"Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven"

“Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”

Quite so. The question is, when will this happen?

What I’ve recently come to realise is that there are two mistakes to make here.

The first is to say God’s kingdom will come on earth, in the very, very distant future. So distant, it won’t. Until Jesus comes back. This is the “rabbit out of the hat” view of the world. The world is a bad place; it will remain a bad place; until suddenly, Jesus comes back and a new world is born. We have no right to expect the kingdom to grow on earth, no right to see earthly empires come under the influence of the gospel, no right to expect success in our evangelistic endeavours. To expect those things is to miss the point that we live too early.

Why do I say that is a mistake? Much could be said here. We could note the organic nature of the growth in Daniel 2 (rock growing into an all-earth-filling mountain), or in Mark 4 (growing seed, mustard seed). We could note the past tense in Matthew 28:18-20 – all authority already his, so will there be no evidence? We could look at the expectation in Isaiah 2 and elsewhere in the prophetic literature that nations as nations will stream to Zion. Much more could be said, and has been said by others.

The second is to say that God’s kingdom will come on earth, today. So imminent that every evangelistic endeavour will succeed, so imminent that we will see heaven on earth in our own generation.

Why do I say this is a mistake? Because Jesus taught that he would be away for a long time, or at least an unknown time. Because there is no promise that he will return tomorrow. Because he’s been away 2000 years and counting; the kingdom is growing, but we still have a long way to go. Jesus will get there, but he has never promised that it will be instantaneous.

One thing I’ve learnt in recent months is the important correlation between post-millenialism and patience. Jesus has been given the kingdoms of this world, and he will make that reality visible in his own time. I have made a great deal of mistakes in the past, and he patiently bore with those and corrected me gradually. I continue to make a great deal of mistakes now; I am blind to them, but he bears me with patience and will get there. Britain will be a Christian country again, but in his own time.

Which means that it’s very important that we are patient with others. Patient with individuals, churches, denominations, countries. Jesus has been patient with us, so we should be patient with others. Our present flaws are the means he is using to bring about his kingdom on earth. Knowing that he will complete his work gives us scope to be totally patient with slowness of it from our perspective. He is in authority now, so every apparent set-back, every piece of slow progress, is the way that he has chosen to work. So we can and must be patient as he is, and patiently get to work.

But to over-react to that would be to fall back into mistake number 1. Because things are nowhere near perfect yet, and because things take time, that does not mean they will take indefinite time and there will be no progress until he returns.

Rather it means that, to take our own village here, Audley will be a Christian village. Our own evangelistic endeavours to secure that future may succeed or may not. Whichever, Jesus determines that outcome. And here’s the important bit: If the outcome of this year’s outreach is failure (humanly speaking), that is the outcome he has deliberately ordained to ensure that Audley becomes a Christian village.

So we don’t say that our work will fail because the world is bleak. Neither do we say that our work will succeed because the kingdom will come rapidement. Rather we work hard because we know that Jesus will succeed in his own timing, and we want to be faithful to his plans and purposes. The timing, we leave to him.