The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1
II. Jesus Proclaims the Kingdom of God
Soon after His baptism, and after the forty days in the wilderness, “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, 3 and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Mark 1:14, 15. (See also Matthew 4:17.) Not only did Jesus bear this message Himself, but He sent out first the twelve and then the seventy to preach this same truth of the kingdom of God. (Luke 8:1; 9:1, 2; 10:1, 9.) PFF1 137.1
And what was this kingdom of God, or kingdom of heaven? It was not always, of course, the future kingdom of glory, at the end of the age, that Jesus meant; for sometimes He obviously referred to the kingdom of grace “within you.” But many of Jesus’ most emphatic teachings concerning the kingdom are unmistakably prophetic of a future state. PFF1 137.2
1. KINGDOM OF GLORY FOLLOWS SECOND ADVENT
Jesus declares that the future kingdom would be “nigh” at the time of the second advent, not at the first (Luke 21:31); for “when the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory.” And it is at this time that He says: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.”(Matthew 25:31, 34.) PFF1 137.3
2. MISTAKEN CONCEPT OF THE FUTURE KINGDOM
It was this coming kingdom that the Jews misapplied to a glorious Messianic reign of an earthly national Israel, which they thought they saw in the Old Testament prophecies. (John 6:15; Matthew 20:20, 21; Luke 23:2; John 19:12; Matthew 27:42.) PFF1 137.4
That is why they rejected their meek and lowly Saviour. That is why even the disciples misunderstood Him, and quarreled over the highest places in the anticipated kingdom; that is why, even after three years of close association with Him, they could, for a brief time, lose their faith in the hour of His death (Luke 24:20, 21), and why, after His resurrection, they could be so blind as to interrupt His farewell promises, on the very occasion of His ascension, to ask, “Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Perhaps it was not until after the Holy Spirit was sent to bring Christ’s sayings to their remembrance (John 14:26) that they finally saw the kingdom in its true perspective. PFF1 137.5
3. THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM
They must have recalled how He had permitted them to see the kingdom demonstrated in miniature at the transfiguration (Mark 9:1-4), and how He had told them that it was to follow His second advent in kingly glory at the end of the world, in connection with the resurrection and the judgment, the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous (Matthew 13:39-43; 19:28; 25:31-34). They must have remembered His promise to eat and drink with His disciples in the kingdom—in that joyful reunion to which the observance of the Lord’s supper, “till He come,” points forward (Matthew 26:27-29; Mark 14:25; Luke 22:16-18, 29, 30)—and to seat them on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28; Luke 22:29, 30). PFF1 138.1
4. THE TRUE ISRAELITES INHERIT THE KINGDOM
Possibly it was not until the infant church began to be pushed out of its Jewish nest, and the incident of Peter and Cornelius convinced the apostles that the gospel was to go to the Gentiles also, that they realized fully the teachings of Jesus that the twelve tribes of Israel, in the future kingdom, were not to be the literal Jewish nation, but the righteous of all nations. These, He said, would come from the east and the west to “sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven,” and the unfaithful children of the kingdom would be cast out. (Matthew 8:11, 12; Luke 13:24-30.) For the husbandmen, in the parable, who had stoned the Father’s messengers and rejected the Son, were to forfeit the vineyard which had been entrusted to them (Matthew 21:33-45); and indeed “the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (verse 43). This sobering sentence the Jewish leaders well knew was being pronounced against them. (Verse 45.) PFF1 138.2
The true children of Abraham, according to Jesus’ reply on another occasion to certain boasting descendants of that patriarch, are those who do the works of Abraham. (John 8:39.) And among the works which characterize the children of the kingdom He names righteousness (Matthew 13:43; 25:34, 46), obedience to God’s will (Matthew 7:21-23), humility (Matthew 20:20-27), and self-sacrificing love, which ministers to “one of the least of these” as to the Master (Matthew 25:34-46). PFF1 139.1