Thy Kingdom Come

Stan Moody, Ph.D.

Haggai 2:1-9
Luke 19:37-46

Down through the history of Christianity, there has been no greater error than the neglect of the doctrine of the presence of the Kingdom of God. The most dangerous practice of the Church of Jesus Christ, in my estimation, has been either to render the Kingdom of God to a government on earth or to render it so spiritual as to be out of our reach – away. In the one case, the visible, physical church becomes the Kingdom of God. In the other, Christians are standing, gazing up into the heavens, stuck between the two Advents – the First Coming of Jesus and His anticipated Second Coming.

We pray every Sunday morning, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” As you think about those words, you cannot declare the Kingdom of God as either wholly present in the church or wholly future in the so-called End Times. “Thy Kingdom come” has to be interpreted to mean that the Kingdom of God is either not yet fully here or is wholly future. “…thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” can only mean that God’s redemptive plan is unfolding both in heaven and on earth – that they are evolving together through time. We can think of God’s redemptive plan as the earth providing the raw material for His will in heaven.


From Isaiah’s prophecy of the Highway of the Redeemed (Isaiah 35), we have used the metaphor of a conveyer belt assembly line as the Kingdom of God on earth. The redeemed of the Lord are there, enough above the earth so that they can act and react with it but enough removed so that they are distinct and separate. On that highway are those saints who have gone before and those who are living today. The task before the saints of God – both the living and the dead – is to advance the Kingdom by bringing God’s people in one at a time. We are told in Scripture that the end will come when the last of the elect has been brought in and not until.

As God’s elect – both the living and the dead – look down on the earth from the safety of the Kingdom, they see many people preoccupied with what they are doing, where they are living, how much money they are making and their contribution to mankind, etc. – all those things that are forever making their way into the obituary columns. Here and there, however, there are upraised hands, stretched out seeking rescue. It becomes the task of the elect of God to reach down to those upraised hands, grab hold and offer a lift into the Kingdom. That is our task.

Every generation of Christians, however, has shied away from this task in preference either to creating God’s Kingdom here on earth or to send it away and do a rain dance to bring it back. This comes from a belief that each generation of Christians is more blessed, more righteous and more oppressed than previous generations. It degenerates even further into racism, classism and nationalism.

At the time of Jesus, the Jews considered themselves to be the elect of God. In fact, they were right. Where they were wrong was extending that into a perpetual insurance policy against annihilation. God would rescue the Jews because they were His chosen people. That fell apart during the exile, when Babylon – modern Iraq – carried the tribes of Judah and Benjamin into captivity, destroyed Solomon’s temple and leveled Jerusalem. The insurance policy paid off with the return from exile and the building of the second temple around 500 BCE. The insurance policy against annihilation of Israel had expired, however, by the time 1M Jewish zealots had died in the Roman siege and the burning rubble of the Second Temple in AD 70. It failed to pay off against annihilation as 900 Jews held out on the mountain of Masada and some 4,000 Jews held out on Gamala, nearly all opting for suicide over capture.

The problem the Jews had was that, instead of remaining faithful to the spiritual Kingdom of God, they set out to create God’s Kingdom here on earth. The First Century Church, on the other hand, spiritualized the Kingdom so much that it fell victim to Gnosticism, by which its members considered themselves privileged spiritual beings incapable of sin. As a result, they engaged in all kinds of sinful practices with the rationalization that they had become sinless and were therefore immune from God’s judgment.

As the Roman Empire was winding down, Emperor Constantine recognized an opportunity to merge the Church of Jesus Christ with a pagan empire. It is possible that he saw this as the only way to save the Empire. When that was done, the Christian world breathed a collective sigh of relief. Persecution ended, and the Holy Roman Catholic Church was built as the Kingdom of God come to earth. Once the persecution ended, so also did the witness of the Church until the defender of the church became the oppressor.

We have a history of lurching from an earthly kingdom to a heavenly kingdom, when in fact the Kingdom of God is both earthly and heavenly. The Kingdom is the vehicle through which God exercises His will on earth in order to fulfill His will in Heaven. The Kingdom of God is the focus of the Lord’s Prayer. To say, “Thy Kingdom come” is to acknowledge that the Kingdom has not yet been completed. It has not yet fully come. To say, “…thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is to acknowledge that because God’s will is the fulfillment of the Kingdom, its fulfillment is an ongoing process. The Kingdom of God, therefore, is both present and future – both a present reality and a future hope.

As believers, we are citizens of that Kingdom that is both on earth and in heaven – a present reality and a future hope. You can think of it as God’s building project. Its present citizens are the saints who have gone before us and those who are presently living – you and me. Its future citizens are those who will take that leap of faith onto Isaiah’s Highway of the Redeemed. In the event that there are more citizens now than are left for the future, we can come to no other conclusion than that the Kingdom is gaining strength day-by-day. In the event that there are fewer citizens now than are left for the future, we must come to the same conclusion. Either way, God’s will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Since the End Time and appearance of the resurrected and risen Lord is considered to be the moment of the completion of the Kingdom building project, you can see what a futile and selfish exercise it is to try and project when that will happen or where it will happen. The End Time is simply the point at which God’s will has been done on earth as it is in heaven. There is too much work of Kingdom building to be done in the meantime to be struggling over the time and nature of the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is sufficient to know that seeking after the Kingdom of God and His righteousness is all that is required of us. Yet, it is the expectation of an imminent Second Coming of Christ that has left the Church of Jesus Christ in America shallow and apostate.

One of the great surprises I encountered when going down to the prison as chaplain was that the Second Coming is driving the theology of the Christian church there. Inmates are good at memorizing Scripture verses – they have a lot of time to do so. They are very good at deciding what God is going to do in the near future. They are very bad, however, at living the cross-bearing life day-to-day. Because God is expected to take them out of prison very shortly, who needs to study the Word of God? The words of God, taken in cafeteria style, are sufficient. They know the words, but they do not know the Word.

At the root of all this is a desire on the part of Christians to escape persecution and suffering. We have a church in America today that is paranoid of suffering. Like the ancient Jews and the Roman Catholic Church before it, we have created a kingdom on earth in order to use our political muscle to avoid suffering and persecution. The intensity with which this heresy has crept into the prison culture is startling and reflective of an American perspective.

By contrast, listen to the teaching on the Kingdom of God by Watchman Nee who was, until his death, imprisoned in China for the cause of Christ:

Regrettably, the gospel preached in Christianity today rarely mentions the kingdom of God. When it does mention the kingdom of God, it mentions only the name without explaining what the kingdom of God actually is. For this reason many people know the kingdom of God in name but not in its reality—they do not know what the kingdom of God truly is. Today when many people preach the gospel, they preach the “heavenly mansion” as the central and most important matter. This is truly ridiculous.

A careful reading of the New Testament from the first book to the last will reveal not even a single verse that says that the goal of the gospel is for people to go to heaven. Rather, almost every book in the New Testament speaks of the kingdom of God and says clearly that the central goal of the gospel is the kingdom of God. God’s intention with the gospel is not to save people into heaven but to save them into the kingdom, that is, into the kingdom of the heavens.

The kingdom of God is not only righteousness but also peace. This means that although we need to be strict with ourselves by being righteous, we need to deal with others in peace. God’s kingdom requires us to have peace toward others. Our dealings and interactions with others must be in peace. If we Christians do not have peace toward others but rather have many problems with others, this shows that we have not allowed God to rule in us. If we allow God to rule, our relationship with others will be peaceful, and there will be no quarrels or arguments with others, nor will there be opinions. We must be ruled by God and have peace toward others.

This past week, I was given a book written in 1888 by Ellen G. White, the founder of the 7th Day Adventist Church, a home for some of the most peaceful, committed believers I have ever encountered. I am in the process of reading it. It is a wonderful historical treatment of the Jewish and Christian churches as they attempt to merge the Gospel with government. On that score, she is right on.

Where it falls apart, however, is in the lack of a doctrine of the Kingdom of God. Her legalistic condemnation of a Sunday Sabbath attempts to correct the problem through proper worship forms. But Jesus said to the woman at the well in Samaria, “…a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…A time is coming and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks” (John 4:7-9). Worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth is, in fact, the very essence of Sabbath rest.

We have to ask, “If Jesus proclaimed Kingdom time as one in which the place of worship is irrelevant, how then can we split hairs over when we worship?” Was the Sabbath made for man, or was man made for the Sabbath? While she had the problem very well analyzed, her remedy is inappropriate.

The veil to the Holy of Holies at the Temple was ripped in two at the death of Jesus, signifying that where God is worshipped no longer is controlling.

The Prophet Haggai ministered to the exiled Jews who had returned from Babylon but had stalled in the re-building of the Temple. His task was not only to get them going but to set the stage for a new experience in worship, when we would worship not at the Temple but at the altar of the living God. He asks the question in v. 3, “Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you as nothing?”

This Second Temple is remarkably inferior to the one built by Solomon, one of the most remarkable buildings the world had seen up to that time. Nothing could possibly compare with that built at the apex of the power and glory and wealth of Israel. Yet, Haggai has good news in vs. 7-9:

“I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,” says the Lord Almighty. “The silver is mine, and the glory is mine,” declares the Lord Almighty. “The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,” says the Lord Almighty. “And in this place, I will grant peace,” declares the Lord Almighty.
The Second Temple was honored by the living presence of One in whom bodily dwelt the fullness of the Godhead.

The Desire of Nations was the very Messiah who came to the Temple as the Man of Galilee and who taught and healed within its courts. God’s glory in the Son of Man would fill the Temple, making it far greater than the glory of Solomon.

Herod the Great, over a period of 40 years, had poured wealth and the best of architectural skill into the Temple, making it again a place of international pilgrimage. Its enhancement by the scoundrel Herod was the very enticement that brought the entire world to witness the crucifixion of Christ. He rebuilt the Temple to make its destruction even more devastating to the Jews and even to the Roman general, Titus, loathe to destroy an architectural wonder.

You will recall Solomon’s dedication of the First Temple, when he acknowledged that God could not be contained within it. Yet, the presence of Jesus Christ, the Desired of Nations, had brought the glory of God within the very Temple walls. When we move to Luke 19, we find two things happening. The first is that the disciples were admiring how the Temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts from the Emperor of Rome dedicated to God (Luke 21:5). The second is that Jesus wept over Jerusalem from the crest of the Mount of Olives.

It was a peaceful scene spread out before Him. It was the Passover, and people had journeyed from all over the world to worship Jehovah there. Jerusalem was surrounded by gardens, vineyards and palaces. The temple rose up in the middle with glistening marble walls, the pride of a Jewish nation under the domination of Rome. Jesus had just entered this marvel of a city to the cheers and praises of thousands who believed that the signs of the times announced the arrival of the Messianic kingdom. Jerusalem had been chosen by God above all the other nations on earth. But the history of its people was one of rebellion against God because they sought to institutionalize and nationalize God’s Kingdom on earth.

Jesus looks down at all this beauty and opulence from the Mount of Olives, and what does He do? He weeps:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.

Some forty years later, that prophecy was fulfilled to the extreme.

You cannot gloss over AD 70 in redemptive history. After I completed my dissertation in 2000, I went back to a book I had read that made a profound impact on me. The title of the book was, From Darkness to Dawn, nearly 600 pages long. It was a historical novel of the life of Caesar Nero. I actually retyped the book so that I could at some later date edit if for modern consumption, as it was written in the mid to late 1800’s. You cannot read that book without knowing that it was a time of great transformation from the Old Covenant to the New – from Temple worship to life in the Kingdom of God – from the law to grace.

Next week, a number of us will be headed back over to Israel/Palestine. While there will be a time for reflection, this will not be a tourist trip. We will be confronted with some very grave realities that have been brought about by the bondage of religious systems bound down by ritual and worship forms. You see, the Kingdom of God becomes relevant to us only when the kingdoms of this earth become treacherous.

There is in Palestine a remnant of those who believe in living within the Kingdom of God and have given their lives to its advancement there. We will be meeting them. While they are imprisoned, they yet are free; while they are poor, they are rich. These stand as bastions against the attempts of religion to establish God’s Kingdom on earth and to take pride in its worship forms and its splendor.

I ask that you keep us in prayer as we take this journey. You have stood with us; stand with us in prayer. Especially, I ask that you lift up daily these young people who are being raised in a theocratic world view that longs to force God’s hand in history.

Your brothers and sisters in Christ there have learned patience and perseverance in the midst of suffering. I ask that you embrace them on the Highway of the Redeemed as they travel with you on life’s journey. God bless you in these coming weeks as we ponder together what God has for us in the future.