Preaching the kingdom of heaven was central to the early church’s ministry. This was true from the start of the gospel. God chose John the Baptist to prepare the way for Christ. His first and primary message was about the kingdom. He said, “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2).
The Nearness of the Kingdom
John proclaimed the kingdom was “at hand” (Matt 3:2). This time statement is important. It determines how we understand much of Biblical prophecy.
The Baptist did not suggest the kingdom
might be near. Some prophetic teachers say Christ offered the kingdom to Israel. When they rejected him as their King, God delayed the kingdom and called Gentiles into his church. In the future, he will establish the kingdom. This view robs John’s statement of its certainty.
This Greek term (
engizō) does not allow for the
possibility of nearness. It asserts an
actual nearness. It often refers to nearness of physical location (e.g., Matt 21:1). But our interest here is its use about time. It means “the occurrence of a point of time close to a subsequent point of time.”
2 Something is near in time or it is not.
John did not make a mistake. The kingdom of heaven was near, or “at hand.”
This announcement is the first kingdom time statement in the New Testament. Jesus and his apostles built on this foundation of imminence. For example, Jesus said, “There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matt 16:28).
After Jesus’s resurrection, the apostles knew he had gone to heaven to receive his kingdom (cf. Dan 7:13–14). They said he would soon return to end the Mosaic Age and complete the transition to the kingdom (e.g., Heb 10:37).
They agreed with John. The kingdom’s arrival in their near future was not a possibility, it was a certainty.
The Nearness of Wrath
Matthew 3 says something else was also near—the wrath of God on apostate Israel. When John “saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Matt 3:7).
This nearness is not as obvious as John’s earlier statement about the kingdom. So, we must dig a little deeper. Let’s begin by looking at Kenneth Wuest’s translation of John’s rebuke of the Jewish leaders. “He said to them, Offspring of vipers, who gave you a private, confidential hint that you should be fleeing from
the wrath (Gk.
orgē)
about to break at any moment?”
3
Wuest translates the Greek word
mellō,
4 which is often omitted. It can mean “to be about to, in purely temporal sense.”
5 This is the appropriate meaning here. John called for repentance because the kingdom was “at hand” (Matt 3:2). He now also warns of soon-coming wrath. The context suggests temporal nearness for this wrath.
John’s warning contains the first time statement in the New Testament about God’s wrath. It is a warning of God’s wrath against apostate Israel. That wrath would come in John’s near future.
The apostles reflect this orientation. Paul speaks of these same apostate Jews. He says they forbid “us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for
the wrath (Gk.
orgē)
is come upon them to the uttermost” (1 Thess 2:16). This was not some far-off wrath. It was in Paul’s immediate future.
God was about to judge apostate Israel. This soon-coming judgment was necessary to establish the soon-coming kingdom of heaven.
The Redefinition of Israel
John mentions another truth in this context. Jesus was redefining Israel. The apostate Jews relied on their genealogical link to Abraham. John warned, “think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father” (Matt 3:9).
In the kingdom age, physical descent from Abraham would not define Israel. Paul later ratified John’s statement. “They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom 9:8).
This redefinition had already begun as John spoke. God had started the process of killing Israel as defined in the Mosaic Age. John said, “now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire” (Matt 3:10). John said this in AD 26. When someone cuts its roots, a tree withers and dries.
Jesus advanced this imagery of apostate Israel on his way to Golgotha. He said, “If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” (Luke 23:31).
The Jews killed their Messiah soon after John the Baptist announced God had cut their roots. This murder occurred in AD 30 while Israel’s tree was still green.
Their tree dried during the last days of the Mosaic Age. As a result, their acts became ever more maniacal. At the end, Josephus describes their dry-tree insanity. After the Romans surrounded Jerusalem in AD 70 (cp. Luke 21:20), he said,
I suppose, that had the Romans made any longer delay in coming against these villains, the city would either have been swallowed up by the ground opening upon them, or been overflowed by water, or else been destroyed by such thunder as the country of Sodom perished by, for it had brought forth a generation of men much more atheistical than were those that suffered such punishments; for by their madness it was that all the people came to be destroyed.
Their dry-tree deeds showed it was time for God to cast them into the fire.
The Two Baptisms
In Matthew 3, John describes the soon-coming kingdom and judgment as a two-fold baptism. He said Jesus would “baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Matt 3:11).
We have been discussing the baptism of fire. John said God’s wrath was “about to break at any moment” (Matt 3:7).
God burned apostate Israel (the dry tree) in the “great tribulation” of AD 66–70. This included the incineration of the Temple. Josephus, a Jew, said he lamented because
it was a seditious temper of our own that destroyed it; and that they were the tyrants among the Jews who brought the Roman power upon us, who unwillingly attacked us, and occasioned the burning of our holy temple.
This was Israel’s baptism with fire.
But, as we saw earlier, John proclaimed another soon-coming event—the arrival of the kingdom (Matt 3:2). This kingdom required another kind of baptism—a baptism “with the Holy Ghost” (Matt 3:11).
The disciples needed this baptism to do the work before them. After his resurrection, Jesus gave them instructions regarding it. “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Jesus baptized elect Jews with the Holy Ghost on Pentecost, 50 days after his resurrection (Acts 2:1–3). He baptized apostate Jews with fire in the “great tribulation” (Matt 24:21) of AD 66–70.
Conclusion
John said these soon-coming events would winnow Israel as grain. Jesus would “thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matt 3:12).
The winnowing of men continues throughout the Messianic Age. It will culminate in the final judgment. But that was not John’s primary meaning. He was describing the establishment of the kingdom and God’s judgment of Israel. Both were about to happen in his day. God would soon gather the elect Jews into his kingdom granary. He would destroy the non-elect Jews in the fires of the “great tribulation” in his generation (Matt 24:21, 34).
