The Two Kingdoms - GOD's KINGDOM VS satan's kingdom - Who is your Master? - Brothers on a Journey

I mean, that part of the gospel is part of the gospel. It's just not the whole gospel. It's part of the gospel of the Kingdom of God about His death and resurrection and forgiveness of our sins. Um, but there's a whole lot more to it. Almost all of my life, the gospel was basically the story of from the cross forward. Um, you know, when when Christ sent out His disciples to preach the gospel of the Kingdom, it never crossed my mind what in the world were they teaching being how He hadn't died and rose from the dead yet.

Welcome back, everybody, to this episode of Brothers on a Journey, the podcast where we seek the way, the truth, and the life through the lens of the historic faith. I'm with my good brothers again today. To my right, I have Dana Willis with me. Over here to my left, I have Bill Shiley. And to the left of Bill, we have Len Martin. Today, we have a topic we talk about for a couple of different episodes. This is a huge topic. There are so many implications in this topic in life. So we're going to begin today, and we'll see how far we get into it. The topic is about the two kingdoms. What exactly are the two kingdoms?

And how should we live our lives in a way that is pleasing to our King in these kingdoms? Before we really get into the topic, I think it would be best to start off maybe with some definitions. What exactly do we mean when we say the two kingdoms? What does that mean? Yeah, so if I were to put it in a nutshell, I would say that there is the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. The Kingdom of God is God's nation here on this earth, made up of people who serve Him, worship Him, and follow His commands and are in obedience to Him. Living out Christ's reign on the earth and waiting for His return as our King, the kingdoms of this world are those who aren't in obedience to that reign, whose first allegiance is to other nations other than God and His nation.

Very good. Well, where do you guys think this idea of the two kingdoms even came about? How did this—where did this all begin?

So I think about it like right from the beginning of the story of the Bible, we're introduced to a King who creates a kingdom, creates everything into existence by His spoken word, and everything conforms itself to His character as He expresses it by speaking things into creation. And God then creates co-regents to rule with Him. Then Adam and Eve, He gives them dominion, and He gives them His image to bear. They're to be representatives of Him and to continue creating, to continue the inertia of what He began in His creation and to continue to envelop the whole world into a garden, it seems like.

And the reason we have two kingdoms is because there's somebody else that enters the picture, and that's Satan. We don't know a lot about the backstory of how he came to be a rebel, but he decided he was going to be the King. He was going to be God, exalting himself. Because of that, created disunity in the cosmos, in the world that God had created, and God cast him out of heaven. And he came to Adam and Eve then and tempted them to be like him and pursue their own agenda. He actually tells them, accuses God of trying to hold back from them what's good and tells them that really, to better themselves, they need to pursue their own way, their own independence, rather than working together with God.

And Adam and Eve chose to do that. And so the kingdom that God had created in the physical world, as we see it today, is broken. It bears part of the handiwork of a good and intelligent and wise and beautiful person, but also the marring result of man as the governor, as the steward of earth, selling it off to Satan as a destroyer. Really, I think the two kingdoms at their core is a method of achieving goals. You'd call it a politic. God's method of reigning and being supreme and receiving glory is to bless and to give. We're introduced over and over in scripture to Him as the one who gives to all things. Nothing suffers.

And then Satan's is to pull to himself, to consume and to control and to grab and to clutch in order to make himself great. And that fundamentally, I think, sort of defines the two kingdoms then. And the stories in the Bible proceeding from Genesis 3, then we're introduced to lots of different characters that either follow the one king or the other king or are in a struggle at one point of which king they're going to serve and the outcomes. And then the nation of Israel comes along, and God is continuing to work on this problem of the brokenness in the world because of the king that is ruling because of human choice. And then Jesus comes later.

Well, I'm sure we'll unpack all those topics. But that's where it all starts is because there was a king who created a good world, and there was another usurper who has come and has set up his own way and persuaded humans to follow his own way and is causing chaos. And God desires to restore the goodness and beauty of his original kingdom.

Yeah, and I would add to that, well, I think that's a great picture of the whole. I think where we get the concept is from when Jesus comes into the picture and says, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." There was the kingdom of Israel throughout history that God, where God was trying to have a kingdom for himself. You see it contrasted with the nations throughout the Old Testament or the Gentiles, sometimes it's translated. Jesus comes and he says, "The kingdom of heaven is here." So they didn't, at that point, like they hadn't had a king for a while. He actually was that king. They recognized he was that king coming to restore the kingdom, like as Bill said.

And interestingly enough, you know, you hear about Jesus as Savior quite a bit. We talk about him as Savior, but the one message that he talked about the most was that kingdom. And I hope we can get into what he meant by that kingdom. Yeah, and part of this whole thing, the terminology of the kingdom of God and the two kingdoms, part of that comes out there in Jesus' discussion with Pilate, where he says, "My kingdom is not of this world," which is not necessarily talking about the physical place, but it's not of this system. And so all the other kingdoms of this world, including the kingdom of Israel, which God says was actually a rebellion against him, their desire to have an earthly king and an earthly government was an act of rebellion and a desire to be like the wicked nations around them who had rejected God.

All those kingdoms are on one hand, and Jesus says he's setting up a kingdom that operates on a completely different set of principles. And that's why his servants wouldn't fight. So speaking of a different set of principles, what would you guys think the biggest differences are between these two kingdoms, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness? What would be the greatest differences that we see in today's time? Well, it's really an upside-down kingdom. To live, we must die. To win, we have to lose. To enter it, we need to become children and the servants of all. To be the greatest, we need to be children and servants of all. Following all the teachings of Jesus literally does everything opposite from what the world says.

Like if you get smacked on one side of the cheek or if someone's coming to kill you, you bless those who persecute you. And people always call it somewhat cowardice, but it's so much harder. Like I think we've mentioned before that if you hit me in the face, it's much harder not to hit you back and to do something good. Everything is upside down compared to the kingdoms of the world. We're blessed when we're poor. We see that when you're rich, that it's not a blessing.

I mean, if you name something of the world, I mean, it's very likely the opposite is true. There's some things that are true that are in both worlds, but there's so much in contrast. That's in principle, though, it is. Everything is opposite.

And Jesus shocks us with a lot of those statements like that. And I think to try to help us get away from trying to simply alter or reform our natural human methods of reigning and of succeeding in life and however you want to put that, finding meaning, being secure, he wants to just shatter that and say, "Look, you guys just got—you got to stand on your heads. Just forget about the way you've been doing." So we should expect that the whole thing is going to be opposite. It's going to clash.

And it's going to be difficult to our natural instincts. Yeah, and maybe the biggest thing, like the most obvious thing, is the non-resistance. The world likes to get rid of evil or to restrain evil with force. But we actually are able to overcome evil with good. And it doesn't always result in a pretty end for us. But at least we're actually on the side of overcoming that evil rather than continuing the evil by using evil to combat evil. And I think that's one of those principles, upside-down principles in God's kingdom, where the world's kingdoms rules things in a certain way, but Jesus, as the King, he rules in a completely different way.

His most iconic moment is being hung up on a cross, dying. That's not something that any other king would be proud of. Yeah, definitely not your first option. Like that's the first idea on the board. Hey, let's go get crucified. That's how we're going to—that's what we're going to do for the coronation.

On the first question, where the two kingdoms idea came from, like Bill said, definitely started from the beginning of the Bible. But if you just go to Bible Gateway and type in kingdom of and then go to the New Testament, it's like 133 times kingdom of is in there. Not all of them are kingdom of God or heaven, but just a few of them are. And I'll just read a few.

The very first one, from that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." So this is the very first words of Jesus' ministry. And it's, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven's at hand." The second one's quite interesting.

And the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And you know what happens? He's like, "I'm going to give you—I can give you these." And it goes on and on, and it calls it the gospel of the kingdom. And then later it calls it the gospel of Christ, which Christ means anointed king. And there's 50 times just in Matthew. And this is something that I miss my whole life, that there was this idea of Jesus being king and us being subjects and that the gospel that they went out and preached wasn't just, "Jesus died for your sins, so you can go to heaven," because that hadn't happened yet.

And the disciples didn't even know that was going to happen. And he sent them out to preach the gospel. Satan was able to offer them all the kingdoms of the world. I thought it was very intriguing because the kingdom of God is not the kingdoms of the world. And it shows who is over the kingdoms of the world. The kingdom of God doesn't operate off of rights. So the kingdoms of this world and the human way, Satan's way, is to protect me, make sure I'm getting what I need. The kingdom of God, it's not like the constitution or the declaration of independence, I believe, but it says that we are—how does it say that?

We're endowed by a creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'm glad you guys are in fact glad.

But instead of rights in the kingdom of God, instead of me protecting my rights, the kingdom of God says, "I have a responsibility to treat you the way I want to be treated, the way God created you to be treated." I think that's one fundamental difference. And maybe we might cover some of that more, kind of zoom over some of Jesus' teachings and talk about that. But I think that's one of the fundamental things is it's not that children don't have—children were not created to be loved and to be protected, but it's more we view it as it's my responsibility to treat that person this way. And it's not my responsibility to protect, to cause harm to somebody else or to trod somebody else down to protect myself.

So what would you guys say the relationship is between two kingdoms? So we have two different kingdoms here. How do they relate to each other?

My first thing pops off in my head is Jesus said, "I didn't come to bring peace but a sword." That's how he views this kingdom coming and engaging with even the Jewish society.

Yeah, I would say it's kind of this complex relationship that's hard to quite pin down because on the one hand, we're told to actually obey the kingdoms of this world. But on the other hand, we're not supposed to love the world. And like Bill said, there's that sword, or Jesus has come to bring that sword. And there's always a tension between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, even though the citizens of the kingdom of God are some of the best citizens in the kingdom of this world. They just see the kingdom of God as their first allegiance. And so that bothers the kingdom of this world, the kingdoms and the kings of this world, even though they're good citizens.

I think it can be easy for us to fall into the one side or the other to say, "Okay, well, the kingdom of God is my only priority. I don't have to worry about what the government says." Like, "I'm a Christian. Can't I speed?" Or, "I'm a Christian. Do I have to worry about the building codes?" Like, "I'm not going to do anything bad." It makes sense to a degree, and I can see why people think that way. But that's one pitfall. The other one is, "Well, I mean, we're supposed to obey the government. So if the government tells us to go to war, well, I mean, the government, it's not my fault. The government's telling me to do it.

And so now I can disregard the rules of the kingdom of God and go to war." And it would be really nice and simple if we could just say, "All right, we don't have to worry about the kingdom of this world." Or, "All right, well, we can just obey the kingdom of this world and not ever have to worry about the kingdom of God." But we have to do both. Jesus is clear that we have to do both. The apostles are very clear that we have to do both. And so that's where things get sticky, I think. Yeah. And when you bring up us being asked by the kingdoms of the world to go to war, that really brings out the picture of what I see the relationship between the two kingdoms is war.

You mentioned earlier, Lynn, that just when Jesus started his ministry, he said, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." And the experience of my own life of repentance and choosing to turn away from a lifestyle of practicing sin on a consistent basis, you really do enter into a war that I think takes place in the beginning on the inside. I think that in the end, whichever kingdom we end up being in, that we end up manifesting war outwardly. But there is an internal war. And I think that we see it described in Galatians, Galatians 5, where it says, "The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants.

And the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite to what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are consistently fighting each other so that you're not free to do whatever you want." So there is a war that's going on, and we are called to be warriors. Especially in the beginning of a Christian life, the war is heavily internal.

And then I think when someone has victory in their lives over that internal war, then it puts them in a position to be able to take that fight to the front lines externally. And so yeah, I think that war is a good description of the relationship between the two kingdoms. Yeah. And our war is not against other people. And we see all other people as potential people of the kingdom.

That we should treat them as our friends, even if they're our enemy. And that our enemy is Satan. Like my dad pointed out, and Jesus points it out. My wife pointed this out this morning to me. So there's three people.

My wife said, "Your dad says this all the time. It's right here in the Bible." That my dad says something like, "If there's a sick person and you know he's mentally ill and he says really horrible things at you, do you get offended and do you get hurt?" No, he's a sick person. You just love him and treat him like that. And then she said, "Well, look right here. It says Jesus came for the sick and the sinners." And it was mentioned the sinners. And so if we're looking at everybody, including ourselves and our brothers, who sin, we should see them as sick and that we should love on them because they—and we're fighting something else.

We're not fighting them. And they can fight us if a mentally ill person's hitting us. Or I'm talking about if this were to happen, if you went to a mental institution and you were not a part of the kingdom of God and some crazy person's hitting you, you wouldn't be trying to kill them. You just try to restrain them and keep them from hurting others.

I feel like that's how we kind of, in the kingdom of God, we have to treat everybody like Jesus did. He came, he sees a bunch of sick people. And the people who are sick but don't admit it and don't know that they're sick, he didn't really come to help them so much. It's like whenever you actually see all the teachings of Jesus, we all realize we're sick. They're all so difficult. And it's such a—I mean, not difficult, like not a joy to do, but you lay down in bed and realize, "Ah, I messed up." Or, "I didn't do that as well as I could have," whatever it is.

The one good thing you can always remember, though, is God likens it to our relationship is like a bride relationship or son-father relationship. And there's a lot of mercy and there's a lot of longing and there's a lot of really good emotions and thoughts behind it. It's not just this angry tyrant. He's pruning us and disciplining us. And so the hard part—anyway, but whenever you really look at the teachings of Jesus or the King, everybody will realize that they're sick. And so when he says he came for the sick and not the righteous or the sinners and not the righteous, I think that you can be a heroin addict and really sick but not know it and not admit it.

And I mean, Jesus would come to help them, but he's not as interested in the people who don't know it. They need help. He wants the people who know they need help and are seeking his help. I went off on a tangent, but sorry. Well, one of my favorite passages on that is 2 Timothy 2, I think it's verse 24, where it says, "The servant of the Lord shouldn't be contentious." The King James says, "The servant of the Lord must not strive, but must be gentle in meekness instructing those who oppose themselves so that God will lead them to repentance, that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who had been taken captive by him at his will or by his cunning."

That's the picture that we have towards these people, is they're people who have become enemies in their minds through wicked works. That's Ephesians 2. And we want to help them be recovered because they're being held hostage, sort of.

They got somebody with a knife to their throat that's making them do this stuff. Maybe they're still in the state where they want this, and maybe they're in the spot they're a little more in the Romans 6, Romans 7, where they're stuck because they've obeyed sin, and sin has dominion over them, and they would like to get loose. Some other passages on this that give this picture of war, obviously Ephesians 6, the Christian armor there, he tells us, "We're wrestling. It's not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers. Then we need to arm ourselves so that we can make a stand, take the field back over." And these spiritual powers are closely related to the kingdoms of this world.

Yeah. Yeah. The kingdoms of this world are all being run by him.

Satan claimed him there in Matthew 4 and the temptation there. And Jesus never argued with him about whether or not the kingdoms belonged to him. And different places through scripture it refers to the kingdoms of this world and the prince of this world and all that, because especially Romans 6 tells us that principle that when you yield yourself, when you obey somebody, you become their servant. They own you then. And then all of a sudden fall in short. So if everyone's obeyed, then everyone's—yeah. Another scripture about this concept of being at war is 2 Corinthians 10, verse 5. And I'll backing up. It says, "Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments." King James says, "Imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." When you were talking earlier, I was thinking about this. Where does the Bible say that the two kingdoms are at war? But it's kind of just, I think it's an obvious thing. It's like you have a kingdom going on, and then a king comes in and declares a revolution. And it's like, it's obvious. Their whole agendas and the way they go about the way the kings live are just completely opposite. So it's just an integrated thing. They start talking as if everybody just understands we're at war.

This is the way our warfare is.

And yeah, I think it's just so important to remember that the enemy is not the people. The enemy is what's behind the people causing these people to do things. And I think this can just get really practical. So whenever I have a relative or a friend or someone who does something that's just very wrong to me, the immediate response is, "Well, I'm mad at them." And somehow they need to see how wrong they are. And somehow I need to get back at them somehow. And somehow I need to do it without actually being non-resistant, I mean, without—retaliating while still being non-resistant, which is not possible, just so you know.

But then I realize what I have to remember is that they're not the enemy. They're actually, yes, they are serving. Well, they might actually be in good faith, but if they're doing wrong, they're actually serving something else. In that way, they're a servant of sin. And they might be Christians, but they aren't fully serving the kingdom. Well, I'm not either.

But the enemy is the one who's ruling them. And so I'm actually on their side. I'm actually there. I want to help them, not in a demeaning way, but—you don't want them to die that way. Right. Yeah. If you see people that are under slavery, you want to free them. You don't want them to remain slaves. So another thing that's come up in my journey of learning this thing about the two kingdoms and Jesus coming to set up a kingdom was, was Jesus' kingdom a physical kingdom or was it a spiritual kingdom? And so I kind of vacillated back and forth in my terminology on that.

Jesus' kingdom is not a kingdom after the manner of the kingdoms of this world, which is following Satan's methodology of how to rule and how to make things good. But Jesus talks about a kingdom in his teachings and everything. He depicts actually something that's happening here and now, not something that's just in our heads and in our hearts, but actually changing the way life on this planet is.

The way I like to think of it is Jesus came to set up a physical kingdom, a kingdom in this physical world, but that is achieved by changing the spirits of the rulers of planet Earth, which is us as humans. We were given dominion. So it is a spiritual kingdom. It's something that starts; it changes who we are and what we love and our methods of ruling, our methods of pursuing the good life. And by that, it changes physically now. It's something that changes the way life is here now physically. I really like you bringing that out because one thing I've often heard from people is, so I'm saying, "We should belong to the kingdom of God and not the kingdoms of this world."

And they say, "Well, the kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom." They actually go to John 18, where Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were of this world, my servants would fight. But no, it's not from here."

And they're like, "Well, it's not of this world. It's a kingdom that's up there in heaven, and we belong to it in our hearts." I think that that's a misreading of what Jesus is saying because Jesus says, "So of this world" could either mean, "If his kingdom is not of this world, maybe that could be interpreted to mean that it's not here." But he does say, "It's not from this world as well. It's from heaven, and it's of heaven, but it is actually here." He says throughout his teachings, he says that the kingdom is at hand. It's very close. And it came in him, it came.

And also, when he talks about the several parables, he says that the kingdom is like a certain thing. And then—can we read one right now? I actually wanted you to read one that goes along with this, I think. Sure. Which one?

Matthew 13:24, the parable of the wheat and tares. And then do the explanation of it. It starts at 36. There's a few parables in between. Yeah. So this is a great example. Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore green, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.'

So the servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he said, 'No, lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. And at harvest time, I will tell the reapers, 'Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'" And yeah, so he explains this parable, and he's—yeah. His disciples said, "Explain this to us because we don't understand it." And he answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, as in Jesus. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.

The weeds are the seeds, for the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom, as in these people are actually in his kingdom, all causes of sin and all lawbreakers. But he's putting them out of his kingdom." He says, "And throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

He who has ears, let him hear." So the kingdom is taking place from when Jesus said this until now. So the good seed are the good seed and the bad seed are both Christians, but the good seed are Christians who are serving the king, and the bad seed are Christians who aren't serving the king or who won't endure to the end, won't keep serving the king, and will be judged in the final judgment. And then they'll be taken out of his kingdom, and his kingdom will continue without end.

It will come in its fullness at that time, but it is already here in part. Just the basic method of operating is completely different. The kingdoms of this world, they go in, and they have intelligence agencies to figure out who's subverting and try to make sure that they stomp out anything that's threatening them at all. And Jesus lets it go. "Go ahead and try." I really think that's kind of God's whole thing with Satan and all of it. It's like, "Go ahead and try."

And he is going to harvest out the people who truly choose to be like him because they want to. And then that affects a lot of things about the way we go about proselytizing or trying to make converts, the way we go about trying to train and disciple people.

The way we operate in our churches with, if you want to say, church discipline and things like that, we don't feel some responsibility to try to make everybody be a good fish, going to the parable of the dragnet or to be a good grain.

We try to—yeah, we try to—we do everything to help them. We try to create an atmosphere and do all the things necessary to give them that opportunity. But if they choose not to, the loss is theirs. I mean, it's all of ours, but it's their choice, ultimately. It's not something that we have to try to make happen or try to force the purity of the church.

That's kind of a subject for another time. We follow the teachings of Jesus, and people who don't follow the teachings of Jesus, we admonish them, and we try to bring them to the light. And if they refuse, then we, in whatever ways are appropriate and commanded there, we terminate fellowship or whatever with them. But we don't feel some need to try to—it doesn't—we don't have to have this pure church where we have to be sure that only the people in this church are only people who are going to make it in the end. There's no way we can really know that.

Especially by punitive measures. Right. I think Kevin says this often, like in discipleship, we don't make anybody join a discipleship group. If somebody sets a goal and they don't keep it, nobody punishes them for it. But simply by virtue of the fact that the rest of us are trying hard to grow, that person eventually is going to feel pretty uncomfortable.

But if they make a change, it's going to be because they want to, not just because they feel embarrassed or somebody's shaming them or threatening them.

So it's a free-will kingdom. Yeah, this is a verse—I don't know, you might be about to read something, but this is a verse that somehow I missed. I've read it a bunch, but in this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.

When I was at Johnson Bible College in the missions course, we talked about this verse that we're going to usher in the age by going and spreading the gospel. But it never dawned on me until way later in life that it was called the gospel of the kingdom. And I never went around preaching, "Do you want to know the good news about the kingdom of God?" It was a somewhat saved-me gospel.

And for some of our listeners, this might be very foreign. And there's a verse in here, and I can't recall where it's at, that talks about that people that don't understand, when you plant the seed of the gospel of the kingdom, that Satan will come and snatch it. Do you all know that verse? Parable of the sower. Parable of the sower.

The birds of the air on the field lane, the wayside. Yeah. I think it might be in the explanation of the parable of the sower when he's saying that.

And it's just crazy that so much of my life, I never heard of it. It's like I couldn't understand. It was like the evil one was constantly keeping that away. And people, whenever they get into these crowds, after a while, they kind of get sick of us.

They're like, "You always talk about this." But it's like talking about love in the Bible. It never gets old. I mean, when it's 130-something times in the Bible and it's what the gospel is, it's about this. How can we not always talk about it? And yeah, I would say that's a good challenge to leave with our listeners.

Not that I'm saying we're wrapping up. I don't know when we're wrapping up, but probably about when we wrap up. That's when we're wrapping up. Right. Yeah. But I think that's a good challenge. If the gospel that you believe or the gospel that you teach, if you aren't sure where the kingdom fits into that gospel, you might want to look into what the Bible says about the kingdom of God and what the gospel of the kingdom is, because that is the gospel that we're supposed to be teaching.

Yeah. Is my gospel when I go out and I present the gospel or I witness to people, is what I'm talking about, is the main gist of it a kingdom? And is all of my theology and all of my arguments and everything, is it the whole point of it all bringing people to obedience to King Jesus?

Absolutely. On top of that, a lot of people listening that might be in that kind of thought, some people would say, "Well, that was a gospel for a different dispensation." I couldn't think of the word. They might not use that word, but a different time. But then after Jesus died and rose from the dead, there's a new gospel, and that's he died and rose from the dead. But if you look in Acts, and it says the last 40 days, Jesus was with the apostles. He was teaching about the kingdom of God. And then it goes through a bunch of different times like that. Then the very last few years of Paul being in house arrest, he's teaching everybody about the kingdom of God.

This is the first church age, and it was about the kingdom of God. It wasn't about what we've heard of the gospel being. I mean, that part of the gospel is part of the gospel. It's just not the whole gospel. It's part of the gospel of the kingdom of God about his death and resurrection and forgiveness of our sins.

But there's a whole lot more to it. And we know there's only one gospel because in Galatians 1:9 and 10, it says, "If anybody comes preaching a different gospel, let him be accursed or condemned," whatever version you read, eternally accursed. Even an angel or me, Paul, preach a different gospel.

And so this gospel's the gospel throughout the whole New Testament, and there's no other gospel. So when it says the gospel of peace, the gospel of Christ, the gospel of the kingdom, it's all the same thing. All the same. Yeah. Yeah. And I would kind of come from Daniel's world where almost all of my life, the gospel was basically the story from the cross forward.

When Christ sent out his disciples to preach the gospel of the kingdom, it never crossed my mind what in the world were they teaching, seeing how he hadn't been died, he hadn't died and rose from the dead yet. He hadn't been died.

He hadn't been died. Going back to the George Roots down there.