Previews of the Kingdom

Wherever Jesus rules, the Kingdom is there.  In that sense we live in the Kingdom now—and in a number of places that kind of language is used.  But these two passages aren’t the Kingdom in that sense:  Jesus says the Kingdom is coming near even where his kingship is not accepted!  But where the miraculous healings were happening, Jesus says, the Kingdom is there.  At least, a foretaste of what it will be like—sickness and death banished, for a short time, a demonstration of what we’re promised is coming in full, at Jesus’s return.