“The Kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the Kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (Luke 17:21-22)
In the smack-dab middle of my little town, directly across from the library and the old city hall building, sits a modern day travesty; a four-story business and residential complex, billed as “The World’s Greenest Building” by it’s developer back in 2004, but which now sits unfinished and abandoned over 20 years later. Looking now like a scene out of some dystopian sci-fi film, a prime property and developer’s dream, that once offered much hope and pride to our community, represents little more than disappointment and shame.
Because we live just two blocks from this building my family has had the displeasure of having to look at it nearly every day over the past two decades. For years and years we’ve watched the starts and then the stops, the visions cast and promoted by various owners and hopes reignited to then be left once more with only dashed dreams and an ugly unusable skeleton structure. Needless to say, it’s been quite frustrating to watch, and has stirred up some unsettling emotions. And so, in our family, we have affectionately named it “The Monstrosity”.
The other day, as I was walking by The Monstrosity, peering through the tattered chain link fence, meant to keep out vandals, but which only really serves to make the property even less attractive, a thought came to me… This building project is not so much different from the eschatological vision painted by most Evangelical Christians in America. Particularly from the mainstream dispensational preachers and “prophecy experts”, who have offered a constant stream of hollow conjecture, and unfulfilled promises.
“The end is soon!”
“Jesus is coming back to set up His Kingdom and make all things new!”
“…And then there will be true peace on earth, as it is in heaven!”.
The problem is these tropes have been tirelessly used over and over again for the past two hundred years and whatever it is that those who use them are looking for has clearly not materialized. The end of our current physical world has not come. Jesus is not ruling from a literal throne in the Middle East, rebuilding the physical cosmos. And we do not have a significantly greater prevalence of physical peace on earth than we have had in our past.
The sad thing is, the fallout from these unfulfilled expectations, is not merely disappointment for believers, but also mockery from the unbelieving world, and worst of all confusion and disillusion for many genuine followers of Christ.
Peering deeper, behind the chain link fence, the true condition of the building project is revealed. Water stained and corroded with rust and algae. Littered with expensive and unused materials,…probably irreparably damaged.
In the center of the building lies a large hole where access to a dark and scarry looking basement is found. The basement floor is cluttered with shopping carts and random garbage left by vandals, who decided at one point to make it their playground.
No doubt, this mess was not part of the plan for a world leading self-sustainable building. But then neither is the confusion and chaos left by ignorant and arrogant theological prognosticators. I think this scene, this mess, really illustrates how bankrupt even “good intentions” can be when there is nothing substantial to back them up.
And this leads me to the first city I want to talk about, the fictional physical world of pre-millennial, dispensational speculators. The city that this worldview postulates is a cartoonish version of reality, where passages of scripture that are clearly meant to convey deep spiritual realities, that the human mind can hardly conceive of, are taken instead as wooden literal descriptions of a physical world. In this fictional world, Jesus is expected to drop down to this planet, at some undefined point in the future, with a massive 2,744,0000 cubed mile Golden City in tow. Despite its massive three dimensional 6 sided size it will have only four walls that are 216 ft, tall. The city will have 12 full, complete foundations, each one made of precious stone. Every color of the rainbow will be represented, so at a distance the city will appear to be resting upon a rainbow. On this new planet there will no longer be any sea or stars or moon or sun, or even night time because the “Glory of the Lamb” will illuminate it all and continually. (See Revelation 21&22).
Sounds pretty spectacular doesn’t it? And who wouldn’t want to experience something this other worldly? But the part that most excites futurists interpreters of these Scriptures is the part in Revelation 22:2 that talks about the “tree of life” on each side of the “river of life”, bearing fruit every season, and bringing healing to the nations. Depending on who you talk to this imagery can be interpreted in a host of different manifestations, some adding additional details, others ignoring other details, but what all of the futurist interpreters agree on is that it will indeed be literal in some capacity and that it will supersede our current physical cosmic environment.
Strangely few of these pundits take the time to ask obvious questions, like:
Why is it better that there is no longer any Sea or Sun or Moon or stars?
Why are walls necessary in a remade and perfected world?
And if this new cosmic order is so much better than the previous one, why is it said that the nations will still need healing?
Of course there are answers to these questions if one takes the interpretive approach that the author intended us to take. Not as wooden literal but as metaphorical imagery of a profound spiritual reality. But sadly, many Christians are content to just stop at the surface description of things and pursue it no further.
Personally, I have not been satisfied with any of the superficial interpretations that have come to be so popular. And so, after many years of carefully examining every single text that prophecy pundits use to postulate the supposed future physical “coming of Christ”, and a remade physical “heavens and earth” I have discovered that such things are not at all what the scriptures actually intend to teach.
When ambitious dreamers like the developers who invested in a futuristic zero environmental impact building started with this project, it’s evident that their desire for this dream was greater than their means to accomplish it. To put it bluntly, they just didn’t have what it takes! The same can be said for the dispensationalist and every other flavor of prophecy prognostication that predicts a future physical reign of Christ on a remade planet.
The fact is, the writers of the New Testament Scriptures, from Mathew to Peter to Paul and John couch all of their prophetic statements in a specific time frame, addressed to specific people, and offered to those particular people for their comfort regarding the “soon” and “at hand” coming transfer of covenants. The historical fact is that the “New Covenant” came to its complete fulfillment in 70 AD, after the judgment and destruction of physical Jerusalem. Following this event the true people of God, the “Bride of Christ” (the church) were wed to Him, in the spiritual realm, and all those who had been waiting patiently under the Old Covenant/Old Creation order were now free from those constraints to worship and dwell with God in Spirit and in truth.
I will not be taking the time now to examine all the passages that are relevant to this topic That would open a Pandora’s box that this brief post cannot contain. My Hope here is simply to present a paradigm, indeed a revelation, that few modern day believers, including my own friends and family are strangely unfamiliar with. And to hopefully stir up an interest in reading the Scriptures as they were intended to be understood (Spiritually) and perhaps even create an appetite for deeper spiritual realities.
Today, and for the last 2,000 years followers of Jesus have lived under His reign and rule within the walls of the New Spiritual Jerusalem, the City of God, who dwells and operates no longer in physical temples made by human hands but within the hearts of His people. (See John 17:26 Acts 2:32-32, 1 Cor. 3:16, Eph. 2:22, & Peter 2:5)
The idea that Jesus needs to physically appear in the future to complete some unfinished business, some 2000 years after He already established His rule and reign in Heaven (See Matt. 26:64 and Heb. 1:1-3) and presence on earth through His people, His bride, the church. (See Rev. 21:1&2, 22:17) would not only be unnecessary, but very strange and regressive from the place which we have now arrived. (See Col. 2:6-10)
One of the ways futurists try to subvert these clear teachings of Jesus and His apostles is with the idea of an intercovenantal, “dispensation of grace”, where God is just biding His time, waiting for His church and Old Covenant Israel, to finally get their act together and get the gospel out sufficiently to every nation on the planet. There are many problems with this line of thinking though.
First of all, the Scriptures never speak of this kind of intercovenantal period, where God’s intended goals are restrained. The closest thing that we could see to this idea is the “millennium” spoken of in Revelation 20. During this period the culmination of all things, has not come to complete fruition, for people do still die, and Satan is not yet destroyed completely but only restrained. But what is clear is that during this time, Christ and His servants are ruling and reigning with Him and His Kingdom has clearly come. Whatever one makes of the millennium, whether it is a period of time which is past fulfilled (as I believe it was between the time of Christ’s Ascension and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.) or currently being fulfilled (as amillennialists and post millennialists conclude) it could in no way be construed to describe a future intercovenantal period, where Christ finally gets around to ruling, some 2000 years after He ascended to the right hand of the Father. That’s just not part of the biblical narrative.
Secondly, the Scriptures clearly tell us that the gospel had already gone out to all corners of the world, and that all creatures under heaven had heard it, during the time of the apostles. (See Col. 1:5-6 & 23) Such verses should clue us into the fact that the terms “creation”, “earth” and “creatures” which Paul and the rest of the apostles are referring to are not the whole literal world, but rather the Old Covenant religion, the “holy land” and its present people. Before Paul and most of the disciples had passed on the gospel had been proclaimed to the full extent of which Jesus had commanded them to. If it had not been completed then they and He had failed. For the whole point of this missionary movement was to rescue the Jewish people before their religious structure and city were completely annihilated. This happened in 70 AD and since then the Jewish religious system has ceased to exist, just as Jesus prophesied that it would 40 years earlier. (See Matthew 21:43 & 24:2)
2,000 years later this is still good news for us! For ever since the old superficial religious structure was removed God has been able to move immeasurably more powerfully and effectively through His spiritual body, His bride, the church, both in more accurately representing His character, and in drawing people of all kinds into His eternal family. (See Ephesians 1:18-3:21)
This is the city made without hands, that the prophets before Christ’s first coming longed to see. The one that can not be shaken, and which true believers participate in even today. (See Heb. 11:10, 12:22-23, & 12:28)
So how does this eternal city and people of God manifest on a local level, and in a town like my own? And if it’s not visible, like the Catholic Church or other denominations that have tried to supplant Judaism with a physical structure, how do we know that it’s real?
We know that it’s real because it works just like the rest of God’s created order. Despite the failings of the developers who tried to do something new and novel and impressive, the building on the corner of 2nd and Monmouth Street has become, without anyone but God’s intentions, truly the greenest building around!
It is, according to the natural course of God’s created order growing grass, and black berries, and ivy, and ferns, and a host of other weeds, which no doubt serve some greater cause in the ecology of it all.
Sparrows and doves and starlings now claim it for their own, and even the stray cats find it most amenable for their abode.
This is how the city, made without hands in the heavens operates. And it is in just such places that God has graciously given us the opportunity to participate in His rule of order and peace. Not merely as stewards of the physical land, and animals, but as imaginative reconcilers and healers, like Jesus and His apostles, who changed the world of humanity through their loving service, even to the least of these.
This is not something new to us it’s just not something that we often pay close enough attention to. Everyone reading this regularly has their own special encounters with the City of God.
-A neighbor who lent you something you really needed but could not afford to buy for yourself.
-The hug of a friend after an especially hard day.
-The mercy of a police officer who pulled you over for a legitimate infraction but who let you get off without a ticket.
-The gift of forgiveness from someone you treated harshly or hurt with your words.
-The coworker who shared in the penalty of a stupid mistake, when it was really your fault.
-The faithful devotion of a spouse who sticks with you through thick and thin, irregardless of headaches and messes you create.
-The feeling of blessing when God bestows wisdom upon you just before you’re about to make a really big mistake, or supernatural protection after you already have.
I could go on and on here but hopefully you’re starting to get the picture. The City of God is dwelling in His presence. Not trying to to run away or impress Him, but simply responding to the subtle nudges of His Holy Spirit and embracing the next experience, no matter what it is, knowing that His eternally benevolent and loving sovereignty will always carry you, and the rest of the world, through,…even if we aren’t paying very close attention to it.
P.S. In case you hadn’t picked up on it, this post is basically just a recapitulation of Matthew chapters 5-7 (Jesus’ “Sermon on the mount”). If you haven’t read in a while I would strongly encourage you to do so!
Be blessed!!!
Through Spiritual Eyes 