Her bridal attire and her festal array
All nature shall wear on that glorious day;
For her King cometh down, with His people to reign,
And His presence shall bless her with Eden again.
Horatius Bonar’s hymn of millennial expectation climaxes with the hope of Eden restored at the return of Christ when a groaning creation will be “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21).1 As the creation’s groaning seems to grow ever more intense, and what Wordsworth called “the still sad music of humanity” continuing to crescendo, the prospect of Eden restored seems ever more remarkable. More remarkable still is the fact that the Millennium will not just be Eden again; the ultimate outcome of God’s redemptive project will bring this world to heights unknown even before the Fall. It is nonetheless true that the Millennium will see the implementation of God’s initial purpose for the planet; mankind will, once again, inhabit a world free from the effects of the curse. And, because work was part of God’s original design for humanity, the Millennium too will involve work.
Some of that labor will be physical. In Eden, God’s intention was that Adam and Eve would work to “dress” and “keep” the garden (Gen 2:15). Much has been written about the implications of these two verbs, but, at a minimum, they speak of action, effort and service. In the context of Eden, that work was horticultural: tending to the garden that God had planted. In the Millennium, too, dressing and keeping will be required. This will be true in a particular way at the beginning of the Millennium as a massive clean-up operation will be required following the horrors of the Tribulation and the slaughter of Armageddon. It is clear from passages such as Zechariah 14 that Christ’s return will involve massive seismic reconfigurations, and the rubble of cities will need to be removed and new dwellings built. God promises, “In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded” (Eze 36:33). Amos 9:14 records God’s promise that “I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.”
Similarly, the city of Jerusalem and Ezekiel’s temple will need to be built, and although Isaiah 44:26 tells us that God says “to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof,” and Zechariah 6:12 promises that “he shall build the temple of the LORD,” Zechariah 6:15 makes it clear that this building will be accomplished by human agency, just as the divinely decreed rebuilding of the temple under Cyrus and Zerubbabel was.
That activity will be needed at the beginning of the Millennium, but dressing and keeping will continue through the reign of Christ. Agriculture will be important to meet the food needs of the citizens of the Millennial Kingdom, but it will be a very different enterprise in a creation that is no longer groaning and travailing. Isaiah 65 speaks of the building of houses and the planting of vineyards and includes the precious assurance that “they shall not labor in vain” (v23). Ezekiel 36:35 predicts such fruitfulness that those who observe it will exclaim, “This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden.” Even the least productive parts of the planet will be transformed into fruitfulness: “the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose” (Isa 35:1), and “there shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon” (Psa 72:16). The fecundity of creation will be almost unmanageable: “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt” (Amo 9:13). Fertilizers, pesticides and genetic modification will have no role in the agriculture of a restored creation.
For Adam and Eve, dressing and keeping involved not just cultivation but also administration. This is seen in God’s delegation of the naming of animals to Adam (Gen 2:19). Up to this point, it has been God who has named things, imposing order and identity on creation. Now Adam carries on God’s work. In the Millennium, too, there will be delegation of administration. Christ will have ultimate responsibility, for “the government shall be upon his shoulder” (Isa 9:6), but Luke 19 makes it clear that those who have “occupied” faithfully in Christ’s absence will have responsibility for the administration of the millennial earth, entrusted with “authority” over cities. Perhaps more remarkably, Paul asks the Corinthians, “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1Co 6:3), language that anticipates administrative, rather than juridical, responsibility. Like the Corinthians, we should be more conscious that we are presently “training for reigning”; that those who have proven their faithfulness in the “very little” of this world will be rewarded with responsibility in the coming kingdom (Luk 19:17).
Adam and Eve were busy in Eden, but it would be difficult to imagine that their tending of the garden or their administrative responsibilities would ever have interfered with those occasions when, in the cool of the day, they walked with God. Similarly, the Millennium will involve a range of spiritual activity: from the nations who will come to Jerusalem for the feasts, from Israel who will, at last, fulfil her purpose to be “a kingdom of priests,” and from the priests who will be engaged in service and sacrifice in Ezekiel’s temple. We will not be excluded from this service, for, says Revelation 22, “his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads” (vv3-4). Whether we locate this verse in the Millennium or the Eternal State makes little difference in this context; it will be our portion to be occupied with Him and engaged in priestly service through the long Millennial day and out into eternity.
1 Bible quotations in this article are from the KJV.
