According to the Scripture, the next age will be the 1,000 year reign of Christ upon the earth, the “Millennium”; the eternal age in the new heaven and new earth will begin only after the 1,000 years has been completed (Rev. 20:1-6, 21:1). It is crucial for us as the believers in Christ to realize this, because the Scripture leaves no doubt that, for some Christians, the Millennium will be a time, not of blessing, but of discipline, and even punishment, before all the believers enter into the state of full blessing with the Lord in eternity.

(For more on the Millennium see the most recent edition of my podcast, “The Millennium, the 1,000 Year Reign of Christ Upon the Earth.”)

Yet, while the fact of this discipline is clearly spelled out in Scripture, the details of how it will be carried out are not. As D.M. Panton states in The Judgment Seat of Christ, his classic work on this topic,

Let us grant (if we choose) that God has shrouded the temporary fate of the excluded in impenetrable mystery, the fact of exclusion remains.
— page 76

It seems all we see in Scripture are hints, here are there, of what this punishment might be. For example, one important question regarding this discipline is, Will it last for the entire 1,000 years, or only for a part of that time? I’m certainly not aware of any answer to this question in the Scripture.

What we can do, however, is simply look at examples of how the excluded believers will be dealt with, and draw conclusions from that. And one important conclusion we are able to draw is that there will be varying degrees of punishment for the unfaithful believers. For example, the Lord Himself states this explicitly when He says that some servants will be “beaten with many stripes,” while others will be “beaten with few,” depending of what they knew of their master’s will (Luke 12:47-48).

But, we can also see this principle of varying punishments by considering a number of the portions of Scripture that show us the punishment of the believers. And in doing so we can also gain some idea of what these punishments will be like.

Some, it seems, will only lose their reward, which is already very serious, but may receive no further punishment; these may very well still be in a place of some kind of blessing in the next age. Panton indicates that some classes of the believers,

presumably the great proportion of the excluded, continue to enjoy the conditions of Paradise, the ‘very far better’ of the Lord’s especial presence (Phil. 1:23, Luke 23:43).
— Page 76

These include the foolish virgins who will not be allowed into the wedding feast (Matt. 25:10-13), and also, the servants who did not gain a profit with their minas because they were afraid of their master, and thus will not reign with the Lord (Luke 19:24-26). It may be such ones are able to view the joy and blessing of the faithful saints, while deeply regretting they are not able to partake of it themselves (Luke 14:24-30), because of how they wasted their Christian life. Surely then they will realize just how foolish they really were!

Others will not only lose the reward, but also be cast into the “outer darkness,” a place of suffering outside of the kingdom where there will be “the wailing and gnashing of teeth.” These will include the servant who failed to gain a profit with his talent, which is of far greater value than a mina (Matt. 25:28-30), and the friend who appeared at the wedding feast without a wedding garment (Matt. 22:11-13). Possibly many of the forgiven Jews will also fall into this category (Matt. 8:11-12).

Then you have the most serious cases, those believers who will indeed be severely punished by the Lord for their unfaithfulness to Him. Some of these cases have to do with mistreating our fellow believers.

And this category will certainly include the unforgiving servant, who will, as the Lord warns, be “delivered…to the tormentors until he should repay all that was owed” (Matt. 18:34).

It will also include the unfaithful servant who lost sight of his master’s return and so began to “beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunken”; he will be “cut in two” and have his part appointed with the hypocrites (Matt. 24:48-51), and even be beaten “with many stripes” (Luke 12:47). How serious is this punishment!

And then there is what appears to be the most serious punishment of all for the unfaithful believers. That is, when the Lord promises the overcomers they will not be hurt by the second death (Rev. 2:11), which is the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20:14), He is also warning us that some among the genuine believers will for a time be hurt (but not destroyed) by this second death.

This warning is consistent with the Lord’s word on the night He was betrayed, when He told His disciples the unfruitful branches in Him will be cast into the fire to be burned (John 15:6); and also, with His warning to the disciples when He was sending them out, to fear Him who has the power to cast into Hell (Matt. 10:28, Luke 12:4). It also accords with the apostle Paul’s explicit warning to the saints that some will be saved “only so as through fire” (1 Cor. 3:15).

Again, we may not know the details, but from all of this we can see that the matter of the Lord’s discipline of His believers—even though it is only temporary, during the 1,000 years, before we all enter into the blessed state in eternity—is indeed a very, very serious matter that surely is unveiled in the Scriptures. Thus, we need to consider it very soberly before the Lord, in the light of His holy word, so we would prepare ourselves today as we should and thus be ready to to meet Him at His return at the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor. 5:10).

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—  19 July 2025 —