As part of a civil trial, and in reply to the question whether he is the King of the Jews, Jesus answered Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here” (Jn 18:36; NKJV). Many replacement theologians, especially a-millennialists, use this text to argue that the kingdom is entirely spiritual, and that Jesus never meant to establish a literal kingdom on the earth. This misunderstanding must be addressed.
Matthew 21:43 does not teach that God has ripped the kingdom of God from Israel and given it to the Church. Bluntly put, I am convinced that is false teaching. In fact, Matthew 21:43 teaches the exact opposite: Jesus guarantees a future blessing for Israel in the millennium (cf. Decker 2010:43). The kingdom of God will be given to a future generation of Jewish leaders and Jewish people who will bear the fruits of it. When that kingdom is restored on the earth, all who believe in Christ will participate in it, whether of Jewish or non-Jewish ethnicity.
If Elon Musk and his SpaceX company’s website is to be believed – if ¬– their goal is to build a ‘Mars base, from which we can build a thriving city and eventually a self-sustaining civilization on Mars’. Apparently, the idea is to ‘make life multiplanetary’, because becoming ‘a multi-planet species beats the hell out of being a single planet species’ (Musk 2017:8). How do these dreams square with God’s order, and with God’s mediatorial kingdom on earth?
What will the “seventy sevens” of Daniel 9:24-27 achieve? When did this period begin, and when will the 70th seven end? What does this prophecy have to do with Christ’s first and second coming? The prophecy of the seventy sevens, or 490 years, is very important. This prophecy not only covers the time to Christ’s first coming, but it also covers the 70th seven – and immediately after this 7-year Tribulation Period, Christ will return to the earth. This time He will come as the king to establish the Messianic kingdom.
During Christ’s first coming, Satan deployed his demonic forces on earth to try to thwart God’s plan (cf. Mat 2). At the time of Christ’s second coming to the earth, the same invisible battle will again clearly manifest itself. Matthew 2 and 24 describe incidents in a way that people are accustomed to, but in Revelation 12 God unveils events from the perspective of the invisible battle in the angelic world at the time of both comings of Christ.
