The Victorious Kingdom

With all the insane things we've dealt with the past few years (things like pandemics, riots, and social unrest), It's easy to become a newspaper exegete. What is that? Exegesis is a way of interpreting the Bible in order to get to the intended meaning. Newspaper exegesis is when you read current events back into the Bible as if that is what it was referring to. 

Prophecy teachers and end times ministries are constantly warning of the impending doom of the last days. Every year there are books written predicting when the end will come, predicting who the antichrist will be, looking for the signs of the great tribulation. With all of this going on, is this the consensus view? Is there any hope for an optimistic theology? I'd like to present a view that most people have probably never considered, but a view that is more mainstream and historic than you'd realize. 

For this post I want to focus on the church and the kingdom of God, what is your view of the church? Not the buildings that people occupy on Sundays, but what is your view of God's people and his kingdom on earth? Have you given it much thought? Have you ever wondered what the purpose and goals of the church are? Often people have a pessimistic view of the future, they acknowledge the power of the Spirit but are convinced that the world or the dominion of Satan is supposed to win the battle until Christ returns at the end and ultimately wins the war. 

David Chilton sums this mindset up well in his book Paradise Restored,

“For too long, Christians have been characterized by despair, defeat, and retreat. For too long, Christians have heeded the false doctrine which teaches that we are doomed to failure, that Christians cannot win –the notion that, until Jesus returns, Christians will steadily lose ground to the enemy. The future of the Church, we were told, is to be a steady slide into apostasy… Any new outbreak of war, any rise in crime statistics, any new evidence of the breakdown of the family, was often oddly viewed as progress, a step forward toward the expected goal of the total collapse of civilization, a sign that Jesus might come to rescue us at any moment. Social action projects were looked on with skepticism: it was often assumed that anyone who actually tried to improve the world must not really believe the Bible, because the Bible taught that such efforts were bound to be futile; as one famous preacher put it, “You don’t polish brass on a sinking ship… Evangelism was an invitation to join the losing side.

This was rooted in two problems. One was a false view of Spirituality. The unbiblical idea of “spirituality” is that the truly “spiritual” man is the person who is sort of “non-physical”, who doesn’t get involved in “earthly” things, who doesn’t work very much or think very hard, and who spends most of his time meditating about how he’d rather be in heaven. As long as he’s on earth, though, he has one main duty in life: Get stepped on for Jesus. The “spiritual” man, in this view, is a wimp; a loser. But at least he’s a Good Loser….The second obstacle to Christian action has been an eschatology of defeat …As a young Christian, I remember my Bible teachers informing me that they had “peeked at the last chapter (of the Bible), and the Christians win!” But that is just my point: according to certain popular brands of eschatology, victory takes place only in “the last chapter.” In time, in history, on earth, the Christians lose. The world is getting worse and worse. Antichrist is coming. The devil is running the world, and getting more and more powerful all the time. Your work for God in this world will have no lasting effect, except to save a few individuals from hell. But you’d better do it quickly, before the Tribulation hits, so that you can escape in time. Ironically, the unintentional message of this gospel is: Antichrist is coming! There is something terribly lopsided about that.” (David Chilton – Paradise Restored, pp. 3-4).

But is this what the Bible actually teaches about the church and the kingdom of God? In order to see what Jesus taught about his kingdom, it's important to look at a conversation that is often overlooked, but personally, I think its significance is critical in understanding this issue. In Matthew 26 Jesus is on trial before the high priest and Something profound takes place that we often miss. 

Verse 63-65 "But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus said to him, 'You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.' Then the high priest tore his robes and said, He has uttered blasphemy. What further proof do we need? You now have heard his blasphemy."

At first glance, it's not really clear what Jesus said that would cause such a reaction from the high priest.  But understanding the Old Testament, the high priest knew exactly what Jesus was saying and it's something we should be aware of too!

Jesus was quoting two Old Testament passages, Psalm 110:1 & Daniel 7:13-14.

Psalm 110 is the most quoted psalm in the New Testament. Verse 1 says, "The Lord says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool."

Paul references this passage in 1st Corinthians 15:25 "For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet."

Peter quotes this on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:34-36 "For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until l make your enemies your footstool. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."

Again Paul quotes this Psalm in Ephesians 1:20-23 "That he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, for above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." 

Hebrews 1 addresses this passage as well in verse 1 "He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,"

And verse 13 "And to which of the angels has he ever said, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?"

Again, Hebrews 10:12-13 "But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet."

Why is this significant? Often as believers, we tend to have a pessimistic view of the world and our future. We often assume that the world is going to get worse and worse until Christ comes to rescue us.

This seems to conflict with much of the Bible including the great commission. Why would Christ commission us to disciple the nations if this wasn't possible? 

According to the Scripture, Christ isn't waiting for a specific time in the future to physically reign on the earth, but he is currently reigning right now, seated on the right hand of the Father until all his enemies are defeated with the last enemy defeated being death.

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15.26).

"In the verse just prior to this one we are told that Christ must reign as He progressively puts down all opposition to His rule. All rule and authority and power is being made subject to Him, and in this verse we see His triumph over the last and greatest enemy, which is death. On a personal note, this was the verse I tripped over when I became a postmillennialist. Some might say I tripped over it and hit my head, but here was my thinking on it.

In the more common views of Christ’s reign, death is the first enemy to be destroyed. Human history goes along doing its thing until the Second Coming dramatically interrupts it. The dead are raised, and then comes the millennium (if you are premill) or the eternal state (if you are amill). But in both cases, death is the first enemy to go down. In this scenario, however, death goes down after all rule, authority, and power—with the assumption being that this is all rule, authority, and power that is opposed to Christ—has been defeated.

This means that our task, prior to the Second Coming, is through the gospel to casting down imaginations, to be casting down every high thing that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. The lion will lie down with the lamb, children will play with cobras, tornados will be diverted from their courses, and Congress will start doing good things. A man considered by his neighbors as accursed will die when he is one hundred. And after all this, with so many wonderful things accomplished, and the earth being as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, God will give the signal for the final trump, and death will be destroyed. Death and Hades will be thrown in the lake of fire." 

- https://dougwils.com/the-church/s8-expository/the-last-enemy-2.html

Now to look at the other passage Jesus quoted, Daniel 7.

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14)

Jesus told the high priest from that moment he was going to see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven. Usually, we think this is the rapture, but the context of this Old Testament passage is about the Son of Man going UP to the ancient of days, not coming down to earth. Also it says that he will be given dominion and glory and a kingdom. But not only that, his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

The significance of this kingdom isn't recognized until you see how Jesus talked about the kingdom while he was on earth.

Notice what Jesus says when he comes on the scene in Matthew 4, this is after his baptism and temptation in the wilderness the first thing he says is "Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near."

Mark 1:15 records this as well, "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel."

Matthew 12:28 "But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."

Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem, Matthew says, specifically fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy of the kingdom's inauguration.

Matthew 21:4 "This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden."

Zechariah 9:9-10 "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations, his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth."

According to Paul, we are now in this kingdom.

Colossians 1:13 "He has delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,"

Now notice how Jesus talks about the kingdom in Matthew 13:31-33 "He put another parable before them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened."

Both parables speak of the kingdom in similar ways,

"The kingdom was established when Christ came. But it has not yet reached its full development. Like the mustard tree, it started out small, but will grow to enormous size. The kingdom will grow in size, spreading everywhere, until the kingdom of God covers the earth, as the waters cover the sea. The kingdom will be extensive." - (David Chilton, Paradise Restored. pp. 71)

Jesus also tells his disciples in Matthew 16 that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church. The church wins, not hell!

Notice this prophecy in Daniel 2,

 “As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” (Daniel 2:34-35)

We know the interpretation of this prophecy because Daniel gives it to us, 

Daniel 2:44 "And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever."

So according to the Old Testament this kingdom that Jesus says came with him, would be an everlasting kingdom, it shall never be destroyed, it will fill the whole earth, and it shall stand forever. 

But isn't Satan the god of this world? Doesn't he have dominion and rule over the nations? 

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness one of the three things Satan says to him is found in verses 8 & 9,

Matthew 4:8-9 "Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. and he said to him, All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me."

This couldn't have been a temptation if Satan was unable to offer this. So at this time, Satan did indeed have dominion over the world.

In Revelation 20:3 it says that Satan was bound for a thousand years and thrown into a bottomless pit so that he might not deceive the nations any longer. The thousand years here is typically understood as the Millenial reign of Christ where he will physically reign on earth for a literal one thousand years. 

Now in order to understand Revelation 20 we need to take some time and expound on the theology of eschatology, or more commonly known as end-times theology.

Again David Chilton does an excellent job addressing this issue,

"There are three main systems of interpretation regarding the Millennium, the 'thousand years' of Revelation 20. The Premillennialists say that this passage teaches that Christ will return and resurrect Christians before (pre-) the Millennium, which is to be a literal 1,000 years with Christ reigning in Jerusalem as a political, earthly ruler of the nations. The Amillennialists say that there is not and will never be a 'millennium' of any kind on earth; instead, they say, Revelation 20 refers to the state of Christians who have died and are now 'reigning' in heaven. The Postmillenialists say that the Millenium refers to the period between the First and Second Advents of Christ; the Millenium is going on now, with Christians reigning as kings on earth."

Revelation 20:4-6 "Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who have been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or on their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priest of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years."

David Chilon continues,

"This is not a bodily resurrection. John gives us a clue that he means something special by calling it the first resurrection. What could this mean? We saw in a previous chapter that there is only one bodily resurrection, at the end of the world. To find the answer, we again go back to Genesis, which tells us of the first death: "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'From every tree of the Garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die'" (Gen. 2:16-17). As we know Adam and Eve did not actually die physically on the day they ate the forbidden fruit. But that was the Day of their Spiritual death, their alienation from God. This Spiritual death was inherited by the children of Adam and Eve, so that we all are born 'dead in trespasses and sins' (Eph. 2:1). The first death is this Spiritual death, And this the first resurrection is Spiritual as well.

"God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus:" (Eph.2:4-6; Col. 2:11-13; 1 John 3:14) (David Chilton, Paradise Restored. pp. 186)

So now that we understand that this isn't referring to the final resurrection, now let's turn our attention to what Revelation 20:3 says about the binding of Satan.

Revelation 20:1-3 "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who. is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut if and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while."

"The binding of the dragon expresses in symbolic, prophetic language much of what we have seen in previous chapters: Christ's defeat of Satan. The angel (messenger) with the controlling authority over the abyss is the Son of God (cf. Rev. 1:18; 10:1; 18:1), who 'appeared for this purpose, that he might destroy the works of the devil' (1 John 3:8). As we have already noted, our Lord began 'binding the strong man' during his earthly ministry (Matt. 12:28-29). The New Testament (cf. Luke 10:17-20; John 12:31-32; Eph. 4:8; Col. 2:15; Heb. 2:14) stresses that Satan was definitively defeated in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. And he is overcome daily in the experience of Christians as we resist him (James 4:7) and proclaim the Word of God (Rev. 12:11). The kingdom has come!

We should note, too, the specific sense in which Satan is said to be bound: it is in reference to his ability to deceive the nations. Before the coming of Christ, Satan controlled the nations. But now his death grip has been shattered by the gospel, as the good news of the kingdom has spread throughout the world. The Lord Jesus sent the Apostle Paul to the Gentile nations 'to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me' (Acts 26:18).

Christ came to rule over the Gentiles (Rom. 15:12). That Satan has been bound does not mean that all his activity has ceased. The New Testament tells us specifically that the demons have been disarmed and bound (Col. 2:15; 2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6) but they are still active. It is just that their activity is restricted. And, as the gospel progresses throughout the world, their activity will become more limited. Satan is unable to prevent the victory of Christ's Kingdom. We will overcome (1 John 4:4). 'Let it be known to you therefore, that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen' (Acts 28:28). Satan will be crushed beneath our feet (Rom. 16:20).

As we can see the idea that the church will be unsuccessful in evangelizing the world is not a theology grounded in Scripture. Jesus came not only to give us eternal life, but to establish his kingdom on earth. He defeated Satan and his demons on the cross, "He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him." Colossians 2:15

“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.” (Psalms 22:27-28).

"For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14).

Matthew 28:18-20 "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."