That does not mean every wound has already disappeared. It means the decisive victory is behind us, and the healing of the nations is underway.

The mountain begins with a stone

Daniel 2 describes a stone cut without hands that strikes the kingdoms represented by the statue and becomes a mountain filling the earth. The image joins decisive establishment to continuing expansion. The Kingdom does not remain a small religious enclave, and it is not an evacuation from creation.

Jesus placed its coming within the lives of His hearers:

“Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom”

— Matthew 16:28 NASB

Jerusalem’s destruction and the temple’s fall in 70 AD marked the close of the old covenant age, not the postponement of God’s government. Heaven’s government had been planted in history and would never be uprooted. Isaiah’s promise that its government would increase without end gives the direction of travel: not permanent smallness, but growth.

Jesus’ pictures of leaven and a mustard seed make the same point. Leaven works through dough; a seed grows. Neither image asks us to imagine that the whole world becomes visibly perfect in a single afternoon.

Establishment is not the whole chronology

The Kingdom’s first-century establishment must not be confused with every later event in Revelation. The martyrs’ resurrection and reign are followed by a literal millennium, the gathering of Gog and Magog in the First Crusade beginning in 1096 AD, and the second resurrection and abolition of Death and Hades. Only then does John show the new heaven and new earth and the New Jerusalem coming down.

The earthly side of that transition was not a quiet change of labels. The Forgotten Cataclysm of 1100–1300 AD was a planetary-scale, compound upheaval: repeated major eruptions, atmospheric darkening and cooling, sustained seismic destruction, altered landscapes and rivers, and cascading drought, famine, plague, and social collapse. It was the physical signature of the old earth passing away—not the annihilation of the planet, but a profound change of state and covenantal order.

In scale and persistence, this was the greatest environmental cataclysm since the end of the last Ice Age, not merely a succession of difficult seasons.

That is the larger setting for the New Jerusalem. The city is a people in union with God, not a golden building waiting to fall from the sky. Its continual descent is heaven’s life flowing into earth without an ending. The Kingdom was established in the first century; Revelation’s later transition opens the ever-arriving reality whose light and healing continue through history.

What does growth look like on the ground?

Women have gained property, voting, educational, and public opportunities denied to earlier generations. Children once sent into mines and factories are protected by laws and schooling requirements. Smallpox has been eradicated. Clean water and sanitation reach people whose ancestors had neither.

Slavery has been outlawed, while exploitation remains a real problem. A change in law is an advance, not proof that every person has stopped abusing others. Expanded protections for minorities and indigenous peoples likewise represent movement without making every present injustice disappear.

The hunger comparison assembled in Chapter 9 is particularly concrete. It follows Global Hunger Index scores between 2000 and 2025 for 121 countries with valid data in both years. Approximately 91% show lower hunger scores. The chart also contains countries moving in the wrong direction. Growth is not the same as uniform improvement everywhere.

These are not merely encouraging statistics placed beside an unrelated spiritual hope. They are the visible fruit of the Kingdom: compassion widening, preventable suffering being challenged, creation being pulled out of futility. Revelation’s nations walk in the city’s light and receive healing. Daniel’s mountain is filling the earth.

A longer view is not indifference

A twenty- or thirty-year window can contain terrible reversals. Looking across centuries is not a way to tell suffering people that their pain is unimportant. It is a way to stop treating every crisis as proof that God’s Kingdom must still be absent.

Revelation’s heavenly victory and earth’s continuing healing are related but distinct. In the realm of light, the promise is complete: Death and Hades are gone. On earth, biological mortality continues, evil still resists, and creation still groans. The nations’ healing unfolds through advances and reversals, not a neat upward line. We are not waiting for God to win again. We are living where earth is catching up with heaven’s victory.

That gives us a calling, not a spectator’s seat. The first-century Bride entered union with Christ; the family of sons and daughters carries heaven’s life into creation. Romans 8 is a mandate to pull creation out of futility. Protecting a child, opposing exploitation, healing disease, or bringing beauty where there is ruin belongs to that work.

Hope should make us more responsible for the world, not less. The Kingdom is here. The light is expanding. The question is whether we will participate.

Discuss

• Why does it matter to distinguish the Kingdom’s first-century establishment from Revelation’s later new-creation transition?
• Which example of progress most clearly helps you see the healing of the nations as a real, continuing work—and where could you participate?

From Dismantling Religion by Chris Drake — Chapters 7–9; Chapter 13: “The Real Gospel”; Appendix 4, objection 4.