Simple Introduction To: How To Advance The Kingdom Of God?

Last night I had a dream where someone who spent their entire life in a few different kinds of churches asked me very sincerely, “how do you advance the Kingdom of God?” The feeling I had in the dream was very positive. When I woke up, I knew this was my next writing assignment in this series. The question I was asked illustrates exactly the paradoxical dilemma I was in 10 years ago when, after 40 years of church, I had for the first time ever, begun hearing teaching about the Kingdom of God. If you are in this same predicament as I was, I am going to give you the 101-level introduction that will get you going in a very practical way right now.

The Good News Of The Kingdom

And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.
Matthew 4:23-24 (KJV)

In 10 years of being fully immersed in true teaching about the Kingdom of God, I can say that there is one very simple foundational truth that you must start with. It is such a simple fact but, it can be very difficult for some to understand and believe. That starting point is this: the Kingdom of God is a very good message and a positive force that comes into your life to transform everything so that it looks more and more like what exists in Heaven.

Very simply again, the earth was not made in a corrupted state by a perfect God but, it became that way as the result of sin. God sent Jesus in the flesh to teach principles that we could actively use to fix everything on earth that is corrupted and out of order with God’s original perfect creation.

Sin has brought poverty, death, demonic activity, evil behaviors, false beliefs, dead religious doctrines, and every form of lack which causes people to live in horrible conditions. The gospel of the Kingdom of God (or Heaven) is the news that there is a positive force available, only by faith in Jesus, which can reverse everything in our life that is out of order and evil.

That is THE foundational starting point that God sent Jesus to teach us in order to reverse the evil that was brought upon earth 4,000 years earlier. If you base your understanding about the Kingdom of God on anything other than this, you are going to end up off course and without results.

In order for you to know if the Kingdom of God has come to you, these are the results you should be experiencing… You should be able to heal the sick, cast out demons (from people and regions), raise the dead, produce financial wealth and recover everything that was destroyed, stolen, lost or corrupted by sin. If you can do this, then the Kingdom of God has come to you. That is exactly what Matthew 4 says.

In my 40 years of church where none of this was ever taught, I had basically none of the results that I just listed above. There was no evidence in my life that the Kingdom of God had come down to earth. I had almost no power to change my own circumstances, nor that of anyone else. If someone got sick, all I knew was doctors who only seem to know about needles, knives and pharmakeia pills. If someone died, there was nothing that could be done. If someone had a problem with demons, there was no power to cast them out. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” (Hosea 4:6).

All I had was a bunch of “religious” rules, rituals and laws that ultimately left me no better than an atheist or someone in a false religion. Worse than that, as the years went by, certain parts of my life began to look more and more like the fallen ways of the world. I was a very good example of a religious clown who had nothing to offer anyone.

Kingdom First, Not Church!

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Matthew 6:33 (KJV)

If you do a word search in the Bible, you will find the phrases, “kingdom of God” 68 times and “kingdom of Heaven” 31 times. If you look up the word “gospel” in the concordance, you find that it means a “good message” and a “declaration of good news”. If you continue the search for the word “church”, you find that Jesus only spoke about it twice! Once in Matthew 16:18 and once in Matthew 18:17. Doing the simple math, Jesus spoke about the kingdom 99 times and church 2 times. That means Jesus spoke about the church 2% of the time and the kingdom the other 98%.

Based on that very simple research, you really have to wonder why then, most churches flip this around and teach almost exclusively about church matters and almost nothing about the kingdom. I have said in previous blogs that one of the top reasons there is very little competent understanding about the Kingdom of God is that, most nations on earth are run by some form of a western democracy. Yes, that type of government has given a partial correction to the evil abuses of the former kingdoms but, it does not change the fact that God’s governmental system is a kingdom.

If you are going to do what Jesus did and taught, you must start with learning what a kingdom is. Until you do that, you cannot put into practice anything He taught. It is impossible to bring the Kingdom of God on earth to change everything that is out of order if you do not even know what a kingdom is. Remember what I said above few paragraphs above… what I am saying is so simple but, for many of us, our “religious” teaching has made it very hard to grasp any of this and put it into practice.

As a result, we have a bunch of “western church religion” that has NO results, NO power of God and as subsequently, the world has become increasingly full of evil and out of order. Since this condition has gone on for a very long time, most people who claim to be Christian have changed, dumbed down and perverted the Gospel of the Kingdom into yet one more false religion that disagrees with the Word of God and conforms to their experience. Worse yet, in many cases, if you try to show those people what I am talking about here, they will reject and fight with you to continue believing their dead religious nonsense.

Your Royal Kingship Assignment

The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
Psalms 24:1 (KJV)

Let me give a very simple summary of the points above because I want to make sure you have this in the most easily understandable and memorable way. Here is how you know you are advancing the Kingdom of God in your life and on earth (I’m going to let you do the word searches in the Bible for the verses, that is your homework assignment)…

You can heal the sick by a prayer of faith.
You can cast out demons from people and regions by the exousia (kingdom governmental) authority given by Jesus.
You can raise the dead by the power of God.
You can transform your life and that of others to look increasingly like that of Heaven.
You bring prosperity to any area of poverty and lack – both materially and spiritually.
Anything that is out of order in your life, your city, state, region or nation will be transformed so that evil is removed and God’s right way takes over and becomes the law of the land.
You live a life of power such that any negative condition is reversed and becomes lined up with Heaven where no one is sick, maimed, murdered, addicted, tormented, living in poverty, engaging in wicked behaviors or agreeing with anything that is against God’s character.

If you are in the process of doing the above, then you are advancing the Kingdom of God. This will take time and effort to get the proper education and to learn to engage in spiritual warfare. You and I are supposed to become kings first, priests second. Our royal assignment is primary and we must seek that first! When we keep that proper order, all the above will show up in our lives increasingly.

Learn about the Kingdom of God from a massive number of resources found at my parent ministry, Joshua Media Ministries International: joshuamediaministries.org or see the recommended resources on the Kingdom of God in my store page.

I believe this simple explanation and summary of a few main points should help those who are like I was 10 years ago. Yes, I believe in being blunt about the mainstream dead religion churches because they are responsible for the overflowing of evil everywhere in our society. Had they followed the proper teaching on the Kingdom of God, we would not be in the disaster we are in – in my country and everywhere else.

Thank you for reading and supporting my work!!