Signs of the Times

The Anglican

From "The Youth Page" in The Anglican Sydney, New South Wales Australia

Usually, when we speak of a kingdom, we mean a territory which has a king reigning over it. But when we turn to the third clause of the Disciples' Prayer and notice its reference to the Kingdom of God, we realise that here is a Kingdom whose territory cannot be quite so simply defined.

Where are the boundaries of this Kingdom?

Look at this clause of the prayer which Jesus taught us:

"Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
as it is in heaven."

Here is Kingdom without frontiers....

Where God's perfect will is perfectly done, where His authority is recognized and His laws obeyed, there is the Kingdom of God. ... If we are to be in the Kingdom of God, we must obey His will.

Before we can obey His will, there must first of all be the personal submission of our own wills to His. And this calls for a personal decision.

No one else can enter the Kingdom of God for us. We must each one do it for ourselves

Until we sit down with our Bible and see how great a place the idea of the Kingdom of God occupied in the thought and teachings of Jesus, we do not realise how important it is that we should commit our lives to the cause of the Kingdom and work and pray for its coming.

Our Lord preached more sermons about the Kingdom of God than about any other subject. It was the central theme of His teaching.

No less than sixteen of His parables begin by saying "The kingdom" is like this, or that. His message became known as the gospel (i.e., the good news) of the kingdom (Matthew 4:23).

He sent the Twelve to "preach the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:2), while the Seventy were to proclaim "The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you" (Luke 10:9).

The importance of the Kingdom is seen by His admonition "Seek ye first the kingdom of God" (Matthew 6:33), and He saw in the simple faith of little children the spirit that would gain admittance into the kingdom (Matthew 18:3; Mark 10:14). ...

If the Kingdom can only come in our own experience by personal commitment of our lives to God, it can only come in the world around us by a wholehearted willingness to do God's will and to show it to others.

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October 11, 1958

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