Ryken Kingdom, Come!

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4335-3407-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

In this world of pain, regret, and brokenness, people regularly wonder about the future. Yet Christians find confidence in one secure truth: Jesus is coming back. Directing readers to this ultimate hope, Phil Ryken encourages Christians to live each day longing for Christ's return and anticipating the coming of his kingdom. This book overflows with engaging anecdotes, contemporary illustrations, and insightful reflections on Scripture, offering readers a powerful reminder of the glorious future promised to all who trust in Christ and who long for his appearing.

Philip Graham Ryken (DPhil, University of Oxford) is the eighth president of Wheaton College. He preached at Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church from 1995 until his appointment at Wheaton in 2010. Ryken has published more than fifty books, including When Trouble Comes and expository commentaries on Exodus, Ecclesiastes, and Jeremiah. He serves as a board member for the Gospel Coalition and the Lausanne Movement.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ryken, Philip Graham

Leseproben

1

The Kingdom Is Near

Suddenly they began to appear all over the country: billboards announcing the end of the world. “He Is Coming Again!” some of them read, followed by a specific date on the Gregorian calendar: May 21, 2011. “Save the Date!” others proclaimed. “Return of Christ. May 21, 2011.” Then there were the billboards that sounded an alarm: “Blow the trumpet . . . warn the people. Judgment Day May 21, 2011. The Bible Guarantees It.” On some billboards the number 2012 was printed down in the corner, circled in red and then crossed out, to indicate that the year 2012 would never arrive.

These billboards supported the radio teaching of one of America’s most famous false prophets, Harold Camping. Mr. Camping first predicted the end of the world for May 21, 1988, and then again for September 7, 1994. Later he predicted that on May 21, 2011, judgment would come, Christ would return, the righteous would be raptured to heaven, and the world would be visited with five months of fire and brimstone.

Not Soon Enough

All of these prophecies turned out to be good for the beleaguered billboard industry. Starting on May 22, a new set of billboards appeared in response to Mr. Camping and his false prophecy. “That was awkward,” they said, and then they provided a relevant text from Scripture: “‘No one knows the day or the hour . . .’ Matthew 24:36.” Undaunted, some of Mr. Camping’s followers remained convinced that they knew when the end would come. May 21 was only a spiritual judgment, they said, but the universe would be destroyed the following autumn. Their billboards now listed May 21, 2011, as the date of “The Rapture” (in a spiritual sense) and October 21, 2011, as “The End of the World.” But these prophecies, too, turned out to be false.

In considering Mr. Camping’s followers, it is hard to know whether to laugh or to cry. Looking to make a fast buck, some enterprising atheists from California advertised a post-rapture pet-sitting service and took nonrefundable deposits from animal lovers who wanted someone to look after the pets that would get “left behind” if suddenly their owners disappeared because they were taken to heaven.1 More tragically, some radio listeners quit their jobs, spent their life’s savings, and emptied their children’s college accounts to warn people about the coming judgment, getting the word out over the radio waves and on highway billboards.

Christians who knew their Bibles criticized the preacher for being too specific. They rightly pointed out that when Jesus taught his disciples about the coming judgment, he told them that “concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matt. 24:36). Therefore, anyone who presumes to predict the day the world will end speaks in direct contradiction to the true words of Jesus Christ.

These criticisms were valid; Mr. Camping was being much too specific. But there is another problem with predicting the day when the world will end: such prophecies push our expectation of the return of Christ and the coming of his kingdom too far out into the future. The problem with saying that Jesus will come again next October is not that he probably won’t come that month after all, but that we should expect his return much sooner! The Bible’s last prayer ought to be our daily expectation: “Come, Lord Jesus!” So we pray the way Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10).

The world may scoff at our hope in the second coming and at our belief in the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In fact, when a group called American Atheists invited the general public to a “Rapture Party” in San Francisco for the day after May 21, 2011, their billboard said, “2000 Years of ‘Any Day Now’: You KNOW it’s Nonsense.” Admittedly, there is usually a lot more nonsense in what Christians believe about the end times than there ought to be. Nevertheless, the Bible teaches us to live in hope for the coming of Christ. His kingdom is near.

The Coming of the King

We know that the kingdom is near because Jesus said it repeatedly. From the very beginning of his public ministry, he announced the coming of the kingdom of God. We see this clearly in the Gospel of Mark, which begins with words from Isaiah, Malachi, John the Baptist, and then from God the Father himself, declaring Jesus to be his “beloved Son.” But what would Jesus say, when he finally spoke? Mark tells us that he came “proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’ ” (Mark 1:14–15).

People say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Jesus had been waiting for this moment all his life. He had thirty years to prepare his opening line.2 And this was it: “The kingdom is near.” Of all the things Jesus could have said, of all the ways he could have preached the good news and described the plan of salvation, he started with the coming of the kingdom of God. As the gospel begins, the Son of God strides onto the stage of human history to make the eschatological announcement that his kingdom is at hand.

The coming of the kingdom may not be a very prominent theme in the church today, but it was central to the teaching ministry of Jesus Christ. The reason for this, of course, is that Jesus is the King. So when he comes, the kingdom comes. Here is how Christoph Schwobel explains it: “The imminent coming of the kingdom of God is a center of Jesus’ message, and when he is confessed as the Messiah, the Son of the living God, the coming of the kingdom of God is so closely related to his person that he is in his person seen as the coming of the kingdom of God.”3

Our Once and Future King

If this is true—if the coming of the kingdom is closely related to the person of Christ as king—then this explains why the kingdom is still at hand. There is a sense in which the kingdom has already come. It came when Jesus came, exactly as he announced. But there is another sense in which the kingdom is still to come. The kingdom is coming because Jesus is coming again, to reign in the full supremacy of his risen majesty.

A good, simple definition of the kingdom of God comes from Graeme Goldsworthy, who says it is “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule.”4 God does not establish his rule in all places all at once. In fact, Jesus emphasized this in some of his parables—the slow advance of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is like yeast, he said, that gradually works its way through the dough, or like a little mustard seed that eventually grows to become a tall tree (Luke 13:18–21).

So we live in kingdom tension—the tension between the inauguration and the consummation of the kingdom of God. The kingdom has come in the person of Jesus Christ, who said, “The kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11:20). As we submit to his lordship and surrender to his sovereignty, we are living the kingdom life. Wherever we live and worship, work and play, is a place where the kingdom has come (at least insofar as we actually live for Christ our King, submitting to his rule for our lives, even in the little things). James Davison Hunter comments: “As Christians acknowledge the rule of God in all aspects of their lives, their engagement with the world proclaims the shalom to come. Such work may not bring about the kingdom, but it is an embodiment of the values of the coming kingdom and is, thus, a foretaste of the coming kingdom.”5

The Bible constantly reminds us that the kingdom is not yet here in all its fullness, and to that extent it is still coming. This hopeful expectation runs right through the New Testament. We see it in Paul, who said, “Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20 NIV). We see it in Peter: “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:13). And of course we see it in the Revelation of John, with all its prophecies of kingdom come. The King has come, and he is coming again. His kingdom is both here, and not here.

Frankly, Christians haven’t always handled this tension very well. There is something about the imminent return of Christ that tends to bring out the crazy in people’s theology. Somebody always wants to play “Pin the Tail on the Antichrist,” or to hot-wire biblical prophecies to global politics, or to predict the exact date when the world will end.

Church history provides countless examples of end-time predictions. It happened in the Middle Ages, when one of the best-selling books was Fifteen Signs of Doomsday. It happened during the Reformation, when a German tailor declared himself “the Messiah of the Last Days” and announced that the whole world was about to be destroyed . . . except for his home city of Munster, where he would be king.6

It happens in America, too. Back in the nineteenth century the Millerites sold everything they owned, said their good-byes, and gathered on local hillsides to greet the coming of Christ, which they were certain would take place on October 22, 1844. At the end of the twentieth century everyone was reading The Late Great Planet Earth, which said the world would end in...