“The New Testament begins the announcement of the Kingdom in terms expressive of its being previously well-known…The preaching of the Kingdom, its simple announcement, without the least attempt to explain its meaning and nature, the very language in which it was conveyed to the Jews — all presupposed that it was a subject familiar to all. John the Baptist, Jesus and the Seventy all proclaimed the Kingdom in a way without definition or explanation that indicated that their hearers were acquainted with its meaning. In the opening pages of the New Testament, it is taken for granted that the Kingdom was something well known, already the object of faith and hope”
(G.N.H. Peters, The Theocratic Kingdom of our Lord and Savior,
Vol. 1, p. 181).
Churchgoers are often nonplussed when it is suggested that Jesus was the first evangelist (introduced by John the Baptist). Jesus, they think, was important only because he died for the sins of the world. Jesus was indeed the supreme evangelist, a bearer of God’s Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus came to save, and he worked as an evangelist for several years before his death. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John tell us this primary fact on page after page.
John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ Announcement of the Gospel about the Kingdom of God
Jesus spoke to Jews, and in his opening statement he did not intend to confuse them by using words in a way which they could not have understood! Jesus frequently appealed to the Old Testament as a divine revelation whose meaning he and his audience held in common. Moses, according to Jesus, had written about the Messiah. But if one were not prepared to believe what Moses wrote, it would be impossible to believe what Jesus said (John 5:46, 47). After the resurrection Jesus chided the disciples for their failure to grasp what the prophets had spoken
(Luke 24:25-27). This means that what the prophets wrote was intelligible. There existed already clear evidence of the trustworthiness of the prophets’ predictions. Micah had foretold the birthplace of the Messiah. Isaiah had foreseen the Messiah’s activity as a miracle worker and healer
(Isaiah 35:5, 6).
The meaning Jesus attached to the phrase Kingdom of God can only have been the meaning given to that phrase in the Old Testament. If another concept were intended by “Kingdom of God” some explanation would be required at the beginning of John the Baptist’s ministry to avoid misunderstanding. The facts are that John and Jesus make their announcement of the Kingdom on the presumption that their audience knew what the Kingdom was. People reacted by coming to John and Jesus for baptism. They could not have done this in the absence of information about what the Kingdom was.
Jesus spoke to Israel, to whom the oracles of God had been entrusted (Romans 3:1, 2). According to Paul Jesus came to confirm the promises made to the fathers (Romans 15:8). The Kingdom was itself the subject of the divine promise as “the kingdom which God has promised to those who love him” (James 2:5). It is impossible therefore that Jesus could have opened his ministry in Galilee by announcing the Kingdom of God in any sense other than that which was intelligible to himself and his audience.
What was that sense? Though the phrase Kingdom of God does not appear exactly in that form in the Hebrew Bible, the idea is all-pervasive. John Bright declares that the whole Bible might rightly be called “the book about the coming Kingdom.”
A classic passage for defining the Kingdom of God is I Chronicles 28. King David addressed an assemblage of officials, declaring that God had chosen him to be King over Israel forever. Likewise God had selected Solomon to sit on the throne of the Kingdom of the LORD [Yahweh] over Israel (I Chronicles 28:4-5). Solomon was duly crowned king of the united kingdom of Israel. They “anointed him as ruler for the LORD [Yahweh]”. This meant that “he sat on the throne of the LORD [Yahweh] as king in the place of David his father; and he prospered and all Israel obeyed him”
(I Chronicles 29:22-23).
Subsequently Abijah succeeded to the throne of Judah and when confronted with the opposing armies of Israel under Jeroboam, he reminded the latter that “the LORD [Yahweh] God of Israel gave the rule over Israel to David forever, and to his sons, by a covenant of salt” (II Chronicles 13:5). It would therefore be unwise for Jeroboam to “resist the Kingdom of the LORD [Yahweh] in the hands of the sons of David”
(II Chronicles 13:8).
Plainly, the Kingdom of the LORD [the Kingdom of Yahweh] means the kingdom administered by the royal house of David. The Davidic covenant had named the Davidic throne as the Kingdom of God when Nathan had said to David, “I will settle him [David’s descendant] in my house and in my Kingdom forever and his throne shall be established forever”
(I Chronicles 17:14).
The Kingdom of God meant therefore the empire ruled by the dynasty of David over Israel in the promised land. Its capital was Jerusalem, and it functioned on behalf of God Himself and could therefore be called both God\’s Kingdom and David\’s Kingdom. It was about this Kingdom to come that the fully-trained Apostles inquired in Acts 1:6. The restoration of the Kingdom in Jerusalem is the heart of the Good News. It will mean world peace.
The political and territorial nature of the Kingdom is made clear in numbers of other significant passages in the Hebrew Bible. The prophet Obadiah describes the Kingdom of the LORD as a time when Israel rules over former enemies. The supremacy of Israel is restored when “deliverers ascend Mount Zion to judge the mountain of Esau and the Kingdom will be the LORD’s” [Yahweh’s] (Obadiah 21). Here the political and territorial
character of the Kingdom of God is crystal clear. So it is in Daniel 2:44 where “the God of Heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these other [preceding] kingdoms and it will itself endure forever.”
This empire is further described as a time when “the saints will possess the kingdom” and “all kingdoms and dominions will serve them” (Daniel 7:22, 27). The Kingdom in question will be on earth, “under the whole heaven” (Daniel 7:27).
Kingdom data appears in equally unambiguous terms in Isaiah 16:5: “A throne will be established in lovingkindness and a judge will sit on it in faithfulness in the tent of David.” Micah’s Messianic prediction foresees a time coming when “the LORD [Yahweh] will reign over Israel in Mount Zion…Even the former dominion will come, the Kingdom of the daughter of Jerusalem” (Micah 4:7, 8). It is a well-known fact that the Targums (Jewish commentary) clarify these passages with the paraphrase: “The kingdom of God will be revealed.” Jesus echoed this passage in Micah when he urged his followers to concentrate their prayers on the future: “Thy Kingdom come.” Zechariah forecasts that the Messiah will “speak peace to the nations and his dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the River [Euphrates] to the ends of the earth” (Zechariah 9:10).
Two further passages are of prime importance for establishing the territorial and political nature of the Kingdom as well as its thoroughly spiritual dimension as a kingdom initiated by Yahweh himself. In Isaiah 40:5 “the glory of the LORD [Yahweh] is to be revealed.” This will mean the evangelization of the cities of Zion when the Lord GOD [Lord Yahweh] “will come with might with his arm ruling for him” (v. 10). Once again the Targum recognizes in these events the revelation of the Kingdom of God. Zephaniah reports that following a period of severe judgment, and beyond the Day of the LORD, the King of Israel, the LORD [Yahweh], will be “in their midst.” Zion is comforted with the promise that the LORD [Yahweh] will be present as a victorious warrior
(Zephaniah 3:17).
Finally in Isaiah 52:7 (a text which Paul had in mind when he talked about the Gospel, Romans 10:15) there is a passage rich in Gospel and Kingdom terminology. The announcement is made to Zion that “Your God reigns,” resulting in the restoration of Zion and the comfort and redemption of Jerusalem (Isaiah 52:8, 9; cp. Acts 1:6). The Kingdom thus established is viewed by “all the nations” (Isaiah 52:10). Appropriately the Targum sees in these events the setting up of the Kingdom of God. The phrase “your God reigns” or more accurately “your God has assumed kingship” marks a definite new era of history on earth. There is nothing abstract about the Kingdom, nor is the eternal sovereignty of God the subject of these prophecies. It is instead a political event marking the intervention of the Deity to take control of the Kingdom by installing His ruler the Messiah as head of a theocracy in Jerusalem. The basis of the concept is found in the Davidic covenant which anticipates a member of the House of David presiding over the Kingdom in the promised land (cp. Psalm 96:10: “The LORD [Yahweh] has assumed His kingship”).
In view of this mass of convergent evidence it must be clear that when Jesus announced the Kingdom of God, he did not need to tell his audience that there was going to be such a thing. It is surprising that commentaries have not made the political, territorial and national aspects of the Kingdom of God known to readers. Jesus was not talking into the air when he announced the near approach of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom was something deeply embedded in the national consciousness of Israel and unambiguously defined by the Hebrew text and Targums. What has severely hampered understanding of the nature of the kingdom of God — and thus of the Christian Gospel — is the well-worn theory that Jesus must have been speaking of a spiritual and not a political and geographical kingdom. A Jew might legitimately object that a kingdom managed by the anointed Messiah ruling in Jerusalem is utterly spiritual. It is both spiritual and political, both national and universal. The fallacy of so much commentary has been to set spiritual against political as though these are mutually exclusive ideas. However in Scripture this is not the case. A prophecy which spelled out the geographical place on earth at which the Messiah was to be born (Micah 5:2) was no less spiritual than the prophecy of his suffering for the sins of the world (Isaiah Chapter 53). The prophecy which announced the conception of the Messiah from a virgin was equally spiritual, though related to a particular Israelite virgin living in a specific location.
It cannot be reasonably argued that Jesus’ meant anything by Kingdom of God in Mark 1:14, 15 than his heritage had transmitted to him. Only on that basis can his opening gospel salvo have been intelligible. There is a mass of New Testament evidence to corroborate the local, geographical and political nature of the coming Kingdom. Two passages in Luke tie the Kingdom to geography. There was an occasion during the ministry of Jesus near Jerusalem that his audience thought that the Kingdom would appear immediately. They were obviously thinking of the Kingdom as having its capital in the holy land. Jesus did not correct this expectation. The parable he gave clarified the fact that the Kingdom would not come into existence immediately. There was to be an interval during which he as Messiah would be absent. During that time he would acquire his right to rule in the Kingdom. He would then return to rule in the promised Kingdom, dealing at that time with opponents who resisted his royal authority (see Luke 19:11ff.)
Luke reports also that Jesus expected that many would arrive from east, west, north and south and join the resurrected patriarchs in the Kingdom of God (Luke 13:28, 29). The picture would naturally suggest to the minds of those familiar with the Hebrew Bible the Messianic banquet described by Isaiah 25:6, 7. The banquet was to take place “on this mountain,” that is in Jerusalem.
The critical importance of this material lies in the fact that intelligent reception of the Gospel of the Kingdom is the essential step in Christian repentance and conversion. Christians are those who have grasped the promise of the Kingdom by receiving the Kingdom Gospel as humble “children” (Luke 18:17; Mark 4:11, 12). In addition, the atoning death of Jesus, offered as a substitute for sinners, is the object of Christian faith. But the cross removed from its essential Kingdom background presents a partial and distorted Gospel.
“The content of Jesus’ preaching is reported by Matthew in exactly the same words that were used in connection with John the Baptist (3:2; 4:17, 23). Jesus aligned himself completely with John. Like him he proclaimed [as Gospel] the coming of the Kingdom, the imminence of the great Day of the Lord, which meant judgment for the wicked and salvation for those who served God. The coming of the Kingdom is nothing less than God’s final, decisive intervention into world history. Jesus therefore only said the Kingdom was near. With his appearance the end of the age had indeed drawn near, but it had not yet arrived. The nearness of the Kingdom was not merely Jesus’ distinctive message at the beginning of his ministry; it remained the content of his message until the very end (see Matthew 10:7; Luke 22:18). Just like John he always pointed towards the future…He, like John, placed all emphasis on the Kingdom’s imminence and on the urgent need to repent, before final judgment arrived”
(Matthew, H.N. Ridderbos, pp. 75, 76).