“But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you.” (John 16:7-8)
If we were to watch the movie of time from beginning to end, Jesus would unquestionably be the star and hero. The story of His life, death and resurrection, though infinitesimal in the total span of time, shines brightly as the cornerstone or lynchpin of everything God has done in and for His creation. “The gospel” is the moment all of history waited for prior to its coming, and the moment the future will look back on as the event that changed everything.
Jesus was in the beginning before time as we know it began and became the Savior, which will grant Him alone the honor of judging all things in the end of history as we know it. Then He and the kingdom He reigns over will endure on to eternity. But we’re not living for that movie, we are living right now in a very finite period of time, and any impact we are going to have on this life and people must come within our tiny slice of history. So, please understand what I am about to say in no way detracts from Jesus or disparages His mighty deeds or name in any way, but it’s time to move on!
What heresy is this?!! According to the passage above, along with Jesus final prayer over us where He declared to His Father, “I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do” (John 17), and His words upon the cross, “It is finished,” He had completed His task. There was literally nothing else for Him to do on earth. It would do Him nor His disciples any further good for Him to tarry here in the flesh.
He told His disciples He would have many more truths to download to them, but they could not bear them while He was with them. However, He said not to worry because after He left, He would send the Holy Spirit to take up where He left off and then they would be able to understand all He had to teach them through Him. The Father would also speak to them in the same way, for when they were delivered up before governments of man due to their testimony, “the Spirit of their Father” would speak through them” (Matt. 10).
If you think about it, the moment He told His disciples He was leaving, and it was “to their advantage” that He do so, can be likened to another moment where He was introduced as that new thing God always does and it would be to our advantage that the voice of the Father would be replaced by another.
Matthew 17 records Jesus leading three of His disciples up a high mountain, where He was transfigured before them into His heavenly glory. Moses and Elijah, the lawgiver and the prophet, appeared with Him. Peter asked Jesus if it would not be good that he built three tabernacles to house them. Suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed the mountaintop, causing the disciples to fall on their faces. From the cloud a voice arose, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased. Hear Him!” When the disciples arose Moses and Elijah were gone.
What was the Father showing them and saying? “Here is My great lawgiver and My great prophet, but their voices you are no longer to hear. I have done an amazing new thing on earth by sending My Son. Hear Him now!”
In the same way, Jesus left and the Holy Spirit remained standing alone. Jesus said, “Here is the One I am sending who will take all I have to teach you from now on and reveal it to you. He will, from now on, guide you into all truth. From now on, hear Him!” Yet we insist on building a tabernacle for Jesus in our preaching and teaching even though He’s gone.
Did the transfiguration moment mean God’s laws and truths revealed up to that time had become irrelevant? By no means! for Jesus said He did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5). Does loosening our grip on what Jesus did to walk in the Spirit mean He is now irrelevant? By no means! For that would be impossible inasmuch as the Spirit speaks only what Jesus tells Him to speak.
What happens to those who refuse to move on? When Jesus came to earth there was only one group He showed disdain for, openly battled with, and condemned. It wasn’t the Romans who ruled His people with an iron fist. It wasn’t the most brazen of prostitutes or even the hated tax collectors. That dubious distinction was reserved for the religious leaders who should have been the first to embrace Him but, in the end, had Him crucified.
In Isaiah 43 God says, “Do not bring to mind the former things, nor ponder the things of the past. Behold, I will do something new. Now it will spring forth. Will you not be aware of it?” Jesus said to these hypocrites with hard hearts, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about Me and yet you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5). He was saying, “Here God is doing an amazing new thing that will give you eternal life not available to you before, and yet you continue to ponder what He did in the past. Because you do this you will miss it, Me, the kingdom and eternal life!”
God had walked with His people Israel for thousands of years, yet when He sent the promised Messiah, the One spoken of so often in their sacred texts these religious leaders held to, they could not let go of the past and move on with that new thing God was doing! Jesus comes, lives with us for a scant 33 years of which only one-tenth was His public ministry, and then says, “I was the new thing God did but here comes another! Now I gotta go because the next new thing God is doing is knocking at the door. If I don’t go, He can’t come in.” Granted, this must have been a mind-blower! After thousands of years of largely one thing, now in a scant 34 God does two gigantic, amazing, miraculous new things! Nonetheless, He called us from one, to the next, to the next.
All this begs the question, have we become Pharisees of Jesus? Who do we mostly preach in “the church?” Jesus. Can we be likened to the Jews who refused to let go of the Father when Jesus came, in that we refuse to loosen our grasp on Jesus now that the Holy Spirit has come? “But we can’t leave Jesus behind!” If we’re walking by the Spirit we’re not. How could we be? In that same verse in John 16, Jesus says, “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.” We’ll never leave Jesus behind by spending more time focusing on the Spirit. It’s the focus that is the issue. Do we, like the Pharisees, make the focus what Jesus did thousands of years ago or what the Spirit is doing now?
In Hebrews 5-6, we find the Writer admonishing people who have obviously known God for some time, at least enough to have matured far beyond where they had. He says, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God…” A few verses later he defines what those principles are, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God.” What are the elementary principles of the faith? What Jesus did! The Writer says, “Move on!”
In my upcoming book, The Kingdom Election, I talk of the two gospels now being preached on this earth: one to keep the religious in the kingdom of man all the while thinking they are not, and the other the one Jesus preached while here—the one He used to make disciples and the one He said would be preached throughout the world just before the end comes.
The first is the gospel of salvation which is, in a nutshell, those elementary principles taught over and over again. To the religious, saving souls is all that matters, and we preach “repentance from dead works and faith towards God” as regular fare to fill our temples with those all-important new converts. But once “saved,” we ignore those who have said yes to our message and move on to the next scalp that needs to be harvested. This results in about 95% of those we “save” ending up like the babes Hebrews speaks of.
The other gospel is the one Jesus preached and was, the gospel of the kingdom. This gospel is about making disciples per the Great Commission, not converts. Those who preach this gospel would not dream of birthing new-born babes and leaving them on the sidewalk to die while we went on to birth more. The kingdom gospel is it is more lived than preached. It’s about moving people from the gospel story into walking by the Spirit.
Jesus set the perfect example in His life of every word that came from His mouth. The gospel He preached will never fill stadiums with the emotionally charged tearful thousands “praying the prayer.” What it will do is populate the kingdom with “friends of Jesus who did what He commanded” (John 15). His focus was on 12 hand-picked men to live with and pour into. Then He left them in favor of the Spirit to come.
There are many other differences between the gospel of salvation and the gospel of the kingdom I lay out in my book. But suffice it to say if we want to graduate beyond “repentance from dead works and faith towards God” we need to move on from what Jesus did then and do a deep dive into what the Spirit is doing now!
Jesus said of the kingdom He brought to earth, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation. Nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17). God is always, ALWAYS, doing a new thing in our lives and in His church. To understand what it is we must speak and listen to the language of the kingdom. That is revelation, given to each individually through hearing and walking with the Holy Spirit who lives within us.
Many times, in the Scriptures we are told to “walk by the Spirit” and we can do this because He is “within us” every moment, hour, and day. Anyone see Jesus out there walking around so we can “walk by Him?” And yes, the Bible does say we are to abide in Jesus, and even once it says we are to “walk in Him” (Col. 2). But how do we do that? Only through the Spirit He sent to “guide us into all truth” (John 14).
We must ask ourselves what preaching Jesus, the cross, and salvation as the cornerstone of theology for so long has done for the church? According to every poll taken over the past 50 years, by their own admission, 90+% of those who have had Jesus preached to them, prayed the prayer, and then “gone to church” regularly to hear repeatedly what Jesus did have no clue what it means to be kingdom citizens. Their faith is not a priority in their lives, they minister to no one and understand not the kingdom nor their spiritual gifts. It is simply not so for those who have loosened their grip on what Jesus did and walk by the Spirit.
Jesus said to Thomas, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed” (John 20). We need to stop preaching ad nauseum salvation and elementary faith, “the gospel,” and start preaching the kingdom and how to hear the language of the kingdom. We need to spend less time studying Jesus, whom we have seen, and more time cultivating our ability to hear from the One we have not seen He sent to guide us into all truth. That’s faith!
While it cannot contradict the written Word, our guidance through the perilous times to come will not be found in “searching the Scriptures” but in revelation, “coming to the Spirit.” I believe the greatest revival to come will not be more lost souls praying the prayer of the gospel of salvation, but of the lost sheep of God’s house being discipled into the kingdom and hearing the voice of the Spirit!
Listening to revelation, the language of the kingdom that is even now bursting upon the scene with power and glory from above as the kingdoms of darkness and light enter a titanic struggle leading us to the end of all things on earth, is what will be important! Yes, walk by faith and not by sight, and hear that! If we do, we need not fear Jesus will be with us. However, those babes who cannot get past the gospel in their growth will be swept away like the Pharisees who refused that new thing when He first came.
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