Israel: God’s Church Kingdom

One of our readers made a mild objection to our last post, Can God’s Kingdom Grow?. His two observations are correct: the terms “church kingdom” and “creation kingdom” do not occur in the Scriptures and there is only one kingdom. This post will explain why we introduced these terms.

For starters, let’s admit these terms are for our convenience. We can understand the Scriptures without them. They do not determine our theology, but they can make our discussions more efficient.

This is because the Bible speaks of the kingdom of God in at least two senses. First, the kingdom is the domain where God exercises an absolute, eternal, and unchangeable rule. We introduced the shorthand term “creation kingdom” to refer to this realm. God rules here because he is the Creator.

Second, the Bible also speaks of changes in the kingdom. It can begin, grow, culminate, and move from one nation to another. We use the term “church kingdom” to speak of the kingdom of God in this way. God’s rule here rests on his redemption of his people.

We need terms that identify these two views of the kingdom. In our last post, we saw that one commentator uses visible kingdom of God¹ instead of our “church kingdom.” This term is helpful, but it seems to limit the kingdom to observable things. Does it not include the joy, patience, and other invisible graces people possess in the kingdom (e.g., Rom. 14:17)? Also, this term gives no hint that the kingdom involves churches. “Visible kingdom” is unsatisfactory, but if other terms can do this job better than “creation kingdom” and “church kingdom,” we will gladly adopt them.

Our “church kingdom” is a subset of the “creation kingdom.” Relating kingdoms in this way is a common practice. We often use terms like “kingdom,” “empire” and “dynasty” to name limited jurisdictions within God’s overarching kingdom. Thus we speak of the Hurrian Kingdoms, the Ottoman Empire, the Ming Dynasty, etc. This kingdom-within-a-kingdom idea is familiar to us.

These terms do not imply multiple kingdoms of God. The kingdom is one. We should recognize, however, that the Scriptures speak of the realm where God reigns in a special way over his people (our “church kingdom”) as a synecdoche. In this way, a part of God’s one kingdom represents the whole. When Joseph told his brothers, “Except your youngest brother come down with you, ye shall see my face no more” (Gen. 44:23), his “face” represented his entire person. In like manner, we can speak of the limited “church kingdom” as if it were the entire “creation kingdom.”

Let’s see how the term “church kingdom” works in both the Old and New Testaments.

Israel: God’s church kingdom in the Mosaic Age

Israel was the “church kingdom” during the Mosaic Age. This name is proper for at least two reasons. First, God referred to Israel as his kingdom just before he gave the Ten Commandments to Moses:

Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. (Exod. 19:5–6; emphasis added)

This passage links the kingdom of priests concept to the ideas of “covenant” and “holy nation.” Many other Old Testament passages show how God considered Israel as the kingdom (e.g.,  Deut. 17:18; 1 Sam. 10:9–16).

Second, the term church kingdom is fitting because of how the Septuagint (LXX)² uses the Greek word ekklēsia. This word means an “assembly duly summoned” and “in LXX, the Jewish congregation.”³ Ekklēsia is the word most often translated “church” in the New Testament. The LXX uses it over 100 times and in almost every instance it stands for Israel.⁴ The New Testament confirms Israel was the Mosaic-Age church: Moses “was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina” (Acts 7:38; emphasis added).

One LXX reference especially interests us. Near the end of his life, Moses spoke to the “church of Israel” (Deut. 31:30, LXX). He told the “church kingdom” about the blessing and curse that would come upon them in their “latter days” (Deut. 30:1; 31:29). The blessing pertained to the Messianic Age as several New Testament passages show (e.g., Rom. 10:8–10 quotes Deut. 30:14). The curse pertained to the days of vengeance when God would judge them (Deut. 32:35–36; cp. Luke 21:22; Heb. 10:30).

This is the same curse-then-blessing sequence revealed in the Olivet Discourse, the Revelation, and other New Testament passages. (This pattern is a vital part of inmillennialism.) Israel would pass through “great tribulation” (Matt. 24:21; Rev. 1:9; 7:14) in Jesus’ generation (Matt. 24:34). The parousia (Gk. for “presence”) of Christ would remain with his people during the Messianic Age (Matt. 24:3, 27, 37, 39; et al).

Scripture applies the terms “church” and “kingdom” to Israel in the Old Testament. The term “church kingdom” seems to suggest itself from a natural reading of the Scriptures.

Israel: God’s church kingdom in the Messianic Age

The term “church kingdom” also applies to Israel in the New Testament, but with some major alterations. God placed Israel under the law of Moses until the Messiah would come (e.g., Gal. 3:24). Once Jesus arrived, many things changed.

Israel and the events in her Old Testament history served as types (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:6, 11). They were physical pictures of spiritual things to come in the Messianic Age.⁵ It was time for the real things to replace the pictures.

This change occurred on many levels. Physical birth and circumcision (as types) established covenant membership under Moses (e.g., Gen. 17:10; Lev. 12:3). In the Messianic Age these yield to spiritual birth, circumcision of the heart, and baptism (John 3:3; Col. 2:11; Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27). During the Mosaic Age, Israel was God’s vine (Psa. 80:8), but during the Messianic Age, only those branches of the vine that abide in Christ survive (John 15:1–8).

To be a child of Abraham in the Messianic Age does not depend on physical lineage as it did in the Mosaic Age. Faith is the key (Rom. 4:9–16): “They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom. 9:8; emphasis added).

The New Testament contains many other examples, but these are enough to show how it redefines the nation of Israel around Jesus. The Mosaic-Age covenant nation is “Israel after the flesh” (1 Cor. 10:18), but the Messianic-Age covenant nation—“the children of the promise”—is the “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16).

This renewed Israel is the “church” Jesus builds (Matt. 16:18). Like its Old Testament counterpart, it is a kingdom of priests designed to reign on earth (Rev. 1:6; 5:10). It is God’s “holy nation” (1 Pet. 2:9), as was Israel after the flesh in the Mosaic Age. The in-Christ Israel possesses in truth what Israel after the flesh possessed only in type.

This is not replacement theology where “the church” replaces “Israel.” Israel is the “church kingdom” in both Testaments. Israel defined in Christ is the goal toward which God moved Israel after the flesh. “For all the promises of God” to Abraham and all the fathers “in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us” (2 Cor. 1:20).

During the Messianic Age, God sends his agents to gather the members of this kingdom into particular churches (cp. Matt. 24:31). The terms “church” and “kingdom” continue to describe Israel in the New Testament, but it is a reconstituted Israel. Still, Israel is the “church kingdom” in the New Testament.

Conclusion

Having a shorthand way to distinguish the rule of God over his people from his overarching rule over all things will prove helpful. We will use the terms “church kingdom” and “creation kingdom” for this purpose as we continue to apply our prophetic model (inmillennialism) to various passages.

The first vision in Revelation contains a statement that will show the usefulness of these terms. Jesus tells the church at Smyrna about men “which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9). Our terms and the basis for them will help us identify these false Jews in our next post.

1. Abraham Booth, An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, Vol. 2, The Baptist Tract Series (Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1987), 5, 24.
2. The Greek translation of the Old Testament, including parts of the Apocrypha.
3. Henry George Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 509.
4. E.g., Deut. 4:10; 9:10; 18:16; passim.
5. See Patrick Fairbairn, Typology of Scripture, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1989), 1:46. We also discussed this in Typology and Inmillennialism.