The
Coming of the Kingdom of God- When?
“And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That
there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till
they have seen the kingdom of God come with power. Mark 9:1”
Jesus talked much about
the kingdom of God but exactly when was
the kingdom to be realized? We want to
show in this brief article that the kingdom was in fact realized in the
lifetime of that first century generation which has some major implications on
ones view of eschatology.
We
read this about the nearness of that kingdom during our Lord’s earthly
ministry:
Mark 1:
14 ¶ Now after that John was put in prison,
Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,
15
And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand:
repent ye, and believe the gospel.
We
see from the words of John the Baptist
that the kingdom was about to be realized. Before we look at how soon this was
to come we will give a few verses to show that the kingdom of God was indeed
the age of the preaching of the gospel.
The
verses are legion that speak of this and the reader is challenged to do a word
search and see for himself or herself we will just post 3 such verses. We will
not make an attempt to prove that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven
are the same thing for we will let the reader see for himself on this as well
that these are interchangeable.
The
first one is the parable of the soils where Matthew mentions the kingdom of
heaven but Mark says this:
Mark 4
11
And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the
kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in
parables:
This
is obviously a reference to gospel preaching and the conversion of souls
through that gospel preaching.
In
Luke’s version of the beatitudes, he says this regarding the kingdom
Luke 6
20 ¶ And he lifted up his eyes on his
disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of
God.
Matthews is a little
different where he mentions poor in spirit and kingdom of heaven but we believe
it is quite clear that the gospel age in its fullness if meant here as well as
in Matthew.
If
one still questions whether or not the kingdom of God is indeed the new covenant
gospel age in its fullness we turn to John’s gospel:
John 3
5
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Here it is quiet clear
that the kingdom of God is what one enters in upon the new birth.
Now
when exactly did this kingdom come? Many will argue that it had already come at
the time of the earthly ministry of our Lord. But did it? Lets look at a few
verses and see if the kingdom had already come at that time.
We
will look at a few other passages to
show that the coming of the kingdom was not yet fulfilled during our
Lord’s earthly ministry.
Lets
look at three such passages
Matt
16: 27
Verily I say unto you, There be some
standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming
in his kingdom.
Mark 9
1 And he said unto them, Verily I say
unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of
death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
Luke 9
27 But I tell
you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till
they see the kingdom of God.
In these three parallel passages
we not only see that the coming of the kingdom was the same as Christ coming in
his kingdom but that the kingdom was to come in the lifetime of some standing there.
These
three passages not only clearly show us that the kingdom of God had not yet
come but that it was soon to be realized. Our first major premise would then be
The kingdom of God had not yet come but was to come in the
lifetime of some living at the time or our Lord’s earthly ministry.
In Luke 21 we have the
prophetic words of our Lord as to the coming tribulation. We are not going to
give any comments at this time as to when these will be fulfilled, whether the
tribulation was at the fall of Jerusalem or still yet in the future yet
unfulfilled we will only quote the part
about the coming of our Lord and how it relates to the kingdom of God.
Luke
21:
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the
stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the
waves roaring;
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those
things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
27 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud
with power and great glory.
28 And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and
lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
29 ¶ And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the
trees;
30
When
they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now
nigh at hand.
31
So
likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom
of God is nigh at hand.
Now
we can see from these verses that the coming of the kingdom of God is directly
connected with the coming of the Son of man following the great
tribulation. It is certainly within
proper biblical interpretation to assert our next premise which is:
The kingdom of God was
predicted to come at the time of our Lord’s coming in power and great glory
which is his second coming.
Now what conclusion can we draw from the two premises that
are clearly drawn from biblical exegesis? Before we draw any conclusion we want
to look a little further into one of our passages we quoted to further buttress
our argument.
It is commonly held to by many that the passages we quoted
about some not tasting death till they see the son of man coming in his kingdom
refers to the transfiguration. Now we believe the parallel passages of Mark and
Luke disprove that notion for we would then have more than one coming of the
kingdom of God. But we think that we would be remiss if we did not give further
argument against such an interpretation. We will now look at one of those
passages in its context:
Matt 16
27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of
his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his
works.
28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing
here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in
his kingdom.
What we see here are two things that remove this from being
fulfilled at the transfiguration which follows this narrative in the next
chapter. First Jesus begins verse 28 with the words “verily I say unto you.” In
all instances of Jesus’ use of the word “verily” over 90 times, excluding the
this three parallel passages, he never introduced a new topic but was
emphasizing what was already said. What basis are we to take it any different
here. So that means that if it was the transfiguration then the angels must have
come with him and he at that time judged every man. One can see the poor
exegesis this becomes when the verse is taken in its context.
Secondly Jesus uses the word “mello” in verse 27 which
means “about to.” I will now quote verse 27 from Jay P. Green’s interlinear Bible
“The Son of man is
about to come in the glory of his Father, with his angels. Then he will
give reward to each according to his works.”
Now to further support
this argument of a soon coming and judgment we quote one more verse.
2Tim 4
1 ¶ I charge thee therefore before God, and the
Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and
his kingdom;
Notice the coming of the Jesus Christ and his kingdom at
the same time which is when he will judge men. But we need to notice one more
thing and that is the use of the word “mello” one more time. Here again we
quote Jay P. Green. “Therefore I
solemnly witness before God and Jesus Christ, he being about to judge living and dead
according to his appearing and his kingdom.”
The parallel of 2Tim 4:1 and Matt 16:27-28 is uncanny. The
nearness of the judgment and the
connection between coming into his kingdom is supported by both verses.
But what shall we say to these things? We want to once more
post our 2 premises and then lay out the logical conclusion of them and state
our third premise.
The kingdom of God had not yet come but was to come in the
lifetime of some living at the time or our Lord’s earthly ministry.
Premise
#2
The kingdom of God was
predicted to come at the time of our Lord’s coming in power and great glory
which is his second coming.
Our
final premise:
Our Lords second coming as predicted was in the lifetime of
those living in his day. Just as he said as recorded in both Matthew and Luke
in the Olivet Discourse “this generation will not pass till all these things
be fulfilled.”
We will leave it to the
reader’s own conscience as to whether or not these three premises set forth are
supported by Scripture.
Please direct your comments to Mike
Krall.