When the Lord Jesus began His public ministry, His message was: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Remarkably, His forerunner, John the Baptist, began his ministry using very much the same terms: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 3:2). This kingdom was prophesied in Daniel 2, when Daniel was able to interpret King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a great image made up of various materials. There were to be four kingdoms, beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s, the Babylonian Empire, and ending with the Roman Empire.
Daniel further explained, “In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever”. This kingdom, represented by a little stone, was the one which Jesus proclaimed as “at hand”. And He was the King of that kingdom. Daniel had also prophesied of “seventy weeks” – that is, 70 periods of seven years – from the time when the command would go out to rebuild Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, until the time when “Messiah the Prince” would come. Jesus was now announcing that this time had been fulfilled and the kingdom was soon to be established.
And He went on to demonstrate His authority when he found a man in the synagogue who was devil-possessed. Jesus said, “Hold thy peace, and come out of him” (Mk 1:25). Such was the authority of the King that the devil did come out of his victim. The people recognised this; they said, “With authority commandeth He even the unclean spirits, and they do obey Him”.
It was one of the first occasions when Christ showed that “for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8). Alexander S Patterson points out that, “in successive victories, [Christ] overcame the temptations of the devil . . . and, on the atoning cross, He spoiled principalities and powers, making a show of them openly, and triumphing over them (Col 2:15)”. Patterson further refers to “the efficacy of His life, death and resurrection, in bringing sinners from under the devil’s yoke” and speaks of “that predicted era when Christ ‘shall bruise Satan’ under the feet of the Church, and the kingdom of God’s dear Son shall universally prevail”1. Christ is the universal King.
1Patterson, Commentaries on 1 Thessalonians, James and 1 John, Edinburgh, 1857, p 338-9.
That work of delivering souls from the devil’s yoke is, of course, continuing today, though on a much smaller scale than we would wish. We see Satan allowed great power in our time. He goes about deceiving the nations successfully, so that the true God is very largely ignored, despised and rejected. There is, no doubt, a significant amount of outward allegiance to various outward forms of Christianity, but how little comparatively of true heart allegiance to the King of kings! How little we see of sinners turning from their own ways, of listening to the voice of the King and of following Him, as He continues to reveal Himself through the Scriptures!
Satan uses various methods of keeping sinners away from scriptural Christianity. False religions satisfy the needs that large numbers feel for a form of religion; others are satisfied with gross departures from scriptural Christianity, such as Roman Catholicism; others again are content with some nominal form of Protestantism. And there are those who try to follow a secular philosophy, which inevitably denies the existence of God and the authority of Jesus Christ.
Great numbers of people, in the UK for instance, live for the world and for the things of the world, whatever their professed beliefs. They seek for satisfaction from their possessions, from fulfilling their ambitions in life and from vain entertainments. But God says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). If we love the world, we are rejecting the grace of God, who “gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). To reject God’s grace is to choose eternal destruction rather than the eternal blessedness that the everlasting King has promised to those who believe in Him, and who follow Him through good report and evil report, and who seek to submit to Him and His authority in all things.
Satan and his temptations are behind the increasing ungodliness and the decreasing morality of our time in the Western world. He provides an impetus to the promotion of anti-scriptural legislation at present before Scotland’s Parliament: one bill to allow assisted suicide and another to make it easier for people so minded to change their gender, in spite of the clear testimony of their body (in almost every case) to what their gender really is. But what does the King say? “He which made them at the beginning made them male and female” (Mt 19:4), and the King was quoting from the already-existing Word of God, which is perfectly reliable in all it says. Yet politicians and others, with their secular mindset, place themselves in opposition to God and to the truth which He has revealed. They reject the authority of the King who came into the world to save sinners.
Yet the King is allowing all this unbelief, ungodliness and rebellion. He has His purposes in doing so; things have not spun out of control as far as He is concerned. Just as surely as He showed His power and authority on earth in sending the devil out of the man in the synagogue, so will He yet exercise His power and authority, on a large scale, in drawing sinners away from their false religion, their secularism and their heretical beliefs. He will also draw to Himself sinners who are ready to listen to sound preaching, yet refuse to repent and believe the gospel which is proclaimed to them.
The Lord may use the reading of the Scriptures to bring sinners to Himself, but especially the preaching of these Scriptures – not least the words which the King Himself used when He began His public ministry: “Repent ye, and believe the gospel”. He is calling sinners today to repent – to turn from their sins, with a sincere sorrow and hatred for them. But if people turn from sin, they cannot remain in some kind of no man’s land – neither in Satan’s kingdom or in Christ’s. They must turn to God, through Christ; they must believe the gospel: the good news that “the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” – not just accepting the truth of such a statement, but trusting in the One who is revealed in it.
If a sinner is to be brought into the kingdom of God, to believe the gospel and turn to Christ, then he or she should be clear that the work of the Holy Spirit is necessary. He is given for the sake of Christ, to make sinners both willing and able to repent and believe. We should be thankful that the Spirit is even today working in the hearts of sinners, albeit on a relatively small scale. But when we see so many, throughout the world, led as captives by the devil towards a lost eternity, how earnest we should be in prayer to God that He would pour out His Spirit so that multitudes everywhere would turn to the Lord in repentance and believe the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ! How earnestly we should plead that, in Patterson’s words, “the kingdom of God’s dear Son shall universally prevail”. And at the day of judgement, Satan’s kingdom will be finally destroyed.
Most of 2022 has already passed, and there seems no sign of any improvement in the moral and religious situation in the UK and elsewhere. But God is able to bring about a massive improvement, even in a short period of time. Let us never despair even of this ungodly generation. God is all-powerful, and He is gracious. We can say the same about God the Son, King Jesus. He is all-powerful, and He is gracious.