Sermon 09.09.12 :: Authority

“The Kingdom of God for Jesus is less a happy state of affairs in the first place than God in his evident rulership . . . Many of Jesus’ most radical statements are not closely connected at all with expectancy of the coming kingdom, but rather with the realization of the present rule of God in the course of daily and natural events.”     - Richard Niebuhr

“The kingdom of God is a country we have not yet visited but whose King has come to our own land.” 

“The early Christians all believed that with Jesus’ death and resurrection, the kingdom had indeed come in power, even if it didn’t look at all like they imagined it would.  A new theocracy had indeed been inaugurated.  A new empire had been launched that would trump Caesar’s empire and all those like it, not by superior force but by a completely different sort of power altogether.”     - N.T. Wright

                                                                                        

New sermon at reliantchurch.org