The Exalted Jesus Still Has A God

 

The exalted, resurrected Jesus still has a God

Learn more about the nontrinitarian non-Oneness beliefs of the early Christians in my newest book

Why Oneness Is Wrong

Who Is Jesus Christ? (Why Oneness Is Wrong)

Why Oneness Is Wrong: A New Non-Trinitarian Challenge to Oneness Theology

 What if rejecting Oneness theology does not require accepting the Trinity?

That question lies at the heart of my new book, Why Oneness Is Wrong.

For many Christians, particularly those within or familiar with Oneness Pentecostalism, the theological alternatives can appear remarkably narrow. Either Jesus is the one God—the Father Himself manifested in flesh—or one must embrace the traditional doctrine of the Trinity.

But are those really the only possibilities? 

I believe the biblical evidence points to another conclusion: there is one God, the Father, and one uniquely appointed human Messiah, Jesus Christ.

The Question That Changed Everything

Oneness theology presents an initially simple proposition: there is one God, and Jesus is that one God manifested in flesh.

But that proposition creates a series of difficult questions when we begin reading the New Testament carefully.

Why does Jesus pray to God?

Why does Jesus distinguish his will from the Father's will?

Why does Jesus say that the Father knows something that the Son does not know?

Why does Jesus identify himself and his Father as two witnesses?

Why does Scripture repeatedly say that God raised Jesus from the dead?

Why does Jesus sit at God's right hand?

Why is Jesus called the mediator between God and humanity?

And perhaps most strikingly, why does the resurrected and glorified Jesus still speak of the Father as “my God”?

These are not peripheral questions. They concern the identities of God and Jesus themselves.

“The Only True God”

One of the foundational passages examined in the book is John 17:3.

Jesus is praying to his Father when he says:

“And this is life eternal, that they might know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.”

The statement contains a remarkably straightforward distinction.

Jesus identifies the Father as “the only true God.”

He then identifies himself as Jesus Christ, the one whom God sent.

This same pattern appears throughout the New Testament.

Paul writes:

“But to us there is but one God, the Father... and one Lord Jesus Christ...”
— 1 Corinthians 8:6

And elsewhere:

“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and humanity,
the man Christ Jesus.”
— 1 Timothy 2:5

These passages provided the foundation for what I call the One God One Human Messiah framework.

God and His Human Messiah

The argument of Why Oneness Is Wrong is not that Jesus is insignificant.

Far from it.

Jesus is God's uniquely begotten Son, His Messiah, His supreme agent, the risen Lord, the mediator between God and humanity, and the one whom God has appointed to rule His coming Kingdom.

But none of these truths requires Jesus to be the God who appointed him.

Peter's Pentecost sermon provides an extraordinary example.

He introduces Jesus as:

“Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God...”

and says that the miracles were works:

“which God did by him.”

Peter then declares that Jesus was killed, but:

“This Jesus has God raised up...”

Jesus is subsequently exalted to God's right hand.

And Peter's argument reaches its climax in Acts 2:36:

“God has made this Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

Consider the significance of those words.

God made Jesus Lord.

Jesus's Lordship is real. His authority is extraordinary. His exaltation is unparalleled.

But there remains a distinction between the God who exalts and the Messiah whom God exalts.

What About the Famous Oneness Proof Texts?

Of course, Oneness theology does not rest upon one or two passages.

That is why Why Oneness Is Wrong directly examines many of the texts commonly presented as evidence that Jesus is Almighty God or that Jesus is the Father.

Among them are:

• John 1:1 — “the Word was God”
• John 8:58 — “Before Abraham was, I am”
• John 10:30 — “I and my Father are one”
• John 14:9 — “He who has seen me has seen the Father”
• John 20:28 — “My Lord and my God”
• Isaiah 9:6 — “The mighty God, The everlasting Father”
• Colossians 2:9 — “all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”
• 1 Timothy 3:16 — “God was manifest in the flesh”
• Hebrews 1:8 — “Your throne, O God”
• Revelation 1:8 — “the Alpha and Omega”

Rather than isolating these passages from their surroundings, the book asks what happens when they are read alongside the passages immediately before and after them—and within the larger biblical presentation of God and His Messiah.

The results are often very different from what a proof-text reading might suggest.

Two Witnesses: A Particular Problem for Oneness Theology

One passage deserves special attention.

In John 8:17–18, Jesus appeals to the biblical requirement for two witnesses.

He says:

“I am one who bears witness of myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness of me.”

Jesus's argument depends upon there being two witnesses:

Jesus himself

and

the Father who sent him.

If Jesus and the Father are actually the same individual, a serious question arises: Where are the two witnesses?

The distinction is not incidental to Jesus's argument. It is the argument.

This is one of many places where I believe the straightforward reading of Scripture creates considerable difficulty for the Oneness model.

“My God”: The Words of the Glorified Jesus

Revelation 3:12 raises another remarkable problem.

This is not Jesus during his earthly ministry.

This is the resurrected, exalted and glorified Jesus speaking from heaven.

And four times in a single verse he says:

“my God.”

That deserves to be allowed its full force.

Jesus had a God during his earthly ministry.

Jesus was raised by God.

Jesus was exalted by God.

And the glorified Jesus still speaks of “my God.”

If Jesus is himself the one Almighty God, what exactly does it mean for Almighty God to have a God?

The One God One Human Messiah framework does not need to explain this language away. It expects it.

Jesus is God's glorified Messiah.

A Non-Trinitarian Critique of Oneness

There is another important feature of this book.

Why Oneness Is Wrong is not a defence of the Trinity.

I am not arguing that Oneness theology is wrong because God is three persons.

Instead, I ask a more fundamental question:

Does the biblical evidence actually identify Jesus as the one God—the Father Himself—or does Scripture consistently distinguish the one God from the Messiah whom He sent?

This allows the Oneness position to be examined on its own merits rather than simply comparing one post-biblical theological system with another.

My argument is that the biblical pattern is considerably simpler:

One God — the Father.

One human Messiah — Jesus Christ.

God sends him.

God anoints him.

God works through him.

Jesus obeys God.

Jesus prays to God.

Jesus dies.

God raises him.

God exalts him.

God makes him Lord and Messiah.

And the exalted Jesus continues to call the Father “my God.”

Why the Humanity of Jesus Matters

The genuine humanity of Jesus is not something Christianity should be embarrassed about.

It is essential to the gospel.

Jesus is the second Adam who succeeds where the first Adam failed.

He is our human mediator.

He is our high priest.

He is the obedient Son.

He is the man through whom God will judge the world.

His obedience matters precisely because it is genuine human obedience.

His temptations matter because they are genuine.

His prayers matter because they are genuine.

His death matters because he genuinely dies.

And his resurrection is magnificent precisely because God raised His faithful Messiah from the dead.

Making Jesus genuinely human does not diminish him.

It allows us to appreciate the extraordinary position to which God has exalted him.

One God. One Human Messiah.

The central argument of Why Oneness Is Wrong can therefore be expressed quite simply.

The Bible does not present Jesus as a second God alongside the Father.

Neither, I argue, does it present Jesus as the Father Himself appearing under another manifestation.

It presents:

the one God

and

His human Messiah.

The Father is the God who sends.

Jesus is the Messiah who is sent.

The Father is the God who empowers.

Jesus is the man through whom God works.

The Father is the God who raises the dead.

Jesus is the Messiah whom He raised.

The Father is the God who grants authority.

Jesus is the Lord to whom that authority has been given.

Distinction without rivalry.

Unity without identity.

Authority without equality of source.

And above all:

One God and His uniquely appointed human Messiah.

About Why Oneness Is Wrong

Why Oneness Is Wrong is a detailed biblical examination of Oneness theology written from a non-Trinitarian perspective.

Across its chapters, the book examines the biblical identity of God and Jesus, the Law of Agency, the two witnesses of John 8, Psalm 110:1, Gethsemane, Jesus's humanity, his priesthood and mediation, his resurrection and exaltation, the Book of Revelation, and numerous passages frequently presented as proof that Jesus is Almighty God.

It also examines textual and translation questions surrounding passages such as:
1 Timothy 3:16, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8 and Isaiah 9:6.

The purpose is not merely to dismantle a theological position.

It is to recover what I believe to be the beautifully simple apostolic confession:

“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and humanity,
the man Christ Jesus.”
— 1 Timothy 2:5

Why Oneness Is Wrong
by Adam Pastor

The book is available now from Lulu:

Why Oneness Is Wrong

One God. One Human Messiah.

Life after Death, but When?

It seems to us utterly clear, from a mass of Bible verses in both Testaments, that no one receives a judgment and a reward until after the resurrection. And the resurrection has not yet occurred. It will occur only when Jesus returns (I Thessalonians 4:13ff; I Corinthians 15:23; Revelation 11:15-18; Luke 20:35; Luke 14:14; Daniel 12:2, etc.). It follows, then, that no human being, apart from Jesus, has gained immortality. No one has been destroyed in the fires of hell, since hellfire is part of future judgment. 

Popular stories about “after death” experiences should not be permitted to contradict the Bible — which they certainly do when claims are made that certain specially favored individuals have been conducted by “Jesus” either to heaven to see the saved enjoying bliss, or to hell to see the wicked writhing in agony. Such legends are now presented with considerable frequency to a public eager to know the secrets of the “afterlife,” but not so willing to study the issue in the pages of the Bible. 

It is a sad fact that a number of verses are still called upon to support the traditional idea that Christians really do not die: they just “move home” to a heavenly dwelling the very instant they “breathe their last.” A massive propaganda, reaching the hearts of the bereaved when they are most vulnerable, continues to convince multitudes that the dead are very much alive and conscious. This concept could not have arisen, much less gained popularity, had the sober words of Ecclesiastes been heeded: “The dead do not know anything at all.” There is no need to multiply confirming texts, since, as the celebrated commentary by Keil and Delitzsch notes, the thought expressed by Ecclesiastes 9:5 is typical of the entire Old Testament teaching about the present condition of the dead. Moreover, Daniel 12:2 tells us that the dead emerge from their sleep of death in the dust of the ground, when the time comes for the resurrection. 

On that solid base the New Testament’s teaching about life after death is built. All our present doctrinal confusions stem from our failure to base our theology on the Hebrew Bible and to read the New Testament in its light. We are unconsciously anti-Semitic in our approach to religious Truth. We are Gentiles at heart — prone to religious tendencies which can only be checked by a whole-hearted return to Jewish-Christian roots. (But this does not mean saddling ourselves with the Law of Moses from which Jesus has freed us, Galatians Chapters 3 and 4.) 

Of course, it is possible to contradict the mass of biblical evidence about the present state of the dead by appealing to the story of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19ff.). Here at last one may find a post-mortem description of fully conscious individuals, who far from “knowing nothing” are already enjoying the bliss of “Abraham’s bosom” or suffering torment. 

Luke was not confused. He had already reported Jesus’ teaching in 14:14: “you will be rewarded at the resurrection of the just.” No resurrection, no reward. What then is Abraham doing enjoying his reward in Hades, before the resurrection? Luke 20:35, consistent with Luke 14:14, announces that the faithful will be counted worthy “to attain to that [future] age and the resurrection of the dead.” Obviously that is their goal, and as long as they have not been resurrected, they cannot have been rewarded. Are we supposed to believe then that Abraham and Lazarus have been granted the reward of paradise before the resurrection? Have they “jumped the gun”? Such an understanding would stand the rest of the biblical teaching about our future on its head. 

Wise commentary on Luke 16:19ff. has noticed that Jesus here uses the language of the Jews. He follows a well-known popular story. In the story the “dead” are not disembodied spirits in heaven and hell, but fully bodied persons holding a conversation in Hades. If one is to take the story as a literal account of what happens when we die, then one must believe that the righteous dead are all in Hades, in a compartment called Abraham’s bosom. 

One must believe that they have received an immortal body. One must believe also that the wicked are close enough to the righteous to allow a conversation, one with the other. This literal picture will not fit the traditional teaching that the righteous have gone disembodied, not to Hades but to heaven. 

It remains for us to understand that Jesus is borrowing a Pharisaic story from his enemies and using it for effect. In an earlier story, in the same context (Luke 16:9), Jesus, jibing at the Pharisees’ love of sharp practice, says, “Make friends using unrighteous money so that when it fails, they may bring you into the habitations of the coming age.” In other words, Jesus, almost certainly using sarcasm (“Go ahead! Try making friends with money!”), mocks the Pharisees by telling them to rely on their money to gain the ultimate reward of life in the coming Kingdom. 

“The Pharisees,” Luke notes, “who were also greedy, heard all these things and mocked Jesus” (16:14). The story of Lazarus and the Rich Man pokes fun in return at a traditional, imaginary tale, whose setting is the underworld. It is as though Jesus is saying: Imagine a conversation between Abraham and the rich man in the afterlife. To press the details of the story as a scientific account of where the dead are and exactly what they are doing misses the point of Jesus’ vivid and stinging rebuke of Pharisaism. 

In II Corinthians Chapter 5 Paul goes to great lengths to contrast our present condition with the new body to be received at the resurrection. To extract and misquote one third of one verse of Paul’s extended teaching (“absent from the body, present with the Lord”) and make it the buttress for the notion of immediate consciousness after death, apart from resurrection, is a failure to grasp the overall biblical teaching about life after death. Context is always important. In II Corinthians 4:14 Paul introduces his topic: “He who resurrected the Lord Jesus will also resurrect you through Jesus and will present us with you.” 

It is the goal of the Christian life to be resurrected when Jesus returns. Paul sets his sights firmly on that goal. The present treasure enjoyed by the Christian, the treasure of the Gospel of the Kingdom as Jesus described it (Matthew 13:44-46), is now contained in us as earthen vessels. The power of that Kingdom Gospel — the dynamic, vitalizing activity of God in us — comes from God and it is invested in frail human persons (II Corinthians 4:7). 

Paul develops his theme (5:1ff): “We know that if our present earthly house is dissolved [by death] we have a [new] building of God, a house not made with human hands, fit for the coming age” (poorly rendered as “eternal” in many versions). That new body is now “reserved in heaven” (cp. I Peter 1:4). Paul continues by referring to our present sufferings, while we wait to receive the bodies which will confer on us immortality. While we are at home in our present bodies, we are absent from the Lord Jesus. While we wait for the coming of Jesus we must continue to walk by faith, not by sight. Our desire and hope is to be absent from our frail bodies in order to be present with the Lord in our new bodies, “for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” The obvious contrast is between our present existence as mortals and the future resurrection to occur at Jesus’ return. 

Paul has nothing to say about the interval between death and resurrection. This has no meaning for him, since it is a time of unconsciousness (“The dead know nothing at all…There is no activity in the grave…the dead are sleeping in the dust of the ground,” Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10; Daniel 12:2). Only a year earlier he had written to the same Corinthians (I Corinthians Chapter 15) to inform them that the Christian dead will achieve immortality only at the coming of Christ (I Corinthians 15:23) and when the last trumpet summons all the faithful dead not from heaven but from the grave (I Corinthians 15:50-57). It is only at that future collective resurrection that Hades (i.e. death) is overcome (I Corinthians 15:55, KJV). (The popular current teaching that Jesus removed the faithful dead from Hades at the time of his own resurrection has no basis at all in the Bible. It merely confuses the biblical scheme.) 

A confirmation of Paul’s teaching is found in I Thessalonians 4:16 where the Apostle tells us again that it is only by resurrection at the Second Coming of Christ that a Christian can be present with the Lord: “Thus [via resurrection] we shall be forever present with the Lord.” This verse would be obviously contradicted by any theory that Christians can be present, face to face, with the Lord now, before the resurrection has occurred.

The above post was taken from here.

DEFINING THE KINGDOM AND THE GOSPEL

“It may be said that the teaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God represents his whole teaching. It is the main, determinative subject of all his discourse. His ethics were ethics of the Kingdom; his theology was theology of the Kingdom; his teaching regarding himself cannot be understood apart from his interpretation of the Kingdom of God” (Dr. F. C. Grant, from “The Gospel of the Kingdom,” Biblical World, 50, pp. 121-191).

 

“This is our first basic thesis about Jesus: He did not preach about Himself, or simply about God, but about the Kingdom of God” (Dr. John Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads, p. 60). 

According to the records of Jesus’ ministry, the pioneer of the Christian faith, Jesus, gave a definite label to the Christian Gospel. He called it, quite specifically, “the Gospel (Good News) about the Kingdom of God.” In Luke 16:16 Jesus remarked that since the time of John the Baptist (Matt. 3:2) “the Gospel of the Kingdom of God has been proclaimed.” The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is another way of describing Christianity or the Christian religion. “Kingdom of God” is the term in which the genius of the Christian faith is concentrated. 

But you could easily miss this central and fundamental point, if you listened to contemporary versions of the Gospel. The vocabulary of modern proponents of Christianity and the Gospel avoids this basic vocabulary of Jesus. When is the last time you heard on radio, television or from the pulpit, the words “Gospel of (or about) the Kingdom”? Certainly the word Gospel is not in short supply, and the word Kingdom is heard, if fairly rarely. But the biblical description, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, of Jesus’ saving Gospel — the Gospel about the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven — is almost extinct.[1]

This should put us on the alert. When words are changed or suppressed, ideas are changed or lost. The words of Jesus, however, are the most precious of all words and their loss means the loss of the Christian faith itself. This does not mean that people will cease to talk about Christianity, but it does mean that when they do they risk defining it in a way different from Jesus. At that point, the name remains, but the substance of the faith is distorted or perverted. 

Paul knew how important it was to maintain the ideas and words of Jesus: Writing to his young delegate Timothy, Paul said: “If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree with the health-giving words — the words of our Lord Jesus Christ — and teaching which is in accordance with true religion, he is blind….” (1 Tim. 6:3). 

The most obvious way in which Christians could guard against losing the words of Jesus and thus abandoning the mind and spirit of Jesus would be to adopt quite consciously and deliberately as a constant habit of speech: “The Gospel of the Kingdom.” 

... No less than 18 times in Matthew, Mark and Luke and Acts (both before and after the cross) the full and definitive expression “Gospel about the Kingdom of God” appears. It will be useful to remind ourselves of these basic verses. They bring before us the main topic around which Christianity revolves (note that in the original Greek “proclaiming” and “preaching” imply the Gospel): 

“THE GOSPEL ABOUT THE KINGDOM OF GOD” (Matthew 3:2; 4:17, 23; 24:14; 9:35; Luke 4:43; 8:1; 9:2, 6, 11, 60; 10:9; 16:16; Acts 8:12; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31) 

A leading contemporary evangelist made an extraordinarily interesting observation at a conference of world evangelists in 1974. He said, “How much have you heard here at the conference about the Kingdom of God? Not much. But it was Jesus’ prime concern.” Ponder the meaning of this amazing statement. “Here we are,” Michael Green said in effect, “as leaders in the field of Christian evangelism, and we do not sound like Jesus. He always talked about the Kingdom as the Gospel, but we do not.” 

Words are the expression of the heart and mind. A person is, in a sense, his mind. Is it not rather disconcerting that leading exponents of the Christian faith admit that their concerns in regard to the saving Gospel are strangely different from those of Jesus? The situation suggests that all is not well. I have a tape in which another leading evangelical scholar dedicated two hours to defining the Gospel. The Kingdom of God received hardly a mention in the discussion. And when the speaker appealed to Paul’s wonderful farewell statement about his ministry in Acts 20, he skipped from verse 24 to 26, omitting verse 25 where Paul defined the “Gospel of the grace of God” (no one avoids that phrase!) as the “proclamation of the KINGDOM.” An intelligent analysis of these facts will suggest that something has gone awry with modern attempts to present Jesus and his saving Gospel. 

Some of our readers may know that there is a theory which has been very popular in America in some circles, which tries to justify the clear absence of Jesus’ “Kingdom-Gospel” language in contemporary preaching, by saying that Jesus’ Gospel of the Kingdom is not the saving Gospel for us now.[2]  We would like to urge our readers to examine this most carefully. We suggest that such a theory, which would separate Jesus from his own Gospel, is without a shred of supporting evidence in the New Testament. It is a man-made device which confuses and complicates the consistent “One-Gospel” of the New Testament (beautifully defined, for example, in Acts 8:12). 

If Jesus spoke of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and made this the key for an intelligent reception of himself and his message, what is the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven? The Kingdom of God was a phrase well known to Jesus and his audience. The Kingdom of God was the national hope of Israel. It had been described in detail in the books of the Hebrew prophets (the Old Testament — actually “the Hebrew Bible”). Jesus did not play verbal games with his audience. He did not come into Galilee calling for repentance and belief in the Gospel about the Kingdom (Mark 1:14, 15) intending his audience to misunderstand his words! Common sense and honesty dictate that Jesus expected the audience to know what the Kingdom of God was. Jesus did not define the Kingdom. There was no need to do this. The Kingdom of God meant “God’s revolutionary Government” to be inaugurated by the promised Messiah on a renewed earth. (The Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven certainly did not mean a realm of disembodied postmortem spirits in Heaven.) The Kingdom of God was a coming event, and a very spectacular one. It spelled destruction for the wicked and joy and endless life for the true followers of the Messiah. 

The New Testament lays out this basic definition of the Kingdom for us in Matthew chapter 3. John the Baptist commands repentance in view of the approach of the Kingdom (“The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, repent!” 3:2). What this means is clarified when John goes on to announce the two possible destinies for mankind: either to be welcomed as “wheat” into the “barn” of the Kingdom, or, alternatively, to be burned up like chaff in the consuming fire of judgment at the Messiah’s arrival. The Message is more than clear —  either the Barn or the Bonfire. Choose! The choice is laid before us in this Gospel about the Kingdom. Jesus came with the same fundamental Gospel Message of the Kingdom. Matthew makes this clear to us by describing the Christian faith/Gospel with the same terminology for Jesus as for his forerunner cousin John: “From that time on Jesus began to make a public proclamation, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17; 9:35; cp. 3:2). 

It is essential not to lose sight of this ABC teaching about the Christian Gospel. There are misleading forces around trying to wrench Jesus’ Gospel message from its New Testament, Jewish environment and dissolve it into something else, a vague exhortation to “be good and go to heaven when you die.” This is foreign to Jesus and the New Testament. What Jesus required was a response to his message about the Kingdom. Response requires an intelligent understanding of what is put before the potential convert. How can one “Repent and believe in the Gospel of the Kingdom” (Mark 1:14, 15) if one has a very hazy, or perhaps mistaken idea of what Jesus meant by the Kingdom? 

“In the New Testament the Kingdom of God is conceived, first of all, as something in the future” (Dr. E Schweizer, The Good News According to Mark, p. 45). 

Commitment to Jesus, receiving Jesus, coming to Christ is defined in the New Testament as intelligently and repentantly receiving the Message/Gospel of Jesus — the word(s) of Jesus. It is possible to miss this point if one speaks only of “coming to Christ,” “receiving Christ,” “believing in Christ.” Receiving Christ means receiving his words. Now the New Testament uses both types of language: “receiving Christ” and “receiving the words of Christ.” The one defines the other. “Receiving Christ” is not possible apart from the reception of his words/teaching/Gospel. Jesus, in other words, is defined by his words (aren’t we all?). 

A Jesus without his defining Gospel easily becomes a vague symbol of salvation, a non-descript, loving personality who is not clearly the Messiah-Savior, Kingdom-Gospel preacher of the New Testament documents. We should never forget that Satan’s great trick is to present “other Jesuses.” Satan is very happy to have the word “Jesus” in circulation, but very unhappy with the actual, historical Jesus who came armed with the saving weapon — the Gospel of the Kingdom, plus of course (later) the vital facts about his death and resurrection. 

Jesus spelled out the “mechanics” of conversion, the entrance upon the journey to salvation, in his famous parable of the seed (or the sower). According to Jesus, the Master evangelist, the essential seed (seed is necessary for rebirth) which must take root and germinate in the heart of the believer is this: “The WORD/GOSPEL of the Kingdom.” Here are Jesus’ critically important words: 

Describing evangelism “Jesus-style,” Matthew records the Messiah: “Whenever someone hears the WORD about the KINGDOM…the Devil comes and snatches away the seed which has been sown in his heart” (Matt. 13:19). So the key to salvation is the reception of the word of the Kingdom, Jesus’ favorite topic. (And no wonder, because he says that the destiny of man is wrapped up in his reception or nonreception of the Gospel of the Kingdom.) The Devil understands Jesus’ program and system of evangelism/salvation, and he mounts his massive (and clever) counter-program, to ensure to the maximum that the Gospel of the Kingdom, the vital seed which sparks the new birth, does not remain in the heart of the potential convert. Better still, the Devil would like to see the Message suppressed altogether and some sort of counterfeit put in its place. Jesus provided a brilliant, “consumer activist” intelligence report when he made this fascinating observation: “When anyone hears the Message/Gospel, the Devil snatches away the Message which has been sown in his heart, so that he may not believe it AND BE SAVED” (Luke 8:12). 

Can anyone deny that the key to salvation is revealed here? No wonder that Jesus in this context (Luke 8:8) would “raise his voice” and urge, “those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” Immortality in the Kingdom of God was at stake, and Jesus strained every nerve in his body to get the vital saving information across. He was involved, as are all evangelists, in a cosmic struggle with the ruler of this Age, the god of this Age, whose power of deception should never be underestimated. (Paul understood, and passionately preached that “loving the Truth” was essential for successful Christianity, II Thess. 2:10.)

[1] Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven are exactly equivalent, with no difference in meaning. Only Matthew uses the title Kingdom of Heaven.

[2] See, for example, the notes in the Scofield reference Bible on Rev. 14:6. According to the extraordinary comment the Gospel of the Kingdom is a thing of the past and the future but not of the present! The theory interferes with the Great Commission in which Jesus knew of only one Gospel to be preached continuously until he returns.

The above post was taken from here.