i have a concordance but i thought the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God were used interchangeably. I was hoping someone could give me an answer or confirm this.
Yes Dre, I believe the 2 terms are used interchangeably.
Excerpt from 'What is the Gospel of the Kingdom?' (http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,6142.0.html):
HEAVEN OF THE HEAVENS
So what is the kingdom? We are the kingdom of God. We are the kingdom of the heavens.
Where does God reside? In heaven. God resides in heaven, but it is not called the kingdom of heaven in the Greek, you can check Rotherham and all those, it’s kingdom of the heavens, plural. We are the temple of God. God resides in His temple God resides in heaven. We are the heaven in which God resides, where He dwells.
But don’t get to haughty, because the Scriptures say, not even all the heaven of the heavens can contain Him.
2Chron 6:18 …Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!
But never the less it is true, He does dwell in the heavens. But they can’t even contain Him, He’s bigger than that. But He does dwell in His heavens, we are His heavens, we are His spiritual kingdom. But it does not yet appear what we shall be, we only have the earnest, down payment of His spirit.
Eph 1:14 which is an earnest of our inheritance, unto the redemption of God's own possession, unto the praise of his glory.
We have the down payment, but John says we will eventually see Him as He is, because we will be like Him. We will be like Jesus Christ.
1John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
So we are the kingdom of God. Christ is going to return with a kingdom. What does He return with? What is the symbolism of how Christ returns? He returns on, what is He riding? A white horse. Is anybody with Him? An army. Are they walking? They are riding on white horses too.
Rev 19:14 And the armies in Heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
What is that army? The kingdom of God, it’s us. We are coming with Him, He is going to gather us up. Gather up what? His army, His kingdom.
We still have all these parables though. We are the kingdom of God, so what are all these parbles?
The kingdom of God is like…a merchant
The kingdom of God is like…a seed
The kingdom of God is like…a king that goes afar
The kingdom of God is like…workers in a vineyard
Like… like… like…what is it like?
Specifically we will see what the parables are all talking about, they are all talking about the same thing. Jesus Christ says, “Do you not know this parable? And how then will you know all parables?” (Mark 4:13)
So does it mean if you know one parable that you can know them all? Yes. Why? They are all the same. That’s why the kingdom of God is like this and also like this and like this and this, etc. Well what is that ‘like,’ like what? Well it’s like Seed. But what is that? What is it saying though? The Seed and the country and the vineyard and the leaven… what is it actually saying? What is it like? What is the ‘like’?
WHAT IS THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM?
So we are the kingdom! We are the kingdom of God. We are the temples - the heavens in which God’s Spirit dwells. We are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar special people to God and through this kingdom, with Christ as the King, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed. But we are blessed through judgment and they are going to be blessed in judgment. We may think it would be nice if it was another way, but it’s through judgment.
Hope this helps,
Marques