The Kingdom of Heaven

170:1.1In con­nec­tion with the recital of Je­sus’ ser­mon it should be noted that through­out the He­brew scrip­tures there was a dual con­cept of the king­dom of heaven. The proph­ets pre­sented the king­dom of God as:

170:1.21. A pres­ent re­al­ity; and as

170:1.32. A fu­ture hope—when the king­dom would be re­al­ized in full­ness upon the ap­pear­ance of the Mes­siah. This is the king­dom con­cept which John the Bap­tist taught.

170:1.4From the very first Je­sus and the apos­tles taught both of these con­cepts. There were two other ideas of the king­dom which should be borne in mind:

170:1.53. The later Jew­ish con­cept of a world-wide and tran­scen­den­tal king­dom of super­nat­u­ral ori­gin and mirac­u­lous in­au­gu­ra­tion.

170:1.64. The Per­sian teach­ings por­tray­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a di­vine king­dom as the achieve­ment of the tri­umph of good over evil at the end of the world.

170:1.7Just be­fore the ad­vent of Je­sus on earth, the Jews com­bined and con­fused all of these ideas of the king­dom into their apoc­a­lyp­tic con­cept of the Mes­siah’s com­ing to es­tab­lish the age of the Jew­ish tri­umph, the eter­nal age of God’s su­preme rule on earth, the new world, the era in which all man­kind would wor­ship Yah­weh. In choos­ing to uti­lize this con­cept of the king­dom of heaven, Je­sus elected to ap­pro­pri­ate the most vi­tal and cul­mi­nat­ing her­itage of both the Jew­ish and Per­sian re­li­gions.

170:1.8The king­dom of heaven, as it has been un­der­stood and mis­un­der­stood down through the cen­turies of the Chris­tian era, em­braced four dis­tinct groups of ideas:

170:1.91. The con­cept of the Jews.

170:1.102. The con­cept of the Per­sians.

170:1.113. The per­sonal-ex­pe­ri­ence con­cept of Je­sus—“the king­dom of heaven within you.”

170:1.124. The com­pos­ite and con­fused con­cepts which the found­ers and pro­mul­ga­tors of Chris­tian­ity have sought to im­press upon the world.

170:1.13At dif­fer­ent times and in vary­ing cir­cum­stances it ap­pears that Je­sus may have pre­sented nu­mer­ous con­cepts of the “king­dom” in his pub­lic teach­ings, but to his apos­tles he al­ways taught the king­dom as em­brac­ing man’s per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in re­la­tion to his fel­lows on earth and to the Fa­ther in heaven. Con­cern­ing the king­dom, his last word al­ways was, “The king­dom is within you.”

170:1.14Cen­turies of con­fu­sion re­gard­ing the mean­ing of the term “king­dom of heaven” have been due to three fac­tors:

170:1.151. The con­fu­sion oc­ca­sioned by ob­serv­ing the idea of the “king­dom” as it passed through the var­i­ous pro­gres­sive phases of its re­cast­ing by Je­sus and his apos­tles.

170:1.162. The con­fu­sion which was in­evitably as­so­ci­ated with the trans­plan­ta­tion of early Chris­tian­ity from a Jew­ish to a gen­tile soil.

170:1.173. The con­fu­sion which was in­her­ent in the fact that Chris­tian­ity be­came a re­li­gion which was or­ga­nized about the cen­tral idea of Je­sus’ per­son; the gospel of the king­dom be­came more and more a re­li­gion about him.