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Good afternoon, Mr. Light. You've been very silent the past week or so. I guess you're not smarter than your "best friend", after all. Jesus really did know the truth and preached and taught it!

I'm doing a study on the Kingdom and came across a verse that puts another nail in your theory that the Kingdom of God was "within" Christ's sworn enemies the Pharisees (and Sadducees for that matter). But before we look at that passage, let's do a quick review of the three main reasons I have provided in the past for why your theory holds no water.

First, your interpretation of Lk 17:21 doesn't even fit with the immediate context of the passage.

Secondly, in order for God's Kingdom to be "within" a person, that person must be in the Holy Spirit. In fact, to be in the kingdom is to experience "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" through the sanctifying work of the Spirit (Rom 14:17). But the huge problem here is that the gift of the Holy Spirit was not given to unbelievers but only to the Church after Jesus ascended into heaven -- to be exact... 10 days after on the day of Pentecost. Therefore, the Kingdom of God was in no one prior to the feast day of Pentecost (Act 1:1-5; 2:1-4)!

Thirdly, Jesus told the chief priests and Pharisees that the Kingdom of God would be taken away from them and would be given to a "nation producing the fruit of it" (Mat 21:43). And Jesus wasn't talking about the visible, physical aspect of the kingdom either! He was talking about the spiritual, invisible aspect that is "here and now" in this age. We can know this because the kingdom was going to be given only to God's elect, which of course would include gentile believers. God's elect is the "nation" to whom the kingdom would be given (1Pet 2:9). And God's elect are fully expected to produce spiritual fruit in this age (Lk 8:11-15)! So, when Christ spoke these words to the chief priests and Pharisees, he was actually telling them that the kingdom would be taken away from Israel as a geopolitical entity. And this was ultimately accomplished in 70 A.D. when Israel, as a geopolitical entity, ceased to be the chosen, covenant people of God. So, God took away the kingdom from one nation to give it to another -- a spiritual nation without physical borders!

Now to the passage that puts, yet, another nail in your lame theory. Matthew 13 is without doubt the central chapter in all the bible that teaches us what the nature of and different aspects to the kingdom are. Jesus taught his disciples by a series of parables in rapid fire succession.

Matt 13:33
33 He told them another parable. "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened."
ESV

The term "leaven" in scripture can mean "evil" or "good", depending upon the context of the passage. During the Exodus when the Jews celebrated their first Passover in Egypt it was used in negative sense to denote evil. The Jews were not only forbidden to use any leaven (yeast) in their bread but were even forbidden to have any leaven in their household during this Feast. In the NT, we find the negative use of this term in such passages as Gal 5:7-9; 1Cor 5:7-8, etc. In addition, we have this passage as well:

Matt 16:5-12
5 When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. 6 Jesus said to them, "Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." 7 And they began discussing it among themselves, saying, "We brought no bread." 8 But Jesus, aware of this, said, "O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? 9 Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 10 Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 11 How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." 12 Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
ESV

In this passage, Jesus warned his disciples about the evils inherent in the teachings of the religious establishment. The danger is that their false teaching, that was contrary to the Word of God, would permeate and spread throughout all of one's faculties, thereby prohibiting him from believing the Gospel. (See Luke 8 the Parable of the Four Soils). But in the kingdom parable, "leaven" is used in a good sense since the only way the Kingdom has spread and is continuing to spread throughout the world is by the preaching of the Gospel (i.e. good news) and the effectual application of that preaching to the minds, hearts and souls of God's elect by the Holy Spirit, who himself is the very God of God (Act 5:1-4) and, therefore, He alone is good. At the end of the day, what determines when "leaven" is a medium for good or bad is what controls us. Paul explains this in Romans 7 and 8 and how each of us is either controlled by the flesh (sinful nature) or by the Holy Spirit ("divine nature").

So, Mr. Light, you claim that the evil, unbelieving, Christ-hating Pharisees had the kingdom of God "within" them, but very obviously it didn't do them one scintilla's worth of good! For Jesus was compelled to warn his disciples about the leaven of those wicked Pharisees and Sadducees! Yet, if one truly has the kingdom within him by the indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit then one would naturally think that that holy leaven would produce good fruit,which is precisely what scripture teaches (see Romans 8)! But the Pharisees of Jesus' day, for the most part, produced nothing but bad fruit, as they were actually enemies of Christ as depicted in Jesus' Parable of the Ten Minas in Luke 19.