This is not my idea; it comes from a book called “Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus” by Roy Blizzard. Read it many years ago and this part has stayed with me.
Here is Micah 2.12-13:
I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob.
I will gather the survivors of Israel; I will set them together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in its pasture; it will resound with people.
*The one who breaks out* will go up before them;
they will *break through* and pass the gate, going out by it.
Their king will pass on before them, the LORD at their head.
*Heb. paratz = break through, press
Picture it; hold onto the image of the shepherd bursting through the gate, with the sheep following, and the explicit statement that God is gathering them and leading them after exile. Now this:
From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been *breaking through*; even the *Breaker* is *pressing through*.
Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and the *Breaker* is *pressing forth*.
*Gr biazo/biastes = to crowd into, press
(rather than do/suffer violence)
And with the connection to Micah, the implicit sense of Jesus as the shepherd/King, gathering and leading (at the end of exile?), at the very least fully backed up by the LORD himself, with those sheep crowding right along after.
If Blizzard is right, this is an extremely strong Messianic claim by Jesus, and maybe more… (“I’m up to what God’s up to…”) It fits with what Wright says Jesus was about, particularly the true people of God being constituted around Jesus. It supports your points 1&2, and possibly 4&6. I think it makes much better sense of the text.
Dana

So again, I don’t see an either/or future vs. present in most of these texts. Its seems more as though the description of kingdom is always in the sense of imminent future; as though the kingdom is in the process of coming into being. So – the urgency of the gospel message is inherent in this timing. Now, do we still live in this tension, with the now/future ambiguity? Or has the kingdom come – and we simply have deep misconceptions about what the kingdom actually is, having misread the story Jesus tells?

RJS,
The time issue has bedeviled Jesus studies since Schweitzer. It’s inevitable to bring it up.
In this case, though, “has been advancing” and “entering into it” evidence presence not just impingement of future on the present. The violence against it — in the Matthean version — also indicates presence.
In general, I would say “to the degree it has been inaugurated, to the same degree we participate in it” — now.