The Bible tells us that Jesus came into the world to “usher in the kingdom of God.” While this is a very good understanding of Jesus’ work and the whole of the New Testament, we might be missing a very important truth.

That truth would be that God had already laid the foundation of His Kingdom. How do we see this in the Biblical Creation story?

Not only did God create the world, the heavens, and us, but He also created a garden called Eden. It was the Garden of Eden where God had intended to live with and interact with us. What would you say if I told you that the world itself was the foundation of God’s kingdom and the Garden of Eden was where God laid the foundation of His throne?

If you will, allow me to make a long story short. If we look at the entire Bible, we might be able to see that Christ did not come to lay the foundation of God’s Kingdom, but rather He came to restore the Kingdom of God that was lost in the fall of mankind. 

Man has spent the last several thousand years seeking to find their way to God, in Heaven. But our 50,000-foot view of the Bible tells us that it is not God’s intention for us to “get to heaven.” Christ has always been the one and only plan of restoration of what God had already created. 

Christ didn’t come into the world to tell us how to get into Heaven. Jesus came to restore the kingdom of God that had already been established in the world. God’s plan of redeeming us through Christ is not about getting us to Heaven. It’s about restoring what God had already created.

We are not looking to leave this world and find our way to Heaven. We are looking to discover and gain entry into that Garden of Eden—God’s kingdom—here on earth.

So, with all this in mind, what is different about “prayer” between the Old and New Testaments? From the OT, we can learn why and how prayer developed.

Prayer developed in the context of a broken world. But we cannot put this on the shoulders of Adam and Eve alone. God still walked with and spoke with them, and to the fathers of our ancestors.

So what do we mean when we talk about Jesus coming to restore the kingdom of God? It’s important not only to understand the idea of Christ restoring the kingdom, but also how He restored the ways in which the kingdom worked. 

It is very clear that God indeed wishes us (man) to use “prayer” as a means of communication between Himself and us (His creation) as an alternative, since He is no longer walking in the presence of Mankind.

Adam’s disobedience caused God to change His approach in dealing with us. With this in mind, we must also recall that God puts His plan of redemption into action at this very time (Gen 3:14-24). You may have taken note that I did not mention Eve here; that is a message for another time. 

In the beginning, God spoke face-to-face with Man. God stood in the presence of Adam and had conversations with him. I believe that the Bible gives us enough information for us to believe that God continued speaking face-to-face with Man, even Cain and Abel, Seth, and others, as well as Enoch, until “he was not, for God took him” (Gen 5:24).  

© 2025 Clayton Moore|mooreofclayton