Books · When Christ Returns — Complete Table of Contents
Humanity’s original vocation, the corruption of power, and the promise of a kingdom received from God
Humanity was told to fill the earth. Why does Genesis soon say the earth was filled with violence?
That contrast brings us to a question beneath the chronology of the last things. Why does Scripture associate redeemed humanity with rule? Why do the resurrected saints participate in Christ’s kingdom? What has gone wrong with human dominion that makes its restoration so significant?
Part XVIII examined the possible relationship between glorified saints and mortal inhabitants of a future earthly kingdom. We now return to the beginning to understand the human vocation behind that discussion.
Genesis presents authority as a gift and a responsibility. Human rebellion corrupts its exercise. By Daniel’s visions, kingdoms appear as beasts that devour and trample. Yet the story also contains a promise: dominion will be entrusted to a ruler whose kingdom endures, and the holy ones will share in its inheritance.
Scripture quotations below are from the public-domain Berean Standard Bible (BSB). The ESV remains the series’ primary reading reference.
1. Humanity receives a vocation before it builds a kingdom
Genesis introduces humanity through God’s own purpose:
“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.’”
— Genesis 1:26
The following verses identify male and female together as God’s image and give them a shared commission:
“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth.’”
— Genesis 1:28
These commands belong together. Being fruitful and multiplying describe the growth of the human family; filling the earth gives that growth its worldwide direction. God’s image-bearers are to inhabit His world and exercise their entrusted responsibility throughout it.
The calling unfolds across generations. Settled communities can serve that purpose, but a collective determination to keep humanity concentrated in one place would resist its outward direction. Read against the earlier commission, Babel’s determination to prevent dispersion represents resistance to humanity’s outward calling, joined to an ambition to establish its own greatness.
Whatever else the image of God includes, Genesis connects it directly with a vocation within creation. Humanity is to represent God’s rule in the world He has made.
This status belongs to humanity, male and female. It is not a distinction earned by becoming powerful, intelligent, prosperous, or politically important. Genesis gives the human family its dignity before describing its achievements.
The chapter also establishes the Creator’s authority over everything humans might otherwise worship. The sun, moon, and stars are created lights assigned their functions by God (Genesis 1:14–18). They occupy their places within His world. Later, Deuteronomy explicitly warns Israel against worshiping them (Deuteronomy 4:19).
Human beings likewise receive their place from God. Their rule remains accountable to Him.
The command is substantial: filling, subduing, and ruling involve responsibility and action. Yet its stated objects are the earth and its creatures; it does not authorize one group of humans to treat other image-bearers as disposable property. Read alongside God’s provision for His creatures and His declaration that creation is good, dominion entails the care appropriate to representing its Maker.
Human authority begins as something entrusted. Its corruption begins when those who receive it behave as though they are its ultimate source.
Psalm 8 preserves the wonder of this calling. The God whose heavens dwarf humanity nevertheless crowns human beings with glory and honor:
“You made him ruler of the works of Your hands;
You have placed everything under his feet.”— Psalm 8:6
The psalm’s framework is worship. Human greatness is received in the presence of a far greater Lord.
2. Eden joins human responsibility to God’s presence
Genesis 2 brings that vocation into the garden:
“Then the LORD God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.”
— Genesis 2:15
Human work begins within God’s generous provision. The garden supplies food, the man receives a task, and God establishes the command that governs his life.
This setting helps explain why G. K. Beale reads Eden as an early sanctuary and Adam’s task as priestly. God’s presence, the cherubim guarding access, and the language of serving and guarding correspond to later sanctuary traditions (Genesis 3:8,24; Exodus 25:18–22; Numbers 3:7–8). Ezekiel’s lament over the king of Tyre likewise joins Eden and God’s holy mountain (Ezekiel 28:12–16).[1]
These connections support a reading of Eden as sacred space. Their force is cumulative. Genesis does not expressly call Adam a priest, and the verbs in Genesis 2:15 can describe ordinary cultivation and care. Ezekiel’s figurative lament also requires interpretation before its details can be transferred directly into Genesis.
Similarly, the idea that humanity was to extend Eden’s ordered life throughout the earth is a reasonable theological inference from the garden setting and the command to fill and subdue the earth. Genesis does not state that assignment in those exact terms.
The secure foundation is already rich: humanity receives life, work, relationship, and responsibility under God’s command. Its vocation belongs within fellowship with Him.
The coming rupture therefore affects far more than humanity’s location.
3. The earth is filled—with violence
Genesis 3 overturns the proper relationship between God, humanity, and creation. The humans listen to the serpent’s challenge to God’s word and take what God has prohibited. Those commissioned to govern living creatures accept a creature’s invitation to distrust their Creator.
Shame, blame, painful toil, and estrangement mark the aftermath. God’s earlier warning about death becomes a sentence: Adam will return to dust, and expulsion bars the way to the tree of life (Genesis 2:17; 3:19,22–24).
Human ability nevertheless continues. People form households, cultivate the land, keep animals, build a city, make music, and work metal (Genesis 4:17–22). Those activities are not all condemned. The narrative places genuine cultural development alongside murder and escalating boasts of vengeance.
Civilization can become more capable while becoming more violent.
By Genesis 6, the problem reaches a devastating scale:
“Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and full of violence.”
— Genesis 6:11
Set that beside Genesis 1:28.
Humanity was commissioned to fill the earth under God’s blessing. The earth has become full of violence. The narrative contrast exposes a corruption of the human calling: expansion has continued while its moral purpose has been betrayed.
Genesis 6:5 locates the disorder within human thought and desire. Verse 6 describes God’s grief over what humanity has become. The judgment that follows concerns a world whose relationships and conduct have been corrupted.
The chapter also contains the disputed account of the sons of God and the Nephilim. We will examine that material in Part XX. Whatever interpretation one adopts there, Genesis explicitly holds human wickedness and violence responsible for the world’s condition.
The presence of a supernatural dimension must never erase human agency. Human beings remain responsible for what they desire, choose, and do.
4. Noah receives the commission again
After the Flood, God blesses Noah and his sons:
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”
— Genesis 9:1, excerpt
Genesis 9:1,7 renews the command to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. The earlier language about subduing the earth and ruling its creatures is not repeated verbatim. Nevertheless, the connection with the original commission is clear: judgment has not brought God’s purpose for humanity on earth to an end. Human life receives a renewed beginning.
Verse 7 reinforces the earthly scope of that commission; the BSB renders part of it “spread out across the earth.” The human family is to grow and inhabit the world God has preserved. This renewed calling supplies the setting for the resistance that appears at Babel.
The conditions have changed. Genesis 9 describes fear between humans and animals, permits animal food with a restriction concerning blood, and demands an accounting for the taking of human life. Its reason is especially significant:
“for in His own image
God has made mankind.”— Genesis 9:6b
Humanity’s vocation has been corrupted, but its God-given dignity remains.
The image of God continues to ground the seriousness of violence against human beings after the Fall. Our reading of dominion must therefore hold authority and accountability together.
Nor has the Flood itself removed the heart’s inclination toward evil. Genesis 8:21 acknowledges that continuing problem before the renewed commission is given. Noah’s righteousness and the reality of God’s favor remain part of the account; the text does not describe every person as equally wicked.
Still, a renewed environment has not, by itself, produced a humanity incapable of rebellion.
That observation anticipates a concern raised in Part XVIII: favorable outward conditions and inward renewal are distinct matters. Genesis establishes that distinction long before we reach the disputed questions surrounding the Millennium.
5. Babel gathers humanity around its own name
Genesis 11 begins with humanity sharing a language and a common form of speech. The people settle on a plain in Shinar and organize a common building project. Their stated purpose exposes the direction of their ambition:
“‘Come,’ they said, ‘let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth.’”
— Genesis 11:4
The final phrase matters. They intend to prevent dispersion.
Read against Genesis 1:28 and 9:1,7, this determination works against the command to fill the earth. God’s commission directs humanity outward; Babel’s project seeks to hold humanity together around a center of its own making.
The objection is not to every city or settled community. Genesis gives us a particular project with an expressly stated purpose: establishing a name and preventing the people from being scattered. Its resistance to the earlier commission emerges from reading these passages together.
The human heart’s disorder has acquired a public project.
The Mesopotamian setting also matters. John Walton has argued that the tower is best understood against the background of ziggurats, monumental structures associated with temple complexes. That is a plausible historical interpretation, although Genesis itself calls the structure a tower and does not explain its ritual function.[2]
Walton does not, however, read the builders’ wish to avoid scattering as disobedience to the earlier commission. He understands the fruitfulness passages primarily as blessings and distinguishes filling the earth through reproduction from geographical separation, locating Babel’s religious problem in the distorted conception of deity associated with Mesopotamian urban life. The reading adopted here rests on the narrative relationship between filling the earth and preventing dispersion; Genesis 11 does not expressly quote a violated command to disperse, and the ziggurat background does not independently establish that interpretation.
We should also avoid assuming that a tower reaching the heavens means the builders expected to climb physically into God’s dwelling. Deuteronomy uses comparable language for exceptionally fortified cities (Deuteronomy 1:28).
The narrative’s irony is unmistakable. The builders envision a tower reaching heaven; the LORD comes down to inspect it.
God then confuses their language so that they cannot understand one another’s speech (Genesis 11:7). Their coordinated project breaks apart:
“So the LORD scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city.”
— Genesis 11:8
Verse 9 connects Babel’s name with the confusion of speech and again identifies the LORD as the One who scattered humanity.
A shared language was not itself the offense. The judgment interrupts the use of human unity for collective self-exaltation and resistance. Through that judgment, God brings about the dispersion the builders sought to prevent.
Yet geographic dispersal does not, by itself, heal the human heart. The nations will carry humanity’s moral and spiritual disorder with them.
This is where the preceding chapter becomes important. Genesis 10, commonly called the Table of Nations, traces peoples through Noah’s sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth. It groups their descendants by families, languages, lands, and nations (Genesis 10:5,20,31).
Traditionally counted as seventy nations in the Hebrew text, the table presents the ancient human world through its peoples, territories, and relationships. Its many branches belong to one human family.[5] Its closing statement explains:
“From these the nations of the earth spread out after the flood.”
— Genesis 10:32b
The chapter order deserves attention. Genesis 10 already describes differentiated languages, while Genesis 11:1 returns to a setting with one common language. The arrangement is best read as an overview followed by a closer explanation: chapter 10 displays the world of nations, and 11:1–9 looks back to the division that helps explain it.
Babel also appears among the early centers of Nimrod’s kingdom in Genesis 10:10. The account of the nations is already intertwined with the growth of human political power.
Israel does not yet appear in the table as an established nation. After the scattering account, Genesis follows one line from Shem through Terah to Abram (Genesis 11:10–32).
The narrative moves from the whole human family, to the scattered nations, to one family through whom God will address their need.
6. Abraham receives the name Babel tried to make
Genesis 12 opens with God’s instruction to Abram to leave his country, his kindred, and his father’s household for a land God will show him (Genesis 12:1).
The contrast with Babel is striking. The builders seek security by preventing their dispersion; Abram is called to entrust his future to the God who tells him to leave.
They seek to make a name for themselves. God tells Abram:
“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
so that you will be a blessing.”— Genesis 12:2
God is setting apart a man and promising to form a people through him. The covenant line will continue through Isaac and Jacob, whom God names Israel (Genesis 17:19; 32:28).
The promise depends on God’s faithfulness from its beginning. Genesis has just told us that Sarai has no children (Genesis 11:30). The family through whom a nation is promised cannot produce that future simply by organizing its own strength.
Joshua later places this calling within a world of other gods. Israel’s ancestors, including Terah, lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods; then God took Abraham from beyond the river and led him through Canaan (Joshua 24:2–3).
Abram’s calling therefore involves loyalty to the LORD as well as a new destination. God begins the covenant people who will belong particularly to Him within the world of the nations.
Later Scripture adds a further dimension to that setting.
Deuteronomy 32:8 looks back to the Most High’s division of humanity and the establishment of the peoples’ boundaries:
“He set the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.”— Deuteronomy 32:8b
Verse 9 then identifies Jacob—Israel—as the LORD’s own allotted people.
There is an important ancient textual difference here:
The traditional Masoretic Hebrew text reads sons of Israel.
A Dead Sea Scrolls witness preserves sons of God, the reading followed by the BSB and ESV.
The common Septuagint rendering is angels of God, likewise pointing toward heavenly beings.
The Masoretic reading can be understood as placing Israel at the center of God’s ordering of the nations; some interpreters connect it with the seventy members of Jacob’s household who went to Egypt (Genesis 46:27; Exodus 1:5). The other reading connects the division with heavenly beings. This difference matters to the interpretation and should be visible to the reader.[5]
Deuteronomy 4:19–20 provides a related contrast. The heavenly host is associated with what God has apportioned to the nations, while Israel has been brought out of Egypt to belong especially to Him. The passage expressly warns Israel against worshiping that host.
The apportionment language has also been understood as referring to the heavenly lights provided for all peoples. On that reading, the passage contrasts God’s provision for humanity with Israel’s particular covenant belonging, without itself assigning each nation a heavenly governor. The prohibition of worship and Israel’s status as God’s own people are explicit; the fuller account of heavenly rule requires comparison with the other passages.
Michael Heiser develops these connections into an interpretation of Babel and the nations: in judgment, God gives the rebellious nations over to the governance of lesser heavenly beings while beginning His own covenant people through Abraham. On this reading, the nations’ political and religious histories have a heavenly dimension.[5]
Deuteronomy 32:8–9 supplies a heavenly dimension to the division of humanity: the nations are ordered according to the sons of God, while Israel is identified as the LORD’s own portion. This contrast provides substantial grounds for understanding the nations as allotted to subordinate heavenly rulers. Read alongside Genesis 10–11, it supports Heiser’s understanding that Babel’s scattering involved both an earthly division and a heavenly allocation of authority. Genesis describes the confusion of language and dispersion; Deuteronomy helps explain the larger significance of that division. The connection requires interpretation, but it rests on specific textual evidence.
Daniel later portrays conflict involving princes associated with Persia and Greece, alongside Michael, the prince associated with Daniel’s people (Daniel 10:13,20–21). This supplies a more explicit biblical picture of a heavenly dimension to the nations’ affairs, although it does not date the origin of those relationships to Babel.
Psalm 82 contributes another part of the picture. God judges the beings called gods for injustice and failure to defend the weak. On the heavenly-ruler reading, the psalm holds the spiritual governors of the nations accountable for corrupted authority. Other interpreters understand its defendants as human rulers or judges; we will examine that disagreement more fully in Part XX.
The psalm ends with a remarkable appeal:
“Arise, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are Your inheritance.”— Psalm 82:8
The LORD’s particular claim upon Israel belongs within His sovereignty over the whole world. At Sinai, He calls Israel to be His treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation, while affirming that the entire earth belongs to Him (Exodus 19:5–6).
Accordingly, the heavenly beings in this interpretation remain subordinate and accountable to God. Their authority does not make them His equals, and their injustice comes under His judgment. These passages also do not provide a detailed chronology of when each heavenly being became rebellious.
The significance for Abram’s calling is substantial. God is forming a people devoted to Himself amid nations whose worship and authority have become disordered.
But His purpose for the other nations remains visible in the promise itself:
“and all the families of the earth
will be blessed through you.”— Genesis 12:3b
God calls one family with all the families of the earth in view.
At Babel, greatness is pursued through a collective project centered on human reputation. In Abram’s calling, greatness is received from God and directed toward the blessing of others.
The separation of Abram serves that larger purpose. God’s answer to the nations’ disorder includes a particular covenant people through whom His blessing will reach beyond their own boundaries.
This is why Israel’s story matters to the larger human story. Paul explicitly connects the promise to Abraham with the gospel reaching the Gentiles through faith (Galatians 3:8–9), and identifies Christ as the promised offspring through whom the blessing comes (Galatians 3:14,16).
The later failures of Israel and its kings show how deeply the problem runs. Receiving a vocation does not guarantee its faithful exercise. Yet human failure does not cancel God’s commitment to bring blessing.
The promise continues toward the Messiah.
7. Daniel exposes the predatory character of corrupted rule
Daniel brings the question of human dominion into the world of great kingdoms.
In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar sees a magnificent statue composed of different materials. Daniel identifies its golden head with the Babylonian king and explains the following portions as succeeding kingdoms. A stone cut without human hands strikes the statue; the stone becomes a mountain filling the whole earth (Daniel 2:31–45).
The interpretation locates the decisive kingdom’s origin in God:
“In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people.”
— Daniel 2:44a
Daniel 7 presents another succession of kingdoms, this time through terrifying creatures rising from the sea. The fourth beast devours, crushes, and tramples. Its arrogant horn wages war against the holy ones (Daniel 7:7–8,21).
The interpretation identifies the beasts with kings and kingdoms (Daniel 7:17,23). These symbols concern actual political power. They also disclose its destructive character.
Read alongside Genesis, the contrast is powerful: the human family was commissioned to govern the creatures under God; human kingdoms now appear as devouring creatures themselves.
This is a theological connection between the books, rather than an explicit statement that Daniel is explaining Genesis 1. It does not require us to say that rulers cease to bear God’s image. The imagery exposes predatory conduct and corrupted authority.
Power entrusted for the flourishing of creation has become power that feeds on it.
The historical identification of the four kingdoms remains disputed. A long-standing Christian reading understands Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. It treats Media and Persia as one kingdom and places Greece before Rome. Daniel 8:20–21 contributes to that reading: its two-horned ram represents the kings of Media and Persia, while the goat represents Greece. Those identifications help explain the combined Medo-Persian reading, although they do not independently settle every identification in Daniel 2 and 7.
Another reading understands Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece. It distinguishes Media from Persia in these visions and identifies the fourth kingdom’s persecuting horn particularly with Antiochus IV, comparing the attacks on God’s people and worship described elsewhere in Daniel (Daniel 8:9–14,20–25; 11:21–35).[3]
The disagreement therefore involves how the visions correspond, how Media and Persia are arranged, and which ruler best fits the persecution. Neither four-name sequence is simply supplied as a list in Daniel 7.
Those differences matter when constructing a chronology. For our present question, both readings recognize Daniel’s contrast between oppressive earthly kingdoms and God’s enduring kingdom.
Daniel also prevents an oversimplification. God grants authority even to Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2:37–38), and the third beast is given dominion (Daniel 7:6). An authority’s dependence on God does not mean that God approves everything done with it.
Daniel 2:38 includes people, wild animals, and birds within the king’s received authority. This royal language recalls Genesis’s dominion theme and sharpens the contrast with his later beastlike humiliation, without expressly announcing an interpretation of Genesis or requiring that Nebuchadnezzar personally controlled every creature.
The decisive questions include how power is exercised, to whom it is accountable, and how God will judge it.
Daniel 4 makes that personal. Nebuchadnezzar boasts in his own greatness, is brought to live like a beast, and recovers his reason when he acknowledges heaven’s rule. Daniel’s earlier counsel gives righteous conduct practical content: abandon sin and show mercy to the oppressed (Daniel 4:27–37).
Daniel 7:4 adds a suggestive detail: the first beast is raised to stand like a human and receives a human mind. That image can be read alongside Nebuchadnezzar’s humbling and restoration, although Daniel 7 does not expressly identify the change by referring to his story.
Acknowledging God’s sovereignty should change how a ruler treats vulnerable people. The recognition of heaven’s rule has consequences for life on earth.
8. The humanlike figure receives the kingdom
Daniel’s vision does not end with beasts.
The heavenly court convenes, the books are opened, and the arrogant kingdom faces judgment. Then Daniel sees:
“In my vision in the night I continued to watch, and I saw One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence.
“And He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”
— Daniel 7:13–14
Daniel’s wording deserves attention. This chapter is written in Aramaic. The expression kəbar ʾĕnāš means approximately “like a son of man,” or “like a human being.” The BSB acknowledges the first wording in its footnote, and the ESV uses it in the main text. The capitalization and definite wording in the BSB quotation above reflect a translation choice.[4]
The immediate contrast is therefore significant: after the beasts, Daniel sees a humanlike figure. His coming with heaven’s clouds and receiving universal dominion give him extraordinary significance. His identity must be considered through the vision as a whole and its later biblical reception.
The direction of movement also matters. In this scene, the figure approaches the Ancient of Days. The passage depicts presentation before God and the reception of kingship; it does not itself describe a descent to earth. Later uses of this imagery must also be read in their own contexts; this observation alone does not determine the timing of every New Testament cloud-coming passage.
Daniel’s own interpretation then joins the kingdom’s inheritance to the holy ones:
“But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and possess it forever—yes, forever and ever.”
— Daniel 7:18
Daniel describes their apparent defeat and eventual inheritance:
“As I watched, this horn was waging war against the saints and prevailing against them … and the time came for them to possess the kingdom.”
— Daniel 7:21–22, excerpts
The decisive intervention between those statements is the Ancient of Days’ arrival and judgment in the saints’ favor. Their persecutor does not have the final word. Verse 27 again places the kingdom in relation to the people of the holy ones.
Who are these holy ones? Daniel uses related language for heavenly beings elsewhere, particularly in the account of the heavenly watchers in Daniel 4:13,17,23. In Daniel 7, the persecution and the reference to a people support the familiar reading in which God’s faithful people inherit the kingdom. Other interpreters emphasize heavenly beings or a relationship between heavenly representatives and the people they represent.[4]
We should acknowledge that discussion without losing the vision’s concern with persecution, vindication, and the kingdom’s inheritance. The fuller relationship between heavenly powers and earthly peoples belongs in the next article.
Interpreters also debate whether the humanlike figure should be understood primarily as the holy ones’ representative symbol, a distinct heavenly or messianic ruler, or a figure combining personal and representative significance. The relationship between this figure and the holy ones must be considered within Daniel’s vision before we bring later texts to bear.
What is clear is the reversal: those oppressed by beastly rule receive the kingdom through God’s judgment.
Their future rests on God’s verdict. The beast’s ability to overpower them for a time does not establish its right to possess the world forever.
The beasts can seize power for a time. They cannot decide who will inherit the kingdom.
9. The New Testament brings these hopes together in Christ
Jesus applies Daniel’s cloud-coming Son of Man language to Himself, notably before the high priest (Mark 14:61–62). His answer brings together Daniel 7:13 and Psalm 110:1: the Son of Man will be seen at the right hand of Power and coming with heaven’s clouds. The Christian identification therefore arises from the New Testament’s own use of these passages.
Jesus also gives the question of authority a searching practical answer. In Mark 10, James and John seek places of honor beside Him in His glory. Jesus responds by contrasting the domination exercised by rulers with the service required among His followers (Mark 10:35–44).
He then places His own mission at the center of that teaching:
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
— Mark 10:45
Read alongside Daniel, the connection is profound. The Son of Man associated with enduring dominion gives His own life for others. His service reveals the character of His kingship; His authority also includes the judgment of evil.
The King who overcomes beastly power also confronts the appetite to dominate within those who follow Him.
Paul develops a related theme through Adam and Christ. Romans 5:12–19 contrasts the consequences of Adam’s disobedience with the saving obedience of Christ. Adam’s trespass brings condemnation and death; Christ brings the gracious gift of righteousness and life. Paul’s comparison culminates in the promise that:
“so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”
— Romans 5:19b
This restoration rests on what Christ accomplishes for sinners. The people who will share His reign first receive His grace. Romans 5:17 connects their reigning in life with the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness received through Jesus Christ.
First Corinthians 15 connects the Adam–Christ contrast directly with resurrection:
“For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.”
— 1 Corinthians 15:21
Paul later calls Christ the last Adam and promises that those who belong to Him will bear the likeness of the heavenly man (1 Corinthians 15:45–49).
Colossians identifies the Son as the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). It also describes a renewal already taking place among His people. They have put off the old self and its practices:
“and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”
— Colossians 3:10
The surrounding exhortation concerns how believers live together: falsehood and the old divisions must give way to a common life in Christ (Colossians 3:9–11). Renewal in God’s image therefore has present moral and communal consequences. Genesis 9:6 still grounds the dignity of every human being; people outside Christ have not ceased to be image-bearers.
Paul’s resurrection argument also reaches beyond present renewal. In 1 Corinthians 15:42–49, bearing the heavenly man’s likeness belongs to the transformation from a body sown in decay, dishonor, and weakness to one raised in imperishable glory and power. The Last Adam brings His people into an embodied future appropriate to His victory. Present regeneration and future bodily glorification belong to the same saving work, but they are distinguishable gifts. Their fuller relationship will be examined in Part XXV.
Daniel does not call his humanlike figure the last Adam. That connection belongs to a broader Christian reading in which Daniel’s kingdom vision and Paul’s teaching converge in the same Messiah.
Hebrews makes the connection with humanity’s original vocation particularly clear. It introduces the world to come by saying that God has not subjected it to angels (Hebrews 2:5). It then quotes Psalm 8’s language about humanity crowned with glory and honor and everything being placed under human feet. The contrast between the calling and our present experience leads directly to Jesus:
“Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus”
— Hebrews 2:8b–9a, excerpt
The next words describe Jesus crowned with glory and honor through His suffering and death. Verse 10 extends the promise to the many whom God brings into glory through their Savior’s suffering. Humanity’s unfulfilled vocation finds its answer in the One who shares our condition and opens that future to His people (Hebrews 2:5–11).
A translation detail helps explain the connection. Psalm 8:5 uses the Hebrew word ʾelohim, rendered here as God, heavenly beings, or angels in different translations. The Greek Psalter uses angels, as does Hebrews. The Greek expression brachy ti can indicate degree, “a little lower,” or duration, “for a little while.” The latter reading emphasizes the temporary humiliation preceding Jesus’ exaltation. These are contextual translation questions; they neither establish a universal meaning for ʾelohim nor demonstrate corruption of the Hebrew text.[8]
The fulfillment of humanity’s calling is bound to Him.
First Corinthians 15:24–28 likewise joins Christ’s reign to the defeat of hostile powers and, finally, death. Resurrection, rightful rule, and the overcoming of humanity’s deepest enemy belong together. Paul’s account culminates in Christ’s delivery of the kingdom to God the Father and the Son’s subjection to Him, so that God may be all in all. Later in the chapter, Paul connects believers’ resurrection and transformation with the fulfillment of the promise that death is swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:51–54).
The passage does not itself specify a thousand-year interval between the resurrection of Christ’s people and the consummation. How these statements relate to Revelation 20—including whether the combined texts warrant distinguishing the saints’ deathlessness from death’s final universal abolition—requires the fuller comparison in Part XXVI.
Ephesians makes Christ’s present enthronement explicit. God raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in heaven, above every rule, authority, power, and dominion, in this age and the age to come (Ephesians 1:20–21). Paul continues:
“And God put everything under His feet and made Him head over everything for the church,”
— Ephesians 1:22
The language of everything under His feet echoes Psalm 8. The following verse identifies the church as His body (Ephesians 1:23). The exalted Christ already reigns, and His authority concerns His people’s present life as well as their future inheritance. What we await is the complete manifestation of His victory, including the abolition of death; His kingship has already begun.
The cross has already secured a decisive victory over hostile powers. Scripture also looks ahead to the final removal of evil and death. Colossians describes what God has accomplished:
“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
— Colossians 2:15
Future judgment brings Christ’s victory to its appointed completion. It does not require us to imagine that the nations lie beyond His authority until then. The same passage identifies Christ as the head over every ruler and authority (Colossians 2:10).
Heiser’s wider account of the nations preserves this present dimension. In his treatment of Acts 1, the mission beginning in Jerusalem belongs to God’s reclamation of the nations. The kingdom has been inaugurated, and its promises still await their complete fulfillment.[6]
This helps connect the promise to Abraham with the worldwide mission of Christ’s people. God’s purpose for the nations is already advancing through the gospel.
But Scripture also joins the nations’ future with authority shared by the Messiah’s faithful people.
Psalm 2 portrays the nations and their rulers resisting the LORD and His Anointed. God answers their defiance by establishing His King. He then promises:
“Ask Me, and I will make the nations Your inheritance,
the ends of the earth Your possession.”— Psalm 2:8
Revelation applies this royal expectation to Christ and brings His followers into its fulfillment. To the faithful overcomer, Jesus promises:
“And to the one who overcomes and continues in My work until the end, I will give authority over the nations.”
— Revelation 2:26
The following verse echoes Psalm 2’s iron-scepter imagery and explicitly relates this authority to what Christ has received from His Father (Revelation 2:27).
Read these passages alongside the conclusion of Psalm 82. God is called upon to judge the earth and inherit the nations. Psalm 2 promises the nations to His Anointed. Revelation promises that Christ’s faithful people will share His authority over them.
The nations’ story moves toward righteous rule under the Messiah, with His people participating in authority He gives.
Everything in that promise remains a gift. The redeemed rule with Christ and under His authority. Their inheritance expresses His victory.
Paul’s statement that the saints will judge the world and angels belongs within this larger picture (1 Corinthians 6:2–3). His immediate concern is the Corinthians’ handling of disputes, but his argument appeals to their future participation in judgment. Those entrusted with such a future should learn to act justly now.
The passage does not identify every angel involved or describe a complete replacement of heavenly government by glorified humans. The established point is substantial enough: redeemed humanity has a participatory role in the exercise of God’s judgment.
Revelation 20 then joins resurrection and rule:
“And they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.”
— Revelation 20:4b
Within the future bodily-resurrection reading developed earlier in this series, the connection is extraordinary. People whom beastly power persecuted are raised to share the reign of the true King. Their resurrection overturns the apparent success of the persecutor.
The world in which human rule became predatory becomes the setting, on this reading, for human rule restored under Christ.
This gives the Millennium a meaningful place within the larger biblical story. Genesis establishes humanity’s vocation; Daniel exposes its corruption and promises a different kingdom; the New Testament identifies the faithful King and promises His people participation in His reign.
That is a theological reason the proposed earthly kingdom matters. The arguments for its timing and duration still come from the relevant prophetic passages. Amillennial interpreters also affirm Christ’s victory and humanity’s final restoration, while locating the thousand-year reign within the present age. The broad creation-to-restoration pattern supports the significance of righteous rule without independently deciding that disagreement.
The distinction made in Part XVIII applies here: confidence in Christ’s victory, resurrection, and His people’s shared rule is stronger than confidence in the proposed intermediate kingdom containing mortal inhabitants. The vocation argument supplies neither that kingdom’s founding population nor its exact duration; those remain distinct questions requiring their own evidence.
Revelation 20 specifically names Satan’s restraint from deceiving the nations. The judgment of other rebellious spiritual powers belongs to the wider biblical argument; the chapter does not separately date the removal of every such being.
The fuller investigation of redeemed humanity’s rule belongs in Part XXIII. Here the connection with the beginning has become clear: the God who entrusted humanity with responsibility for His world brings that calling toward fulfillment through the Last Adam.
Christ’s victory reaches into the calling humanity has so grievously corrupted. In Him, the prospect of human rule can become a promise of blessing again.
10. The next question lies beyond human politics
Restored government brings us back to another feature of Eden: humanity’s access to life in God’s presence.
The problems exposed in Genesis belong together. Human beings distrust their Creator, corrupt their calling, become estranged from Him, and are barred from the tree of life. God’s answer must reach both the conduct of human beings and their condition.
This helps explain why the story continues beyond the establishment of righteous rule.
On the premillennial reading, the final rebellion follows an extraordinary period under Christ’s reign. Satan’s release and renewed deception precede that revolt (Revelation 20:7–9). The rebellion suggests that favorable conditions have not made all their inhabitants inwardly faithful.
Righteous government does not, by itself, regenerate the governed.
That distinction already appeared after the Flood: a renewed world did not remove the heart’s inclination toward evil. It does not mean every mortal person is unregenerate. Paul describes believers who already possess the Spirit while still awaiting the redemption of their bodies (Romans 8:9–11,23). Present renewal and future bodily transformation are related gifts with distinguishable roles.
The implications for the final rebellion and glorification will receive their fuller treatment later. For now, the destination of the story helps us understand the scale of the promise.
In Genesis, access to the tree of life is barred (Genesis 3:22–24). In Revelation, Christ promises the overcomer access to that tree in God’s Paradise (Revelation 2:7). The closing vision then places it beside the river flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:1–2).
Ezekiel supplies an important connection between these scenes. His vision describes water flowing from the sanctuary and trees bearing fruit month after month, with leaves used for healing (Ezekiel 47:1,12). Revelation gathers the river, life-giving fruit, and healing leaves into its description of the holy city.
The leaves now concern the healing of the nations. The peoples whose disorder we have traced from Babel appear within the final vision of God’s provision for His world.
John places this healing within a world where death and pain have passed away and entry into the city belongs to those written in the Lamb’s book of life (Revelation 21:4,27). The image therefore portrays the nations sharing in God’s restored life and wholeness.
There the curse is gone, God’s servants see His face, and their calling includes an enduring reign:
“and they will reign forever and ever.”
— Revelation 22:5b
Life, divine presence, the nations, and human rule converge.
The ending answers the beginning: life with God and rule under God belong together.
This final tree-of-life scene belongs to the New Jerusalem vision. In John’s presentation, it follows the final judgment and belongs to the new heaven and new earth, where death has ended (Revelation 20:11–21:4; 22:1–5).
Within the premillennial reading, the thousand years are a distinct stage in the kingdom’s unfolding. Daniel’s everlasting dominion and Revelation’s final promise of unending reign reach beyond that period. The Millennium therefore remains distinguishable from the final new-creation condition, when creation is free from death and the curse.[7]
The connections gain their force as the passages illuminate one another. Genesis establishes the calling and the rupture. Daniel exposes corrupted dominion and anticipates the kingdom’s inheritance. The New Testament brings these hopes together in Christ. Revelation portrays their consummation. Each passage contributes to the larger picture while retaining its own setting and purpose.
Yet one dimension of that picture still needs closer investigation.
Isaiah places judgment on earthly rulers alongside judgment in the heavenly realm:
“In that day the LORD will punish
the host of heaven above
and the kings of the earth below.”— Isaiah 24:21
The following verses describe confinement, punishment after many days, and the LORD reigning gloriously in Zion (Isaiah 24:22–23). The passage gives no thousand-year duration. It does, however, place heavenly and earthly opposition within the scope of the judgment associated with God’s reign.
Revelation develops the relationship between the visible and unseen realms through imagery already familiar from Daniel.
Its beast rises from the sea and combines features of a leopard, a bear, and a lion, together with the ten horns associated with Daniel’s fourth beast (Revelation 13:1–2; Daniel 7:3–7). Its war against the saints recalls the persecuting horn in Daniel’s vision (Revelation 13:7; Daniel 7:21).
These correspondences give the connection a direct literary foundation. John gathers Daniel’s imagery into a further portrayal of power at war with God and His people.
Then Revelation identifies the source of the beast’s power, throne, and great authority: the dragon (Revelation 13:2).
Human beings remain responsible for the kingdoms they build and the loyalties they choose. But those kingdoms can participate in a rebellion extending beyond their human rulers.
What, then, does Scripture reveal about the powers associated with the nations—and how does their judgment belong to God’s purpose to reclaim His world?
Next: Part XX — The Nations and the Unseen Rebellion
Scripture and source notes
[1] G. K. Beale, “Adam as the First Priest in Eden as the Garden Temple,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 22.2 (2018), 9–24, especially 10–14. Read the article. Beale develops the sanctuary interpretation more extensively than the limited claim made here; his individual proposals require their own evaluation.
[2] John H. Walton, “The Mesopotamian Background of the Tower of Babel Account and Its Implications,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 5 (1995), 155–175. An authorized reprint of the article is available under the title “Is There Archaeological Evidence for the Tower of Babel?”. Walton rejects the interpretation that the builders disobeyed by resisting dispersion; his argument about ziggurats should be distinguished from that separate question. The historical background supports consideration of a temple tower; it does not establish every proposed identification or motive.
[3] For an argument for the Babylon–Media–Persia–Greece reading, see Robert J. M. Gurney, “The Four Kingdoms of Daniel 2 and 7,” Themelios 2.2 (January 1977), 39–45. Its inclusion documents an alternative and does not adopt all of that article’s historical or chronological proposals. This identification is not confined to interpreters who reject predictive prophecy; Gurney develops it within an argument that affirms prophecy.
[4] For the wording of Daniel 7:13, compare the BSB text and translation footnote, the ESV rendering, and the Aramaic text. For a concise account of differing interpretations of the humanlike figure and the holy ones, see the USCCB notes on Daniel 7:13–14 and 7:18. These notes document interpretive alternatives; their inclusion does not adopt every conclusion in that commentary.
[5] For the textual witnesses and interpretive alternatives in Deuteronomy 32:8–9, see the BSB translation note and the NET Bible notes. Michael S. Heiser argues for the heavenly-being interpretation and its connection with the nations in “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God,” Bibliotheca Sacra 158.629 (January–March 2001), 52–74. This article also discusses the traditional count of seventy nations in Genesis 10. The manuscript evidence, the identification of the beings, and the proposed relationship to Babel are related questions that must be distinguished. For a narrative example of conflict involving princes associated with nations, compare Daniel 10:13,20–21.
[6] Related reading: Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible(Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015). For the present and future dimensions discussed here, see his Naked Bible Podcast 35, “Acts 1:1–11,” February 2015, and the official transcript, especially its discussion of Jerusalem, the nations, and the inaugurated kingdom. That discussion supports the international scope and present beginning of restoration; it is not cited as Heiser’s endorsement of this series’ complete millennial chronology.
[7] For the connections developed in Sections 9–10, read Psalm 2, Revelation 2:26–27, 1 Corinthians 6:2–3, Colossians 2:10–15, and Revelation 20 in their own contexts. Compare Isaiah 24:21–23 for heavenly and earthly judgment, and Ezekiel 47:12 with Revelation 22:1–5 for the fruit, healing leaves, divine presence, and enduring reign. Together these texts support a wider restoration argument; their relationship does not make every scene simultaneous or assign the same chronology to every interpretive model.
[8] For Psalm 8’s wording, compare the Hebrew text of Psalm 8:5, the BSB translation note, and Brenton’s translation of the Greek Psalter. Read Hebrews 2:5–11 and its translation note alongside the Greek wording of Hebrews 2:7. For the related arguments about salvation, image, resurrection, and present enthronement, compare Romans 5:12–19, Colossians 1:15–20, Colossians 3:9–11, 1 Corinthians 15:20–28,42–54, and Ephesians 1:20–23. These passages connect restored humanity with Christ’s saving work and authority; they must still be distinguished from arguments about a particular millennial chronology.