Mankind failed in his responsibility to rule and to be subject to rule. Would you care to comment on the progression of this truth in Scripture, which leads to the final Messianic reign?
This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Problems of Becoming and Being a King’ (1990).
To come immediately to the Revelation, whatever else it says or it doesn't say, it appears to say that before the Lord Jesus comes and destroys the beast and the false prophet completely, God will let the devil go to the end of his tether. God is not a tyrant. God could have wiped the devil out who knows how many centuries ago. God could have wiped out humanity in the garden of Eden. God didn't. God had mercy. God, in fact, allows man's rebellion. Though compassed with many a warning and many an offer of salvation, God lets man's rebellion go. And we are advised through Scripture that he will let it go to the very end of its tether before he will step in and use his almighty power to put it to an end. And what that seems to me to demonstrate is that God is not a tyrant. He'll have us in heaven, not because he has frightened us there simply by his almighty power, but because we have learned by experience how evil sin is, how wrong our own way is, how it will lead to disaster. And, having found that, we want to be saved; we want to receive God's Son. We receive God's Son because we love him, because we want to be like God; we want to obey God. Before God eventually takes over, the whole universe will be taught the lesson of where the creature's rebellion against God will eventually lead. Not because God says, 'Well if you're going to do that I shall put my spanner in the spokes and make sure you don't succeed,' but because sin is sin, and eventually, automatically and inevitably, it leads to that harvest. I think therefore it doesn't give us excuse to sin, but it at least tells me volumes about the nature and character of God, and his use of his divine power. How did he ever get around to conceiving the notion that he would love the sinner enough to nail his own son to Calvary What a God that is, who will be patient with humanity and let sin go to that length, and then turn it not to our destruction but to our salvation. A magnificent God, surely!
We can learn in the early chapters of Samuel the principles that lay behind God imposing a king on Israel in that far off day, but it is only an early and small example of the problem that God has had, and does have still. How will the almighty God impose his Messiah on our world? Will he just do it as a tyrant and put him there? How will he do it? And the method God has chosen, in my estimation, not only reveals the character of God but is an answer to the primeval slander that God is against us and wants to keep us down. That is not so.
