People very often take the Kingdom of Heaven as if it was the same thing as the Church of God; but this is in no way the case, although those who compose the Church are in the Kingdom. Supposing for a moment that Christ had not been rejected, the Kingdom would have been set up on earth. It could not be so, no doubt, but it shows the difference between the Kingdom and the Church. The Kingdom of God was there in the person of Christ, the King; only as He was on earth, it was not the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ being rejected, He could not take it outwardly then, but ascended on high. Thus the sphere of the rule of Christ is in heaven. The heavens rule, and the kingdom is always the Kingdom of Heaven, because the King is in heaven; only at the end it will be subdivided, so to speak, into the Kingdom of our Father, the heavenly part, and the Kingdom of the Son of Man, the earthly part.

If we understand the Kingdom of Heaven as the rule of Christ, when the King is in heaven, it is very simple. If Christ had set up a kingdom when He was with the Jews, it would not have been the Kingdom of Heaven, because He was not in heaven. Hence, it is said, "The Kingdom of God is among you," but "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."

The gospel is the only means we have of gathering souls into the Kingdom, and such are properly "the children of the Kingdom;" but within its limits Satan works and sows tares, and they too are in the Kingdom… tares which have been sown where the good seed has been. The Church, or rather the assembly of God, has nothing to do with the thought of a kingdom. J. N. D.