When the Lord Jesus came, there was a religion called Judaism. It was not a pagan, heathen religion; it was a religion worshipping and serving God, a religion formed according to God's divine Word. If you had lived at the time of the Lord Jesus, would you have taken sides with the Lord Jesus or with Judaism? I believe that every one of us would have taken sides with Judaism. Judaism was not a pagan religion. Its temple and its altar were according to God's Word. The sacrifices and offerings were according to God's Word. The priesthood, the worship, and the service were all according to God's Word. Have you considered, however, that when the Lord Jesus came He did not care about Judaism at all? He crossed out whatever Judaism was doing. Judaism kept the Sabbath, but He worked on the Sabbath. The Pharisees, the Judaizers, sent out the "Sabbath Patrol," and they caught Him breaking the Sabbath.
Christianity is now five hundred years older than Judaism was during the time of the Lord Jesus and the Apostles. When the Lord Jesus and His Apostles were on the earth, Judaism was only fifteen hundred years old, but Christianity is nearly two thousand years old. We are facing a religion which is five hundred years older than Judaism was to the Lord Jesus.
I believe that most of you have received some teaching about the kingdom from Christianity, but I would ask you to come back to the pure Word. When the Pharisees came to argue with the Lord Jesus concerning divorce, they said various things, but the Lord Jesus replied, "From the beginning it has not been so" (Matt. 19:8). Let us come back to the beginning. Forget about the traditional teachings and come back to the beginning to see the kingdom from the pure Word.
In Luke 17:20-21 the Pharisees came to the Lord Jesus asking about the kingdom of God. Like many Christians today, they had their own concepts. However, the Lord Jesus immediately told them that the kingdom of God does not come with observation—that if they were looking for the kingdom, they would be unable to observe it. What does it mean that the kingdom does not come with observation? It means that the kingdom is invisible. The kingdom is something that you cannot observe by your natural ability. Therefore, do not exercise your thinking, your understanding, your knowledge, or your comprehension. They are completely useless in apprehending the kingdom of God.
When the Lord Jesus said that the kingdom does not come with observation, He did not mean that the kingdom could not be realized. For example, if you had no ears, you could never realize my speaking. You simply could not observe my speaking because you lack the substantiating and realizing ability. That realizing ability is the listening organ, the ear. You need to have the listening organ and also to exercise it. Then you can observe my speaking. The Lord told the Pharisees that the kingdom did not come with their observation. Their kind of observation was wrong. They depended upon their mentality and exercised their knowledge too much. By their natural ability, they were utterly unable to observe the kingdom of God. To them, the kingdom of God came without observation.