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Transcript 034C
Is Zechariah 14:16-21 Referring to the Millennium?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening, Brother Camping. I have a question about Zechariah 14:16-21 particularly, but also the whole latter part of the chapter. It seems to me it's talking about the thousand year reign. Yet I know that you say that there's not going to be any such thing. But it speaks previously about the great plague that will come upon the people, and the fighting around Jerusalem. And then it says of those that are left, if they don't go up to Jerusalem to worship the kings, there will be no rain on them. And if the family of Egypt does not go up or enter, then no rain will fall on them. I wonder if you'd just explain this.
HC: We have two clues in Zechariah 14 that indicate that this cannot be read quite as simply as we might think. First of all, we have the major clue in the beginning of the chapter, where it says, for example, in verse 6: "On that day there shall be neither cold nor frost, and there shall be continuous day. It is known to the Lord not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light. On that day living water shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter."
Now these three verses are the language of Revelation 22. Christ becomes the sun, and there is no day nor night. And so we know from this that God is talking about the New Heaven and the New Earth. Now there are other clues that speak to this. We have the earthquake in verse 5, and we know that Judgment Day comes upon the earth in the context of a huge earthquake.
We have the fact that "the valley of My mountain shall be stopped up. For the valley of the mountains shall touch the side of it." In other words, there will be a movement of the earth itself. And that matches the language of Revelation 6, where it speaks about the cataclysmic events that are occurring upon the earth.
And so there are a number of these kinds of clues that point to the fact that this is talking about the New Heaven and the New Earth.
Secondly, speaking specifically about verses 10-21, we read here, threaded through this, we find this matter of keeping the Feast of the Booths, in verse 19. And we read about the pots in Jerusalem being sacred to the Lord, in verse 21. Now we know that the ceremonial law has been completely done away with. We're not to ever again come under the ceremonial law. And so when we read the kind of language we begin to sense that there is some symbolism here, that God is not talking about something literal, but that He is talking about something symbolical.
Actually, we are a priesthood and our priesthood is an eternal priesthood. And it goes on into the New Heaven and the New Earth. And in a sense we are a completion of the Levitical priesthood. We read in Jeremiah 33:17 "David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel " Well that's Christ, of course. He sits there eternally. "And the Levitical priest shall never lack a man in My presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn cereal offerings and to make sacrifices continually" (forever is really the word that is in view here).
This is talking about the born again believers. We are an eternal priesthood, and it's using that figure here in Zechariah 14. Now verse 16 specifically: "Everyone that survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem." And you'll remember that Jerusalem is a figure of the Body of Christ. In fact, the Body of Christ in its fullness is spoken of as the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21. Now the nations that have come against Jerusalem, they are the world, that is, slaves to Satan. Remember Revelation 20:8 declares that the nations from the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, shall assault the camp of the saints. They are the peoples of the world that are found amongst the various political nations. They wanted to destroy Jerusalem.
Now out of these political nations, which comprise all of the peoples of the world, there are born again believers They are sprinkled throughout the political nations. They are the ones that survive of all the nations because the nations, of course, are cast into hell. And they shall go up year after year to worship the King. Well, this is using again an Old Testament figure of coming to Jerusalem annually to worship, but actually it's emphasizing the fact that we are the only ones who will worship Christ as King, the Lord of Hosts, and keep the Feast of Booths. In other words, we are a priesthood that goes on forever.
"If any one of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, there will be no rain upon them." Okay now. Of all the people who have ever lived on the earth, only those who are born again will worship Him. The rest will be in hell. And here rain is used in the sense of God's blessings coming upon them. They will not be objects of God's blessings. They will not be in the presence of God's blessings. This is not a conditional kind of a thing. This is just putting it this way. But actually it is the nature of what eternity will be. Born again believers will worship Him. The rest will be in hell, where there is no blessing coming on them.
Then it goes on in verse 18: "And if the family of Egypt do not go up and present themselves, then upon them shall come the plague with which the Lord afflicts the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths." Now who are the family of Egypt? Egypt was the house of bondage. It's the figure of sin, that we come out of when we are saved. And so the family of Egypt in this context, therefore, would be the unsaved. It's another figure speaking about the unsaved. And they are in hell. They are under God's judgment.
Verse 19: "This shall be the punishment to Egypt and the punishment to all the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths." And that is that no rain will fall upon them. In other words, God's wrath abides on them. And in verse 20: "On that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses HOLY TO THE LORD. The pots in the house of the Lord shall be as bowls before the altar, and every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the Lord of Hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the flesh of sacrifice in them."
In other words, the whole Body of Christ will be holy. Everything that they are involved in is holy, because we are now in the New Heaven and the New Earth where there is no sin. "And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of Hosts on that day." Now this is speaking of false prophets. Remember the moneychangers. They were cast out by Jesus, and they were called a den of robbers. And from Jeremiah 7 we know that this is a figure of speech used to speak about those who follow after other gospels. And so God is saying in this last phrase that there will be none in the New Heaven and the New Earth who are false prophets, who are bringing another gospel. Everything will be holy to the Lord.
Now there's nothing at all in this context that speaks about a millennium. There's no thousand years mentioned here, nothing related to that. And if Christ were going to reign on this earth and re-institute the priesthood of Levi and the offering of the ceremonial laws, then we would have a complete reversal of everything that the Bible teaches.