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The Kingdom Not Yet

When Jesus preached the Kingdom of God, he often did so in parables. In fact, there are over 40 parables recorded in the Gospels. Scripture tells us that Jesus did so to purposely make his message obscure to those whose hearts were callous to God, his messenger, the message and to God's purpose for their lives so that while they were ever hearing they would not understand, and while they were ever seeing they would not perceive (Mat 13:13-15). This strategy was so successful that even to the very end of Jesus' stay here on earth, his own disciples were still confused as to when the Davidic Kingdom would be restored to Israel, asking Him as he was about to ascend to heaven, "Lord, is at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" Jesus replied, "It is not for you to know the times or epochs which the Father has set my by how authority" (Act 1:6-7). Jesus went on to tell them that they the must remain in Jerusalem to wait upon the Holy Spirit and his power and then they would preach the gospel starting in Jerusalem, then to Judea, then to Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. Ten days later at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon them and over one hundred others in an upper room with great power. And the world has never been the same since.

Pentecost is most often thought of as the official inauguration of the church. And while that is true, Pentecost is much more than that. That day was a huge historical event for the entire world, for it also marked God's reversal of his rejection of the nations at Babel thousands of years earlier. The small remnant of Jews who would come to believe the Gospel of the Kingdom, would themselves sow the seeds of the gospel throughout the entire world.

Many Christians, even, mistakenly think that after Cyrus the Persian king set the Jews free from captivity in Babylon, that everything returned to normal in Israel. But that is the farthest thing from the truth. Many Jews allowed themselves to be persuaded to not return to their homeland, and so they migrated to other nations. These basically became known as Hellenistic Jews who eventually were scattered all over the empire of Greece after the Greeks conquered the Medo-Persian empire. The prophet Jeremiah pronounced a woe upon the false shepherds, who were in Babylon at the time, who were persuading God's exiled flock to not return to Israel at the end of their captivity (Jer 23:1-4). God promised that he himself would gather his flock out of all the nations where they went, and that he would raise up other shepherds to tend to them. And this is exactly what happened at Pentecost.

After the Holy Spirit descended on all the disciples and filled them with power in the upper room, Peter rose to give a sermon. Jerusalem at that time was filled with Jews because of the Passover season. Greco-Roman Jews from many nations were in the city. And a great miracle took place -- a miracle that reversed the confusion of tongues at Babel. All the Jews from these different nations who spoke in different tongues were able to understand Peter; and while at first they couldn't understand what was going on and how everyone could understand one man speaking in one tongue, about three thousand that day wound up believing the gospel that Peter had preached to them (Acts 2). These new believers were brought into a new and different kind of "nation" that Christ talked about Mat 21:43. And when these Jews returned home to all the nations in which they lived, they spread the gospel of salvation in those places slowly but surely and relentlessly bringing Gentiles into this new nation with them. This is precisely how God began to gather his flock, as the prophet Jeremiah predicted. The gospel literally went out in the nations of the world, beginning in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

But this wasn't the end of it. Far from it. God had promised Abraham that his people would always live in the land of milk and honey, conditioned on their obedience. God even promised. through Jeremiah, that he would bring his people back to "their pasture" (Jer 23:3). The Jews would certainly would have understood this to mean nothing less than their promised land.
But even so...how would this plot of land in the Ancient Near East fit in with God's vision of restored Edenic glory? The answer to this is that under the New Covenant, the promised land expands to become the entire world (Rom 4:13; Mat 5:5). On the last day, after Christ creates the new heavens and the new earth, Edenic glory will encompass the entire earth. Remember: Adam failed to fulfill God's mandate of making the earth like Eden; but the Last Adam will not fail! The entire physical world will shine with the brilliance of Edenic glory, and no doubt be filled with billions of redeemed, glorified saints from the entire span of human history.

It is no accident or coincidence that we find Eden in the last book of the bible. We find it my its many themes scattered peppered throughout Revelation. Here are just a few:

1. The river that flowed out of Eden and the tree of life (Gen 2:4-14); the river that flowed from the New Jerusalem and the tree of life (Rev 21:9-22:2)

2. The first bridegroom (Adam) and bride (Eve) in Eden (Gen 2:18-25); bride = the church and Bridegroom = Christ (Rev 19:5-9; 21:1-9).

3. Satan and the woman Eve (Gen 3:1-13; Satan and the "new woman", the new Eve (Rev 12:1-17)

4. The curse decreed (Gen 3:14-19); the curse abolished (Rev 22:3).

5. Death enters creation (Gen 3:19); death is destroyed (Rev 20:14-15).

On this new earth of Edenic glory, there will be no more tears, no more suffering, no more pain, no more death (Rev 21:4) All will be as perfect as God is perfect. The Abrahamic Promises will all be fulfilled. All the nations will be blessed, for they will consist of all the redeemed from every tribe, tongue and people (Rev 5:9).

This will be the eternal, visible kingdom realized. And this will happen after the fullness of the Gentiles has come in (Rom 11:25; Lk 21:24), Christ returns and casts the devil and his army of wicked angels into the lake of fire (Rev 20:10), forever destroying the lord of death, who had the power of death.