The Setting up of the Kingdom of God
THE gospel which Jesus preached during his ministry was the gospel of the kingdom of God, the good news of the coming of the kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy. During the forty days between his resurrection and his ascension, he talked with his disciples of “the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” The gospel of the kingdom has been the theme of his disciples and their successors during all the centuries since the great commission was given by our risen Lord, and the hope of the faithful has centered upon his second coming as the time when the saved of all ages would enter upon the full possession of the kingdom. The prophecies of the Bible deal very fully with the question of the kingdom of God. They set forth with much definiteness the rise and fall of the kingdoms of earth, and point to the time when all these earthly kingdoms will pass away, when a new heaven and a new earth will be created (Isa. 65: 17; Rev. 21: 1), and when the kingdom of God will fill a renewed earth. The book of Daniel is largely occupied with prophecies of this character, and will richly reward the patient effort of the thoughtful student of the Scripture. In the second chapter of this book we have— A Remarkable Line of Prophecy
And in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, and the inspired interpretation of the dream, as given through the prophet Daniel. “Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”4 The Inspired Interpretation
“This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potter’s clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly brittle. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.” Dan. 2: 31-45. The inspired interpretation of the king’s dream is so plain that it is only necessary to call attention to its perfect fulfilment up to the present time, and the nearness of the final event predicted—the setting up of the kingdom of God. According to the prophet’s interpretation, Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom, Babylon, was represented by the head of gold. “Thou art this head of gold.” After Babylon there would arise “another kingdom.” This was fulfilled when Babylon fell in B. C. 538, and Medo-Persia became ruler of the world. The “third kingdom of brass” was Grecia, or the Macedonian empire, which was fully established in the sovereignty in B. C. 331 by the issue of the battle of Arbela. Then came “the fourth kingdom . . . strong as iron.” This was none other than “the iron monarchy of Rome,” which became the undisputed ruler of the world in B. C. 168 after the victory at the battle of Pydna. Of this fourth kingdom it was said, “The kingdom shall be divided.” This points out the downfall of the Roman empire, and the division of its original territory into ten kingdoms, corresponding to the ten toes of the image. This overthrow of the fourth kingdom was accomplished during the years A. D. 395-476 by the repeated inroads of the barbarians of the north, and particularly by the Visigoths under the leadership of Alaric, the Vandals under Genseric, the Huns under Attila (who styled himself the “Scourge of God”), and other barbarians under Odoacer. And so, when the last vestige of the Western Empire of Rome had vanished, the territory was found partitioned into exactly ten parts occupied by exactly ten independent nations—no more, no less. Named in order from the northern to the southern limits of the Western Empire, these ten, as they stood in 476 at the extinction of the empire, were as follows: (1) the Angles and Saxons in Britain; (2) the Franks in all Gaul north and west of the river Moselle; (3) the Alemanni in north Switzerland, Swabia, Alsace and Lorraine; (4) the Burgundians in west Switzerland and the valleys of the Rhone and Saone in southeast Gaul; (5) the Visigoths in southwest Gaul and Spain; (6) the Suevi in that part of Spain which is now Portugal; (7) the Ostrogoths in Pannonia—what is now Austria; (8) the Lombards in Noricum, between the Ostrogoths and Alemanni; (9) the Heruli in Italy; (10) the Vandals in North Africa, with their capital at Carthage. Three of these ten were afterward “plucked up by the roots,” according to another prophecy, leaving seven kingdoms still remaining, and these seven are in that territory to-day, and are the powers of Western Europe to-day. The Saxons, the Franks, the Alemanni, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Suevi, and the Lombards are the powers respectively of the Britains, France, Germany (in the French language, and with the French people of to-day, the Germans are only Les Allemands, and Germany is only L’Allemagne), Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy of to-day. These nations, just according to the interpretation of the dream, are “partly strong, and partly brittle.” And it is further true that the rulers of these kingdoms are closely related through intermarriages (“they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men”), and yet these ties are not sufficiently strong to unite them in anything like a common kingdom, “even as iron is not mixed with clay.” There is only one specification of the dream as yet not a matter of history—the smiting of the image on the feet. This is still future, and is interpreted as meaning that “in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which . . . shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.” Other prophecies, some of which have already been cited in these studies, enable us to determine with certainty when we have reached the generation which will witness the breaking in pieces of these earthly kingdoms and the setting up of God’s everlasting kingdom. It is evident that it will not be accomplished by the conversion of the world to the principles of truth and righteousness. The fifth kingdom is not established by gradually absorbing the kingdoms represented by the image, but by breaking them in pieces together. It is the stone which fills the earth, and this stone is not even composed of the materials which constituted the image when it was smitten. The Everlasting Kingdom in this Generation
The signs in the heavens (Luke 21: 25), the signs upon the earth (verses 25, 26), the lack of spiritual life in the church (2 Tim. 3: 1-5), the wide-spread departure from the true standards of the faith (1 Tim. 4: 1), the heaping up of riches (James 5: 1-3), the scoffing at the doctrine of the nearness of the second coming of Christ (2 Peter 3: 3, 4), the increase of violence and crime, such as marked the times of Noah and of Lot (Luke 17: 26-30)—all these signs, and others as well, mark the present generation as the last, and as the one in which the God of heaven will set up his kingdom. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.”