Kingdom Principles

Kingdom Concept #7

Bahamian embassy sent a chauffeured car to pick me up at the air port and put me up in a house. A dear American friend of mine who was a missionary in Mozambique years ago spent the better part of a year in prison after the Communists took over the country. Upon his release, the American embassy paid for his plane ticket home, gave him $300 cash, and said, “Your wife will be waiting for you.” If you were to visit the Bahamas and happened to lose all your money or face some other crisis, all you would have to do is turn to your country’s embassy and they would help you. That’s what they are there for. One of the responsibilities of any government is to take care of its citizens, whether at home or abroad. In a very real sense, that’s what the church is (or what it is sup posed to be): an embassy ! The church is not a religious place. When Jesus established His ecclesia , He did not have a religious institution in mind. His purpose was to set up an embassy of His Kingdom—a place where Kingdom citizens (new and old) could receive aid, be trained in the ways, laws, language, and customs of the Kingdom, and be equipped with the Kingdom resources they need for effective life in the Kingdom colony on earth. All Kingdom citizens carry dual citizenship. Most governments on earth allow dual citizenship, where citizens of one country may hold simultaneously legal citizenship in another. If you are an American or Canadian or German citizen, for example, you could become an official, legal citizen of the Bahamas without being required to give up your prior citizenship. Children born to citizens of one country who are living in another country generally become citizens of both countries. It is no different with the Kingdom of Heaven. All Kingdom cit izens are simultaneously citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven as well as citizens of the earthly nation of their birth or their naturaliza tion. We don’t give up our earthly citizenship when we become cit izens of the Kingdom. And in the same way, we don’t have to be in

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