Biblical Worldview 3, The Kingdom of God

“And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them” (Mark 4:11-12)

October 20, 2003 – It is evident in the scriptures that Jesus Christ was instituting the Kingdom of God during his earthly ministry.  That many of the prophecies of the Kingdom refer to a time still future when the earth will be destroyed and a new heaven and earth instituted is not denied by us, but we must heed the words of scripture that teach that the “spiritual” Kingdom was instituted by Christ during his time on earth.  Jesus said,

“But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you” (Matthew 12:28).

Saying that the Kingdom “is come unto you” proves the point at hand, that God was instituting a separate Kingdom on earth AT THAT TIME that would co-exist (albeit not peaceably) with the kingdoms of this world.

“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10)

The second sentence of this verse explains the first.  Jesus is instructing the faithful to pray that the Kingdom of God would be evidenced on earth just as it is in heaven.

There is much confusion regarding the Kingdom of God, and, just as in the days of the early church, MOST of nominal “Christianity” has missed the point by erring on one side or the other.  Whereas the mainstream “churches” teach that the Kingdom of God is only in heaven, and will only be entered into after death, the “Kingdom Now” teachers teach the opposite, saying that God is done managing his affairs and has left it up to the freewill of the creature to enter into the Kingdom of God on earth, as if there is no heavenly dispensation towards which God’s church travels.

I believe that a closer look at this concept of two distinct Kingdoms (the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world) will ultimately answer many of our questions regarding what is “right action” in the earthly realms, and how we should now live based on these facts.  I also believe that a right view of this issue allows us to properly interpret many Bible passages that might have been hidden from our view previously.

Having noted in the first two sections of this series the change in man brought about by a solemn recognition of God’s existence, His providence and sovereignty, and His prerogative and purpose, we must now turn our attention to the impact of willfully submitting to God’s government.

Once again, it is necessary that we reiterate that we have never denied that man has a will, and that he makes choices for which he is ultimately held responsible, but we do deny that the will of man is ever totally “free”. 

Because we are unable to say it in any more clear and succinct way than has been said by wiser and abler men, I will post the statement on this issue from the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, the confession that I strongly believe most closely adheres to the proper teaching of the scriptures:

LBCF on Divine Providence

1.     God the good Creator of all things, in His infinite power and wisdom, upholds, directs, disposes and governs all creatures and things, from the greatest to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, to the end for which they were created.

- God governs according to His infallible foreknowledge and the free and unchanging counsel of His own will;

- for the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, boundless goodness, and mercy.

2.     Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, Who is the First Cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly; so that nothing happens to anyone by chance, or outside His providence, yet by His providence He orders events to occur according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.

3.     God, in His ordinary providence makes use of means, yet He is free to work outside, above, and against them at His pleasure.

4.     The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in His providence, that His determinate counsel extends even to the first fall, and all other sinful actions of both angels and men.

- This is not merely by a bare permission, but by a form of permission in which He included the most wise and powerful limitations, and other means of restricting and controlling sin. These various limitations have been designed by God to bring about his most holy purposes.

- Yet, in all these affairs, the sinfulness of both angels and men comes only from them and not from God, Who is altogether holy and righteous, and can never be the author or approver of sin.

5.     The most wise, righteous, and gracious God often leaves, for a time, His own children to various temptations, and to the corruptions of their own hearts, in order to chastise them for the sins which they have committed, or to show them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness still in their hearts, so that they may be humbled and aroused to a more close and constant dependence upon Himself for their support, and that they may be made more watchful against future occasions of sin. Other just and holy objectives are also served by such action by God.

Therefore whatever happens to any of His select is by His appointment, for His glory, and for their good.

So we uphold the ancient belief of all of true Christendom that God is sovereign, and we are ultimately responsible for our own choices and actions, knowing finally that God works all things to the final benefit of His elect according to His purposes and decrees – yet we are responsible, as best as we are able, for keeping and honoring God’s word and commandments, utilizing the resources and abilities that God has placed within us according to the light that God has offered us for guidance.

God’s actions towards His creatures, in relation to His Holy purpose, speak to us of his sovereignty, providence and prerogative, but His relational actions within His true church speak to us of His government.

It is evident that the early carnal religiousites hoped that Christ was come as a carnal King to physically rule and reign over the nations of the earth from Jerusalem.  As in all things, these religious men always focused on the carnal and fleshly world, while denying any spiritual realities brought forth in the teachings of the Messiah.  Christ WAS installing a Kingdom on earth during his earthly ministry.  He said so Himself.  But this Kingdom was to be a spiritual Kingdom, not a Kingdom of this world (John 18:36).  His Kingdom would exist as the TRUE Church of God, and would be governed by His laws and commandments.  The Kingdom of God (individuals corporately operating under the government of Christ) annulled the previous arrangements that found strength in the activities of the flesh.  Earthly religions (Catholicism, Judaism, Pentacostalism, etc.) center around mechanisms designed to get the carnal man to “act right” using whatever definition the particular cult utilizes to define proper behavior.  For the Catholic sects, this involved penances and pilgrimages, indulgences and confessions to priests; for the more Charismatic sects, this involves “speaking in tongues”, falling down in trances, imaginative enthusiasms, dancing, musical manipulations, etc.  When Arminianism and Jesuitical freewill doctrines infiltrated the so-called “protestant” denominations, the deception came to its full fruition.   Fundamentally there is no difference in these earthly man-made religions.  None have answers for the questions man has about the existence and character of God, nor can they provide right answers about the proper government of our lives outside of the activities required within the church house.  These modern earthly religions have their roots in Phariseeism, and fundamentally they deny the Sovereignty of God, and the Kingdom He instituted among His elect.

The new covenant instituted a new reality for God’s children.  The converted were now positionally “in Christ” on resurrection grounds.  All other institutions or national allegiances and obligations were wiped out and destroyed as national citizenship and allegiance was offered and transferred into the Kingdom of God and His government.  Many earthly governments originally recognized this position, including the government instituted by the formation of the united States of America.  Our obedience to earthly kings and governments was limited under a specific contract of peace.  Since we are to be considered ambassadors and pilgrims operating in a foreign land, we are to obey all those laws and requirements that do not directly conflict with God’s unchangeable law.  Ultimately we are answerable to our own Sovereign King and only temporally, in a very specifically limited way, to the kings and magistrates of the foreign lands in which we reside.

BEHAVIOR AND SOVEREIGNTY

It is a mistake to believe that we are free moral agents, and that our freedom of will and choice is not regulated and limited in almost every way by God’s sovereign pre-existing decree.  But it is also a mistake to conclude that obedience and disobedience are therefore equals, and that God violates the will in such a way that the truth of second causes is obliterated, and we are nothing more than puppets on earth.  We have preached for some time now about the value and necessity of a Biblical Worldview.  We believe that God has ordained a spiritual Kingdom on earth, and that this Kingdom has order and authority invested in it.  We believe that separation from the world, so far as it is possible, is not only a commandment of Jesus, but it is a necessary facet of our lives and it is conducive to our well being and happiness on earth.  God has stated in His Word that there are temporal punishments instituted for disobedience, just as there are great benefits (both spiritual and temporal) which are promised for obedience.

Conversion (as opposed to ‘regeneration’) is the entering into this spiritual Kingdom of God.  We must not confuse these two important Biblical realities.  I will give a brief (and therefore incomplete) set of definitions:

Regeneration is a sovereign work of God, and is inacted by the Holy Spirit in the elect by "quickening" or making alive that which was dead. In eternity, this happened at the cross, but in the world it happens at a particular time for each of us. We are literally "made alive". This is when the stony heart is replaced by a heart of flesh. There need be no physical EVIDENCE of this regeneration, but by being made alive, the mind is made able to look upon Christ and His way of doing things. We are enabled to SEE the Kingdom of God. To see it afar, as a place that may be entered. Regeneration must preceed everything, including conversion.  Regeneration is a one time and immediate act.

Conversion can, in some extreme cases, take place in an instant, but it usually takes some time. If you have not already done so, I suggest that you read "Pilgrim's Progress".  Conversion is literally the process of entering into God's Kingdom, His government, and His way of doing things. The mind is converted piecemeal, in most cases, as we abandon the ways of the flesh and of our carnal mind and submit to the authority and sovereignty of God. Many of the elect out there are regenerated, but not converted.  They may have taken steps in the right direction, and in some cases they might have, for a time, made genuine and remarkable progress towards mature Christianity, but they remain unconverted so long as they are not governed by the Bible as members of God’s Kingdom.

We need to be wary of any source that confuses these two important things, or even places them so close that they can be easily confused.

Many feel that since they "feel" regenerated, they have no need of conversion, when in reality, they may have experienced neither.  All exhortations to “examine ourselves” are designed for our good in order that we might not be deceived about our condition.  Although God is sovereign over salvation and He quickens whosoever He likes, He has also seen fit to utilize MEANS in order to convert the mind and to bring about Christian maturity.  The means of Grace (the Gospel, the Bible, Preaching, Teaching, etc.) are to be utilized wisely by the true Church of God for the purpose of the conversion of souls to Christ.

I ask that God will day by day bring us under His government and into His Kingdom.  We see the exhortation made by the Apostle Peter concerning the conversion of the elect to Christ.  In this portion of scripture, we can see the delicate balance of truths involved in God’s Sovereignty and man’s responsibility:

“Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:2-11).

An entrance into the Kingdom of God is made available to us by the use of MEANS, by diligence and by obedience.  We have not preached separation these past months for no rational reason.  Separation is not only commanded by God, but it is for our own well being, so that multitudes of spiritual blessings might be opened unto us according to the mystery.  We ought to be governed by the Word of God, not because we are inexorably made to be so as an effect of the fact that we are regenerated, but because God has invited us to enter into His Kingdom for our own good, and so that innumerable precious promises will apply to us on earth and in heaven.

THE KINGDOM OF THIS WORLD

It is evident that many (if not most) of God’s true children are still enslaved to the tyranny of this world.  They operate according to fear and carnal lusts (fear of punishment and deprivation; lust for comfort, personal peace and security), rather than operating according to the commandments of God.  State sponsored education, employment, religion, etc., replaces God’s way of doing things – so that we find many of God’s children still in a “far country”, having joined themselves to the people of the land for protection and provision.

All is confusion.  All is vanity.  While many of God’s true children languish as mind-prisoners, enslaved by the world, as is prophesied in the scriptures, we see that the devil’s children have taken on themselves the name of “Christianity”.  The system of the antichrist (that carnal religion that is headed by the false shepherd in Rome and the Jesuit army that enacts his wishes) has overrun both our nation and the world.  Most recently it has done so through the papist-created Charismatic Movement.

Whereas the Charismatic is fooled into thinking that his emotion driven behavior is a sign of a spiritual working, in reality, he has merely changed the clothing on the Catholic idea that actions of the flesh are the focus of true religion.  A “spiritual” lexicon is used to identify unbiblical carnal actions.  Chattering unintelligibly is termed a “spirit language”, while falling over backwards is called “slain in the spirit”.  The final evidence and judge for the so-called “truth” of these activities is in personal experience, not in the Bible.  A “charismatic” in Costa Rica related many such experiences to us.  When we asked him where we might find the authorization for these experiences in scripture, he responded “I KNOW that it was real, because God talks to me and tells me that it is real”.  To the Charismatic, all truth is found (like in Catholicism) in the wit and wisdom of men, OUTSIDE OF SCRIPTURE, wherein we are told that:

“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1-2)

Whereas the scripture begs us to test all spirits by the scriptures, the Catholic/Charismatic movement teaches people to test all things according to experience (or tradition, etc.).  Where the Catholic believes that He has entered into the Kingdom by acting out certain behaviors which he is convinced evidences the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Charismatic agrees in the same principle, but only replaces one set of fleshly behaviors with another.

So we see that the kingdom of this world has a religion that it calls “Christianity”, and that that religion is easily identifiable by its identifying marks:  It is carnal and fleshly.  Its principle mark is co-operative redemption.  It allows for the adherent to stay “of the world”, so long as minimum requirements (designed to perpetuate ‘church’) are maintained, and it offers a carnal altar whereby the recidivist sinner can “feel” cleaned after willful and purposeful sin.

The Kingdom of God also has a religion that is named Christianity.  It is just as easily identified by its characteristic marks:  It is spiritual, and therefore less emotional.  Its principle mark is God’s sovereign election to redemption from sin and salvation.  Co-operational salvation is anathema to true Christianity.  It is not a corporation or a building, but a living organism which cannot be perpetuated or “grown” outside of God’s sovereign control.  Its only altar is in heaven, where Jesus Christ made a one-time substitutionary offering for the sins of His sheep.  There is no more sacrifice for sin, so altar calls and other Romanist/Arminian relics can have no place in true Christianity.

True Christianity desires more than anything else the conversion of sinners to Christ.  We humbly admit that only the regenerate may be converted, but we also must admit that God has not seen fit to show us beforehand who the regenerate are.  So we say unto those who have been trapped and tricked into false so-called “Christian” worship, that you will evidence your regenerate state when you are converted to Christ.  If you still live in a state of active sin and rebellion, you have every reason to fear the just judgment of God.  You are commanded to “repent ye, and believe the gospel”, as an entrance into the Kingdom of God (Mark 1:15).   We believe fully that “whosoever believeth in the name of Jesus Christ shall be saved”, and that if you do believe in the name of Christ, that you may pray earnestly to the Father that you might be converted to Christ today.  It is the solemn duty of all those who claim to believe in Jesus Christ to pray for entrance into God’s dear Kingdom.  Paul utilizes the terms “strive”, “work out”, “exercise” in relation to entering into God’s Kingdom.  God’s glorious gospel is this; that you truly believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as Prophet, Priest and King.  We evidence belief by the works of faith.  We are not saved by works, but works evidence belief in Jesus Christ.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ!  Do so today!  If you believe you are saved, but do not evidence the fruit of conversion, then pray earnestly that you might be converted to Christ!  If you believe on Christ, but fear that you are not saved, then pray earnestly that you might be converted to Christ!  Pray!  You need not approach any “holy man” or go through any service; you are invited to enter into the Kingdom at no cost.  Only enter in at ALL cost!  If you are enslaved by the world, PRAY!  If you cannot follow that which you know to be the way, PRAY!

“And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:29-32)

The Kingdom is the purchased possession of the King, and He freely gives it to His little flock.  So above all things, we encourage you strongly to be converted at all cost.

Seek the rest your soul requires, be converted.

Seek the Kingdom promised unto you, be converted.

Stand on promises that are made ONLY to you through conversion.

Reject the lies and deceptions of this world, be converted unto Christ.

I pray that God will strengthen you in the inner man, and that you will be converted unto Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.

I remain your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

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