Message Twelve

The Kingdom of Our Lord and of His Christ

Scripture Reading: Rev. 11:15, 18; Luke 17:21;
Mark 4:26-29; Dan. 2:34-35, 44; Rev. 1:9

1. One of the main aspects of the book of Revelation is that God is recovering His right over the earth to make the whole earth His kingdom—Gen. 1:26; Rev. 5:10; 11:15; 12:10; 20:6; 22:5; Matt. 6:10.
2. The kingdom of God is Christ Himself—Luke 17:21; Matt. 12:28:
   1. The Triune God in humanity (Col. 2:9) is the seed, the gene, of the kingdom of God to be sown into God’s chosen people that He might grow in them, live in them, and be expressed from within them to develop into God’s ruling realm—Mark 4:26-29; 1 Cor. 3:9:
      1. The intrinsic element of the entire teaching of the New Testament is that the Triune God has been incarnated in order to be sown into His chosen people and develop within them into a kingdom.
      2. God’s goal is the full development of the kingdom of God:
         1. In the Gospels we have the sowing of the seed, the gene, of the kingdom—Mark 4:3, 14; Matt. 9:35.
         2. In the Acts we have the propagation and spreading of this sowing by thousands of sowers who had received the seed, the gene, of the kingdom—6:7; 12:24; 19:20.
         3. In the Epistles we see the growing of the seed, the gene, of the kingdom—1 Cor. 3:6, 9b; 2 Pet. 1:3, 11.
         4. The harvest of this seed is found in the book of Revelation with the reaping of the firsfruits and the harvest—14:4, 15-16; Mark 4:29; Matt. 13:39.
         5. The millennial kingdom will be the full development of the seed, the gene, of the kingdom with the Son as the King and all the overcomers as His co-kings, the “kingdom-gene people”—Rev. 20:6.
         6. The New Jerusalem, God’s eternal kingdom, is the full development of the kingdom seed, the gene, sown by Jesus the Nazarene in the four Gospels—Rev. 21:2; 22:1, 3, 5b.
   2. As the stone cut out without hands, Christ will come as the smiting stone with His overcoming bride to smash and crush the entire human government of mankind, and the corporate Christ (Christ with His overcomers) will become a great mountain (a great kingdom—the eternal kingdom of God) to fill the whole earth forever and ever—Dan. 2:34-35, 44; 4:26; Rev. 19:11, 14:
      1. In Mark 4:26 Christ was sown as a seed to be the kingdom of God, but He grows in His increase to become a stone, the increased kingdom of God; He will increase further and further until He becomes a great mountain, the eternal kingdom of God for His increase in administration—Rev. 11:15.
      2. The stone refers to Christ as the centrality, and the mountain refers to Him as the universality.
3. We need to live the kingdom life for the growth of the seed, the gene, of the kingdom within us—Luke 8:11, 15:
   1. In order to be in the reality of the kingdom, we must be joint partakers in the tribulation, kingdom, and endurance in Jesus—Rev. 1:9:
      1. We are joint partakers in the tribulation in Jesus:
         1. “In Jesus” means that we are suffering and being persecuted as we follow Jesus the Nazarene by the indwelling Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of a man with abundant strength for suffering—Acts 16:6-7.
         2. As we are suffering today, the Lord Jesus is suffering in us and with us—Acts 9:4-5; Heb. 13:13.
         3. We enter into the kingdom through many tribulations—Acts 14:22.
         4. By the power of His resurrection, we are enabled to participate in His sufferings and live a crucified life in conformity to His death—Phil. 3:10; Col. 1:24; S. S. 2:8-9, 14.
         5. We should not love our soul-life even unto death and lay down our lives on behalf of the brothers—Rev. 12:11; 1 John 3:16.
      2. We are joint partakers in the kingdom in Jesus:
         1. The kingdom is the church life, in which the faithful believers live for their growth in life and transformation in life—Matt. 16:18-19; Rom. 14:17; 1 Cor. 3:7; 2 Cor. 3:18.
         2. To practice the kingdom life, we need to pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart—2 Tim. 2:22.
         3. To practice the kingdom life, we need to care for the sinning brothers in order to recover them—Matt. 18:15-22.
      3. We are joint partakers in the endurance in Jesus:
         1. We must resist the wearing-out tactics of Satan—Dan. 7:25.
         2. When we abide in Christ, we keep the word of His endurance and have the endurance to bear suffering and opposition—Rev. 3:10.
         3. We can endure with the endurance of Christ that we have enjoyed and experienced—2 Thes. 3:5.
   2. In order to be rewarded by the Lord to reign with Him in His thousand-year kingdom (Rev. 11:18), we need to be saved from the degradation of the church to be His overcomers:
      1. We are maintained constantly in God’s organic salvation by the continuous and constant cleansing and accusation- answering blood of Jesus—1 John 1:7, 9; Rev. 12:11.
      2. We are saved from degradation by the speaking of the unlimited, life-releasing, sevenfold intensified pneumatic Christ— cf. Rev. 2:1, 7.
      3. We are saved from degradation by living in our spirit to reign in life—Rev. 1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10; Rom. 5:17, 21.
4. We need to follow the Lamb wherever He may go (Rev. 14:4) to preach the gospel of the kingdom to the whole inhabited earth for the propagation and development of the seed, the gene, of the kingdom to consummate this age—Matt. 24:14; Mark 4:26.