Is Christ a Temporal King?
A CARD recently received announces the call of a conference to be held in Iowa, and all are invited— “who are neither ashamed of King Jesus, nor afraid to acknowledge Him as the Christ politically as well as religiously, and ready to cooperate in doing the will of God on earth through a direct vote of the people, governed by His national Decalogue standard, and the Christ rule nationally.” But how could any intelligent Christian respond to such a call as that? Christ said to Pilate, when He was before his tribunal: “My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from hence.” John 18:36. Christ shows, all through His teaching, that His kingdom is not political, but spiritual. The kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, not through politics, not through majority vote, but by His own personal power at His coming. So-called Christian parties that have been formed in different periods of the world’s history have always resulted in religious despotisms and oppressions that have ended in the worst and the bloodiest persecutions. Christ Himself was crucified at the behest of the organized church of His time. His apostles, with possibly one exception, were put to death by the religiousists of their day. God has not ordained that His kingdom shall be built up by the power of numbers through the influence of politics. But it is by the spiritual power that speaks through His word into the inmost souls of men, and calls them to reforms that are higher than anything this world can invent.