When Jesus says that “the Kingdom of God is near” (Mark 1:15), or “in your midst” (Luke 17:21), he did not mean that the Kingdom had already begun simply because the King had arrived on earth. The Gospel is about the coming Kingdom, not a synonym for Jesus himself. Jesus was taking up a well-known prophetic theme that predated his first coming by millennia. The prophets of old never defined the Kingdom as the Messianic King’s physical presence among Israel. They were given visions of the Kingdom as God’s world government to be established on a restored earth by “the Lord’s Messiah” (cp. Luke 2:11, 26). As a result, in the New Testament the Kingdom is conceived first of all as something yet future — something people wait for, seek, receive, enter, possess, and eventually inherit.
First, the Old Testament prophets described the same event as Jesus did, and it never meant that the Day of the LORD had begun, let alone come, with their ministry or within their own lifetime. For example, Joel 1:15 said, “The Day of the LORD is near,” almost a millennium before Jesus was even born. Zephaniah 1:14a declared, “The great Day of the LORD is near, near and rapidly approaching,” almost seven hundred years before Jesus. Obadiah 15a says, “For the Day of the LORD is near, against all the nations.” This was said about four hundred years before Jesus. Using the present tense of prophecy for immediacy, the Day is described as “against all the nations.”
In the New Testament, the book of Revelation uses similar language, with the phrase “the time is near” framing the visions of the whole book (Rev. 1:3; 22:10). In other words, “the time is near” refers to the whole collection of end-time events, including the parousia, the resurrection of all believers, the judgment of the wicked nations, and the reign of the saints.
Second, Daniel 2:44 envisions a time when “the God of heaven will raise up an everlasting kingdom that will not be destroyed, and a kingdom that will not be left to another people. It will break in pieces and bring about the demise of all these kingdoms. But it will stand forever.” Later, Daniel 7 shows the Son of Man and the saints of the Most High receiving the Kingdom following the destruction and subjugation of the present evil nations on earth.
Micah 4:6-8 says that “in that day” — again, a time still future to us — God “will gather the lame, and assemble the outcasts whom I injured.” At that time, He “will transform the lame into the nucleus of a new nation, and those far off into a mighty nation. The LORD will reign over them on Mount Zion, from that day forward and forevermore.” God then says to His chosen nation of Israel:
“As for you, tower of the flock, Hill of the daughter of Zion, To you it will come—Even the former dominion will come, The kingdom of the daughter of Jerusalem.”
Jesus himself confirms that the Kingdom was still future even while he was present. He taught his disciples to pray to God the Father, “May Your Kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10), not, “Your Kingdom is already here because I am here.” This is why Luke 17:21 must not be used to overturn Jesus’ whole message, as though he meant the Kingdom was “within your heart.” Later, at the Last Supper, Jesus said, “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the Kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:18). He also said that when the end-time signs occur, “recognize that the Kingdom of God is near” (Luke 21:31). This shows that “near” cannot simply mean “Jesus is physically present,” since in Luke 21 the Kingdom is near in connection with decisive end-time events, including the great tribulation and the abomination of desolation, just before his parousia. Jesus consistently speaks of believers entering and inheriting the Kingdom, not of the Kingdom being internalized in the heart.
The apostles understood Jesus the same way. After forty days of instruction from the risen Jesus about “the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3), they asked, “Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the Kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). This was the right and proper question, not an error on their part, because Jesus had taught them about the Kingdom and had promised them royal positions in it. Jesus corrected only their desire to know the timing.
Peter preached that Jesus “must remain in heaven until the time for the restoration of all things, which God announced from long ago through His holy prophets” (Acts 3:21). That is fatal to the view that the Kingdom had already arrived in the ministry of Jesus in the first century. The text says that heaven receives Jesus until the “restoration of all things,” as defined by the prophets of old, such as Daniel 2, Isaiah 19, and Zechariah 14. New Testament preaching about the Kingdom therefore remains the same hope announced in the Hebrew prophecies. The apostles still believed that “all the prophets who have spoken have announced these days, from Samuel and those who followed after.” Peter also reminded his fellow Jews:
“You are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, promising to Abraham, ‘All the families of the earth will be blessed through your offspring’” (Acts 3:24-25).
The Gospel message of the early church also distinguishes the Kingdom from Jesus himself. Acts 8:12 says people believed Philip as he preached “the Gospel about the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus.” Acts 28:31 says Paul was “preaching the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ.” These are inseparable, but they are not identical. Jesus is the appointed King of that coming Kingdom — the inheritance that Christians will one day enter (1 Cor. 6:9-10; 15:50; Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5; James 2:5; 2 Pet. 1:11).
So the phrase “the Kingdom is near” simply means that the Gospel was being announced, and therefore God now “commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice through a man He has appointed, and He gave proof of this to everyone by resurrecting him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31). But the Kingdom itself — the restored Kingdom of David, the renewal of Israel, the judgment of the nations, and Christians inheriting a restored earth to rule with Jesus from Jerusalem — awaits his parousia.
