The Kingdom from God

The meaning of the phrase ‘kingdom of God’ ‘The kingdom of God’, or ‘kingdom from heaven’, is mentioned 58 times in Matthew’s Gospel alone. It was Jesus’ main message; everywhere he travelled he proclaimed the kingdom of God. Even the apostle Paul, at the end of the book of Acts, was talking about the kingdom of God. Jesus said we should seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. It must be an important topic. So, why do so few people understand what the kingdom of God is? Take a minute to think about it. How would you explain it to someone? Who is the king in the kingdom of God? Is the kingdom present, past or future? Is it on earth or in heaven? What is our role in it as Christians? What does it mean to enter the kingdom of God? What are you really entering? How can you inherit it? How can a kingdom come? Don’t we often pray ‘thy kingdom come’? What are we praying for? Over the past 100 years there have been an estimated 10,000 papers and books written on the kingdom of God, and most of them don’t give correct answers to these questions. I hope this chapter will clarify things for you. It is my belief that all the messianic prophecies from the Old Testament, and all the kingdom of God passages in the New Testament, refer always and only to the Messiah and his coming reign on this earth; never to God’s sovereignty. It is certainly not about God reigning from heaven. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream In Daniel 2, Daniel explains the meaning of a dream that Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had. He dreamt of a statue that represented four great empires, generally interpreted as Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. These were world empires, four powerful human kingdoms from antiquity. In the dream, a rock is cut out, but not by human hands. It strikes the statue on the feet and smashes it to pieces and then the rock becomes a great mountain that fills the whole earth. This fifth kingdom is the eternal kingdom of God. “During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed; nor its sovereignty left in the hands of another people” (Daniel 2: 44). That is the kingdom of God which we are studying. Note carefully that it is an earthly kingdom, not a heavenly one, and that it has nothing to do with God’s universal reign. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar: “The great God was showing the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its meaning is certain” (Daniel 2:45b). The fulfilment of this prophecy will occur at the end of this present age. When the seventh angel blows his trumpet, loud voices in heaven will proclaim, “The world’s kingdom has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will rule forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). When John the Baptist and Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God, they were proclaiming the coming of the Messiah. But they couldn’t be too explicit about it, because they were under the domination of the Roman Empire, so they spoke about the kingdom rather than the king. The clearest prophecy about Messiah’s kingdom in the Old Testament is from Daniel 7:13-14, and it is from here that John and Jesus took their terminology. “I continued to observe the night vision – and look! - someone like the Son of Man was coming, accompanied by heavenly clouds. He approached the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. To him dominion was bestowed, along with glory and a kingdom, so that all peoples, nations and languages are to serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion - it will never pass away - and his kingship is one that will never be destroyed.” Daniel asked the angel for an interpretation of the vision and was told, “These four great animals are four kings who will rise to power from the earth. But the saints of the Highest will receive the kingdom forever, inheriting it forever and ever (Daniel 7:17-18). Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man, a title for the Messiah, but one that was not obvious to the uninitiated. In the same way, the kingdom of God is an expression that means Messiah’s kingdom. It was used by both John the Baptist and Jesus to refer to the messianic reign, but without being explicit as to who the king was, which was a necessary precaution in the political situation in which they lived. Jesus did not travel around broadcasting the fact that he was the Messiah. He spoke of the Son of Man, and then he didn’t directly call himself the Son of Man, he spoke of the Son of Man in the third person. The kingdom was given to the Messiah by the ‘Ancient of Days’, so the most appropriate way of translating βασιλεία του θεού, is ‘the kingdom from God’, the title of this book. It is not an expression that speaks of God’s rule in action, or of God’s rule over the universe. This kingdom is a kingship given by the Ancient of Days to ‘the Son of Man’, who is none other than Jesus the Messiah. Daniel had a vision about four great animals or beasts that come from the earth and that are generally interpreted as being the same empires represented by the statue in chapter two, and the fierce fourth beast has similarities with the beast described in Revelation 13-14. Then comes the climax in Daniel 7:27, “Then the kingdom, authority and magnificence of all nations of the earth will be given to the people who are the saints of the Highest One. His kingdom will endure forever, and all authorities will serve and obey him.” Compare that with Revelation 20:4, “Then I saw thrones, and those who sat on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or hands. They came back to life and ruled with the Messiah for a thousand years.”