The kingdom issue is not settled for me yet. When we are born again don’t we experience the kingdom relationship with Jesus? Are we not already in the vine?
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Well, I’ll preface my statements with a few remarks.
First, the topic of the “Rapture” (given that it’s an accepted and real event in this thread) is closely tied in and together with the accompanying event of the “Tribulation” and then the next event of the “Millennial Reign of Christ” (the 1,000 year “kingdom”).
It’s only with “other” interpretations (not named here...) that these things are “not real” and are “spiritualized away” or “allegorized” as representing something else, other than what they *really* are, as plainly stated in the Bible — and said to be “in your heart”...
Note in that first article quoted up above, the statement...
“...it is quite clear the term kingdom is a noun describing the literal messianic reign of Christ on earth.”
Thus, that’s what Jesus is talking about to the Jews, his disciples, who were actually expecting that to come about soon, and thus they were asking Jesus about that. They wanted to know if He was setting up that kingdom *now* (at their time). Jesus didn’t tell them that they were wrong in expecting it, but that it wasn’t for them to know “when” it was going to come about (they have a lot of evangelizing to do first, as we well know, now, since almost 2,000 years have passed by and the kingdom is not set up on earth yet).
So, in answer to your question..., “When we are born again don’t we experience the kingdom relationship with Jesus?”
To tell you the truth, I don’t really know what a “kingdom relationship” is.
I know what being saved is. I know that a person is a new creation in Christ, when He accepts Christ as his Savior (and that happens immediately). I know that we have the Holy Spirit that indwells us, but a body that is called a “body of death” (per the Apostle Paul). We’ll have that body of death (even though we are a new creation in Christ, and the Holy Spirit indwells us), until the time when we are given our new glorified and permanent bodies to match up with being a new creature in Christ — which is at the time of the Rapture.
But, in all that (in being saved) — there’s nothing there that has anything to do with the “Millennial Kingdom”..., which is a kingdom on earth, which Jesus the Messiah of Israel sets up, in which He sits on the Throne of David (an throne for the nation of Israel), and He rules and reigns over all the nations on earth, in this earthly kingdom.
Those are two different things — being saved... and... the Millennial Kingdom.
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I think the possible confusion comes about — in this case — because of others, in the past, equating the “kingdom” with being saved — in the course of rejecting Israel, and rejecting the “literal” and “real” kingdom that will be set up on earth.