Kingdom Truth: Volume Nine

God has needs. We are not thinking enough about this in America. Our sermons and books always seem to focus on what we are going to get from God or how we can use God in some manner. We are far too self-centered. We are seeking power or wisdom or money or healing.
It is time we began to think about seeking God and finding out what it is that will please Him.God needs and desires a house. God needs and desires a resting place. Have you ever thought about that?
The hope of many religions, including Christianity, is that some day we will get "there," meaning Heaven. By the same token we hope not to go to the other place, Hell. But Christianity is different from other religions. We get "there" now, in the spiritual sense, and our final destination is a tangible, probably physical in a transcendent sense, city that will be located on a new earth.
Heaven is not spoken of as the goal of salvation or the reward for righteous living in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. The concept of going to Heaven when we die is one of the most deeply ingrained of the traditions of Christianity. As far as we know, the phrase "going to Heaven" does not appear even one time in the New Testament. The Apostles of Christ preached the return of Christ in His Kingdom, not our going to Heaven.
We may have assumed that the early Apostles preached or implied that the righteous are going to make Heaven their eternal home, but they did not do so. Such is our tradition and it needs to be examined, because the wrong goal leads to the wrong approach to the process of redemption.
Iin view of the fact that the Scriptures have little to say about going to Heaven, perhaps we ought to review our belief about what happens to us when we die.
John the Baptist preached the Gospel of the Kingdom. The Lord Jesus Christ preached the Gospel of the Kingdom. The Apostles of the Lamb preached the Gospel of the Kingdom. What are we preaching today?
Today we are preaching the gospel of going to Heaven when we die. This is "another gospel." We need to return to the biblical Gospel of the Kingdom.
Christian theology is built on a false premise. The false premise is that Divine grace replaces the need for righteous behavior. This is not what Paul taught. Paul taught that Divine grace replaces the Law of Moses. The misunderstanding of what grace is intended to replace has produced multitudes of believers who are babies in the ability to distinguish between good and evil, and in the willingness and strength to choose the good and reject the evil.