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Transcript 192D — What is the Relationship Between the Church and Heaven?
CALLER: Do you think that the church and the Kingdom of Heaven are synonymous terms? Or what is the relationship between the church and the Kingdom of Heaven? I do believe in an eternal Heaven, but in these last times is the church a type of a manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven, to be used as a witness to those who don't understand the Kingdom of Heaven?
HC: A question was raised, which is a very contemporary question, What is the relationship in the Bible of the church to the Kingdom of Heaven? First of all, what is the church?
Well, the Bible indicates that the church is the body of believers. When did it really come into existence? Well, it came into existence from the very beginning of time. People are surprised, you know, when you call the Old Testament believers a church. But the Bible itself does this.
We read, for example, in Acts 7, where the deacon Stephen, a man well learned in the Scriptures, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says, in verse 38: "This is he who was in the congregation" [or in the church; it is the same word ecclesia that is found throughout the New Testament, that is translated church], "This is he who was in the church in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with Our Father." You see, the Old Testament congregation was a church. And throughout the Old Testament you find the word congregation or assembly. It was the body of believers, which consisted primarily of Israelites, but it was augmented by the proselytes, like Rahab the Harlot, or Ruth the Moabitess. It was the church.
In the New Testament the church was vastly increased, so that it included primarily people from every nation in the world, with Israelites, blood descendants of Abraham, having a much smaller part, percentage-wise. But it's still the same church. It's headed up by Christ. He is the one who said, "I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
The church was very small in the Old Testament, but it was Christ's intention to build it, so that it would become a great and glorious body, consisting of believers from every nation.
Now what's the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of Christ? Actually, the Kingdom that we enter into when we are saved is the Kingdom of Christ. He is our King. He is our Head. That's why when Jesus came, He said, and John the Baptist also said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." The King had arrived. And in order for the Kingdom of God to be effectuated, it was necessary for Christ to go to the cross.
There are those who say, "You know, the Jews rejected Christ as their King. And therefore God put into the works an alternative plan where He has the church age." Well, I often think, supposing that the Israelites had accepted Jesus as King. Where would they ever have gotten eternal life? Where would we receive eternal life? If they had accepted Christ as King, then there would have been no cross. And without a cross, there could not have been salvation.
The fact is, the Jews did want to accept Him as a political King. They were all rejoicing when He went into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, ready to accept Him as a political King. They misunderstood altogether, even as many people misunderstand today, that the Kingdom of God is not a political Kingdom. It is a spiritual Kingdom.
We read in Colossians 1:13: "We have been transferred from the dominion of darkness into the Kingdom of His dear Son." In John 3:3 it says, "We shall not see the Kingdom unless we are born again," and we "cannot enter that Kingdom unless we are born of water and the Spirit."
So the fact is, the church and the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, are one and the same, one and the same. The church has to do with the body of believers. The Kingdom of God has to do with the body of believers. The church is headed up by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of God is headed up by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now the fact that Christ only went to the cross in AD 33 does not mean that He wasn't the head of the Kingdom in the Old Testament. Christ is the Great "I AM," and the impact and the efficacy of the cross reached all the way back to Adam and Eve, even as it reaches all the way forward to us. There is only one Kingdom.
It's interesting, you know, that Israel was a figure of the church in a literal sense, and it was also called a kingdom. Jesus said in Matthew 8, "The sons of the kingdom will be cast out." Because we are a member of the church does not mean we are saved. We can be cast out, if we're not born again.
If we are a member of the church, corporately we're a member of the Kingdom of God. But that doesn't mean that we have eternal life, that we are personally related to the Kingdom of God, in the eternal sense. Only when we've been born again will we live forever in the Kingdom of God.
But if we are a member of the congregation, if we are a child of believing parents, then corporately we have entered the Kingdom. Corporately we have entered the church. But only when we personally have become saved do we have eternal life and will we remain forever in the church, or in the Kingdom of God.
Now once we catch this, we don't have to fuss with trying to find nuances and slight differences between the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Christ. They're all one Kingdom, because Christ is God, and Heaven is only where God is. It is the citizenship that we receive, as Philippians 3 puts it: "Our commonwealth is in Heaven." That is the Kingdom that we belong to when we have become saved. And we belong to it eternally.
Well, thank you for that question.