Jesus Christ will physically return to earth and set up a kingdom on the earth. This will happen. The Bible prophecies it multiple times. It is not that He becomes king then. He already is King.
The arrival of the Messiah, prophesied in the Old Testament, comes in two parts: the first time as Savior, the suffering servant of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 52-53. This is the “Messiah cut off, but not for himself” in Daniel 9:26.
After His first coming, His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, promising to return. He said, “I go away, and come again unto you” (John 14:28). His second time He comes as Lord, a conquering King.
The New Testament very often calls the second coming “the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Timothy 6:14). In other places, it says like Matthew 24:46: “his lord when he cometh.” Jude writes in 1:14, “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints.” The Apostle Paul puts it this way in 1 Thessalonians 1:10, “And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.”
What about the between time? The time we live is the church age. After Jesus ascended, in heaven His Father commanded Him (Psalm 110:2): “rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.” After His ascension into heaven, in the present tense Jesus rules among His enemies. That’s now. Jesus rules right now on earth. How? As the head of the church (Ephesians 1:22, 5:23). The church is a form of the kingdom, an outpost, that operates among enemies in the world. Church members behave as they’re already in His kingdom.
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