Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Book Installment)
Living in the Kingdom of God
Chapter 1 – Context for This Book
In 1982, the Lord told me by His Spirit in my heart that everyone was going to heaven. This news brought so much peace and joy to my soul that I do not know how to describe that moment to you.
I was a pastor at the time, so the obvious next step was to preach it.
I could not, however, even get to the point of outlining a sermon on the subject because I knew that it would polarize the congregation. I became troubled by the fear that I was wrong, that I might be misleading people about an eternally existential question. Was that really God talking to me?
The days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months as I stalled into a permanent state of indecision.
It happened to me just as Jesus said,
Mark 4:19 but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
Over the next 11 years I would periodically remember this word from the Lord and wonder if it was true or false. But there was always some distraction to keep me from seeking resolution.
In 1993, I found myself in another congregation, this one already polarized by other issues. In fact, it was so polarized that it was hemorrhaging members. In the despair and frustration of that time, I decided I might as well go back and make a concentrated Bible on the subject of that word from the Lord: that everyone was going to heaven. And if the Bible confirmed it, I was now committed to preaching it.
To my surprise and delight, I found that there was indeed a biblical case for that word that I’d heard in 1982. By this time, I’d lost almost all of my congregation, so I wrote a book titled Everyone Is Going to Heaven (later re-titled as The Biblical Case for Everyone Going to Heaven). I had written for publication before coming to Christ, so this way of getting a message out wasn’t completely unknown to me.
In that intense, extended Bible study, the Lord also showed me that the Second Coming had occurred late in the 1st century – just as Jesus said it would. So I wrote a book about that, too – titled Whatever Became of Jesus Christ? (later re-titled as The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact).
Earlier this year…(Yes, I just skipped over 33 years, but those years contain other stories for other times)…I began a series of three books on the major implications of the Second Coming being fulfilled long ago. The first was the full revelation of The One True God. The second was a revelation of The One True Church. And now this one: Living in the Kingdom of God.
You’ll understand this book better if you’ve read the others first – and in the order I just named them. But if you haven’t, welcome to this book anyway.
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