Entering the Day of the Lord
Christ was living in the Kingdom Age while He was here on the earth. He is the thousand-year Kingdom Age, the Jubilee. The laws He proclaimed during His Sermon on the Mount and at other times when He addressed His apostles, and when He healed the multitudes and taught them, are the laws and power of the Kingdom Age. The laws of the Kingdom Age are summed up in Micah 6:8:
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to practice righteousness, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
Micah gave the laws of the Kingdom Age before Christ, who is the Kingdom Age, came to earth. The laws of the Kingdom Age are repeated in Galatians 5:22,23:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
The Holy Spirit, the law of the Spirit of life, is the Law of the Kingdom Age. Christ Himself gave the most accurate and concise summary of the laws of the thousand-year Kingdom Age when He taught:
. . . Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)
Whoever keeps these two commandments is a true man or woman and is living in the Kingdom of God in a personal, immediate sense. The individual who has had Christ formed in him and dwelling in him, and who is living in the Spirit of God, is beginning to keep these two commandments by nature.
Christ always lives in the Kingdom Age, in the Day of the Lord, in the Kingdom of God. The early apostles and the first-century churches were living in the Kingdom to the extent that they were abiding in Christ.
We can notice in the life of Jesus and in the ministry of His apostles the "powers of the world to come" (Hebrews 6:5). The dead were raised, the sick were healed, demons were cast out. The demons protested at what must have seemed to them an early exercise of Kingdom vengeance on the unclean spirits. But the authority and power of Christ prevailed, as they always do.
The Day of Vengeance had not come, as evidenced by the fact that Jesus did not include that phrase ("the day of vengeance of our God"—Isaiah 61:2) when He read from the scroll of Isaiah to the synagogue members. But the authority and power of the Day of Vengeance were present in advance in the eternal Christ, so the demons were forced to leave their victims.
The Battle of Armageddon is the confrontation between Christ and Satan-filled man. Armageddon will occur historically when the Lord Jesus invades the world and imposes His Kingdom rule (I Thessalonians 4:16; Revelation 1:7).
However, Armageddon in a true sense is being fought in each overcomer now. The struggle to subdue lust and self-will takes place continually as we seek to press into Christ. The enemy employs every possible devise to deceive us, bluff us, frighten us, tempt us, entice us, infuriate us, and especially to remove our gaze from Christ and to focus it on somebody or something else.
Any person who thinks that there is not a genuine Armageddon being fought now in the spirit, soul, and body of each of God’s saints is not one of God’s saints. The battle is taking place. If we are to overcome the world and our sins and self-love we have to do so by the blood of the Lamb, by the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit, and by loving not our life to the point of death.
As far as the disciples of the Lord are concerned, the issue of the Kingdom of God is being decided today. The "day star" heralding the Day of the Lord is arising in the heart of the saints even now (II Peter 1:19). From the standpoint of Christ and His Body, the worldwide events of the Kingdom of God will be no more significant than the decisions being made right now in the heart of each believer in Christ.
To what extent are we surrendered to the will of Christ? To what extent are we being obedient to the Holy Spirit? How intently are we pursuing Christ? How far are we willing to go in allowing Christ to be formed in us?
Are we willing to praise God in the furnace of affliction? The victories of God are gained first in the spirit realm. Then the natural realm reflects the spiritual victory. This is one of the laws of cause and effect of the Kingdom of God, of the Jubilee.