Thy Kingdom Come

I. The night in Babylon

The king of the world lies awake.

Nebuchadnezzar has dreamed, and the dream will not let him go. He summons his wise men and demands the impossible: first tell me the dream itself, and only then the interpretation. Whoever cannot will be cut to pieces. The sentence applies to all the wise men of Babylon — and so also to four young exiles from Judah, whom no one had asked anything.1

The wise men say it aloud, and it is the most honest word the court produces that day: what the king asks, no human on earth can do. Only the gods could — and they do not dwell with flesh.2

That is exactly where the four begin. Daniel asks the king for time, goes to his house and lays the matter before Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah — four names from Judah in a city that had given them other names. In the night they ask for mercy, and the text says from whom: from the God of heaven.3

In a city full of gods with houses and streets, four displaced boys name their God after the one domain no king can conquer. The wise men were right: their gods do not dwell with flesh. This One does dwell — in heaven — and He lets four exiles ask Him for mercy as if He lived next door.

In the Aramaic of the court, it is the address of the prayer itself: the God of heaven — which art in heaven.4

In that night the secret is revealed. The first thing Daniel does is bless the name. And the blessing itself is about kings: "He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings."5 Before Daniel enters the throne room again, the question of power has already been settled — in a bedchamber of exiles, in prayer.

II. Who hands out kingdoms

The next morning an exile stands before the most powerful man in his world, and the first thing he tells that man is where his power comes from.

"You, O king, king of kings — to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the honor."6

Given. The king of kings turns out to be a recipient. Daniel says it to a man who, one command earlier, condemned all his wise men to death — and the king does not fall upon him; he falls upon his face.7

Everything Babylon rests on has been handed out by the God of the four condemned — and what has been handed out can be taken back.

One generation later that happens, in a single night: at a feast where they drink from the vessels of the temple, a hand writes on the plaster of the wall, and it is the same exile who has to read the words. The interpretation is bookkeepers' language — "God has numbered your kingdom and brought it to an end." That same night it was over.8

Between those two thrones stands the sentence on which the whole book of Daniel rests, repeated three times until even the greatest can recite it: the Most High rules over the kingship of men, and He gives it to whom He will.9

Whatever else happens in the king's dream — the statue of four metals, the stone cut loose without human hands, the mountain that fills the whole earth — turns on that same verb.10 In Babylon nothing is seized that was not first given. With this God kingdoms are not plunder; they are on loan.

And then Daniel says, in the interpretation of that same dream, where it is heading:

"But in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never perish."11

The God of heaven — for the fourth time in this one chapter, and now about a kingdom that will never again be relieved by another. It is not passed on to a next one. It is set up, and the One who sets it up is the same One to whom four boys prayed for mercy that night.

III. The throne room

Years later it is Daniel himself who dreams, and this time the curtain opens further than for any king.

It is the first year of Belshazzar. The man who was once asked, on pain of death, for another man's dream now lies on his own bed — and when it is over, he writes it down.

First the sea, whipped up by the four winds, and out of the water come beasts — one after another, each more gruesome than the last, and on the last beast a small horn with eyes like human eyes and a mouth full of boasting.12 That is what world history looks like from the beach: rising beasts.

Then the vision turns, and thrones are set in place. The Ancient of Days takes his seat — his garment white as snow, the hair of his head like pure wool, his throne flames of fire. A thousand thousands serve Him; the court sits, and books are opened.13 Below, a horn holds the floor — great words, until judgment is passed on it.14

And then this:

"I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven came Someone like a son of man; and He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him before Him. And to Him was given dominion and honor and kingdom."15

There is no second vision in all of Scripture in which a Son and a Father figure stand side by side like this. And what happens to the kingdom in that one vision: it is carried in and handed over. He comes to the Ancient of Days; He is brought before Him; to Him it was given. Every movement in the sentence is receiving. No one ascends anything here. No one takes.

And the giving does not stop with Him. Further on, in the interpretation of the same vision, the kingship is handed out once more: "to the people of the saints of the Most High".16 The same passive giving, one step further down — all the way to the children.

The land where Daniel dreams this is still called Shinar in his own book — the plain where people once drove a tower upward to seize a name.17 What he sees tonight is the counter-move, at the highest place there is: in this family power is not seized but handed over — even to the Son, even on the throne. What the child presents in the second petition, the Son never had in any other way than from the hands of the Father.

What it does to the seer is recorded as well: his spirit is distressed within him, the visions of his head terrify him. In the middle of the dream Nebuchadnezzar's interpreter goes up to one of those standing by and asks him for the certainty of all this. And his account ends not with a hymn but with a man in the night: his thoughts greatly terrify him, his color changes, and he keeps the word in his heart.18

IV. A petition that did not yet exist

The remarkable thing about this petition is that it is new.

The noun already existed. A psalm of David says to God: "Your kingdom is a kingdom of all ages."19 That could be sung, and it was sung: his kingship stands, it is there, it endures. But asking for the kingdom to come — no one did that in the whole Greek Old Testament.

What happened between the psalm and the petition is called Daniel. Ever since the God of heaven had it announced in Babylon that He would set up a kingdom, the kingdom is not only something that stands, but something that is at hand.

The petition borrows its noun from the psalms and its expectation from Daniel. There is a prayer in Daniel's own Aramaic that in its second line asks for this very thing — and may He let his kingdom reign — with Daniel's own word for the kingdom.20 The child who says "thy kingdom come" prays within the inheritance of those exiles.

V. From "let it come" to "Come"

The petition is in the third person. Let your kingdom come — something is spoken about, reverently, almost with face averted. That is how the child prays it today: about a kingdom it does not see, to a Father it does not see. That is also how Daniel stands within it: he sees Him coming, with the clouds, and even in the dream he does not address Him — he keeps the word in his heart.

On the last page of the Bible the petition is still there — but something has happened to it. The visions are over, the city has been shown, and what remains is a voice that invites and a voice that answers.

"And the Spirit and the Bride say: Come. And whoever hears, let him say: Come. And whoever is thirsty, let him come."21

The Bride says ἐλθέ — second person. She no longer speaks about the kingdom; she addresses Someone — the very One whom Daniel saw coming with the clouds. And then the name is added, the name that never stood in the prayer: "Yes, come, Lord Jesus."22 A word that was always said about something is said to Someone.23

The third person, the form of the petition itself, is also still in that verse — but it has been passed on. Whoever is thirsty, let him come. The form in which the child once asked for the kingdom, the Bride now uses to hold the door open for whoever is still standing outside.

The word the Bride says to Him is rare in the New Testament: it occurs in three verses, and twice it comes from his own mouth.24

VI. The petition of the child

So the second petition stands between three nights in Babylon and one morning still to come — the morning on which the Bride needs only one word.

In all three nights stands the same man. In the first he asks, with three friends, for mercy from the God of heaven. In the second he sees the throne room and the Son who is handed the kingdom, and he keeps the word in his heart. In the third he reads from a plaster wall that a kingdom has been numbered and ended. And between those nights and that morning a child sits up in bed, and it asks for what Daniel saw: thy kingdom come.