The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is not the Divine solution for the problems of people. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is the Divine solution for the problem of God, which is the bringing about of loving obedience on the part of God's creatures and the establishing of Christ Jesus as the Head, Center, and Significance of every creature and of every other aspect of the creation.

It is when people are exclaiming, "Peace and safety," a peace and safety brought about through means of their own resources, that the end will come.

Our afflictions are leading to redemption. Certainly sorrow has been the portion of mankind since the first century. Even in our time the famines, pestilences, and earthquakes continue. Heart disease and cancer are two of the principal pestilences of our day and in some instances overcome the most capable efforts of medical science to combat them.

"All these are the beginning of sorrows." Sorrows may be translated "birth pains," and some Bible editions have adopted this rendering. The wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, and other afflictions of the world are not the pains of death but of birth. The creation is not preparing to die but to live. The redemption of the righteous is drawing near.

The entire material creation is anxiously and hopefully awaiting the revealing of the sons of God because the material creation itself—the earth and those who are saved to dwell therein—will be released from the bondages of sin and death under the ministry of the sons of God.

We are not coming to the end of anything except sin and rebellion against God and His Christ. We stand now at the threshold of the glorious consummation of all that God has envisioned since He planned the creation.

All that God has sown in the earth is near to harvest. The Lord Jesus the Christ will return with His saints to bring in the Kingdom of God, that wonderful reign of God in Christ over the nations of the earth.

The earth and its resources belong to Christ as does every individual who has ever been born. Wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes—all are necessary because we build "Herod's Temples." Saints and sinners alike build for the glory of self more often than not. God in His goodness sends various afflictions on us and the rest of mankind so the works of self and flesh will be torn down before they do extensive damage to God's plan for the world.

God intervenes in our life before we are so strengthened in our self-will we no longer can be brought under the lordship of Christ Jesus. The only freedom there is comes to man when he accepts the absolute lordship of Christ Jesus over him. Only then is he free.

It is God's goodness that knocks down every stone of our life until there is not one left on another. All we have built for our self-glory is demolished. Then God in Christ comes to us and builds His own place of rest. We find our true rest in His rest.

The wars, pestilences and earthquakes are not the pains of death, except death to sin and rebellion. Rather they are the pains of life—the travail of the material creation to bring forth the Kingdom of God in the earth.

Glory is on the way. He who endures to the end in Christ Jesus will be saved into the eternal Kingdom of God. (from The Coming of the Lord)