Kingdom Principles

Kingdom Principles

The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it (Luke 16:16).

“Everyone is forcing his way into it.” Once people learn about the Kingdom of God, they can’t wait to get in! Picture in your mind all those would-be immigrants desperately clamoring to cross the bor der, and then you will see what Jesus meant. Why then, someone might ask, do we not see people clamoring to get into the churches? Why does the church as a whole seem to have so little impact on our culture? The reason is simple—and sad. Most pastors don’t understand the Kingdom, so they don’t preach it or teach it. Consequently, most of the people in the churches don’t understand the Kingdom either, so they don’t model Kingdom liv ing. My experience has been that once people know about the Kingdom and see it modeled, they want it! Such is the power of the lure of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. BECOMING A KINGDOM CITIZEN All nations, including kingdoms, have citizens. And all nations require immigration status. The Kingdom of God is no different. Every Kingdom citizen today is a naturalized citizen. We emigrated from a foreign country—a “ dominion of darkness ” (see Col. 1:13)— where we as a race had been “exiled” ever since Adam’s rebellion in the garden of Eden. At that time, the human race lost citizenship in heaven. We lost our citizenship because we lost our Kingdom, and we lost our Kingdom because we lost our property—our territory. Don’t forget that without territory, there is no kingdom; and without a kingdom, there can be no kingdom citizenship. When Jesus Christ began His public ministry, He announced that the Kingdom of Heaven had arrived. That was the only message

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