Eternal Now Kingdom
By Ron McGatlin
I was taught through the church systems years ago that we could NOT experience the kingdom of God in this life. We had to wait to die and go to heaven to experience the victory and order of God. Or perhaps we could be alive when Jesus bodily returned in the air to take us up to heaven while he burned up the planet and made us a new one, and then we could come back to a new planet that would then be heaven on earth.
It was quite a shock and yet overwhelming peace when God began to reveal the truth about His eternal kingdom reality. I was at a start-over point in my life in the mid 1980s when I began again in Matthew reading the New Testament. The words kingdom of God and gospel of the kingdom began to stand out to me. I realized I did not really know why kingdom was so important to Jesus that He talked about it so much. So I asked God the question that completely changed my life forever. I asked God, what does this word kingdom mean and why did Jesus talk about it so much? Thousands of God’s humble people around the world have now received the word of the kingdom. The church and the world are beginning to be changed. You can read more about this in “Kingdom Growth Guides” (#004) and in “Overcoming Life On A Small Planet” Chapter 4 available for free download http://www.openheaven.com/networking/webrings/ .
Jesus taught and preached “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” He sent His disciples to preach the same message. Jesus became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15:45) and returned in the Holy Spirit as promised (Mat 16:28) to indwell and empower His people to finish the work that He began while on earth. After Pentecost He worked with the disciples proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and doing the same mighty works that He had done in His natural body (Mark 16:20). He (the Spirit of Christ) was then and is now in His new body of many members reaching out in power to proclaim and demonstrate the gospel of the kingdom in many places at one time. This is the true Body of Christ led and empowered by Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
After the first-century disciples had passed away, men rose up speaking perverse things leading disciples away after themselves just as Paul had warned (Acts 20:29-31). The church became infected with the rule of man and religious spirits. By the third century the rudiments of modern religious church systems had developed.
The Holy Spirit was replaced by other spirits as the theologians took an intellectual approach to discerning the Bible and establishing many doctrines as foundations of the spiritually powerless but politically powerful church systems based on the tree of knowledge. The theologians unknowingly had the help of other spirits in developing their foundational doctrines just as the Pharisees had in the past. Jesus said the Pharisees were of their father the devil.
The devil hates the eternal kingdom of God reality on earth now because it destroys his rule on the earth. He helped propagate the systematic doctrinal demise of the real gospel of the kingdom that Jesus and His first century disciples proclaimed and demonstrated in their lives. Doctrines were developed that postponed the victorious reality of kingdom on earth until sometime in the nebulous future. The devil does not really mind us believing in a kingdom some day in the future in heaven or even on earth. He wants all scripture about kingdom to be interpreted as in the past or distant future but NOT today. His false kingdoms can continue as long as God’s people do not find out who they are in Christ Jesus and Christ in them ruling and reigning on earth.
We are currently heading into an intensified season of spiritual surge to bring forth the manifestation of the eternal kingdom of God on earth.
The eternal kingdom is now, always was, and forever shall be.
Christ in us by the Holy Spirit is preparing His people to powerfully demonstrate the supernatural love, power, and wisdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
Love, the pure love of God, is the greatest and most foundational aspect of the kingdom of God. The experience of intimate connection with the love pouring into us by God is the fountain of life and the great all-consuming cleansing work of God. Sharing that love with others is the outpouring of God to save and change the world. Sharing that love with others who are also intimately connected to God’s love is the most heavenly experience on earth.
It is the love of God that establishes and holds together His kingdom life now in this life and forever. Without love there is no kingdom – no righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. The entire world is eventually to be ordered by the pure holy love of God. God will have a pure and holy people who will return His love to Him – a people who will live by His Spirit and walk in His Spirit continuously.
Keep on pursuing love. It never fails
and His kingdom never ends.
Ron McGatlin
Coordinator OpenHeaven.com