The Future Kingdom of God

The Future Kingdom of God: a Present Reality and Our Blessed Hope is a study of the kingdom of God as it is presented in the New Testament. As were my two previous books (Desert Living: Contemplative Living as the Context for Contemplative Praying and The Vicarious, Sacrificial, Atoning Death of Jesus Christ: How We Benefit from the Death of Jesus Christ), it also is an edited collection of originally individual sermons and essays; in this case, those dealing with the New Testament doctrine of the kingdom of God.

My basic idea is that the kingdom of God is an essentially future reality, which has been dropped back into the middle of history by the fact of the coming of the Messiah and Son of God into the world in incarnate form in Jesus of Nazareth in the midst of the present age.

The kingdom of God is nowhere explained in the New Testament, yet it seems to be everywhere understood. No explanation was ever needed, and so none was given. It was simply taken for granted that the term refers to the end-time hope of the Jews for a glorious kingdom that the Messiah would one day set up in Palestine, in which he would rule the world from Jerusalem. This kingdom would be characterized by righteousness, would destroy all other kingdoms, would extend over the entire earth, and would last forever (Dan. 2:35, 44). When it comes, the Jews would henceforth rule supreme on earth. It would come during the final days, at the end of the world, and in Jesus’ day the general belief was that its appearance was imminent. There was great expectation in the air at that time (Luke 3:15) caused especially by the striking appearance of John the Baptist in the desert of Judah, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). When priests and Levites were sent from Jerusalem to ask John who he was, he answered, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23).

Then when Jesus appeared proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15), a new era began. John had already been arrested—indicating that the time of immediate preparation was now over and the time of the kingdom of God had begun. This is the meaning of the phrase, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15).

Jesus clarified this when he said, “The law and the prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached” (Luke 16:16). A clear differentiation of eras is made: 1) the time of the law and the prophets on the one hand, and 2) the time of the kingdom of God on the other hand. John was still part of the first age. After him comes the kingdom.

Jesus made it clear that John was before the coming of the kingdom when he said, “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matt. 11:11). So great, in fact, is the kingdom of God that even a child in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist, the greatest of the prophets, who preached before the coming of the kingdom.

So here is the astonishing message of Jesus, a completely new message—namely that he is the longed-for Messiah, none other than the Son of God himself, and that with his arrival, the kingdom of God has come into the world. In fact, we can trace the coming of the kingdom of God into the world to his birth in Bethlehem, for that is when the Son of God became incarnate in the world for its transformation. But it was only after the arrest of John the Baptist that Jesus made himself publically known so that all could benefit from the arrival of the kingdom. Previous to this, only Jesus’ immediate family and the shepherds and Magi recognized him.

No one ever expected such a thing as this—the kingdom of God arriving now in the middle of history! It was supposed to come at the end of the world. But the world was still going on just as it was before. Jesus was obviously not the glorious military figure that the Jews were expecting who would free them from the Romans and set up a universal and everlasting Jewish kingdom of righteousness on earth. Yet Jesus proclaimed that in him, the kingdom had arrived. He said that his exorcisms proved it. “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons,” he said, “then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). Indeed in him, the kingdom of God has arrived.

When John the Baptist sent messengers from his prison cell to ask Jesus, “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matt. 11:3), Jesus replied, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (Matt. 11:4-6). By saying this, he makes it clear that his answer to John’s question is, ‘Yes, I am he who is to come, and my works prove it.’

We are now living in the blessed time of the kingdom of God. “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear,” Jesus said. “Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Matt. 13:16-17). Their eyes are blessed, for they have seen the Messiah and the arrival of the kingdom.

In the synagogue in Nazareth after Jesus himself had selected and read a key messianic passage from Isaiah, he “closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down … And he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’” (Luke 4:20-21). Jesus had just read the passage about the one who was to come who would preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and liberty to the oppressed (Isa. 61:1). Now he astonishes them by telling them that this scripture was being fulfilled as he was reading it to them. He is the one whom they were awaiting to do these things.

The future kingdom of God has come in Jesus. Yet the glorious hopes of the Jews were not mistaken. Christ will come again in glory on the clouds of heaven to consummate all things. Then their hopes, based on God’s promises, will be fulfilled in a kingdom of righteousness that he will set up on earth. In the meantime, we are to wait in hope and longing for his coming and his kingdom, preparing ourselves ever more each day for it “so that when he comes he may find us watching in prayer, our hearts filled with wonder and praise” (Advent Preface II). “Take heed, watch and pray,” Jesus said; “for you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33).

The first part of this book deals with the fact that the future kingdom of God is now present among us. The second part deals with the kingdom’s glorious future consummation as our blessed hope. The books of George Eldon Ladd (see bibliography) were of the greatest help to me in realizing that the future kingdom of God is now present in our midst. I especially explore this under the aspect of the Advent-Christmas mystery (see table of contents).

The books of John F. Walvoord and J. Dwight Pentecost (see bibliography) greatly expanded my understanding of the future kingdom of God as our blessed hope, in particular their treatment of the future millennial kingdom (Rev. 20:1-7). It is unusual for a Catholic to take up these matters, but I believe that a strong case can be made for a millennial hope such as was once the almost universal belief of the early Church Fathers, as well as of St. John in the book of Revelation (Rev. 20:1-7).