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 that 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 of 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 that hath seen me hath 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 fulness of the Godhead bodily”
• 1 Timothy 3:16 — “God was manifest in the flesh”
• Hebrews 1:8 — “Thy 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.

Contemporary Evangelism and the Biblical Good News by Anthony Buzzard

The contemporary invitation to accept salvation runs along the following lines: 

“If you have never put your faith and trust in Christ, I urge you to do so now. Christ loves you and He died for your sins. Your hope of salvation is in Him alone. By a simple prayer of faith you can invite Him into your heart and join the millions through the ages who have come to Christ and become part of His church. Then become active in the church.”

Backed by a verse from Ephesians (1:7, 8), the evangelical call seems plausible enough: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us.” 

The purpose of this study is to show that the offer of salvation as presented in the outline above omits vital information; that it will induce a false sense of security; that it is a partial Gospel. 

The popular Gospel is true as far as it goes. What is omitted from the Message makes it untrue to the Bible. The Good News (Gospel) brought by Christ and preached by the disciples was not concerned with forgiveness of sin alone. It was the proclamation of the Kingdom or Reign of God (Luke 4:43). It is that central element of the Gospel which is entirely absent from nearly all contemporary appeals to accept salvation. 

In order to understand what is meant by the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, we must examine the Scriptures. Unless we do this, we shall not know what Christ is asking us to believe, and consequently we shall be unable to respond to His call for repentance and belief in the gospel of the Kingdom (Mark 1:14, 15; Acts 8:12). 

If you are doubtful whether an understanding of the Kingdom of God is necessary for salvation, consider the following facts: The New Testament disciples were sent out to preach the Gospel, before they even understood that Jesus was to die for the sins of mankind. This must lead us to the conclusion that the death of Christ for our sins and His resurrection is not the entire Gospel Message. 

In Luke 9:6 we find that “the disciples departed and went through the towns preaching the Gospel.” Later we read: “Then Jesus took the twelve disciples aside and said to them: ‘We are going up to Jerusalem and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and be spitefully treated and spat upon; and they will scourge Him and put Him to death: and the third day He will rise again.’ And they understood nothing of all this: His words were hidden from them. They understood nothing of what He was saying” (Luke 18:31-34). 

What was it that they had been preaching, then, while still ignorant of the coming death of Christ? The answer is found in Luke 9:2: “He sent them to preach the Kingdom of God.” In verse 6 this is defined as the Gospel. They had been preaching the Gospel, but with no understanding of the death of Christ for sin. The facts about Jesus’ death and resurrection were added to the gospel message about the Kingdom after his resurrection (Acts 8:12). 

How much about the Kingdom of God have you heard in contemporary preaching of the Gospel? Probably the Kingdom of God is not even mentioned! 

It is reasonable that we should inquire what the disciples preached as the Gospel after the death of Jesus for the sins of the world. The answer is found in the book of Acts, the record of the early Church’s preaching: 

“And when they believed Philip announcing the Good News about the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12). 

In verse 14 of this chapter it is said that the people had thus “accepted the Word” (or Message). We learn from this that the Good News of the Kingdom and the Name of Jesus Christ is summarized under the single term: The Message. So in Acts 19:8 Paul spent three months “persuading the people about the Kingdom of God.” In this way the whole of Asia heard the Word (Message) of the Lord Jesus (v. 10). Paul described his own preaching as the proclamation of the Kingdom of God (Acts 20:25) and later, from dawn to dusk, he expounded and declared the Good News of “the Kingdom of God and the things concerning Jesus” (Acts 28:23, 31). 

We see, then, that the Gospel was still the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, as it always had been. The information about the death of Christ was added after His crucifixion. 

The evidence is conclusive that the Apostles did not simply invite the people to believe in the death of Jesus for their sins; nor was His resurrection all that they preached. They also proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom of God. All these elements are needed for the full Gospel. A half-Gospel or a mutilated Gospel will not lead anyone to salvation. 

If you have not believed in the Kingdom of God, or if you are in doubt about what this is, you have not accepted the Good News of the Bible. Your attention may never have been called to the need for believing in the Kingdom of God as well as the death and resurrection of Christ. It is possible to attend church for years and hear nothing about the Kingdom of God, Jesus’ own gospel message. 

The crucial question for your salvation is, therefore: have you repented and believed the Good News of the Kingdom of God? To do this was the very first command of Jesus (Mark 1:15). Without an understanding of the Kingdom of God there can be no belief leading to salvation. The parable of the sower shows that the “Message about the Kingdom” (Matt. 13:19) must take root in your heart. It is essential to find out what is involved in believing “the Good News of the Kingdom of God” (see Matthew 4:23, 9:35, 24:14). Only those “hearing and believing the Message [Word]” about the Kingdom (Matthew 13:19) are promised eternal life in the Kingdom (John 5:24). And belief in the gospel and the practice of a corresponding lifestyle must be held fast until the end.

The above post was taken from here.

The Vital Question of Defining the Saving Gospel

There is an urgent need for disciples of Jesus to ensure that they have grasped the meaning of the Gospel as Jesus preached it. This [blog] is devoted to the task of helping to “sort out” the vast amount of confusion which seems to surround this most basic question of all, “What is the Gospel?” 

There are two principal questions which must be addressed if we are to respond with honesty and intelligence to the summons issued by Jesus when he inaugurated his Gospel-preaching ministry:
1. What was the content of the Gospel announced as the saving Message by Jesus, the pioneer of the Christian faith?
2. How far has traditional preaching represented Jesus accurately in this matter of defining the Gospel? 

To the first question we answer unequivocally because the evidence provided by the Christian documents is utterly clear. The Gospel is a Gospel about the Kingdom of God. This is obvious to anyone who reads the accounts of the ministry of Jesus. With this fact established we move to the question of what the Kingdom of God means in Jesus’ fundamental command: “Repent [do a U-turn in thinking and conduct, return to the Covenant] and believe the Gospel of the Kingdom of God” (see Mark 1:14, 15). It is clear that there can be no intelligent response to Jesus if “Kingdom of God” carries no definite meaning for us! The Kingdom of God, say numerous good commentators, was not the nebulous phrase for Jesus’ audience which it often is today. Ask your friends the critical question “What is the Gospel and what is the Kingdom of God?” You may be surprised by a bewildering variety of answers, many of them probably vague. 

The Kingdom of God announced as the content of the Gospel was not, however, a “catch-all” phrase for “religion” or a call for people to “be good.” On the contrary it had a definite and very concrete meaning in first-century Palestine. Here from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (article “Salvation”) is a sound, common-sense and historically-sensitive answer to the question about the nature of the Kingdom: 

“It was in the full heat of John the Baptist’s eschatological [pointing to the future] revival that Christ began to teach, and he also began with the eschatological [concerned with the future] phrase, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand.’” 

Matthew 3:2; 4:17; 9:35; and 24:14 inform us that the Gospel Message of John and the Gospel Message of Jesus were founded on a common basis: the Kingdom of God. It is a serious error to try to separate Jesus from his forerunner. According to our New Testament reports both John and Jesus announced the Kingdom of God as the Gospel. 

Our source in the ISBE continues: “Jesus’ teaching must have been understood at once in an eschatological sense.” The Kingdom, in other words, meant the Kingdom of the future. It was not a reference to a present “kingdom in the heart” or “God’s rule in our lives.” ISBE goes on: “‘The Kingdom of God is at hand’ had the inseparable connotation ‘Judgment is at hand,’ and in this context (Mark 1:15) means ‘Repent lest you be judged.’ Hence our Lord’s teaching had primarily a future content: positively, admission into the Kingdom of God [at its future coming] and negatively deliverance from the preceding judgment.” 

We trust that this comment from a standard dictionary will dispel some of the fog of confusion which surrounds current understanding (or misunderstanding) of the Kingdom and thus of the Gospel. The Kingdom of God did indeed mean the coming day of intervention when God would punish the wicked and establish through the agency of His Messiah a new world order on earth. There is absolutely no doubt that “Kingdom of God” carried this connotation in the minds of Jesus and his audience. Jesus does not define the Kingdom of God. He did not have to. What was new, however, was the fact that the promised new world order did not materialize during the ministry of Jesus and has not since that time. Thus in his parables of the Kingdom Jesus explained to his followers how the Gospel announcement of the future Kingdom operated in the present time prior to the advent of the Kingdom itself. 

The Gospel of the Kingdom, therefore, is to the Kingdom as an invitation to a banquet is to the banquet itself. The Gospel invites everyone to prepare for the Great Day Coming. To speak of the Kingdom as though it is has arrived is to contradict Jesus’ statement that it was “at hand,” “near,” but not yet here. The Kingdom of God is the Great Event of the future, meaning the end of earth’s rebel governments. It does not mean the end of life on this planet! 

Hence Jesus commands prayer for the coming of the Kingdom, and Mark and Luke report that after the Gospel preaching of Jesus was over, and he had been crucified and resurrected, the disciples were still “waiting for” the Kingdom of God. It would be wrong, therefore, to say that the Kingdom of God as constantly referred to by Jesus had already come. Certainly we might add that the preaching of the Kingdom is an anticipation of the Kingdom. But the preaching of the Kingdom is not the arrival of the Kingdom. An invitation precedes the actual event to which we are invited. 

97% of the Kingdom statements of Jesus in the Gospels will fit beautifully into this scheme. Re-read the gospels with the future Kingdom notion firmly in mind (as introduced by Matthew 3:2) and the Kingdom will become clear as the New Organized World Government — Kingdom — to be openly manifested upon the return of Jesus in the future. 

Confirmation of the basic Gospel fact is found in the Book of Daniel. Daniel’s vision of the future of world history is an absolutely indispensable guide to the understanding of New Testament Christianity. 

In Daniel 2 we are presented with an extraordinary vision of four world-empires destined to be destroyed and superseded by a fifth World Empire — the Kingdom of God set up “under the whole heaven” (7:27) by the God of Heaven. In the vision the Kingdom appears as a “stone cut out without hands” which strikes the image at its base and then “fills the whole earth.” We must emphasize that this Kingdom of God is nothing whatsoever to do with a “realm beyond the skies.” Its origin certainly is from Heaven (God) but its location is territorial and linked to the earth. 

Daniel 7 is a central key to the whole book of Daniel and should be considered also a kind of “blueprint” for the whole Bible story which culminates in the arrival of the Kingdom, the principal topic in Jesus’ Gospel. 

Students of Scripture will have no difficulty recognizing that Daniel 7 describes the career, present and future, of the Saints. And the Saints, so the New Testament interprets the word, are the faithful followers of Jesus. The principal Saint, the Holy One, takes center stage in Daniel 7’s vision. It is the Son of Man to whom the future Kingdom is given (7:13, 14) and that Kingdom is then shared with “the people of the Saints of the Most High” (the Christians as the true remnant of the people of God). Daniel 7:18 forecasts that the “time came for the saints to possess the Kingdom” (nothing to do with psychological kingdoms of the heart). Again, “judgment is passed in favor of the saints” (v. 22). They are vindicated and promoted to positions of power as a corporate Son of Man (Son of Man referring first to Jesus and then also his accompanying followers). In Daniel 7:27 the climax of this amazing revelation announces that the “Kingdom under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the Saints of the Most High. All nations will serve and obey them.” For this translation, see RSV, GNB and note the important comment of Driver in Cambridge Bible for Schools: “It is the people of the saints who receive the Kingdom and they operate as its executives.” 

These two sections of Scripture, Daniel 2:35, 44 and Daniel 7:13, 14, 18, 22, 27, are vital keys to the meaning of the term “Kingdom of God.” The Kingdom of God is not a term invented by Jesus. It has its roots deep in the Hebrew Bible, which Jesus and the New Testament treat as a divine repository of essential saving information. The Gospel itself is founded on the Old Testament (Romans 1:16; Galatians 3:8). 

In commanding repentance and belief in the Gospel of the Kingdom (Mark 1:14, 15) Jesus urges everyone everywhere to grasp the meaning of God’s saving Plan both for the individual and the world. Repentance means turning from our violations of God’s ways, our misconceptions of His revelation and embracing God’s Gospel (Mark 1:14) which lays out the goal of history unfolding through Jesus and culminating in the Kingdom of God destined to replace present nation-states (Revelation 11:15-18) on this planet renewed.

The above post was taken from here.