FOOTNOTE:
[9] See S. Matt. xvi. 18. Pearson on the Creed, p. 336.
CHAPTER V.
THINGS PERTAINING TO THE KINGDOM.
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“Now is there solemn pause in earth and heaven; The Conqueror now His bonds hath riven, And Angels wonder why He stays below; Yet hath not man his lesson learned, How endless love should be returned.” |
Hitherto our thoughts about “The Kingdom of Heaven” have been founded on the teaching of the King respecting His Kingdom recorded in the Gospels. But we must not forget to give attention to the very important time in the life of our Lord extending between His Resurrection and Ascension, during which He appeared to His Apostles upon terms very different from those on which He had previously associated with them[10]. And though few records have been preserved of His instructions to them during this period, we find this general description, which very clearly shows the nature of those instructions. In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, S. Luke records that the time was spent in “speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” (Acts i. 3). Consequently, though we have not His discourses in full, we know that the subject of them was still the same as in the time past—the good news of “The Kingdom of Heaven.”
During the years of His public ministry the Apostles frequently asked their Lord to explain what they did not understand in His teaching. And we may feel sure that, at this time, many things must have appeared to them in a new light, and many sayings must have gained a force and meaning which they had failed to perceive before. And if “The Kingdom of Heaven,” about which He had said so much, was to be a real Kingdom, it is clear that there must have been many things on which they would require instruction, about the order and government of it, and about the practical carrying out of His loving designs for the salvation of the world. And inasmuch as we find that, almost immediately after their Lord’s Ascension, the Apostles were fully prepared not merely to preach, as He had done, the good news of the Kingdom, but to call men into it as a Kingdom already established upon earth, we conclude that all these matters must have been fully explained to them during these days, and that these were “the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” of which He spake.
Passing by, for the present, other questions of difficulty which would very probably arise in their minds, there are two passages in our Lord’s discourses recorded in the Gospels which we can hardly doubt were discussed at this time; because some of His words have been preserved to us which connect those passages with what afterwards became the practice of the Church.