The Kingdom of God is the central storyline of the Bible.

Key developments of the story are found in accounts of the Garden (1:28), Abraham (12:1-3), Moses (Ex 19:6), David (2 Sam 7:12ff, Ps 2), and Daniel (chps. 2 & 7), but the theme permeates the entire Hebrew Bible. The Kingdom of God is the topic of all of Jesus’ parables, the foundation of His preaching, the reason for His coming, and the final eschatological goal and hope of His people.¹

Individual salvation is emphatically of infinite importance, but Scripture does not present getting you to heaven² as its central literary theme. The Bible functions as invitation to us to participate in its narrative of an Everlasting Kingdom that is advancing progressively. By trusting in the person and redemptive work of Christ the Savior-King you join the winning side of a kingdom story that is much, much bigger than yourself.

Realizing the Kingdom of God is the central storyline of the Bible becomes a new, eye-opening, life-changing epiphany for many Gentile believers in the Jewish Messiah at some point after trusting Him for the forgiveness of their own sins.

Yet, by and large, I would contend that even those who see the centrality of this theme in Scripture do not properly understand its contemporary relevance. My evidence for that contention is that Western Christian history centers around things called “Christian countries,” while Eastern Christian history is full of “secret churches.” Neither of those practices make any sense, I contend, in light of the proper Biblical teaching on the Kingdom of God in the present stage of redemptive history.

Jesus’ kingdom is more than a spiritual kingdom. He will physically reign over embodied people in a material world. But there is a process and order from inauguration to fulfillment. In this inter-advental age, Jesus’ people have been redeemed from Egyptian slavery but have not yet entered the promised land. In this age we are aliens and strangers, pilgrims and sojourners, living in tents, with no place to lay our heads. The Kingdom of Christ is public, international, and global, but presently landless. At present, the Kingdom of God is not established or advanced by the sword, but rather Jesus’ martyr-witnesses overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death.

At the same time, Jesus is indeed a real king of a real Kingdom which is ultimately in direct rivalry to all the kingdoms of this world. Though this kingdom is presently landless, it is very much “above ground,” as its citizens openly testify to the earth-dwellers about its coming fulfillment on the public stage.

Old Testament Israel was a trial-run in setting up God’s physical kingdom in this world. One thing this trial-run, with its spectacular failures, proved is that a righteous kingdom requires a Righteous King and righteous citizens.³ Even an Almighty Warrior-Messiah cannot establish a Kingdom by simply annihilating its external enemies as long as the Enemy maintains an internal, domestic foothold.

So Jesus’ already-but-not-yet gospel of the Kingdom sets up a chronological gradation which prioritizes getting hearts right first. Far from Gnosticism or asceticism, the goal here is indeed the redemption of all creation, … but that’s just the rub! Christ’s bride is not able to successfully exercise image-of-God dominion over the external world while she lacks dominion over her own internal lusts.⁴ Followers of the Lamb must come out of Babylon and slay both the fear and enticement of the beastly kingdoms of the present-world-system before the Eternal Queen will be ready for the awesome responsibility of ascending to her own throne beside her Husband-King.

In the present age, the genuine Kingdom of God looks like it did in the book of Acts—the Spirit-empowered testimony of a persecuted, faithful, minority remnant. When that manifestation of the Kingdom has publicly gone forth and filled the earth among every tongue, tribe, and nation, then and only then the next stage of the Kingdom will come. In the meantime, the presumptive framework behind both “Christian countries” and “secret churches” demonstrates that the bulk of visible Christianity is entirely missing the main point of our current place in the unfolding of cosmic history.

1. This claim is far from unique to me. One sample citation of many that could be given is the following.
   Beale, G. K. Union with the Resurrected Christ: Eschatological New Creation and New Testament Biblical Theology. Baker Academic, 2023, pp. 62–63 [emphasis in original]:
   My above revised proposal of the main storyline of the OT (see chap. 1, sec. I.F) was this: The OT is the story of God, who progressively reestablishes his eschatological new-creational kingdom out of chaos over a sinful people by his word and Spirit through promise, covenant, and redemption, resulting in worldwide commission to the faithful to advance this kingdom in blessing and in judgment (defeat or exile) for the unfaithful, unto his glory. How does this OT storyline relate to the aforementioned proposed “centers” of the NT and what we have discovered in the preceding chapter on NT eschatology? How should the NT storyline be stated in light of its relation to that of the OT? My proposal of the NT storyline is the following: Jesus’s life, trials, death for sinners, and especially resurrection by the Spirit have launched the fulfillment of the eschatological already-not yet new-creational reign, bestowed by grace through faith and resulting in worldwide commission to the faithful to advance this new-creational reign and resulting in judgment for the unbelieving, unto the triune God’s glory. This statement of the NT narrative line is to be understood from two angles. First, my thesis is that this storyline is the principal generative concept from which the rest of the other major notions in the NT are derived; therefore, second, this idea is the overarching concept or organizing structure of thought within which the others are best understood. ↩︎
2. For one thing, heaven is not even the eternal home of God and His people. Heaven is only a temporary residence for the souls of the redeemed until Messiah returns and our resurrected bodies inherit and inhabit the new heavens and new earth. ↩︎
3. Incidentally, Plato (Republic) seems to have independently discovered the same essential reality albeit with some important category distinctions. ↩︎
4. Hmm, ya, I wasn’t trying to echo Plantonic ideas here, but there are some interesting parallels. Also important differences. ↩︎