According to the Scriptures, Jesus message was this:":The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Reform your lives and believe in the good news"
My understanding of that is that Jesus was telling people that God stands ready to rule in their life and that they would be much better off if God did rule in their life rather than anyone or anything else.
When Jesus sent his disciples on mission he told them to say the same thing. "The reign of God is at hand.
Jim
Hi Jim,
We agree on what Jesus’ message was all about – the goods news that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What we don’t agree on is what this “kingdom of heaven” is. You believe it is something that exists only in the hearts and minds of those who want God to rule their lives – the “reign of God” in one’s life. I believe it is a literal kingdom that will be set up on earth when Christ returns.
The Scriptures show that the Jews, including Christ’s disciples and all those who believed in Him, understood the kingdom to mean a literal world-ruling kingdom that God will establish on earth. This understanding comes from the Jews’ reading of the writings of their prophets [the OT Scriptures]. Note that the Jews knew about the coming of a Messiah from their Scriptures (Matt. 2:5-6). The Messiah was to be their liberator who will not only rule Israel but also the whole world. What the Jews failed to understand was that this Messiah had to suffer and die first before He becomes all that. They correctly understood that this Messiah would rule from Jerusalem (Zech. 9:9; 14:16; Mic. 4:1-2; Ps. 2:6), that was why when Jesus was about to set foot on Jerusalem, His disciples thought that the kingdom was about to be established:
“And as they [the disciples] heard these things, He [Jesus] added and spoke a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and * because they thought the kingdom of God was about to appear immediately *” (Lk. 19:11).
Notice that Jesus spoke of the parable to give His disciples an idea on the TIMING of the establishment of the kingdom because of their mistaken belief that the kingdom would appear immediately upon His arrival in Jerusalem. The parable was about a nobleman (representing Jesus) who went to a far country (heaven) to receive a kingdom. The nobleman then began to rule upon his return. In this parable, Christ reveals that He will go to heaven first to receive the kingdom then begin to rule (establish the kingdom on earth) only when He returns.
Now, did Christ’s disciples understand the parable? Days after Christ’s death and resurrection, we find His disciples asking Him again the same question. Notice Acts 1:6: “When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord,
wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel ?”
Did the apostles understand the parable? Certainly! The parable says the nobleman will receive the kingdom from a far country and will begin to rule only when He comes back. When the apostles asked Jesus again whether He will now set up the kingdom, Jesus had already gone to heaven [after His resurrection] – the far country of the parable – and had come back to earth! The disciples clearly had the parable in mind when they asked Jesus that second time in Acts 1:6. What they did not get was that His coming back to appear to them after His resurrection and ascension was not the coming back He spoke about, ie., His second coming “with power and great glory” to set up the kingdom.
But what is immediately evident from the text is that the apostles, several days after having been taught personally by Christ what the kingdom of God was all about (Acts 1:3), still was of the understanding that the kingdom is a literal kingdom to “restore again the kingdom [of David] to Israel.” If their perception of the kingdom had been wrong, Christ would have corrected them. But Christ tacitly showed His agreement of their views [about what the kingdom was all about] when He answered their question with these words: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in his own power” (v. 7).
Clearly, Christ’s good news was that of a soon coming establishment of a literal kingdom on earth – a kingdom that is from heaven with Christ as King – to rule the nations on this earth. That is the most wonderful good news for an evil and sick world headed towards utter destruction! Don’t you think so?