Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Every time we pray the Lord's Prayer, we pray the prayer that may be over our heads in understanding: "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10).
The "kingdom" has not yet "come." It's been awaiting establishment now for two millennia since Christ gave us this prayer of expectation; many who reverence the Bible as the Word of God wrestle with the conviction that it's overdue. It's been hindered. But they also are convicted that if there is any delay, the honor of God will be compromised. People wiser than I have said that.
The coming of "the kingdom" is equivalent to the great "another angel [who] came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him that sat on the cloud, 'Thrust in Your sickle, and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe" (Rev. 14:15). It's the grand close of probationary history of this earth.
The coming of the kingdom is also equivalent to the grand climax of Christ's work as the world's High Priest: "We have a great High Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, ... not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:14, 15, KJV).
The High Priest's work is to reconcile the alienated hearts of God's people to Him; another name for that is the ministry of the antitypical Day of Atonement (a simple Anglo-Saxon word, at-one-with-God-in-heart). Yes, for that to happen would be a miracle; but that's what the Lord's Prayer has been praying for all this long while!
Another word for that is "the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary" (see Dan. 8:14), a phrase that makes sense only if it is understood as the cleansing of the hearts of God's people from all sin, known and also unknown. The honor and vindication of Christ in the great controversy with Satan is involved in thus establishing "the kingdom." That is our true motivation, something that transcends our concern for saving our own souls.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: July 16, 2007.
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