Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within you, and apparently you don’t believe that if I understand correctly. Seeking after the kingdom is on the right track. Jesus said in Matthew 33 “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
You may notice that Jesus said “his righteousness” as if the kingdom of God is a person. One could also interpret that to mean to seek the righteousness of God, and that would not be wrong either, except one can only have a relationship with the Father through the Son.
The Kingdom of God is Paul’s Epistles
The kingdom of God is not a worldly sort of empire that will return one day like Dorothy’s house landing on the wicked witch in Oz to destroy Satan aka the ruler of this world. The Lord said in Luke 6: 17-26: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God”. The kingdom of God is within you. God is omnipotent. It is the relationship with God that matters; everything else, as Einstein said, are details.
Everything of a social sort in the world is a third party. The Bible is a third party- I didn’t write it myself. Biblical theology has gone on for nearly 2500 years (i.e. Hillel and Shammai, Origen, Atanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Calvin etc) years and one may learn from it (i. Paul apparently made 14 references to the Kingdom of God and some seem to be of a soteriological sort. A doctor of theology publishd his study of that in 2015… https://tms.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/tmsj26e.pdf
There is a point of view of Biblical interpretation concerning prophecy called partial preterism. It has some of the prophecy of the New Testament already fullfilled in the first century A.D. yet also has prophecy yet to be fulfilled. I tend toward accepting that. Many or most Christians are not partial preterists and fail to accept the many remarkable prophecy’s of Jesus concerning the end times as being fullfilled in the first century A.D. with the destruction of Jerusalem. They believe in a future Armageddon rather than the clear and present Armageddon that happened in 70ad with a million dead and Israel scattered. This is the era of the kingdom of God increasing in the world still at the end of which the Lord will physically return to wrap things up.
Luke 20 “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
22 And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.
23 And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after them, nor follow them.
24 For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day.
25 But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.”
Jesus in describing the establishment of the Kingdom is describing the near future and distant future; the future emerges from the present. The following from Luke supports different viewpoints too. Some would see support for the rapture in 34-37 while others would have different ideas including the events in Jerusalem in 70 ad. The ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
“34 I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.
35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.”
Really there isn’t an easy way to abbreviate the topic. Dr. Kenneth Gentry’s book ‘He Shall Have Dominion’ is very worth reading.
K.J.V. 21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
The KJV is about 99% accurate so far as translating the Septuagint goes. Scholars note that “The Greek word in question, εντος, means ‘inside’ or ‘within’.” at… https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/…/is-the-kingdom…
There are newer translations of the Bible that use a wide variety of lexical viewpoints, thus conservatives on hermeneutics tend to look toward the K.J.V Like the Septuagint it was produced by a large number of scholars.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/King-James-Version
Garrison Gibson: books and blog 