It is our purpose to show that the Lord's Prayer, if understood and followed in all its Scriptural implications and outreach, could be one of the means for bringing all of the Lord's people together. The Lord's prayer for unity among the Lord's people.
Do all these various religious bodies believe in following the Lord's Prayer? They most certainly do. Then here is a common platform on which we could stand together.
We shall confine our presentation to these two expressions from this prayer. "Thy kingdom come." "Thy will be done." Multiplied thousands pray these words every Sunday. Is it possible that they pray these words every week for a lifetime and do not know what they are praying for? In speaking of the Samaritans who believed in God, Jesus said, "Ye worship ye know not what" (John 4:22).
"Thy Kingdom Come"
Let us therefore search for a true understanding from the Scriptures of these two expressions from the Lord's Prayer. When we pray, "Thy kingdom come," what are we praying for? When will God's kingdom come, so that His will shall be obeyed by all the people in the earth, even as it is now obeyed by all the angels in heaven? How will this be brought about? What is God doing to bring this to pass? The Bible furnishes clear answers to these questions.
The Bible shows that there are two phases, or stages, to the kingdom of God. A present kingdom of grace—God's arrangement for saving believers from sin by His grace. A future kingdom of glory, where those who have obeyed Jesus Christ will have sinless, immortal, incorruptible bodies, and will reign eternally with Christ in the New Jerusalem and the coming new perfect earth of God's plan. God's kingdom of grace is inseparably connected with Christ's first advent, His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and priestly intercession in heaven. God's kingdom of glory is inseparably connected with Christ's second advent and the events that follow. Thus these two phases of the kingdom of God blend in perfect harmony for the accomplishment of God's eternal purpose.
From the time sin entered by the disobedience of Adam and Eve, God has been calling people into His kingdom of grace, to prepare them to live forever in His coming kingdom of glory. God justifies, or accounts righteous, every believer by imputing to him Christ's perfect righteousness. Then He sanctifies him, by imparting Christ's righteousness to him day by day to keep him from sin. This impartation of righteousness is identical with having Christ in the heart.
When we receive Christ as our personal Saviour, and permit Him to abide in us day by day, we are in the kingdom of grace. Thus Paul speaks of believers' having been translated into the kingdom of Christ (Col. 1:13). Thus we can be already in the kingdom of God as we Pray for God's kingdom to come. We can have the kingdom of God within us and yet rightfully pray, "Thy kingdom come." This sounds mysterious and even unreasonable. But it is all clear when we keep in mind the two phases of the kingdom—the present kingdom of grace, the future kingdom of glory.
The Second Advent
In harmony with this, Matthew 25:31 declares that "when the Son of man shall come in his glory . . . , then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory." In 2 Timothy 4:1 we are shown that the inauguration of Christ's kingdom is at His appearing at His second advent. This is the time when He appears as King of kings (Rev. 19:11-16).
At the present time the Lord Jesus is performing His priestly intercession in the heavenly sanctuary as our mediator, intercessor, high priest, and advocate. In this intercession He is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by Him. Soon He will finish His intercessory work. Then He will make His second advent to this earth according to His promise in Tohn 14:3. He will gather all His faithful followers from this earth to His capital city, the New Jerusalem in heaven. This will be done by resurrecting all who have fallen asleep in Him, and by the translation of the righteous living at this last day.
Those who are living in disobedience when He comes will be slain. Thus it is written: "And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be clung upon the ground" (Jer. 25:33).
Revelation 20 speaks of the one thousand years that follows after the gathering of the righteous and the slaying of the living disobedient when Christ appears the second time. It shows how at the end of this millennial period all the disobedient of all generations will he raised in the second resurrection. They will be punished with everlasting destruction. Then God will reconstruct this earth into a new perfect earth entirely free from sin and sinners, with the New Jerusalem its glorious capital. This new earth and New Jerusalem will be the everlasting kingdom of Christ. Then the prayer "Thy kingdom come" will be fully answered. The will of God will then be done in earth as it is in heaven. But this will not be the case, and it cannot be, until the new earth is prepared of God.
Thus it is that when we pray, "Thy kingdom come," we are praying for Christ to come and put an end to the long cruel reign of death and sin. We are praying for Christ to make this earth new, as the eternal abode of the saved.
It means of a truth that when we pray, "Thy kingdom come," we are placing special stress on the second coming of Christ. The Standard Dictionary in defining the word adventist, when spelled with a small "a" and used in a general sense, says it is "one who lays special stress on the second coming of Christ." So from this angle everyone who believes in the Lord's Prayer with its real scriptural implications is an adventist.
Commandment Keeping
Consider now what is involved in praying, "Thy will be done." The entire Bible is a revelation of the will of God. But in a special sense the Ten Commandments, as interpreted by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, are a summary of God's will. Romans 3:18 shows that a person may know God's will, when he is instructed out of His law. The doing of God's will is equated with having His law within one's heart (Ps. 40:8).
No one of himself can ever keep the Ten Commandments. But Christ will keep them in every soul who permits Christ to live in him constantly. God gives the surrendered soul a new heart with the principles of the Decalogue traced thereon, so he can obey His commandments (Eze. 11: 19, 20). Thus the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:3, 4).
What, then, is involved in praying, "Thy will be done"? It means that we want our life to be in subjection now to the divine will. It means that we are looking to Christ to take away our sinful heart and give us, in real conversion, a new heart, with His law written thereupon. It means that we will meet the conditions upon which Christ will abide in our renewed heart. Then Christ will keep the commandments in us.
When we pray, "Thy will be done," we are praying, "Lord, make me to respect every form of lawful authority, to be kind and loving, pure, honest, truthful, and content according to the second table of Thy commandments." It means, "Lord, help me to make Thee supreme in my life, to worship only Thee, to be reverent, and keep the seventh day, as spelled out in the first table of Thy law." It is evident that when one follows through on "Thy will be done" he will be a keeper of the seventh day, according to God's commandments.
A Common Basis for Unity
Thus it is that one who practices the truth involved in "Thy kingdom come" and "Thy will be done" will be an adventist and a keeper of the seventh day along with Jesus, the apostles, and the early Christians. These two truths of the Advent and the Sabbath could be a common bond in this commonly accepted Lord's Prayer for bringing all of the Lord's people together.
Scripture prophecy does assure us that before the end all the Lord's people will be brought together in true unity. They will stand united on that sure, true platform of "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." "Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus" (Rev. 14:12).
In Revelation 12:17 this same group is called the remnant of God's church. They are from the last generation of mankind —because the next event in the prophecy of Revelation 14, after the calling out of this group to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, is the second coming of Christ on the cloud (chap. 14: 14).
The keeping of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus is God's gathering call for our day. It will in due time bring all His people together as one, as Jesus prayed. The faith of Jesus in this case certainly includes the stressing of His second advent. The keeping of the commandments includes the hallowing of the seventh day. Thus "Thy will be done," when followed through, will be a formula for true unity.
