REFUTING THE A.D. 70 THEORY - 6
REFUTING TH E A.D. 70 THEORY - 6
Yeow Chin Kiong
John the Baptist preached the urgent need for all men to repent because they prophesied that the "kingdom of heaven ( as Matthew's account of the gospel has it, Matthew 3:1-2) is at hand." After John was imprisoned, Jesus Himself preached the same message (Matthew 4:12-13, 17). Mark's record of Jesus teaching this (Mark 1:14-15) states that Jesus "preached the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.'" We note that the kingdom of heaven (or "kingdom of God") was about to be present very near in time to its urgent preaching by John and Jesus. Its establishment did not have to wait for some forty years after Jesus' death, burial and resurrection in A.D.33 to be established whole and ready to have repentant believers of the gospel become its members (see Acts 2:46-47).
When A.D.70 theorists say God's kingdom on earth was established FULLY or WITH POWER in A.D.70, they are in error. The church of Christ was established on the Jewish feast of Pentecost of A.D.33 with signs that it was so established seen in Jerusalem.
While He was on earth, our Lord declared that He would "build" His "church" (which He equated with "the kingdom of heaven") upon the truth about Himself that Peter affirmed (Matthew 16:16-18). It is clear from Matthew 16:19 that by "the kingdom of heaven" Jesus meant an institution on earth and not Heaven itself, the church and not the dwelling place of God. In the context of talking about His church Jesus provided an indication WHEN He would build His church, the kingdom belonging to Heaven; He would bring about (i.e. build or establish) His church during the lifetime of some of the hearers of that prophecy He declared He would build His church (Matthew 16:28). Note that in that verse Jesus refered to that time as "the Son of Man coming in His kingdom" (Matthew 16:28). In the parallel verse of Luke 9:27, Jesus is recorded as .making reference to those hearers seeing "the kingdom of God". Mark's account of the same matter states that those hearers would "see the kingdom of God present with power" (Mark 9:1), providing a visible indicator of this coming of the Lord in His, God's, or Heaven's, kingdom.
As the scripture pointing to the fulfilment of that prophecy of Jesus tells us, the visible indication (of the presence of "power" that the hearers would perceive) would be the apostles speaking in "tongues" (i.e. languages) not their own and which they never learnt. Just before His ascension back to the Father, Jesus prepared His apostles to receive this "power". We read in Acts 1:4-8, "And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, which, He said, 'You have heard from Me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.' Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, 'Lord. will you at this time restore the kingdom to israel?' And He said to them, 'It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive POWER when the HOLY SPIRIT has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.'
We read of the fulfilment of Jesus prophecy in detail in Acts 2:1-4. "When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all in one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirut gave them utterance." The Jews dwelling in Jerusalem at that time,- the Day of Pentecost in A.D.33, and NOT during the fall of Jerusalem and its temple in A.D.70,- were witnesses of this great miracle of speaking in unlearnt languages and, after understanding and obeying the gospel thus preached by the apostles, became the first members of the church of Jesus Christ. After this great event in history, the kingdom of God, complete in all its Divinely-determined characteristics, began to be preached as having been established (as by Philip in Acts 8:12 and by Paul in Acts 28:23 and Colossians 1:13-14).