One of the characteristics of modern assumptions about the Bible is that in the Old Testament God dealt with His people in more physical or earthy ways, and that in the New Testament His promises and deliverances are of a more spiritual (meaning ethereal) nature. Thus, we don’t expect God to actually deliver us from our actual troubles, and we postpone all deliverance to the end of history, or to some pie in the sky when we die deliverance. The problem with this assumption is that it is radically false. Other than that, it is fine, but the central objection we have against this assumption is that it is not true.
Jesus came in the middle of history, and He did so in order to utterly transform history. The history that has been undergoing the process of transformation is earthly history, the one with kings, and parliaments, and merchants, and explorers, and farmers, and husbands and wives, and children, and nations, and wars, and taxes, and everything else that a newspaper might talk about.
God’s promises will not come to fruition in this “other” place, where the nations of men cannot see. Rather they will culminate in the Last Day, but all flesh will see and will acknowledge that Jesus is Lord, and they will do so prior to the end of the world. Every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, and this will be done by earthly, physical tongues. This is not a mystic, spiritual truth that will be somehow brought to pass in God’s seventeenth dimension somewhere, but invisible to mortals.
The Incarnation means that the fulfillment of God’s promises are more earthly and physical than they were in the Old Testament. Then they were promises, faithful words, but still words. But now they are being fulfilled before our eyes. We actually see the nations coming to Christ, and our great grandchildren will see far more of it, and will read about it in the papers.