Years ago I was told I would be out of the country for two to six weeks on a project with another company. It turned out to be six months. Needless to say the project was not going well. I would get bored in the evenings, and did not know what to do. I would listen to religious radio broadcasts. I would listen to various ones in the evening in the motel room. I was getting interested.
I remember there were several of them. They were preaching various versions of the gospel. There was something missing in the message that most were giving.
I do remember one man who spoke quite differently than anyone else and with quite a bit of authority. His name was Mr. Herbert Armstrong. It did not take me too many weeks to learn that he knew more about the Bible than all of these other ministers that I was listening to. So I listened to him just about every evening. He preached the gospel of the kingdom of God.
I wanted to order the literature that he offered. I wanted to order it so badly. I remember there was one article in particular on predestination. He went through telling us what predestination was not. Then he said get this booklet, and you can find out what it is! There I was stuck a thousand miles from home. I was thinking if I order this book and have it mailed to the motel, that is the week I will be sent back home. Then I would miss it. So I just held off on that. Eventually I came back home, requested the literature, and found my way into God's Church. That was a very good thing to happen.
As I mentioned, there are many gospels. They talk about gospels about Christ. Sometimes they will say “of Christ” but it usually means “about Christ”. They talk of gospels of salvation and of grace. They are all contradictory, and they cannot all be right.
Let us turn to Mark chapter 16 where we can learn something about the importance of knowing what the true gospel is. Mark 16, starting in verse 15: “And He said to them, 'Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.'” This is important. It is saying that if you believe the gospel and are baptized, you will be saved. This means you have to know what the gospel is in order to be saved. That makes it very important.
Let us turn to II Corinthians chapter 11, verse 3: “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted you may well put up with it!” This different gospel did become the dominant gospel that was preached. Sometime soon after the death of Paul, things started changing. In fact, at this point Paul knew there was a different gospel going around. By 150 A.D. the Church bore very little resemblance to how it was in the time of Christ.
Jesus Christ predicted that there would be other messages, and, in fact, He called it deception. Turn to Matthew chapter 24, the Olivet Prophecy. Matthew 24, starting in verse 4. “And Jesus answered and said to them: 'Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and will deceive many.'” The point is many will be deceived. As you may remember, the New Testament was written in Greek. It was a type of Greek that is even different from what we have now. Everything was in capital letters, and there was no punctuation. The people who translated either the King James or the New King James tried to put punctuation in here, and I am afraid they have messed it up in this case.
It can be read as “…many will come in My name, saying…” (take out the comma and quotation mark there as you read it.) “Many will come in My name, saying I am the Christ” (without the quotation) “and will deceive many.” In other words, many will come in Christ's name saying Christ is the Christ and that is certainly true. Many people say Jesus Christ is the Christ, He is the Messiah. They are not saying that they, the persons saying it, are the Christ. You get a few individuals once in a while claiming to be Jesus Christ. You get a few claiming to be Napoleon and others, too! It does not matter what they are talking about, because they are not many who do this. They surely do not deceive many people. But many will say Jesus Christ is the Christ. I heard the radio broadcasts in another city, one after another for two or three hours. Each one was saying Christ was the Christ, but the trouble was they still deceived many.
Turn to Galatians chapter 1. Again Paul talks about another gospel. Galatians chapter 1, starting in verse 6: “I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.” Call this a double curse if you want to on someone who preaches another gospel.
Let us study today about what is the true gospel.
Let us turn to Malachi chapter 3. We start here because God promised to send a messenger with a message. Turn to Malachi chapter 3, verse 1. He says, “'I will send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me.'” Let us keep our finger in Malachi and go on to Mark chapter 1. Read verses 2-4. What this is telling us is that this messenger to come before the Lord was John the Baptist. That is who is referred to back in Malachi. Let us go back to Malachi 3:1 just for one more comment on that verse.
Half way through the verse it says, “'the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant.'” Of course, that is Jesus Christ, the messenger of the covenant. Christ was a messenger coming with a message.
Let us see what His message was. In Mark 1:14 it says, “.Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God…” This is the gospel, the gospel of the kingdom of God. Some translations of the Bible omit “of the kingdom” in this verse. However, the King James and the New King James Versions include those words. The kingdom of God is very important. After all, one of our memory verses for some of us who like memory verses is Matthew 6:33: “'But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you.'” We are to be seeking God's kingdom.
It is not enough to believe in Jesus Christ but not to believe His message, because that was true of some people of His time. Let us read about that in John 8. Read verse 30. Yes, many really did believe in Christ.
But go on a little bit further, verse 31: “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him…” (or if you look in the King James Version or the Greek Interlinear it says “believed on Him”) “'If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.'” Continue reading verses 32 to 33. Here they were. They supposedly believed in Him, but they were not believing what He was saying. Right away they were being argumentative. They said they had never been in bondage, which of course was a ridiculous statement for them to be making in the 30's A.D. Here they were with the Roman occupation troops around them. These were hardened soldiers. They were to keep them under control. To say they were not in bondage was a ridiculous statement to begin with anyway. They would not admit that they were in physical bondage, much less spiritual bondage to sin that Christ was explaining. We can go on here.
Please read John 8:45-46. He knew they did not believe what He was saying.
In John 8:37 Jesus Christ says: “'I know that you are Abraham's descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you.'” Here these people believed in Him but wanted to kill Him! Again, is it enough to believe in Jesus Christ?
John 8:59 states: “Then they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.” Here is a man they believed in but would not believe His message and in fact would have liked to have killed Him!
People talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ. What we have to realize is the gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel that He preached and not a gospel about Jesus Christ.
People like to talk about the miracles He performed. That is certainly true, He did. They talk about the love that He had for people. That is certainly true. People even like to talk about Jesus Christ coming back. But it is not enough. We have to talk about the whole message that He gave.
Turn to Mark chapter 1, verse 1: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” There is a clarification in here depending on what translation of the Bible you are using. In Mark chapter 1 it talks about “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ…” That is correct. That is the correct translation “gospel of Jesus Christ”. You will find in some other translations, “The gospel about Christ…” They are missing the point here. They are translating incorrectly, as well, because this is not the gospel “about” Christ. It is the gospel “of” Christ. It is Christ's message.
Let us turn to Acts chapter 8. Please read verse 12. Philip was talking about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ. He talked about both. He said some things about the person of Christ, but he also talked about the kingdom of God.
Turn to Acts 28, way to the end of the book, in fact the last two verses. Read verses 30 and 31. We have Paul preaching the kingdom of God, too. This is telling me that the gospel of the kingdom is not the same as preaching about Christ because here he talks about both, the kingdom of God and about Christ.
What is the gospel of the kingdom of God? You can look up the word “gospel” in a dictionary. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1969, it comes from an old English word, “godspell” which means “good news”. The word “kingdom” means, “A government, country, state or population that is nominally or actually ruled by a king or queen.”
For a literal kingdom four things are necessary. Mr. Armstrong has talked about this before. We are going to go through each one of these. One must be a territory. You have to have a king, of course, for a kingdom. You have to have subjects, and you have to have laws and a form of government. Let us go through each one of these now.
Let's go over the territory first of all. Let us turn to Daniel chapter 2 where even in the Old Testament the kingdom of God was mentioned. Remember Daniel 2 is where Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had his dream and it was a disturbing dream. He wanted someone to interpret it for him, but he knew better than to just tell everybody what the dream was and say what does this mean? He figured people would make up all kinds of things. He figured if someone could tell him what the dream was, then he could also rely on their interpretation being sure. So Daniel was brought before this king.
Read Daniel 2:28. Let us skip ahead to verse 31 and read to verse 36 for a description of the dream. At this point the king knew that Daniel knew what he was talking about. Here he related the dream about the image perfectly. I am sure the king was listening attentively.
Continue reading verses 37 to 38. As we later read that these are to be kingdoms, we realize that the head of gold was Babylon, the Babylonian Empire, the first world-ruling empire.
Please read verses 39 to verse 45 of Daniel 2. He has talked about four literal world-ruling kingdoms or empires. Now he is coming to the kingdom of God, saying it will replace those. One of the things he is trying to get across here is that it is a literal kingdom on the earth. The earth is the territory.
Turn to Daniel chapter 7. When people used to watch the “World Tomorrow” television program years ago, they used to wonder at times if they were not getting the point. Maybe they were not being called, or maybe they just had not studied enough. Why was the Church talking so much about beasts on the “World Tomorrow”? They were showing that these were literal kingdoms in this world that were then to be replaced by a literal kingdom on this earth, the kingdom of God.
Let us read that in Daniel chapter 7, starting in verse 2. This is Daniel's dream and vision. Read to verse 4. Of course, this again is the Babylonian Empire. Later on we read that these are kings on the earth. Read verses 5 and 6. These are the Persian empire and the Greek Empire. As you may know, the Greek Empire was divided into four parts after the death of Alexander. Verse 7 refers to the Roman Empire. Skip down to verse 13 (Jesus Christ called Himself the Son of Man) and read to verse 14.
The interpretation begins in verse 16. Read through to verse 22. Someone called the saints are to possess the kingdom. Elsewhere in the Bible we learn that the saints are those who grow and overcome and endure to the end.
Read verse 27 of Daniel 7. You see this is not something in heaven, this is “under the whole heaven.” This is showing us that the kingdom of God at least starts out on the earth and is literal. But it goes further than that.
Let us read in Hebrews chapter 2. We are going to find out in Hebrews chapter 2 that this kingdom eventually will cover the whole universe. Read Hebrews chapter 2, starting in verse 5. We have to look at the context of this chapter. This is “the world to come,” the world in the future. In fact this is literal for what the “World Tomorrow” telecast and radio broadcasts were in French years ago, “Le Monde a Venir.” It literally means “the world to come.”
Let us go on to verses 6 through 8, “'…You have put all things in subjection under his feet.'” Paul is quoting from Psalm 8. David continued in Psalms showing that God put in subjection under man the earth and everything that is in it, and this is certainly true. Paul leaves off quoting Psalms and goes in a little bit different direction here. The rest of verse 8 says, “.For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him.” God is going to put all things - the universe - under us!
Read verses 9 to 10. That is our potential. To be brought to glory. Read verse 11: “…He is not ashamed to call them brethren” (that is, brothers). To be the brother of someone, you are of that same species, that same existence. We are to be of the God family. Right now, of course, we do not have access to everything in the universe. The universe is so tremendous. The nearest star would take four years to get to if we traveled at the speed of light, and we cannot travel at a hundredth of the speed of light. There are a hundred million galaxies and a hundred million stars in each galaxy. It just goes on and on. It is unimaginable. We have nothing like that right now, and yet that is our potential to be given a portion of that universe.
Let us turn to and read Revelation 21, verse 7. This is what the kingdom is to end up being, eventually the whole universe, starting out here on this earth. Read the Parable of the Talents in Luke 19. Christ said you would be ruler over many things. In the Parable of the Pounds He said be ruler over five cities or ten cities, again literal territories.
This again is the first point about the kingdom of God and what is the territory.
The second point is who is the king? Turn to and read Luke 1:31-33 where the angel Gabriel is talking to Mary. Christ was born to be a king. That is what Jesus Christ even told Pontius Pilate in John chapter 18. Here He was on trial for His life. John 18:37 says, “Pilate therefore said to Him, 'Are You a king then?' Jesus answered, 'You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.'” Jesus Christ was truly born to be a king.
Read Revelation 11, verse 15. Do you remember that from the Hallelujah Chorus? It is a very beautiful piece of music that we often enjoy. Here we are talking about Jesus Christ being the king.
The gospel includes what Christ did. It includes what He taught, how He taught people how to live, and that He died to pay the penalty for our sins. The gospel also includes what Christ is doing now and how He is our High Priest. He is living His life in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The gospel also includes what Christ will be doing, that is returning as King of kings in power and glory. But as we study about Christ or people preach about Christ, instead of looking at the past all of the time, they should not de-emphasize the future. Otherwise something that is in Matthew 24 is going to happen. We do not want that to happen to us.
If we are not looking ahead, this is what can happen to us. Read Matthew 24, verse 48. We do not want to say Christ is delaying His coming. Go on to read verses 49-51. To beat one's fellow servants is not always physically. Sometimes it is verbally, in other words people saying things to each other they should not be saying. That is like beating the person up verbally. We are not supposed to be doing that.
The third point on the kingdom is again that it has to have subjects. The scriptures we have talked about and read indicate that the kingdom will start out ruling people on this earth. Those will be the subjects. We read about having cities, and in Daniel he talked about literal kingdoms. Again that is over people under the heaven.
The fourth point was having a law and form of government. If we go back to Matthew chapter 5, this is the Sermon on the Mount. It is right in the area of the Beatitudes where people like to talk so much about love. But many of them do not get the point that love and God's law go very much together. Let us talk about the laws that will be in the kingdom and see what Christ preached.
Read Matthew 5, verse 17 (to fulfill, to fill to the full with their complete meaning is another way to put that) to verse 19. And we are going to read a couple more verses here to find out which commandments He is talking about. It indicates there that the commandments are going to be in effect in the kingdom.
In verses 20 to 21 there is one of the ten commandments He is talking about, in case we wonder.
In verse 22 Christ is saying again in the kingdom we will have to be obeying God's commandments. He is telling us to continue to obey the commandments. He is not only saying literally in the letter of the law keep the commandments. He is giving the spiritual intent as well. He is saying the commandment against murder is also broken if we are angry without cause, if we look down on people, if we insult people. This is all covered. I suppose we are killing them verbally if you want to think of it that way.
We read of another commandment in Matthew 5:27-28. This is a spiritual intent of the commandment against adultery. It is broken when we lust, as well.
Go further on in Matthew and read 19:17. Again, this talks about the laws that will be in the kingdom of God. Maybe this young man who was talking to Jesus Christ wondered which commandments, just as much as many of us do, because he came right out and asked, “'Which ones?' Jesus said, 'You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery…'”, etc. He named several here just to make it clear which commandments He was talking about that we are to be obeying.
Let us turn to an Old Testament scripture on the subject of God's kingdom and read Micah chapter 4:1-2. In the kingdom we will know God's ways. People will be teaching His ways. Continue with reading verse 3. We will be living by God's ways in the kingdom. If we just have a gospel about Christ, we will not understand that we must now live by the laws that everyone will live by in the kingdom.
The other thing to learn about is that there is going to be a government. It is going to be from the top down. People will be coming to the Lord's house to learn His ways. “Out of Zion the law shall go forth.” It is not going to be a democracy or some other form of government. It will be called a kingdom. A kingdom is not the same as a democracy.
Let us turn to Luke chapter 22 to learn a little bit more of that form of government. There are a couple of interesting points on government here. Let us read Luke 22:25-27. It is talking about proper leadership here. This is the type of government that will occur in the kingdom. That is the way Jesus Christ even expects us to be living right now. In fact, it is how He expects His Church to be governed.
Read Luke 22:28-30. Jesus Christ had twelve apostles. They will be judging the twelve tribes of Israel. They will, of course, be ruling under Christ. It starts to talk about a governmental structure to it. We can go further into that if we want to, but time does not permit. The point is, you have the kingdom of God with the Father, then Jesus Christ and a structure under that. Again, it is government from the top down.
Let us talk about getting into the kingdom. We are to be born into the kingdom, but it is not the way many people think. As we are talking about what is the kingdom of God and how we get there, look at what “born again” really means. It is directly involved. Please see our Bible study, “Born To Be Born Again.” You may also want to read the Bible study, “Our Potential.”
Let us go back to more on the conditions for entering the kingdom. To enter the kingdom you have to believe the gospel. We read that in Mark chapter 1. Of course, that includes Christ as king and accepting Him as our personal Savior, but all the other aspects of the gospel as well.
Peter gave us a formula in Acts 2:38, Peter's first inspired sermon on Pentecost 31 A.D. Let's read that in Acts 2:38. We are to repent to enter that kingdom. Of course, you have to know what to repent of. Repent of sin defined in I John 3:4 (King James Version): “Sin is the transgression of the law.” It says repent and be baptized. Baptism is another condition to enter God's kingdom. And then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Of course, you have to have God's Holy Spirit. That is only the beginning, because then we live a life of growing in God's righteous character throughout our whole life. Righteous character is knowing the difference between right and wrong, always choosing the right regardless of the circumstances, and always doing it whether we feel like it or not. Then after we have grown and overcome and endured, we have our resurrection or change into immortal spirit beings and we enter God's kingdom.
It is important that the gospel of the kingdom be preached today. The twelve apostles preached it. Let us look at Luke chapter 9 for a moment. Read Luke 9:1-2. Here they were preaching the kingdom of God. Someone brought up an interesting point on this subject. Some people who might think that the gospel is only preaching about Jesus Christ dying to pay for our sins would have a little bit of a problem with this verse because this happened before Jesus Christ had died. He was sending his disciples out to preach the kingdom of God. They could not say He died for our sins obviously because He had not yet. Just a side note there. That was another supporting scripture that the kingdom of God is not just talking about the person of Christ.
Turn to Acts 20. Paul preached the kingdom of God. In Acts 20:17-38 I find this to be a rather touching portion of scripture because here Paul was talking to the Ephesian elders. He figured he would never see these men again. These are men he had worked with. He had taught these people and wanted them to continue to teach the people. He had given a lot of good instruction.
Let us look at Acts 20:25. Here Paul, years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, was still preaching the kingdom of God. We have read the other verse at the end of Acts where he is preaching the kingdom of God. Philip preached the kingdom of God, and there are many other scriptures.
Let us look at our job a little bit. Matthew 24:14 reads, “then the end will come.” The gospel of the kingdom has been preached as a witness to all nations, but not to everyone in each nation. The innumerable multitude of Revelation 7:9 must yet receive the gospel. We should still be preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God to the world.
People in all nations can visit TheBeautifulThoughtsOfGod.com as you have. On this website they will learn about all aspects of the gospel of the kingdom of God, including so many beautiful thoughts of God.