His disciples said to him, When will the kingdom come?
[Jesus said,] It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is.’ Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it. (113)
Brill: It cometh not with observation. They will not say: Lo, here! or: Lo, there! But the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.
It will not come by waiting for it. If we wait to see the kingdom coming, as nearly all prophecy-obsessed Christians do, it will never arrive. For two thousand years people have been claiming (and on occasion “proving”) that the return of Jesus is immanent and that the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth is near–even though Jesus said: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
It will not be a matter of saying “here it is” or “there it is.” By this Jesus is saying that we will not have to go somewhere to find the kingdom, that it will not at all be a matter of “come over here” or “go over there.” It will not be a matter of the kingdom being in one place and not in another.
Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it. The kingdom is here right now throughout the world, but it is invisible–at least to human eyes, but not to the eyes of those evolving beyond ordinary humanity. So we need not go anywhere to find the kingdom. We need only open the wisdom eye of the spirit and see ourselves as we truly are: the divine, immortal Self. For the Self is the kingdom–as is God, the Self of the Self.
Read the next article in the Gospel of Thomas for Yogis: Male and Female?