“If someone calling themselves the Son of God is a real, historical person, why can’t the Kingdom of God be a real, historical kingdom?”
Indeed.
Praying Medic, _Divine Healing Made Simple: Simplifying the supernatural to make healing and miracles a part of your everyday life_ (2013), 266pp., on 193-195
John Sellers is a Facebook friend and gifted teacher on the kingdom.
I like the way in which he explains the kingdom of God and how it is to be proclaimed.
He has graciously allowed me to share some of his observations:
“Historically, one of the problems in understanding the kingdom has been a focus on spatial concepts in thinking about God.
This has led to confusion about where heaven is, where God is, where Christ is, and it’s led to a failure to grasp the reality of our lives in the kingdom of God, now.
The kingdom of God is perhaps best understood as a new relationship under the rule of Christ, the king, rather than a realm that we journey to, or a period of time during which Jesus will reign over the earth.
Jesus lived as a supernatural man.
Although he is God, he divested himself of his own power and authority, and operated under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, just as we do.
Our goal is to become like him.
It is the relationship we have with Christ in the Spirit that opens us up to the revelation and experiences of the supernatural.
It is only the transforming presence and power of the Holy Spirit that enables us to walk like Jesus did.
To walk in the Spirit is to have a relationship with him.
This is why I believe relationship is preferable to realm in thinking about the kingdom of God.
The scriptures draw us continually into relationship.
Even the kingdom of darkness is not so much a realm as it is the absence of proper relationship under the rule of God.
The enemy is in rebellion to God, and therefore is not in his kingdom.
He has been cast out.
Does this speak of realm or relationship?
The whole world is under the power of the enemy.
Is God absent?
No.
He is present always and everywhere.
But the whole world is in rebellion and is not in the kingdom.
God is not without power and influence in the world now.
The entire universe is upheld by him.
But he has allowed rebellion, and so the call to come into the kingdom is primarily a call to turn from that rebellion and to turn to him in faith and obedience.
This enables us to receive all the riches of Christ.
We are seated with him in heavenly places.
Do these things speak of realm or a relationship?
If God is present, then it must be that to be seated with Christ in heavenly places is to be properly oriented to God in Christ, as the representative man, the second Adam.
We share in the obedience of Jesus Christ, who is now at the right hand of God, and in us at the same time by the spirit.
Because he is at the right hand of God, we have also gone behind the veil into the holy of holies, because we are in him.
When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he was not primarily referencing the spiritual realm, nor was he specifically referencing the realm of God’s presence, where he dwells, where the angels are, where he has prepared mansions for us.
When he said the kingdom of God is within you, it is best understood as ‘among’ you.
The kingdom first is represented to the disciples as the person of Jesus.
He is the king and the one in whom they saw the kingdom.
Then as the disciples were called and followed him, and as the multitudes followed him, the kingdom grew.
The disciples were given power and authority because they entered the kingdom and became representatives of the king.
They have been given authority to do what Jesus did as part of the ongoing ministry of expanding the kingdom until the glory of the Lord covers the earth, as the waters cover the sea.
We are each called, commissioned, tasked, and empowered to do the same things until he returns.
There seems to be confusion in the body of Christ over what preaching the gospel of the kingdom should look like.
This confusion is partly due to the differences in how Jesus and the apostle Paul presented the gospel of the kingdom.
One area that is perhaps not spoken of enough is how the Jewish people understood the gospel as Jesus related it.
His preaching of the gospel was couched in the language and imagery of the Messianic promises to Israel.
The gospel as Paul preached it was a continuation of that, but it was couched in terms that explained it for Gentiles.
The major emphasis of the good news of the kingdom of God concerns salvation from sin and reconciliation to God.
Salvation as Jesus taught and as Paul taught are not in conflict, but are emphasizing different aspects of it, ultimately bringing the same result.
That result was to bring people into recognition of Jesus as the son of God, Messiah, and Savior;
to bring them into putting their faith in him;
and to enter into the grace of God, which produces eternal life in Christ.
Both Jesus and Paul performed miracles as signs and as expressions of the reality of the kingdom of God, and as expressions of the love and goodness of God.
Both pointed out the absolute necessity of believing in Christ.
Both called people to repent.
Both called for radical transformation of the individual and society.
Both healed, cast out demons, and raised the dead.
In the gospel of John, Jesus talked about his signs in several ways.
He pointed to them so that people would believe in him.
He expected them to believe, and when they didn’t, he rebuked them.
In all of that, the clear mission of his coming was to be the savior of all.
The benefits of the kingdom, which tied Jesus to the Messianic prophecies from the Old Testament, reveal the heart of God for people now, not just in eternity, and demonstrate that Jesus is the son of God, who is able to do those things as part of God’s testimony to him.
How we proclaim the gospel of the kingdom depends on the dynamic of each situation.
We relate to people according to the truth of Christ, who we are in him, the reality of the kingdom of God, and who they are, their needs, and what the situation presents.
There really is no formula for proclaiming the gospel.
Man-made formulas for evangelism exist because we have failed to love others as Christ did.
Love implies relationship, and making disciples requires authentic ones.
The Holy Spirit should direct the way in which we present the good news.”
Dan Santa 2003:
Serene said
So anyway, Jesus says the Kingdom of God was coming in their lifetime.
This is false and this is an instrument part of the pozzed academic scholars’ book bag that they use to defame Jesus and to present him as a failed apocalyptic prophet. Absolutely nowhere Jesus predicts that it will happen in his lifetime.
Steefen:
What evidence gives you reason to Deny Luke 9:27, Mark 9:1, and Matt 16:28?
= = = = =
Serene, you’re saying Jesus was part of the Ossaeans from Nabataea or sided with them in forbidding the books of Moses?
= = = = =
Dan Santa 2003, at the bottom of Comment 30, Serene speaks of Kingdom of Heaven, Comment 31 picks up Heaven and mentions the Kingdom of Queen Julia Urania who moved into the Holy Land area.
Steefen said
Dan Santa 2003:Serene said
So anyway, Jesus says the Kingdom of God was coming in their lifetime.This is false and this is an instrument part of the pozzed academic scholars’ book bag that they use to defame Jesus and to present him as a failed apocalyptic prophet. Absolutely nowhere Jesus predicts that it will happen in his lifetime.
Mark 9:1
“And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.'”
Matthew 16:28: “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Luke 9:27: “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God”
Not failed. The Kingdom of [Obodas the God] won against Galilee, Perea, and Samaria’s King Herod, and Bethsaida and Caesarea Philippi’s King Phillip by 36 CE. These are the exact locations of Jesus’ mission.
More Supporting “In This Lifetime” Verses
Beyond Mark 9:1, several other key passages emphasize the immediate, present-generation arrival of the Kingdom and the imminent end-of-the-age transition:
Matthew 10:23
“When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”
Mark 13:30 (Parallel: Matthew 24:34 / Luke 21:32)
“Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
This generation.
Luke 17:20–21
“Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is in your midst.
Oh he there there.
Matthew 12:28
“But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
Serene, you’re saying Jesus was part of the Ossaeans from Nabataea or sided with them in forbidding the books of Moses
In my original hypotheses, Jesus’ mother Mary is an Essene and Jesus is raised to the King of the Nabataeans whose Haran territories take in Jewish refugees.
In the Quran, Mary’s material form is given to her by the Virgin of Light, which mirrors the Essene patronym, Sons of Light.
King Malchus (meaning “King”) who appears after the Crucifixion when the Roman administration favorably changes, again doesn’t have a commemoration for his birth, he only begins to appear in the lineage list of Nabataean royalty as a young adult.
Tribe to Kingdom
The tribe named Nabaiāti ruled the entire confederacy of Ishmaelites in the Assyrian records c 8th C BCE onwards.
It’s similar to how multiculturally Transjordanite Jesse is. His son David has a plainly multicultural team, but he conquers instead of negotiates; which is not nomadic style, that’s landed kingdom style.
It’s pretty natural from there to prophesy the union of tribal confederacies.
The Nabaiāti have a King Yauta, meaning “God Saves,” which is a name meaning virtually identical to the popular name Yeshua, “Yah Saves,” just without using personal theonyms. Pre-Islamic Arabia universalizes gods with a descriptor, not a personal name, as that can vary town to town.
During the period that Deutero-Isaiah is written, you have King of Kings Nabonidus joining the Arabians after removing the Edomites from the area of Petra in forging the Incense route.
Nabonidus’ palace in Tayma is considered to be the first Nabataean architecture, just in the local material of mudbrick. Tayma becomes Nabataean. Petra becomes Nabataean. And in 2020, they found his seal topmost over the first Nabataean capital of Sela.
In my original research, the problem of the tribal name becoming the landed kingdom name NBTW, Nabataea, the soft t to hard t, becomes solved when you mediate it through Nabonidus’ Mesopotamian chancery.
In other words, the texts are predicting various natural alliances, and if a prophet predicts wrong, swap it out with the prophet that predicts right.
DavidFord said
“If someone calling themselves the Son of God is a real, historical person, why can’t the Kingdom of God be a real, historical kingdom?”
Sincerely with no offense giving all those things look like Protestant mumbo-jumbo with no essence and no real value. It’s just non-sense talk when everything, absolutely anything, can be seen as a “personal relation with Jesus”. I’m surprised that the author didn’t mentioned the necessity of being “born again”. Who reads those books? And why are they rated so high? Steefen can write better books with his AI farm. These books do not have any value from a scientific point of view.
Steefen said
What evidence gives you reason to Deny Luke 9:27, Mark 9:1, and Matt 16:28?
Who says I’m denying them? Have you seen Highlander? And you also forgot John 21:21-23, that actually gives the hint what this is about: an immortal disciple. John gives the hint but then he takes it back, leaving it uncertain.
23 The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”
More I cannot talk on the subject, because simply I just don’t know what these verses are referring about. There must’ve meant something, an allegory, just because that’s how the gospels are being written. But I strongly do not believe they actually meant that Jesus was coming back in their life times. Neither of the gospels suggest that. If you look in Mark and Matthew, these are gospels that present a new religion, a new church and a new priesthood class, to replace the older.
- Jesus feeding the thousands, with a couple of leaves and fish – means the Church preaching to the people
- the disciples almost sinking the boat or couldn’t navigate the boat because the wind was against them, up until Jesus came aboard and encourage them to have faith – that is an advice for the priesthood class not to lose hope in leading the Church
- Matthew 25, the most weaponized chapter, was not instructions in how to help the poor, but those were instructions to the priesthood class in how to behave towards the Church: to keep it clean of heresies by treating it, to come up with sermons to “dress” it, to practice it even if it’s banned (in jail) etc
- and many others
- even Matthew 10:23, mentioned by Serene above, it’s just an advice for the priest hood class that they have so much missionary trips to perform to do that they won’t be able to finish until the end of the world, but not a short finite list that will end soon
All of these suggest planning for a long term, planning for the long future. None of these gospels, that were written several decades after the death of Jesus who clearly didn’t came back in his lifetime and not even close, were writing about an immediate return of Jesus!
Dan Santa 2003, at the bottom of Comment 30, Serene speaks of Kingdom of Heaven, Comment 31 picks up Heaven and mentions the Kingdom of Queen Julia Urania who moved into the Holy Land area.
no idea
Serene said
Serene, you’re saying Jesus was part of the Ossaeans from Nabataea or sided with them in forbidding the books of Moses
In my original hypotheses, Jesus’ mother Mary is an Essene and Jesus is raised to the King of the Nabataeans whose Haran territories take in Jewish refugees.
In the Quran, Mary’s material form is given to her by the Virgin of Light, which mirrors the Essene patronym, Sons of Light.
King Malchus (meaning “King”) who appears after the Crucifixion when the Roman administration favorably changes, again doesn’t have a commemoration for his birth, he only begins to appear in the lineage list of Nabataean royalty as a young adult.
Tribe to Kingdom
The tribe named Nabaiāti ruled the entire confederacy of Ishmaelites in the Assyrian records c 8th C BCE onwards.
It’s similar to how multiculturally Transjordanite Jesse is. His son David has a plainly multicultural team, but he conquers instead of negotiates; which is not nomadic style, that’s landed kingdom style.
It’s pretty natural from there to prophesy the union of tribal confederacies.
The Nabaiāti have a King Yauta, meaning “God Saves,” which is a name meaning virtually identical to the popular name Yeshua, “Yah Saves,” just without using personal theonyms. Pre-Islamic Arabia universalizes gods with a descriptor, not a personal name, as that can vary town to town.
During the period that Deutero-Isaiah is written, you have King of Kings Nabonidus joining the Arabians after removing the Edomites from the area of Petra in forging the Incense route.
Nabonidus’ palace in Tayma is considered to be the first Nabataean architecture, just in the local material of mudbrick. Tayma becomes Nabataean. Petra becomes Nabataean. And in 2020, they found his seal topmost over the first Nabataean capital of Sela.
In my original research, the problem of the tribal name becoming the landed kingdom name NBTW, Nabataea, the soft t to hard t, becomes solved when you mediate it through Nabonidus’ Mesopotamian chancery.
In other words, the texts are predicting various natural alliances, and if a prophet predicts wrong, swap it out with the prophet that predicts right.
I cannot build this and present it.
Why?
Because the gospels do not have a map of Jesus events in Petra.
What miracles or sermons did Jesus do in Petra? What support did Jesus have in Petra? Did the brother of Jesus have ties to Petra?
Does Acts talk about Petra? Did Paul interact with disciples in Petra?
How long did it take for Jesus to go from Petra to Jerusalem?
Why go from Petra to Galilee then finally to Jerusalem?
“use to defame Jesus and to present him as a failed apocalyptic prophet. Absolutely nowhere Jesus predicts that it will happen in his lifetime”
Jesus prophesied that the [Mt 16:27-28]”Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels…. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”
Did that prophecy come to pass?
Matthew 16:27-28
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tentmaker.org/forum/judgement-and-punishment/jesus-returned-in-power-and-glory/
For *the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels;* and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
Verily I say unto you, *There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.*
DavidFord said
Jesus prophesied that the [Mt 16:27-28]”Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels…. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”
Did that prophecy come to pass?
Look above, I already addressed this. You guys are taking one verse, that happens to be cryptic, and then label the entire gospel based on it. That’s not how it works. If you carefully read the gospels, there are clear messages about a structure in time, an organized religion to withstand the next centuries. Especially Matthew’s gospel. I find Matthew’s to be literally a manual for the new priesthood class, that is replacing the older Jewish class and their Temple, that was “cleansed” and replaced with Jesus’ body.
It seems that in all 4 gospels this remark is present, see: Luke 9:27, Mark 9:1, and Matt 16:28; John 21:21-23 has it as well, and John even goes further to hint something about an immortal disciple. I would dismiss the same explanation for the other 3, the synoptic trio, because John seems to be focused on Lazarus, and this might be referring to Lazarus, and it would make sense why John would say Lazarus to be immortal, on the idea that once raised, he will never taste death again. But the synoptic trio might have something else in mind.
What? As I said above, I don’t know. And maybe a real scholar, an honest one, not dishonest like Bart, might shed a light on this. The saying can be interpreted in numerous ways (beside that of a Highlander). “Death” here might be interpreted as the death of the soul, not of the body; that means, people will still continue to experience a bodily death, but their soul will still live on. When Jesus will finally come, these souls will receive bodies: some to live, some to die. Notice what it is said: “shall not taste death until Jesus comes”. When Jesus will come, that means some will die. It might not even refer to good people; it might refer to bad people that their soul will be tortured until the 2nd coming of Jesus and only then they’ll get a respite. I just don’t know.
However, as I said, one single verse or other singled out cryptic verses, from an entire gospel designed for a church organization in time, doesn’t change the nature of the gospels.
“are taking one verse, that happens to be cryptic, and then label the entire gospel based on it”
Jesus prophesied to the high priest, [Mark 14:62]”ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”
Did that prophecy come to pass?
Mark 14:61-62 (KJV)
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But he held his peace, and answered nothing.
Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?
And Jesus said, I am: and *ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.*
DavidFord said
Jesus prophesied to the high priest, [Mark 14:62]”ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”
Did that prophecy come to pass?
You can repeat this as much as you want, I already addressed this above and I repeated for you above, as well. I will not repeat the 3rd time. Re-read what I wrote to you.
Scholars like Bart like to estimate Mark written in the 70s, written thus 40 years after Jesus’ death. The other synoptics, Matthew and Luke, are even older, 50-60 years. John is considered 60-70, meaning it was written in 90-100 AD, despite some voices are putting it even older. At that time with no doubt all the high ranking priests and Pilate himself were dead. “World renown scholars” like Bart don’t seem to have any issues presenting two very strong contradictory statements:
a) that Jesus was a failed prophet who said he will be crowned a king during those people’s lifetimes and
b) the gospels that are saying that are written after all those people died.
Wouldn’t you find this peculiar? I certainly find so. Someone is lying intentionally. Someone like a “world renown scholar”. The gospels were written for an already organized Church with advice in how to organize it even further for the centuries to come. In fact, that’s very likely the root reason why it stood the test of time. Beside a verse scattered now and there, that happen to be cryptic, everything seems to be written for a long time.
“use to defame Jesus and to present him as a failed apocalyptic prophet. Absolutely nowhere Jesus predicts that it will happen in his lifetime”
Did C.S. Lewis “defame Jesus and… present him as a failed… prophet”?
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C.S. Lewis explicitly addressed this issue and treated Jesus’s statement in the Olivet Discourse (“this generation will not pass away until all these things take place,” Mark 13:30 / Matthew 24:34) as an apparent error regarding the timing of his return.
In his 1952 essay “The World’s Last Night” (later collected in the volume of the same name), Lewis confronts the skeptical argument head-on:
> “Say what you like,” we shall be told, “the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false.
It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime.
And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing.
Their Master had told them so.
He shared, and indeed created, their delusion.
He said in so many words,
‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’
And he was wrong.
He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.”
Lewis continues:
“It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.”
Both the Gospel of Luke and the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas state that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, that it comes in a way that cannot be seen, and that it is scattered among us and people do not see it.
Perhaps the Kingdom of Heaven has manifested and is manifesting, and we just don’t see it or realize it.
Perhaps things are happening that we are just not aware of.
Judith said
I’ve thought of what you just wrote, Helen Young. Could there be yet another dimension here on earth that humans have no ability to be aware of.
That’s a possibility.
Another possibility is that there are people living and scattered among us who are, in some sense, in the Kingdom of Heaven. Perhaps they are in another dimension psychologically or spiritually, and we just don’t see it.
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