2.06. The Consummation of the Kingdom

Chapter Six: The Consummation of the Kingdom

Although Jesus’s teachings during the first part of his ministry, as recorded in Matthew, focused on the presently inaugurated aspects of the kingdom, Jesus certainly did not neglect the topic of fulfillment of the kingdom. For example, in Matthew 8:11-12, Jesus foreshadowed the fact that, in the millennial kingdom, Gentiles would be included while the Jews who rejected their Messiah would be left out. This same teaching was repeated in Matthew 21:42-43. As Jesus’s death grew closer, his teachings on the end of the age grew more prominent. Hence, Matthew 24:1-51 through 25 contain the Olivet Discourse, a discourse about the coming culmination of the kingdom given by Jesus during His last week before the crucifixion. In Matthew 24:3, the disciples asked Jesus, “what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Glasscock states that “the end of the age” is a clear reference to “the closure of Israel’s rebellion and the beginning of the glorious kingdom.”120

Jesus responded by describing in significant detail the end of the age: the Tribulation period (Matthew 24:4-25), the Second Coming of Christ (Matthew 24:26-31), and the regathering of true Israel at the beginning of the millennium (Matthew 24:36-41).121 Jesus then offered several parables to demonstrate the certainty of his coming. (Matthew 24:42-51; Matthew 25:1-30). Matthew 25:31-46 describes the judgment on the Gentile nations that closes the end of the age and ushers in the millennial period. Matthew 25:34 states that Jesus will invite Gentiles into the kingdom which had been “prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Glasscock rightly notes: The kingdom Messiah is establishing will include the Gentiles, and not as a last-minute adjustment to God’s plan but determined from the very foundation of the world (katholes kosmou). The messianic kingdom, therefore, was predetermined, before the world was put into operation, to be a place for the human race to experience the divine kingship of God’s Anointed.122 In Matthew 26:1-75, Jesus and the disciples were eating the Passover meal and Jesus instructed the disciples on the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. At this time, he told them, “But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.” (Matthew 26:29). In other words, Jesus will not participate again in the Lord’s Supper until “the consummation” when he “will sit down with them at the messianic banquet.”123