| There are many
passages in the Old Testament which speak of a tremendous victory for God’s cause
(e.g. Micah 4:1-5). Up to the present time, these prophecies have not been fulfilled. We
have not seen the victory of the Kingdom that is promised in the book of Revelation. The
reason is that history has two stages; the times of the Gentiles and the times of the
Kingdom. At present we are living in the times of the Gentiles (Luke 21:24). During this
time the kingdom of God rises and declines. It has some tremendous victories, but does not
reach the fulfilment that is promised in the Old Testament. During the times of the
Gentiles, the majority of Jews are absent from the Kingdom, because their nation has
rejected the Messiah and is under judgment. This is one reason why the Kingdom does not
reach fulfilment. The Kingdom of God cannot be complete when one of the nations is
excluded from it. The Kingdom cannot come to fulfilment until the judgment of Israel is
complete.
When Jesus died upon the cross, the devil was totally and fully defeated. He was cast
out of heaven (Rev 12:13) and can only continue to function on earth if he can deceive
people into rejecting the gospel. However he does have one last legal right on earth.
Because Jews are under judgment (Matt 23:39), Satan has had the right to execute its
judgment by working evil that will affect them.
Furthermore, because the Jews had been scattered among the nations, he has been able to
work in all the nations. Whenever, Satan wanted to do great evil in a nation, he incites
it to attack the Jews and then he has a greater authority to do his work. For example,
Satan incited both Hitler and Stalin to attack the Jews. This enabled him to do great evil
through them. We can expect the rise and decline of the Kingdom of God to continue until
the times of the Gentiles are finished.
The times of the Gentiles come to an end when the judgment of the Jews is complete.
When the Jewish judgment comes to an end, Satan’s power last legal authority
on earth will be gone. His power to do evil will be severely curtailed. We will see a
rapid decline in evil and an equally rapid advance of the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom will be able to come to
completion because every nation in the world can have a place in it. Satan will have lost
the right that he had to work in the world. God will then be free to pour out his Spirit
and bring the Kingdom to its promised fulfilment. The Jews will then be called into the
Kingdom in a fuller way. The times of the Kingdom will then begin.
Christians often say that God is doing a
new thing. We need to be careful about making this kind of statement. A new thing will not
happen on earth, unless something changes in the spiritual dimension. The ascension of
Jesus changed things in heaven, so it resulted in a new thing on earth (Pentecost). Since
then, God has mostly been doing the same thing. However, the end of the judgement of
Israel does represent a change in the spiritual dimension (Dan 7:26), so it will result in
a "new thing" on earth. |