The Gospel of the Kingdom

I have started "The Gospel of the Kingdom" by George E. Ladd. Here are some highlights:

"The primary meaning of both the Hebrew word malkuth in the Old Testament and of the Greek word basileia in the New Testament is the rank, authority and sovereignty exercised by a king...First of all, a kingdom is the authority to rule, the sovereignty of a king."(p. 19) Italics are Ladd's.

"'Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' This prayer is a petition for God to reign, to manifest His kingly sovereignty and power, to put to flight every enemy of righteousness and of His divine rule, that God alone may be King over all the world."(p. 21) Italics are Ladd's

"When we trace this word in the New Testament, we discover that in the course of God's redemptuve purpose, there are two ages which are frequently called 'This Age' and 'The Age to Come.'"(p. 26)

"The point is this: it is the character of This Age to choke the working of the Word of God. The spirit of the Age is hostile to the Gospel.(p. 29)

"All forms of wickedness ultimately grow out of the root of unglodliness. Sin is primarily religious and secondarily ethical. Man is God's creature and his primary responsibility is towares God. The root of sin is found in his refusal to acknowledge in grateful dependence the gifts and the goodness of God (Rom 1:21), which are now imparted in Christ. Darkness is the assertion of independence rather than God-dependence."(p. 31)

"The New Testament sets The Age to Come in direct opposition to This Age. The present age is evil, but the Kingdom of God belongs to the Age to Come. The Kingdom of God, both as the perfect manifestation of God's reign and the realm of completed redemptive blessing, belongs to the Age to Come."(p. 31)

"Thus we find that the Kingdom of God belongs to The Age to Come and is set in sharp contrast to This Age. In This Age there is death; in the Kingdom of God, eternal life. In This Age, the righteous and the wicked are mixed together; the Kingdom of God, all wickedness and sin will be destroyed. For the present, Satan is viewed as the "god of this age;" but in the Age to Come, God's Kingdom, God's rule will have destryed Satan, and righteiousness will displace all evil."(p. 34)

"The solution of this problem is found in what we may call the Biblical prophetic perspective, a phenomenon which occurs throughout the prophetic Scriptures. Usually the prophets, as they looked into the future, spoke of coming events without attempting to give the temporal sequence of the several stages of the accomplishment of God's purpose. Not only is the distant future viewed as a single although complex event, but the immediate future and the distant future are described as though they constituted a single act of God."(p. 36)