The third line is usually heard as a request for something to arrive: a future state, delivered from outside, in which things are finally put right.
This reading takes that apart, and what replaces it is considerably more demanding.
A transformation, not an event
The kingdom is presented as an evolutionary process already running: the transformation from our current animal-human condition toward genuine humaneness.
It is not scheduled, and it does not arrive. It emerges — through growing understanding, tolerance and forgiveness in actual beings. Which means it is not something happening to you. It is something happening in you, and the prayer is a request to participate.
That is the same transition described in reincarnation and karma and mapped in the six kingdoms. Here it is put in the second person.
Why peace by force fails
The section that does the most work, and the most useful thing in this short video.
Wars continue despite an almost universal desire for peace, which looks like a contradiction until you look at the mechanism. The video's account: peace imposed by force is a contradiction in its own terms. Force is the thing peace is the absence of, so using it can suppress a conflict but cannot produce peace — the underlying capacity for enmity is untouched and simply waits.
Peace, on this account, is not a state that can be installed. It is a byproduct of beings who have developed past wanting the conflict. There is no shortcut, because the shortcut consists of applying the very thing being eliminated.
That explains the historical record better than most theories do, and it explains why every enforced settlement requires continued enforcement.
What you are actually asking for
This is where the line becomes uncomfortable.
If the kingdom emerges through development, and development runs on experience — including the bitter kind, per the contrast principle — then praying for the kingdom to come is praying for the process that produces it.
The video says this plainly: to pray for this kingdom is to welcome the very experiences that guide our evolution. Not to ask for difficulty to end, but to accept what the transformation requires.
That is a long way from the comfortable reading, and it makes the line one of the more serious things a person could say. It is also consistent with everything the series has established: prayer works by aligning you with the structure rather than asking the structure to move.
Part 4 takes up Thy will be done.
Key ideas
- The kingdom is a transformation already under way, not an event that arrives from outside.
- It emerges through understanding, tolerance and forgiveness developing in actual beings.
- Peace imposed by force cannot work, because force is what peace is the absence of.
- Wars persist despite the desire for peace because the underlying capacity for enmity is untouched by suppression.
- Praying for the kingdom means welcoming the experiences that produce the development, not asking for difficulty to end.
About this article. It summarises the video above from The Eternal World Picture. The writings of Martinus Thomsen are published by the Martinus Institute.
