The Kingdom of Jesus
Roger Forster
The following is the introduction to Roger's 2001 book, The Kingdom of Jesus.
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Some years go I was speaking at a college meeting when I was challenged by a Muslim sitting on the front row. He was studying Christian theology in order to destroy it and at the end of the meeting he attacked me verbally. He said, 'My lecturers cannot tell me what the Kingdom of God is and they imply Jesus didn't know what it was either'. He claimed that the Kingdom of God was such a vague concept that it was not worth preaching. In his opinion there was no coherent message – it was just an empty phrase.
The Kingdom of God, it seems, is not easily understood and has become a stumbling block for some. In the 1980s, there was an orthodox Jewish theologian called Pinchas Lapide who said he believed Jesus was raised from the dead. He maintained that the evidence for the resurrection was overwhelming and should convince anyone, but he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah because he did not think that Jesus brought in the Kingdom.
The church is taught to pray, 'Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven' and for 2000 years Christians have prayed this prayer. But when asked, they are not at all sure of the content of their request. Do we know what we are praying for? Can we explain it to a Muslim or a Jew? Evangelical Christians are strong in their proclamation of the new birth, to be sure, but understanding it in the context of the Kingdom is vital. Unless a man or woman is born again 'he cannot see – or enter – the Kingdom' (Jn. 3:3). The Kingdom is the very purpose and sphere for which people are born again.
People have often asked me to write something about 'what on earth this Kingdom of God is'! I have been studying, reflecting on and trying to practise the Kingdom for many years. In the process, I have read much academic literature produced over the last couple of centuries, and trawled through church history to see how theologians have tried to understand the meaning of the Kingdom. In this book, I haven't gone into detail concerning my findings from these areas of scholarship, and consequently some may find it rather too simplified. My aim in writing this is not to dazzle you with historical research, but rather to try and recover the radical nature of Jesus' Kingdom message which has at times been obscured by the church culture and politics of the day.
Throughout the entire history of the church the subject of the Kingdom of God is rarely expounded. In more recent times, the higher echelons of theological thought have studied the Kingdom with renewed vigour, Joachim Jeremias, A.M. Hunter and N.T. Wright being particularly outstanding. But on the whole, neither academic nor popular theology has concentrated on this concept. We have neglected the subject, yet Jesus never stopped talking about it, never stopped preaching it. The Kingdom was the one and only message of Jesus. The very purpose of his coming was to preach the good news of the Kingdom.
Jesus' preferred title for himself was the Old Testament epithet 'Son of Man', a concept intimately linked with the Kingdom in Daniel chapter 7. We very rarely call Jesus 'Son of Man'. We call him 'Son of God', 'Prince of Peace', 'King of Kings', 'Lord of Lords', but we do not call him 'Son of Man'. Yet this name was Jesus' favourite way of interpreting himself to the people. Jesus uses these two important verses to explain himself:
I kept looking in the night visions and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.
(Dan. 7:13-14)
The church has always grappled with two fundamental questions: Who is Jesus and what was his message? These verses provide the embryonic answers: Jesus is the Son of Man and his message was the Kingdom of God. I believe that when we rediscover Jesus as the Son of Man and when we seek the everlasting Kingdom that he preached, we are going to be on track to see the end come. I want to see the end. I want the Kingdom to come. I want to see the Son of Man appearing in the clouds of divine glory and receiving to himself those that belong to him from every nation, tribe and tongue as Paul declared (1 Thes. 4:16-18). Paul didn't live to see the day – let's pray that it happens in our lifetime!
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