"I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven" (Matt. 16:19).
"Verily I say unto you, There are some of them that
stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see
the Son of man coming in his kingdom" (Matt. 16:28).
"They therefore, when they were come together, asked
him, saying, Lord, dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to
Israel?" (Acts 1:6).
"Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is
come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem,
and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the
earth" (Acts 1:8).
"Now there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men,
from every nation under heaven... And they were all amazed and
marvelled, saying, Behold are not all these that speak
Galilaeans? And how hear we, every man in our own language
wherein we were born? ...we hear them speaking in our tongues the
mighty works of God... But Peter, standing up with the eleven,
lifted up his voice... saying..." (Acts 2:5-14).
The whole matter of the kingdom
of heaven can be reduced to one simple issue. In all the above
passages it is undoubtedly the kingdom of heaven which is in
view, and which is governing. Pentecost saw the Son of man coming
in His kingdom, and the exercise of the authority concerning that
kingdom of which the Lord had spoken to Peter. The disciples
still had some earthly ideas of the Kingdom, but by the
happenings on the day of Pentecost they were lifted completely
out of their old ideas and came to see that the whole matter of
the Kingdom, as regards this dispensation, was bound up with the
person of the Lord Himself - that it is Himself present and
manifested in power by the Holy Spirit.
The Kingdom is not, in the
first place, what is so commonly implied when people speak of
'extending the Kingdom,' meaning thereby the realm in which
Christianity is propagated and converts are secured. The Kingdom
in its inception at all times is the Lord Jesus present in power.
"Ye shall be my witnesses" - that is the simple issue
of the Kingdom. It is not a movement, it is not a teaching and it
is not an institution. It is firstly Christ; then it is 'ye'. It
is Christ present by the Holy Spirit in people - and manifestly
present.
This coming of the Kingdom on
the day of Pentecost, or Christ the Son of man coming in His
kingdom, changed everything from negative to positive. Up to that
point, everything was negative where the disciples were
concerned. Now everything became positive. The Kingdom is very
positive. Christ is very positive. The Holy Spirit is very
positive. Where Christ and His kingdom by the Holy Spirit are in
people, things are of a positive character. It is not a case of
just being there, just going on from day to day, just waiting for
something to happen; the Kingdom is there. There is a witness for
Christ. It does not have to be organised. At Pentecost it was not
organised at all. I recently read the statement of a modernist
trying to interpret these things, and his word on this matter was
that on the day of Pentecost the Apostles came to the conclusion
that they had to form a society. Nothing could be farther from
the mark, more utterly out of keeping with what God was doing,
than such a statement. What happened was spontaneous; and that is
the point about the Kingdom - it happens. Where it is a matter of
lives made positive by the power of Christ in the Holy Spirit,
everything else follows.
It is remarkable how much was
included in this. First of all, you notice that the feature of
the universality of Christ was very clearly and powerfully
displayed. There were all these languages and tongues represented
in Jerusalem. There is a Rabbinical statement that the whole
range of human languages at that time was seventy. It seems clear
that the intention of Luke was to show that practically the whole
world in tongue and language was represented in Jerusalem, and
then, by this miracle, all those differences of language, tongue,
nationality, were suddenly transcended. The universality of
Christ, of His gospel, of the Church, of the Kingdom, transcended
all the earthly aspects; and more - it overcame all the results
of Satanic interference with the race in disintegration and
division. What a marvellous thing it was! But that is all part of
the Kingdom.
The point is, the Kingdom is so
positive, and it is not an organised thing. It is not something
set up in an external framework. It is the Lord present in us in
the power of the Holy Spirit, and that, without any appointments
or institutions, constitutes us positive factors; there is
nothing negative about us at all. I do feel that is a point upon
which we should focus for personal exercise. Supposing we take
out of our lives any given period of a few months or a year; how
far can we say that our life in that period has been positive,
there has been some registration, some real impact? How far do we
have to say that it has just been a matter of carrying on, and we
have not been positive at all; there has been no impact? It is a
simple, concrete issue which we ought to take up before the Lord
day by day. 'Now, Lord, today at least my presence here must be a
positive thing so far as the Kingdom is concerned, so far as Thou
art concerned; I desire that Thou shalt be positively manifested
whatever I am doing.' I think that both men and the powers of
evil should have something to reckon with in our being here. That
is how it was in the "Acts". The world and the devil
had to reckon with the presence of these people. Their mere
presence was a menace. It must be like that, that we count, that
we mean something that is positive, that there is some mark left
by our going on from day to day. "Ye shall receive power...
and ye shall be my witnesses". That implies the presence of
men in whom the Kingdom has become a reality by the power of the
Holy Spirit.
First published in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, May-June 1950, Vol 28-3