From the book Thy Kingdom Comes
A Man as King
In those days [there was] no king in Israel, [but] every man did [that which was] right in his own eyes. Jud 17:6
The inhabitants of Israel were free to obey or disobey God. The people called for other men to rule over them and chose to sin against God as they had since the day he took them out of Egypt.1 In 1 Samuel chapter 8 we see this displeased God and he warned the people that this desire for a central government with exercising authority, common in most nations, would lead to terrible oppression, tyranny and bondage. They would not relent. Samuel, God’s prophet, appointed the popular Saul as king of God’s kingdom on earth.
Are men the property of the state? Or are they free souls under God?
This same battle continues throughout the world?”2
Saul was intrusted with an office that seized the imperium which each patriarch had once enjoyed as free men in the kingdom of God. “Saul took [from lawkad’, to capture, take, seize] the kingdom [from maluwkah meaning kingship, royalty, kingly office] over Israel, and fought against all his enemies on every side…”3 Saul now possessed the kingship of Israel that was once vested in every household.
His reign was called salvation4 but Saul in this centralized office of power did many foolish things. There is a great temptation with the power to command allegiance and obedience. With such great powers comes great corruption. Few on this earth could remain pure under such temptation of dominion and power.
The high office of government did not automatically pass to the sons of Saul. Eventually, before Saul was dead, David would be anointed king. The word anointed is translated from the Hebrew word mashiyach which in English is written Messiah. When ever you see Saul or David or any king of Israel called the LORD’s anointed they are being called the Messiah in the Hebrew. The Messiah was simply the anointed King of God’s kingdom on earth. He was the trustee of God’s dominion on this planet since the son of Seth, called Enos, when ‘men began to call upon the name of the LORD’.
When Jesus said that, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand”5, many people were angry because they did not want to believe in him or have him as king. His policies and doctrines were contrary to what that kingdom had become. Yet, many called him Messiah which in the Greek would be written Christos. This is where we get the word Christ. Christos means anointed and is a way of saying that Yeshua Mashiyach, a.k.a. Jesus the Anointed is the King of Israel, God’s kingdom on earth.
This Jesus Christ was and is the Anointed King of the kingdom of heaven on earth, He is the ruling judge of Judea which was the remnant Israel, the kingdom where God prevails.
Of course unlike other rulers in other nations Jesus did not fall to the temptation of ruling over men. He only came to serve and trained ministers to do the same. They were not to exercise authority like the other nations, but truly be servants in a government based on the perfect law of liberty, where each man must learn to walk with God according to His ways. This was the kingdom Jesus preached and which he appointed to his ambassadors, called Apostles.
God’s kingdom on earth has been here from generation to generation. Jesus became its king in spirit and in truth by his birth, anointing and his sacrifice. There is a common and religiously held misunderstanding concerning the phrase the kingdom of Heaven. God’s kingdom can be called the kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. These two phrases are just the results of translation from one language to another.
The only author in the Bible who used the phrase kingdom of heaven was Matthew and if we compare the Gospels we can see that the phrases were used interchangeably within the different Gospels when speaking of the exact same incident.6
Matthew wrote in Aramaic. In translating from Aramaic to Greek the word malkuthach becomes besilia ouranos, kingdom of heaven. It actually means a realm on the earth or a dominion. The word ouranos in Plato’s Dialogues is translated world not some mystical ethereal or spiritual realm called ‘heaven’.7 The Kingdom of heaven can mean the Kingdom of the world since the same word is commonly translated world by Greek scholars.
Ouranos, is from a root word meaning “to cover, encompass.” The meaning of ouranos includes the vaulted expanse of the sky, from the outer edge of the atmosphere to the center of the earth. Many other cultures believed that if a man actually owned the land as a true and actual dominion then he owned it from the sky above all the way to the center of the earth. This is clearly expressed in the maxim of the Roman law:
He owns the land from the heavens and to the center of the earth.8
When someone actually owns land, holding more than a mere legal title, the maxim in American courts states, “that a man’s land extends to the center of the earth below the surface, and to the skies above, and are absolute in the” ownership of the land.9 Land owned with a true and actual title by an individual was his realm, his kingdom. Land owned by a mere legal title does not even include the beneficial interest of the property in question.10
Although the kingdom of God may include dominion on earth in a godly way it is far more than that. In order to understand the Kingdom of God, a.k.a. the kingdom of Heaven, this Righteous Dominion of God granted to Adam and preached by Jesus, we should examine its history as presented in the Bible and the Historical record.
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1 According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee. 1 Sa. 8:8
2Cecil B. DeMille in “The Ten Commandments.”
31Samuel 14:47.
4And Saul said, There shall not a man be put to death this day: for to day the LORD hath wrought salvation in Israel. 1 Samuel 11:13
5Mark 1:15
6See Appendix A-1
7“…indeed we have no suitable word to express what the Greeks at first called an ouranos. It will be convenient to use the term ‘world’ for it”; Plato’s Dialogues, Early Greek Philosophy, Introduction , John Burnet.
8Cuius est solum, ejus est usque ad caelum et ad inferos.
9“that a man’s land extends to the center of the earth below the surface, and to the skies above, and are absolute in the owner of the land.” Taylor v Fickas, 64 Ind. 167, 172 (1878)
10See Law vs Legal in The Covenants of the gods.