![]() In the Old Testament, for example, the principal difference between the gods of the heathen and the God who, as Yahweh, manifested himself to Israel was that, while the pagan gods occupied themselves chiefly "up there" in the "council of the gods," Yahweh showed his power principally "down here" on the stage of history. And all of that, mind you, directly in the face of Scripture's insistences to the contrary. Worse yet, we have conceived of that elsewhere almost entirely in "heavenly" rather than in earthly terms. ![]() Because Matthew (though not Mark or Luke) uses the phrase "the kingdom of heaven" - and perhaps because the greatest number of parables of the kingdom do indeed occur in Matthew - we have frequently succumbed to the temptation to place unwarranted importance on the word "heaven." In any case, we have too often given in to the temptation to picture the kingdom of heaven as if it were something that belonged more properly elsewhere than here. “Christians have often been lamentably slow to grasp the profound secularity of the kingdom as it is proclaimed in the Gospels. ![]()
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