The Hebrew prophets looked forward to the coming Kingdom of GOD.
According to the prophet Daniel, this Kingdom would be for all nations and ethnic groups (Daniel 7). Daniel declared the exact time this eternal King would come to the earth to inaugurate His kingdom (Daniel 9). The wise men (magi), educated in the Babylonian School of Daniel, came to Jerusalem at the time of His coming, asking, “Where is He that is born King …?”
Throughout history, men had sought to establish kingdoms, but “the stone not cut with human hands” (Daniel 2:34) came to be the Foundation Stone of a new Kingdom. He brings people into His Kingdom as stones built on Him, the Foundation.
How does He do it? He crushes the pride of people, transforms us from the inside out, and shows us the silliness of trusting in earthly kings and kingdoms.
Jesus tells us “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2).
When John introduced the Savior to the world he proclaimed, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe the Gospel.” (Mark 1:15).
The Kingdom of God and the Gospel (Good News) of Jesus Christ. are like peanut butter and jelly between two pieces of bread. You can’t separate them.
Where the gospel is believed, a new brick is laid on the Foundation Stone and the Kingdom of God expands.
Definition of a Kingdom: A King with a Domain
Jesus said, “My kingdom is NOT of this world” (John 18:36).
So where is it?
Jesus came to earth to establish His Kingdom in the hearts and minds of His people
“Now, when Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21).
Jesus didn’t come to guarantee you a retirement fund, to make comfortable your holidays, or to promote to a new position at work.
Jesus came to give you unshakeable confidence while living in a shaking culture.
He came to reign in your mind and heart. He came to convince you that eternity is worth your allegiance to Him.
In the United States, it seems we worship comfort. We go to our comfortable churches, live in our expensive homes, drive our new cars, and find ourselves shaken when our comforts begin to disappear.
But true Kingdom people are never shaken.
We have the unshakeable Kingdom of Christ (see Hebrews 12:18-29) in us.
The day is coming when Spirit-led revival awakens more and more people in the United States, similar to what happened in the Book of Acts.
For the kind of Christianity seen in Acts to be normative in the United States, our culture has to be brought to a place of shaking so people look for the unshakeable.
Our Unshakeable Kingdom in a Shaking World
When I read the book of Acts, I see followers of Jesus who are living in a hostile world, with very few possessions, and with no financial safety net.
These early Christians, disliked by the Roman kingdom, were endued with Spirit’s power.
Christ reigned in their hearts, and they trusted nothing other than Him.
I believe the early Christians in Acts display normative Christian living.
Their hearts and minds are captivated by Christ’s unshakeable Kingdom while living in a shaken world.
Chinese Christian writer and martyr Watchman Nee, author of the classic work The Normal Christian Life, once wrote:
“Christianity today is so subnormal that if any Christian began to act like a normal New Testament Christian, he would be considered abnormal.”
Normality may soon be returning to us Christians as we see temporal comforts removed.
Don’t be shaken.
Christ reigns over all the kingdoms of men.
Wade,
On a trip to Japan, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Tokyo had a preacher to take his place one Sunday. He was a short puggy guy, and I thought we’d hear a Sunday School lesson.
He told of being invited to preach in an area where Christians were persecuted.
It was a night service with a few candles burning. Everyone had hoods over their heads. After preaching, he stood at a small exit door but no one would shake his hand. So, he gave each one a shoulder hug.
Afterwards, he asked the pastor why were they were all women. The pastor replied:
“They are from a Leper colony, and it’s the first time they have been touched in years.”
Then the man sang in the voice of an Angel:
He touched me, oh, He touched me.
And oh, the joy that floods my soul.
Something happened, and now I know.
He touched me and made me whole.
Wade,
I was reading your great post again, and noticed you wrote: “Jesus tells us “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2)
That Scripture is talking about John the Baptist.
Has the machine gone to sleep?
Wade,
What do you think about so many Black kids killing Black kids in Chicago?
My Dad said churches in a town was better than a policeman on every corner.
I heard people from Africia say missionaries should be sent to America.
James Teague: “The KGB had come to the same conclusion in 1965 that it had taken me nearly 50 years:
… was behind the … of …”
Reader, you must fill in the blanks because the machine does not allow certain words.
REX RAY,
you have begun to figure out ‘the machine’ . . . . please share what you have learned with the rest of us!
Have a blessed weekend.
c.
CHRISTIANE,
If I was to say what word you can’t use, the machine would not print my comment. The only way I can share what I have learned is by letter or telephone. My phone is 903-227-0701.
REX RAY,
TAKE YOUR PHONE NUMBER OFF THE INTERNET NOW!
You must consider your privacy and protect it.
This is IMPORTANT !!!!!!
Call WADE and have him help you remove it if necessary! Get it done!
Am very worried for you.
c.
How do you know I gave the correct number?
REX RAY,
You’re right. I don’t know.
It scared me when I saw the number as I know what scammers can do once they get your information.
You have to be self-protective, especially these days. Don’t take any chances. It’s not worth it.
CHRISTIANE,
You are a nice hearted lady. In the first place, how many bad people read a preacher’s blog?
My cellphone warns about Spam Risk. My reply to: “Our records show your vehicle is out of warranty” is: “Really? It’s only 15 years old.”
Phone call: “We’d like to tell you about our life insurance.”
“OK, I’m 91.”
“Click”
“Would you give $30 to help? (Some worth cause)
All they want is your credit card number.
CHRISTIANE,
Just took a bite from a package named Temptations. It said, “crunchy inside and soft inside.” I told Judy it tasted awful, and she said, “It’s the cat’s food.”
REX RAY,
so you’re eating the cat’s food and putting your ‘information’ out on line . . .
I know you know better. Of COURSE, you know better.
Talk to WADE about taking that number off, and listen to his advice if you don’t believe me.
As for the cat food, some folks will do anything . . . . once. 🙂
This afternoon, in the middle of storm warnings, I went out to shop for health food. I’ve got less sense now than I used to have, this is true. But even I’m not publishing my personal data. I was told not to put stuff on-line by the military members of my family, particularly my nephew who is a Navy doctor, who used to work in intelligence. SOME of my family have got some smarts. I listened.
I’ll say no more. But talk to WADE anyway.
I’m not into \cat food myself . . . . maybe I try it next year. 🙂
CHRISTIANE,
Today there was a buzzard on top of our United States flagpole, and four others in the back yard having a ‘tug of war’ with a dead racoon. (I shoot racoons because they eat the bird seed, we keep on a table.) We have a place where we put racoons, and sometimes it looks like there’s a buzzard convention.
REX RAY,
solution: don’t put the birdseed out on the tables . . . you will save ammunition and the lives of some of God’s more humble creatures who are often hunted and killed as ‘vermin’
a story: from a comment I wrote on Dr. Roger Olson’s blog:
Dr. Olson,
maybe some of your dear Grandma Hanson’s Norwegian heritage influenced her conception of ‘signs and wonders’ and of a connection between the natural world to the eternal mysteries? I’m wondering how you might view ‘Celtic’ Christianity or the celebration of the Eucharist among some Christian traditions?
I once wrote about ‘imagination’ and wondered if God somehow used our imaginations as a way to try to communicate that to us which has no words . . . . . . and I didn’t worry about this, or fear for my sanity when, in deep grief after the death of my dear spouse, I moved to an apartment knowing that nature would not be so ‘near’ as it had been in my own private home.
But then, rabbits came around the back of the apartment visible at the kitchen door, and the hanging basket my daughter in law put up outside my front door was chosen to be the place a bird came to nest and hatch her baby bird . . . so fragile, so beautiful . . . . was I wrong to feel ‘comforted’ by the bunnies and the bird, was I wrong to feel that God in His mercy, ‘comes near’ when grief overwhelms ? Was I wrong to take the presence of those creatures as ‘blessing’? Because, like Grandma Hanson, I saw them as a sign. I have Norwegian blood myself through the Asbjorn line so for me ‘imagination’ and ‘the natural world’ combine not so much in a pagan way as that I am affected by ‘nature’ to consider its Creator as both ‘generator’ and ‘conservator’ of being. Maybe Grandma Hanson shared some of my own quirks about the natural world? There must be some kind of theology that understands the words of Chief Seattle, these:
” if all the beasts were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.”
sometimes, I think we need more of the theologies that address that for which there are no words . . . . that we can, as the sacred Scriptures tell us, ‘learn’ from the creatures of the Earth and the Earth itself . . . .
“7But ask the animals, and they will instruct you; ask the birds of the air, and they will tell you. 8Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; let the fish of the sea inform you. 9Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?” (Job, chapter 12)
Did Grandma Hanson go ‘too far’ in her notion of signs and wonders ? Or was she ‘sensitive’ to the vagaries of how nature teaches us the ways of the Creator ?
The ‘old ways’ of a people often carry in them ‘legends’, myths, ‘signs’, and we modern types smile, but still, sometimes the older folks ‘teach us’ from nature and how they perceive its connection to its Creator,
as when my father of blessed memory picked up a Daddy Long-legs spider inside our house and carried it outside and let it go very gently, and when we asked why he didn’t ‘kill it’, he said, it still had some work left to do in this world. . . . . so we children learned to respect and preserve instead of to fear and destroy.
CHRISTIANE,
Enjoyed your last comment. So true. I got to thinking; you, Judy, and I have in common that we’ve lost our mates.
Today, Judy and I found a ladder we use on the dock to get in and out of a boat. It’d been missing three months. It was mostly submerged on the other side of the 10-acre lake. I backed our truck near the edge and threw the end of a rake attached to a rope and pulled it in, but the truck was stuck. Judy walked a mile and came back with our four-wheeler and pulled the truck out. Did a better job of fastening the ladder to the dock.
We told my brother-in-law what we had done, and he said, “Build something when you’re young and when you’re old, you’ll have something to work on.”
CHRISTIANE,
Here is a story:
In 1951, Dad took a picture of what he had written on the back of our car; “Alaska or Bust”. My twin brother, Hez and I went with him. We were 19.
We ran out of money in Conrad, Montana. Dad got us jobs putting fresh tar on flat roofs.
One day when Hez and I came back to our hotel, there were several firetrucks, and police had the building surrounded with yellow tape. We asked what was going on. They said the hotel was in danger of exploding and had been evacuated. We broke through the tape; yelling our daddy is in there.
We found him in the basement using gasoline in a washing machine to clean the tar off our cloths. We told him what was going on, and he poured the gasoline down a drain. We walked out as innocent as lambs, and they never found the cause.
Great story, REX RAY, and further proof that the Ray family has some powerful guardian angels watching over them!
I can only imagine IF someone threw a lit cigarette down an adjacent sewer, the three of you would have been blown to Kingdom Come along with half the town. . . . but the angels were ‘with’ you again.
I’m glad you all didn’t get charged by the law, but better you were not blown up. 🙂
Now, tell me what you know about what happened to Tucker Carlson. I thought he was Trump and Putin’s greatest supporter on the media, at least on Fox News. I guess his luck ran out with the Dominion/Fox lawsuit. (?)
CHRISTIANE,
I’d not heard about Tucker Carlson being fired. He was my favorite!
Have you heard about this church? It had a sign in front that said:
“Visitors will be baptized. Frequent visitors will be sent on Mission Trips.”