In Christianity is born the new sense of life that one should not flee the world but that Christ is coming into the world for the marriage feast of the Lamb, the feast of Divine-Humanity - as the King and therefore as the judge. In the battle for the Kingdom of Christ the faithful turn toward the coming Christ; their hearts are inclined toward Him in their expectation of Him, and one begins to hear the still timid refrain of the nearly forgotten ancient Christian prayer: "Even so, come." In the heresy concerning the world, in their disbelief in Christ's royal ministry, Christians have forgotten this prayer, for it had led them into fear, but fear is vanquished by love. This prayer remains the paschal hymn of Christ's humanity, however, for Christ is the King coming in the name of the Lord.
          Arise, 0 God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.
          God standeth in the congregation of the mighty: he judgeth among the gods.
          The foundations of the earth are out of course.
          I have said: Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
                            hymns of Holy Saturday (cf. Ps. 82)
                    Paris, St. Sergius Theological Institute
                          30 September 1933

… The enthronement is accomplished in the battle for the kingdom, in the war of the prince of this world, of the forces of the Antichrist, against the power of Christ. Such a war would be impossible as far as the power of God as the Creator over creation is concerned. However, here it is a question precisely of the Kingdom of Christ the God-Man in the world; and He acts here not by Divine omnipotence and not by the power of this world, "not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit" (Zech. 4:6). (Correspondingly, it is said in 2 Thess. 2:8 that "the Lord shall consume [the Wicked] with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy [him] with the brightness of his coming," that is, by spiritual power.) The enthronement of Christ in the world is a tragedy of the antagonism and separation of light and darkness; this is the fundamental theme of both the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation, uniting the two books despite all their differences.

This enthronement is clearly prefigured in Holy Scripture. The basic text here is, of course, 1 Cor. 15:24-28: "Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." This text, a true crux interpretum, represents a micro-apocalypse of history and eschatology. It becomes intelligible if we take as our starting point the fundamental premise concerning Christ's royal ministry, namely, that His enthronement takes place during the course of history as a whole, crowned by eschatology. At the extreme bound of history, the Kingdom of Christ is abolished, to be replaced by the Kingdom of the Father and thus of the entire Holy Trinity. This is the Kingdom of Heaven (of God), where there will no longer be a boundary between God and the world that has fallen away from Him and opposes Him. In this kingdom, "God will be all in all."^[49] On the basis of this text, one can affirm the continuing ministry of the God-Man in the world even after the Ascension, notwithstanding His sitting at the right hand of the Father. Consequently, this ministry remains unfinished. As a result, Christ's ministry goes beyond the limits of His personal glorification, which thus remains incomplete, and the state of creation remains limited, until God becomes all in all and the final enemy, death, is abolished and all things are made subject by the God-Man to the Father's will. In other words, the glorification remains unfinished as long as Christ's enthronement continues, as long as the Kingdom of Christ has not finished its work and has not been replaced by the Kingdom of God.

Christ's continuing royal ministry is based on His already accomplished high-priestly ministry: "this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool" (Heb. 10:12-13). Compare this with Hebrews 2:8-9, an interpretation of Psalm 8:4-6, concerning the son of man, who is identified here with the Son of Man: "in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus … for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour."

This general idea of Christ's continuing enthronement,^[50] of His royal ministry, which is being accomplished in history, is disclosed in the book of Revelation as the apocalypse, that is, as the revelation of the hidden, inner content of history. In the heavenly vision of the One who sits on the throne and who holds in his right hand a book, in this vision of the historical destiny of the Church and, with her, of the historical destiny of humanity and the entire world, "no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon" (Rev. 5:3). But as one of the elders said, "Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof" (5:5). "In the midst of the throne … stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth" (5:6). And when the Lamb took the book, all fell down before Him, and one heard voices saying, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing" (5:12). This is echoed by the voices of "every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them" (5:13). This is the enthronement of the Lamb on earth, or the beginning of His royal ministry.

The enthronement of Christ on earth for His one-thousand-year reign will become perfectly evident, as evident as His enthronement was during His royal entry into Jerusalem. … This prophecy — contrary to the prevailing doctrine, which it would be erroneous to consider as the dogmatic definition of the Church — refers to the as-yet-unactualized future, … According to the content of this prophecy, one can in any case establish that, during the "first resurrection," the wall separating the world of the living from the world of the dead disappears, as it were, precisely for the souls who have come back to life and who reign with Christ for a thousand years. It is through these souls that Christ Himself reigns on earth. This event, connected also with the enchainment of Satan for a thousand years, represents an important step on the path of Christ's enthronement; and in general it belongs to His royal ministry.