And His Kingdom Will Have No End
When Jesus stood before Pilate, he was asked if he was a king. Jesus replied that his kingdom was not of this world. If we have been raised in church, we have no doubt heard this passage and also the explanation of the kingdom Jesus was referring to. At that time, and even today, the Kingdom of God still is not of this world. But someday it will be.
Right now, the kingdom of God is alive in the heart of every believer. Every time we surrender our will, every time we embrace the will of the King, we further the Kingdom here on earth. Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer (if you are of the Protestant Tradition) or the Our Father (if you are Catholic), we pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” By this prayer we are recognizing that the kingdom God lives in our hearts and our spirits, but not in our world. Not yet.
The day will come, however, when all of that will change. ‘For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17 NABRE)
After this will come the final judgment. And then the party starts. For those who have been found faithful to the King, we will enter into our bliss. At that time, what we have only seen very dimly here on this earth will become a reality. The kingdom of God will be established forever. Not just in hearts and lives, but in physical reality.
At that time, this world will be restored. It will be restored to what God had originally intended and created it to be, just as we will be restored to what we were originally created to be. We will have our new, glorified physical bodies, just like Jesus now has. Those new bodies will require a new earth to live on. All effects and stains of sin will be forever removed from the earth. There will be no need of sun or moon because the Lamb will be its light. There will be no sorrow, suffering or tears. There will be no death. The river of Life will flow through the New Jerusalem and the Tree of Life will grow on its banks. (See Revelation 21 and 22)
Righteousness, peace and justice will reign there, because Jesus will be the King. Not just the King of hearts and lives, but of the whole world. Everything that is a spiritual reality now, in the very best sense, will be a physical reality then. And we will all live and work and play there with each other forever. And best of all we will behold Him face to face.
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