God's Kingdom Here And Now

"We Christians think of a heavenly kingdom; I came to see that God intended an earthly kingdom, or rather, a heavenly kingdom on earth. God's name was to be hallowed on earth, His kingship seen on earth, His will done on earth. The earth should announce eternity: God on earth."

In a number of writings, Christoph Blumhardt presented his understanding of the kingdom of God and how it is forever breaking in to life on earth - for that was always God's intention.

"The angels have God in heaven, I have not - I want to pray down here. I must have God here. The earth is the stage set for the kingdom of God, because the kingship of God is in direct relationship with this earth: the Saviour, down here. God's intention is the here and now: Jesus challenging poverty, sin and misery on earth."
[my own translation (and in parts paraphrase) from the German]

Here you will find a further meditation by Blumhardt on the in-breaking kingdom of God - and the amazing but urgent opportunities that gives for Christian witness.

The Church And The Kingdom

As Johann Blumhardt lay dying in 1880, he spoke a blessing over his son Christoph (1842-1919). The blessing was that Christoph might conquer in the strength of Jesus, the Victor (see previous post).

Christoph, like his father, had trained as a pastor. He was, by all accounts, a fiery preacher. The novellist Hermann Hesse recalls him saying that a Mohammedan with a real and honest heart is closer to God than many Christians.

Blumhardt grew increasingly disillusioned with the established church, so he returned to Bad Boll and assisted his father with the work there until Johann's death passed the mantle to him. He held healing crusades, which carried the same power his father had known.

But Christoph was on a different, more radical road. "A Christian must be born twice", he wrote: "once from the human to the spiritual, and once from the spiritual to the human". In other words, a spirituality or church commitment which had no interest in addressing the sufferings of people and the ills of society was a comfortable lie.

In a letter which he kept secret for years, he reproached his father for three failings:

1. His individualism. Johann had compassion on each person, and for that person to know the healing power of God was sufficient evidence of the in-breaking kingdom of God. Christoph had a more developed notion of God's kingdom: a rulership that included all things, the universe, the earth, nations and structures.

2. His view of the Church. Johann was too accepting of a religious system which his son had come to see as a preserve of the middle-class, concerned only with power and influence.

3. His view of mission. Christoph saw his father's model of outreach as simply feeding a church which was a mere extension of imperialism. His son saw the more 'cosmic' aspect of the kingdom of God - that it was a Body hastening the return of Jesus Christ by shining as a light in darkness, a 'city on a hill' (Matthew 5:14). His father had acted as if the Kingdom was part of the Church; for the son, the Church is part of the Kingdom.

The In-Breaking Kingdom Of God

I always appreciate the arrival of the new edition of The Plough, published by Church Communities International. There aren't too many publications emanating from an Anabaptist, "all things in common", communitarian stream, but this is one.

The latest issue heralds a bold and very welcome move: to publish, for the first time in English, the works of two remarkable men: Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) and his son, Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842-1919).

"What do such wildly diverse movements as religious socialism, neo-orthodoxy, Pentecostalism, and such Christian thinkers like Karl Barth, Eberhard Arnold, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jacques Ellul and Jürgen Moltmann, have in common?", writes one of the series' editors. "They all trace their Christian understanding of the world and God’s kingdom to Johann Christoph Blumhardt, a humble pastor in Germany who lived in the 19th century."

Johann Christoph was pastor in Möttlingen, a village in South-West Germany as unremarkable as Blumhardt himself. Until 1842, that is, when circumstances plunged him into the realm of 'deliverance ministry', exorcism and healing prayer. A young woman exhibiting the classic symptoms of demonisation, as shown in the Gospels, was released after an intensive season of prayer, spiritual battle and exorcism.


"Möttlingen was swept up in an unprecedented movement of repentance and renewal. Stolen property was returned, broken marriages restored, enemies reconciled, alcoholics freed, and more amazingly still, an entire village experienced what life could be like when God ruled." People started arriving from miles around, drawn by the manifest power of God and the possible hope of freedom in their own lives. Such 'success' was, in fact, embarrassing for Blumhardt, who was a solid and unflamboyant character and freely admitted that he was no expert in these matters.

Even so, "Blumhardt’s parsonage eventually could not accommodate the numbers of people streaming to it. He thus began to look for a place with more room and greater freedom. He moved his family to Bad Boll, a complex of large buildings which had been developed as a spa around a sulfur water spring. His biographer [in German] recounts in vivid detail one story after another of how through the small circle at Bad Boll, desperate individuals of all stripes— burdened with mental, emotional, physical and spiritual maladies—found healing and renewed faith."

What made this a radical movement in the scope of this blog is that Blumhardt had the courage to work through the ideological issues (and plenty of opposition) and to conclude emphatically that the Kingdom of God was perennially able to break into everyday life, with whatever manifestation of the divine or miraculous that the Holy Spirit might choose.

Blumhardt was not a theologian and did not attempt a reasoned theology of his stance. He was a practical man, full of compassion, who was wise enough to realise that the damaged, the sick and the demonised need compassion and hope in their damaged souls every bit as much as healing or exorcism. His sermons pleaded, cared, pointed to a God who is love and who wants us to know it.

But Blumhardt also offers hope to Christians who long for the transcendental, for God's power to be seen in today's world. He was convinced that the Old Testament prophecy of Joel, quoted by Peter when the Holy Spirit was first outpoured (Acts 2:17) had only been partly fulfilled; that the generous and saving God in whom he believed had so much more for the Church to discover and to use for God's glory and the blessing of multitudes.