The Throne Of David

   In this present age there is a great deal of false information being spread regarding the “throne of David“.  The establishment of this throne on earth is the culmination of all the Messianic prophecies relating to both Israel and the Church.  However, subversive elements within Gnostic/subjective Christianity have denied that Christ will physically reign over a renewed creation.  Naturally, this causes complications, essentially rejecting true fulfillment of the Messianic promises.  It also hopelessly divides Israel and the Church, preventing them from being united as “one body,” which Christ came to accomplish.

   The throne of David is not where Christ is sitting now.  Christ is presently sitting at the right hand of His Father.  In Revelation, Christ says: “To Him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne” (Rev. 3: 21).  When the Lord returns to judge mankind and resurrect His saints, He will not exalt the saints to His Father’s throne, but will place us on His throne.  The misconception that there is only one throne, where Christ is sitting now, prevents us from properly viewing the nature of the Messianic prophecies.  We see the Messianic reign as being forever in the heavens, when that is not the case at all!

   When the Lord returns, He will restore all things as the Second Adam.  The First Adam was given dominion over the creation, but lost it on account of sin.  But Christ, through the sacrifice of Himself, purchased the creation with His own blood.  When He returns from the heavens, He shall not only redeem us, but also restore the heavens and earth that became subject unto bondage on our account.  This is an important doctrine.  What else does the “crown of thorns” signify, but Christ’s redemption of the sin-accursed creation?  When the times are filled up, and the anti-typical days complete, then shall arrive the perfected kingdom of Christ. 

   It is necessary to know that man’s place is on earth, not in heaven.  In his classic work, The Typology of Scripture, Rev. Patrick Fairbairn, D.D. writes: “We deem it incredible, that with the grant of the earth so distinctly made to man for his possession, and death so expressly appointed as the penalty of his yielding to the tempter, he should, as a subject of restoring grace, have looked for any other domain as the result of the Divine work in his behalf, than the earth itself, or for any other mode of entering on the recovered possession of it, than through a resurrection of the dead.  For how should he have dreamt of a victory over evil in any other region than that where the evil had prevailed?  Or how could the hope of a restitution have formed itself in his bosom, excepting as a prospective reinstatement in the benefits he had forfeited?  A paradise such as he had originally occupied, but prepared now for the occupation of redeemed multitudes–made to embrace, it may be, the entire territory of the globe–wrested forever from the serpent’s brood, and rendered through all its borders beautiful and good: that, and nothing else, we conceive, must have been what the first race of patriarchal believers hoped and waited for, as the objective portion of good reserved for them.”

   Thus, it is to the “restitution of all things” (Acts 3: 21) that the Messianic promises look forward–not to some vague, subjective salvation in which the moral state of man remains forever in the midst of evil–but to a release (jubilee) from the bondage of sin and corruption.  To enter his glorified state man must be rid of the temptations of sin, that he may be fully sanctified (Eph. 5: 27).  Since salvation is inseparably connected with moral experience, it is false to say that sanctification can be anything of a subjective or “covenantal” nature.  When Christ returns, we shall “see Him as He is,” for we shall “be like Him” (1 John 3: 2).  We shall “see face to face” and “will know, even as we are known” (1 Cor. 13: 12).  The struggle between the flesh and spirit will cease, when Christ comes to “change our vile body, that it may be fashioned unto His glorious bodies, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself” (Col. 3: 21).  These doctrines involve physical realities which will be verifiable by exprience.

   But if the consummation of our redemption is real and not subjective, than the placement of the throne of David in the midst of the renewed earth must be real as well.  We are not to look for a hypothetical and invisible coming of Christ, but for a personal, visible, and glorious return.  This Peter avowed when He said: “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of His majesty.  For He received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.  And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with Him in the Holy Mount” (2 Peter 1: 16-18).  Peter is affirming that Christ will return in the same glorious body in which He appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration. 

   The promise will be fulfilled at the “end of the age,” when the Lord sits on the throne of His glory to judge all nations.  Then shall the throne of David be established on earth.  It is a throne of delegated authority, entirely distinct from the throne of the Father.  When Christ leaves His Father’s throne to sit on the throne of David, He shall relinquish His purely Messianic session in the heavens, and will come to reign on earth.  Then will the New Jerusalem come down from heaven and be placed in the midst of a redeemed multitude.  “And the nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it” (Rev. 21: 24).  Should any man claim that this prophecy was fulfilled in the past, he must be prepared to affirm that there was a wholesale salvation of entire nations.  But we know that isn’t the case.

   There is an ancient Jewish tradition that the Lord had His throne originally placed in Eden before man’s fall and exile.  The legend been preserved for us in the Apocryphal “Revelation of Moses.”  Now, what does Messianic restoration entail but the reinstatement of Christ’s throne in the midst of the entire earth?  There will a subjugation of all enemies when Messiah comes to reign.  Once evil is abolished, then will Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob be allotted their inheritance in the land of Canaan–which they never possessed on earth, although it was personally promised to them (Gen. 13: 14-15; 15: 7; 26: 3).

   When will Abraham and his seed inherit the promised land?  Only in the resurrection.  And the resurrection can only occur after evil is subdued.  Lactantius writes: “But the resurrection cannot take place while unrighteousness still prevails.  For in this world men are slain by violence, by the sword, by ambush, by poisons, and and are visited with injuries, with want, with imprisonment, with tortures, with proscriptions.  Add to this that righteousness is hated, that all who wish to follow God are not only held in hatred, but are harassed with all reproaches, and are tormented by manifold kinds of punishments, and are driven to the impious worship of gods made with hands, not by reason of truth, but by the dreadful laceration of their bodies.  Ought men therefore to rise again to these same things, or to return to a life in which it is impossible for them to be safe?  Since the righteous, then, are so lightly esteemed, and so easily taken away, what can we suppose would have happened if any one returning from the dead had recovered life by a recovery of his former condition?  He would assuredly be taken away from the eyes of men, lest, if he were seen or heard, all men with one accord should leave the gods and betake themselves to the worship and religion of the one God.  Therefore it is necessary that the resurrection should take place once only when evil shall have been taken away, since it is befitting that those who have risen again should neither die any more, nor be injured in any way, that they may be able to pass a happy life whose death has been annulled.”  (Divine Institutes, VII. xxii).

   But will evil ever be vanquished?  Not according to some.  Because of their adherence to the Alexandrian mode of Biblical interpretation, they allegorize, spiritualize, and water down all of the prophecies whose doctrinal significance they cannot understand, and render them purely subjective in nature.  In the end, they even make the abolition of evil and the reign of Christ hypothetical events.  It is to be expected, therefore, that these men deny the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises. 

  Perhaps the real reason men hate the Throne of David is because they are Anti-Semitic.  They do not want the Messiah to reign on earth over His elect people–both Jews and Gentiles alike–but would like to see Israel cast off forever, that themselves only may inherit the promises of God.  Gavin Finley, M.D., a keen observer on these trends, writes:

   “After the Second Coming of Messiah the Throne of David will be established upon this earth. Messiah will both minister and reign in righteousness in the two offices of Melchizedek for a thousand years. This is the coming Millennium of Messiah. The spirit of Belial, or rebellion, hates and loathes His coming rule with a passion. (See King David’s song in Psalm 2.) So a hidden spiritual war is being conducted against the Throne of David which is inside the Jewish House of Judah. Evil powers, angelic and human, are targeting Jews, Israelis, Evangelicals, and all who bear testimony to the future rule of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Yeshua Hamashiach our coming Jewish Messiah. This is the root cause and the essential essence of all anti-Semitism. It is a seething hatred against the rulership of the coming “Son of David”. This is the real reason for the raging of the Gentiles, the (heathen), against Israel and Jews. This hostility against the Throne of David and the loathing of the message of Messiah’s Second Coming is purveyed by wicked men agitated by their dark angels. Their hatred is quite understandable. These ruling powers are short timers. They are in stark terror of the pending judgment they are about to face with the coming of Messiah. This is the quintessential root of all Anti-Semitism whether it be the carefully cloaked acts of high government officials, high church dignitaries, or the more blatant and brutish outrages committed by skinheads and neo-Nazis. The word “Anti-Semitism” is clearly an obfuscation. It is a smokescreen hiding something else. The word is a misnomer designed to mislead the unwary. “Anti-Semitism”, at its heart, is really “anti-Throne of David-ism” or “Anti-Messiah-ism”. It is, in fact, the “anti-Jewish”, “Anti-Judah” arm of the spirit of Anti-Christ.“

   Do you believe that the Throne of David will be established?  Or are you a Gnostic/ subjective Christian?  Your own conscience will give you an answer.  But however you decide the question, only know that the Lord’s promises will not fail, nor will Jesus Christ be accounted a false prophet, as you blindly suppose.  Bow down and pay homage to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Admit your lies and distortions of His Holy Word.  For this a Crusade that we are fighting, and the Lord giveth the victory unto them only who keep His faith whole and undefiled. 

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