The Kingdom Jesus is referring to in Mark 1
is the physical Kingdom of Israel,
which would have been established
had the nation repented...
It was not that Kingdom to which Christ was referring ANYWHERE in Mark...
Thank-you for saying that it was, because I now understand, thanks to you, the lens of your understanding...
I tell ya, Menno, I have been struggling for some years now trying to understand people who think as you do...
I have been dumbfounded at their hard-headedness and hard-heartedness...
And none of it made any sense - I was on a forum some of them had created...
Not one of them made it as clear as you have done here...
So my Brother, please receive my heartfelt thanks to you...
Here is my answer to you:
Christ NEVER refered to His Kingdom as a physical kingdom on earth...
He was referring to yhe Kingdom of Heaven...
Christians are strangers to this fallen earth...
The JEWS thought that this was what He was referring to...
That He was coming to establish an earthly Kingdom...
The JEWS were wrong, my Brother, and Christ PROVED them wrong
by His Holy Death on the Blessed Wood of the Tree of the Cross...
And your understanding is just as wrong as is that of the Jews...
Had the Nation of the Jews believed in Christ, there still would have been Christianity on this earth through the Nation of Israel in persecutions - There was NEVER to be some "believing Israel" RULING the earth... Had the nation of Israel believed in Christ, then Israel would have joined Herself with those She ended up persecuting, the Christians... And what blessedness that would have been! But Christianity is the Faith of Christ Persecuted, not Christ RULING OVER the earth...
Look, even when Peter cut off with his sword the ear of the attendant in the arresting party of Christ in the Garden, Christ CORRECTED him, remember? AND He healed the ear then and there, teaching him that His Kingdom is NOT of this world, but is FOR this world...
Christ's RULE, His PHYSICAL rule over the earth, will not come until His Second Coming, at the Dread and Last Judgement... Until that time, we are, by the actions we take as we live our lives here on earth, establishing our eternal futures - For Life if we embrace the Good or for destruction if we embrace evil... And this is not so God will know who is good and who is not, but it is so that WE will know, by the lives we chose in our living them, that we belong in the eternal future God gives to us...
After Jesus died and rose again, the New Covenant was then established,
which ushered in a change.
Israel is now the Israel of the promise, not the Israel of the Mosaic Covenant.
Christ established the new covenant in HIS Flesh and in HIS Blood...
He established it by His Life, by His Death, and by His Resurrection...
"Drink of this all of you...
This is My Blood of the New Covenant...
Which is shed for many...
For the forgiveness of sins..."
He GAVE his Flesh and He GAVE His Blood...
He gave this BEFORE He ASCENDED the Cross...
Because He had ALREADY overcome the World...
"Take...
Eat...
This IS My Body...
Which is broken for you..."
This when His Body has NOT YET been broken...
The New Covenant was established PRIOR to His physical Death and Resurrection...
And it ANTICIPATED that Death and Resurrection...
Christ KNEW and had ALWAYS KNOWN...
He KNEW in Mark 1 and in every Blessed Page of every Gospel in the Bible...
You do not make this distinction,
which explains why you add works salvation
and cannot hold to salvation by grace alone.
Salvation is by God, and indeed by His Grace Alone...
It is THROUGH the Faith of Christ...
THAT Faith is the Great WORK of Repentance from sin...
And the OVERCOMING of the demonic rulership of this fallen world...
"I have overcome the world..."
Arsenios