The Kingdom of Heaven

170:4.1Je­sus never gave a pre­cise def­i­ni­tion of the king­dom. At one time he would dis­course on one phase of the king­dom, and at an­other time he would dis­cuss a dif­fer­ent as­pect of the broth­er­hood of God’s reign in the hearts of men. In the course of this Sab­bath af­ter­noon’s ser­mon Je­sus noted no less than five phases, or epochs, of the king­dom, and they were:

170:4.21. The per­sonal and in­ward ex­pe­ri­ence of the spir­i­tual life of the fel­low­ship of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever with God the Fa­ther.

170:4.32. The en­larg­ing broth­er­hood of gospel be­liev­ers, the so­cial as­pects of the en­hanced morals and quick­ened ethics re­sult­ing from the reign of God’s spirit in the hearts of in­di­vid­ual be­liev­ers.

170:4.43. The super­mor­tal broth­er­hood of in­vis­i­ble spir­i­tual be­ings which pre­vails on earth and in heaven, the super­hu­man king­dom of God.

170:4.54. The prospect of the more per­fect ful­fill­ment of the will of God, the ad­vance to­ward the dawn of a new so­cial or­der in con­nec­tion with im­proved spir­i­tual liv­ing—the next age of man.

170:4.65. The king­dom in its full­ness, the fu­ture spir­i­tual age of light and life on earth.

170:4.7Where­fore must we al­ways ex­am­ine the Mas­ter’s teach­ing to as­cer­tain which of these five phases he may have ref­er­ence to when he makes use of the term king­dom of heaven. By this pro­cess of grad­u­ally chang­ing man’s will and thus af­fect­ing hu­man de­ci­sions, Mi­chael and his as­so­ciates are like­wise grad­u­ally but cer­tainly chang­ing the en­tire course of hu­man evo­lu­tion, so­cial and oth­er­wise.

170:4.8The Mas­ter on this oc­ca­sion placed em­pha­sis on the fol­low­ing five points as rep­re­sent­ing the car­di­nal fea­tures of the gospel of the king­dom:

170:4.91. The pre-em­i­nence of the in­di­vid­ual.

170:4.102. The will as the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor in man’s ex­pe­ri­ence.

170:4.113. Spir­i­tual fel­low­ship with God the Fa­ther.

170:4.124. The su­preme sat­is­fac­tions of the lov­ing ser­vice of man.

170:4.135. The tran­scen­dency of the spir­i­tual over the ma­te­rial in hu­man per­son­al­ity.

170:4.14This world has never se­ri­ously or sin­cerely or hon­estly tried out these dy­namic ideas and di­vine ide­als of Je­sus’ doc­trine of the king­dom of heaven. But you should not be­come dis­cour­aged by the ap­par­ently slow prog­ress of the king­dom idea on Uran­tia. Re­mem­ber that the or­der of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion is sub­jected to sud­den and un­ex­pected pe­ri­od­i­cal changes in both the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual worlds. The be­stowal of Je­sus as an in­car­nated Son was just such a strange and un­ex­pected event in the spir­i­tual life of the world. Nei­ther make the fa­tal mis­take, in look­ing for the age man­i­fes­ta­tion of the king­dom, of fail­ing to ef­fect its es­tab­lish­ment within your own souls.

170:4.15Al­though Je­sus re­ferred one phase of the king­dom to the fu­ture and did, on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, in­ti­mate that such an event might ap­pear as a part of a world cri­sis; and though he did like­wise most cer­tainly, on sev­eral oc­ca­sions, def­i­nitely prom­ise some­time to re­turn to Uran­tia, it should be re­corded that he never pos­i­tively linked these two ideas to­gether. He prom­ised a new rev­e­la­tion of the king­dom on earth and at some fu­ture time; he also prom­ised some­time to come back to this world in per­son; but he did not say that these two events were syn­ony­mous. From all we know these promises may, or may not, re­fer to the same event.

170:4.16His apos­tles and dis­ci­ples most cer­tainly linked these two teach­ings to­gether. When the king­dom failed to ma­te­ri­al­ize as they had ex­pected, re­call­ing the Mas­ter’s teach­ing con­cern­ing a fu­ture king­dom and re­mem­ber­ing his prom­ise to come again, they jumped to the con­clu­sion that these promises re­ferred to an iden­ti­cal event; and there­fore they lived in hope of his im­me­di­ate sec­ond com­ing to es­tab­lish the king­dom in its full­ness and with power and glory. And so have suc­ces­sive be­liev­ing gen­er­a­tions lived on earth en­ter­tain­ing the same in­spir­ing but dis­ap­point­ing hope.