A brief summary of each of the twelve or so overlapping areas that Jesus taught me which are preventing the Kingdom from manifesting in our churches is here. But really, these are only brief overviews and do not capture the full revelation of any one of these topics.
And sure, I can easily list more than a dozen Scripture reference for each of these main ideas, but it tends not to make the revelation more powerful. For a scholar or teaching pastor, I will lay this out in greater detail in the main teaching. But for the empowerment of people to walk in the power of God, this is unnecessary and tends to be a distraction. It is better to say THREE WORDS with power than give an exhaustive lecture on hundreds of verses that reference this power.
Why? Because the Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk … but of power. We don’t solve a problem by throwing more verses at it, but there are prideful people who have faith in man’s wisdom more than God’s power and this upsets them. So yes, not to offend them, I set out basic verses that Jesus explained to me even in this brief section, and more in the main pages on each of these topics, but the power is not in the verse but in the Holy Spirit behind the verse. The Holy Spirit is not a verse, not a written word, but a living word … living and active. But you knew that already. So let’s stop wasting time and get right to it!
1. Gospels and Baptisms
John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. [Mark 1:4, Luke 1:76-77] He prepared the ‘way of the Lord’ within people’s hearts so they would be able to hear a higher message next when Jesus came. Jesus then came preaching the good news of the Kingdom, a higher message with a higher baptism, but only those who listened to John would be able to accept Jesus’ preaching. [Luke 11]. John told people he only had water to baptize with, but Jesus would baptize in the Holy Spirit and Fire. When John saw Jesus he asked for this fire baptism, but Jesus said no. Jesus was baptized in the Holy Spirit that day in the Jordan, and then after 40 days of intense warfare and preparation, he came out of the wilderness in the POWER of the Holy Spirit [Luke 4:14 ]. John was not yet walking in God’s Kingdom, [Luke 7:28 ] yet he preached repentance and salvation and water baptism and had many disciples, some of whom followed Jesus into the higher message, but many who obviously did not. [Acts 19] Today we preach repentance and do Water Baptism in Jesus name, and rightly so, and the need for this preparation ministry continues today, but just as John was not walking in the higher blessings of God’s Kingdom, neither do the disciples of this preparation work typically.
This is clearly a parallel or type of Moses, who also ‘came up out of the water’ as his name means, and took the people through deliverance from bondage in Egypt and then through a red sea baptism, but afterwards Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land at what would be their second miracle water crossing, a kind of second baptism at the Jordan. All he could do was stand on the slopes of Mt. Nebo and stare. So who took the people in? Joshua, which is also spelled Yeshua, which is also spelled Jesus. In fact, John and Moses both led people through repentance by preaching law up to the border of the Promised Land, but not into it. In both cases Joshua / Yeshua / Jesus took the people into the possession of the Promised Land, which is what Jesus was now calling the Kingdom.
Why I must say this, is because, many Christians today are still identical to disciples of John the Baptist. They have a preparatory message of repentance, water baptism, but are not yet enjoying God’s Kingdom and the realm of miracles, healing and prophecy—and cannot do so unless they continue into this ‘second’ baptism, this one of fire.
Christians today do not distinguish the two gospel messages of the gospel of salvation from what Jesus called the gospel of the Kingdom. But they need to understand the landscape we are now walking through. The gospel of the Kingdom surely BEGINS with the gospel of salvation, which is but a narrow door, but the good news does not end there! There’s more! In fact this higher message brings blessings so large and profound they are not called a room of blessings or a mansion of blessings … but an entire country—it’s a Kingdom that awaits us, not just a small chamber or courtyard of fulfilled promises.
The Promised Land is actually within you, but there are walled cities in the best places preventing you from easily occupying this territory, Jesus told me, so your progress to become transformed into Christ-likeness will require effort, force and ‘violence,’ which only the forceful will take hold of. It’s a force or violence of “a faith that will not be denied,” Jesus told me; it’s not physical or human violence that produces this. But understand laying hold of these promises is not automatic, it takes effort, there will even be persecution at times. But sadly many Christians who do not understand that there is a difference between salvation and the Kingdom do not even know that there is a Kingdom to enter into after salvation. It is as if the Body is divided into two camps of Wise and Unwise saints; take note, only the Wise will be raptured. [Matt 25]
So this first key is simply this, the gospel of salvation is but a narrow door that leads those willing to continue the journey into a country of blessings, which Jesus called the Kingdom. The gospel of the Kingdom is higher than the gospel of Salvation; they are attached, they are related, one begins the other, but they are still separate enough that John and Moses were not allowed to continue into the higher realm, but had to stop before experiencing the blessings of the ‘second’ baptism, to highlight to us there is a difference, and it is not just a difference without a distinction. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit, this ‘second baptism,’ is profound, powerful and essential to go this next step.Well, Jesus asked me not to call it the next step or the higher stage … “it’s the Kingdom,” he said. And so only Joshua/ Jesus can lead people through the ‘second’ baptism that is required to take possession of the Promised Land, the Kingdom, which is within them, but which does still require some effort to possess fully, just like the conquest of Canaan in fact.
Wow, that key alone is worth an entire degree in biblical theology. The other keys are thankfully not nearly as complex.
External Links
All 12 topic briefs and full main teachings on these topics can be found HERE at the Foundations of the Kingdom website.