11.6. Millennial Reign of the Saints
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The amillennialist sees a conflict here and insists that the eternality of Christ’s kingdom does not permit any place for a thousand year reign on earth. Calvin’s reason for rejecting the premillennial view as his concept that the thousand year reign nullified the eternal reign of Christ. Did the premillennialist limit the reign of Christ to a thousand years, his contention that “their fiction is too puerile to require or deserve refutation” would be true. However such is not the case. An important Scripture bearing on the discussion is 1 Corinthians 1Cor. 15:24-28.2
[1Cor. 1Cor. 15:24, 1Cor. 15:28] does not mean the end of our Lord’s regal activity, but rather that from here onward in the unity of the Godhead He reigns with the Father as the eternal Son. There are no longer two thrones: one His Messianic throne and the other the Father’s throne, as our Lord indicated in Revelation Rev. 3:21+. In the final Kingdom there is but one throne, and it is “the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. Rev. 22:3+).3
Notes
1 “The princes who shall rule in justice prefigure those who will rule and reign with Christ in the coming Kingdom (Luke Luke 22:30; 2Ti. 2Ti. 2:12; Rev. Rev. 2:26-27+; Rev. 3:21+).”—Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Commentary on the Old Testament (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2002), Isa. 32:1.
2 J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1958), 491-492.
3 Alva J. McClain, The Greatness Of The Kingdom (Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 1959), 513.