The Life of Jesus in Harmony |
Index
kingdom of God
KINGDOM OF GOD, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. Heb. Malkut, Gr. Basilea; both mean "rule
or reign" at any given period.
In Jewish thought both kingdom of God and
kingdom of heaven were synonymous terms as Hebrew parallelism since heaven is where God rules
from. Therefore "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done is Hebrew parallelism and
equal terms.
Kingdom of God embraces all created intelligences, both in heaven and on
earth, who are willingly subject to God and thus in fellowship with Him. The kingdom
is a term descriptive of the rule of God at any given period.
John the
Baptist,
Christ, and the
apostles announced that the kingdom of national
Israel was "at hand." That offer was rejected. As a result the "kingdom of heaven"
in its earthly manifested form was postponed until Christ's second advent.
According to the clear teaching of the Bible the full manifestation of the
kingdom will be revealed at the second coming of Christ.
According to (Mt 13) the present
gospel age represents the mystery form of the kingdom. "Since the kingdom of heaven
is no other than the rule of God on the earth, He must now be ruling to the
extent of full realization of those things which are termed 'the mysteries' in the
NT and which really constitute the new message of the NT" (Lewis Sperry
Chafer, Systematic Theology, 7:224).