Not With Outward Show
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But today in the religious world there are multitudes who, as they
believe, are working for the establishment of the kingdom of Christ as
an earthly and temporal dominion. They desire to make our Lord the
ruler of the kingdoms of this world, the ruler in its courts and camps,
its legislative halls, its palaces and market places. They expect Him
to rule through legal enactments, enforced by human authority. Since
Christ is not now here in person, they themselves will undertake to act
in His stead, to execute the laws of His kingdom. The establishment
of such a kingdom is what the Jews desired in the days of Christ. They
would have received Jesus, had He been willing to establish a temporal
dominion, to enforce what they regarded as the laws of God, and to
make them the expositors of His will and the agents of His authority.
But He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
John 18:36
. He would
not accept the earthly throne.
The government under which Jesus lived was corrupt and oppres-
sive; on every hand were crying abuses,—extortion, intolerance, and
grinding cruelty. Yet the Saviour attempted no civil reforms. He at-
tacked no national abuses, nor condemned the national enemies. He
did not interfere with the authority or administration of those in power.
He who was our example kept aloof from earthly governments. Not
because He was indifferent to the woes of men, but because the remedy
did not lie in merely human and external measures. To be efficient, the
cure must reach men individually, and must regenerate the heart.
Not by the decisions of courts or councils or legislative assemblies,
not by the patronage of worldly great men, is the kingdom of Christ es-
tablished, but by the implanting of Christ’s nature in humanity through
the work of the Holy Spirit. “As many as received Him, to them gave
He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His
name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God.”
John 1:12, 13
. Here is the only power
that can work the uplifting of mankind. And the human agency for
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the accomplishment of this work is the teaching and practicing of the
word of God.
When the apostle Paul began his ministry in Corinth, that populous,
wealthy, and wicked city, polluted by the nameless vices of heathenism,
he said, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ, and Him crucified.”
1 Corinthians 2:2
. Writing afterward to
some of those who had been corrupted by the foulest sins, he could