Revelation 20:4 “And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.”
After the battle of Armageddon the Lord Jesus Christ will begin His reign on the earth for one thousand years, and He will reign from the temple in the city of Jerusalem. And so it is at this point that, as we have already mentioned the temple will be cleansed (Daniel 8:14). In the above quoted passage of scripture we see that the Lord’s saints will also reign with Him during this period, for as we have already seen, the church will return to the earth with the Lord Jesus Christ at His second coming. And so finally our Lord’s prophetic statement to the city of Jerusalem will be fulfilled, when He said “I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!' “(Luke 13:35). Just like the first time when our Lord entered the city of Jerusalem lowly and riding on the colt of a donkey, it was the saints that welcomed Him on that occasion by proclaiming “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38), so it will be that second time that our Lord enters the city as King of Kings riding on a white horse, that it will once again be the saints that will welcome Him by proclaiming “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”.
Ezekiel 38:8-14 “After many days you will be visited. In the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back from the sword and gathered from many people on the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate; they were brought out of the nations, and now all of them dwell safely. … (11) You will say, 'I will go up against a land of unwalled villages; I will go to a peaceful people, who dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates'-- (12) to take plunder and to take booty, to stretch out your hand against the waste places that are again inhabited, and against a people gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell in the midst of the land. (13) Sheba, Dedan, the merchants of Tarshish, and all their young lions will say to you, 'Have you come to take plunder? Have you gathered your army to take booty, to carry away silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to take great plunder?' “‘(14) “Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog, 'thus says the Lord God: "On that day when My people Israel dwell safely, will you not know it?”
Although the saints will rule over all the earth during our Lord’s millennial reign they will not be living all over the earth. The above passage of scripture describes the rebellion of Gog and Magog against the Lord and His saints at the end of His millennial reign. The point that I wanted to highlight from this passage is that we see that the saints will be living in one geographic location during that time, for the scripture speaks of “a land of unwalled villages”. We know that it is from the city of Jerusalem that the Lord Jesus will reign, and so very clearly the saints will be living in the area of the Middle East (including Israel) with Jerusalem being its capital. We have stated earlier that there are approximately three hundred million saints, and so clearly in order to accommodate a population of that size the geographic area that will be occupied by the church will be substantial. The reign of Solomon under the old covenant is a type and shadow of the reign of our Lord Jesus under the new covenant. And so if we were to look at the example of how God allocated land to the children of Israel during the time of Solomon’s reign, then that will give us an idea as to the size of the land that will be occupied by the saints during our Lord’s millennial reign. There were approximately four and half million Jews in Israel under Solomon’s reign, and the geographic size of Israel during that time was approximately fifty thousand square kilometres. And so if we were to apply that same formula to the period of the Lord’s millennial reign then the church will occupy a geographic area of approximately three and half million square kilometres, which is roughly one third the size of the Middle East region today.
Michael E.B. Maher
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