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GOVERNMENT-Christ as King

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The World PEACE Plan: The Kingdom of God Come on Earth by Frank N. Mitchell

Evangelical Kingdom Christianity is a Christianity with Jesus in your heart in profound personal spiritual experience as the central point of the faith where one worships God correctly in Spirit and Truth or, that is, in heart and mind in all that one does and in all aspects of one’s life in the larger society or culture. The end goal? To win Every Nation for Christ. This book explains how God is going to lead the saints to do this according to countless Bible prophecies.   See the book on Amazon>>>   https://www.amazon.com/dp/1717304729

​This is a short YouTube video by the author about this book The World PEACE Plan >>   https://youtu.be/oVByuCuvjgA      

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Christ as King over all the nations of the world (as in Isaiah and Revelation) is perhaps the most misunderstood idea and prophecy in all of the Bible. The common misconception that one encounters is that it is about Jesus returning to planet Earth in the clouds and sitting on a throne in Jerusalem and then ruling the world as an absolute monarch with a rod of iron in his hand after having led the saints to victory in a battle of Armageddon between all the great armies of the world. This is simply not clear thinking! And this reading of the Bible and of Revelation in particular completely misses the central and larger more important points.

If one thinks the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God, one is pretty much committed to the literal, actual truth of the book of Revelation. However, the book of Revelation is openly written in symbolic language, and the symbols and metaphors are themselves not to be taken literally. The whole point of reading Revelation is figuring out the various meanings of the symbolic language.

Christ is King over the nations or any nation, not when he is sitting here physically telling everybody what to do as an absolute monarch, but rather Christ is King when the nations are established to do God's will for Just and Righteous government based on the moral Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, Wisely applied by statesmen for the common good of the whole body politic. When all the nations are doing this, this will bring worldwide peace and fulfill countless Bible prophecies about a literal, actual political Kingdom Era come on planet Earth for all mankind.

Justice and Righteousness are the repeated leitmotif of the Old Testament. It can be said the major theme of the Old Testament is Justice, and the major theme of the New Testament is Justification of mankind before God by the atoning work of Christ on the Cross. But more than this Justice and Righteousness are the one main central theme of Greco-Roman tradition, as laid out by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. In their philosophy when the individual does the morally right thing, that is called Righteousness, and when the state does the morally right thing, that is called Justice and starting with Socrates and Plato and culminating in Cicero, the state or nation is likened to a body, and when government does what is good for the whole body (or commonwealth) and for a harmonious interaction of all the parts of the body that is called doing statesmanship in Justice. This is opposed to the injustice of special interests exploiting others or dominating over others.

Aristotle and eventually the Roman Republic and Cicero consider the best form of government seeking to do the common good for the commonwealth is a mixed form of government of monarchy oligarchy and democracy, and they come up with chief executive officer (like a monarch), and an upper house of the ruling class (like oligarchy) and a lower house of the people (like a democracy). In such a government there is a certain balance of interests, of course, but more than that each of these three branches of government is supposed to be seeking the good of the whole body in statesmanship. The good of the whole body is the common good or general welfare of the nation-state. In essence, each branch of the mixed nation-state (executive, upper and lower house) is keeping an eye on the others and making sure that all valid or legitimate groups and people are represented in the making of laws for the well-ordered society.

The body model is the perfect model or metaphor for any unity of a group because it at one and the same time maintains distinct individuality in identity, role and function but at the same defines and describes each person as a particular aspect of the whole body as opposed to collectivism, which has no individuality, and as opposed to libertarian liberty with no concept of one whole body of free individuals interacting.

The body model is a natural philosophy philosophical concept, and it used by Paul for the Church as well. And it also allows for the body to do help for those in true need when they cannot help themselves, as say when one cuts one's finger, but on the whole each person maintains their own individuality and pursues their own moral, legitimate, or mutual self-interest. This is in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 by Paul for the Body of Christ, but it is also in Plato and Cicero and Augustine for the state or nation, where the nation is also likened to a symphony with many different individual players of various instruments playing harmoniously together as a whole but with each having different distinct parts.

Essentially, the statesman legislator makes good laws to facilitate this harmonious interaction for the good of the whole body or the wealth of the nation in a free society says Adam Smith, and essentially the interaction of the individual parts of the body is based on the reciprocity of the Golden Rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

This type of interaction is practicing loving your neighbor as yourself of the Second Great Commandment, and it is called the moral Good Life by the Greeks and the Wise life by Solomon, and it is both practical and moral. And it is called one's true self-interest as opposed to one's immoral or selfish self-interest. As Socrates and Cicero say your true self-interest is always doing the moral, and if you think something is in your self-interest that is immoral, then you are not thinking straight, and if you do not get rewards for doing the morally right thing in this life, you will in the next say Socrates and Cicero. Again, the statesman does what is best for the nation as a whole and not for particular special interest groups over and against each other. On this point it does not matter if you are talking Aristotle or Ronald Reagan.

Christ is King over the nation when statesmen in government are committed to doing what is best for the nation as a whole, and hence all the individual parts in it. The actual saints here on earth who are doing this statesmanship are said to be sharing the throne with Christ (Rev. 3:21) as He in the Spirit rules and reigns through them. This is the point of Christ as “King” over a nation in the Kingdom Era and not Christ sitting here physically on earth in the flesh on a throne in Jerusalem.

Again, doing this Justice (good for everybody versus good for special interests) is the one major theme concerning good government in both the Greco-Roman tradition and the Judeo-Christian tradition. When Christians had a virtual absolute monarch as in ancient Rome the responsibility for good government for the whole body fell on the king or emperor alone, but in the modern democratic state the responsibility for good government falls on each citizen to vote for the best candidates for doing what is best for the whole body of the nation or community. This allows for a fulfillment of the prophecy (Rev. 3:21) that all the saints will share the throne with Christ in the Kingdom Era, and it means that every saint should pray to God, just as Solomon did, to have the Wisdom to vote for the right candidate to do in true statesmanship what is best for the nation as a whole and not best for some particular special interest group. The fact is the individual Christian citizen is accountable to God for how he or she votes in Wise discernment.

The last words of (former) President Grover Cleveland were “I have tried so hard to do right.” May that be said of all citizens as well as all in government service.

Bottom line on good government: We should seek the American founders' vision of Liberty and Justice for all based on the moral Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, Wisely applied by the statesman legislator for the general welfare or common good.

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