The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

John the Baptist and Jesus were both preaching the Kingdom of God was at hand,1 and told their disciples to do the same.2 From the beginning we were told that it was at hand, that we were supposed to seek it, that it was in our midst, and within our reach in a present tense.

Everyone knew that a king was born. Prophets knew it, Herod knew it. Magi, angels, and shepherds knew it.3 At Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, thousands of people hailed Him as the highest son of David, the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed, the King of a kingdom.

Today, men have created eschatologies that might lead people to believe that the kingdom of Heaven or God is some distant event, or that it is only where you go when you die. While its jurisdiction may reach beyond the veil of life and death it was clearly for the living.4

The state of our modern society, its similarities to the world of Rome at the time of Christ, and the prophecy of a great deception of the people under a strong delusion should encourage, if not compel, us all to reexamine the events and words of the gospel of the kingdom, and what the early Church and the Christians were really saying and doing.

When Jesus told Pilate that His Kingdom was not of the “world” we see one of five different Greek words found in the Biblical text which have all been translated into the word “world”. The word was kosmos, and it is defined in Strong's Concordance as an “orderly arrangement” and in another Greek concordances it is defined as “an apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government.”5

The word kosmos in the Greek and Roman view at the time, “... meant originally the discipline of an army, and next the ordered constitution of a state.”6 The word came from the Greek “komizo” meaning “to care for, take care of, provide for” or “carry off what is one’s own.” Kosmos did not mean planet, inhabitable place, or age.

Jesus was not saying that His kingdom was not on this planet nor that it was not at hand in spirit and truth. He was simply telling Pontius Pilate, who was seated as a ruling judge of a Roman court,7 that Jesus Kingdom was not a part of Pilate's constitution, order, government or state and Pilate had no jurisdiction to judge Jesus as king of the kingdom God had given him.8

Evidently, this Procurator of Rome had already agreed9 that Jesus was the rightful “King of the citizens of Judea,” and would proclaim it so on an official epigraph written in three languages and nailed to the cross.

Everyone who accepted Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the king was cast out of the government of the Pharisees.10 The Pharisees by denouncing Christ and claiming no king but Caesar had abandoned the Kingdom of God and had entered the jurisdiction of Rome.11

Centuries before, in accordance to prophecy the Hasmonean Kings of Judea were taking the first fruits of the people, the best of their fields, making their instruments of war, drafting their sons, and allowed the Levites to own personal estates. By 78 BC the Pharisees, a political party, had passed ordinances,12 requiring the temple tax be paid and enforced by the appointed civil magistrates.13

In 66 BC, two royal brothers, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, had begun to battle for the office of the king. Aristobulus appealed to the “world” of Rome, and Pompey's multi national military force.

In 63 BC, Pompey decided against Aristobulus, but Hyrcanus refused to appeal to Rome for protection in accordance with the Torah. The Pharisees, however, did request this foreign aid, contrary to the law. This gave the Roman occupation some appearance of legitimacy.

Rome was in its own decline. The people were neglecting the responsibilities that had kept them free. Greed and corruption had brought in political and economic subjugation of the people through a dependence on governments created by men like Caesar and Herod.

Judea had followed the political pattern of Rome with their “free bread and circuses”, offered to entice the favor and support of the people and gain power over the same. Herod had created his new deal of social welfare through government support. Membership required baptism and the people were given an ID token made from a white stone with a registered Hebrew name carved on it to guarantee their eligibility for benefits and to keep track of their required and compelled contributions.

Their sacrifice, once called Corban, was no longer a “freewill offering.” The society established by God through Moses no longer depended on faith, hope, and charity through the free will offerings of a people who loved each other. This new form of government imposed a tax through Sanhedrin legislation, and the exercising power of a king.

“Let their table become a snare before them: and [that which should have been] for [their] welfare, [let it become] a trap.” Psalms 69:22

“And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them:” Romans 11:9

John the Baptist offered an alternative to Herod's Kingdom of Heaven. It was a system based on faith, hope, and charity and the law of liberty. If you had two coats and your neighbor had none you shared. Jesus preached that same kingdom, and John chose to follow Jesus.

Read the entire sermon

http://hisholychurch.info/sermon/kingdomofheaven12.php

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Comment by john hopkins on November 22, 2009 at 4:29am: About the kingdom being here is fact, it is being confirmed over and over again. I came into this website to place a new blog, but instead I would like to add thought to this note which is in line with the teaching of Christ who preached the kingdom. (Luk 4:43 But he said to them, "I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other cities also. For this reason I have been sent." )

My blog would have been titled, "DO WE UNDERSTAND ZION?"

In deed, we are not only entering, we are living in the end time and we need to preach and never stop reaching out to others to tell them that THE KINGDOM IS HERE NOW. JESUS IS WAITING FOR HIS BRIDE, so people do not have to wait until they die to enter into heaven, which is a spiritual realm, and is open to us now. We need to tell the world that it can get out of this hell into which it has locked itself and that it can move into the kingdom which God has prepared for us through His Son Jesus Christ who paid the full price for our debt, and all we need to do to partake of this is to repent and be baptized. There is no other name or religion which has this but Christianity, God made no other provision and He explained this to Jeremiah in Chapter 31:4 Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry. (5 ) Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria: the planters shall plant, and shall eat [them] as common things. (6 ) For there shall be a day, [that] the watchmen upon the mount Ephraim shall cry, Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion unto the LORD our God.

Zion in the Hebrew is the mountain and in the Greek it is Siōn which is not only a hill of Jerusalem; but figuratively the Church (militant or triumphant) So figuratively this is all speaking about the spiritual realm, and not the physical Zion which is a mountain of Jerusalem, and to get into this Zion one does not have to be Jewish but must be redeemed just as Jacob was redeemed as told by Jeremiah in 31:11 For the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of [him that was] stronger than he.

And just as Jacob the father of the Jews was redeemed so his decedents need to be redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ, his was the last sacrifice, there is no more sacrifice, and no other way to atone for our sins, and other than that sacrifice all God wants is obedience to His will who is Jesus Christ in the lives of sinners. God gave us Jesus Christ as a template, as a mirror image, so we are all born with the potential to become like Jesus Christ.

Now we do not have to prove Jesus Christ, for with repentance comes the revelation of the risen Lord, and it is through the resurrection that a transformation takes place within the confessing sinner which goes far, far beyond an intellectual understanding of the birth and death of Jesus Christ.

In this redemption there needs to be forgiveness, and those who still carry the hurt that Christianity inflicted on their decedents need to forgive Christianity for the evil that it purveyed, and not to see Jesus Christ as the God of that perversion which prevailed then, but as being the Son of God who died for the sins of all of mankind. Briefly what happened is that Rome got involved in what was a purely a Jewish affair, and it took Jesus Christ away from the Jews. (Sylvester I) and it then expected the world to convert to what it was teaching which was not in line with the teaching of Christ and his disciples.

• Within this redemption is a New Covenant.

Jeremiah 31:31 tells us about the New Covenant. Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:

• The Old Covenant is dead. It is finished.

Jeremiah 31:32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day [that] I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:

• Within this redemption a metamorphosis takes place as our temple, the body, is cleansed and God physically fills us with His Holy Spirit. Proof of this is the countenance which will appear on your face which will light up, this is referred to in the bible as the mark on the forehead. (You can read about this in my website http://elumnae.ning.com under the title, “Wired for Jesus.”)

• This now gives us the New Covenant with the New Testament.

Jeremiah 31:33 But this [shall be] the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. (34) And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

To reject this Israel ceases to be the chosen. It means that they still live in the Old Covenant, and unfortunately there is now a new chosen child, the old was rejected because of their disobedience, and the new bears the seed of Jesus Christ. He is redeemed by the blood of the lamb, and becomes God’s chosen. This is New Covenant.

I have already written on this and given a “Time Line” which proves this fact. This time line I did not create, it is basically proved through the Gregorian calendar and the Book of Daniel. These are hard facts, and not merely my opinion. Isaiah 53 is a fact written 700 years before the Messiah came. Daniel 9:24-27 is a fact, it came, history proves this, and those theologians who refuse to look at history and fact are doing nothing but protecting their own knowledge of the Word of God. These people are not moving on with God through His Holy Spirit, they are living in stagnant waters which brings forth no life and that is why so many other religions are prospering because Christianity failed to produce the fruit God intended. Christ did not die in order to give us a religion but a way of life, he wanted us to love our enemy and pray for those who hate us, and it is impossible as history has proved, without the working of God Himself in us, through His Holy Spirit. You who are reading this now, can at this moment receive the very same Holy Spirit, by saying, “Lord forgive me for my sins,” with a heart that is overflowing with remorse because of your sin. Yes, you must be sorry for your sins, if you are not and you desire to be born again, then you need to ask the Lord to soften your hardened heart, remove the blindness and deafness that Satan has given you, so that you may receive Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. It is so simple, and that is what the church did not want, they wanted religion which has turned out to be so complicated that even they do not understand it, and they themselves are lost in the world..

Jeremiah 31:36 tells us the Old Covenant is finished, as he wrote, “If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, [then] the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. (37) Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD.”

These are strong and hard words, but they do not come from me. The seed of Israel has ceased, and there are even many Christians who fail to see and understand that Zion is the church of Jesus Christ who died and was resurrected and lives within us today, so they need to see this themselves and encourage those who have ceased from being a nation before God, to come out of their Zion and to come into the living Zion, which is here now and carries on into eternity.

The only criteria needed for becoming a child of God is, repentance and believing that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, no other Messiah came on a donkey, or will come on one, and there is by no other name by which we can be saved. You reach Jesus Christ on your knees and through no one else. Spiritual life or death is all contained in your heart, what you desire there will bind you or set you free. The choice is yours, we each, individually, have to make a choice, there is no corporate move of the spirit as was in Acts, if this is what the Christian world is waiting for..