Question: Is Jesus now on His throne?

Answer: In Revelation 3: 21 Jesus 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.” This and many other Scriptures show that as a reward for His faithfulness, Jesus in His resurrection was given the position as the Father’s Special Representative, His Vicegerent, indicated in His being set down with the Father in His throne. Scripture passages which mention Jesus as on the Father’s right hand since His resurrection show also that our Lord is set down with God in His throne.

But Jesus is also mentioned as having His throne, mentioned in Revelation 3: 21 by the words “my throne.” This is the same as the “great white throne” (Revelation 20: 11). Jesus’ throne, to which He at His resurrection received the right (scepter) and authority (crown) to rule, is also referred to as the throne of David (Psalm 89: 35-37).

Jesus returned in 1874 with the authority to reign as King and began to exercise His Kingly power in 1878. In a primary sense He therefore began to sit on His throne in 1874, and in 1878 His risen Body members also in a sense began to sit with Him in His throne. Another important sense in which the Head and the Body members began to sit on the throne was in 1914, when Christ was given the dominion (Daniel 7: 13, 14). At that time Jesus and His Body members were given “power over the nations,” and have been ruling them with a rod of iron, breaking them in pieces like a potter’s vessel (Psalm 2: 9) (Revelation 2: 26, 27).

But in a very important sense Jesus and the Church will sit with Him in His throne and rule in the future, in His Millennial Mediatorial Reign, after the Youthful Worthies have all completed their course in this life, Israel will have been converted as a nation, and the blood-merit of Christ has been sprinkled “for the people,” the world of mankind. The 12 Apostles were also told that they would sit on 12 separate thrones (Matthew 19: 28) (Luke 22: 30), subservient to the Mediatorial throne of Christ (still future), which in turn is subservient to God’s throne.

At the end of the Millennial Age and the beginning of the Little Season, Christ will have vacated His Mediatorial (but not Kingly) throne and delivered up the Kingdom to the Father, after He will have destroyed all the effects of Satan’s rule, authority and power. Though the Christ vacates the Mediatorial throne at the end of the thousand years, they continue to sit on the throne as King and Judge throughout the Little Season, supervising the final judgment of mankind (Matthew 25: 34, 40), and on the antitypical throne of David forever (Isaiah 9: 7). 

Revelation 11: 15 (American Standard Version, ASV) mentions “the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ” and that it “shall reign for ever and ever.” Note also Revelation 22: 3, which shows that in the post-Millennial Kingdom “the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it.” These two passages show that God and Jesus will sit on the combined throne eternally. How glad we are for this!