The Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, is one of the most central concepts in the history of revelation. Prepared in the Old Testament, notable in the so-called enthronement Psalms and in the prophecies, it makes its appearance in the overture of the New Testament as the contents of the great proclamation of salvation, first of the herald, John the Baptist, then of Christ himself: “The kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). Especially in the Synoptic Gospels, it remains in the foreground. It constitutes the nucleus of Christ’s parables; indeed, of his entire mission and message.
In John and Paul, however, it seems to withdraw. But this is only seemingly so, as Herman Ridderbos shows in detail in When the Time Had Fully Come.
