Jesus spent much of his time liberating the poor and oppressed through his spoken word. Chapter six of Jesus Before Christianity refers to three passages of Isaiah that convey Jesus’ attitude and feelings towards the meek
The deaf, that day,
will hear the words of the book
and, after shadow and darkness
the eyes of the blind will see.
But the lowly will rejoice in God even more
and the poorest exult in the Holy One of Israel. (29:18-19)
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
the ears of the deaf unsealed,
then the lame shall leap like a deer
and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy. (35:5-6)
The spirit of the Lord has been given to me.
He has sent me to bring good news to the poor,
to heal the broken-hearted;
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
freedom to those in prison;
[or: to proclaim new sight to the blind,
to set the downtrodden free]
to proclaim the Lord’s year of favor. (6:1-2*)
In these passages, the poor and oppressed are referred to as the deaf, blind, lame, poor, broken-hearted and so on. The verbs that follow are God’s promises to the meek. They are promised restoration of sight, hearing, joy, freedom, and in general liberation. It is important to note that proclaiming good news is a form of liberation. Jesus’ preaching was centered around bringing good news to the poor or in other words “evangelize”. The gospel or good news, which Jesus proclaimed to poor, was promising and hopeful; it was a prophecy. He prophesied the coming of God’s “kingdom” for the poor and oppressed. The clearest example of his prophecy can be seen in the beatitudes.
Blessed are the poor
because yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now
because you shall be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now
because you shall laugh. (Lk 6:20-21)
Matthew extends the needs of his readers to those who are weak at heart or spirit. These words undoubtely provided great hope to the poor. However, these hopes did not have to do with the heaven because in Jesus’ time heaven was synonymous with God. Heaven was literally thought of as the ‘resting place’ for God. People did not think about going to heaven after death, all the dead go to sheol (the underworld of the grave) The Christian belief in heaven came about after Jesus’ resurrection where he ascended into heaven and was seated at the right hand of the Father.
The “kingdom” of God and its characteristics are clarified in chapter six. To help us understand we can turn to the Our Father. To say “Thy kingdom of God” is the same as saying “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Perhaps the biggest mistranslation is of Lk 17:21: “The kingdom of God is within in you” rather is should read: “The kingdom of God is among you or in your midst”. Since every other reference to the kingdom of God says it is yet to come, the verse must mean that the “kingdom” of God will suddenly be among us. More importantly, the “kingdom” of God is not within a person but where a person can live. Jesus speaks of the “kingdom” of God in a visual way, describing it as a walled city or a house. Due to the fact that Jesus spoke about the “kingdom” as a city or a community we can conclude he had a politically structured society of people in mind.
So when and how will God’s kingdom come about? We first need to understand that the “kingdom” is not of this world, the values of the kingdom are not in compliance with the values we hold on Earth today. The “kingdom” of God is any less political than our society it simply is opposed to the human “kingdom” or as Jesus would say the “kingdom’ of Satan.
Jesus condemned all political and social structures in his time and would condemn our society because our perverse and evil values belonged to Satan. Even if there are good people on this world, evil always has the upper hand. When God’s “kingdom” comes, God will replace Satan and all evil will be eliminated. Jesus saw his healing and ministry work as a warfare against Satan. He strongly believed the “kingdom” of God would reign supreme and that good would always overcome evil, the ultimate dualism. Jesus assures us that the “kingdom” of God will come however one of the greatest and vital questions goes unanswered by him: will a great catastrophe to occur in order to bring about the "kingdom" of God
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