Is it the Church? Is it a certain feeling within the hearts of men? Is it "the Millennium?" Each of these is widely accepted—yet none is right! The correct answer is imperative as it effects other questions such as the reward of the saved born again or military service to name a few. The truth is “good news!”
"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ" we read in Mark 1:1. "Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God, and saying, the time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the Gospel." (Mark 1:14-15). Jesus went everywhere preaching the Kingdom of God. He taught in parables about the Kingdom of God. He sent out seventy men preaching, and commanded them to preach the Kingdom of God (Luke 10:9). He sent the apostles, on whom the Church of God was founded, to preach the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:1-2).
The prophet Daniel, who lived 600 years before Christ, knew that the Kingdom of God was a real kingdom—a government ruling over literal people on the earth. Jesus Christ brought additional knowledge about it which the prophet Daniel might not have known. Still, Daniel knew there was going to be a real, literal Kingdom of God on the earth. The whole purpose of Daniel’s dream was to reveal God’s government—the fact that God rules—the truth of the Kingdom of God. And, secondly, to reveal what is to happen in the “latter days” in which we now seem to be living.
What is a Kingdom? It is literal. It is specific requiring four main components: rulers, territory, laws and subjects. There is no misunderstanding as to what is meant by the word "Kingdom." When Christ comes, He is coming as King of kings, ruling the whole earth (Rev. 19:11-16); and His Kingdom—the Kingdom of God is to consume all worldly kingdoms. Revelation 11:15 states it in these words: "The kingdoms of this world are become the Kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever!" This is the Kingdom of God. It is the end of present governments—the governments that rule Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Germany, the United States, Canada and the British nations. They then shall become the kingdoms—the governments of the Lord Jesus Christ, then King of kings over the entire earth.
The Kingdom of God will rule over the peoples and nations of the earth. Yet these mortal peoples and nations will not be the Kingdom, nor even in the Kingdom of God. They shall be merely ruled over by it. "Jesus answered [Nicodemus] and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God" (John 3:3). Yes, notice! The Kingdom of God is something that can be seen, but only by those who have been "born again." It is something others cannot see! In the Resurrection chapter of the Bible, we read: "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." (I Cor. 15:50). The Kingdom of God is something no human, of flesh and blood, can enter or inherit!
The saints—then no longer human flesh and blood, but immortal—are to possess the Kingdom, at the second coming of Christ! Jesus Christ makes that unadorned. It is Christ who is speaking in Revelation 3:21, and 2:26-27: "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne." The Father's throne is in heaven—where Jesus Christ is now; but Christ's throne, in which the saints shall sit with Him, is the throne of David, in Jerusalem (Luke 1: 32). Further: "And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron."
After His resurrection, on the Mount of Olives at the very hour of His ascension to heaven, Jesus was explaining to His disciples how they would receive the inspiring God-begetting power of the Holy Spirit. His disciples wanted to know whether the Kingdom of God was to be set up at that time! "Lord," they asked, "wilt thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel?" Jesus again made plain that the Church is not the Kingdom. "And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight" (Acts 1:6-9).
The commission He had given the Church was to preach His gospel of the Kingdom of God to the entire world. They were to receive the Holy Spirit, begetting them as saints—as Christians—putting them into God’s Church. This would infuse them with the power to carry out the mission of the Church, which continues to this very day. But it was not the setting up of the Kingdom of God. Of that they and us today were not to know the time.
World War I began in l914. There was a recess from 1918 until 1939. We are in a second recess now! We now have nuclear energy including bombs stock-piled in such power and volume that they could blast all human life off this planet several times over. Not to mention biological and chemical warfare also in existence. Today many scientists and politicians alike say only a super one world-government can prevent world cosmocide. Yet rulers cannot and will not get together to form such a world-ruling government. It's time we face the hard, cold, realistic fact: humanity has two alternatives: either there is an Almighty, all-powerful Supreme Being who is about to step in and set up the Kingdom of God to rule all nations with supernatural and super-national force to bring us peace—or else there will not be a human being left alive on this earth to tell the difference!
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