The Time Is Fulfilled

Thank you very much, Mr. Wilkie. Good to see all of you here today. To our guests and visitors, I might mention, as Mr. Wilkie noted, there are some seats up here near the front. We are covering a lot of the information through PowerPoint today. There will be a lot of detail in the slides you'll be viewing there, so if you're having some difficulty seeing it there, feel free to move it up closer to the front, or if you'd like to do that during the break, that's fine as well. We will have—hopefully, you brought your Bibles today. We do encourage people to check out and read in your Bibles exactly what we are saying. Most of the Scriptures today we will be projecting up here on screen as well, just so you can see that. We also encourage you to take notes and pay attention to what is being said. As Mr. Wilkie mentioned, we do have a lot of booklets over here at our tables. The one that you were handed when you went to get your name tag on the Gospel of the Kingdom would certainly encourage you to read that when you get home. That is the overall subject of these Kingdom of God seminars. The Gospel of the Kingdom talks about the Kingdom of God and what it is and how we can enter it on our part in it and the part that God is playing and bringing us to that Kingdom. We do encourage all of you to read that.

Another booklet you may wish to pick up is called What is Your Destiny?

It is this one right here with a purplish cover on it. We would encourage you to pick that up and take that as well. I am not sure if we have enough copies to go around for everyone, but we would certainly encourage you to read those two, those two booklets in particular.

A very warm welcome to all of you here today. I am glad the weather cooperated here. We are having to come through a blizzard, so I appreciate that very much. So why are you here?

Why are you here? I do not mean just at this seminar today, although again we are glad you came and glad you are able to be here with us today. But why are you here at all? Why are you here on earth? Why were you born? What is your purpose in life? Why were you created?

Why did God place you on earth now, in this time and in this place? What is the purpose? What is the point of your existence? Why again were you born? Why do you exist at all? We spend our lives looking for meaning, looking for relevance, looking for a purpose to life. Many, many people get discouraged about that. They give up on life. The United States, the world for that matter, is experiencing a huge epidemic of depression, mental illness and things like that because people are confused about life. They don't know why they exist. They don't know why they are here. They don't know what the point is of it all. And some people, unfortunately, give up on that and even take their own lives out of absolute frustration of not being able to understand why they are here, not seeing any point, any purpose in this life at all. You've come here today to learn about the kingdom of God. Today we are here to help you understand what that kingdom is and to show you how to access the power of God and His coming kingdom to change your life, to give you meaning, to give you purpose, to give you understanding of what life is all about and why you are here. In September, we had a previous seminar where we did discuss a great deal about exactly what the kingdom of God is. We don't have time, unfortunately, today to recover that same ground there. But these sessions that we had in September did address exactly what is the kingdom of God and why the world needs it so desperately now. There are a lot of misconceptions about what the kingdom of God is. If you missed those two sessions and would like to listen to them, you can go to our local site here at Denver.ucg.org. Know www in front of it and go to the Sermon's link there at the top of the page. If you scroll down through the list of messages there, you will find in September the two sessions that we gave explaining what the kingdom of God is all about. Again, we don't have time to cover that same ground today, but I would encourage you to do that if you were not here for those first two sessions.

Later, if you would like to review what we're covering today, check back in the middle of the week or another week or so from now. You will find today's sessions posted on there as well. So you can review this material as well. We'll cover a lot of ground, a lot of information, and you may find you're not able to absorb it all. So we do encourage you to go back and listen to that again. So let's focus in on the subject today, which is about the kingdom of God and the time is fulfilled. Today, what we'll focus in on, at least in this first session, is the impact of God's timing. Timing is everything, as the saying goes. And God is an expert in dealing not only with the timing of events as they affect the world, but also the timing in our own individual lives and how he interacts and works with each of us in carrying out his purpose. So we'll talk about the state of world affairs as God interacts with that, as well as our own individual personal state of affairs so that we might be aware of and have the opportunity to understand the gospel of the kingdom of God and to order our lives accordingly. So let's notice, let's begin here in Mark 1, verses 14 and 15. This is where we started in the previous seminar back in September as well. And this tells us something very important about the message that Jesus of Nazareth brought. It tells us that Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. So that was at the heart and the core of his message, the gospel or the good news, which is what the Greek word that is used there means, the good news of the kingdom of God. And saying, he went on to elaborate, the time is fulfilled. And that is the theme of today's message, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. We'll be focusing on those areas today. And then an important part of that message we'll cover in future sessions is repent and believe in the gospel. So what did Jesus mean when he said the time is fulfilled? Why did he include that? Why is that a part of his message? And what does it mean? To begin to comprehend Jesus Christ's words, let's take a look at two very important verses. And the first of these is Isaiah 46 verses 9 and 10. We see something very important about the nature of our creator here.

Here God declares that he declares the end from the beginning. He states, reading from the new international version, I am God and there is no other. And there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning and from ancient times what is still to come. I say my purpose will stand and I will do all that I please. So God tells us several important things about himself here. First of all, he says that he can foretell the future, which he does over and over again through the prophecies that we read about in the Bible. But he also tells us that he alone has the power to bring to pass what he has foretold. That's why he says, I am God and there is no other. There is no other being, no other supposed God who has the power to predict the future and then bring that future to pass. It tells us what a great and awesome being he is.

And he also tells us here that he will intervene in human affairs to bring to pass what he has foretold will happen. And that is a sure thing that the great and almighty God will come to the fore in the future course of this world and in your life as well, at some point or another. A second verse for us to consider here is John 5 and verse 17.

And here Jesus Christ says, My Father has been working until now and I have been working. So God is, what this tells us, is that the Father and Jesus Christ are working. They have a plan that they're working out. That God is not just some being, as a lot of people envision Him, who created the world and then just stepped away like some kind of absentee landlord, moved away and is not active in running the affairs of this world anymore.

He's not. He is working. And Jesus Christ the Son is working as well. Both the Father and the Son are working out a plan and a purpose and promises that they have given that will bring His kingdom to this dying age and to our lives as well. So knowing that God the Father and the Son are working and that they have the power to bring to pass what they have foretold, we're better prepared to understand what Jesus Christ meant when He said the time is fulfilled. So there are several things we should notice here about the words in the original Greek that give us a deeper understanding of this here.

The word kairos, which is translated time here, it doesn't mean time as we commonly think about it, like the time as it passes by on the face of your watch or on a clock on your wall at home. It's not talking about that. Instead, it refers more to to a fixed moment in time, an appointment, you might say, a particular time when something is to happen.

That's the meaning of this particular word here. There is no exact English equivalent there. It basically means, as one Greek English dictionary puts it, it means a specific time when certain foreordained events take place. An appointment, if you will, a season. This word is often translated season, as in there are specific seasons for planting and harvesting, for instance. When that time of the year would roll around and the farmers would know this is the time to plant and this is the time to harvest.

A specific time when something is foreordained to take place. That is the meaning of the word time here, when Jesus says the time is fulfilled. It is a time that a specific thing is to take place. What about the word fulfilled? It's a Greek word, plureo.

Again, it's very difficult to translate precisely into English, a good one-word English equivalent. But it basically means to fill up something until it is completely full. The Bible uses it in the sense of there's an incident where the disciples are fishing and their nets are full of fish. It's the same exact word. It means to fill something to the brim, to fill it to the point of overflowing. In a prophetic sense, it means all the conditions are in place for a prophecy to be fulfilled. In other words, everything is set up.

Everything is ready. Everything is in place. The time is fulfilled for that prophecy to be fulfilled here. What it's talking about here, when Jesus Christ uses the phrase, The time is fulfilled, it means that the stage is now ready for God's gift to humanity, for the Messiah to appear, and to bring His message of the Kingdom of God. The good news of the Kingdom of God here. You might say a good way to translate this would be, The time was ripe.

In an agricultural sense, again, the word time has a seasonal connotation to it. So you could say, The time is ripe. The fruit is ready to be picked. The harvest is ready to be taken care of here, for God's plan to be fulfilled, to begin a cycle of planting and harvesting, according to His plan.

What had come to fruition at this point in time that Mark wrote about almost two thousand years ago? What conditions had been fulfilled to the full, ready for what was prophetically foretold to come to pass? So remember what we read a few minutes ago about Isaiah 46 and verse 10, from there, where God says, I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come? My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. What was it that had been foretold about this time that is now ready to be fulfilled? So let's see exactly what the purpose was that God had that is now about to come to fruition. So God does have a plan that has existed from before the world was even created. Notice here what Jesus Christ said in Matthew 25 and verse 34. This is breaking into the parable about the sheep and the goats, if you're familiar with that, between those who will receive a good reward, the sheep, and those who are the goats and receive a not so good reward. Here, so what does Jesus Christ says? He says to those who are receiving this good reward, come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation or the creation, as some other versions put it, of the world. So we see several important key points to notice here in this verse. We see that God has prepared a reward, a reward for those who do good there. And what is that reward? It's the kingdom of God. And it says this reward has been prepared from the foundation or the creation of the world.

This is how far back God's plan goes, goes all the way back to the time of the creation of the world. That's how long His plan and His purpose has been being worked out here.

And this tells us that He has prepared a kingdom as that reward for those who serve Him and commit their lives to Him. And He is carrying out that plan. So again, what had come to fruition to allow this plan to begin to be carried out here at this point? When Jesus Christ came preaching the gospel, the good news of the kingdom of God and saying the time was now fulfilled, what had come to fruition that God had foretold? Again, Isaiah 46.10, I make known the end from the beginning. God is carrying out this plan. And that plan was to have a people who would inherit the kingdom of God.

As Matthew 25.34 tells us, that was the plan, that was the goal that was established from the foundation of the world. And now conditions are falling into place for this to begin to be fulfilled. So what were some of the conditions, some of the prophecies that God had given that were now to begin to be fulfilled? They were beginning to be set into place for this plan to begin to unfold. The very earliest prophecy of the Bible is found in Genesis 3, verse 15. Familiar prophecy, if you're familiar with the story there. We read about it here. And of course Adam and Eve had been there in the Garden of Eden, and they had rejected the relationship that God, the Creator, wanted to have with them. They rejected that. They rejected the values. They rejected the laws that God was revealing to them there, and they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.

And then God foretells that the seed of Eve, the woman, Jesus Christ, would be wounded, but ultimately He would crush the head of the serpent. The serpent be representing Satan the devil by ultimately defeating the devil in His plan for mankind. We have two competing plans at work here. We have God's plan in purpose, and we have Satan's plan in purpose. And God foretells here that the seed of Eve would defeat the plan of Satan by crushing his head there.

So now we move forward, prophetically, for two thousand years to the time of an individual by the name of Abram, or Abraham, as He's better known to us. In Genesis 12, verses 1-3, we won't read all of this, but we'll focus in on a specific promise that God gives to Abraham here. A specific blessing that from one of His descendants, all the families of the earth would be blessed through the seed that is referred to there, seed singular, an individual, a descendant of Abraham, through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed. Who is that talking about? It's talking about the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. So we see here seeds, seeds of hope that are being planted prophetically, first all the way back to shortly after the Garden of Eden, and now about four thousand B.C. is His promise, excuse me, two thousand B.C. being given to Abraham here. Now we move forward prophetically another 600 years to the time of Moses and the Israelites. They're being led out of slavery in Egypt, and Moses is leading them to the Promised Land, and we find another promise in Deuteronomy 18 and verse 15 that is revealed through Moses, and under God's inspiration, Moses says that God will raise up another prophet like Moses, someone who would be a prophet, but more than a prophet. He would also be a deliverer to deliver a new people, a spiritual nation from spiritual bondage and enslavement. He would also be a new lawgiver, giving new meaning and purpose and understanding of the law of God.

So another seed of hope is being planted here prophetically that will ripen at the proper time.

So with all of this stated here, the people of Jesus Christ's day knew and understood these prophecies and various others we don't have time to get into, but they knew that the time was growing nearer for these prophecies to begin to be fulfilled. They were expecting a Messiah. We read about that in the Gospels where there's a huge expectation of the Messiah appearing at that time to become the new King of Israel there, the King who would overthrow the Romans and establish a new kingdom there, the Kingdom of God, as they understood it in their very limited way at that time.

So when Jesus Christ came saying the time is fulfilled, what time? Well, again, the time for these prophecies to come to pass because the conditions have now been met and this crucial point in history has arrived. You might notice, let's look here at Galatians 4 and verse 4 where the Apostle Paul writes from the New International Version, but when the time had fully come, this is a variation of the Greek word that we covered earlier about fulfilled here. So what it means is that conditions had now been filled to the full and everything was ready. And at this point, as we read here, Paul says God sent his Son, born of a woman. A specific reference back to the promise to Eve. There in Genesis 3.15 that we read earlier, the seed of the woman would be the fulfillment of this prophecy here. Born under law to redeem those under law that we might receive the full rights of sons. So what Paul is speaking about here is a pinpoint timing that the time is right now to plant the seed of the kingdom of God in a set in motion a harvest. And what will that harvest be? As we see here, it will be sons, children, offspring, daughters as well would be included there in the Greek term, who would receive the full rights of sons, who would receive an inheritance from their father, is what it's talking about, about God the Father. It's talking about children, literal children of God, who would be born into the family and the kingdom of God and receive that as their inheritance from the Father, an inheritance and a kingdom that was established from before the foundation of the world. So we come to Mark 1, verses 14 and 15, and we see that the seed is planted.

We see that Jesus Christ has come to earth in the form of a man, and we see another prophecy fulfilled now, a prophecy of Isaiah 7, in verse 14, a familiar prophecy to many of us, which says, Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.

What does Emmanuel mean? It means God with us. God with us. God with us in the flesh.

We won't turn there, but John 1, the first chapter of John, covers about how Jesus Christ did come in the flesh, and John writes about how He and the other disciples saw Him and lived with Him, and they touched Him, and He was there, He was real, He was God in the flesh. The Logos, as it's referred to there, the Word, come to live among human beings.

So He came as God in the flesh for four specific purposes here. What were they? Why did He come in the flesh? The first purpose was to be our Savior. To be our Savior. As John the Baptist said in John 1, in verse 29, you remember the words when Jesus came to Him to be baptized? And what did John say? He said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. How did He take away that sin? Took it away by offering Himself as the perfect sacrifice, which none of us could ever do. But He came as the perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God, the perfect sinless Lamb of God, to take away the sins of all humanity for all human beings who have ever lived for all time.

And by removing the sins that have cut off mankind from God, His sacrifice makes it possible for mankind to return to God. A second purpose for Jesus Christ coming in the flesh to earth was to destroy the works of the devil through carrying out this important aspect of God's plan. We read about this point in me in 1 John 3 in verse 8. It tells us here, For this purpose the Son of God was manifested. He appeared, in other words, as other versions put it, that He might destroy the works of the devil. What's that talking about? Well, again, there are two people whose plan are trying to carry out—two beings, I should say—carrying out their plans for mankind. One is God, the great God, the Creator of all in heaven, and the other is Satan, the devil, the enemy of mankind, as he's called. He's trying to carry out His plan, too, which is to deceive, and to destroy, and to kill mankind. And He's been doing a darn good job on it through all the centuries there. We see this in the war and the suffering all around us here. This is not God's world. We live in a world that is deceived by Satan. Revelation 12.9 says that Satan has deceived the whole world. He's carrying out his plan, but he's not going to be ultimately successful at that. We also read—we won't turn there—but we read in Revelation 20 verses 1 through 3. You might write that down, but it talks about how when Jesus Christ returns, Satan is going to be bound and put away for a thousand years so he can no longer deceive and blind the human race.

And it's only at that point that mankind will begin to understand what God's plan and purpose is all about and why they are here, why they were born, why they exist, and the great plan that God is carrying out for the human race. Continuing on here, a third purpose of Jesus Christ coming to earth was to become our high priest, to become our high priest. Hebrews 2, verse 17, reading from the 2th century version, I think this is a little clearer here, it says, For this reason Jesus had to be made like his brothers, talking about us, those who he is our elder brother, the one who has gone before us, and he had to be made like his brothers in every way so he could be their merciful and faithful high priest in service to God. Then Jesus could bring forgiveness for their sins.

What is unique about Jesus Christ? So many things, but one is that He was God.

Read about that in John 1 again, how He was in the beginning with God and He was God.

And He surrendered His divinities. We read about in Philippians 2, and He came to earth.

And He came in the lowest form. He came as a tiny, helpless human being, as a tiny baby, utterly dependent on His mother and His stepfather, for all of His needs, just like any baby, is totally helpless. And He lived as a human being for 33 years and experienced everything that we do in this life. He experienced pain, experience suffering, experience betrayal by His closest friends. All of His friends abandoned Him and run away. He knew what it was like in every way. As Hebrews tells us, He was tempted in every way as we are, and yet He never once sinned. And because of these experiences, He has become our perfect high priest, our intercessor, the one interceding for us on God's behalf, because He knows what it's like. He knows everything that we have been through, everything we can experience in this life He has gone through.

And therefore, He is our perfect high priest, because He became a physical, flesh and blood human being for our sakes. For our sakes. The fourth purpose of Jesus Christ coming in the flesh was to establish His church. To establish His church, as Jesus Christ said in Matthew 16 and verse 18. This is quoting from the New Century Version again here. He said, I will build My church, and the power of death will not be able to defeat it.

In other words, His church would exist from 2,000 years ago to this day. Yes, it's been small.

He refers to His church as a little flock. Not great, not large, not huge in its political power, influence, money, wealth, presence, that sort of thing. It's a little flock. Often a persecuted flock through the years, having to hide out from persecution by other political and religious authorities and so on. They were much more powerful there, and persecuting it because of the truth that it taught. He came to develop a spiritual body. Most people have a totally wrong concept of what a church is. We here in the United States think of churches as referring to a physical building. The Greek word that is used here for church is the Greek word ekklesia. It literally means in the Greek an assembly of called-out people. It's talking about a group of people. The people are the church. The building is not the church. We meet here at the United Church of God. We meet here on Saturday, the seventh day of the week. Here we meet in this building, the Northland Recreation Center. But the church is the people. It's not the building that we meet in. That's not what the New Testament means when it uses the word church. It's referring to a group of people instead. It's never used of a building in that way. So we see these four purposes here, and what is the purpose of this body, the church? It has a twofold purpose. You can read about it. We won't cover it, but in Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20 there, it talks about the purpose of the church. It's twofold. One is to prepare a people. What did Jesus Christ tell his church to do?

Told them to go to all the world, preach the gospel to every creature, and make disciples.

To make disciples. To make followers of Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus Christ made disciples among his followers, his church is also to make disciples. And how do they do that? He goes on to say, teaching them to observe all the things that I have commanded you. Teaching them the truth of God. That is why we as the publishers of the Good News magazine and publishers of the many booklets right there, we publish all kinds of booklets and all kinds of biblical subjects. What is your destiny? What is the point? Why are we here? How to understand the Bible? There's no book that we need to understand more than God's Word. Are we living in the time of the end? We have a number of different books on prophecy there, like the Middle East and Bible prophecy, the United States and Britain and Bible prophecy. Why is the United States in the sad shape that it's in right now? You'll find the answers to it in that booklet. The book of Revelation and Vail gives us an outline of history, prophetic history, from the first century all the way down to our day, and the return of Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and far beyond that, and to the future as God's plan unfolds for every human being who has ever lived.

What we are doing is teaching all people whatsoever things. God has commanded us. Jesus Christ has commanded us and taught us. That is our purpose here, to prepare a people, to prepare disciples, followers of Jesus Christ. I've given a sermon on this not too long ago. What is a disciple? A lot of people view it as just a student, a pupil-teacher relationship. It's much more than that. A student just wants to know what the teacher knows. A disciple wants to become like his teacher, like his master, like his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is what we as disciples are to be, to become like our teacher, like Jesus Christ, in every way, walking in his footsteps, living as he lived, in every way possible here.

And a second goal, as we also read about in Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20, is to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. Matthew 24, verses 14 and 15 says, this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness, and then the end will come. The end of what?

The end of this age of Satan's world. The end of this age. We wonder why the world is in such bad shape. Well, again, it's not God's world. It's Satan's world. He has deceived the whole world.

And because mankind is deceived and cut off from God through sin, that's why we have so much suffering, so many problems. Had several people write that they were not able to attend today's seminar. I'd love to come, but I can't. I haven't had a job for months now. I can't afford gas for my car. This type of thing. Just terrible, terrible financial difficulties. Why is the United States, which up until a few decades ago was the greatest lending nation in the world, the most wealthy nation in the whole history of the world, why in just a few decades have we become the nation with the most debt of any country in all of human history? Why do these things happen? Why do we see so much suffering throughout the world? It's because mankind is turned against God, rejected His laws, rejected His revelation, turned their backs on God, and insisted on doing things their own way. And as Proverbs 16, 25 tells us, there's a way that seems right to man, but the end thereof is the ways of death. The ways of death. And that's what we're seeing in this world around us here. Jesus Christ commissions His church to preach the gospel, the good news of a coming kingdom, a coming kingdom that we have the opportunity to be a part of. And that's what, again, the seminars are all about here. So these are the four purposes of Jesus Christ coming to earth that we covered here briefly, and the purpose of His church.

And the fourth, here again, is that His church would prepare a people and preach this good news of the coming kingdom of God. And now, prophetically, we come to the period when the time is ripe. When the time had fully come, and what happened at this point?

The time had fully come for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, to enter human history.

And as we read about earlier in Galatians 4 and verse 4, that the time had now fully come. The conditions were ripe here. And now we see a number of different prophecies being fulfilled. We'll just touch on a handful of them. One of them, Isaiah 9 and verse 2. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. When Jesus Christ came to the world, it was a world of great darkness, of worship of all kinds of supposed gods and goddesses, just horrible, horrible practices that they carried out in the worship of their gods.

It was a world blinded, again, by Satan, the god of this world. As we read about in 1 Corinthians 4.4, I believe it is, or possibly 2 Corinthians 4.4, it says, Satan appears as an angel of light, but he's not. He's the god of this world here. So a number of prophecies were waiting to be fulfilled here at this particular point in human history.

The conditions had to be ripe for this to be fulfilled. And what were some of those conditions? There were several major factors that made it right for the Messiah to appear at that time. We'll talk about just three of them briefly here. The first was the system of Roman roads and the Pax Romana. Pax Romana is a term, a Latin term. It means the Peace of Rome. In other words, the Roman Empire occupied what you might say is the position of the United States in the world today. It was the world's greatest superpower of the day. It was the world's policeman, you might say.

It was the policeman that kept order throughout the world there. Without the Roman Empire, before it appeared, before it had the power, there was just barbarism all over the world. It wasn't safe to travel the roads, the paths, a lot of robberies, murders, kidnappings, ransomings, kidnapping people for slavery, all kinds of plagues like that. But the Roman Empire came along, inherited or overcame the Greco-Roman Empire, started by Alexander the Great, and they established a level of peace and stability that the world had never seen before.

So here is a condition that is right now for the Messiah to appear and for the message, the good news of the Kingdom of God, to be spread in a systematic and established way. There was also the Roman roads there. We see them there. I've been to Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, places like that. And you can still see these Roman roads snaking across the countryside in various places. If you look closely at that, you can actually make out some of the ruts from the chariots of the Roman wagons and chariots of that day.

It's quite remarkable to see that, to realize you're standing on a 2,000-year-old road. Tell you what, they do a much better job of their roads than building than we do. You can see those roads and you don't see potholes in them like we see in our roads here in Denver this time of year here. They were marvelous, marvelous engineers.

They made much better use of their military. When their Roman military wasn't fighting, they put them to work building roads. They are an established, a huge network, kind of the equivalent of our interstate highway system across the Roman Empire. You could have sure roads and commerce and transportation and passage of military forces, but also commerce, trade goods, and all of this throughout the Roman Empire.

A marvelous system that had never existed before. The Romans built that up from scratch there. This created a secure, peaceful environment in which the gospel could be spread. The Apostle Paul was able to go from Israel, from Judea, Jerusalem, all the way up into Asia Minor, today's Turkey, all the way over through Greece, Macedonia, the cities there, Athens, Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, places like that, all the way over to Rome, preaching the gospel there in Rome.

Throughout the Roman Empire, he was able to travel and the other apostles as well, being able to spread the gospel. A second factor that allowed this to take place, again, to use an analogy with our modern day. Today, English is basically a universal language. You can go pretty much anywhere in the world and find people who understand English, or at least think they understand English, but they can get along.

You can communicate just about anywhere in the world with people because of an understanding of English. It's pretty much a universal language. And this was true in that day as well, except the language was Greek.

Well, you might say, but wait a minute, wasn't this the Roman Empire where Latin was spoken? Well, yes, that's true, but where did the Roman Empire came from? It absorbed the Greco-Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Greek, where Greek was spoken throughout that empire. So, actually, Greek was more or less absorbed into the Roman Empire and became the primary language of commerce and business and all of that during the Roman Empire period, just as English is the common universal language today as well. So, because of that, that's why our books of the New Testament were written in which language? They're written in Greek. It's because there was a universal language that the Apostles, the disciples, could now go pretty much anywhere in the Roman Empire and find people who could understand the message. They didn't spread it in Hebrew, they spread it in Greek, because that was the universal language of the Roman Empire of that day. And a third factor that really allowed the Gospel to be spread at that time was the system of Jewish synagogues. The system of Jewish synagogues, the Jewish people by this point in history, had been dispersed throughout the Mediterranean region there and the Roman Empire and along the trading routes and cities off to the east where they have been taken captivity by the Assyrians and the Babylonians long before that, several centuries before. And out of that dispersion, which is called the diaspora term you might have heard, which means the dispersion, came a system of synagogues. After the temple was destroyed, the Jewish and Hebrew people needed places to meet to worship. They no longer had a temple to go to there, so they set up a system of synagogues of local congregations, you might say.

Wherever there were ten adult men, they would establish a synagogue there. And these would become the springboards for explaining what the prophets meant and the understanding of God's law and God's Word here. And this is where the disciples, where the Apostle Paul, if you read the book of Acts, where did he go? When he went to a new city, he would go to the synagogue.

Because he knew there he would find people, not just Jews who were familiar with the prophecies of the coming of the Messiah, but also Gentiles who had come to also accept the Jewish religion of that day, and were there in the synagogues as well. You find that mentioned a fair amount in the book of Acts. And that was the nucleus from which the early church started. It was the converts they made through this system of synagogues throughout the Roman Empire. And this is where this really gets into somewhat mind-boggling when you think about the greatness of God's plan. And how he carries this out, because all these factors did not come together overnight.

Think about the time factors involved in just these three aspects that I've mentioned here. The Jews were dispersed throughout the world during the fifth and sixth centuries BC. That's when they were dispersed, fifth and sixth centuries BC. When did the Greek language come along? It didn't come along and be widely expected until Alexander the Great came along in the third century BC, 200 years after the Jewish diaspora there. And what about Rome? Rome didn't really officially become an empire until 27 BC, when Augustus, Caesar Augustus, became emperor there. So you have a span here of about 600 years that it took for these factors to come together and to make the conditions ripe for the Messiah to arrive and to start His church and to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God. All of these factors over six centuries ultimately came together and intertwined to make the conditions right for God to carry out that aspect of His plan, a plan that had been put in place, that had been established from the beginning, from the foundation of the world. So what I mentioned earlier that God is a... with God, timing is everything. He's a master of timing. It took centuries for all these factors to come together, for these prophecies to be fulfilled and the Messiah to arrive on the scene and to begin His work.

So what does this have to do with you? Yeah, a lot of interesting hearing history, but what does it have to do with you? What does it have to do with me? What does it have to do with all of us sitting here today listening to this message? Have you ever considered that the events of your life, like the events we've talked about here, are intertwined? Intertwined by the One who created you, the One who set your life in motion. Intertwined also for a purpose in God's prophetic plan.

A purpose, the specific purpose of bringing you to a point of understanding what the Kingdom of God is all about. Of understanding the good news of that Kingdom and the part that He wants you to have in it. Just like the people of that day 2000 years ago came to understand that they had lived in a world of darkness, a world of spiritual blindness, your eyes are being opened now.

Your eyes are being opened to truths that most of this world does not comprehend. It does not understand here. You may have come to the point of where you're beginning to realize that your old ways of doing things just don't cut it in today's world. When you're tired of being or feeling conquered by the world, beaten down, and knowing there's got to be more to this life, there's got to be a point, there's got to be a meaning, there's got to be a purpose for all of this to come together, there's got to be a reason why I am here on the earth. And the good news of the Kingdom of God is what ties it all together. I ask in the beginning, why are you here?

The Kingdom of God makes sense. It gives us the answer to that. Why you were born, what your destiny is here, and why you're here. Perhaps you're beginning to reach the point where you realize that God is ready and wanting to give your life meaning and purpose that are far beyond anything you've probably really understood or imagined before up to this point.

God is carrying out His plan, and that plan involves what Jesus Christ said to His disciples.

Matthew 24, 14, referred to this earlier, this good news of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. Again, the end of what? The end of this age of man, the end of man's ways of doing things on his own, cut off from God, and it will be replaced by the coming Kingdom of God. The book of Revelation tells us that Jesus Christ is coming as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Who are the other kings? If He's King of Kings, if He's Lord of Lords, who are the other kings? Who are the other Lords? We'll hear more about that in the second part of today's seminar here. Again, what does this have to do with you? We'll see the links. Begin to understand that in the second part of today's seminar.

You have received an invitation, or what the Bible refers to as a calling, as it's referred to in 2 Timothy 1, verses 8 and 9. Paul writes here, God has saved us and called us with a holy calling. Come! Accept my invitation! Come! That's what God is saying.

According to His own purpose and grace, His gift which was given to us in Christ Jesus, before time began. It's how far back God's plan and purpose for you goes before time began.

Or a phrase we've seen earlier in today's presentation before the foundation of the world.

It's how far back that great plan goes. And God is working out that plan, a plan that's been in place for thousands of years. A plan that involves His kingdom. A plan that involves you.

And why you're here, and why you're born. You not just as a part of the entire human race, but you personally. You individually. Today we've talked a lot about specific times, about fulfillments, of parts of God's plan. And perhaps a time of fulfillment is here for you today as well. Perhaps God has been leading you, intertwining the events, the story of your life, the circumstance of your life. Giving you a combination of experiences to create a pinpoint moment in time where the time is fulfilled. The time for you to be fulfilled. For you to take the next step, which will be the subject of our next presentation, which is the kingdom of God is at hand.

What does that mean? What does that mean for you? So as we break for a moment, just remember that God is not simply the creator of time, which He is, but He's also the master of timing. And we need to understand that God is the master of timing, and also our master as well. So we'll now take about a 15-minute break. We'll reconvene at 3.15 here. We'll hear from another elder here in the Denver area, Mr. David Hale. And I'd like to invite you. We do have coffee and lemonade over here. Feel free to take some of that. Again, we have a lot of booklets on these different subjects. I've mentioned several of them to you. Feel free to help yourself back here at the table there. And again, we'll start back at 3.15.