The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Gospel of the Kingdom, #8

Many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. (Isaiah 2:2,3—NIV)

Now we see why the Gospel of the Kingdom is good news. It is because there will be no wars. In addition (remember, we are speaking of the nations of the saved, not of the Church itself):

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. (Revelation 21:4—NIV)

Can you imagine? People read the above verse and say "there will be no tears in Heaven when we get there!"

How self-centered can we get? This verse does not mean when we get to Heaven there will be no tears, it means when we are willing to grow up in Christ we will be able to appear with Him and wipe away the tears of mankind!

What a difference it would make if we would read the Bible instead of imagining what it says!

Let's see what we have discussed in this briefest of essays.

Another gospel: current Christian preaching is not the Gospel of the Kingdom preached by John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, and the Apostles of the Lamb.

What is preached today is the good news that we shall escape Hell and go to Heaven even though we have behaved wickedly before and after taking the "four steps of salvation."

This is another gospel, not the Gospel preached by the Apostle Paul. It does not even resemble the Gospel preached by Paul.

The "pre-tribulation rapture" is so manifestly unscriptural it is not worthy of discussion, as I view it.

Heaven and Paradise: we have mentioned that when we say "heaven" we really mean Paradise, the garden in which mankind was created. The memory of that garden is in our blood. Paradise is in Heaven now and so we treat the two synonymously. But Heaven and Paradise are not the same.

Heaven is a place in the spirit realm. It is the abode of God, Christ, the angels, and, as far as we know, (although the Bible does not discuss this to any great extent), the deceased saints.

Paradise was on the earth but now is in the third Heaven. Paradise will return to earth when Christ establishes His Throne here in the saints.

The Kingdom of God: the Kingdom of God is God in Christ in the saints governing all the works of God's hands. It is useless to bring people back into Paradise until a kingdom has been established that will be strong enough to maintain God's way and will on the earth. Christ and His saints will govern the saved nations with the rod of iron of the Holy Spirit.

We place much emphasis today on getting people into Heaven! According to the New Testament, God places a greater emphasis on getting Heaven into people!

To be continued.