For the majority of the evangelical world, this title makes no sense. When the phrase, “Kingdom of God” enters their mind, visions of sugarplums and eternity dance in their heads. It’s as though the Kingdom of God is only a future time/place and has nothing to do with now, except for thinking about harps, clouds, and golden streets.
But the inspired authors’ of the new testament describe a Kingdom of God that now is, and is becoming, not just a future reality, but a reality that is now in the making. Let me clarify; many think that the Kingdom of God will come, in full, and in the future, complete and perfectly wrapped, and to this we give a hearty, “amen.” Where we differ with those, is not what happens at the very end, but what happens between now and the end.
God made Adam to be a sovereign king over the earth; to have dominion over birds, beasts, cattle, crickets, and anything else you can think of.
Psalm 8:4-9 KJV [4] “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? [5] For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. [6] Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: [7] All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; [8] The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. [9] O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”
Man was made to have dominion over the world; a sovereign king under God.
Adam’s obedience to God’s command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the only stipulation. He was king. The sovereign of the earth. Everything was in subjection to Adam. He was lord, ruler, potentate, and despot.
When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, he lost his authority, was banished from his earthly throne in Eden, and all of his pomp and spoils were handed to Satan.
For four thousand years, Satan was the ruler of the world, the god of the age, the principality behind the chaos.
But when Jesus Christ, the second Adam defeated Satan at the cross, all of Satan’s spoils, which were first given to Adam, were now back in the hands of man; but not all men, only those men who are of the first regeneration, those that have been raised from death to life by hearing the voice of the Son of Man. On Calvary, the God Man declared, “It is finished,” signifying that, along with the old sacrificial system of Judaism, the age of history that had started at the fall of man had ended, and the reign of Satan was over. (Click the link below to understand more on this.)
Satan is no longer the ruler of this world
This new age that started 2000 years ago is referred to in scripture as, “The Kingdom Of God.”
This Kingdom of God is now here, but for the four thousand years prior to it’s arrival, the world had a very bad king; I mean, come on, his name is Satan, the sultan of evil! Like the worst nightmare rental property. Imagine a rental home that you own, having inside it, drug dealers, murderers, ungodly men, liars, orgies, drunkenness, meth-heads, prostitutes, homosexuality, bestiality, pedophilia, extortioners, mafia bosses, etc.. That’s what the kingdom of Satan produced, and if you’ve ever had to go into a nasty rental property to clean it up for new tenants, there is a lot of work to be done. You need trash dumpsters and many gallons of oil based primer to get rid of the stench.
That’s where we are now. Satan, the ultimate rental owners’ nightmare, has been kicked out of his castle and the locks have been changed. Now, we get to clean up his disgusting mess. He has had freedom to roam this entire universe for 4000 years, and there is not a square inch that he has not made his mark, like a male dog lifting his leg on every tree he passes by. This cleaning process has been going on since the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and will continue until the great and terrible Judgement Day.
A summary of the entire Bible in one sentence:
A kingdom given, a kingdom taken, a kingdom restored.
Soli Deo Gloria!