d would certainly bless and
give the kingdom to that people which he had specially selected for his
own. And so, as the coming of the kingdom was postponed, they believed
that it was because they had not complied with the divine conditions,
they had not kept the law or they had not been good, they had not
obeyed him. Somehow, they had done wrong; and that was the reason the
kingdom so long delayed.

Remember another thing. We have come, in this modern time, to place the
kingdom away off in another world after the close of this life. The
Jews had no such belief about it. They expected it to come right here
on this poor little planet of ours; and they expected that a kingdom
was to be set up which was not only to place them at the head of
humanity, but through them was to bless all mankind. Different thinkers
among them held different views, but this in substance was the belief;
and they were constantly looking for signs of this imminent revolution
which was to make the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our God
and of his Christ, that is, his Anointed One.

John the Baptist preached that this kingdom was coming. But he was
imprisoned and beheaded, having come into conflict with the civil
authority. Jesus, then, having come from Nazareth, where he had studied
and thought and brooded over the divine will, takes up this broken work
of John, and begins a proclamation of the gospel; and the one thing
which constituted that gospel was: The kingdom of God is at hand,
repent and believe; accept this statement. And note that "repent" on
the lips of Jesus did not mean what we have been accustomed to
associate with it. The New Testament word translated "repent" means
change your purpose, change your method of life. You have not been in
accord with the truth, you have not been obedient to God; turn about,
come into accord with the divine law, become obedient to the divine
message.

Jesus taught no kingdom in any other world. He believed that the
kingdom was to be here. For, even after he had disappeared from the
sight of men, and this reflects in the clearest possible way the burden
of his message, his disciples expected, not that they were to be
transferred to some other planet or into an invisible world to find the
kingdom, but that Jesus was to come back, to return in the clouds of
heaven, and establish the kingdom here.

The kingdom, then, that Jesus preached was a kingdom of righteousness
here on this earth, among just