Non-Observations: The Kingdom That Never Came
“The kingdom of God cometh not with observation” (Lu. 17.20).
“In those days there was no king in Israel” (Judge 21:25)
“God is your King” (1 Sam. 12:12)
“Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink” (Mt. 25:37)?
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If any man ever had a front row seat to the “observable” Kingdom of God it was John the Baptist. He was obviously the forerunner prophesied in Isaiah, watched as the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove on the Messiah and heard a voice from Heaven to further confirm what he saw. Within a few years he was in a dungeon, not for preaching the approaching Kingdom, but for denouncing Herod’s invalid marriage according to the Book of Moses. Meanwhile, the Messiah did not act kinglike, and if this was the Kingdom it was, as they say of some towns that you drive through-- if you sneeze, you’ll miss it. He voiced his doubts to Christ, and heard little that he did not already know--miracles and preaching. The miracles must have been few enough not to cause a sensation, otherwise the Pharisees would not have asked for more. In the end, John saw no more of the Kingdom of God than anyone else in Israel, and the result was far below expectations. He would have to die in faith, like all the great and little that came before him, with the assurance that, like Abraham, he had “seen the Kingdom afar off,” for the Kingdom cometh not by observation. The Kingdom, like faith, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
The disciples, who had seen all the miracles, and were with Jesus after His resurrections, were still as clueless as John the Baptist. Even as they listened to Jesus expound “the Kingdom of God” during their last hours together, their only thoughts were, “are we about to see the real thing?” In other words, a kingdom that is a kingdom in fact, and not this something that is always kept dangling on the horizon, but never comes.
The Book of Judges plainly says what everyone in Israel knew: “there was no king in Israel.” Which is why they demanded a king. “God is your king,” Samuel told them. “Whatever that means,” most of them would have thought, because everyone knows there is no king. Boaz, Ruth, Naomi and Hannah understood this. God was king, and the hewing prophets were his agents, for by “a prophet was he preserved.” Even after the coup that put Saul on the throne, the prophets were who the kings got when they called 911, which was very frequently. God was king, but where was He? And the Ammonites were fast approaching. They feared the Ammonites, but trembled in Bethlehem when they heard the prophet was coming. On the one hand they wanted to keep the chastening rod of God (the nations around them) at bay, but were not too keen on getting too close to God. The Bethlehemites Boaz and Ruth would have rejoiced to hear of the preacher’s coming “for God let none of his words fall to the ground.” “Comest thou peaceably,” they ask, undoubtedly quickly hiding things that might raise the prophet’s eyebrows. Israel wanted nothing more than to enjoy the fruits of the land, but the constant vigilance demanded by the proximity of hostile nations did not “make their cup run over.” “A fat table in the presence of their enemies” was like the Damoclesian sword hanging over a feasting king. On the other hand, to settle down to the good life was to court the chastening rod of God’s displeasure. They did not leave the fleshpots of Egypt to spend their days watching and praying in the land of milk and honey. Yet God redeemed them to a life of Bible study, “for man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”
Samuel stands among the greatest of preachers, an oasis after a dearth of preaching. Before him the word of God was “precious (or scarce), for there was no open vision,” “a famine not of bread, but of hearing the word of God.” But Bethlem could think only of the rod of chastening as Samuel approached.
By this time Israel had been in the shambling Book of Judges for 400 years, “faint (perhaps), but yet pursuing.” But to what end? Where was all this going? And the arrangement was open to terrible abuse, for even Hannah’s grandsons were by now corrupt and degenerate leaders. And yet, in spite of all this, Samuel says, “God is our king,” and the Kingdom of God was on course. God did not want to change the rule of preacher-judges. “I gave you a king in my anger, and took him away in my wrath.” In fact, in New Testament preachers, “God restored judges as at the first.”
Where is this king? He is a non-observable king. John the Baptist could hardly conceive of a kingdom (the Church) preserved by preaching. The disciples could not imagine that their preaching would be the essential component in the Kingdom of God. Or that the Church was now the Kingdom of God. Even up to the Ascension, they could only think of a kingdom with a real, and not spiritual, king. At Pentecost they finally grasped the spiritual nature of the Kingdom as men were converted and added to the Kingdom through conviction and conversion. And yet, Pentecost was barely a ripple in Jerusalem, and the rest of the world would feel its effects only as the Gospel spread like a virus, barely observable. Josephus, who lived in Paul’s time, barely mentions it . Plutarch, who wrote many books in the second century, ignores it altogether, even as the 7 churches of Revelation thrived around him. But by 325 A.D it so saturated the Roman Empire that Constantante made it the official religion. He was able to co-opt it, because Church leaders assumed that by absorbing the Roman Empire, they now had established the Kingdom of God on Earth. Finally, the Kingdom of Observation. The World almost immediately sank into the Dark Ages, and now they reinvented Observation by creating monstrous gothic basilicas with spires that reach to heaven, a futile attempt to recapture a long lost vitality. Or they became soldiers of the Cross to deliver the Holy places from the infidel Turk. Here now was a Kingdom that the disciples would have recognized before Pentecost. And thus began Holy Land tourism that continues to this day, an attempt to find Observations among the dead relics of the past. Meanwhile the real church shambled along, often weary in well doing, and always convinced that the kingdom never came (or that it is in “a good church” halfway across the world), for there is little to observe “in well doing,” or “in a cup of water.” But the Kingdom of God was in the cup of water, Jesus--after casting off the famous men of the Church--tells his little flock of well doers on Judgment Day. God was not in the wind, the fire, or the earthquake as Elijah would have supposed, for he wished to die after the fire from heaven against Baal worshippers accomplished precisely nothing. And the Bible never bothers to tell us that God was in the “still small voice.” And Elijah was not impressed that he was. God was not there to impress, otherwise Elijah would have run back and hid in the cave as before. And that was the point. The Word of God is powerful because it is Truth: “thy word is truth.” It is as powerful in written, as in spoken, form. “A still small voice” will suffice. The Word of God is plain and simple to the point of foolishness, like sheep. The Kingdom of God, since the time of Abel, has never been more than a flock of shambling, barely observable, sheep: “the quiet in the land.” They themselves can never believe that they are the Kingdom of God, they are so unobservable. In the end, John, hearing the lion roar, turns to find a lamb on the throne. Men’s hearts will fail when they see “the wrath of the Lamb,” because they will suddenly get it: Not that a lamb can demonstrate wrath, but that they are now at the mercy of something which throughout history was the last thing they would associate with power. For here was a Lamb (the greatest of the non-observables) surrounded by all the legions of Heaven, one more terrifying than the next. They will suddenly realize that they will forever be at the mercy of what they had mocked all their lives. Abel comes down in history as an innocent lamb, senselessly struck down in the prime of life, which sets the tone of how the Church will march through history and inherit the earth: “sheep for slaughter.” The new earth/heaven will continue to be very sheepish, “for the Lamb Himself shall lead them besides the still waters.”