For thine is the kingdom The Lord’s Prayer
Kingdom here for the second time in this prayer, making it the beginning and the end of the prayer. This harks back to the dawn of creation, when Lucifer, the son of the morning, tried to usurp God the Father’s kingdom from Him, wanting His power, honor, glory and kingdom. Jesus said regarding this division in the Kingdom of God in Heaven:
“And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:”[i]
Therefore, Satan and his followers were ejected from God’s presence and kingdom. They were sent to earth as was described by Moses:
“And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.
But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.”[ii]
Lucifer’s language is not the language of a humble obedient son who has no desires for glory of his own, only to do all the Father’s will and make Him honored and more glorious. Not only does Satan remake the Father’s plan after the manner of his controlling, forceful way, but he brags that his plan is better than the Father’s since “not one soul shall … be lost.” After showing such immense disrespect in front of all the hosts of heaven, he then wants to dethrone the Father and get all His glory and honor and kingdom.
The Savior, in contrast, only wanted to submit himself humbly to all the suffering necessary to follow the Father’s plan, risking his life for the Father and all of the Father’s spirit children, the rest of us.
“But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.”[iii]
Many of Heavenly Father’s spirit children apparently were afraid of the risks of the moral agency which the Father would give them here on earth, afraid of failing and losing the eternal kingdom forever, followed the deceptive, pleasing to the ear, logical reasoning of Lucifer. A war started in heaven, led by the rebellious Satan and those who believed in his kingdom of coercion.
Satan and the hosts that followed him were cast out of heaven down to this earth where he immediately began to plan and scheme the complete usurpation of God’s kingdom on earth, taking honor and glory and power through his followers on earth, building earthly kingdoms after his image, kingdom’s that ruled tyrannically with bloody and horrific violence, making everyone slaves to despots that were among the worst humans to have ever lived.
“Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;
And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice.”[iv]
There have only been two times in two specific locations where the kingdom of God was established in its fulness on the earth in contrast to the near continuous warfare between Satan’s earthly kingdom’s of force and domination. The first one was led by Enoch the prophet and the people became so righteous that as a kingdom, they were taken up to heaven to join the heavenly kingdom of the Father. The second was the kingdom set up by Jesus Christ himself in the Americas after his resurrection which lasted for two hundred years. As Jesus had prophesied 200 years earlier, when the people became selfish and wicked and destroyed not only the heavenly kingdom on earth but their entire kindred and nation, leaving only ruins and their enemies as stark reminders of the end of all earthly kingdoms.
Jesus tried diligently to set up a lasting heavenly kingdom in the Old World. However, he prophesied that it would not last because of wickedness. John the Baptist was the forerunner to this kingdom, and preached that the entrance or gateway to it was repentance and baptism for the remission of sins. Jesus called the Twelve Apostles who further established the kingdom of God on the earth by conferring the gift of the Holy Ghost or baptism of fire to those who were baptized by John and themselves. The apostle Paul and later John would document the destruction of the kingdom of God set up by Jesus Christ himself through pride, sin, false teachers and grievous wolves who would enter the flock.
The book of Revelations documents that there was not much left of the Kingdom of God at the time it was written some 70 years after Christ’s crucifixion. It would not be long before the churches would no longer listen to the wandering Jew, John the beloved, who Christ prophesied would not taste of death till He came again. So the Kingdom was lost for a time.
Moses tried to set up the heavenly kingdom, and after washing, anointing and clothing 70 priests, they rebelled and would not go up with him to the top of Mt Sinai where there was lightning and thunder, preferring instead for Moses only to intercede for them like the priests of Egypt. Moses wanted a kingdom of priests like unto himself in a heavenly kingdom. Instead the Israelites would eventually beg to be like other wicked nations around them and have a wicked earthly king ruling over a wicked idolatrous earthly kingdom.
“And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!”[v]
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“And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king….
And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.
Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;
That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.”[vi]
Peter prayed for such a heavenly kingdom led by righteous royal priests, when he said:
“If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:
Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.”[vii]
Peter’s vision of the kingdom included Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone, lively stones of the kingdom’s subjects, all with royal (kingdom) priesthood, holy nation, peculiar people, and people of God having obtained forgiveness of sins and mercy through the blood of the Lamb.
John, the Revelator, saw these priests of the earthly/heavenly kingdom in vision:
“Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.
After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;
And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.
And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,
Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.”[viii]
Here, the worthy members of the earthly kingdom of God, “the servants of…God” are sealed in their foreheads like kings and priests are joined with innumerable others of the earth when the earthly kingdom of God is joined with the heavenly kingdom of God and all worship God the Father and His Son, the Lamb of God.
If the Old World kingdom of God which Jesus Christ set up was to fail with the deaths of the apostles, was their a promised latter-day kingdom of God to be set up to be a forerunner like John the Baptist to the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Daniel prophesied of such a kingdom in his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the giant stature with his head of gold representing the earthly kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar being smashed to pieces by a latter-day kingdom made by God on a mountain out of a stone that would start small as a kingdom and roll down the mountain from God to become bigger and bigger as an heavenly kingdom till it smashed to pieces all the earthly kingdoms represented by the 10 weak toes and filled the whole earth in the millennium.
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.[ix]
Paul prophesied that before the coming of the Lord, and the setting up of his kingdom on the earth, that their should be a falling away first, similar to the mess of iron mixed with clay toes in the vision of Daniel:
That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.[x]
So Christ’s first kingdom of God in the Old World would be usurped by a man after the image of Lucifer who wanted all the glory for himself. Certainly we have seen many such dictators since Paul’s day till now.
The restitution of all things and the kingdom of God at the end of time before Christ’s coming was also prophesied by Isaiah, multiple prophets and Christ himself. Isaiah and Micah prophesied:
And it shall come to pass in the last days, when the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.[xi]
And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.[xii]
Peter prophesied:
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.[xiii]
Jesus prophesied:
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.[xiv]
Jesus answered and said to them, Indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things.[xv]
Before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the millennium, these verses explain that the gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached unto all nations. Elijah come and restore all things in the time of the restitution of all things ever spoken by the holy prophets. The kingdom that will be set up as an ensign to all people everywhere Zion is established for the last time for the gathering of people from every nation.
And thus, with the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations; [xvi]
After the fall of every earthly kingdom, institution, organization of man built by the devil, then the Kingdom of Heaven can come down on earth to become one with the Kingdom of God on the earth.
And Jesus Christ shall reign personally on the earth as King of that future millennial kingdom.
[i] Matthew 12:25
[ii] Moses 4:1
[iii] Moses 4:2
[iv] Moses 4:3-4
[v] Numbers 11:29 KJV
[vi] 1 Samuel 8:10,18-20 KJV
[vii] 1 Peter 2: 3-6,9-10 KJV
[viii] Revelations 7:3-4,9-12 KJV
[ix] Daniel 2:44-45 KJV
[x] 2 Thessalonians 2:2-4 KJV
[xi] Isaiah 2:2-3 KJV, see also Micah 4:2 KJV
[xii] Isaiah 11:12 KJV
[xiii] Acts 3: 19-21 KJV
[xiv] Acts 24:14 KJV
[xv] Matthew 17:11 NKJV
[xvi] D&C 87:6