I was 12 years old when I first began to hear and study the scriptures that describe the time of the Kingdom of God on this earth. I remember the conflicting feelings of interest, unbelief and wonder. It was so different from anything else I had heard about the Bible up to that point. Jesus was really coming to this earth with a government, a kingdom that will rule the world in a manner unlike any other form of rule ever experienced. What an incredible, almost unbelievable concept.
Yet the more I read in the Scriptures on the matter, the more real they became. The more I looked at our world and saw the problems man's rule had created, the more the Bible made sense and gave me hope in something beyond today. From that early period I formed a worldview that helped me understand today's world and the way to lasting solutions for the monumental problems facing mankind. I had hope, and still do, that it is going to work out all right.
We have two articles in this issue of World News and Prophecy that describe the coming age and what it will be like. We have been running a series by Mike Bennett that goes, in detail, into the transformation that will take place when Christ returns as Messiah. Past articles have talked about the scourge of war and what conditions will be like when war will no longer cast its dark shadow over the earth. This month's installment shows the healing effect when there is no more hunger or disease.
We have an additional article by Cecil Maranville, "What the World Tomorrow Will Be Like." This article gives an overview of the subject and emphasizes that this message of the coming Kingdom was at the core of Christ's message while He was on earth the first time. Christ came preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God and urging everyone to repent, believe and accept the impact of that message (Mark 1:14-15).
