Here is a brief summary of the teachings concerning the kingdom of God from the Old and New Testaments.

1. It was not God’s idea that Israel should be a kingdom. The people demanded a king so they could be like other nations, so God gave them Saul. Saul began well but soon fell in love with being king and things went from bad to worse. God sent Samuel to anoint David as king. The difference between these two men illustrates the difference between this world’s idea of a king and God’s idea of what a king should be. Saul did all in his power to eliminate David; David refused to lift up his hand to slay Saul when the opportunity arose. When David became king he still saw himself as a shepherd caring for his Father’s flock, not as one having the divine right to plunder the people for his own aggrandizement.
2. God promised David that his seed would forever reign over his people. This promise received its full earthly fulfilment in the reign of Solomon, a glorious and peaceful reign. After Solomon, the spiritual life of Israel went up and down according to the faithfulness of the king, illustrating that the people did not themselves have a personal relationship with God.
3. By the time of Jesus, the Jewish people were ruled by Rome and looked earnestly for the promised Son of David to come and rid them of Roman domination and reestablish the earthly kingdom. God’s plan was to establish a spiritual kingdom, something unheard of and incomprehensible to the Jewish leaders. So they conspired to get rid of Jesus, and in so doing they brought the whole Jewish worship system to an end and ushered in the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
4. What the majority of the Jewish people really wanted, along with many who have called themselves Christian since that time, was a king who would resemble Saul, not someone like David.
5. Jesus now reigns as king in the hearts of born-again believers who live in submission to Him. This reign of love and peace is more complete than any domination that could be achieved by fear and the force of arms.
6. Jesus will not share his authority with others. All who claimed to reign as Christian emperors and kings, with the support of churches who sought earthly influence rather than the kingdom of Christ, were imposters.
7. There has never been a Christian nation. Some have called themselves Christian and proceeded to persecute anyone who would not adhere to their specific brand of “Christianity”. Other nations have been called Christian because a large percentage of the population adhered to some form of Christian values and the governments thought it best to accommodate those beliefs. The decline in Christian influence in such countries is the fault of the churches and Christian people, not of the governments.
8. Those who foresee a thousand year reign of peace and the return of Christ to reign on earth, whether premillennial or postmillennial, have seriously misunderstood the Scriptures. Christ is reigning now in the hearts of His people. There is nothing better than this to be expected.
9. Jesus told Nicodemus “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3.3). People with earthly eyes will always look for an earthly kingdom. That has never been God’s plan.
10. The apostle Paul warns in Romans 12.2 to not let our thinking be shaped by the thinking of the world around us. “And be not conformed to this world*: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” *This world is a translation of the Greek word aion which refers not the the physical world and the things of the physical world, but to the thinking of the world in the times in which we live.