Closing on Know

Here is the thing the waiting-room version of the kingdom cost you, without your ever quite noticing the theft: it turned the kingdom into a destination, and turned Christ into someone you would finally get to know later, once you arrived there. But that is backward from everything Jesus actually taught about His own kingdom. The kingdom was never a place to arrive at someday. It is the King you can know now — not someday, not after death clears the way, not once the theological chart finally resolves into certainty. Now. Today. In the same present tense the angels used when they told two staring disciples that the sky was not where the work happens.

This is why Part One of this book has to close where John 17:3 already told you the whole book would close: on know. The kingdom Jesus announced in Galilee, taught in parables, and ascended to reign over from the right hand of the Father is not primarily useful to you as a subject of theological interest. It is useful to you as a relationship you are invited into, today, with a King who is not waiting for the end of the story to start being your King. He already is. Everything else this book will walk you through — death, the different views of the end, the deep textual work in Part Six, the discernment Part Seven will teach you — has to be read in light of that fact, or it has not really been understood at all.