Are The Church And The Kingdom Of God The Same?

Most of us have grown up believing that the church and the Kingdom of God were the same thing, but is it really so? What can we learn from church history that will set the record straight?

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TRANSCRIPT

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A lot of people think that the Kingdom of God is the church, but that is something that didn't, that understanding didn't take hold amongst members of the church until the early to mid 1900s. Prior to that they understood it to be like the Constitution of the United States, a political organization.

So we go to the 1850s, 1860s, the church has already been established for 30 plus years and George Q. Cannon says that the Kingdom of God, when established, so the church was not the Kingdom of God, he understood that very clearly, when established will not be for the protection of one church alone but for the protection of all men. We have been taught from the beginning this important principle that the Church of God is distinct from the Kingdom of God.

In the midst of all of us who understand this matter there is a clear distinction between the church in its ecclesiastical capacity and that which may be termed the government of God in its political capacity.

So we have the Prophet Joseph all the way up to, we go up to basically the 1880s, and they recognized and they taught plainly the distinction and the difference between the Church of God and the Kingdom of God and then after that slowly until we get to basically the 1930s to 1960s where culturally speaking the two organizations are merged and used interchangeably incorrectly.

Brigham Young explained the link between the Constitution of the United States and the Kingdom of God. He said, "But few, if any, understand what a theocratic government is. In every sense of the word it is a republican government and differs but little in form from our national, state, and territorial governments. But its subjects, meaning the people, will recognize the will and dictation of the Almighty. That's the difference. Even now the form of the government of the United States differs but little from that of the Kingdom of God."

The Council of Fifty is basically the governing body of the Kingdom of God. It's like a Congress or a legislative body almost. Their power, politically speaking, was right there in Nauvoo. Any organization, any groups attempting to build the Kingdom of God—there have been two different ways that they've done that. One is through separation physically and the other is a separation politically.

And so you have examples of separation physically when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt. You have the pilgrims leaving Europe and coming to the to the the New World. On the other hand you have the the colonists who didn't leave. They stood their ground and they said that we are not under this other political authority. So either way you have to separate yourselves from the political authority.

And so the Prophet Joseph, he saw that it was the preference is of course not to shed blood. He said that he organized into a special council to take into consideration the best policy for this people to adopt to obtain their rights from the nation and secure protection for themselves and children and to secure a resting place in the mountains or some uninhibited region where we can enjoy the liberty of conscience guaranteed to us by the Constitution of our country. And so they were looking for a place to separate themselves physically to build that political kingdom. Now that we have the documents that we haven't had for a long time we understand that it was actually the Council of 50 that directed things for the Saints at their trek west out of the United States to Utah.