- What does the Bible mean by the kingdom?
- The OT prophets define the kingdom as the worldwide government of God;
- And the NT adds that this kingdom will be presided by Christ with the resurrected Christians ruling all nations of a restored earth!
Isa 2:2 In the future the mountain of the Lord’s temple will endure as the most important of mountains, and will be the most prominent of hills. All the nations will stream to it, 2:3 many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the temple of the God of Jacob, so he can teach us his requirements, and we can follow his standards.” For Zion will be the center for moral instruction; the Lord will issue edicts from Jerusalem. 2:4 He will judge disputes between nations; he will settle cases for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations will not take up the sword against other nations, and they will no longer train for war.
- The same repeated almost verbatim by the prophet Micah in ch. 4.
NRSV, Dan 7:13 As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. 14 To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed. 27 The kingship and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them.”
Hosea 2:14 “However, in the future I will allure her; I will lead her back into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. 15 From there I will give back her vineyards to her, and turn the ‘Valley of Trouble’ into an ‘Opportunity for Hope.’ There she will sing as she did when she was young, when she came up from the land of Egypt. 16 At that time,” declares the Lord, “you will call, ‘My husband’; you will never again call me, ‘My master.’ 17 For I will remove the names of the Baal idols from your lips, so that you will never again utter their names!
Zech. 9:10 I will remove the chariot from Ephraim and the warhorse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be removed. Then he will announce peace to the nations. His dominion will be from sea to sea and from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth.
- In the NT Paul says it was first preached as gospel, good news to Abraham as his land promise in Gen 12-17;
- But the promise is extended to the whole earth, Rom 4:13; cp. Jesus the meek “will inherit the earth” (Mt. 5:5) at his parousia (Rev. 5:9-10).
People “from every tribe, language, people and nation” will be made “kings and priests for God to rule the world.”
2. How will we know when the kingdom comes? Luke 17:20
According to the OT prophets, Jesus and his Apostles when the kingdom comes it will sudden, immediately. It will not come in stages, like a building that’s Under Construction Now!
No, the Kingdom will be:
- like a fast falling rock, crushing all wicked kingdoms, Dan. 2:35, 44;
- like a fast moving fire that will consume and bring to a sudden end all evil on earth, Zeph 1.18;
This is repeated throughout Luke 17 when Jesus explains the coming of the kingdom:
- like the fast flash of lightning across the sky, Luke 17:23–24;
- like the rush of the flood waters of Noah’s day, Luke 17:20–28;
- like the sudden fire and brimstone of Sodom and Gomorrah, Luke 17:29–33;
And Paul later says unbelievers will be caught off guard and the wicked speedily judged in 1Thess 5:
1 Now as to the periods and times, brothers and sisters, you have no need of anything to be written to you. 2 For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord is coming just like a thief in the night. 3 While they are saying, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction will come upon them like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, so that the day would overtake you like a thief.
This is why Anthony’s “the Kingdom of God will be all over” best translates the Greek estin (is) in Luke 17:21c idiomatically, i.e., as a reference to the future and sudden arrival of the kingdom of God. This is the most natural reading after the obviously futurist force of the words of Jesus from v.22 and following, as we have seen.
The Word Biblical Commentary is therefore right to note that:
“The view that does best justice to the content of v 21, and the one view that easily makes room for vv 22-37 and does justice as well to Luke’s evident concern to link the two sections.”
This reading also fits the wider context and Jewish expectation “that the Kingdom of God was going to appear immediately” (Luke 19:11; also 17:20–33; cp. Dan. 2:35, 44; Zeph 1.18; etc.).
3. Is the Kingdom Under Construction?
The Kingdom should never be defined as God’s rule or reign within each individual believer. I mean, ask yourself: was that really what Jesus was saying to those unbelieving Pharisees in Luke 17:21? And then, were those unbelieving Pharisees spreading and building God’s kingdom?
The German scholar Johannes Weiss was right to say in his book Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God:
What speaks more forcefully than all else against the kind of interpretation to which we have been objecting is the fact that Jesus put in the mouths of his disciples, as the first petition of their prayer, the words “May Your kingdom come.” The meaning is not “may thy Kingdom grow,” “may thy Kingdom be perfected,” but rather, “may thy Kingdom come.” For the disciples, the kingdom is not yet here, not even in its beginnings; therefore Jesus bids them to “seek His Kingdom” (Luke 12:31). This yearning and longing for its coming, this ardent prayer for it, and the constant hope that it will come— that it will come soon—this is their religion. We would import an opaque and confusing element into this unified and clearly unambiguous religious frame of mind were we to think somehow of a “coming in an ever higher degree” or of a growth or increase of the Kingdom. Either the kingdom is here, or it is not yet here. For the disciples and for the early church it is not yet here.
Bottom Line
If you don’t get the kingdom right you’re preaching another gospel!
