GLORY CLOUD COVERS MILLENNIAL TEMPLE. “…they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other” (Mt. 24:30-31).
We find “great glory” in only one other Scripture (except for the parallel passage in Lk. 21:27). Proverbs 28:12 says, “When the righteous triumph, there is great glory.”
Assuredly, the righteous will triumph in the Second Coming. Jesus will come on the clouds with great glory. Out of His glory cloud He will send angels. The angels will gather His raptured elect into His glory cloud.
There Christ “will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory” (Php. 3:21). In our glorified bodies, we will follow Christ in heavenly armies when He returns to earth (Rev. 19:14-15).
Christ comes to His temple
After vanquishing His enemies who gathered at Armageddon, He will suddenly come to His temple (Mal. 3:1). From His temple Christ will reign with us for 1000 years. Some of us will serve His kingdom as priests in His temple. Moreover, some may act as Jews to the Jews to win them to Christ (see Millennial Kingdom Priests Will Show the Way of Christ).
But where will the glorified bodies of all the millions, perhaps billions, of glorified believers live? We can answer that question after we have established that they cannot live as unglorified humans do on the land.
In Ezekiel 45-48, the prophet clearly maps out where in the land of Israel the twelve tribes, Levites and priests will live during the Millennium. (They will include “people who are gathered from the nations”, Ezek.38:10-14). The priests’ allotment will surround the temple, where Christ “will dwell in your midst” (Zech. 2:10,11).
Glorified saints and Jewish survivors
But these twelve tribes, Levites and priests will not be raptured believers. They will be survivors of the Great Tribulation who neither received Christ nor the mark of the Antichrist. They will not have glorified bodies. Their priests will eat, drink, and get married (Ezek. 44:21-31). In contrast, raptured believers “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven” (Mt. 22:30).
At times these priests will experience defilement, and offer sin offerings for themselves as well as for the people. But before long the Lord will bring such conviction on them as to cleanse them from sin.
He will pour out on Jerusalem “the Spirit of grace and supplication.” In response “they will look on Me whom they have pierced, and they will mourn for Him… In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and impurity” (Zech. 12:10; 13:1).
Jerusalem purged and glorified
The Lord will wash away the sin from Jerusalem and call its people holy:
“It will come about that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy — everyone who is recorded for life in Jerusalem. When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and purged the bloodshed of Jerusalem from her midst, by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning, then the Lord will create over the whole area of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, even smoke, and the brightness of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory will be a canopy” (Isa. 4:2-5).
Once the Lord has washed away the sin of Zion, He will create over Zion a cloud by day and fire by night. We have already seen that Christ will return in a cloud of great glory. And that He will send angels from that cloud to gather raptured believers into that cloud.
Accordingly, we can surmise that raptured believers will live in that great glory cloud over Zion. Jesus will dwell in the greatest glory in the center of Zion in the temple (Isa. 24:23). His glory will fill the temple and the glory cloud. And when He washes away the sin of Zion, “all the glory” will cover Jerusalem (Isa. 4:5).
Upcoming: Ever Increasing Glory from Temple to World
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