BETWEEN THE LINES
ARE YOU READY FOR THE RESTORATION OF ALL THINGS?
Exclusive: Joseph Farah looks past 'fallen world' to '1,000-year period of tranquility'
I don’t know about you, but I’m looking past this fallen world in which we live to a much better one – one where everything is restored to the way God planned it from the beginning.
God didn’t plan a world for His children made in His own image that was plagued by death, illness, pain, injustice, slavery, bigotry, victimization, suffering and war. And He promises to restore all things to the way they were intended originally and to place His Son on a throne in Jerusalem to reign and rule over this world in the future.
That’s what I have my eye on today.
That may sound like crazy talk to many of you.
“Has Farah flipped his lid?” I can hear you asking yourself as I write these words.
Maybe.
But I’ve been a student of the Bible for many, many years. And, so far, I’ve watched every prophecy in that book come true – including all those about His Son’s first coming to tell us about His coming Kingdom.
So, I don’t think I’m crazy.
I think I might go crazy if I were unsure.
That’s why I’m proclaiming this good news to you today.
Jesus is coming back soon, and He’s going to bring about what Peter called in Acts 3 “The restitution of all things.”
It wasn’t just Peter who talked about this coming Kingdom of peace, justice and righteousness. Peter said it’s what “God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.”
I’m introducing this subject to you today because it’s the subject of my new book of the same name – “The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians and the End of the Age.”
I don’t expect that you’ve heard many sermons on this subject. I’ve been in the church for more than 40 years, and I’ve never heard one. I don’t expect you’ve read many books on the subject. There are many, many prophecy books out there, but almost all of them deal with what’s coming next, according to the scriptures. But their emphasis, almost entirely, is on a very short period of time that leads to the Second Coming.
About that 1,000-year period of tranquility? Almost nothing.
My goal was to look at His Kingdom on Earth: What will it be like – that 1,000-year period on Earth? Will believers be surprised? Will it be like they expect?
If you want to know where you’re going to be living for a thousand years, how we’re going to be living, what it will be like on earth after the tribulation and the Second Coming, this is the book for you. If you don’t care about that, then this book is not for you. After all, it’s only a thousand years of your life, right? Who needs to know, right?
What got me interested in the topic was the fact that even among self-professed followers of Jesus, there is so little expectancy, so little talk about this age of which all the prophets yearned to see.
The Bible gives us many hints of what this period of time will be like, from many different angles and perspectives.
That begs the questions: Why don’t we hear much about this period of time in churches? Why aren’t more books written about it? Why don’t we see movies about this period instead of films about the most violent and catastrophic brief times to come on Earth that precede it?
Why do even prophecy students and teachers focus so much attention on the death and destruction and the cataclysm of what the Bible promises to be a very short period of future history and so little on what is called the Millennial Kingdom, or when earth will experience the restoration of all things?
Shouldn’t mankind be looking toward the Coming Kingdom of God as our great hope for the future? Why are we so preoccupied by an intense but short period of Tribulation?
Even the most famous prayer of the Bible, the one Jesus recited when He instructed His brethren on how to communicate with the heavenly Father, references this Kingdom on Earth (Matthew 6:9-13).
“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”
Twice in that short prayer Jesus refers to this coming Kingdom in which God’s will for mankind will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
In studying this subject, I found some things that may shock you. It won’t be without controversy in the church. If I have done my job right, you’re going to be asking yourself: Why haven’t I heard this before?
But have no fear – you still have the Bible, the Word of God – very nearly the sole resource of my book to check and double-check and triple-check every finding I present. (In most cases, the verses are presented for you right out of the old King James to make it easy on you.)
For now, I’ll leave you with some provocative questions I attempt to answer in “The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians, and the End of the Age”:
- Did Jesus come to start a new religion?
- What does it literally mean to be a Christian?
- What was the grave error of the Pharisees?
- Could it be that we have Pharisees among us today in Christianity? Is it likely? What would they look like? How can we recognize them?
- Could it be that we listen more to “church fathers” of the second, third or fourth centuries than we do the real “church fathers” – Peter, Paul, John, James and the other spirit-guided first century leaders?
- Have we fallen through church tradition into a gentile mindset rather than a Hebrew mindset and thus misinterpreted much of scripture?
- Will we really be living on earth for a thousand years rather than in heaven?
- What will it be like?
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