Great Themes of the Bible
Kingdom of God 141
2. THE WorD OF THE KINGDOM
So the word of God to a fallen world, Jew and Gentile alike, is "'the word of the kingdom" (Matt. xiii. 19). This is the word of the kingdom. The kingdoms of the world compared with that are not to be called kingdoms. The Gospel comes from that kingdom, and conducts to that kingdom. The word of the
Gospel is the "word of the kingdom'"'. It is the word of the King, and where that is ''there is power'"'. It is a law by which we must be ruled and governed. This word is the seed sown, which seems a dead dry thing, but all the product is virtually in it. It is "incorruptible seed"' (1 Pet. i. 23). It is the Gospel that "brings forth fruit"' in souls (Col. i. 5, 6).
It is the word of power, since it is the word of the King. Even when it is spoken by those whom the King sends (Luke x.
17, 18) it is powerful to the destruction of the citadels of evil. Said Jesus to the Seventy on their return in effect: "My heart and eye went along with you; I took notice what successes you had, and 'I saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven'."
Satan and his kingdom fall before the preaching of the Gospel. "'T see how it is', says Christ; '"'as you get ground, the devil loses ground." He falls as lightning falls from heaven; so suddenly, so irrecoverably, so visibly, that all may perceive it and say, ''See how Satan's kingdom totters; see how it trembles." The disciples triumphed in the casting of devils out of the bodies of people; but Christ sees and rejoices in the fall of the devil, from the interest he has in the souls of men, which is called power in high places (Eph. vi. 12). He foresees this to be but an earnest of what should now be shortly done, and was already begun—the destroying of Satan's kingdom in the world by the extirpating of idolatry and the turning of the nations to the faith of Christ. Satan falls from heaven when he falls from the throne of men's hearts (Acts xxvi. 18). And Christ foresaw that the preaching of the Gospel, which would fly like lightning through the world, would, wherever it went, pull down Satan's kingdom and make way for the kingdom of God.
3. THE SIGNS OF THE COMING KINGDOM When Christ, the King Himself, began to cast out devils, people took this as a sign that the kingdom of Messiah was come. They inferred from it, 'Is not this the son of David?"'