The Kingdom of Heaven

170:2.1The Mas­ter made it clear that the king­dom of heaven must be­gin with, and be cen­tered in, the dual con­cept of the truth of the fa­ther­hood of God and the cor­re­lated fact of the broth­er­hood of man. The ac­cep­tance of such a teach­ing, Je­sus de­clared, would lib­er­ate man from the age-long bond­age of an­i­mal fear and at the same time en­rich hu­man liv­ing with the fol­low­ing en­dow­ments of the new life of spir­i­tual lib­erty:

170:2.21. The pos­ses­sion of new cour­age and aug­mented spir­i­tual power. The gospel of the king­dom was to set man free and in­spire him to dare to hope for eter­nal life.

170:2.32. The gospel car­ried a mes­sage of new con­fi­dence and true con­so­la­tion for all men, even for the poor.

170:2.43. It was in it­self a new stan­dard of moral val­ues, a new eth­i­cal yard­stick where­with to mea­sure hu­man con­duct. It por­trayed the ideal of a re­sul­tant new or­der of hu­man so­ci­ety.

170:2.54. It taught the pre-em­i­nence of the spir­i­tual com­pared with the ma­te­rial; it glo­ri­fied spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and ex­alted super­hu­man ide­als.

170:2.65. This new gospel held up spir­i­tual at­tain­ment as the true goal of liv­ing. Hu­man life re­ceived a new en­dow­ment of moral value and di­vine dig­nity.

170:2.76. Je­sus taught that eter­nal re­al­i­ties were the re­sult (re­ward) of righ­teous earthly striv­ing. Man’s mor­tal so­journ on earth ac­quired new mean­ings con­se­quent upon the rec­og­ni­tion of a no­ble des­tiny.

170:2.87. The new gospel af­firmed that hu­man sal­va­tion is the rev­e­la­tion of a far-reach­ing di­vine pur­pose to be ful­filled and re­al­ized in the fu­ture des­tiny of the end­less ser­vice of the sal­vaged sons of God.

170:2.9These teach­ings cover the ex­panded idea of the king­dom which was taught by Je­sus. This great con­cept was hardly em­braced in the el­e­men­tary and con­fused king­dom teach­ings of John the Bap­tist.

170:2.10The apos­tles were un­able to grasp the real mean­ing of the Mas­ter’s ut­ter­ances re­gard­ing the king­dom. The sub­se­quent dis­tor­tion of Je­sus’ teach­ings, as they are re­corded in the New Tes­ta­ment, is be­cause the con­cept of the gospel writ­ers was col­ored by the be­lief that Je­sus was then ab­sent from the world for only a short time; that he would soon re­turn to es­tab­lish the king­dom in power and glory—just such an idea as they held while he was with them in the flesh. But Je­sus did not con­nect the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom with the idea of his re­turn to this world. That cen­turies have passed with no signs of the ap­pear­ance of the “New Age” is in no way out of har­mony with Je­sus’ teach­ing.

170:2.11The great ef­fort em­bod­ied in this ser­mon was the at­tempt to trans­late the con­cept of the king­dom of heaven into the ideal of the idea of do­ing the will of God. Long had the Mas­ter taught his fol­low­ers to pray: “Your king­dom come; your will be done”; and at this time he earnestly sought to in­duce them to aban­don the use of the term king­dom of God in fa­vor of the more prac­ti­cal equiv­a­lent, the will of God. But he did not suc­ceed.

170:2.12Je­sus de­sired to sub­sti­tute for the idea of the king­dom, king, and sub­jects, the con­cept of the heav­enly fam­ily, the heav­enly Fa­ther, and the lib­er­ated sons of God en­gaged in joy­ful and vol­un­tary ser­vice for their fel­low men and in the sub­lime and in­tel­li­gent wor­ship of God the Fa­ther.

170:2.13Up to this time the apos­tles had ac­quired a dou­ble view­point of the king­dom; they re­garded it as:

170:2.141. A mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence then pres­ent in the hearts of true be­liev­ers, and

170:2.152. A ques­tion of racial or world phe­nom­ena; that the king­dom was in the fu­ture, some­thing to look for­ward to.

170:2.16They looked upon the com­ing of the king­dom in the hearts of men as a grad­ual de­vel­op­ment, like the leaven in the dough or like the grow­ing of the mus­tard seed. They be­lieved that the com­ing of the king­dom in the racial or world sense would be both sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar. Je­sus never tired of telling them that the king­dom of heaven was their per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of re­al­iz­ing the higher qual­i­ties of spir­i­tual liv­ing; that these re­al­i­ties of the spirit ex­pe­ri­ence are pro­gres­sively trans­lated to new and higher lev­els of di­vine cer­tainty and eter­nal grandeur.

170:2.17On this af­ter­noon the Mas­ter dis­tinctly taught a new con­cept of the dou­ble na­ture of the king­dom in that he por­trayed the fol­low­ing two phases:

170:2.18“First. The king­dom of God in this world, the su­preme de­sire to do the will of God, the un­selfish love of man which yields the good fruits of im­proved eth­i­cal and moral con­duct.

170:2.19“Sec­ond. The king­dom of God in heaven, the goal of mor­tal be­liev­ers, the es­tate wherein the love for God is per­fected, and wherein the will of God is done more di­vinely.”

170:2.20Je­sus taught that, by faith, the be­liever en­ters the king­dom now. In the var­i­ous dis­courses he taught that two things are es­sen­tial to faith-en­trance into the king­dom:

170:2.211. Faith, sin­cer­ity. To come as a lit­tle child, to re­ceive the be­stowal of son­ship as a gift; to sub­mit to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will with­out ques­tion­ing and in the full con­fi­dence and gen­uine trust­ful­ness of the Fa­ther’s wis­dom; to come into the king­dom free from prej­u­dice and pre­con­cep­tion; to be open-minded and teach­able like an un­spoiled child.

170:2.222. Truth hunger. The thirst for righ­teous­ness, a change of mind, the ac­quire­ment of the mo­tive to be like God and to find God.

170:2.23Je­sus taught that sin is not the child of a de­fec­tive na­ture but rather the off­spring of a know­ing mind dom­i­nated by an un­sub­mis­sive will. Re­gard­ing sin, he taught that God has for­given; that we make such for­give­ness per­son­ally avail­able by the act of for­giv­ing our fel­lows. When you for­give your brother in the flesh, you thereby cre­ate the ca­pac­ity in your own soul for the re­cep­tion of the re­al­ity of God’s for­give­ness of your own mis­deeds.

170:2.24By the time the Apos­tle John be­gan to write the story of Je­sus’ life and teach­ings, the early Chris­tians had ex­pe­ri­enced so much trou­ble with the king­dom-of-God idea as a breeder of per­se­cu­tion that they had largely aban­doned the use of the term. John talks much about the “eter­nal life.” Je­sus of­ten spoke of it as the “king­dom of life.” He also fre­quently re­ferred to “the king­dom of God within you.” He once spoke of such an ex­pe­ri­ence as “fam­ily fel­low­ship with God the Fa­ther.” Je­sus sought to sub­sti­tute many terms for the king­dom but al­ways with­out suc­cess. Among oth­ers, he used: the fam­ily of God, the Fa­ther’s will, the friends of God, the fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers, the broth­er­hood of man, the Fa­ther’s fold, the chil­dren of God, the fel­low­ship of the faith­ful, the Fa­ther’s ser­vice, and the lib­er­ated sons of God.

170:2.25But he could not es­cape the use of the king­dom idea. It was more than fifty years later, not un­til af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem by the Ro­man armies, that this con­cept of the king­dom be­gan to change into the cult of eter­nal life as its so­cial and in­sti­tu­tional as­pects were taken over by the rapidly ex­pand­ing and crys­tal­liz­ing Chris­tian church.