OUR MOST URGENT NEED

OUR MOST URGENT NEED

                Our most urgent need in these last days is to transition from the Gospel of Salvation to the Gospel of the Kingdom. Now don’t get me wrong; the Gospel of the Kingdom contains everything that the Gospel of Salvation has, but it adds another element. The Gospel of the Kingdom is a Gospel of the restoration of the earth to what it was before the fall of man and more.

                Adam lost his dominion over the earth to Satan when He listened to Satan instead of God. But Jesus came to earth as a man in order to buy that dominion back and He intends to restore that dominion to us by Christ living in us. It is Christ in you the hope of glory… and we are soon to see Jesus’ prayer answered which is “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

                We have been praying that prayer for 2000 years now and we still don’t know what we are saying. We are saying that Christ is soon to restore what Adam lost in the fall and He is going to do it through us, as we become the sons of God for which all of creation waits. Romans 8:19

                But before I go a step further I must clear up something. I am not talking about “Kingdom Now” and I am not talking about the kind of kingdom that the church of the Dark Ages mistakenly tried to build. The church of the Dark Ages thinking to regain dominion of the earth resorted to human wisdom and power. They combined political power and pagan authority with what had become by then a weak and spiritless Christianity and they ended up with one of the most despotic governments this world has ever seen.

                Actually if you understand this properly, you will see that this global push that is going on right now, represents the final attempt by Satan to combine Religious, financial and political power to rule the world. In other words, they are going to repeat the horrible mistakes of the church to enforce one final global attempt at dominion.

                The judgments that we see in the book of Revelation and elsewhere throughout Scripture are nothing more than Christ’s final dismantling of that Satanic attempt at global dominion so that Christ may reign. We see it all the way back in Daniel 2 and the statue representing world history right down to our time; and it is the kingdom of Christ that comes down during the reign of the ten final kings that rule the world under the antichrist, and grinds them all into powder and blows them all away,.

                But what happens next? The kingdom of Christ fills the whole earth right? Daniel 2:35 says:

                “Then the iron the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time; and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. BUT THE STONE THAT STRUCK THE STATUE BECAME A GREAT MOUNTAIN AND FILED THE WHOLE EARTH.

                Are we going to heaven? Yes… for the marriage supper of the Lamb, but then in Revelation 19:14,15 we return with Jesus to defeat Satan and His kingdoms at the battle of Armageddon and then we set up shop on the earth for 1000 years, during which time we will restore the earth to its former dominion by the power of Christ.

                Today we have developed an escapist mentality. “The world is going to hell in a handbasket so we need to get out of here and go somewhere else.” But God’s plans in the creation of this earth were eternal. We lost it, but Jesus bought it back. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son… and Jesus said it plainly, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

                This is why manmade religion is not enough… in fact manmade religion is quite the opposite of what God is looking for. What He is looking for is human temples that are filled with and empowered by His Holy Spirit. He is looking for a people who will learn how to walk in the spirit rather than in the flesh. Flesh will create a false kingdom every time. Flesh will build a Tower of Babel. Flesh will build a Vatican. Flesh will seek to rule over men in the place of Christ. Flesh will always resort to political, financial and false religious power to rule. It always has.

                We just happen to live in the generation in which Jesus Christ is going to crush all of those man made kingdoms into powder. He is going to establish an eternal kingdom here on earth. So when we see judgments like the great earthquake in which every wall of man falls, we are seeing Jesus Christ bringing man’s failed attempt at kingdom rule to an end in order to establish His Kingdom of righteousness peace and Holy Spirit power.

                And because we don’t really understand God’s plans and purposes we tend to get caught up in the rituals of Christianity as an end in themselves. We go through all of the motions, but we don’t know what the endgame is. The church has almost entirely dropped the whole idea of Bible prophecy simply because we no longer know God’s plans and purposes. We have lost our foresight. We have lost our vision and so we satisfy ourselves with endless trips to church just to get our spiritual batteries recharged for another week. It seems almost like a futile cycle and today’s youth can’t see the point in it.

                We pray for power, but we don’t know what to do with the power if we received it, because we no longer know what Jesus plans to do with us when we do have power. He certainly doesn’t intend for us to repeat the Church’s past mistakes in trying to build an institutional kingdom run by the flesh. The Gospel of the Kingdom that Jesus preached had power to heal, deliver and save, but it had no connection with political power whatsoever. It even operated largely outside of the Jewish structures even though God had established them… why? Because they had lost sight of the purposes of God and so their rituals had become an end in themselves.

                The purpose of God was to bring forth the Messiah through whom He would restore the kingdom to what it was before Adam sinned… but their sights were too small… too low. So when the true Messiah came, they could no longer recognize Him. He no longer fit their traditions or their limited expectations.

                Likewise today, a vast majority of the church has no clue what God is doing or what He plans to do through His people. We need a new outpouring of His Holy Spirit, but we also need prophetic understanding.

                The Feast of Trumpets tells us about the return of Christ for His Bride. It includes the marriage of the Lamb to His Bride. It includes the coronation of Jesus Christ as King over the whole earth.  It includes the judgment of the earth and the time of Jacob’s trouble.

                The Day of Atonement includes judgment and the bringing of the kingdoms of this world to an end so that Jesus Christ may reign over all; and then the Feast of Tabernacles represents Christ’s return to the earth with His saints to rule the nations with a rod of Iron, to restore all things to the original plan, to establish His eternal government in which the sons of God will reign with Him forever. God will tabernacle among men forever. His glory will fill the earth even as the waters cover the sea.

                Then we see the Holy City, the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. Heaven and earth will become one and will become the eternal kingdom of our Lord and we will reign with Him forever.

                Okay, so let’s back up for a minute. Do you understand why the Vatican is so integrally involved in the coming global kingdom? It is because Satan wants to rule the world and he can’t rule the world without controlling its religion, its money and its politics. This is why Pope Francis is so busy working to unite all of the religions of the world into one religion. And it is going to repeat the ultimate mistake that Papal Rome made before. It is going to combine ecclesiastical, political and financial powers together to form the same despotic kingdom as they formed during the Dark Ages only this time it will be global in scope and it will be even more diabolical because Satan Himself, represented by the dragon of Revelation 13 will rule with the Beast and the False Prophet.

                And where is this satanic cabal going to set up its kingdom?  He is going to set it up right in Israel, right in Jerusalem, the very place from which our coming King Yeshua is coming to reign for 1000 years. Satan is going to pull off a fake millennium. He is going to rule as Christ in the temple. He is going to commit the abomination of desolation by claiming to be God on earth.

                So what we see building up in the world right now is what you might call “Satan’s last stand.”

But Daniel has good news for us for he said in Daniel 2:44: “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.

                This prophecy provides adequate reason why we as the gentile church must be grafted into Israel through Jesus Christ. By faith in Him we become Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise. The promises were all made to Jesus Christ and to His people the Jews. It is through them that the whole world will be blessed. We must be grafted in if we are to be a part of Christ’s eternal kingdom. Romans 11

                Even here in America many well- meaning people are being set up for a fall because they are placing their hopes and their faith in politics rather than in the God who sets up kings and takes kings down. God bought us a little more time, NOT so that we can start waving flags and getting political, but rather so that we might learn how to become the sons of God who will reign with Christ in His kingdom.

                I fear that we are being led into another diversion. We are putting our faith in the wrong place. We are looking to a political kingdom run by men rather than a spiritual kingdom empowered by the Holy Spirit and ruled by Yeshua.

                We desperately need to get it right this time and that means preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom that Jesus said must be preached before He can come.

                So we keep praying for more power, but we are not sure what to do with the power if we did receive it. All we can envision is better church programs and livelier services. But Jesus modeled the Gospel of the kingdom for us while on earth and when we line up with His model; then we will receive the power to do what He did. And that is a promise!

                “Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. And whatever you ask in My name that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” John 14:12, 13.

                Today half of the church teaches that the gifts of the Spirit have ceased, but they say so in defiance of Scripture, for on the day of Pentecost as Peter was explaining the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, he said to them: “For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call to Himself.”  Acts 2:39 So if Jesus is still calling people to Himself, then He is still pouring out His holy Spirit upon those willing to receive it.

                We need the Holy Spirit and fire if we are ever to become the sons of God for whom all creation is eagerly waiting. Paul says: “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

                In other words we are going to reign with Christ on the earth in glorified bodies and the work of restoration that we will do, will be done by the miraculous powers of the age to come. We will be restored to that which Adam was before the fall and we will receive back the dominion that Adam lost and it will be done with Jesus Christ as the Head as it always should have been.

                We need to lift our sights a little higher to the plans and purposes of God so that we can better understand the training that we are going through right now to become trusted sons and daughters of God in the age to come. This is our most urgent need.