Stan Moody:
I am sick to death of elected talking heads in government and in the Confessing Church. Where are the folks who are willing to put their butts on the line to erect guardrails against the demolition of representative government and Christian Truth?
Has Today’s Confessing Church Lost Sight of Its First Love?
Are Christian evangelists responsible for bending the person and work of Jesus to the American Dream of prosperity and success? There has been lots of talk about the evils of communism and OPS – Other People’s Sins, but virtually no talk about the evils within our churches rising through the comforts of cheap grace!
As a lifelong evangelical, I have found myself thinking through Jesus’ Gospel of the Kingdom of God sidelined in favor of mass evangelism that teaches:
- Heaven is a place where your departed relatives are waiting to unite with you again!
- “If you died tonight, where would you wake up? Repeat after me, and you are on your way to Heaven – guaranteed.”
- “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!”
The End of An Era:
On Monday evening, May 12, 2025, my sister, Sue, called to tell me that our brother, Jimmy, had died that day. We had lost close touch in recent years after he moved to the West Coast, but what jumped immediately to mind was our common passion of faith. We had both majored in 2 matters of common dispute – sex offenders and the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jimmy had served as a sex offender counselor for the states of MA and RI for 20-odd years, while I had been a prison chaplain.
Why sex offenders? Maybe it is because we were both convicted over our own violations of God’s highest intention regarding our relationships. “OK, but If you are a professing Christian, why the Gospel of the Kingdom of God?” My answer is something in the order of, “If it was pivotal to Jesus, it needs to be pivotal to me if I truly am to be a follower!”
The Kingdom of God as Alternative Citizenship:
Bible teacher, Ed Jarrett, offers a look into Jesus’ introductory words to His ministry (“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”) and as to why the Gospel of the Kingdom of God has failed to gel with Evangelicals1:
Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom
It is hard to overestimate the importance of the Kingdom of God (Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew) in Jesus’ teaching. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is recorded as mentioning the Kingdom 49 times. Matthew 4:23 records what was probably Jesus’ ongoing activity through his 3+ years of ministry: “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”
Was Jesus proclaiming a kingdom in the distant future, a kingdom that is immanent, or a kingdom that already existed? Or is there some truth to all three positions?
It is likely that there are serious sociological reasons as to why the Gospel of the Kingdom has been so difficult for the Confessing Church. Shoving Jesus’ invitation to Kingdom living now into pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-by allows us professing Christians to worship both God and Mammon (money), thus serving neither (Matt 6:24).
“Seek First the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness” (Matt 6:33):
I believe that what is missing is that professing Christians reject a spiritual option to governmental faith in America. José Hutter, however, Chair of the Theology Group of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance, offers a way forward for American Evangelicals who find our faith walk to be in conflict with the American Dream of prosperity and success2:
National pride must never compete with the bonds that unite us in the Body of Christ…Two thousand years ago, the Lord Jesus stood before a Roman governor and declared, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). That should settle the question of whether any nation is indispensable to God's purpose.
Our primary bond as believers is not with those who live within a particular geographical boundary, speak a specific language or wave a particular flag. Our primary bond is with all who have Jesus as their Lord, for with them we will spend eternity. And one thing is clear. In heaven there will be no national flags; no territorial fights.
Please Stay Tuned:
I hope soon to offer a critique of the fear-inducing message, “If you died tonight, where would you wake up – Heaven or Hell?”, as inconsistent with Jesus’ Gospel of the Kingdom of God.
1 What Is the Kingdom of God, and Are We Seeing It Now? - Topical Studies | Bible Study Tools
2 The idol of nationalism: when the homeland becomes a god, Evangelical Focus
