What Is the Kingdom of God?

Jesus and the Pharisees

"Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

Luke 17:20-21
When Jesus began to preach, his very first announcement was about a kingdom: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15). The phrase runs through his teaching more than any other — it is, by a wide margin, the heart of his message.
But what is the kingdom of God? The word "kingdom" calls up images of territory, armies, and thrones, and from the beginning people have been tempted to read it that way. In Jesus' own day many awaited a political Messiah who would raise an army and restore an earthly throne. When the Pharisees asked him when the kingdom would come, he turned them away from spectacle and calculation: "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed … for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you " (Luke 17:20-21).
Some modern movements have revived the older mistake in a new form. Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the kingdom is a literal heavenly government that began invisibly in a calculated year, 1914 — not the Church, not anything present in the first century, and not anything visible now. The Catholic understanding is very different: the kingdom is the reign of God present in the person of Christ the King, welcomed in the hearts of those who receive him, and present now — visibly though imperfectly — in and through the Church. Let's examine the question and see ...
  • Where do the Scriptures locate the kingdom of God: in a heavenly government dated to 1914, or in Christ and his Church from the first century to this day?
I invite your engagement with me on these questions. You may leave comments below, but please be sure to read our policy on commenting before doing so.

Watchtower View

Jehovah's Witnesses hold a distinctive and far-reaching belief about the kingdom of God: that it is a literal government, established in heaven in October 1914, when Christ — who, on their account, had been waiting at his Father's side since his ascension — was at last enthroned as king. From that moment, they teach, Christ has been invisibly "present," ruling unseen from heaven while the world runs down toward Armageddon, after which God's kingdom will be extended over a cleansed earth. On this view the kingdom is not the Church, not anything present in the first century, and not anything visible now; it is a heavenly administration not yet two centuries old, whose arrival no one observed.1

This teaching is not a peripheral matter for the Watchtower; it is foundational. The 1914 date anchors the claim that we have lived in "the last days" for over a century, that Christ's invisible presence began then, and that the Watch Tower Society itself was chosen, shortly afterward, as God's sole earthly organization.

How the Date Is Built

The calculation. The Witnesses date the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians to 607 B.C. They read the "seven times" of King Nebuchadnezzar's madness in Daniel 4 as a hidden prophecy of "the appointed times of the nations" (Luke 21:24) — a long period during which no king would sit on God's earthly throne. Reckoning each "time" as a prophetic year of 360 days treated as 360 years, they multiply seven by 360 to get 2,520 years and count forward from 607 B.C., arriving (allowing for the absence of a year zero) at October 1914 as the moment the Gentile times ended and Christ was enthroned.2

The manner of Christ's presence. Where the New Testament speaks of the parousia of Christ — traditionally rendered his "coming" — the Watchtower's New World Translation renders it "presence," and interprets this as an invisible presence: Christ returned in 1914 not visibly but unseen, his royal authority detectable only by a composite "sign" of the wars, famines, earthquakes, and disorders that have marked the world since. Because the presence is invisible, its beginning could not be observed; it must be accepted on the strength of the calculation and the claimed sign.3

The Reply in Brief

The Catholic and broadly historic Christian reply is developed in the Catholic View panel and set out point by point in the Summary panel below, with the full positive exposition in the essay downloadable there. In brief: the risen Christ declared, before his ascension, that "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matthew 28:18) — a completed grant in the first century, not a future enthronement; Jesus located the kingdom "in the midst of you" (Luke 17:20–21) and "come upon you" (Matthew 12:28) in his own ministry, and Paul told first-century believers that God "has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13); and the 1914 chronology fails on its own terms, since Jerusalem fell in 587/586 B.C., not 607, and Daniel 4 speaks only of a king's madness, not of any kingdom's timing. A kingdom no one saw arrive, ruled by a king no one can see, dated by a calculation no one outside the organization accepts, is built so that no evidence could ever count against it.

Endnotes
  1. On the doctrine, see “What Is God's Kingdom?” and related chapters in What Does the Bible Really Teach? (Wallkill, NY: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 2005), and The Watchtower, study edition, January 15, 2014, “100 Years of Kingdom Rule—How Does It Affect You?” The teaching is that Christ was enthroned as heavenly King in October 1914, beginning an invisible “presence” and the “last days” of the present world order. ↩
  2. The 1914 date is reached by dating the fall of Jerusalem to 607 B.C., then applying the “seven times” of Daniel 4 (reckoned as 7 × 360 = 2,520 years) as “the appointed times of the nations” (Luke 21:24). See What Does the Bible Really Teach?, appendix, “1914—A Significant Year in Bible Prophecy,” and the supporting chronology in Insight on the Scriptures (Watch Tower, 1988), art. “Chronology.” ↩
  3. On parousia (παρουσια): the term denotes a visible, public arrival, as in Matthew 24:27, where the parousia of the Son of Man is likened to lightning seen “from the east … as far as the west.” The standard lexicon glosses it as “arrival, advent … the coming of Christ … in messianic majesty” (Bauer–Danker, A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 780–781). The rendering of an invisible presence is not found in the lexica. The Watchtower's interpretation appears in the New World Translation at Matthew 24:3 and is explained in What Does the Bible Really Teach? (2005), ch. 9. ↩

Catholic View

What Is the Kingdom of God? The Reign of God in Christ, in the Heart, and in the Church
by Richard Whiting

© 2026 Richard Whiting. All rights reserved. May be reproduced in whole, with attribution. See the full notice at the end of this article.

I. The Heart of the Gospel

When Jesus of Nazareth began to preach, he announced not himself, in the first instance, but a kingdom: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). This was the heart of his message. The phrase “kingdom of God” appears some 122 times in the New Testament, ninety of them on his own lips — it is, by a wide margin, the dominant theme of his teaching. To understand what Jesus came to do is, before anything else, to understand what he meant by the kingdom of God.1

Yet the phrase is easily misunderstood, because the word “kingdom” calls up images of territory, armies, and thrones — earthly dominion of the ordinary kind. Sometimes familiarity with a term is mistaken for understanding of it. The kingdom Jesus proclaimed is richer and stranger than any worldly realm: it is the reign of God himself, breaking into history in the person of his Son, taking root in human hearts, gathered and made visible in the Church, and destined for a glory that will be revealed only at the end of time. This essay sets out that Catholic understanding of the kingdom — what it is, where the Scriptures locate it, and how it is both already present and still to come.

The aim here is positive: to say what the kingdom of God is, as the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the Church's teaching present it. Where other accounts differ — and some modern movements understand the kingdom very differently — those differences are taken up elsewhere. Here the concern is to lay the Catholic understanding out plainly and on its own foundations, so that it may be seen whole.

II. What Israel Awaited: The Kingdom in Prophecy

Jesus did not introduce the idea of the kingdom of God from nothing; he proclaimed the fulfillment of a hope that God had been cultivating in Israel for centuries. Though the exact phrase is uncommon in the Old Testament, the conviction beneath it is everywhere: that the Lord, the God of Israel, is the true and eternal King — “The Lord reigns” is the refrain of psalm after psalm — and that his reign, now acknowledged by his covenant people, would one day be acknowledged by all the earth.2

From the prophets, Israel learned to expect a kingdom marked by four things. It would be divine — established and ruled by God himself, not merely by men. It would be everlasting — without end, like the stone in Daniel's vision that becomes a mountain and “shall stand for ever” (Dan. 2:44), or the everlasting dominion given to the son of man in Daniel 7. It would be universal — beginning with Israel but reaching out to embrace all the nations of the earth. And it would be spiritual — heavenly in its very essence, a reign of God in the hearts and lives of his people, even though it is begun on earth. These four notes — divine, everlasting, universal, spiritual — define the kingdom the prophets foretold.

It must be admitted that by the time of Jesus this hope had, for many, grown distorted. Longing for deliverance from Roman rule, much of Israel had come to expect a political Messiah who would raise an army, restore the throne in Jerusalem, and subject the nations by force. The divine, everlasting, and universal notes were retained, but the spiritual note — the very heart of the matter — was largely lost. The Gospels show this expectation at every turn: a crowd tries to seize Jesus “to make him king” (John 6:15); even after the resurrection the apostles ask, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). A great part of Jesus' teaching on the kingdom is devoted to correcting precisely this earthly, political misreading — and the correction remains necessary, for the temptation to reduce God's kingdom to a this-worldly program, whether political or institutional, recurs in every age.

III. “The Kingdom of God Is at Hand”

Into that expectation Jesus came, announcing that the long-awaited kingdom had arrived — and arrived in him. This is the great surprise at the center of the Gospel: the kingdom is not merely near in time but present in his person. When the Pharisees charge that he casts out demons by the prince of demons, he answers, “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). The verb is past tense: where the King is and acts, there the kingdom already is. In Jesus' healings and exorcisms, his forgiving of sins and raising of the dead, the reign of God is breaking visibly into the world.3

This is why, when asked when the kingdom would come, Jesus turns his questioners away from spectacle and calculation: “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20–21). The kingdom is not to be located by external portents or future datings; it is already present among them, in the person standing before them. To look for it elsewhere — in political upheaval, in a calculated date, in any “Lo, here it is!” — is to miss it.

And what was inaugurated in his ministry was established in power by his death, resurrection, and ascension. Before ascending, the risen Christ declares, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18) — the universal kingship of the son of man whom Daniel saw receiving “dominion and glory and kingdom” as he came to the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:13–14). The apostles preach this reign as an accomplished fact: at Pentecost Peter announces that God “has made him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), and Paul tells the Colossians that God “has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). The kingdom is not a distant prospect for the first Christians; it is a reality they already inhabit.

IV. Three Dimensions of the One Kingdom

Because the kingdom of God is so central and so rich, the Scriptures use the phrase for several related realities at once. Pope Benedict XVI helpfully distinguishes three dimensions of the one kingdom, each of which illumines a facet of the whole.4

The Christological dimension. First and most fundamentally, the kingdom is a person. “The Kingdom is not a thing,” Benedict writes; “it is not a geographical dominion like worldly kingdoms. It is a person; it is he.” In the way Jesus speaks of the kingdom, he quietly reveals that in him God himself has drawn near and begun to reign. The early Father Origen captured this by calling Christ the autobasileia — the Kingdom in person. This is why the kingdom “has come upon” those who witness his works: the King is among them, and where the King is, there is the kingdom. To grasp the kingdom of God, then, is finally to grasp Christ himself.5

The interior dimension. Second, the kingdom is a reign of God within the human heart. Commenting on the petition “Thy kingdom come,” Origen taught that those who pray it are asking for the kingdom of God already within them to grow and bear fruit until it attains its fullness. Jesus' own words point the same way: the kingdom comes not “with observation” but is “in the midst of you,” taking root quietly like a seed sown in the soul and nurtured by grace, by prayer, and by the sacraments. The kingdom of God begins, in this sense, in the heart — wherever Christ is welcomed as King and his will is done.6

The ecclesial dimension. Third, the kingdom is present here and now in and through the Church. This is the sense in which the kingdom is most visible in the world, and it requires a section of its own.

V. The Kingdom and the Church

The relationship between the kingdom and the Church must be stated with care, for the two are neither simply identical nor wholly separate. The Church is not yet the kingdom in its final glory; that fullness will come only at the end of time. But the Church is the kingdom as it exists now on earth. In the words of the Second Vatican Council, the Church is “the kingdom of Christ now present in mystery,” which “grows visibly through the power of God in the world.” The Catechism says it as plainly: “The Church is the Reign of Christ already present in mystery.”7

The clearest scriptural anchor is Christ's charge to Peter. In the same breath in which he founds his Church — “on this rock I will build my Church” — Jesus adds, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16:18–19). Church and kingdom are named together, the keys of the one being the keys of the other; they are two ways of speaking of a single reality. Kingdom and Church are not the same in every respect — the kingdom is larger, embracing heaven and the angels and the consummation still to come — but on earth, the kingdom subsists in the Church, which is its “seed and beginning.”8

St. Augustine drew the point out long ago, commenting on the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Christ's “kingdom is here until the end of time,” he wrote, “and until the harvest comes will contain weeds … And this could not happen if the kingdom were not here.” The very fact that the Church on earth is a mixed field of saints and sinners, growing toward a future harvest, is itself a proof that the kingdom is already present — for the weeds among the wheat are exactly what Jesus said the kingdom would contain until the end (Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43). A kingdom still wholly in the future could have no weeds growing in it now. The Church, with all its imperfection, is the kingdom in its pilgrim state, on the way to glory.9

His kingdom is here until the end of time, and until the harvest comes will contain weeds … And this could not happen if the kingdom were not here.

— St. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 115.2

VI. Already and Not Yet

To say the kingdom is already present is not to say it has arrived in its fullness. The Catholic understanding holds two truths together: the kingdom is already here and not yet consummated. It came in Christ's ministry, was established in power in his death and resurrection, grows now in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful, and will be revealed in glory only when he comes again.

Both poles are essential, and the Scriptures hold them together everywhere. On the one hand, the kingdom “has come upon” us, and believers have already been “transferred” into it. On the other, Christ teaches his disciples to pray “Thy kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10), and tells parables — such as the nobleman who goes to a far country to receive a kingdom and then return (Luke 19:11–12) — precisely to teach that its consummation still lies ahead. The kingdom grows now like a mustard seed and like leaven hidden in dough; it will be fully revealed only at the harvest, when the weeds are separated from the wheat and Christ “delivers the kingdom to God the Father” (1 Cor. 15:24).10

This “already and not yet” is the rhythm of the whole Christian life. We live as citizens of a kingdom genuinely present, under the reign of a King who has truly conquered, while still praying and laboring and longing for the day when that reign will be made complete and visible to all. To collapse the tension in either direction — to deny that the kingdom has come, or to claim it has already come in its fullness — is to lose the shape of the gospel itself.

VII. The Kingdom Is Salvation

Beneath all its dimensions, the kingdom of God is, at its core, about salvation. It is not finally a matter of territory or government or institution, but of God reconciling the world to himself in Christ and gathering a people to share his own life. As Pope John Paul II summed it up, “the kingdom of God is the manifestation and the realization of God's plan of salvation in all its fullness.” To enter the kingdom is to be delivered from the dominion of darkness and brought into the light of the Son; to pray “Thy kingdom come” is to pray that this saving reign would be completed in us and in all the world.11

This is why the kingdom can never be separated from Christ himself, nor from the Church through which he continues to pour out his saving grace. A “kingdom” preached apart from the King, or sought apart from the means of salvation he established, would no longer be the kingdom of God of the Scriptures. The kingdom is the King's own reign, extended to us; it comes to us as he comes to us — in his word, in his sacraments, in his Body the Church — and it draws us toward the day when God will be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).

VIII. Conclusion

The kingdom of God is the great theme of Jesus' preaching, and the Scriptures, read in the Church, tell us plainly what it is. It is the reign of God present in the person of Christ the King; it is that same reign welcomed in the hearts of those who receive him; and it is present now, visibly though imperfectly, in and through the Church — “the kingdom of Christ already present in mystery,” growing toward a glory that will be revealed only at the end. It was inaugurated in Jesus' ministry, established in power at his death, resurrection, and ascension, and it endures, never absent from the earth, until he comes again.

To understand the kingdom rightly is to hold all of this together: the King who is its very presence, the interior reign of grace, the visible communion of the Church, and the “already and not yet” that stretches between the first coming and the second. “The time is fulfilled,” Jesus said at the beginning, “and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). It was at hand then, in him; it is present still, in his Church; and it will come in fullness when he who is its King returns in glory. For that completion the Church prays in every age, in the words the Lord himself gave: Thy kingdom come.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.

Copyright and Distribution

© 2026 Richard Whiting. All rights reserved.

This essay may be reproduced and distributed freely, in printed or electronic form, provided that it is reproduced in whole and without alteration, and that the author's name is retained. Excerpts may be quoted in reviews, scholarly works, or other writings consistent with fair use, with attribution. For any other use, including translation, adaptation, or partial republication beyond fair use, please contact the author.

Endnotes
  1. Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 47–63. Benedict notes that basileia tou theou (“kingdom of God”) occurs 122 times in the New Testament, 99 of them in the Synoptic Gospels and about 90 on the lips of Jesus himself. ↩
  2. The specific phrase “kingdom of God” is rare in the Old Testament, but the underlying conviction that the Lord is eternal King runs throughout it, especially in the enthronement Psalms (e.g., Pss. 93, 96–99, 145:11–13) and the prophets (Isa. 9:6–7; 52:7; Dan. 2:44; 7:13–14; Zech. 14:9). On the kingdom's development across both Testaments, see Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1:47–63. ↩
  3. Matthew 12:28 / Luke 11:20: “the kingdom of God has come upon you” (ephthasen, aorist of phthanō, “to arrive, have come”), spoken of Jesus' exorcisms in his own ministry; Luke 17:20–21: “the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (entos hymōn); Colossians 1:13: God “has transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son” (aorist mestēsen, a past, accomplished act). ↩
  4. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1:47–63, distinguishing the Christological, interior (mystical), and ecclesial dimensions of the one kingdom. ↩
  5. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1:49: “the Kingdom is not a thing, it is not a geographical dominion like worldly kingdoms. It is a person; it is he. … By the way in which he speaks of the Kingdom of God, Jesus leads men to realize the overwhelming fact that in him God himself is present among them.” Origen, a third-century Father, whom Benedict cites in this connection, calls Christ the autobasileia — the Kingdom in person. ↩
  6. Origen, On Prayer (De Oratione) 25, on the kingdom of God within the soul of the one who prays “Thy kingdom come”: those who so pray “pray without any doubt for the kingdom of God that they contain in themselves, and they pray that this kingdom might bear fruit and attain its fullness.” Cited in Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 1:55–57. ↩
  7. Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium (1964), 3 and 5: “To carry out the will of the Father, Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of heaven on earth … The Church, or, in other words, the kingdom of Christ now present in mystery, grows visibly through the power of God in the world.” ↩
  8. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§763–765: “The Lord Jesus inaugurated his Church by preaching the Good News … The Church is the Reign of Christ already present in mystery … This Kingdom shines out before men in the word, in the works and in the presence of Christ.” On the keys of the kingdom given to Peter (Matt. 16:18–19), joining Church and kingdom in a single act, see §§551–553. On the Church as the kingdom's “seed and beginning,” Lumen Gentium 5. ↩
  9. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 115.2, trans. in J. C. Elowsky, ed., John 11–21, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007), 290: “his kingdom is here until the end of time, and until the harvest comes will contain weeds … And this could not happen if the kingdom were not here.” On the kingdom present in the Church as wheat-and-weeds until the harvest, see Brant Pitre, The Mass Readings Explained (catholicproductions.com), on the Kingdom of God and the Church. ↩
  10. On the “already and not yet” of New Testament eschatology, see Catechism §§671–672: the kingdom is “already present” in Christ and his Church yet awaits its consummation, when Christ “will hand over the kingdom to God the Father” (1 Cor. 15:24). The parables of growth — the wheat and weeds, the mustard seed, and the leaven (Matt. 13:24–33), and the seed growing secretly (Mark 4:26–29) — express this structure. See also Catechism §§2816–2821 on the petition “Thy kingdom come.” ↩
  11. John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio (1990), 15: “the kingdom of God is the manifestation and the realization of God's plan of salvation in all its fullness.” On the inseparability of the kingdom from both Christ and the Church — against any attempt to preach a “kingdom” detached from him — see ibid., 17–19. ↩

Summary

The Watchtower teaches that the kingdom of God began invisibly in October 1914. The plain language of Christ and his apostles places the kingdom in the first century, not the twentieth; the chronology that produces 1914 fails on its own terms; and the doctrine, by making the kingdom's arrival invisible and its King unseen, has insulated itself against any possibility of disproof.

“All authority has been given to me.” Before his ascension the risen Christ declared, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18) — a completed grant, in roughly A.D. 33, not a promise of enthronement in 1914. This is the kingship Daniel saw the “son of man” receive as he came to the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:13–14) — an ascent to God's throne, the Ascension, not a descent in 1914. Peter preached it as already accomplished at Pentecost: God “has made him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).

The kingdom was already present in the first century. Jesus said, “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28) — past tense, in his own ministry. Pressed on when the kingdom would come, he warned against looking for a spectacle: “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed … for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20–21). And Paul told the Colossians that God “has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13) — already true of first-century believers.

An earthly kingdom by another name. Many in Jesus' day had distorted the kingdom-hope into the expectation of a political Messiah, a kingdom that would come “with signs to be observed,” marked by upheaval among the nations and read off from prophetic timetables. The Watchtower's kingdom — a literal government, identified by the wars and disorders since 1914, calculated from a prophetic chronology, located somewhere other than in the present life of God's people — reconstructs the very expectation Jesus came to correct. It is the ancient mistake in modern dress.

The chronology fails on its own terms. The whole computation depends on dating the fall of Jerusalem to 607 B.C. But that destruction is one of the better-fixed dates of the ancient world — established by Babylonian chronicles, astronomical-diary tablets, and dated business records — and it falls in 587 or 586 B.C. Correct the starting point, and the 2,520-year reckoning arrives not at 1914 but around 1934, a year of no significance in the doctrine. Moreover, Daniel 4 speaks only of the seven years of Nebuchadnezzar's madness, which the chapter interprets for us explicitly; it says nothing of Christ, the Church, or any kingdom's timing.

A trail of revised dates. 1914 is not the original answer but the surviving one. The same method produced 1799, 1874, 1878, 1914, 1915, and 1925 — each affirmed in its turn and then quietly revised when the predicted events failed. The expectation for 1914 was at first that the faithful would be caught up to heaven; only after that hope disappointed was the date reinterpreted as an unseen heavenly enthronement.

A kingdom that cannot be checked. By teaching that Christ's arrival was invisible, his enthronement hidden in heaven, and its only evidence a “sign” of wars and troubles found in every age, the doctrine is arranged so that no observation could ever count against it. When the faithful were not taken to heaven in 1914, the date was reinterpreted; when the generation said to have witnessed 1914 died out, contrary to a long-held reading of “this generation will not pass away” (Matthew 24:34), the meaning of “generation” was revised rather than the date surrendered. A teaching that absorbs every disappointment as a fresh confirmation has placed itself beyond the reach of evidence.

Set this beside the kingdom of the Gospels and the contrast is total. The kingdom Jesus proclaimed came into the open — preached in the towns of Galilee, made visible in healings and exorcisms, established in a death and resurrection witnessed by many, and entrusted to a Church that has stood in the light of history ever since. “The time is fulfilled,” he said, “and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). It was at hand then — not in 1914.

The full Catholic exposition is available as a Word document: Download What Is the Kingdom of God? (.docx)