The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Kingdom of God Is at Hand

Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them. (Isaiah 42:9)

The Lord Jesus is coming soon. We know that. The thousand-year Kingdom Age, the Millennium, will be a reality on the earth in the near future.

Most believers in the Lord Jesus Christ may understand this is true. What we may not understand is the kind of events that take place when God moves from one creative day to the next; what we can expect to happen during the period in which we are living.

Whenever we pass from one "day" of God's working to the next there is a season of preparation. The Spirit of God broods on circumstances that are chaotic in terms of what God envisions as being His eternal purpose in Christ. There is a period of unsettledness and sometimes tribulation and persecution.

There also is the appearance of two witnesses. The witnesses proclaim the new day at hand.

It is the purpose of Christ in the Church to bring the rule of God into the personality of every saved person on the earth. This is the work of the Kingdom—the bringing about of the doing of God's will in the earth as it now is performed in Heaven.

When we state that the Kingdom of God is at hand, that the Lord Jesus is coming soon to set up His rule on the earth, we are saying we are entering the period of transition from the fifth day of creation to the sixth day of creation. By day of creation we mean a period or segment of God's working as He proceeds toward the attainment of the eternal purpose He has determined in our Lord, Jesus Christ.

The original six days of creation of the universe, and the seventh day of Divine rest, are a foreshadowing of the seven eras of God's plan. Let us think for a moment about the days described in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis:

1. The creation of the heaven and the formless earth, the creation of light, and the separating of the light from the darkness.

2. The creation of the firmament, the separating of the waters below the heaven from the waters above the heaven.

3. The gathering together into one place of the waters, the appearance of the dry ground, and the bringing forth of vegetation.

4. The creation of the sun, moon, and stars to separate the day from the night, for signs and seasons, to give light, to rule the day and the night.

5. The creation of fish and birds.

6. The creation of land animals, and mankind—male and female, the assigning of fruitfulness and dominion to man.

7. God rested.

This is the description of the creation of the physical universe and also is an advance notice of what God intends to do, from the creating of the physical universe to the coming down from the new heaven of God in His tabernacle to dwell among mankind on the new earth.

To be continued.