"There is no Democracy in a Kingdom"
It is the Biblical teaching that we shall never experience the full blessings of God's Kingdom in This Age. There are those who have identified the Christian hope with a warless world or with a world completely subdued to God's will through the preaching of the Gospel. People who fix their hopes upon a Kingdom which is to be consummated in This Age are certain to be disillusioned. The perfected Kingdom of God belongs to The Age to Come. We shall never know the fulness of its blessings so long as This Evil Age lasts. There will be no world-wide conversion this side of the Coming of Christ. Therefore we ought not to be disillusioned by wars and rumours of wars, by evils and by hostility to the Gospel. And when God's people are called upon to pass through severe sufferings and tribulation, they should remember that God has not abandoned them, but that their sufferings are due to the fact that they no longer belong to This Age and there fore are the object of its hostility.
Furthermore, the Kingdom of God will never be fully realized apart from the personal, glorious, victorious Coming of Christ. Men cannot build the Kingdom of God; Christ will bring it. The powers of Satan and of evil can be finally overcome only by the mighty act of the return of Christ. But that day is coming! The Word of God urges us to watch, to be awake, to be ready and waiting for that Day. What assurance, what comfort, what stability it gives to our hearts and minds to know that our prayer will certainly be answered: "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth. as it is in heaven." Yea, come quickly, Lord Jesus! |
