Nebuchadnezzar was ruler of the entire known world. The prophet Daniel sums this idea up in one sentence when explaining Nebuchadnezzar’s terrifying dream. The phrases throne, power, dominion, and kingdom all share the same idea. This is a very common Hebrew literary device where the second line restates the first line in synonymous terms. They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom,Īnd Your dominion endures throughout all generationsĪll three of these psalms incorporate the use of synonymous parallelism. The Lord has established His throne in heaven So we will stop curling the phrase “kingdom of God” and start with a well rounded exercise that will reveal the phrase’s raw and foundational meaning. Any athlete or strength coach will say, “Curls are for girls,” realizing that curls in isolation do little to strengthen the whole man. Word studies are sometimes like a young boy in the weight room doing nothing but curls. Looking up every occurrence of a word or phrase can be helpful, but that alone does not make for a comprehensive understanding. Here lies the weakness of simple word studies. Some suppose that the kingdom finds its beginnings here in the first gospel at the phrase’s first occurrence. The phrasing in Matthew 4:17 is slightly different but the idea is the same. “The kingdom of God,” finds itself first mentioned in the Bible at Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God…” Just prior to this account, Matthew says that Jesus, “Began to preach and to say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,'” (Matthew 4:17). Any three of these visions may come to the mind of people when they think of the kingdom, but without considering the integrity of any single one of these views- STOP. The mother simply supposed the preacher would teach about the church, nothing more, nothing less. The father immediately thought back to a Sunday school lesson which taught about Christ coming back to earth, setting up His kingdom in Jerusalem, and reigning for 1,000 years. The child envisioned a castle surrounded by expansive land as far as the eye could see. The preacher stood up and said he was going to preach about the kingdom of God. A family of three went to church one Sunday. This phrase gets thrown around by the professor and the janitor so much so that few know what the kingdom really represents. The kingdom of God is a concept with lost meaning. Now for the study itself, let’s get to the bare bones. The first lesson in this series How to Identify THE Church showed just how relevant this study is in the modern world.
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