Would you not say the millennial reign is a time of restoration to those who are righteous, or are you one of those who do not believe in the Millennial reign?
The Bible says,
"And he (God)
shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution (or
reconstitution or
restoration)
of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began" (Acts 3:20-21)
According to Scripture, the earth to come or age to come are perfect, renewed and incorrupt according to Scripture. According to Premillennialism, it is more-of-the-same. In your theology: corruption continues on, the wicked continue on, sin continues on, death continues on, war continues on, rebellion continues on. In your thinking, the second coming is not the closing of time, corruption, Satan and all evil, it is just a transition to the same old same old.
All of the prophets spoke about a time when there would be a renewal of all things. They look forward with expectancy to a time when the curse would be finally removed from creation. This reading locates the time of the fulfilment of the “restitution of all things” as occurring at the Second Advent. This glorious final event sees the elimination of the old temporal degenerate state, and the introducing of the new perfect one. It is not merely the restitution of some things or even most things as some would have us believe, but (in complete agreement with the previous passage we looked at in 1 Peter 4:3-7), of “all things.”
This passage is clear in its instruction: “the heaven must
receive (or
dechomai, or detain)” Jesus Christ “until the times of restitution of all things.” Just like heaven “received him” (Acts 1:9) nearly 2,000 years ago; it will continue to detain Christ until the “the times of restitution of all things.” Interestingly, the word
until used here is the Greek word
achri (Strong's 891), which carries the idea of
a terminus of time and meaning of
up until or
up to. It is variously interpreted in the King James Version
as far as, for, into, till, even unto, even until.
The termination of this prolonged period – namely the climactic Second Advent – corresponds with the “reconstitution of all things” – thus the introducing of the “new heavens and a new earth” and the eternal state. Christ, therefore, will not appear until the consummation of all things, which is the time when every enemy of Christ and His kingdom are finally destroyed, when this sin-cursed world is destroyed, and the time when the kingdom of God will be finally revealed in all its glory.
This is another conclusive passage that supports Amil and refutes Premil. Premil has 'the restoration of
some things'. Their anticipated future millennium is a sin-cursed, goat-infested, death-blighted kingdom like our own. It is not the perfect state they portray. Frankly they try and place a square peg into a round hole. Can we honestly say that a restoration of all things can truly be fulfilled and presented to an earth that remains under the curse, where sin, death and decay still plague and reign among mankind? Would not the wholesale removal of the curse from a regenerated earth be the only viable occurrence? Wouldn't that alone constitute the only optimal and truest possible fulfilment of the restoration of all things?
