Most of us grew up waiting. We live on a platform, ticket in hand, and the train is always coming.
Soon.
Marriage, kids, work, and even death are treated like a layover before the real thing starts.
In the West, most of us were raised on a delayed Kingdom of God.
Left Behind made it a thriller.
The late-night prophecy men made it a business.
Watch the headlines, decode the beast, stay scared, and buy the next book.
Friend, this is a strange way to live!
Fear keeps you watching the salesman. A present Kingdom forces you to grow up.
The King is crowned, the wedding has happened, the seed is in the ground. And you’ve been told to wait, even though it doesn’t make sense.
Kingdom Delayed
Today, many people accept the delay because they were told it was common sense. It’s preached and taught as if it’s simply how things are, rather than a modern theory that misleads.
Let’s unpack this:
The New Testament never describes a postponed Kingdom. The apostles, and the Church for 2,000 years, never taught a Kingdom delayed. Christ said, “Behold, I make all things new.” He rose as the firstfruits. The Spirit was poured out. Peter stood up at Pentecost and said, in effect, this is what Joel called the last days.
Those who treat all of this as a setup or a preview of things to come discount the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the words of Christ, and the fact the last days have been here for millennia.
The Christian life was never meant to be a single decision + a future escape plan. When it is treated that way, we stop seeking first the Kingdom of God.
I get it! Modern life loves timetables. Charts feel like control, headlines feel like scripture, and fear feels like being serious. However, none of this is Christian.
The Christian faith is lived in a tension: the Kingdom is here, and the King is coming. You can enter the Kingdom today and taste it, yet you still groan for the resurrection of all and the public appearing of the King. Watchfulness is meant to encourage wakefulness and repentance, not headline decoding.
How did we get here? Hint: not by accident.
After 1054, the Western church drifted from the old common life. The Kingdom got placed into scholastic institutions, laws, and empires. It began to be administered more than lived. When the medieval order cracked and broke into pieces with the Reformation, the tension of the Christian life changed, nothing was truly “reformed.” Stripping the faith down to a Bible without a sacramental life may have helped recover scripture in the West, but it flattened time.
History became a straight line and revelation a puzzle. For Protestants, the Pope became the Antichrist, and people were trained to read newspapers as if they were the last chapters of the Bible.
This retraining of Western civilization took a couple hundred years, until the Kingdom was moved off the map entirely and into the future.
In the last 200 years, the modern machine has hidden the growing seed, covered up the crowned King, and begun looking for a second wedding. Around 1830, John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren put Christ’s Body in parentheses, hid the Kingdom away, and popularized something new: a secret “rapture” of the Church. These charts and timetables were highly marketable to modern minds. They leveraged fear and spun up preachers who could read newspapers like scripture.
Then in 1909, for the first time, it was all printed in the margins of an English Bible, the Scofield Reference Bible. The modern system was off to the races: end-times conferences, radio men, Hal Lindsey, satellite prophecy, and Left Behind. Christian fear had been monetized.
The modern Christian lost the present tense of the age to come. He kept “Jesus is coming.” He forgot that Christ is always and forever with us. The last days forgot the wedding and stopped preparing the feast. The seed still grows, but many leave it untended while they wait for the tree to suddenly appear.
Today, many Christians live in a waiting room built to entertain, because it’s easier to sell than a present Kingdom that asks us to dedicate our lives to its growth and care.
Inaugurated Eschatology
So, what did the counterfeit delay replace?
The truth is that the King planted a seed and stayed with the field. This is “inaugurated eschatology” in common words: the end has begun, the tree is growing, the wedding has taken place, and the feast is being prepared.
A planted seed is an ongoing reality. Christ is the firstfruits. Peter said the last days were here. The Kingdom of God is breaking through into our world day by day. I like the picture of dawn breaking into the night, little by little.
Child mortality, which once claimed nearly half of all children, has fallen to single digits. Life expectancy and literacy have been booming!
Yes, I know we still bleed and suffer. Thousands of Christians are killed for their faith every year, and 1 in 7 are persecuted. We bury those we love. But death has been defeated, and still we gather for the marriage feast.
The Bridegroom is among us, present and reigning, though not yet unveiled to every eye.
For me, this is why Sunday has to be more than a weekly seminar. It is why we don’t celebrate the Resurrection on the Sabbath, Saturday, but on the eighth day: the day beyond the seventh, a day that never ends. A day that breaks into the first day of a week of work and graves. A day that walks us into a foretaste of the wedding feast.
I hate to miss the beginning of the ancient Divine Liturgy, because it always reminds me of this. The first words the priest says,
Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.
The priest blesses the Kingdom in the present tense, here and now!
The eighth day is named: now and ever and unto ages of ages. The people respond, “Amen,” meaning so it is.
The Sunday service is a wrinkle in time where we see the beauty of eternity, and if we fail to see it, we will miss what it demands of us.
A King who is delayed, who is not among us, can be admired and then set aside. A King among His people requires action: obedience or resistance.
The seed will become a tree, whether you like its timing, shape, or fruit.
The nations, like birds, will nest in its branches.
The hungry are being fed. The feast is beginning.
Today, this is the true headline; over a billion people have climbed out of extreme poverty in the last few decades alone.
The Kingdom is here, breaking through. The question each of us must answer is whether we want to grow with it and be a part of the Kingdom of God.
Do you watch the sky?
Or do you become fruitful in the Kingdom emerging now?
We know the not yet is still coming: the King on His white horse, the resurrection of the Church victorious, the last enemy thrown down.
The harvest isn’t finished, but it is well underway. It started with the empty tomb. The King who will be all in all is the same King who is with us now and unto ages of ages.
Seek First the Kingdom
Stop feeling anxious over the rage bait in your feed.
Stop worrying whether you’ll miss the rapture.
Stop delaying the search.
Seek first the Kingdom of God, and you will find beauty changing the world. It can change your life, your work, and your marriage.
Go to Church and see where eternity is named before any announcements or lessons from the pulpit. Watch as a seed becomes food on the altar. Watch the eighth day bleed through into the first.
The King who is coming is the King who is already here.
Seek the Kingdom. Find it while it may be found. Then you must live it.
Live as if the King of all reigns, because He does.
Live as if you will stand before Him this Sunday and give a report, because you will.
Marriage, work, money, the example you set for others, the way you treat the person in the aisle at the supermarket: this is the fruit of a Kingdom breaking through, here and now!
Soon was only a product for sale.
Now is the call.
Build a legacy death cannot take.
