Most people today hear this phrase and think of heaven. However, as a first century Jew this isn't the first thing that would come to mind. Mark says in the beginning of his Gospel, after John was arrested, that Jesus began preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel. In Matthew 10, Jesus also commands his disciples to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew 10. In Luke 11, Jesus, when casting out demons, says the Kingdom of God has come upon you. And, even in John's Gospel, when Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus, Jesus says that unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
So what is this Kingdom of God that Jesus is preaching to first century Jews? What category or categories would they have been operating on to contextualize this phrase of Jesus? Well, if you go back to the Old Testament and look for the phrase "Kingdom of God," you will not find it with the exception of the Book of Daniel. So Jesus is specifically referring to the Danielic Kingdom. So, in this video, Dr. Brant Pitre goes back and provides a context for what the Kingdom of God looks like in Daniel and how Daniel predicted the precise time of the coming of this Divine Messiah which is precisely the time the Jesus steps on to the scene.
In a second section, Dr. Pitre answers the question of why, if Jesus is the Danielic Son of Man and is the king of the fifth kingdom from Daniel, why do people still reject him. Interestingly, it's tied directly to how Jesus himself describes the Kingdom of God in the parables in the Gospels about the Kingdom.
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Brant Pitre
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