THE KINGDOM HERALD

In Pound Wise we discovered how the Parable of the Pounds was a window through which we could peep to preview the order of the promised earthly kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the parable, the Lord told of a noble man who was to embark on a journey to a far country to receive a kingdom for himself. Before leaving he called his ten servants and gave to each a pound , with the instruction, “Occupy till I come” (see Luke 19:11-27). On his eventual return he gathered the servants again to determine what each had accomplished with the money given him. There was one who had made ten more pounds from the one pound he received. To him the master said, “Well, thou good servant: because thou has been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities ” (verse 17). There was another who had with his pound made five more; to him the master gave authority over five cities. As I noted in the article , this was only a parable being used to convey a truth. In other words, the

This is my first article of the year. I am publishing it on the first day of the first full week of the new year. It is also the tenth day of the first month of the year that rounds off the first ten years of the twenty-first century. That could be written as 10-01-10 or 01-10-10, depending on your convention. And when we consider that some biblical prognosticators have described the twenty-first century as belonging to God – that is, to the promised earthly kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ – this would make it an apt time to talk about the “Times and Seasons of the Kingdom.” Now, the above play on numbers in today’s date may be a mere coincidence, but it so happens that I had planned to publish this article last week, but a combination of computer glitches, Internet hiccups and physical indisposition compelled me to put it off. You know, there are those who don’t believe in coincidences. Watch out, brothers and sisters! Yes, there was a time when “Jesus is coming soon” was a slogan