Understanding the Kingdom of God | Part 5B | The Misunderstood Gospel of Jesus Christ
As most entrepreneurs know, a mission statement is defined as “a formal summary of the aims and values of a company, organization, or individual.”
So, what was the formal summary of the aims and values of Jesus? The first official words preached by Jesus in public, as recorded in Matthew 4:17 (NLT), are:
“From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
“From that time on.” Other versions say, “From then on.” This is to mean: from this moment and habitually after that.
From there, Jesus’ message was mostly about the Kingdom of God. All throughout the gospels, the Kingdom was the main message of Jesus.
He would say: “The Kingdom of God is like,” “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God?” “The Kingdom of God is,” etc. The gospels are saturated with Kingdom talk from Yahushua.
Check this out in the King James Version Bible:
- The Kingdom of God appears 15 times in Mark.
- The Kingdom of God appears 31 times in Luke.
- The Kingdom of God appears twice in John.
- The Kingdom of God appears seven times in Acts.
- The Kingdom of God appears eight times in the rest of the New Testament.
Now, you may ask, “What about the Gospel of Matthew?”
Well, instead of ‘Kingdom of God,’ Matthew used the term ‘Kingdom of Heaven’?
The Kingdom of Heaven appears a whopping 32 times in Matthew! Matthew chose to use the term ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ rather than ‘Kingdom of God’ in order to avoid offending his target audience, who were mostly Hebrews. They have long preferred not to name or use the name of God. They did so to avoid breaking the third commandment, which says, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
So, it is evident from the gospels that Jesus’ main teaching and mission was to proclaim this “Good News of the Kingdom.”
But what exactly was the Good News of the Kingdom?
In this episode, we take a look and shed light on "the Misunderstood Gospel of Jesus Christ".
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