We know of no proof that the righteous will be raised a thousand years
before the wicked. The Lord says, “The hour is coming when all that are
in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth; they that have
done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to
the resurrection of damnation.” We see no _thousand years_ between the
resurrection of those that have done good and those that have done evil
here.
The quotation from John v. 28-29, above, connects the coming of Christ
and the resurrection, and the following connects the coming of Christ
and the judgment: “I charge you, therefore, before God and the Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at _his appearing_
(his coming) and kingdom.” II. Tim. iv. 1. Other Scriptures show the
same. At the close of Matt. xxv. it will be seen, as it is from other
Scriptures, that all will be judged at the same time, and at the same
time that the righteous “enter into life eternal” the wicked “go away
into everlasting punishment.” This connects the coming of Christ, the
resurrection, the judgment, the separation of the righteous and the
wicked, and the entrance into life on the one hand, and the going away
into everlasting punishment on the other hand.
We listened to the Millerites in 1843, read pretty much all they wrote
about a thousand years’ reign of Christ, between the resurrection of
those who are Christ’s and those who are not his, and whatever the
thousand years may mean in words, “the rest of the dead lived not again
till the thousand years were ended,” we find no clear evidence of its
coming between the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked. Sundry
Scriptures show that the judgment of all, will be at the same time.
Christ sitting on the throne of David does not make him a king, in
the temporal sense, as David was, but only that he is in the royal
family, and, in the sense of that Scripture, he is now in that reign,
and not to be in the Millennium. In the end he will deliver up the
kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall put down all rule, and
all authority and power. For he must reign till he has put all enemies
under his feet. See I. Cor. xv. 24, 25. “When all things shall be
subdued to him, then shall the Son also himself be subject to him, who
put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” I. Cor. xv. 28.
The Lord has come to receive a kingdom, and is now reigning over that
kingdom—a kingdom not of this world—and on David’s throne, in the
only sense he ever will be.