"Let your kingdom come"

 

The kingdom of God as social justice and loving care for one another

 

 

Notes

 

1. This is the second document of a four document series on the Lord's prayer. The fourth document is not available, yet.

 

2. The following is an updated version of "Let your kingdom come." At the end of this document is the original version.

 

"Adveniat," Let your kingdom come

 

The messianic kingdom

 

There have been, and will be, many interpretations about what Kingdom of God in the gospels is. In reality, we don't know. Jesus talked in parables about the Kingdom of God, but he never explained what it was. This makes us conclude that he took for granted that people understood what he was talking about. He didn't have to explain what was clear and evident for everybody.

 

At Jesus' time, Jews were well aware of what he meant, that the Messiah would soon appear and that his kingdom would commence. The Messiah would be a powerful, temporary king, who would destroy the enemies and would install again the kingdom of David, with equal or greater glory.

 

That was the idea in the mind of the Jewish people listening to Jesus had; the apostles were not the exception; they too were expecting that temporary savior; perhaps even Jesus was too. But what they expected didn't happen, and then, the idea of the messianic kingdom was changed for an early eschatology kingdom.

 

The early eschatology kingdom

 

Once the expectations of a messianic king evanesced, a new hope arose in the mind of the apostles: that in a very near future would be the end of times and then the kingdom of God would begin, with a glorious Jesus as the king.

 

When they had come together, they asked him (Jesus) saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?  And, as Jesus answered, it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority, this does not discourage them from their idea, but rather confirmed that in fact, in the near future, the kingdom of God would be restored. (Acts 1.6,7).

 

This is the idea of the early eschatology kingdom, which lasted until the facts proved that there would not be any such "end of times" soon.

 

More in the book

 

 

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