The Kingdom of God

Shelby G. Floyd

July 2, 2006

About 700 years before Christ, the prophet Daniel interpreted a dream of King Nebuchadnezzar.

The Colossal Image

He dreamed of a colossal image with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. Daniel identified King Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonians as the head of gold. Successive world empires that followed the Chaldean empire were the Medo-Persian, the Greek and the Roman empires.

The Eternal Kingdom

Daniel prophesied that in the days of the Roman Caesars, the God of heaven would set up a kingdom that would never be destroyed:

"In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. "The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy." (Daniel 2: 44-45).

The Kingdom of God Exists Now

That kingdom refers to the kingdom of Christ that was established on the first Pentecost following the death and resurrection of Christ. That kingdom exists today because the Bible says that it exists. The writer of the Hebrew letter declares that we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be moved. (Hebrews 12:28). And Paul declares to the church at Colosse that we have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son. (Colossians 1:13-14).