Checkpoint wrote:
Some seem to think it is entirely future, while others give the impression they are always thinking of it as present, and to not be looking at the future in kingdom terms at all.
Jesus had much to say about the kingdom, including this:
Luke 16:
6 The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone is being zealously urged into it.
So, where do you stand as to whether it is present, future, or has both a present and a future aspect?
On what basis?
According to which scriptures?
It is good to see the question of time of the kingdom, because answering that question helps us understand its nature.
The kingdom comes when the Fourth Kingdom is destroyed:
The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing-floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. (Dan 2:32-35)
So, if we can identify the Fourth Kingdom we can identify its demise, and the kingdom came at that time in power.
The kingdom comes when the Fourth Beast is destroyed by fire:
‘While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully.
‘As I looked,
‘thrones were set in place,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His clothing was as white as snow;
the hair of his head was white like wool.
His throne was flaming with fire,
and its wheels were all ablaze.
A river of fire was flowing,
coming out from before him.
Thousands upon thousands attended him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.
The court was seated,
and the books were opened.
‘Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire. (The other beasts had been stripped of their authority, but were allowed to live for a period of time.) (Dan 7:8-12)
So, again, if we can identify the fourth beast and the little horn, and the time of its demise, we can identify the time the kingdom came in power and judgement.
The first kingdom was Babylon, the second Medo-Persia, and the third Greek.
After the Greek, Israel was no longer subject to anyone and become independent. So the fourth kingdom is Israel. That Fourth Kingdom was progressively weakened, came under Roman domination and fractured until it was totally shattered.
As Moses wrote concerning the Last Days curses on Israel for breaking the covenant: 'He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.' (Deut 28:48)
And as Daniel wrote:
'it would be for a time, times, and half a time, and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be finished.' (Dan 12:7).
There is a consistent theme here: the previous kingdom would be destroyed dramatically and totally at the time of the end, the time of the coming of the Messianic kingdom. And that previous kingdom was the power of the holy people. The iron and the clay. The yoke of iron, referring to oppression and the clay referring to the old people of Israel.
The same thing is in Isaiah. Isaiah 2-4 is a united discourse on the last days of Israel.
It starts as follows:
It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it,
and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.�
For out of Zion shall go the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord. (Is 2:2-5)
This is the messianic kingdom of peace, that is to fill the world. But when and how would it come?
It would come when the lofty are made low, i.e. at the fall of the previous kingdom:
For the Lord of hosts has a day
against all that is proud and lofty,
against all that is lifted up—and it shall be brought low;
against all the cedars of Lebanon,
lofty and lifted up;
and against all the oaks of Bashan;
against all the lofty mountains,
and against all the uplifted hills;
against every high tower,
and against every fortified wall;
against all the ships of Tarshish,
and against all the beautiful craft.
And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled,
and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low,
and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day. (Is 2:12-17)
In this judgement:
And people shall enter the caves of the rocks
and the holes of the ground,
from before the terror of the Lord,
and from the splendour of his majesty,
when he rises to terrify the earth. (Is 2:19)
This judgement Jesus applied to the end of the Old Kingdom of Israel:
And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’, and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?� (Luke 23:26-31)
We can see that this application by Jesus was in keeping with the context of the prophecy, which is about the desolation of Jerusalem, in her last days:
For behold, the Lord God of hosts
is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah
support and supply,
all support of bread,
and all support of water;
the mighty man and the soldier,
the judge and the prophet,
the diviner and the elder,
the captain of fifty
and the man of rank,
the counsellor and the skilful magician
and the expert in charms.
And I will make boys their princes,
and infants shall rule over them.
And the people will oppress one another,
every one his fellow
and every one his neighbour;
the youth will be insolent to the elder,
and the despised to the honourable.
For a man will take hold of his brother
in the house of his father, saying:
“You have a cloak;
you shall be our leader,
and this heap of ruins
shall be under your rule�; (Is 3:1-6)
Jesus applied this prophecy to Jerusalem, which is what the prophecy expressly mentions. The prophecy predicted oppression, men would destroy Jerusalem. Jews would oppress Jews to bring about the demise of Jerusalem.
Jesus said it would come upon those women and their children. He is talking about a judgement that would come on his generation, for shedding his blood.
And this is exactly what the prophecy said too:
In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honour of the survivors of Israel. And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgement and by a spirit of burning. (Is 4:2-4)
Notice that the kingdom of Messiah comes through the destruction of Jerusalem, in vengeance for her blood-guilt. Salvation would come by judgement and fire. Exactly the same as in Daniel.
In the New Testament we have exactly the same:
In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.� For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight.’�
...
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to about to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.� (Mat 3:1-12)
Notice the perfect parallels:
1. The kingdom is near
2. The wrath about to come
John the Baptiser said that the kingdom was coming, therefore the judgement upon Israel was coming. The kingdom was near, therefore the judgement and fiery destruction was about to come upon the Sadducee and the Pharisees, i.e. his contemporaries.
Notice the reference to chaff, an echo from Daniel:
Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. (Dan 2:35)
The present generation of Israel would be chaff. They would be broken into powder by the rock and blown away by the wind. The Fourth Kingdom falls when the Messianic kingdom arrives.
Remember the house that would fall by them oppressing each other? Is 3, from the section that Jesus quoted against Jerusalem of his generation?
Is that not the house divided? Have a look at Mat 12. You have Jesus in his ministry, binding the strong man and clearing the unclean spirits out of the house. He was saving his elect from the falling Fourth Kingdom. But he condemned that generation: he said that the house he cleaned out and put in order would fall, seven unclean spirits would return later in that generation, and it would be condemned by the men of Nineveh and the Queen of the South for failure to repent. Jesus said:
'Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.' (Mat 12:30). As the statue would be broken into pieces and scattered by the wind, the evil generation who rejected and killed him would bear evil fruit, turn to lawlessness and oppress one another and consume one another and the remnant be scattered to all the nations under heaven.
The end of the old kingdom and the coming of the messianic kingdom is clear here:
They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.�
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
“‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord's doing,
and it is marvellous in our eyes’?
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.�
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. (Mat 21:41-45)
Notice that Jesus is describing the upcoming judgement on Jerusalem, God's vineyard. No one will dispute that is the application and meaning of this text.
But what is the significance of that event?
1. The end of the old kingdom and the coming of the new kingdom
2. the crushing of the old kingdom by the stone cut out of the mountain of Dan 2.
Jesus and his coming at the end of the old Jewish kingdom, is the falling of the stone upon the feet of the statue to crush it. And the feet are the then-present Jewish temple authorities, i.e. the old kingdom, the Fourth Kingdom.
The following parable was told specifically because some held that the kingdom was to come immediately. Jesus teaches that the kingdom of heaven is to be received by him in heaven first, and then it would come to earth when he destroyed his enemies. I.e. when he destroyed the Fourth Kingdom:
As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. He said therefore, “A nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Engage in business until I come.’ But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’ When he returned, having received the kingdom, he ordered these servants to whom he had given the money to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by doing business. The first came before him, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has made ten minas more.’ And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’ And the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has made five minas.’ And he said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’ Then another came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your mina, which I kept laid away in a handkerchief; for I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man. You take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘I will condemn you with your own words, you wicked servant! You knew that I was a severe man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money in the bank, and at my coming I might have collected it with interest?’ And he said to those who stood by, ‘Take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’ And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten minas!’ ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.’� (Luke 19:11-27)
Notice that those who resisted the kingdom were destroyed when the kingdom came in power and fullness. This is the destruction of the Fourth Kingdom at the coming of the messianic kingdom. The Jews who opposed Jesus and his kingdom of peace, and who instead chose rebellion, militarism and war were destroyed at the arrival of the king of the messianic kingdom in power and in vengeance on his enemies.
Which is exactly what Jesus goes on to say next:
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade round you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.� (Luke 19:41-44).
Jesus goes on to give the Olivet Discourse on the fall of the Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. He tells them the significance of this event:
'So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.' (Luke 21:31)
Again, when the Fourth Kingdom falls, the messianic kingdom comes.
Paul teaches that the messianic kingdom comes when the kingdom of his enemies is destroyed:
Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Cor 15:24-26)
Paul taught that Jesus was already reigning in his kingdom, but that the kingdom would come in power in and through the destruction of 'every rule and every authority and power.' These authorities were those of his enemies, who would be put under his feet.
For avoidance of doubt, Paul provided a time limit for this event:
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.�
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?�
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. (1 Cor 15:51-56)
Paul taught that the kingdom would come and the old kingdom would be destroyed while some who he wrote to were still alive. Not all would sleep in death. Some would, but others would not. This means he was speaking about the fall of a kingdom in the First Century. It was the fall of the Fourth Kingdom of iron and clay.
The fall of this Fourth Kingdom would be at the end of the power of sin that was THE LAW. That is, the law of Moses, the Old Covenant system. The Old Covenant kingdom was the kingdom that would fall and be crushed by the rock and ground to pieces. It was the ministry of death, death being the last enemy.
And it would be in fulfilment of Is 26:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death for ever (Is 26:6-8)
Is 26:6-8 would be the messianic wedding banquet feast when the reversal of Is 65:13-15 would take place, when the sons of the kingdom are thrown outside (Mat 8:12) and when the king was angry and destroyed those murderers and burned their city (Mat 22:7). That is, it is at the fall of Israel, the Fourth Kingdom.
The Hebrews writer contrasts two covenants:
For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.� Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.� But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.� This phrase, “Yet once more�, indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Heb 12:18-29)
Notice that the writer is talking about and contrasting the two covenants. But these two covenants are also two kingdoms, the Fourth Kingdom, which would be shaken and removed, the old heaven and earth, and the messianic kingdom, which will never end or be removed. Notice that the author refers to the things that have been made. This is the things made by hands. The things not made by hands is the rock of Dan 2:34. In effect, the Hebrews writer is identifying for us:
The Fourth Kingdom, made with hands, and
The Messianic Kingdom, made without hands.
Mark 14:58; and Heb 9:11,24 identify for us the Fourth Kingdom made with hands as the Old Covenant temple system, and the messianic kingdom made without hands, the rock from the mountain as the New Covenant system. The Old Creation and the New Creation. The earthly city and the heavenly city.
This is the same as we saw in Is 65 -- the New Heaven and the New Earth come at the time of the judgement and the reversal, i.e. at the fall of the Old Heaven and Old Earth, the Old Covenant system and people. It is generally and rightly agreed that the Hebrews writer is talking about the impending end of the Old Covenant system, including its kingdom and its temple and ritual system. So the application is not in doubt: the messianic kingdom comes at the fall of Jerusalem in the First Century.
Hopefully this wandering through a good number of the kingdom texts is sufficient to show *when* the kingdom came and the identity of the kingdom that fell before it.
