Originally published in "The Lord's Coming Herald & Wesleyan Bible Prophecy Advocate," Winter 2007
What Is The Kingdom Of Christ
This is a central question that deserves an honest answer. Friends, it is
absolutely essential for a proper understanding of the Christian faith that we
should have the right answer to it!
Jesus himself told us very clearly what His kingdom is. Here are two of the main
points of His teaching:
1. It is the kingdom of God. This fact is inherent in the statement of Jesus
that He and the Father God are one (Jn. 10:30). There is only one God, and there
is only one kingdom, the kingdom of God, and of Christ, who is also God.
Architects of modern dispensational premillennial theory, by contrast, have
attempted to split the kingdom up into factions in which there appears to be
more than one kingdom that is said to pertain to different things. For example,
dispensationalists teach a "heavenly" kingdom as distinguished from an "earthly"
kingdom, a "spiritual" kingdom distinguished from a "material" kingdom, and a
kingdom for the Jews that is to be separated from a kingdom involving the
church.
The above dispensational wresting of Scripture rolls back, ultimately, to a disruptive split within the indivisible Trinity, and churns its way forward in a dualistic approach to the entire message of the Bible--a dualism, or philosophical divide based on Gnosticism, causing polarization in many areas of modern life. O. Palmer Robertson, in The Christ of the Covenants, pp. 214-226, makes this enlightening statement:
"Dispensationalism has built its entire approach to biblical interpretation on a metaphysical dichotomy between the material and the spiritual realm. . . . This dichotomy in the purpose of God [regarding Israel and the Church] is metaphysical rather than biblical in origin. . . . A form of Platonism actually permeates the hermeneutical roots of dispensationalism."
The Bible teaches
only one kingdom that is germane to the world and its redemption, namely, the
kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, or the kingdom of God.
2. It is not of this world. Jesus went on to say: "my kingdom is not of this world" (Jn. 18:36). Jesus does not have two kingdoms, He has only one kingdom, and that one kingdom is "within you" (Lk. 17:21), and not of this world. Paul tells us plainly that it is a "heavenly" kingdom (II Tim. 4:18). Peter tells us, further, that it is an "everlasting" kingdom (II Pet. 1:11).
Nowhere does the
Bible speak of Christ's kingdom as spanning only 1,000 years. The word "kingdom"
by the way, is never mentioned in Revelation chapter 20, the only text in the
entire Bible where advocates of premillennialism claim that their theory, of
necessity, must be based. There is not a single verse in the entire New
Testament, we repeat, wherein Jesus described, or promised, an earthly material
kingdom for the Jews that would be "set up" after His return. The fact is,
rather, that those who embrace premillennialism are choosing to abandon
Christianity and return to a Christ-rejecting Judaism's misunderstanding of the
divine revelation given in the Old Testament.
That choice was fatal for many unbelieving Jews of the first Christian century.
It caused a great apostasy in the later Patristic church, as well. Today, the
phenomenal spread of premillennialism has reached the proportion of total mass
delusion throughout much of the modern so-called biblical fundamentalist
movement.
Unbridled "antinomian apostasy" is the ruin now upon us as the sad result.
In
the midst of this great falling away, however, God is mercifully raising up a
new generation of reformers to restore the true gospel faith that was once for
all delivered to the saints (Jude 3).
At the heart of the gospel lies the concept of the messianic kingdom established on earth at the first advent of Christ two-thousand years ago (Dan. 2:44). Darbyites postpone Christ's messianic kingdom. Our job is to make it known. And we do our job with all the authority of the God of heaven behind us!
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