Two Kingdoms: Light & Darkness (Part 1 of 4)‏

Hello Friends!

Happy Father's Day weekend to all the dads!

Over the next four weeks we will take an extensive journey through the Biblical account of two Kingdoms eloquently outlined throughout the Holy Scriptures, those of Light and of Darkness.  It is my hope that we will learn the truth of these two conflicting spiritual realities and how we might respond to them in these, the last days.  Enjoy!

 
The Two Kingdoms of Light & darkness

In this world there is a spiritual kingdom of Light and a spiritual kingdom of darkness.  Many Christians like to believe that God's Kingdom is on earth now and that He determines everything that happens; so in their minds, this is God's world and not Satan's. However, the righteousness, justice and peaceful characteristics of God's Kingdom, described in the books of Isaiah, Psalms, Daniel, Ezekiel, Zachariah and the Gospels of the New Testament, have obviously not yet appeared.  In fact, our prayer today remains:

"Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10).

Too many Christians today live in a bifurcated world, where the particulars of daily life don't harmonize with their worldview.  The New Testament says that Satan claimed authority to appoint rulers over "the kingdom of the world" (Luke 4:6) and Jesus did not dispute it.  If Satan's offer in the wilderness was not true, the kingdoms of this world would not have been a temptation to Jesus.  This implies that the governments of this world are part of Satan's world system.

The idea that God's Kingdom presently rules the earth can be traced back to Augustine's (354-430 AD) influence on the Roman Catholic Church.  That erroneous tradition developed the concept that the pope rules now as the vicar of Christ.  This was taught during the medieval period by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153 AD) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD).  The divine right of kings became church dogma.

Italian Dante Alighieri (1265-1321 AD), in his La Divina Commedia, popularized the inferno idea that Satan is bound in hell at the center of the earth.  In his magnum opus, the epic poem Paradise Lost, Englishman John Milton (1608-1674 AD) popularized the idea that Satan rules over hell in the underworld and torments those who are there.  The Bible does not teach that Satan is bound in an underworld hell.  He is in fact very much at work in our world today.  Satan will probably occupy a prominent position in the final and everlasting physical hell that follows the Great White Throne Judgment described in the book of Revelation, chapter 20.  So therefore, Dante, Milton and a host of pagan occult myths have contributed to considerable confusion over the past few centuries.

In the Bible, the English word for "hell" is translated from the Hebrew word sheol and two different Greek words, hades and gehenna.  Hades and sheol represent a temporary place with two separate compartments.  One for Old Testament age believers in the comfort of Abraham's bosom; and the other for unbelievers where punishing torment happens.  With Jesus' resurrection and ascension, the believers were immediately transported to paradise into the presence of their Savior.  Jesus describes hades eleven times in the New Testament (Matthew 11:23 & 16:18' Luke 10:15; 16:22-23; Acts 2:27, 31 and Revelation 1:18; 6:8; 20:13-14).

The Greek word gehenna, used twelve times in the New Testament, is formed from the Hebrew wording that describes "the valley of the son of Hinnom" which alludes to a place of fire.  The actual valley was located south of Jerusalem where the Old Testament Israelites defiantly practiced the evil abominations of the nations in the sight of the Lord.  There they sacrificially burned alive their unwanted babies (postpartum abortion) on the white-hot flaming arms of a figurine of the pagan god of pleasure, Molech.  There they practiced witchcraft and sorcery through mediums and spiritists (2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chronicles 283 & 33:6).  In later years, the Valley of Hinnom became the constant site of garbage, trash and refuse where perpetual fires burned and the worms of decay fed upon.

This Greek word gehenna describes the permanent eternal place, also called the lake of fire, that was created for the punishment of Satan and the fallen angels (Isaiah 30:33 & 66:24; Revelation 20:11-15).  Jesus uses gehenna when He describes "hell fire" (Matthew 5:22, 29-30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15 & 33; Mark 9:43-47).  Jesus uses the same word when He describes the "fire of hell" (James 3:6).  It is clear that this finality is held in check, until God proves His goodness and fairness in His final judgment, against the rebellious created angels.  Sadly, for many humans this will also be their final eternal abode, as John recorded:

"And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:15).

Unfortunately, the seeds of Augustine's theology also sprouted in many Reformation churches where texts in the Bible were arbitrarily viewed as allegory rather than literal.  This resulted in replacement theology, which views the church as replacing Israel in God's eternal plan.  It also resulted in allegorizing much of the book of Revelation.  Amillennialism became the belief that the one thousand-year reign with Christ (Revelation 20) was not to be viewed as literal.  Such allegorizing impacts about one-third of the Bible.  There is no propositional truth in an allegory!

Please join us next week as we investigate the first of two kingdoms: the Kingdom of Darkness and its current reign over the world...                   

  
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Blessings on your success! 
Shane  <><

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