Designed, compiled and edited by Gaetan from multiple sources.
Taken from scriptures in the four Gospels with cross references.
The Kingdom: MAT.5:5 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. In that Golden Age the Lord shall rule upon the Earth in person with a rod of iron and we shall rule with Him in mighty power! (Rev.2:27) The pitiful little bands of persecuted Christians and believers in God and His Love are going to inherit the Kingdom of God on earth to run and govern it by love and the power of God! "The meek shall inherit the earth." Jesus and His Kingdom are going to be the government and we will have supernatural bodies and powers and the authority of Christ's Kingdom on Earth which will really facilitate the job, and God knows we'll need it! We will have been resurrected, translated and changed, and we will have our eternal bodies, spiritual bodies like the Lord had when He was resurrected. (1 Co.15:51-54, Luke 24:39) This will be a great advantage in being officers of the law and law enforcers, governors and so on, miraculous supermen, ruling in love over the villagers of this world during the Millennium and also later on with those who will live outside of the Heavenly City. We're going to be teaching them how to live and how to be honest and how to love God and obey. (Isa.2:1-5; 11:1-9) It is you, you, that God is going to use to run the world, and He's getting you ready for it right now! MAT.6:9, 10, 13 In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Lk. 1:31-33 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; his kingdom will never end.� It has always been a little hard to understand exactly what His Kingdom really is, there are so many conflicting teachings on the subject, and even God Himself calls it a mystery! (Mark 4:11; Romans 16:25; Ephesians 1:9, 10; 1Cor.2:7; Ephesians 3; 5:32; 6:19; Col.1:23-27; 4:3; 2:2; Mat.13:11; Luke 8:10; Rev.10:7.) Some say it is future, some say it is now! Some say it is literal, others say it is spiritual! The fact of the matter is, according to God's Word, it is all of these things! Jesus Himself compared it to a lot of things: A field, a seed, a treasure, a pearl, a net, a household, a King with servants who have talents, a household of laborers, a tree, a wedding feast, a marriage, leaven, a mustard seed, etc. (Mat.13; Mark 4 and Luke 13) He preached it, Philip preached it, Paul preached it, and we are commanded to preach it, and it is preached! (Mat.4:23; 9:35; 24:14; Mark 1:14; Luke 8:1; 9:2, 60; 16:16). We are told that it is given unto us, we receive it, are heirs of it, it's given to a Nation, we have to enter it, it's yours and within you, and you are called to it! (Luke 12:32; Heb.12:28; James 2:5; Mat.21:43; Mark 9:47; Luke 6:20; 17:20, 21; 1Thess.2:12)
Jesus said it is hard for the rich and hypocritical religious leaders to enter it, and they shut others out of it, but it's easier for the drunks, harlots, publicans and sinners to get into it! It's full of children, because "you got to be a child" to get in! One scribe was not far from it, and John the Revelator was already in it, even the least in it is greater than John the Baptist, but some are not even fit for it at all, because sometimes you have to forsake all when going in! Some press in violently, but you have the keys, and it's out of this world! (Rev.1:9; Mat.19:24; 21:31; 19:14; 11:12; 16:19; 23:13; Mk.10:15; 12:34; Lk.18:16, 17; 7:28; 9:62; 18:29; Jn.18:36; Mk.10:24, 25) Jesus said it is at hand and is already come, and that some of the people He was talking to would see it come and drink wine in it with Him, so He told them to pray it would come. Paul tells us Jesus is going to deliver the Kingdom to God in the end, and John says the kingdoms of this world will then become the Kingdoms of Christ, and He will be King of kings and Lord of lords! (Mat.26:29; 3:2; 4:17; 10:7; 12:28; 16:28; 6:10; Mk.14:25; 1:15; 9:1 Lk.22:18; 9:27; 11:2; 1Cor.15:24; Rev.11:15) The Kingdom seems to come in two phases: first a spiritual kingdom when Christ first came to die and redeem us from our sins and then, a literal kingdom, when Jesus will return at the second coming!
Jn. 6:15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. At His first coming, Jesus refused to be crown a physical king. His mission was to redeem us spiritually first. Jn.3:5, 7 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. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. COL.1:13-14 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Jn. 18:36-37 Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place. You are a king, then said Pilate. Jesus answered, you are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. Luke 22:28-30 You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
The promised reward contains two elements: the first is a deeper and fuller fellowship with Christ Himself— eating and drinking with Him at His table—and the second is sharing with Him in His reign and practical government. The question arises, when are these rewards to be given? Did our Lord mean by ‘eating and drinking at His table’ partaking in the Lord’s Supper in communion? And was the phrase ‘sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ a picturesque way of saying that the apostles were to have control of the government? Or does the eating and the drinking at His table in His kingdom refer to that fuller fellowship with the King that we shall enjoy at His second coming? And does the promise of judging the twelve tribes of Israel mean literally what it says, that in the coming kingdom of Christ, when the Church reigns with Him, the apostles shall have responsibility for administering the nations? The reward of reigning with Christ was never meant to be enjoyed now in this age; from the very beginning Christ made it clear that this reward would not be given until His Second Coming. This is easily seen if we compare the passage before us in Luke with two similar passages in the Gospel of Matthew. First notice that the phrase, “sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” occurs virtually word for word in: Mat. 19:28: So Jesus said to them, “Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Here the time for judging is said to be when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory. When is that? We are not left to guess: Mat. 25:31-32 tells us explicitly: When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.
This is beyond all doubt a description of our Lord’s Second Coming in power and great glory to take over the government of this world and to set up His own kingdom. And this, of course, is how the apostles and the early Church understood the matter. But if reigning with Christ is not something which is given to the Christian now, but something promised to him in the future, it is meant to have a profound effect on his life now, inspiring his loyalty and strengthening him to endure his present sufferings for Christ whatever they may be. And, of course, it has had precisely that effect on the martyrs and missionaries and on all who have sacrificed or suffered in any way for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s. Paul writing to Timothy from prison, he says: Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel, for which I suffer trouble as an evildoer, even to the point of chains; but the word of God is not chained. Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, We shall also live with Him. If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:8-13). God’s Kingdom will eventually become a literal, down to earth reality during the Millennium: **Revelation 3:21 The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. **Revelation 5:10 …and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. It is in Revelation, chapter 19, that we read John's magnificent marvellous description of Jesus Christ's coming with the hosts of heaven to defeat and destroy the Antichrist and his fiendish forces at the awesome Battle of Armageddon. So following the chronological order of events, in Revelation 20 we're given an amazing glimpse of His Kingdom during the Millennium period:
"And I saw an angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that old Serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the Bottomless Pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season." (Rev.20:1-3.) The devil will be bound and cast as a prisoner into the bottomless pit for a thousand years, with nobody left to run his business! We'll be rid of him, thank God! For a thousand years he will no longer bother us and no longer lead his legions and his demons across the face of the Earth to plague the World and its citizens! And it is during this thousand years, while the Devil is in prison in the heart of the Earth, in the Bottomless Pit, that the Saints, including all the new arrivals who resisted the Antichrist and rejected the Mark of the Beast, choosing rather to give their lives than to deny Christ, will live and reign with Christ for a thousand years: "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them and judgement was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the Beast, neither his Image, neither had received his Mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. They shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. But the rest of the dead (the unsaved) lived not again until the thousand years were finished." (Rev.20:4-6.) During the Millennium, Jesus is going to reign and rule in person using us as His instruments! So our work--and I hope you won't be too disappointed--will not be over with the resurrection and the Rapture! We're still going to be busy, ruling and reigning with Jesus!--It's all very literal! But many people get all theoretical and they get hazy, dreamy ideas about this that, after Jesus returns, we're all going to be way off somewhere in some place called Heaven or something. Well, Heaven is not
going to be way off somewhere, it's going to be right here on Earth, a Heaven-on-Earth during the Millennium! We're going to rule and reign with Christ right here on Earth over the unsaved people and nations who are left, who were not destroyed by the judgements God heaps upon the Antichrist kingdom. Every day, millions of Christians all over the world pray, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!" But most of them don't really appreciate the tremendousness of that statement in the Lord's Prayer, how literally it is going to come true and be fulfilled! It's actually going to be like Heaven, Heaven on Earth, with God's Will being done and His Kingdom come--on Earth as it is in Heaven! And we will be His officers, enforcing His Will as we rule over the Earth with Him! The prophet Daniel described the takeover of this world's governments by Christ's Millennial Kingdom in his famous vision in Daniel chapter two. He saw a great image, which represented history's various great World Empires, being destroyed by "a Stone (Jesus) which smote the image upon his feet", smashing it to pieces which are blown away like the chaff! "And the Stone that smote the image became a Great Mountain (Kingdom), and filled the whole Earth!" (Dan.2:34, 35.) "For in the days of these kings"--the ten toes of the image, the ten final government leaders who fully cooperate with and yield to the Antichrist (See Rev.17:12-14.)-- "shall the God of Heaven set up a Kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the Kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever!" (Dan.2:44.) One of these days very soon, the King is going to come back to claim His Kingdom! God will then sweep away all this world's kingdoms, but not all the people! Many of them will still be here, but we'll be ruling over them.
"And there was given Him dominion, glory and a Kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. But the saints of the Most High shall take the Kingdom, and possess the Kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever!" (Dan.7:14, 18.) "And judgement was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the Kingdom. And the Kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the Kingdom under the whole Heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him!" (Dan.7:22, 27.) Then, under the supreme reign of Christ Himself, God’s children are going to inherit the Earth and the Kingdom of God and govern it by love and the power of God! No longer will reign the cruel, selfish, dog-eat-dog philosophy which gives the world to the strongest and the mightiest, in which might is right, as it is run today by rebellious, disobedient and perverted man! But it will be given to those who really have the right to govern because of what today's reprobate man considers weaknesses: love, meekness, forgiveness and faith in God and His Word! Then and only then, under the supreme and powerful rule and reign of Christ and God's children, will all wars finally cease and the World at last be governed fairly and well with true justice, liberty, peace, plenty and happiness for all! "And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore!" (Is.2:4.) Complete disarmament at last! That will be the World's first real genuine disarmament, beating their weapons into instruments of peace!--Hallelujah! At last there will be peace on earth which shall never end under the reign of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Prince of peace Himself! Today's wicked, vengeful men of
war will be stopped at last as God "destroys them that destroy the Earth"! (Rev.11:18.) Those who brought war and conflict to the Earth! Only then shall the men of peace and the God of peace and the Prince of Peace rule, reign and bring final "peace on Earth"! (Lk.2:14.) Then "all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. For the Kingdom is the Lord's: and He is the Governor among the nations. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the Earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire!" (Ps.22:27, 28; 46:9.) He's going to stop all this war business, He's going to break the arrows and the swords, the shields, the bows, etc. All those chariots, planes, tanks, missiles, bombs and all that are going to be burned up, thank God! Jesus told His disciples, "The Kingdom of God is within you" (Lk.17:21), and this is true for all of us who know and love the Lord: we already have Heaven on Earth in our hearts! But the problem is, there is still Hell all around us! But in that day He is going to wipe away all this Hell on Earth and set up His Kingdom of peace, righteousness, fairness, justice, mercy and love and it will literally be Heaven on Earth! His Kingdom won't only be within us, it will be all around us! "The lord Most High is a Great King over all the earth."--In the Millennium!--"He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet! For God is the King of all the Earth: sing ye praises with understanding! God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of His Holiness." (Ps.47:2, 3, 7, 8.) "The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor." (Ps.72:3, 4.)
There will be no more big powers and oppressed poor! The World is going to see a righteous Judge at last, a righteous King, a righteous Ruler, Who will have a righteous government! No more corruption, vice, crime, payola, bribery or crooked judges and crooked politicians, but a righteous government and justice for all! "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the Earth." (Ps.72:6, 8.) The Kingdom of Christ on Earth is going to completely cover the whole World! "For the Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers. The whole Earth is at rest, and is quiet; they break forth into singing"! (Is.14:5, 7.) "Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him: all nations shall serve Him. And blessed be His glorious Name for ever‌ and let the whole Earth be filled with His glory" (Ps.72:11,19.) MAT.8:11-12 And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Lk. 13:28-30 There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.
There're several indications in the Bible that we're going to sit down at a feast. The Old Testament Israel was cast out because they rejected Christ! (Mark 12:1-11) Therefore Jesus said these former children of His Kingdom are cast out now and no longer members of the Kingdom of God unless they receive their Messiah, Jesus Christ! (Lk.6:11; 19:14; Jn.8:39-44) Paul said, "Well, does that mean God really is through with Israel?" And he goes on to say, "Well, not necessarily. If they receive Jesus, He's not through with them. There's a promise that a remnant shall be saved." (Isa.10:22; Ro.9:27.) He was encouraging himself and his fellow countrymen that Israel was going to get saved, and many did and will get saved. In the end, only the believers in Jesus Christ, whether Jews or gentiles, will sit with Jesus in His Kingdom! ‌the Israel of God. LONG LIVE HIS KINGDOM! Compiled and edited by Gaetan. gaetan.goye@gmail.com
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