Another thing the Kingdom of God does is that it gives people hope. In war the Christians believe that if they die they will go to meet their maker. That is a strong fear reliever. It also helps people who are in grave trouble to hang on. If a man is poor and is in a tremendous amount of debt then the story of Lazarus comes to mind. He will hang on because in the kingdom of God he will not face the problems that he is facing now.
But there is another side. There are Christians that will fight for the kingdom of God. Like the two who come to my house every so often. The kingdom of God gives them a purpose in life. They will fight to make more people believe in the maker.
There are many beliefs on what the kingdom of God is, but the prevailing view is that it is a Utopia, a place where evil cannot happen and all men are brothers. There will be no troubles in this place and God shall supply everything in plenty. There will be no war, no famine. In short it is the place where there is good and no evil.
Some say belonging to the church is many ways like being in the kingdom of God. The problem is in the world today is that no one believes God. In fact no one has a fear of anyone or anything. It is a far too cynical age. People look for faults in the bible. They say that Jesus was not the son of God. They say God does not exist. Look around you they say how can a merciful God let people suffer in the conditions that they do. My view is that the belief in God has been so obliterated that the only place you are ever going to see it in the Churches on Sundays. In the hearts of the faithful you will still find that the Kingdom of God is a safe haven. A place which people in dire situations look to a place where they will be compensated for the suffering they have endured in this life.
'There is no evidence of the existence of the Kingdom of God in today's world.'
The kingdom of God is still very relevant to Christians today. The fact is that the kingdom of god is still at hand. It is here and now, and not in the distant future. You can reach it now, by changing your ways and listening to the word of God.
It is very possible for a cynic to say that there is no God out there. For I know of many atheists who believe that God never existed at all, and that he was a being that was thought up by the weak to try and stop the strong from being omnipotent. Maybe they are right, who am I to say that they are wrong? If you look at all the suffering in the entire world, in Burma there is a tremendous amount of suffering going on. I know from personal experience that there is. How can a God that is merciful let a child starve on the streets. How can a God that is merciful let the good men of this world get beaten, thrown in prison, tortured, and even killed for what he believes. The flooding in India, the oppression of Tibet, the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, where neighbour kills neighbour over a right of land. With all the cheating, lying. All you have to do is turn on the television and what do you see. Violence, pornography, cursing, the list goes on and on. We live in a degrading society. This is a place where youths mug an old woman for her pension. I heard on the news the other day that while an lod lady was getting treated on the pavement by paramedics some one instead of helping goes and steals her hand bag. How many times do we hear of children in America shooting up a school because they were bullied? Even a nine-year-old child can get a firearm and shoot his brother or his friend these days. When a child kills his father and when a father kills his child, this must be evidence that the kingdom of God no longer exists, or that he has totally lost interest in us.
Yet this is all a very one-sided view. It is true all these things happen, and are happening. However it would be very unfair to judge the world on all its bad points. Admittedly it has got more bad, then good. Yet how could people like mother Teresa and Martin Luther King come about if the kingdom of God did not exist? People like this are the model Christians. Look how many lives they touched. In the parable of the sower there were many types of ground that the seeds fell on, one of them was the good soil and it flowered and brought forth a hundred fruit. Mother Teresa is the perfect example of the good soil. Her deeds in life touched thousands and even millions of lives. Martin Luther King as well. He is one of the main reasons that black people are treated like people and not animals.
"The Kingdom of God is at hand" That was one of the most important messages which Jesus relayed unto the human race. He might have said it two thousand years ago but it is still very relevant now. The kingdom of God is always present. One way of looking at it is that the kingdom of god is the gifts that you have been born with. If you do not use these gifts they will disappear and be gone forever. If these gifts are used to its full extent then they can grow and grow until you are complete and you become one with god. The kingdom of god is inside every one. It is not in the clouds somewhere, but within reach, inside us. If we just let it come out, then the world would be a better place for every one.
It is true that rarely do we see the kingdom of God today. Yet it would be wrong to say it did not exist at all. The reason we do not see the kingdom is because it is locked up so tightly in us. No one has the godliness to show every one that the lives they are living is wrong and that the kingdom of god is a better place. No in fact we do have people like that, but in the cynical age that we live in today we would classify a man who expressed his religious views a fanatic madman. All you have to do is go to a church on a Sunday morning or talk to the really firm Christians. Look around, yes there is a whole load of atrocities being committed, yes the world is not ideal. But it also is beautiful. The Kingdom of God is always at hand. All you have to do to reach it is to look inside yourself and reach for it. The Kingdom of God does exist. It exists in the heart of it's believers.
