How the Kingdom Comes

Transformation Through Conversion

"I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and possess the land." (Exodus 23: 30)

God told the Israelites that their Biblical culture would come "little by little".  It did not come suddenly, or overnight.  It came gradually.  The covenantal society . . . can only come about the same way.  That is, if it is to survive, it must come about from the bottom up. . . . It can only successfully come about (and stick) if it takes holy at a grass roots level through evangelism. 

The expansion of the Gospel from Jerusalem to Rome serves as an example.
  Jesus says at the beginning of Acts, "You shall receive My power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."  (Acts 1:8)  This verse summarises the spread of the Gospel from one part of the world to the rest.  It began in Jerusalem, and ended up in Rome.  The method was little-by-little evangelism, just like the land of Canaan.

Yes, Acts parallels the Book of Joshua.  Joshua is the account of the conquest of the land; Acts is the story of the conquest of the world.  But there is one striking contrast.  Joshua took the land by use of the sword, even though it played a secondary role.  None of the Apostles used the sword to spread the Gospel.  Why the difference?  Joshua, although a type of Jesus Christ, was under the Old Covenant.  The Old Covenant was a covenant of the flesh, graphically portrayed in the sacrament of circumcision.  And, if anything, the Old Testament teaches that the kingdom of God could not be established by the flesh, meaning the sword.  The garden of Eden was sealed off by a "flaming sword" (Genesis 3: 24), prohibiting re-entrance.  Man could not return to that particular garden by a carnal weapon because his sword could not stand against God's.

Even David, a great man of God, was unsuccessful in creating God's Kingdom.  He was a man of war, so was not allowed to build the Temple (I Kings 5:3).  . . .

The New Covenant Kingdom is created by the Spirit.  God has conquered Jericho by His might, to be sure.  But the Holy Spirit had not come in all of His historical fulness.  Christ had not yet come in history.  Israel needed to use the sword, but Israel ultimately failed.  The Church succeeded.  In Acts, the Spirit of God went forth and created the beginnings of a Christian world from the bottom up. 

The instrument the Spirit used was evangelism, witnessing.

Ray Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant (Tyler, Tx: Institute for Christian Economics, 1978), p.202f.