Two Kingdoms?
The doctrine of the pre-tribulation catching up ("rapture") of the believers in Christ came as a "revelation" in the last century. In order to give this doctrine respectability (according to our understanding of what took place) it was included as part of a system of biblical interpretation termed "Dispensationalism." Dispensationalism is destructive of sound, defensible interpretation of the Scriptures and is one of the reasons for the spiritually impoverished condition of the Christian churches of our day.
Dispensationalism teaches that God, from time to time, changes His way of dealing with men. Our position is that God never changes nor does His eternal purpose vary. God always has desired that people please Him by faith, that they practice justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. History has been witnessing a progressive unfolding of God's eternal plan in Christ, not a series of starts and stops, fits and jerks, due to God's inability to understand human nature. Christ was crucified, and we were chosen in Him, from the creation of the world. In the mind of God, and therefore in reality, all has been finished from the beginning. The new Jerusalem has been completed already. Dispensationalism teaches that God's ways with the Christian Church are a special "mystery"; that God now is dealing with people differently from what has been true in the past.
The God of the Hebrew Prophets no longer requires righteous, holy, obedient behavior—especially from Gentiles who profess belief in Christ. The Furnace of Israel has decided that people cannot obey His laws. Therefore He has issued a "dispensation of grace." The new dispensation of grace acts as an eternal amnesty for everyone who chooses to believe that God is willing to receive him into Paradise apart from a radical change in his personality and behavior. No new creation is necessary for entrance into the Kingdom of God. Whether intentionally or not, Dispensationalism, as it is applied by numerous Christian teachers and preachers of our day, has given the impression that God does not require righteous living on the part of the Christian believers as He has of every previous generation of people.
It is said that Christians are exempt from the Kingdom principle of sowing and reaping. Belief in Christ is the Christian's "ticket to Heaven." As a result, the main business in life of the Christian is not to be growth in godly living but the persuasion of other people to accept the free ride to Paradise.
We are not implying that believers should not be sincerely interested in the salvation of the souls of men. We should be. However, the perpetual repetition of this obligation (that every believer is to persuade as many people as possible to accept the free ride to Paradise), in place of the feeding of God's sheep, is not always of God but may come from a human desire to gain members. When they are not continually fed the Word of God the believers do not grow in Christ, in the ability to distinguish between good and evil and to choose the good and resist the evil.
The teaching that God does not require a change in how the converts are living, but is asking only that they make a profession of Christ and attend church as the condition for eternal residence in Paradise, is incorrect. We are blind guides when we leave people with the idea that such is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.
One could study carefully the New Testament writings and never find the doctrine (except in passages lifted out of their contexts) that God does not require righteous and holy living on the part of the believers in Christ, that righteous and holy living is not a critical aspect of eternal life. Dispensationalism teaches that there are two kingdoms—a spiritual kingdom of Christians (primarily Gentile), and a natural kingdom made up of those who are Jewish by race. The idea seems to be that the kingdom of Gentile Christians does not require righteous living while the natural kingdom is composed of Jews by physical birth who are obligated to keep the Law of Moses. However there are not two kingdoms, a spiritual Gentile kingdom and a natural Jewish kingdom. There is only the one Kingdom of God.
The Hebrew Prophets revealed the coming of but one Kingdom. John the Baptist, Christ, and the Apostles preached only one Kingdom. There is no scriptural basis for the teaching of two kingdoms. Matthew uses the expression, "the kingdom of heaven." The other writers refer to the same kingdom as "the kingdom of God." That only one kingdom is meant is demonstrated by the fact that the parables Matthew applies to the Kingdom of Heaven, such as the sowing of the grain of mustard seed, are applied by Mark and Luke to the Kingdom of God.
There only is one Kingdom of God, of Heaven. It is the Kingdom announced by the Hebrew Prophets. The Prophets did not speak to physical Israel but to us, Jews and Gentiles, who have received Christ (I Peter 1:12). The Lord Jesus Christ is the only true Seed of Abraham. Physical Israel never did and never will inherit the Messianic promises—the promises pertaining to the one Kingdom of God. When God turns again to the physical people and land of Israel, as the Scriptures declare He will, the physical people will be born again of the Spirit of God and inherit the one Kingdom of God.
Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. (Galatians 3:19) The Christian salvation is not a special "dispensation" of Divine favor to the Gentiles. In fact, no Gentile can come under the new covenant until he or she, by being joined spiritually to Christ, becomes a member of "the house of Israel" (Hebrews 8:10).
There is no such thing as a Gentile church, a Gentile kingdom, a Gentile bride. Upon marrying Joseph, Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah the Egyptian, became an Israelite. Asenath did not retain her identity as a Gentile. If she had, Manasseh and Ephraim would have been considered half Israelite and half Egyptian.
We lose our identity as Gentiles the moment we become part of Christ. In fact, we become part of the only true Seed of Abraham. There is neither Jew nor Gentile in Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ. (Galatians 3:28)
When Christ came He came to the Jews. Salvation is of the Jews. The spiritual and only Kingdom of God, of Heaven, is of the Jews. Christ is the Son of David and will be crowned King on the throne of David in the city of Jerusalem.
Jesus Christ is Messiah, the King of the Kingdom of Israel, which is the Kingdom of God. There is no other Kingdom of God, no other Kingdom of Heaven—at least not according to the Scriptures. In order for a physical Jew to become part of the one Seed of Abraham and thus enter God's Kingdom, he must be born again. There is no separate kingdom reserved for the Jew who has not been born again, who is not a part of the one Body of Christ, the one Kingdom of God, the one Vine, the one holy city, the one new Jerusalem, the one Wife of the Lamb. God's elect are one—one true Olive Tree. The writers of the New Testament were Jews, with the exception of Luke. The Scriptures, Old Testament and New, are Jewish. Christ was raised in a Jewish household. Upon Christ are based all the fulfillments of the promises of God for Christ is the only promised Seed of Abraham. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. (Galatians 3:16)
And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:29) Will Christ, the Son of David, rule over a "Gentile Bride" in Heaven and an "Israelite Bride" on the earth in spite of all the Apostle Paul taught to the contrary? Given the convergence of the spiritual and physical realms in the Day of the Lord, given the fact that Heaven will come to earth in the new Jerusalem, how can anyone conceive of a future in which God has one kingdom in the spirit realm and another in the physical realm?
We Gentiles have become inflated with pride. We need to realize we have been grafted on the holy root of Israel. Indeed, we are not a special "spiritual kingdom" that is exempt from the laws of righteousness.
We have been added to Israel just as Asenath was added to Joseph. Now we no longer are Gentiles but an inseparable part of true Israel and heirs of the Messianic Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, the one true Kingdom that according to the Prophets is destined to rule the nations of the earth forever. This is the Kingdom from Heaven, the new Jerusalem. If, as the Scripture teaches, the new Jerusalem is the Wife of the Lamb, the Christian Church, where is the so-called natural kingdom of Israel on the new earth? Why is it not described in the last two chapters of the Book of Revelation?
The promises in the Book of Isaiah concerning the glorification of Zion and Israel are speaking of the Glory of Christ in an Israel that has been born again in Christ. It is written that after the full number of Gentiles has been received into the true Israel, God will turn again to physical Israel. When God turns again to the Jews, which may be beginning already, they finally will be born again. They will become members of the Body of Christ, which is the Kingdom of God. For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. (Romans 11:25-27)
The Kingdom of God is the rule of God in Christ in the saints over the nations of saved peoples of the earth. The saints (holy ones) are the members of the Body of Christ, the one true Israel of God.