Lessons on the Kingdom of God from the Eighteenth-Century Baptists

The nature of the kingdom of Christ is of paramount importance for Christians. It was the major theme of our Lord’s incarnate ministry, and likewise formed the heart of the apostolic message deposited in the New Testament. Yet there are some today who wish to interpret the kingdom of God as a means to dress their own political ideals in the garb of biblical language.¹For the purposes of this essay, I use kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, and kingdom of Christ as synonymous. As a result, many have feared to embark on an exploration of the kingdom concept, not knowing what other trails must of necessity be trod to reach the destination, especially as “kingdom” has implications for ecclesiology, ethics, and eschatology.

Lamentably, the decline of “Christendom” and the rise of secularism has opened the door for political polarization, genuine perplexity, and lucrative platforms for ambitious tribal leaders—all within the church. It is especially difficult to discern left from right when misinformation and disinformation is disguised in biblical language in order to justify particular perspectives. In such moments, the study of church history is most helpful—not as a withdrawal to bury our heads in dusty books, but as a lifting of our heads out of the smog of tyrannical urgency and into “the clean sea breeze of the centuries.”²C.S. Lewis, introduction to Athanasius, On the Incarnation, Popular Patristics Series 44A (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 13.

I believe the Baptists of the eighteenth century—especially in England—have a perspective that is important for contemporary Christians. They were a few generations removed from the tumult of the Act of Toleration in 1689, so they were able to spread out to stretch their ecclesial and political muscles. Many of them were living in the Age of Enlightenment, the age of the transatlantic revivals, and the age that saw the American and French Revolutions. If ever there was a need for clarity about the limits of human power, the allowable means of gospel advancement, and the relationship of civil and churchly authority, this was it.

In this essay, I summarize the thought of four notable Calvinistic Baptists in England—John Gill, Caleb Evans, Abraham Booth, and John Ryland, Jr.—specifically as they addressed the nature of the kingdom of God. Each ministered in prominent locales and held significant speaking and writing ministries among the churches of their denomination and beyond. It is hoped that the perspectives  of these revered ministers about the kingdom of God will both challenge and form the political imagination and ecclesial focus of evangelical Christians today.

Rightly Distinguishing with John Gill (1697–1771)

Gill clearly articulates what has been understood in the Reformed tradition as Two-Kingdoms theology.³For a basic understanding of Reformed distinctions related to the kingdoms, see “regnum Christi” in Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, 2nd ed. (Baker Academic, 2017), 308–309. In all the recent discussion of the concept of the nature and implications of the kingdom(s), there hasn’t been much investigation into historic Baptist sources.⁴For a sampling of the recent discussion, Brad Littlejohn has written a “guide for the perplexed,” David VanDrunen has several publications on the issue (like this one)—though Littlejohn and VanDrunen differ on key points concerning this doctrine and its application—and Jonathan Leeman addressed the matter quite differently as well (here). I will not venture to analyze or summarize the online discussions that so often devolve into madness. On account of his voluminous writing, extent of influence, and unquestionable orthodoxy, Gill is as good a source as any to get the ball rolling.

Gill believed, “Christ is King in a two-fold sense,” which is an important place to begin.⁵John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London, 1769), 2:696. For a helpful survey of Gill’s view of the kingdom, see Morgan Byrd, “Gill’s Kingdom Taxonomy: Christ, the Church, and the History of the World,” The Hanover Review, 2.1, The Theology of John Gill (March 2024): 38–52. Whatever we say of the two kingdoms, they are united under the singular, personal kingship of Jesus.

1.     Gill said that Christ is “a king by nature.” Since the Son is divine, “he has a right of dominion over all his creatures.”⁶Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2:696. In other words, because of his divine nature, Christ is Lord of all, both in heaven and on earth, both holy and fallen angels, both righteous and wicked men. By virtue of being the creator, he is an absolute sovereign over all things.
2.     Also, Christ is a king “by office.” Since the Son was appointed from eternity to his office of Mediator of the covenant of grace, he exercises his kingship in a way peculiar to his mediatorial office.⁷Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2:696. This is to say, Christ’s kingship is uniquely expressed toward his elect, in a way of redemption and blessing.

It’s the second that elicits the most questions. So how does Christ exercise his kingship in a way peculiar to his mediatorial office? Gill said that just as Christ is King in a “two-fold sense,” Christ has “a two-fold kingdom.” Terms vary in the literature on the two kingdoms, but Gill described it this way: 

1.     Christ has a kingdom that is “natural, essential, universal, and common to him with the other divine persons.” This is “the kingdom of nature and providence,” which “he has a natural right unto, and claim upon.” In other words, as a divine person, all things belong to him and his dominion extends over all created things, without exception. As God, “he has a right to rule over them.”⁸Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2:696–697.

But again, a second category invites the most questions.

2.   Gill continued, “there is another kingdom that belongs to Christ as God-man and Mediator; this is a special, limited kingdom; this concerns only the elect of God.”⁹Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2:697. This kingdom was put into Christ’s hands by the Father in the covenant of redemption before creation, and it is in this way that Christ exercises his kingship in a way peculiar to his mediatorial office. While he is a kingly ruler over creation, he is a kingly mediator only for the church. This kingdom is completed when the full number of the elect have been effectually called, at which point, Christ the Mediator will “deliver up the kingdom to the Father, perfect and entire, that God may be all in all.” (1 Cor. 15:24)

This second “special kingdom” is sharply contrasted to the first, which is worldly (note, Gill’s use of worldly doesn’t mean “sinful” but “common” to the affairs of life which Christians share with non-Christians): “Though it is in the world, it is not of it; its original is not from it; it is not founded on maxims of worldly policy; it is not established by worldly power, nor promoted by worldly means, nor attended with worldly pomp and grandeur.”¹⁰Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2:707–708.

There’s an interesting caveat Gill made when speaking about the “special kingdom:” it concerns the elect only, “and others only as they may have to do with them, even their enemies.”¹¹Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2:697. Exactly what he meant by the latter phrase is unclear, but if I may venture a guess, he means that the non-elect “have to do with” the kingdom but are not “subjects” of this kingdom. The providential paths of non-Christian neighbors and institutions, like the civil magistrate, are bound up with the kingdom of God, like scaffolding on a building in progress, but the scaffolding isn’t part of the building. It serves a temporary, external-to-the-kingdom purpose, which allows for the construction of the building, without comprising part of its fundamental structure.

But Gill was clear that the actual subjects of the special kingdom are only the elect of God in all ages. The kingdom did not include “the people of the Jews, as a body politic, of whom Christ was never king in such a sense,” which is to say, neither outward conformity to ceremonies nor formal constitution as a nation in covenant with God had any direct correlation to status in the kingdom.¹²Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2:703. The elect of God are eventually called by his grace, make a profession of their faith, and become members of the visible church. Thus, the visible church is the manifestation of the special kingdom in history. Because of this, “the form and manner of Christ’s executing his kingly office” over his “special kingdom” is the external ministry of the word and discipline in the churches, and the internal ministry of the Holy Spirit in the heart.¹³Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2:704. Notably, the “special kingdom” does not use the means of the “common kingdom” for its maintenance or advancement.¹⁴Gill held some complicated eschatological views that do not fit neatly into modern categories. Part of that entailed differentiating between a personal reign of Christ on earth (bodily) for a literal thousand years, and a spiritual reign (also a thousand years in some sense) in which “all civil power and authority shall be in the hands of true Christians.” See Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, 2:708, 710. Neither of these periods seem to equate to the presence of the special kingdom on earth.

In these ways, Gill helps us to properly distinguish between two senses of Christ’s kingship and two senses of Christ’s kingdom, which is fairly standard in Baptist theology of this period and, I believe, should be received by us today. It is notable that Gill died in 1771, before the American and French Revolutions. This period that followed Gill’s death surely offered Particular Baptists an opportunity to further develop their own political theology in a way consistent with their principles. Ian Clary has ventured his own assessment of Gill’s political theology as it pertains to the duties of the civil magistrate in relation to true religion and the church—which was quite different from his Baptist compatriots—but more research is needed in this area before we declare definitively what Gill believed on such matters and why and how he differed from other Baptists in this era.¹⁵See Ian Hugh Clary, “‘The First Care of Government’: John Gill on the Magistrate and the Church,” The Hanover Review, 2.1, The Theology of John Gill (March 2024): 4–23. Such research will necessarily have to factor in Gill’s theology of the Two Kingdoms.

Rejecting Secularization with Abraham Booth (1734–1806)

Something was in the water in the late 1780s. In 1788, the American Presbyterians modified the Westminster Confession to no longer affirm a state-established church. That same year, Abraham Booth, a Particular Baptist minister across the pond in London, published An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ.¹⁶The essay saw several editions before Booth’s death, including an American edition in 1791. This essay uses the text from the 1813 edition of Booth’s collected works. An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, in The Works of Abraham Booth, 3 vols. (London: J. Haddon, 1813), 2:233–327. He showed from a Baptist covenantal reading of Scripture that the nature of the kingdom of God is inconsistent with the concept of a national church. While it’s hard to say that the American Presbyterians made their change because of a particular understanding of the kingdom of God, it’s very clear that that undergirded Booth’s Baptist perspective. “Christendom,” with its wedding of church and state, was not a category the eighteenth-century Baptists sought to encourage or retrieve.¹⁷Charles Hodge believed that this “novel, yet sound” change in the American edition reflected a change in conviction for the better: “Since the time of Constantine, in no part of Christendom and by no denomination has the ground been assumed, until a recent period, that the state and church should be separate and independent bodies. Yet to this doctrine the public mind in this country has already been brought, and to the same conclusion the convictions of God’s people in all parts of the world seem rapidly tending.” He attributed the change to (1) a recognition of the distinct spheres of church, state, and family, (2) an understanding that “the Old Testament economy” is not the pattern of our relative duties in each sphere, but we “must derive our conclusions from the New Testament,” (3) a rejection of Lutheran and Reformed interpretations of the “official duties” of magistrates, and (4) the means by which a state-established church can accomplish its duties require the violation of individual consciences, resulting in “incalculable evil.” Therefore, “we have reason to rejoice in the recently discovered truth, that the church is independent of the state, and that the state best promotes her interests by letting her alone.” Booth and his fellow Baptists would heartily agree! Charles Hodge, “The Relation of Church and State,” The Princeton Review, vol. 35, no. 4. (October 1863): 691–693. In fact, it was in the twilight of “Christendom” thus defined that allowed the dawn of the Baptist movement.

Booth rooted his Essay in the text of John 18:36, where our Lord said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world,” a statement “pregnant with needful instruction to all his disciples, respecting the New Oeconomy and the Christian Church.”¹⁸Booth, Essay on the Kingdom, 241. The opening words of his preface reveal that, despite it being “but seldom professedly discussed,” Booth viewed significant features of Christian piety to lie downstream of one’s view of the kingdom of Christ.¹⁹Booth, Essay on the Kingdom, 237. The nature of the kingdom of Christ “is closely connected with our duty and our happiness: which acquaintance must be derived from divine revelation.”²⁰Booth, Essay on the Kingdom, 237.

Booth was quick to identify that some differences of interpretation regarding the kingdom of God are the result of “political artifices, which either impeach the domain of Christ in his own kingdom; or degrade and corrupt that worship which he requires.”²¹Booth, Essay on the Kingdom, 238. In other words, political motivations can cloud our thinking and can have more of a steering influence on our theology than we care to admit. Certainly there are ways in which Booth was not immune to his own critique of “the other side.” But the question for Booth always came back to, What saith the scriptures? “Facts are stubborn things; and the sayings of Jesus Christ must not be explained away, that conscience may rest in a false peace, or that the public taste may be gratified.”²²Booth, Essay on the Kingdom, 239. In other words, neither reactivity to cultural decline nor the effort to maintain cultural respectability can come prior to God’s Word.

Like Gill, Booth recognized a sense of “kingdom” or “empire” that extends over all creation by way of “general Providence,” but he believed the kingdom of Christ to be “no other than the Gospel Church,” by which he meant the universal church which manifests as a “visible kingdom” in local churches.²³Booth, Essay on the Kingdom, 242–243. Booth also uses the term “the Catholic Church” (244). To expound this, Booth’s Essay is structured around seven theses.

1. “The Gospel Church is a kingdom not of this world, with regard to its origin.” (244)
2. “The kingdom of Christ is not of this world, respecting the subjects of his righteous government.” (245)
3. “The kingdom of Christ is not of this world, with regard to the means he employed in its first establishment, and those he appointed for its enlargement and support.” (269)
4. “The kingdom of Christ is not of this world, in regard to the laws by which it is governed.” (284)
5. “The kingdom of Christ is not like the empires of this world, in regard to external splendour.” (290)
6. “The kingdom of Christ is not of this world, relative to its immunities, its riches, and its honours.” (305)
7. “The kingdom of Christ is not like the dominions of secular princes, with regard to its limits and its duration.” (311)

For Booth, the Jews misunderstood the nature of the kingdom, which resulted in their rejection of the Messiah when he appeared. The lesson to learn from this misunderstanding is that, 

It behoves us to guard with diligence against every thing which tends to secularize the dominion of Christ…. Our danger of contracting guilt, and of incurring divine resentment in this way, is far from being small. For we are so conversant with sensible objects, and so delighted with exterior show, that we are naturally inclined to wish for something in religion to gratify our carnality. Under the influence of that master prejudice, the expectation of a temporal kingdom, Jewish depravity rejected Christ; and our corruption, if we be not watchful, may so misrepresent his empire, and oppose his royal prerogatives, as implicitly to say, We will not have him to reign over us.²⁴Booth, Essay on the Kingdom, 240–241.

Space prohibits us from a complete survey of Booth’s Essay, but on the theme of rejecting secularization, his concern was that we not allow the metrics of “success” in the common kingdom dominate our evaluation of the redemptive kingdom. The kingdom is spiritual and so is not to be appraised by worldly standards, such as number of people, money in the bank, and positions of power. “Conversant with sensible objects” as we are, which is perfectly fine for our life in the common kingdom, we must remember the fundamentally spiritual and inner reality of the kingdom, even as it has implications and manifestations in the physical and outward-facing lives. Booth attributes our innate preference for “exterior show” to carnality—the sinful prioritization of the flesh over the spirit. With this in mind, it may very well be the case that the kingdom is growing even while Christian influence in national politics and popular media is sinking lower and lower. The progress of the kingdom simply is not measurable by what is seen. To insist on ever-expanding Christian influence in the halls of cultural and political power is to imbibe the mindset of the wicked citizens in Luke 19:14, “We will not have him to reign over us.” 

Refining Focus with Caleb Evans (1737–1791)

Caleb Evans was the principal of the Bristol Baptist Academy from 1779 until 1791. In 1770, he helped to form the Bristol Education Society to raise support for the seminary. The society held an annual meeting in which respected ministers from around the country gave an address (usually a sermon). In 1775, Evans was asked to give the address and he chose for his subject “The Kingdom of God,” a sermon from Matthew 6:10, the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come!” Printed on the title page stood the words of Matthew 6:33, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.”²⁵Caleb Evans, The Kingdom of God. A Sermon Preached in Broad-mead, Bristol, before the Bristol-Education Society. August 16, 1775 (Bristol: W. Pine, T. Cadell, M. Ward, G. Keith, J. Buckland, W. Harris, 1775). Evans’s sermon on the kingdom is especially interesting because he paid keen attention to the politics of his day and wrote treatises on various matters of political concern, yet here he expressed himself with skill, conviction, and moderation.

He observed that in the model prayer, the hallowing of the divine name stands first. Then, “as that by which his name would be eminently hallowed, we are taught to pray for the advancement of his kingdom in the world: hereby suggesting to us, that the prosperity and establishment of this kingdom, should be considered as an object of the first importance, and which demands our first and principal attention.”²⁶Evans, The Kingdom of God, 5–6. His sermon consisted of an overview of the concept of the kingdom, followed by a consideration of the implications of the command to pray for its advancement.

First, Evans taught that “the proprietor of this kingdom is God.”²⁷Evans, The Kingdom of God, 6. While “every kingdom is God’s,” he said, “there is nevertheless a kingdom which in a more confined and peculiar sense, the great God considers as his own, and in the government and happiness of which he takes supreme pleasure. This is the gospel kingdom.”²⁸Evans, The Kingdom of God, 6. The “gospel kingdom” is “that spiritual kingdom which he hath seen fit to erect to himself out of the ruins of the fall, and in the establishment, prosperity and perfection of which, he displays, I had almost said, all his grandeur and glory.”²⁹Evans, The Kingdom of God, 6. This gospel kingdom is none other than the church of Jesus Christ, and for this reason, the formation and advancement of the kingdom is the proclamation of Christ and him crucified. Evans noted that the design of the kingdom was revealed to Adam in Genesis 3:15, “the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” It was then revealed by Moses and the prophets, and finally by the incarnate Son and his apostles.

The glory of this kingdom is not to be judged by “the eyes of worldly men” because Christ declared “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).³⁰Evans, The Kingdom of God, 8. As such, “the kingdom he came to establish, boasts not of that outward pomp and splendor which constitute the pride of the kingdoms of this world, but stands illustriously by a glory infinitely superior. And never has the beauty of this spiritual kingdom been more marr’d and defac’d than when men have ignorantly attempted to adorn it with the false glare of worldly grandeur and magnificence.”³¹Evans, The Kingdom of God, 11. Instead, the true glory of the kingdom is seen in “that grand simplicity of Innocence, Truth and Virtue.”³²Evans, The Kingdom of God, 11.

Evans listed “the distinguishing excellencies” of the spiritual kingdom as (1) holy and righteous, (2) peaceful and happy, and (3) universal and everlasting. Because of these excellencies, “the seat of the empire is the heart…the understanding, the will, the affections are the ministers employed by him in his government.”³³Evans, The Kingdom of God, 12. The law of love to God and neighbor govern this kingdom. Far from coercion by external force, “in this kingdom there are no oppressive statutes,” and its administration “is to form the subjects of it to the love and practice of holiness, to redeem them from all iniquity, and purify them as a peculiar people zealous of good works.”³⁴Evans, The Kingdom of God, 13. Despite the imposition of pretenders, the kingdom embodies these excellencies. Though imposters may say, “Lord, Lord,” alongside the faithful, the imposters are foreigners to the kingdom of God. Evans emphasized that religious pretenders were self-deceived, never in the kingdom, despite their outward attendance upon religious services. From this it seems that Evans’s view of the spiritual kingdom was equivalent to the invisible church, since the visible church is often beset with false professors.³⁵Precisely how Evans related the visible and invisible church is difficult to say with the material we have from him. In context, he seems to indicate that membership in a visible church does not necessarily mean membership in the kingdom. True conversion is the crucial factor. Similarly, worldly princes can provide outward blessings, but cannot provide peace to the conscience or joy to the soul. Jesus is the Prince of peace, and by his Spirit can regenerate the soul and purify the conscience.

Importantly for this essay, Evans said that “The kingdoms of this world, those of them which are the best constituted and the most wisely regulated, shall all yield to decay and ruin….But the kingdom of God, the gospel kingdom, notwithstanding the united opposition it hath met with in every age from the kingdoms of this world, survives the general ruin and stands amidst all.”³⁶Evans, The Kingdom of God, 16. Furthermore, “The kingdom of God has been a growing increasing kingdom from the very beginning, nor shall it cease to grow and thrive in one form or another, till it hath absorbed all other kingdoms, and the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign without a rival for ever and ever.”³⁷Evans, The Kingdom of God, 17–18. He added, “The kingdom of grace on earth, what is it but the beginning, the earnest of the kingdom of glory in heaven.”³⁸Evans, The Kingdom of God, 18. Thus we see a significant emphasis on the distinction and discontinuity between the common and redemptive kingdoms (they will “all yield to decay and ruin” but the gospel kingdom “survives the general ruin and stands amidst all”). Yet he also believed the gospel kingdom will “absorb all other kingdoms.” I know not how to reconcile these ideas, but apparently Evans felt no need to.

Second, Evans enumerated three implications of our being instructed to pray for the advancement of this gospel kingdom. The advancement of the kingdom (1) is “highly important and desirable,” (2) is “dependent upon God,” (3) assumes our willingness “to do all we can, as humble instruments in the hand of God, to promote its prosperity and glory.” Evans appealed to the patriotism of his audience:

Do we wish well to the British Empire, as freemen, as Englishmen; how much more should we as Christians wish well to Christ’s Empire? The happiness resulting from the best constituted government in the world of a natural kind, is and can be but temporal, but the happiness resulting from the spread, establishment and prosperity of the spiritual kingdom of Christ is eternal. The advancement of knowledge in general, of the arts and sciences, of trade and commerce, is in various views highly desirable; but what are any, what are all of these things compared to the advancement of God.³⁹Evans, The Kingdom of God, 19.

It is evident that Evans saw a clear distinction between the temporal worldly kingdom and the eternal spiritual kingdom, such that the kingdom of God is not to be measured by such metrics as the state of knowledge, arts, sciences, trade, and commerce. In other words, the advancement of the spiritual kingdom does not necessarily correlate with the advancement of human civilization. For this reason, only God can advance this kingdom: “To whom can we look for the advancement, the growth, the establishment, the prosperity and consummation of this kingdom, but to that God whose kingdom it is?”⁴⁰Evans, The Kingdom of God, 19–20. Because of the testimony of God’s sovereign care and preservation of his spiritual kingdom in ages past, there is every reason to be hopeful for his continued blessing in the days to come. Finally, Evans says it is rank hypocrisy to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” without a sincere readiness to be used as a means by which God will answer that prayer.

Remaining Hopeful with John Ryland, Jr.

John Ryland, Jr. rose to prominence while he pastored the Baptist church in Northampton alongside his father (the inimitable John Collett Ryland). He was a close friend to Andrew Fuller, William Carey, John Sutcliff, and helped to form the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792. Also in 1792, he was asked to succeed Caleb Evans as principal of the Bristol Academy, one of the most influential posts among British Baptists. There, Ryland solidified his legacy as a humble minister, a tremendous intellect, and a true statesman for the denomination. Upon arriving in Bristol in 1794, he became the pastor of the Broadmead church and assumed a leading role in the Western Association. Later that year, he preached a sermon at the association’s annual meeting, entitled, “The Certain Increase of the Glory and Kingdom of Jesus.”⁴¹John Ryland, The Certain Increase of the Glory and Kingdom of Jesus: A Sermon, Preached at Chard, in Somersetshire, on Wednesday Evening, July 11th, 1794, at the Annual Meeting of the Baptist Association (no place: John Rose, 1794). The text he chose was John 3:30, “He must increase.”

The opening line of the sermon states that the design of their association of churches was to seek “the advancement of our Redeemer’s kingdom.”⁴²Ryland, Certain Increase, 1. It is amusing that Ryland mentions that the line “He must increase” was “given us by the first Baptist Preacher in the world.” He structured the sermon around three main points: (1) what it means that Christ would increase, (2) what grounds of certainty are there that Christ will increase, and (3) what inferences may we draw from these truths.

First, Christ’s increase refers to the growing “manifestation of his spiritual glory, and to the establishment of his kingdom of grace,” as opposed to worldly metrics of value.⁴³Ryland, Certain Increase, 5. In fact, Ryland argued, Christ’s humiliation in worldly rejection and death were necessary for the increase of his kingdom, which came as a reward for his suffering.⁴⁴Ryland, Certain Increase, 8. He believed that both biblical history and church history demonstrate the increase of the kingdom of Christ—“the continued attention of Providence to the interests of the Church”—as the gospel has gradually progressed from a small seed in Jerusalem to flowering at the ends of the earth.⁴⁵Ryland, Certain Increase, 12. In an interesting aside, Ryland mentions that “The great enemy of our Lord, and of his truth, has not only stirred up persecutors to annoy his Saints, but has endeavored by unnumbered errors to infect the Church, and corrupt the minds of professed Christians from ‘simplicity towards Christ.’ The degenerate Church of Rome, especially, has perverted the doctrines, the ordinances, and the morals of the Gospel, and made war with the remnant that endeavoured to maintain the truth as it is in Jesus. For how many ages did almost all the world wonder after the blaspheming Beast? It was long permitted unto him ‘to make war with the Saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations;’ excepting those ‘whose names are written, from the foundation of the world, in the Book of Life of the slaughtered Lamb’” (13). The Scripture quoted is from Rev. 13:6–8. He reminds us that,

Though the Church below has not been always increasing in numbers, the Church above is continually increasing. The gates of the new Jerusalem, which are never shut day nor night, are perpetually admitting some happy spirit, transported from a state of imperfection and conflict, to the perfection of holiness and bliss….⁴⁶Ryland, Certain Increase, 14.

In other words, the increase of Christ and his kingdom is not to be measured by the apparent success (or lack thereof) of the visible church. Rather, the invisible church is what is increasing as the elect are gathered in. Nevertheless, 

We are fully warranted to believe, that the principal harvest of the earth has not yet been gathered in. This declaration shall be more fully verified in future, than in all the ages that are past. We may be mistaken in our conjectures, as to “the times and seasons, which the Father hath reserved in his own power:” but we are well assured, that there shall be a far more extensive application of Christ’s redemption, than has yet taken place. In spite of all obstacles, which earth and hell have laid in the way, the everlasting Gospel must be preached among all nations. … He must increase, till his mystical fullness is compleated; till all his elect being regenerated and sanctified, he can say to his Father, “Here am I, and the children, thou hast given me.”⁴⁷Ryland, Certain Increase, 15.

Thus, Ryland has a positive view of the church history that is past, but what is most notable here is his remarkably optimistic view of the visible church’s future. While it is not the purpose of this essay to dissect any author’s millennial view, at the very least we can see that Ryland’s view of the kingdom is not limited to what is seen in the state of the visible church, yet he is confident that the visible church will prosper in however much of church history still lies ahead.

Second, he notes our ground of assurance of the certain increase of Christ’s kingdom. It is fundamentally “not founded upon the prospect of his employing a military force to propagate his religion with the sword.”⁴⁸Ryland, Certain Increase, 17. Neither does the kingdom advance because of “the rank and influence of his adherents,” which is to say, by political machinations and social popularity.⁴⁹Ryland, Certain Increase, 17. In the same way, the number of professing Christians at any given point is not a ground for our hope, since “how much smaller is the number of them that are Christians indeed?”⁵⁰Ryland, Certain Increase, 17. These kinds of measurable standards contradict Christ’s words in Matthew 16:24, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Finally, our assurance is not grounded on people’s desire for self-preservation. The enmity and depravity must be overcome by the regenerating power of God.

Instead, Ryland gave five foundations for our hope: (1) Christ is the true Son of God and so he has power to overcome all his enemies and to effect all his purposes—“Jesus has so completed the Purchase of Redemption as to ensure its Application.”⁵¹Ryland, Certain Increase, 20–21. (2) God has decreed the fulfillment of his kingdom in the covenant of redemption, and God “cannot be defeated in the execution of his gracious purposes.”⁵²Ryland, Certain Increase, 22. (3) God has promised to increase Christ’s kingdom, “and it is evident that the season of their chief accomplishment is yet future.”⁵³Ryland, Certain Increase, 22.

Finally, because of the biblical certainty we have of the increase of Christ’s kingdom, “have not they abundant ground for joy and gratitude who are decidedly on Christ’s side!”⁵⁴Ryland, Certain Increase, 28. Likewise, Christians should be “excited to activity and resolution in our Redeemer’s cause,” and “O! What an honor, what a pleasure, will it be, to be employed as instruments in promoting his blessed Kingdom!”⁵⁵Ryland, Certain Increase, 28. Therefore, Ryland exhorted his hearers to “seek the increase of Christ’s Kingdom in your own souls,” for “our own happiness is best promoted by our being thoroughly subdued and entirely devoted to the Lord.”⁵⁶Ryland, Certain Increase, 29. Further, Ryland called his hearers to seek the increase of Christ’s kingdom “all around us; by the conversion of souls to God.”⁵⁷Ryland, Certain Increase, 29. It is notable that seeking the increase of the kingdom came not by building cultural institutions or reclaiming secularizing civic space (which was happening in Ryland’s day too), but it was through evangelism. “By the increase of Christian knowledge; by promoting love to Christ, and love to the Brethren; by building up the Saints in their most holy faith; let us labor to subserve his Kingdom.”⁵⁸Ryland, Certain Increase, 29–30. Ryland concluded his sermon with a rousing call to prayer for missionaries around the world, saying,

Let us enquire whither we may best make another inroad on the kingdom of Satan? … Let not avarice and rapine stimulate the children of this world to greater activity, than the love of Christ and souls can produce in the children of light … While the earth resounds with the din of arms, and myriads exult in having destroyed the bodies of their fellow men, let us use our weapons, which are ‘not carnal, but mighty thro’ the Spirit,’ for the salvation of immortal souls … Never may there be room to suspect that our aim is to increase our income, increase our influence, increase our reputation among men, or to increase the interest of a party. But this is our sole design that HE may increase, whose we are, and whom we serve….⁵⁹ Ryland, Certain Increase, 30–31.

Conclusion

I hope it’s clear that our Baptist forefathers believed that sound thinking about the kingdom of God is of paramount importance. It is not the purpose of this essay to set these eighteenth-century perspectives in conversation with contemporary figures like N.T. Wright and his followers, theonomic postmillennialists, and others who construct a system of Christian ecclesiology, ethics, and eschatology on a view of the kingdom that is quite different. I hope someone else will!

The burden and motivation of this survey is to prompt Baptists to consider the kingdom in its own right, according to Scripture and in conversation with the best of our own tradition, and to resist the temptation to subordinate theology to culture. By the latter, I refer to my concern that the real cultural decline that we’ve witnessed in our generation has led some to adopt views of the kingdom that are motivated more by a felt need for hope for a society that has forsaken God and his Word, and less by what Scripture says and what we’ve received from our forefathers. The cultural rot is real, but hope is real too. However, Christian misinterpretations of the kingdom of God can lead believers to expect the fulfilment of promises God has never made, and so rightly conceiving of the kingdom gives us a sure hope in God’s biblical promises. It calibrates our hope to Scripture. Hardly anything could be more worthy of our attention.

We aren’t the first to witness cultural upheaval. Indeed the very men mentioned in this essay lived through extraordinary declension in national religious interest and public moral ecology. Yet as we explore the concept of kingdom, God has not called us to blaze new trails through the thick underbrush of our crooked and twisted generation (Phil. 2:15), but to walk in the light with our King, following the long line of godly men and women who have gone before us. It’s a footpath straight and narrow, and Jesus says that few find it. The kingdom includes a cross before the glory, for Jesus and for us.