will govern the nations of saved peoples of the earth from their walled city. All the previous stages work together to make possible this ultimate, perfect rule.

Every rebel against God's will shall have his part, along with the Antichrist, the False Prophet, and the devil and his angels in the lake burning with fire and sulfur. The nations of the saved will be ruled by the saints and will bring the glory and honor of their realms to the new Jerusalem in order to receive the blessing of God through the saints. The saints will be permitted to behold the very Face of God because every trace of rebellion has been removed from them.

It is not sensible that man should rebel against his Creator. But the influence of Satan and his angels has been sufficient to infect mankind with the dreadful disease of rebellion and self-will.

The change from the ideal surroundings of the garden in Eden to the terrors described in the Book of Revelation is one vast object lesson to the heavens and the earth of the folly of rebelling against the will and wisdom of our heavenly Father.

To be continued.