Kingdom Ready Blog

This Sunday, most churches spread across the land, will be celebrating Easter Sunday, with perhaps a Sunrise service, or a traditional breakfast, and most definitely a sermon that centers around the fact that Jesus died and was resurrected from the dead. But, what they say they are celebrating, does it really jive with their theology that they profess?

In Luke 1:32-33, the angels give us the tip off that it’s all about Jesus being the Christ, the King of an everlasting Kingdom, who will be anointed by the Spirit of God: “He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the LORD God will give him the throne of his father David; and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and his kingdom will have no end.”

Some have downplayed the significance of the Kingdom because it isn’t mentioned by name as much in the rest of the New Testament, outside of the Synoptic Gospels. But it is mentioned in certain significant passages and tied in with other concepts, using other terminology. The epistles are addressed to people who have already accepted the Gospel of the Kingdom, and now see it from the point of view of “heirs” – a word mentioned quite frequently in the epistles. The promise that Abraham and his seed should be “the heir of the world” (not of “heaven”) is referred to in Romans 4:13-14. And Christians are called heirs in Romans 8:17; Galatians 3:29; 4:1,7; Titus 3:7; Hebrews 1:14; James 2:5; I Peter 3:7.

Since the Reformation, it has been taught more and more among Protestants that Jesus declared the Kingdom to have arrived, but that he taught his disciples the “true” understanding of the Kingdom, namely that of God’s reign in one’s heart.  In addition, another common misunderstanding that leads to the belief that the Kingdom must have been redefined is the question of when Jesus expected it to take place. If Jesus had indeed meant a political kingdom that would overthrow Israel’s oppressors, he would seem to have been wrong about it being “at hand.” Much is made of Jesus’ supposed belief that his return would be in the lifetime of his disciples, but he told them he did not know when he was going to return (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32).

Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was near, but that there would be an interim period before it was fully inaugurated. The Kingdom, to him, was primarily the eschatological (end-times) reign and judgment of Messiah on earth. It is in this sense that it would fulfill the promises to Abraham and David, and the many prophecies of the Day of the Lord and the coming of the Son of Man.

In Part 1, we saw that the words for “generation” (Hebrew, dowr; Greek, genea) can have more than one meaning, and one of the meanings is a group of people with like characteristics, especially a group characterized by negative traits, as in “this crooked and perverse generation.”  We saw examples in the Old Testament, and we saw that this sense was in fact used more often than the literal sense in the Gospels.

One of the main reasons that other viewpoints don’t like the idea of a futurist interpretation of prophecy is that certain sections of Scripture appear to have Jesus say that the end would come before that generation passed away.  There has been much speculation about whether Jesus was mistaken or misunderstood, since the Kingdom apparently did not come to pass in the lifetime of his disciples.  C. S. Lewis wrote in his essay, “The World’s Last Night” (in 1960),

Do you remember playing the game of “Telephone” when you were a child? You would whisper a short sentence to the child seated next to you, who would in turn whisper it to the next child. It was always funny to hear, by the end of the line, how the original sentence had changed by the time it had gone through a dozen little ears and mouths.
So, too, has it been with the Gospel. Today, if one asked someone what the Gospel is, you might hear it defined, “The gospel is the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that provides full and free deliverance from the power and penalty of sin according to the grace of God alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone,” as quoted on a website I found when I googled the question, “What is the Gospel?”

I was going to continue with the next article in the series on my web site, about how the definition of the Kingdom has been changed over the years.  But I’ve been doing some reading, especially in the Early Church Fathers, and will be expanding that article.  In the meantime, this article is from the Future Events section, and deals with one of the most crucial issues regarding the nature and timing of the Kingdom of god. Thanks to Alex Hall for much of the research in this article.

The seeming discrepancy between the announcement of the Kingdom and the fact that it did not appear is, as mentioned, one of the major reasons for the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. Similarly, the long delay since the announcement of the Kingdom has caused some to question the validity of that announcement. But it is not necessary to redefine the Kingdom in order to solve these discrepancies. The new light he shed concerning the Mysteries of the Kingdom and the New Covenant provides the solution. The kingdom is “present” in a preliminary, preparatory phase for a time, prior to its establishment, and certain aspects are previewed. During that time, the King is identified, and the news of the New Covenant which he made available is proclaimed. Those individuals who are heirs of the inheritance experience a foretaste of Kingdom power as they grow and receive training and preparation for their roles in ruling with Jesus the Messiah. It is in that proleptic sense that any reference to a present kingdom must be understood.