Tuesday, April 14, 2015

“K” is for King of Kings

K“All kingdoms of the earth are become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ. And he shall reign forever and ever, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.1

When I began thinking about what I wanted to write for this particular article, the first thing that came to mind were the words of the scriptures used in the Hallelujah Chorus by George Friedrich Handel assecond_coming_anderson_l written above. If you would like to hear this beautiful chorus sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, click here.

We believe that the Millennium, the thousand years that Christ will reign upon the earth, will be very similar to life as we know it, with one great exception: there will be complete peace and evil will be banished. But what does this mean in the sense of King of Kings?

There’s a story in the Book of Mormon that tells of a group of people called Lamanites. These people were divided into different groups with a king that ruled over each separate group of people. However, there was also a Head King that reigned over all the other minor Kings. The smaller groups had a certain degree of autonomy, but were still subject to the whims of the Head King. If he didn’t like the way one of the subordinate kings was acting, he had the power to remove the lesser king or interfere with the way he was running things. The minor kings didn’t have the collective right to remove the Head King. So it will be during the Millennial period, except that the King of Kings will rule in righteousness and will not rule with whims, but according to set rules that will not change, because they will be just. People will not have to change their religion, during this time, if they don’t feel the need, because no man or woman will be commanded to be what they don’t want to be.

 

 1Revelations 11:15; 19:16

See Articles of Faith 10 for further information

Painting: the Second Coming by Harry Anderson