So God can love us with the intent to save us even while he is hating God-despising rebels like us. I’m amazed you can put so much effort into such complex and difficult questions for complete strangers, like me! You had put 27 questions to Shri Raichandbhai from Durban. He came to die, not to be put on a throne yet. For example, consider Psalms 103:19: “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” You can hear the basic meaning of the word kingdom as rule. Bring your kingdom. Bring your reign fully in people’s lives, in my life, in the world. In and through Jesus, God, the king, is coming in a way – a new way – into the world to establish his saving rule. It’s coming. It’s not yet here. It’s not here the way we want it to be. Therefore, the shift that happens in no way diminishes the importance of what was taught about the kingdom during the lifetime of Jesus. The kingdom creates a realm, the kingdom creates a people, but the kingdom of God is not synonymous with its realm or its people. In Luke 19:11, Jesus proceeded to tell a parable because he was near Jerusalem, but the people supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.

For example, you can hear the future dimension of the kingdom in the Lord’s Prayer: “Your kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10). We should pray that every day. My question for you is this: The gospel of Matthew alone is full of references to the coming ‘kingdom’ (55 of them). This is why the coming of the kingdom in the New Testament is called good news. Everyone dresses alike in simple clothing, called ihram, symbolizing their equal status before God and the state of purity in which the hajj is to be performed. The close ties between the church and the state led to the perception of the church as corrupt and greedy by many members of the intelligentsia. In the hectic pace of life today many have drifted away from a close personal relationship with Christ. In addition, J. Philip Hyatt believes it is more likely that yahwi- refers to a god creating and sustaining the life of a newborn child rather than the universe.

God saves millions of people who are loathsome to him in and of themselves until he saves them and makes them the apple of his eye, which makes salvation stunningly more. British Israelism: The belief that the Anglo-American people are descended from the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, specifically Ephraim and Manasseh and are the possessors of the birthright promises and accompanying blessings of Abraham’s descendants, through his grandson Jacob. I hope people will listen carefully. Offer to God the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High, 15 And call on Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall honor and glorify Me. It’s not going to be immediate, and yet already, it’s present in your midst, upon you, at hand.” How can he say all that? The picture you get in the Gospels as Jesus unfolds the teachings of the kingdom is that it is both present and it is still future.

How can the kingdom of God be both not yet present and already present? It doesn’t mean that his kingdom rules over his realm; it means that God’s reign or rule governs all things. If you went over to Malachi 1, you would find the latter. First, in the hearts of his people and in their relationships by triumphing over sin, Satan, and death. That’s because a great many people sacrificed were enemy warriors captured in battle. The answer is, the kingdom of God is God’s reign – his sovereign action in the world to redeem and deliver a people and then at a future time finish it and renew his people and the universe completely. The basic meaning of the word kingdom in the Bible is God’s kingly rule – his reign, his action, his lordship, his sovereign governance. I think the most important thing I could say about the kingdom of God that would help people make sense out of all the uses is that the basic meaning of the word kingdom in the Bible is God’s reign – R-E-I-G-N – not realm or people.