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How The Gospel of Matthew PROVES Postmillennialism

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome back to another installment in our series called A Practical Postmillennialism, where we are exploring the Biblical case for future end times hope instead of the eschatological defeatism and spiritual retreatism that we have been force-fed over the last century. On this show, we believe that the world will be conquered by King Jesus, whose name will be lifted high above every name, and that before this Old world is finished, His Kingdom will come on earth in full as it already has in heaven. 

Think about it like this, the Bible says His name has power, His name saves, and that everyone on earth, every tongue on earth, will eventually confess His glorious name and bow to His magnificent name! But what is His name? Other than being the name above all names, what is His name? And maybe you are saying, "Well, isn't it Jesus?" And you would be right if we were speaking in English. But in Hebrew, His name is Yeshua, the same name given to the Old Testament conqueror, Joshua. And in that, we detect much of the purpose of Christ, who has come to be the true Joshua, to completely conquer the land that the Lord His God has given Him. Unlike Joshua's campaign, which ended in partial victory during Joshua's life and ultimately in defeat in the generations to come, our conquering Lord will conquer until all of the pagans, all serpent-lovers, and all demonic-driven hordes that currently blanket the earth are defeated and driven out of the land so that by God's grace, the Holy Spirit's power, and Jesus' great commission, the world will be filled with His people and no one else. 

Jesus took the name Yeshua because He did not want His followers to misunderstand His mission. He is not an effeminate white European metrosexual in a Middle Eastern toga who looks longingly at you with Fabio-like hair blowing softly in the wind. He is a warrior king in the line of David and in the ministry of Joshua. He is the one who will spiritually curb stomp all of His enemies under the leathery heel of His ferocious sandals and pile up the dead bodies before He stops to take a water break (Psalm 110). Of course, this is not a picture of physical brutality or violence because this Kingdom is advanced by prayer, preaching the Word, gathering on the Lord's Day, taking the sacraments, making disciples, and watching the Spirit of God expand His Church. But, just because it is a spiritual Kingdom built with spiritual weapons does not mean it will have no effect in the realm of men. It will capture hearts, captivate minds, convert the masses, and bring them under His Lordship until there is no more war, no more curse, and eventually, the final enemy He will defeat before He returns; there will be no more death. 

If you are new and you are wondering where we got such a glorious vision and such a ubiquitous picture of all that Christ and His Kingdom will accomplish, well, I would recommend you go back and watch the former episodes in this series, especially the ones where we are developing postmillennialism from the Bible. So far, we have produced episodes on how the promises of Genesis prove postmillennialism, how the history of Israel proves postmillennialism, how the songs of Israel prove postmillennialism, how the prophecies of Isaiah prove postmillennialism, and how the message of the remaining prophets all tell one unified story of a world filled with worshipers, under the Lordship of our great and awesome King, who will crush His enemies, save His people, fill the world with His peace, glory, honor, and fame until the world is filled with joyful worship, happy obedience, and the knowledge of God as the waters cover the seas. 

… While the Old Testament laid the groundwork for this glorious vision, we now need to turn our attention to the New Testament and demonstrate that this was also the vision of Christ, His apostles, and the Holy Spirit, who authored the entire Bible as a consistent narrative of Christ's victory! So, with that, let us turn our attention to the book of Matthew, the first book in the New Testament and the focus of our episode today. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF MATTHEW

Matthew is undoubtedly the most Jewish of the four Gospels, firmly grounding Jesus' identity and mission in the promises made to Abraham and David. That is how Matthew begins! He establishes that Jesus is from the line of Abraham and David, which not only points to His Jewish lineage but makes Him the recipient of, and the perfecter of, all of the promises given to these two great men. Since God promised to bless every family on earth through the Seed of Abraham, and since God promised to establish a Kingdom that rules over all the nations of the earth through the Son of David, Matthew begins with a genealogy to alert you that Jesus will be how the promises made to both men will come about! Jesus will be the true Seed of Abraham, who blesses every family on earth, and He will be the true Son of David, who rules until all of His enemies have been vanquished. If you were tempted to think genealogies are unnecessary, think again! 

Furthermore, in Matthew's Gospel, which is the most kingly saturated of Jesus' biographies, we are told that this long-awaited and conquering King has finally arrived on the shores of this rebellious sphere. He has brought His godly and righteous campaign on earth to take it back from the clinches of the devil. And that invasion began in His first advent and will continue until no more rebellion exists within our domain. He has come to claim His long-awaited Kingdom and conform it to His image and vision! 

To see that in the book of Matthew, we will look at many verses that I have arranged into five distinct sections. 

First, we'll explore this Kingdom's nature (as Matthew described). We will see who this Kingdom belongs to and what kind of people will inherit it. That will be our first section.  

In the second section, we'll hear the various proclamations of the arrival of the Kingdom of God in Matthew's Gospel. We will not behold a Kingdom that has yet to begin or is relocated to an uncertain future, but a Kingdom that began during Christ's lifetime and continues down to us today. 

In our third section, we will see what Jesus and Matthew teach about the growth of this Kingdom. It is like the tiniest little mustard seed taking over the entire garden or like the most insignificant little yeast element that eventually works through a whole batch of dough. Christ shows us that His reign will be global, total, and universal before the Kingdom has finished. That is our third section. 

Then, as we near the end, in our fourth section, we will see how the authority and mission granted to the Church, to be salt and light, built on an unshakable rock, given the very keys of the Kingdom to open hearts through preaching, prayer, and obedience to the Great Commission, is given to us by a King who has universal authority and dominion. This is not a King who loses on this side of heaven. But a King who will be victorious in all He has set about to do. That is our fourth section.

And then, finally, we will see one of the most glorious passages in all of Scripture; a single line from the prayer Jesus taught us to pray that tells us everything we need to know about the kind of Kingdom Jesus is bringing. 

All in all, the postmillennial vision that Matthew is painting will encourage you, challenge you to embrace His victory, and point you to the unstoppable power of Jesus' Kingdom. And while an exhaustive treatment of these passages will be impossible, I would offer you the Spirit of Inigo Montoya, who said: "Let me explain! No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

THE POSTMILLENNIAL NATURE OF THE KINGDOM

I can hardly contain my excitement as we jump into Matthew's Gospel! Beyond being one of my four favorite Gospels, Matthew puts the Kingdom of Jesus on full display for all to see. From the very first pages, we encounter Jesus' royalty and kingship echoing like a thunderous symphony in His day and all the way down to ours.

Right away, we see the wicked and false king Herod filled with rage at the news of the Coming One—the true King whose lineage traces back to great David himself. While that miscreant of Idumean descent postured and seethed in the final hours of his crumbling empire, the wise men from the East came bearing gifts fit for majesty, acknowledging the true King had been born in Bethlehem and that His reign would go on forever!

Look to His baptism, which wasn't just hollow ritualism but the anointing of the promised Monarch, the firstborn Son of God, who was preparing to cross the sea-like Jordan and enter into the wilderness where Israel failed ten times before (Numbers 14:22). Yet, unlike Israel, He would be successful. It was in that wilderness temptation that Satan pathetically dared to offer Christ "all the kingdoms of the world" through treachery. But Christ rebuffed him, holding fast to fidelity to God, knowing that He would receive the nations rightly by obedience to His Father (Matthew 28:18).

Matthew drives home this inescapable point at every turn—Jesus is the prophesied Son of David, the King of the Jews, the heir who will sit on David's throne and reign over an everlasting Kingdom! His teachings, parables, and miraculous works reveal and announce that this long-awaited King and Kingdom have landed on our shores. In Matthew, the battle for the soul of the earth begins. 

And that battle will be won by Jesus. He is the one who has ALL authority in heaven and on earth, which means that no one will stand in His way (Matthew 28:18)! He has brought a Kingdom prepared before God spoke the first photons into their splendid shining. He has destined this Kingdom to ever hunt down and decimate this planet's darkness. 

Listen to the bold proclamations coming out of the King's very lips - the "poor in spirit," the persecuted, even the little children will inherit and belong in the Kingdom He is bringing (Matthew 5:3, 5:10, 19:14)! Jesus declares His Kingdom has exploded onto the shoals of men, elevating and privileging the ones the world despises and rejects. The culturally insignificant, the socially marginalized, the sick and infirm, the unclean, and the sinner - these are the very ones who will be swept up into His jolly heights and will partner with Him in displacing pagan culture and replacing it with Kingdom culture. 

Even the weakest, most vulnerable members of His empire will pry authority and power out of the hands of the most vicious pagans and rule the earth to the glory of God! The meek will indeed inherit the land, which means that Christian men will displace all of the Hitlers, Pol Pots, Stalins, Bidens' Pelosis, and Trumps as we extend His rod of iron and serpent-crushing Kingdom far as the curse is found (Matthew 5:5; Revelation 2:26-27, 12:5).

The redeemed from every tribe, tongue, and nation will stream joyfully to Him, Matthew tells us (Matthew 24:14), repopulating the world with the Seed of Christ instead of the fallen Seed of Adam. Racism will be eliminated in His Kingdom (Matthew 12:21), and Classism will be gone. Secular democracies and godless autocracies will all fail under the ever-expanding dominion of the Son! What a sight to behold as God by the Spirit draws people from East, West, North, and South into the Kingdom of His Son (Matthew 8:11; Matthew 28:19)!

"No demonic opposition can halt this triumphant advance. The demons had to obey Him whenever He spoke (Matthew 8:16). They ran from Him in sheer panic off the sides of nearby mountain cliffs (Matthew 8:32). They begged this Son of David to have mercy on them like groveling peasants licking the mud off his boots (Matthew 15:22). Why? Because Jesus had all authority over them (Matthew 28:18), in His wilderness victory, He had bound the strong man Satan (Matthew 12:29). He was sharing that power with His disciples so that they could cast out demons and have authority over the devil (Matthew 10:1). He even promised His Church that the gates of hell itself would never stand against the advancing Church (Matthew 16:18), which is far from the picture of eschatological defeatism good deluded men like MacArthur herald."

Make no mistake - this isn't some temporary arrangement, an interim period before the King allows everything to go to hell in a handbasket. The world belongs to Jesus Christ! Do you really think that He will let the cowering and squirming devil, whom He triumphed over on the cross, actually wrestle control of this Kingdom out of His solid and fearsome hands? I hardly believe I should dignify such an obvious question with an answer. But, nevertheless, I shall… Absolutely not! Matthew tells us about the King who owns the nations and will conform them to His will. That plan goes on unabated until it is finished! 

THE POSTMILLENNIAL TIMING OF THE KINGDOM

From the very first pages, Matthew pounds the glorious truth into our prefrontal cortexes—the long-awaited Kingdom is not some far-off future reality but an inaugurated reality that has exploded onto the scene in the coming of the King Himself!

John the Baptist thunderously cries out, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 3:2). This is not a Kingdom off in the distant future but one crashing onto the shores of our fallen world imminently. When the King Himself begins His mighty ministry, He takes up this same refrain, boldly proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17).

As Jesus commissions the twelve to go out as heralds of this great Kingdom, He commands them to "proclaim as you go, saying, 'The Kingdom of heaven is at hand'" (Matthew 10:7). At hand! At hand! At hand! The long-expected reign of the Lord's Anointed has arrived, and we are living in it!

This is not a mascot kingdom or paper tiger that will wither and fade with a few good blasts of nasal air. No, Matthew unmistakably casts this Kingdom as an expansive, exponentially growing realm that will be boldly and unashamedly preached "throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations" (Matthew 24:14) before we ever dare worry about any end times coming.

THE POSTMILLENNIAL GROWTH OF THE KINGDOM

As we turn our attention to the divinely inspired parables in Matthew 13, we find an embarrassment of riches regarding the unstoppable, cosmic expansion of King Jesus' Kingdom! These word pictures from the lips of our Lord leave no room for doubt—His reign will not stall out or remain a mustard seed. No, it will become a worldwide, universe-filling tree!

In Matthew 13:31-32, Jesus proclaims, 

"The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."

Can you imagine something so infinitesimal, so easy to overlook and discount, growing into a towering tree that provides shelter and life for all the birds of heaven? This is the nature of Christ's Kingdom! What began with such humble origins in the manger at Bethlehem and such an unlikely start with a carpenter's Son from Nazareth will one day encompass and overshadow all the kingdoms of this world.

But our transcendent King doesn't stop there! He goes on to say, "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened" (Matthew 13:33). This tiny aspect working unseen, this organic, life-giving enzyme will permeate and transform the entire lump!

Just as leaven inevitably causes the whole dough to rise, so the Kingdom of God will gradually, unstoppably, and exhaustively work its way through the entire world until every square inch is leavened with the reign of Christ. There is no stopping its spread!

This upside-down, supernatural Kingdom growth is further captured in the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares in Matthew 13:24-30 and 36-43. Here, Jesus depicts His Kingdom as a man sowing good Seed in the field, which is the world (v.38). But an enemy comes and maliciously sows weeds among the wheat.

Yet, instead of prematurely uprooting the weeds and damaging the wheat, the Master allows them to grow together until the harvest at the end of the age. Why? Because the tiny seeds of truth sown by the Son of Man (v.37) will grow exponentially, overtaking and displacing the poisonous weeds, until they alone fill the field at harvest time.

But there is another reason—the Master lets them grow together because, within the tares, the offspring of the wicked one are future generations of wheat lying dormant! You see, the mustard plant of the Kingdom does not just grow outwardly but reproduces itself from even the most unlikely sources.

Just as God could raise up children for Abraham from the stones (Matthew 3:9), so He can cause the spiritual Seed of Christ to germinate and spring forth even from the progeny of Satan's own field hands. The tares cannot be prematurely rooted up, lest living kernels of truth destined for new wheat stalks be disturbed and destroyed.

No, the wise farmer knows that the growth of the excellent Seed is not linear but exponential and organic. A stalk that appears as a tare in one generation may birth the grandchildren of flourishing wheat in the next. So He leaves them be, allowing the reproducing Seed of His Word to increase upon increase, generation after generation, until the tares are entirely overshadowed.

What incredible patience is displayed by our King! What magnanimous restraint to leave the harvest to its totality, declining to rashly uproot today, what may give rise to thriving wheat tomorrow? His vision is not myopic but far-reaching, preparing the field of this earth for a coming day when the pesky tares have become little more than a long-forgotten memory.

So do not be troubled by the present proliferation of worthless weeds! Your Lord has designed His Kingdom for exponential growth, reproduction, and total field occupation—from the most miniature, obscure seed beds to the most densely tare-infested parcels. The Word He has planted within you, within this age, will achieve its final victory as it populates the world through increasing fruit.

The Sower has developed an intricate, wise, and fruitful plan for the in-gathering of His harvest at the consummation. The wheat now obscured by tares will one day blot out every tares. Such is the power of the Kingdom seed to multiply and fill the earth with the sweet fragrance of Christ! Take heart, beloved - the field belongs to our King, and so the field will soon belong to none but His flourishing harvest.

And as if these visions weren't enough, Jesus reserved some of His most sobering words for the unbelieving Jewish leaders who rejected Him in Matthew 21:43 - "Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits."

The privileged nation entrusted with the oracles of God, The Jews, would witness those harrowing oracles unfolding on their very day. While they held the Old Covenant Kingdom close to the chest with white knuckling fear, forbidding the Gentiles from coming in, the Son was now in charge, and they had been replaced. And under His dominion, He intended that all the tall and small, all the weak and wayward, and everyone in between would finally and fully be brought in! The wheat of Christ's reign will be taken from Israel and distributed globally to everyone with ears to hear. No ethnic or national barriers can restrain the increase of the Lord's anointed dominion.

Church, can you not feel the unstoppable momentum building? Can you not see the divinely prophesied script unfurling exactly as foretold? The Kingdom of God has been planted as a seed on the earth, and it will grow and grow until it alone stands as a towering, globally reaching tree under which all the nations are sheltered and blessed.

Just as Jesus stretched forth His arm across Judea and planted the seeds of truth that have blossomed into the Church worldwide, so He will continue to reign until that final harvest where all sin, rebellion, and wickedness is purged, and only the radiant wheat remains (Matthew 13:41-43). The Kingdom cannot be stopped! It is expanding, permeating every corner of creation like an insuppressible seed destined for absolute increase!

So take heart! Your labor in the Lord is not in vain! Your proclamation is not empty, hollow words but living, multiplying seeds that will bear a universe-filling harvest, conforming the entire earth to the paradise our Creator intended. 

THE POSTMILLENNIAL AUTHORITY AND MISSION OF THE KINGDOM

If the parables alone were not enough to demonstrate the unstoppable advance of Christ's Kingdom, then our Lord's direct teachings to His disciples should utterly obliterate any remaining doubt! In these words, the Church's full authority and optimistic mission are laid bare.

Jesus opens the seminal Sermon on the Mount by declaring to His followers, "You are the salt of the earth... You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:13-16). Do you grasp the significance of these words? We, the citizens of His Kingdom, are given the high calling to be preserving agents and illuminating beacons to this decaying, darkened sphere!

We are not meant to merely hold the line or eke out a remnant existence. No, we are called to radiate the brilliant light of Christ's truth into every corner of the world's shadows and, through our faithful presence, hold back the putrid, corrupting forces of sin and death that would see all creation spoiled.

This is the charge of a Kingdom on an offensive, not retreating into subjective isolation! We are to engage, infiltrate, and transform every aspect of human culture and society until it is fully salted and brightly lit with the reign of King Jesus. There is no realm, no sphere off limits to the all-pervading expansion of His sovereign rule through us.

But how can we be assured of such lofty claims? Because our Lord does not send us out as mere emissaries but as those invested with nothing less than "the keys of the kingdom of heaven" itself (Matthew 16:19)! The same authority by which our King binds and looses in the celestial realm has been entrusted to us who are "His Church," which He promises to build upon the unshakable rock of His Person and gospel (Matthew 16:18).

Do you see what Matthew is communicating here? We have been granted the very keys to open and shut the Kingdom! The words we preach, the disciples we make, the visible or invisible doors of human hearts we bind or loose - all of this Kingdom advance isn't theoretical or lacking substance. Still, it is among the chief means our Lord has appointed to extend His sovereign authority over every earthly realm as it is in heaven.

We are not hollow vessels making empty proclamations! When we speak Kingdom truth and make disciples, we are literally paving the road and opening the gates for the entrance of Christ's reign into every crevice of this fallen world. Such is the magnitude of trust and responsibility our victorious King has placed upon us.

And do you not further see the unlimited scope and confidence with which our labors are to be carried out? For in the very next verse, our Lord doubles down, encouraging, "Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven" (Matthew 18:19-20).

Anything we agree upon and ask in His will shall be done! What staggering assurances! What lavish promises to encourage us in our Kingdom assignments! The authority to bind and loose, ask and receive, tear down and build up has been fully invested within Christ's Church precisely because "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given" to our risen King (Matthew 28:18).

So with supreme confidence in this authority, our Lord sends us forth as His wise master builders upon the unshakable foundation He has laid. No mission could be more confident of success than the one He has entrusted to us - "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19-20).

Let those words settle upon your Spirit, beloved! We are not called to make a few converts, plant congregations, and hold fast until the bitter end. No, we have been commissioned by the unstoppable King to disciple, transform, and populate the entire globe with the obedient Kingdom culture of Christ!

From isolated communities to dense cities, from obscure tribes to world powers, there is no nation, no people group off limits or out of reach of our discipling efforts and the penetrating light of our King's dominion through us!

The Great Commission is nothing less than a cosmic mandate to educate the world and bring every sphere of human existence under the loving instruction of the one who has been given all authority everywhere. This is the bold, unbroken vision of Jesus and His apostles in Matthew - an earth renovated and filled with the knowledge of God and glad submission to the Messianic Son (Matthew 24:14).

So do not lose heart! Do not be intimidated by the immensity of our task. For it is not by our strength that this Kingdom multiplies, but by the sovereign power of He who has commissioned us and invested us with the very keys of His advance (Matthew 16:19).

Remember you are salt and light when you feel small and ineffective (Matthew 5:13-16)! When you are tempted to retreat or question the scope of your calling, remember you wield keys (Matthew 16:19). Your words and works loosed upon this earth are loosed in heaven itself (Matthew 18:18)! When the road grows long, or perspective is lost, remember the unstoppable nature of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) given by He who has been granted all authority everywhere by His victories (Matthew 28:18)!

Raise your sights, brothers and sisters! Lift up your eyes and look upon the fields ripened for harvest by our King's sovereign hand (John 4:35). It is all His - every tribe, tongue, and nation! (Revelation 7:9) So go forth boldly, proclaiming His glorious and ever-increasing Kingdom that will one day fill the earth. For one day, as sure as the sun rises, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the world as the waters cover the seas (Habakkuk 2:14). This is our mission, our high calling, and our certain victory in Christ the King!

THE POSTMILLENNIAL PRAYER WE ARE TO PRAY WITHIN THE KINGDOM

Beloved, we have surveyed the unstoppable nature of Christ's Kingdom as revealed in Matthew's Gospel. We have witnessed the declarations of its arrival, the parables depicting its exponential growth, and the cosmic authority invested in the Church to advance its victory to the ends of the earth. And yet, our Lord has reserved for us one of the most thunderous, unmistakable revelations of His postmillennial agenda. It is a revelation so plain, so inescapable, that it has been repeated by untold millions of Christians through the centuries, though often recited mindlessly without grasping its earth-shattering significance.

I am speaking of the words our King Himself taught us to pray—that foundational, seminal petition that lays the entire biblical vision before us in a single, majestic stroke: "Your kingdom come, you will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10).

Can you perceive it, dear saints? Can you see past the numbing fog of spiritual defeatism that has cloaked our eyes for too long? For here, as clear as day, as luminous as the radiant sun from which nothing is hidden, our Lord commands us to pray for the entire establishment of His sovereign Kingdom rule upon this terrestrial ball until it mirrors the perfect, ceaseless obedience rendered to Him in the celestial realms.

No longer are we to ask for a mere foretaste, a marginalized remnant, or a temporary down payment of His dominion. Still, we are directed to make our continual heart cry for the entire earth to be brought into joyful, unwavering submission to the King of kings! We are commanded to pray and, therefore, to envision and cultivate a longing for the complete overthrow of sin's feudal rule and the universal enthronement of Jesus Christ as absolute Monarch from pole to pole, continent to continent, until He reigns over every square inch with the ineffable holiness of heaven itself.

Do you grasp the significance of this prayer, beloved? This is not a lesser petition to be rushed past on the way to more "spiritual" concerns. No, it is the very centerfold of Our Father's priorities, the first order of business in our dialogue with Him, the prime directive He gave His people until that blessed "end" for which we labor and long is achieved!

Why else would He have us pray in such unmistakable terms for a coming, all-encompassing Paradise of obedience, peace, and divine government if it were not His overarching purpose for redemption? Why else would He use the present perfect tense of "as it is in heaven" if this were not the already-accomplished reality in the celestial realm that He has determined to outwork across the entire cosmos?

No, beloved, the words of this remarkable prayer are no mere chirpings of wishful thinking or eschatological fantasy but the very calibrated revelation of what our Lord has purposed and promised to His people since that first gospel utterance in Eden's tragic garden.

It is a mandate as old as the curse itself that when all the dominion seized by the Serpent has been crushed under the feet of the appointed Seed, the meek will at last inherit the purged, redeemed, and pacified earth. It is the very consummation for which the saints of old set their longing gaze and salted this decaying sphere with the imperishable seeds of His truth - that this world would become the visible theatre of our King's sovereign majesty and holy rule, even as it is in heaven!

No more sin, no more curse, no more death! The perfection for which we groan will become our earthly experience! This is the inheritance purchased by our King's blood and promised to His little flock from the foundations of the world. This is the very reason He came and conquered—to bring to earth in totality the joyful submission enjoyed by heaven!

So take courage, keep praying, and keep obeying dear saints, knowing that with each passing prayer and proclamation of that magnificent Kingdom for which we labor, we speed its triumphant approach and the answering of Christ's own words over our rejoicing souls! We are ushering in that for which He taught us to pray - the subjection of this terrestrial sphere until it mirrors the faultless beauty and perfect pantocracy of the celestial realms.

Church, do you see it now? Do you behold the reason for our postmillennial hope? It is no relic of antiquity or misguided tradition but the very mission statement of our Lord Himself, spoken on that Palestinian hillside two millennia ago. It is nothing less than His grand design and commissioned agenda for us until that day when heaven's reign has become our blessed, earthly experience.

Pray then, obey and work, beloved - for our King has purposed, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven!" Heaven's perfections will yet be our eternal day! Our prayers, efforts, and proclamations have been commissioned to that triumphant end when we will see with our eyes what our Master has determined and what His Spirit has guaranteed. This earth, bought with His blood, will be entirely subjected to His majesty as it is in heaven! Let it be so, Lord, let it be so! Your Kingdom come! Your will be done! On earth as it is in heaven! Amen! Hallelujah!

CONCLUSION

Brothers and sisters, thank you again for joining us and watching this week's episode! As we have seen today, the Gospel of Matthew resounds with the resplendent declarations and promises of King Jesus, claiming this world as His rightful inheritance.

May the visions we have explored fill you with faith, embolden you with hope, and stir an unquenchable longing within your soul for the coming day when every fiber of creation will rejoice in joyful obedience to our reigning King. This is no fleeting dream or farcical myth but the words and agenda of our conquering Lord.

So I encourage you, as citizens of this ever-expanding Kingdom, to live out its victorious reality each day. Be the preserving salt and brilliant light piercing the shadows around you. Wield the keys entrusted to you, binding what must be bound, loosing what must be loosed, and throwing open every door for the entrance of your King's glorious reign.

And take heart amid the trials and conflicts, knowing that the Master you serve is not simply winning minor skirmishes but is methodically claiming the entire earth as His own until it mirrors the celestial perfections we will one day eternally enjoy.

In the days ahead, join us again as we explore how the remaining Gospels only amplify and reinforce this unified message of Christ's total cosmic victory. Until then, live as more than conquerors through Him who loved us! Amen.