#The kingdom of heaven wiki full#

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves (Matt. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. In Jesus’ seven woes to the scribes and Pharisees, He says,īut woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. In addition, proclaiming a message that is counter to the kingdom of heaven is condemnable. Therefore, rejecting the kingdom of heaven has eternal consequences. Everyone must repent because the kingdom of heaven is near.įurthermore, those who disobey this command are like chaff that will be separated from the wheat and burned with unquenchable fire (Matt. In fact, the call to repentance is grounded in the imminent coming of the kingdom of heaven. It is significant that John the Baptist, Jesus, and the disciples all preach the same message and each follows with the command to repent. When Jesus sends out His disciples, He also commissions them to proclaim, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. Using the phrase “the gospel of the kingdom,” Matthew explicitly connects the kingdom of heaven with the gospel. Just a few verses later, Matthew writes, “And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people” (Matt. Proclaiming the Kingdom of Heavenīoth the introduction to John the Baptist and the initiation of Jesus’ ministry are accompanied with the proclamation to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. The use of the word “heaven” would certainly help emphasize and reinforce the spiritual nature of the kingdom. But my kingdom is not from the world” (John 18:36). If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. However, while standing before Pilate at His trial, Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. The Jews were anticipating a physical kingdom, not a spiritual kingdom. So, there must be more going on than merely using the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” to avoid the word “God.” There must be another purpose for this phrase.Ī more plausible explanation is that Matthew did not want his Jewish readership to misunderstand the nature of the kingdom. Moreover, Matthew uses the phrase “the kingdom of God” on four occasions (Matt. However, Matthew does invoke the term “God” on numerous occasions. Many believe that Matthew uses “the kingdom of heaven” instead of “the kingdom of God” simply to avoid using the term “God.” It is certainly true that there was a Jewish tendency to avoid writing the divine name in the first century. The others opt to use the phrase “the kingdom of God” instead. Interestingly, Matthew is the only Gospel writer to adopt this terminology.

However, many Christians are confused about what it means. In fact, the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” is used over thirty times in Matthew’s Gospel. The kingdom of heaven is a central theme running all the way through the Gospel of Matthew.

I think this is true about the phrase “the kingdom of heaven.” We are so removed from the original time and place of its writing that understanding its meaning can require some work. But a great many of its inhabitants do wind up managing to leave in exile.Some Bible terminology can seem strange to our modern ears. Ultimately the invading force (The Greeks/The Saracens) manages to overtake the city. A young protagonist portrayed by Orlando Bloom (Paris/Balian) who had been involved in a love affair with a queen (Helen/Sibylla) who was trapped in a marriage with one of the villains steps up to the challenge during the climax to try and save lives in the face of great danger in spite of having the opportunity to escape earlier. By the end the city loses its chief protector (Hector/Tiberias) before the final assault and the good king in the city (Priam/Baldwin IV) dies. Both films thematically being about the questionable if not ultimately trivial motivations for and excuses used to get people fighting in war and how important they really are.

#The kingdom of heaven wiki full#

(Troy/Jerusalem) A corrupt and conniving man of nobility (Agamemnon/Guy de Lusignan) whose chief ally is a brutish warlord played by Brendan Gleeson (Menelaus/Reynald of Châtillon) seeks to expand his power, causing bloodshed in that pursuit which ignites full scale war. Each is a historical epic centering around the conflict over a sprawling and powerful city.