I’ve been fascinated by biblical prophecy all my life, and nothing encourages me more than God’s predictions about the future. But I don’t make many predictions myself. The Bible is infallible; I’m not. Yet I’m going to predict right now that reading this book will make you feel like the farmer I read about in Kentucky.
We don’t know his name—he hasn’t divulged it, nor the exact location of his farm. But we know what he found. While digging in his cornfield last year, he saw a glint of gold. It was a coin. As the man wiped away the dirt, he was astonished to discover a twenty-dollar Double Eagle coin from the 1860s.
“After I flipped the first clump of dirt,” he said, “over the next forty-five minutes to an hour, the coins kept coming. I knew it was hundreds.”
In all, the farmer uncovered more than seven hundred Civil War era coins just beneath his corn patch. Most of them were minted between 1840 and 1863. A few were silver, but most of them were gold.
Someone long ago had buried the coins to protect them during the war. For reasons unknown, they were never retrieved until our nameless farmer literally struck gold. Experts say the old coins are worth millions of dollars today.
I’m feeling kind of like that farmer. I’ve lived in my Bible for years without fully appreciating the hoard of golden coins lying just beneath the surface. Recently I’ve been digging them up—hundreds of verses about the coming Golden Age, the impending thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ on this planet. Some commentators say it is the single most mentioned subject in all of God’s Word.
Ten centuries when the world will be peaceful, prosperous, and under the power and authority of Jesus Christ!
This Millennium of time is ahead of us. It’s the epoch between our Lord’s return to this planet and the onset of the new heaven and new earth of the eternal age.
This knowledge is invaluable to us. It answers our questions and anticipates our future. If you’re looking around the world right now, alarmed and afraid, I’ve got something wonderful to show you. If you think our planet is headed toward destruction, think again! The unfailing hand of the Lord Jesus Christ—the same hand that is guiding you—is directing the course of events on this earth.
It’s time to cast discouragement out of your life. If you belong to Jesus Christ, you’re included in the future He’s designed. There is a coming Golden Age, and it gets even better after that!
In brief, this is what will happen. The Bible teaches that a great disappearance could occur any day now—the Rapture of the church from this planet. Jesus will come in the skies and call His people upward to be with Him (1 Thess. 4:13–18). The vanishing of millions or billions of people will traumatize the nations, leading to a global power shift and worldwide war (Rev. 6:1–8). A cunning one-world ruler will emerge, triggering seven years of Tribulation on our planet (Dan. 9:27; Rev. 6–18).
The final half of that period will be harrowing beyond anything known to history. God’s wrath will fall on the earth in waves just as the Antichrist is gathering the nations against little Israel (Rev. 15:1; Zech. 14:2). Jesus called it a “great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24:21).
All this will climax in the ultimate war in world history—the battle of Armageddon (Rev. 16:16). Just when Israel appears on the verge of annihilation, Jesus Christ will appear in the sky and destroy the hostile forces of the Antichrist (Zech. 14:2; Rev. 19:11–16). Our Lord will literally speak the victory, and He will deliver His people.
We’ll be with Him. We’ll see this happen!
Jesus will then descend to the earth and His feet will touch the Mount of Olives, the hilly ridge on the east side of Jerusalem (Zech. 14:4; Acts 1:11). He will gloriously enter the city of Jerusalem, assume the reins of world government, and reign for one thousand years (Rev. 20:4–6).
We call this the Millennium—the coming Golden Age. It’s the kingdom to come, the fulfillment of all the promises God made to Israel in the Old Testament. It’s also the bridge of time that will take us into the eternal enclaves of the new heaven, the new earth, and the everlasting capital of New Jerusalem.
Yes, there’s a lot to unpack about all this, which I do in the pages of my new book, The Coming Golden Age.: 31 Ways To Be Kingdom Ready. But the general sequence is easy enough for us to grasp. This framework puts everything in its place so we can assemble the prophetic chronology in our minds.
First, the Rapture, which was the subject of my book The Great Disappearance.
Then a seven-year period of Tribulation, climaxing in the battle of Armageddon.
And then Jesus will come again and establish His kingdom promised throughout the Bible. That thousand-year age will condition and prepare us for our eternal home—heaven!
Rapture. Tribulation. Armageddon. Return. Millennium. Eternity.
Got it? This book is about that underappreciated millennial part of the sequence.
As I researched all this, one thought struck me more forcibly than any other. If the Rapture were to occur today, our world—including you and me—would be only seven years away from the most remarkable and glorious state we could ever imagine on this fallen planet. I felt exhilarated by that. The Lord wants us to think about it. He has scattered passage after passage about this throughout Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, and the amount of biblical truth is massive when it comes to this future Golden Age.
In fact, the sheer amount of prophetic Scripture on this subject could be overwhelming. To make it as simple as possible, I’ve broken it down into thirty-one millennial facts from the Bible. If you read one chapter a day for just a month, it’ll help you become kingdom ready!
In this book, you’ll discover the world you’ve always wanted,
where . . .
- a new and improved Golden City of Jerusalem will become the capital of the world;
- the earth will be characterized by holiness and global peace;
- sickness will be rare, and people will live for centuries;
- fierce animals will become as gentle as house pets;
- worship will be spontaneous, continuous, and glorious;
- the nation of Israel will become the world’s leading travel destination;
- Satan won’t be around to bother us;
- Jesus will literally reign over the world from His throne in Jerusalem, and He will be accessible to His people.
If all that sounds fantastic to you, it’s because it is fantastic. But it is also true—it’s all there in the Bible. There is nothing too hard for God, and He always keeps His promises. He has made a lot of them to Israel, especially through the Old Testament prophets and in the book of Revelation. He has a plan for our world, and He hasn’t forgotten it. He has a prophetic love for Israel, and He will bring to pass every word He has spoken.
Things may seem bleak today. Depressing headlines. Breaking news. Virulent evil. Roller-coaster politics. Rampant antisemitism and religious persecution. Personal fears and worries. But just ahead of us, perhaps little more than seven years from now, all that will change by the power of our risen and reigning and righteous Lord Jesus Christ.
Just seven years after the Rapture! That’s less than two US presidential terms.
Join me in the fruitful fields of Scripture and let’s dig up the cache of golden verses waiting for us just beneath the surface. As we learn more of what God has ahead for us, we’ll anticipate tomorrow with fresh enthusiasm. We’ll await our Savior with greater longing. And we’ll relish the coming Golden Age with increased expectancy.
Excerpted from The Coming Golden Age: 31 Ways To Be Kingdom Ready. All rights reserved.
W Publishing, 2024