In his sermon, Peter Allison discusses the nature and victory of Christ's kingdom as depicted in Luke 13. He explains the parables of the mustard seed and leaven, illustrating how the Kingdom of God starts in humble obscurity and grows from within, expanding its influence like leaven in dough. Allison addresses historical and contemporary misconceptions about Jesus' kingdom, emphasizing its spiritual nature and manifestation through the church. He elaborates on varying theological views of the millennium—pre-millennialism, post-millennialism, and amillennialism—and their interpretations of Christ's reign. The sermon highlights that the Kingdom of God is not of this world but is present within it, extending its blessings and righteousness beyond the church. Allison concludes with the pervasive influence of the kingdom, seen in historical shifts such as the spread of the Bible and the transformation of social norms, asserting that Christ's reign continues to grow and dominate until all enemies are subdued under His feet.

Our scripture reading is Luke chapter 13. Beginning at verse 18 then he said What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed which a man took and put in his garden, and it grew and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches. And again He said, To what shall I liken the kingdom of God?

It is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened." May the Lord direct our steps by His Word, and let no iniquity have dominion over us. Almighty Father in Heaven, Your Word is truth, and it endures to all generations. Even with the passing away of the grass, the people, this earth, Lord, your word indoors. And we ask that you might open our hearts this morning to hear your word, that it might be mixed with faith, that you would, Lord, encourage us and strengthen us this morning as we meditate upon it, as we look into it. May you give us spiritual eyes as well that we may understand this.

And I pray that you would sanctify my lips and set them apart, that through a vessel of clay this glorious gospel may be proclaimed to us. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, in Jesus' day there was a lot of confusion about the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed and about the king. Maybe almost more than any other single point of doctrine, People had a very misguided notion of what to expect when the Messiah came. They knew that the Messiah would come and bring a kingdom.

And so the people waved palm branches when Jesus made his, what's sometimes called his triumphal entry into Jerusalem there in the last week before the crucifixion. They waved palm branches in front of him and proclaimed praise to him. And they did that because that was what God had decreed and announced by the prophets in the Old Testament that the people would do. But also, because they were somewhat confused about the nature of Jesus' kingdom. You see, palm branches were used as a sign of victory, of a victorious king coming back from battle.

And so these people in Jesus' day were looking for Christ to cast off the Roman yoke, the Roman occupation, and to kick them out of the country and to inaugurate a glorious kingdom and to return Israel to the dominance and glory that they had enjoyed under the reign of David and Solomon. You know, that reign when nobody dared to fight David after a while. Because he never lost a battle. God made him that great warrior. That dominion was so strong that for the 40 years after him, in almost the whole reign of Solomon.

There was almost no military attack upon them. Well, this same confusion seems to hold true today as well. And this whole topic of the Kingdom and the nature of the Kingdom and the time of the Kingdom is a matter of a wide variance of opinion among, in the church today, among believers today. What ought it to be? What is its focus?

And what are the types of labors that advance the kingdom? What are we praying for when we pray, thy kingdom come? You ask 20 different Christians and you are going to get 21 different answers. And you look at different, even the theological books, there is just a very wide variation among our understanding of this kingdom. But we can say some things very clearly that the kingdom is the church.

The kingdom of heaven is politically represented by the church. That's the visible church is the external manifestation of the kingdom. Who are the citizens in this kingdom of heaven? Well, it's those who are in Christ. It's those who are ruled by Him.

It's those who worship Him and their children. We know this because conversion is necessary to enter the kingdom. Matthew 18.2 Jesus called a little child to them and he set this child in the midst of them and said, assuredly I say to you unless you are converted and become as a little child, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. He said, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my name's sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." Okay so there has to be a conversion. We also, Jesus also said that there that we have to be righteous to enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5 again, For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Who are the righteous?

Well, the Bible says that all those that are born in Adam are not righteous. That our righteousness is as filthy rags in Isaiah. So who are the righteous? Well, the only righteous are those who have the righteousness of Christ imputed to them. And Those are the saints.

Saints are described as those who have the righteousness of Christ. Peter describes Christians in his opening to his second epistle as those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. By that righteousness. So this is the righteousness that is necessary to enter into this kingdom. This kingdom involves the children of believers.

And they also brought infants to him that he might touch them, but when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them and said, Let the little children come to me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God. And Peter in his sermon on the day of Pentecost called for the people to repent and to be baptized and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For he said, for the promise is to you and to your children and to as many as far off as many as the Lord our God shall call this promise to them and to their children." And so the kingdom then that Jesus is talking about here and that is discussed and mentioned many many times, 150 times or so just in the New Testament, this kingdom is the church. It's represented in the church.

That's the boundary of it. Now, that doesn't mean that the influence of the kingdom is limited to just the church. Certainly the influence of the kingdom, we'll see later here this morning from this text, is far bigger than the simple boundaries of the church. That this is also a spiritual kingdom. It's a spiritual kingdom.

Jesus answered Pilate, My kingdom is not of this world. And he was facing Pilate before his crucifixion. He said, If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight So that I should not be delivered to the Jews, but now my kingdom is not from here His kingdom Jesus said is not of this world this kingdom that he said was at hand the kingdom Repentant believe the kingdom is at hand. It's not of this world though. It's a spiritual kingdom.

But that doesn't mean it is not in this world. It's not of this world, it's a spiritual kingdom, but it is very much present in this world. Not being of this world means it doesn't derive its authority from any physical source. It wasn't a conquering army of people that inaugurated this kingdom. So we can say that the kingdom then is represented in the church, and I know that's a statement that some people would disagree with, but I think there is very clear teaching in scripture that this kingdom is comprised of the church.

And there are, among believers today, it's often seen as there being three views about this kingdom. Three views. And these three views go by the names pre-millennialism, post-millennialism, and all-millennialism. And those are very common words and they're thrown around a lot today. I'd like to take just a minute to try and bring some definitions to these words, at least is how I use them, and how they relate to the kingdom and the understanding of both the timing and the nature of the kingdom that Jesus is speaking about here.

So based on the description of the kingdom in Revelation 20 as a thousand year reign of Christ, two of these views, premillennialism and postmillennialism, hold that This kingdom is a literal thousand year period called the millennium in which Christ will reign. The exact nature of that reign can vary a lot between those two views. But the basic view is is this kingdom that's referred to in in Revelation and throughout the rest of the scriptures. So there's a connection here of this thousand-year reign with That's mentioned in Revelation 20 with the kingdom these two things are seen as as connected so the the pre-millennial and the post-millennial view believe that this thousand year reign is a future period. It's not here yet.

We're not in this kingdom that Jesus is talking about. It's not here yet. It's coming. And The difference between the pre and the post millennial in terms of the timing of Christ's return is that Christ in the pre millennial view Christ will return earth to earth before this 1, 000 year period and it's of this 1, 000 year golden period where Christ will reign. So in the pre-millennial view, Christ will physically reign on earth because He's going to come back.

And so That's why it's called pre-millennialism, because he comes back before the millennium. And he reigns on earth in the millennium. And the millennial reign will be this golden, golden age. And there's lots of variations on pre-millennialism as well that we won't get into this morning that don't directly pertain to this. The postmillennial view though believes that Christ will physically return after the thousand year millennium, The thousand year reign.

So they believe that Christ isn't physically reigning on earth, but it's more of a spiritual kingdom. So John Cotton, I'll just give you a few examples of some historical post-millennialists. John Cotton told his church that the millennium would emerge in the next decade, and he was about 1655, and it would come through the faithful preaching of the word and not through Christ's physical presence on the earth. It would result in a prolonged and remarkable revival and would usher in a large conversion of Jews and establish Christ's kingdom in both church and state through the unchallenged worldwide rule of believers." That was his understanding of the nature of the kingdom and the timing of it. You see, its future, and so it was, we would say, it's not yet realized.

It's an unrealized kingdom. Jonathan Edwards thought the kingdom was close at hand and Christ would return physically once the kingdom was established. Thomas Breitman, 1562-1607 held that the Millennium was the time between 1300 and 2300 during which period the Reformation would crush the enemies of the church, particularly the papacy, and the conversion of Jews would brighten the world. Joseph Bellamy, 1719 to 1790, saw a glorious future for the world during which more would be saved than ever before dwelt on the earth. If it lasted a thousand years, he thought then 17, 000 people would be saved for every person lost.

Samuel Hopkins, who lived 1721 to 1803, in his treatise on the Millennium begins it with, but when the millennium shall begin. In other words, he believed the millennium is future. And that Christ would return after the millennium. See, that's post-millennialism. Christ returns after the millennium.

Now, Amillennialism is the third view, and that's the view that there is a meaning, no, and it's not a very good term, it's a rather recent term actually, I don't know when it came into being, but it's relatively recent, not much before the 20th century, if even that. But let's just use the term as poor as it is. It's the view that the millennium is the period between Christ's resurrection and ascension and the time of his physical return. In other words, unlike pre and post millennialism, all millennialism believes that the thousand year reign of Christ has been realized. So we might call them realized millennialists, and the pre and post millennialists, at least historically, were unrealized millennialists.

And you can look at a number of documents for that understanding. So I could just say, Berkoff says in his systematic theology that post-millennialism is quite the opposite of that taken by premillennialism respecting the time of the second coming of Christ. It holds that the return of Christ will follow the millennium which may be expected during and at the close of the gospel dispensation. That's how he's defining the term. That's historically how that term was used and understood.

That's what I just explained to you. The return of Christ will follow the millennium and the millennium is expected at the close of the gospel dispensation. They would say that this is the gospel dispensation. We are preaching the gospel and many of the post-millennialists believe that it was through the gospel, as opposed to the physical return of Christ, that it was through the gospel that the millennium would be ushered in. He goes on to list how many of the Reformed theologians that believed in this post-millennial view of the Kingdom.

They rejected the idea that Christ would return physically, and that the saints would be raised with him during the Millennial Kingdom and reign with him. In other words, The post-millennialists believe that Christ's return would be after the millennium, and that's when the dead would be raised, the living and the dead would be judged, and so on. So That's the historical definition of those words. Now what's very confusing right now is that a lot of people that call themselves post-millennialists today are actually all-millennialists because they believe in a realized millennium. They believe that now is the reign of Christ.

And so they're really not post-millennialists, but that's what they call themselves, but they believe the all-millennial view. And it doesn't help the fact that many people who call themselves all millennialists are not at all All millennialists in the sense that they don't believe that Christ's reign Has any impact directly necessarily on the earth today and that and so it's somewhat confusing But But I think the terminologies are clear. I think what we really need to do is maybe come up with a better term. I would suggest maybe we talk about people that believe in a realized millennium versus an unrealized millennium. And that would make the divisions between all these beliefs, I think, a lot more consistent.

But nevertheless, this is where we are. So we have a lot today, you'll hear, two kingdoms by people that call themselves all-millennialists. And by that, They believe that Christ really has two totally separate kingdoms. He has this church which is a spiritual kingdom which results in piety in the heart. It results in private Christianity.

But then there's this other external kingdom and that should be pluralistic. You know, there's no... The Bible doesn't say anything about the laws of our state. What kind of laws we should have. They would say, well, the Bible doesn't speak about that.

That's the second kingdom. And all that stuff will be corrected when Christ returns at the second coming. And so I've even heard one of them say, one person that holds this kind of view say, I don't even want to go to a movie with you unless you leave your Christian worldview at the door. In other words, there's these two separate kingdoms that really don't connect. That when we pray for the Christ kingdom to come as Christ taught us in the Lord's Prayer.

We're not praying that the laws of our land would be brought into conformity to God's law. And that the requirements and the standard of justice that we see in the scriptures become the standard of justice that we see in our land. And that is in the laws of our land. They would say that's not an appropriate understanding. That's not what we're praying for.

Because they have a very different view of this kingdom of God. Whereas I believe that scriptures teach that every area is to be brought into the dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we have seen historical examples of this with places like the in places in the first 150 years that this land was settled by Christians in the 17th century. We saw them establish civil governments that recognized the scriptures as the standard of truth and the standard of justice. And that made their civil laws conform to the laws given in the scriptures for what do you do with homosexuals, what do you do with adulterers, what do you do with people who blaspheme the name of God, what do you do with people who are idolaters.

They said, well we look to the Scriptures to find out what to do with these people. And I believe that they were right in that. But many all-millennialists today say, no, that's not what the Kingdom is about. Okay, so with that background then of this kingdom, that it is the church, that it's a spiritual kingdom, and that it is realized, what does Jesus say here about this kingdom? Well, the first thing from these statements, and I don't really think of them as parables, they might be called parables, and in one sense they are, but they're really more like metaphors.

They're really Analogies that he's giving to explain what is the nature of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven? I think those two things are referring to the same thing kingdom of God the kingdom of heaven Luke uses kingdom of God Matthew uses kingdom of heaven Well, the first is that this kingdom begins in humble obscurity. It's a small mustard seed. It's one of the smallest of seeds. There is no great pile of money to get things rolling.

There is no great military force that comes in and sets up this kingdom. There is no election, this great sweeping election that the people vote out one government and bring in another government. No, this kingdom begins in humble obscurity. It's a very, very, very tiny seed. Jesus said it's like this little tiny mustard seed which a man took and he put it in his garden.

He planted it and it begins to grow. That's what the kingdom of heaven is like It starts out in obscurity small And I'm look I'm gonna combine these two Analogies here and in the second thing we see is that the kingdom grows from the inside out It's like leaven. It's the kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal Hit it inside the inside this dough See it works then from within the dough. This kingdom is advanced when one heart at a time is brought under the dominion of the lordship of Jesus Christ. It isn't advanced by external means.

It isn't advanced by getting a really good person elected president. It isn't advanced necessarily by changing a law. If we could just get this law changed, then things would be better. Now Those are the results of the growth of the kingdom. They're the result of what happens as the kingdom grows.

They're the effect, not the cause. So we don't have to become discouraged when some good person isn't elected. What that means is that the hearts of the people are still far away. God's kingdom grows as we grow in grace and in knowledge. It grows as people hear the gospel and turn from their idolatry to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's how that kingdom grows. And then when those hearts are brought under the dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we see the effect in the world around us. The kingdom thirdly ministers or serves. You know, this little mustard seed grows up and the birds of the air nest in its branches. I should read, I just wanted to read the other scriptures that refer to this.

In Matthew Jesus said it this way, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. Which he said it's a parable he put forth to them saying the kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field." Which he said it's a parable he put forth to them saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds, but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches." And in Mark he said, When it is sown, this mustard seed is smaller than all the seeds on the earth, but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs and shoots out large branches so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade. So this little tiny seed grows up and becomes a minute, something that serves, something that the birds of the air, just like the birds of the air can come and nest in it.

When God's kingdom is growing, it brings blessing to the land. Remember Moses told the children of Israel that you are a blessed people to have the law of God. You are a blessed people because you have the law. There is no other nation around you that has laws that are this good and this and this blessed and this holy. And so when God's kingdom grows it is a blessing to even those that are outside of that kingdom.

Because when God's kingdom grows and righteousness is established in the land and the land is at peace and justice is done, that blesses everybody. Women and children are protected. Babies aren't murdered even if they are conceived in non-Christian families. Because of the presence of this kingdom is a salt that preserves and a light that blesses. And it brings a peace that everybody can enjoy.

It's like the tide, you know what I mean? They say The rising tide raises all ships. And as the kingdom comes, it brings blessing. It brings peace. It brings deliverance from the evil one.

Just look at the nations that haven't had strong churches and strong Christian churches. They're dominated by darkness, by death, by injustice, and by often times by poverty. And so it doesn't take every single person being a Christian, It takes even a minority of people, of Christians that are dedicated to Christ and faithful bearing witness to the truth around them. So the next thing that we see that Jesus teaches us here about his kingdom is that it grows to dominance. The mustard seed becomes bigger than all other herbs.

Now, I don't know if I'm that familiar with this mustard plant that Jesus is talking about, but apparently it grows to maybe 10 feet. Some people thought it might grow as much as 15 feet, others thought it was something around six feet, but something in that order. It's not a hundred foot tree we're talking about. It's simply what Jesus was illustrating was this thing starts out from a very, very tiny seed, and then it grows to something that's bigger than all the other herbs. It starts out, it's the smallest seed, but it grows to be the biggest herb.

And it's big enough that it's kind of like, you know, okra plants, they become a little bit woody and birds can nest in them or in their branches. And so this kingdom grows, it becomes very big. It dominates, bigger than all the other herbs. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, for he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

In Matthew 5, 17, Jesus said, Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets I did not come to destroy but fulfill, For surely I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled." Now how is the law fulfilled? Prophecy is fulfilled when what is spoken of comes to pass. And we say that prophecy has been fulfilled. Well, the law is fulfilled when it is obeyed. That's not the first definition of the word if you looked up this Greek word for fulfill.

It's not the first definition for the word but it is one of them and in Matthew where this verse comes from It is the predominant meaning of that word when it is used in the book of Matthew. The law is fulfilled when it is obeyed. The purpose of the law is accomplished. That's the fulfilling of the law. And Jesus is saying nothing is going to pass away from the law until it is fulfilled.

Heaven and earth, until heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle from the law will pass away until all is fulfilled. Jesus is saying that this law will be obeyed. We can think of the statue in Daniel 2, that this dream that Nebuchadnezzar had. Remember it was a statue that had these different metals. In the top was gold, then silver, then bronze, and then the bottom was iron, and then in the feet was iron and clay and Daniel explained what that vision meant to Nebuchadnezzar and he said those metals represent Four different kingdoms the Babylonian the Persian the Greek and the Roman Empire's and the Roman Empire then the feet represented this Roman Empire, which would be very strong but also weak.

And then what happened in that vision? This stone cut without hands comes down and smashes that statue. Those kingdoms are obliterated, they're destroyed. This stone that was cut without hands represents this kingdom that Jesus came and proclaimed was at hand. It destroyed all the other kingdoms.

And in fact, this is what history tells us, that the Christian Church defeated the Roman Empire, such that by the beginning of the 300s, Rome became a Christian nation. The Roman Empire acknowledged God, And he even called an ecumenical council to discuss a point of doctrine, a critical point of doctrine. And God's kingdom has continued to grow. And the last thing that Luke records here, or that Jesus tells us here about His kingdom, is that the influence of the kingdom is pervasive. It is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leaven.

Until that leaven pervaded every part of that dough. The influence of the kingdom, which is not of the earth, but it's in the earth, that influence of the kingdom is pervasive throughout the entire earth. The prophets said that the knowledge of God would cover the earth like the waters cover the sea. Now that doesn't mean that there are, I don't believe, no non-Christians. Jesus also told another parable about the tares.

Remember, the seed, the wheat is what Christ plants, and the devil came and sowed tares. Those things were together until when? Until the final judgment. But what we can say about this is that this kingdom is pervasive everywhere. It will dominate, it will destroy every other power and kingdom.

Christ will reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. Every single one. The last enemy then is death. Now what does that look like? What does it look like for this leaven to permeate every part of the dough?

What does Christ's kingdom look like? I think we have some very clear signs that Christ's kingdom is pervasive and is everywhere. Let me just give you a few of them, hopefully to encourage you. As we live in a very dark day, a day of God's judgment upon our nation which is very wicked, What are some of the indications that we see of Christ's reign? Well we see how we mark time.

I've mentioned this before because it's so obvious and so undisputable. Throughout the history of the world, dating events and the sequencing of time has always been done in terms of the reigning king. That's how things are always been dated. You go back and look at all of the ancient records, even in the Bible, How are things dated? The text that we read today, they're dated by the year of the reigning king, in this year and in that year of this king.

That's how all the other pagan nations around Israel dated things as well, because that's the way things are dated. And how do we date things today? In the year of the reigning king. And we've done that since Christ came. It doesn't matter today that people instead of wanting to use AD which is Latin for Anno Domino in the year of our Lord.

It doesn't matter that they want to change that to CE, which they think means Common Era. I think it means Christian Era. Or BCE, before the Common Era. They're still using the numbers that pertain to the year of Christ's reign. So they haven't really changed anything.

They're simply trying to obscure where the numbers that they're using come from. In a desperate attempt to conceal the fact that Christ is the reigning king. But the numbers they're using, brothers and sisters, are still the numbers that pertain to the Christ reign. And that, I submit, they won't be able to change, just like they haven't been able to change the week. What about the global transition that's happened regarding slavery?

In Jesus' day, it was a part of the culture for slaves. Nobody questioned it. But with the advent of the Gospel, that's changed. People have been set free. Yes, there are still slaves, More so now than maybe recently before that, but it's different.

It's different. This spiritual reign has had a very real impact on slaves. We cannot go down to a market today and just buy slaves. It's a lot more sophisticated. You go to a bank and you borrow money and become a slave.

Or we have prisons. So we still have slaves, but it's very different. All our households, we don't have a plurality of slaves that we own. That's the result of the gospel. Christ came to set the captives free, or the treatment of women.

Augustine writes in his Confessions a tribute to his mother, Monica. And one of the things that is indirectly and implicitly assumed in that is the abuse that women received generally, and how it was accepted. Now, Women still get hurt today, but it's not accepted even by pagans like it was in Augustine's day. The treatment of women, the protection of women, the honor of women that the gospel gives has radically changed that aspect of culture. What about the acknowledgement of God in civil proceedings in courts?

Everybody that takes an oath, so help me God. The conquering of the Roman Empire, as I mentioned, by Christianity. What about the universal knowledge of the Scriptures? The Bible is the largest selling book in the entire world. This data is a few years old, maybe ten years old, but at that time there were about six million Bibles printed.

There are about 6900 languages and there are 1185 that have the New Testament. There are 451 of those that have the whole Bible and there are 2500 that have some portion of the Bible. The Bible was the first book that was printed in 1456. If you look at the manuscripts that we have, you can look at the quantity of manuscripts. Look at some other things like Caesar's Gallic Wars, an ancient text.

We have ten manuscripts. The history of Herodotus, eight manuscripts. The history of Tacitus, two manuscripts. How many do we have in the New Testament? Over 5, 000 manuscripts.

You look at how old they are. Caesar's Gallic Wars was written 58 to 50 BC. The earliest, the oldest manuscript we have is from 900 AD. That means that manuscript is 950 years after, after it was written. The history of Herodotus was 480 to 425 BC.

The earliest manuscript we have is 900 AD. That's 1300 years after it was written and so on. But what about the New Testament? That was written before 70 AD. And we have manuscripts that go all the way back into the early second century.

A mere 30 to 50 to 100 years after they were written. So we said the Bible had about six billion in print. That corresponds, the next closest book is to Coraline at 800 million. The Bible is by far and away the book that is the top of every bestseller list. But it's never put there.

Because they really can't count the number of Bibles that are distributed every year. It's just way, way, way, way more. It would win every year, year after year, for 2, 000 years. So they just say, well, we're not going to count that. 20 million Bibles are sold each year in the United States, in addition to the tens of millions that are distributed free.

In 1956, that number was about 8 million. American Bible Society advises that they distributed 60 million Bibles in the US. The American Bible Society say that since their inception in 1860 they've distributed seven billion Bibles worldwide. The American Bible Society says that there are 6 million Bibles in China, distributed in China. But they say there's no one gathering statistics and we really don't know how many more than that.

They can document that many. The United Bible Society distributed more than 578 million scriptures worldwide in 2002, including Bibles in portions of Bibles. The Gideons International distributed almost 60 million Bibles worldwide in 2002. That's averaging 113 a minute. They have placed almost 2 billion Bibles since they began in 1899.

And it goes on. 92% of Americans own at least one, and the average household has three Bibles. And A recent Gallup poll, this was recent in 2012, advises half of Americans read their Bible at least once a month. How many other books are read by 50% of all Americans once a month? Here is an atheist website.

I think their comments demonstrate the dominion of Christ. This is what they say. This is what they say. They say that not all copies of the Bible are sold for money. Indeed, enormous numbers of the Bible are handed out free of charge, particularly when considering the actions of missionaries.

These cannot be counted in a best-seller list not only because they haven't been sold, but because the person receiving the book may not actually want it. Compare this to the Harry Potter series where the number that were given away dwindles into insignificance. And then it says, thirdly, not all copies of the Bible are read and almost none are read cover to cover. If we turn our attention to a modern novel, it would be a bizarre and ludicrous experience to only read a few pages in the middle and ignore the rest. And remember all those abandoned copies of the Bible that lie in bedside drawers in hotels across the country which are never read and rarely ever seen by a living creature.

The same story goes for hundreds of Bibles locked in school teaching cupboards which if anything are read even less, as the pupils almost invariably aren't interested in them. Well let me ask you the question, what other author has his books in hotel dresser drawers by the millions? What other author or king or prophet has his oracles in school cabinets by the millions are distributed to every home and nook and and cranny all over the globe. What other author has so many disciples that are so inspired by it that they hand out hundreds of his works for free? Very few people buy copies of Harry Potter by the hundreds of thousands just to give them away.

And I quote that because that's one of the very, very, very highly purchased books of our day. What other king's enemies acknowledge the ubiquity of their enemy's oracles? What about the ubiquity of church buildings? No other cause to which so many buildings have been dedicated. What about the stability of the governments that Christ has instituted?

Just even the gender roles that are so strongly under attack today. People still automatically associate males with career and females with family. As caretakers at home. I have some quotes from a poll that show that there's strong, moderate, or slight association of males. That accounts for 70% of people have strong, slight, or moderate association of men with being providers for the family and women with the family.

People can't change these perceptions as much as they've been trying. It's all backfiring on them because Christ's kingdom is dominant and it will be dominant and it is pervasive and it will continue. It will endure until every enemy is put under his feet, until every bit of meal is leavened. May it be so. Let's pray.

Almighty Father in heaven, we thank you that you were victorious at the cross over the evil one, that you have destroyed his kingdom and crushed his head, and that you are reigning, until you have put every enemy under your feet. Lord, we ask that you would that we would be encouraged, strengthened by your Holy Spirit to not grow weary in doing good for in the knowledge that we will We will reap in due time if we do not lose heart. Father, we pray that you would open our eyes, that we might see not just the wickedness around us, the ungodly attacking you, your reign, and your people, and your church, and all that is good and beautiful and holy. But Lord, may you open our eyes to see that greater are those with you than those against you. May you open our eyes to see that you are still reigning and that you are victorious in that reign.

And that it is your hand that is shaking this earth and our nation in order that the dross and the wicked may be destroyed. And your kingdom established. Your righteous rule established. And your will done on this earth as as it is already done in heaven. We ask all these things in Jesus name Amen.