SALVATION THROUGH JESUS CHRIST

In his booklet, Just What Do You Mean…Kingdom of God?, Herbert Armstrong proclaimed:

“When Christ comes, He is coming as KING of kings, ruling the whole earth (Rev. 19:11-16); and HIS KINGDOM - the KINGDOM OF GOD - said Daniel, is to CONSUME all these worldly kingdoms.

Revelation 11:15 states it in these words: ‘The kingdoms of this world are become THE KINGDOMS OF OUR LORD, AND OF HIS CHRIST; and He shall reign forever and ever!’ 

This is THE KINGDOM OF GOD. It is the END of present governments - the governments that rule Russia, China, Japan, Italy, Germany - yes, and even the United States and the British nations. They then shall become the kingdoms - the GOVERNMENTS of the Lord JESUS CHRIST, then KING of kings over the entire earth. 

This makes completely PLAIN the fact that the KINGDOM OF GOD is a literal GOVERNMENT. Even as the Chaldean Empire was a KINGDOM - even as the Roman Empire was a KINGDOM - so the KINGDOM OF GOD is a government. It is to take over the GOVERNMENT of the NATIONS of the world.” (Pages 13-14)

Clearly, for Herbert Armstrong, the Kingdom of God was to be a literal, world-ruling government. This was the gospel that he and his Worldwide Church of God proclaimed to the world. BUT is that the real gospel message? Was he right about the Kingdom of God?

In answering these questions, it is instructive to survey the various scriptures associated with the topic. The Gospel According to John informs us of an exchange between Jesus Christ and the Roman governor during his trial that is more detailed than what is found in the other gospels. We read there: “Then Pilate went back into his headquarters and called for Jesus to be brought to him. ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ he asked him. Jesus replied, ‘Is this your own question, or did others tell you about me?’ ‘Am I a Jew?’ Pilate retorted. ‘Your own people and their leading priests brought you to me for trial. Why? What have you done?’ Jesus answered, ‘My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.’ Pilate said, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus responded, ‘You say I am a king. Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.’” (John 18:33-37) Thus, we can see that Christ’s statement that his kingdom wasn’t an earthly kingdom demonstrates that he did not view it as being a part of this world. This clearly contradicts Herbert Armstrong’s understanding of what the kingdom was!

And what about all of those parables regarding the Kingdom? In the Gospel of Matthew, we find the Parable of the Sower (13) where Christ compares seeds falling on the ground to the way folks react to God’s message. Next, he gave them the Parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat (13). In this one, Christ compares the Kingdom to a farmer’s field where an enemy has planted a bunch of weeds among the wheat. He told his disciples that the weeds would not be removed from the good wheat crop until it was time for the harvest. After finishing that one, Jesus told his disciples that the Kingdom was like a mustard seed (it would start small and grow into a large plant). Next, he compared the Kingdom to yeast (a little yeast eventually works it way throughout the dough). He then returned to the Parable of the Weeds and explained that the wheat represented the people of the Kingdom, and the weeds represented wicked folks who would NOT be a part of the Kingdom. Next, Jesus compared the Kingdom to a hidden treasure and a valuable pearl. In the final parable of the chapter (13), Christ compares the harvest of people into the kingdom to a fisherman casting his net into the water and hauling all of the fish onto land and sorting the good fish from the bad. Notice that in ALL of these parables NOTHING is mentioned about a literal kingdom!

Later, in the same gospel (Matthew 18), Christ told his disciples a parable about an unforgiving servant. In the story, a master has decided to settle accounts with his servants. One servant that owes a large debt begs his master to give him more time to repay the debt, and the master has mercy on him and forgives the debt altogether. Even so, the man who had just been shown such compassion and mercy has the gall to go out and demand immediate payment (on pain of imprisonment) from a man who owes him a small amount! The master hears about his despicable behavior and reinstates his debt! Christ went on to say that the story demonstrated how God would treat anyone who refused to forgive his brother.

Later still, Christ gave his disciples the Parable of the Vineyard Workers (Matthew 20). In this story, the owner of the vineyard went out at various times throughout the day and hired people to work in his vineyard. At the end of the day, he called the workers together and paid them, but the folks who had been hired first felt like they should be entitled to more than the workers who had been hired later in the day. Christ went on to make clear that the vineyard owner (God) was entitled to reward his workers (people) as he saw fit!

In the next chapter (Matthew 21), we read about Christ’s Parable of the Tenant Farmers. In this one, a man rented out his vineyard to various farmers. Later, he sends his son to collect his part of the harvest, but the tenant farmers kill his son! He went on to make clear that he was really talking about himself, and that his Father would not allow the people who killed his Son to inherit the Kingdom! Likewise, in the following chapter (Matthew 22), we read a parable about a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. However, the people who were invited to the celebration didn’t show up, and the king ended up sending his servants out to invite complete strangers to attend the banquet!

Finally, in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, we read about two more parables about the Kingdom which Christ gave to his disciples. First, he compares the kingdom to ten virgins who take their lamps out to meet the bridegroom one night. He told them that five of the virgins were wise and made sure that their lamps had oil, but that the other five forgot to check their lamps for oil. When the bridegroom finally arrived, the five that had oil and were ready were permitted to attend the wedding banquet, but the others were forbidden from entering. The moral of the story? Be ready! This is followed by a story about a man who entrusts different amounts of wealth to his servants and goes on a journey to a distant land. When he later returned, he called together his servants and asked each of them about what they had done with the money he had entrusted to their care. Two of the servants had ended up doubling the man’s money, but the one who had received the least amount hadn’t increased the money entrusted to his care at all. The first two servants are then invited to share in their master’s happiness, but the other servant is thrown out into the dark!

Once again, notice that in ALL of these parables that deal with the Kingdom that NOT one of them is dealing with a literal kingdom or government! Instead, they are all concerned with the behavior and/or enthusiasm of the people who are invited to be a part of the Kingdom. Indeed, the very definition of a parable is that it is a story or allegory that contains some moral or spiritual lesson. Hence, ALL of the parables about the Kingdom that we find in ALL of the other gospel accounts are along the very same lines as the ones we examined in Matthew!

“What about the Parable of the Ten Pounds of Silver in Luke?” some of my Armstrongist friends will demand. In the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells “a story to correct the impression that the Kingdom of God would begin right away.” (Verse 11) The story is about a nobleman who was called away to a distant land to be crowned king (Verse 12). However, “Before he left, he called together ten of his servants and divided among them ten pounds of silver, saying, ‘Invest this for me while I am gone.’” (Verse 13) When the man later returned as king, he called his ten servants together “to find out what their profits were.” (Verse 15) The first servant reported that he had invested the pound of silver which had been entrusted to him and had gained ten times the original amount (Verse 16). The king tells him what a good servant he has been and rewards him with rulership over ten cities (Verse 17). In similar fashion, the king rewards the remainder of his servants according to the amount which they had added to their original pound (Verses 18-24). Interestingly, Christ said that the final servant (who had merely returned the original pound without adding anything to it) had his pound stripped away and given to the servant who had been given ten cities. We are then informed that this decision prompted the servants to note that that servant had already been well rewarded (Verse 25). To which, the king replied: “to those who use well what they are given, even more will be given. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.” (Verse 26)

After reviewing the parable, I would ask my Armstrongist friends: “Why would we regard this parable as being different from any of the many other parables of Christ?” “Why would we interpret this parable literally when we don’t do that with any of the others?” Hopefully, we all realize that Christ wasn’t really talking about seeds, wheat, weeds, farmers, vineyards, and wedding banquets! Moreover, didn’t Christ himself give the moral of the story to his disciples at its conclusion? In other words, the story is obviously NOT about how many cities you’re going to rule over in the Kingdom!

In addition to his parables, however, we should also note some of Christ’s many other statements about the Kingdom. If Mr. Armstrong’s understanding of the Kingdom is correct, then why did Christ say that it was at hand? (Matthew 3:2, 4:17, 10:7, Mark 1:15) Why did Christ tell folks that the Kingdom was then near or among them? (Matthew 12:28, Luke 10:9, 11, 11:20, 17:21) Could Christ have been implying that he represented the Kingdom of God? And why did Christ repeatedly make entrance into the Kingdom contingent upon the righteousness of the individual seeking entrance? (Matthew 5:19-20, 7:21, 18:3, 19:23-24, Mark 10:15, 25, Luke 9:62, 18:17, 24-25) And, according to Scripture, how are people made righteous before God? Don’t Christians believe that they are made righteous before God through Jesus Christ? Isn’t that the essence of the gospel?

In this connection, it is also interesting to note what Christ told Nicodemus about the Kingdom of God. In the third chapter of the Gospel of John (Verse 3), we read that Jesus told him: “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” He went on to say: “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.” (Verses 5-6) Christ summarized: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” (Verses 16-17)

Moreover, this message of salvation through Jesus Christ isn’t just confined to the four gospels! The rest of the New Testament is literally full of the exact same message! We are told in the book of Acts that the Gospel of the Kingdom of God was intimately associated with the story of Jesus Christ (Acts 8:12, 28:23, 31). Likewise, Paul’s writings make clear that his message was about salvation through Jesus Christ (Romans 1:1-5, 9, 16-17, I Corinthians 2:1-2, Galatians 1:3-9, 15-16, 3:1-4, 10-14, Ephesians 1:3-11, 2:4-6, Philippians 1:5, Colossians 1:15-23). Indeed, Paul echoed Christ’s teaching to Nicodemus about the Kingdom in the fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to the saints of Corinth (where he speaks about the resurrection of the dead). He makes clear that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (Verse 50). Likewise, Paul makes plain in a number of places that those who are not righteous will not inherit the Kingdom (I Corinthians 6:9-10, Galatians 5:21) – the same message that Christ preached in the gospels.

Jesus Christ said that he came to this earth to seek out and save those who were lost (Luke 19:10). Paul told the Romans that everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, and that we “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (3:23-24, ESV). He also told them that they received the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ (6:23). He wrote to the saints of Ephesus: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (2:8-9, ESV). Likewise, Paul wrote to Titus: “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (3:4-6, ESV).

This is the “good news” (gospel means “good news”) of the Kingdom of God – that we have salvation through Jesus Christ! If we look at the Scriptures with an open mind, we see that Christ was continuously pushing back on the notion that he had come to establish a literal, physical, earthly Kingdom (even among his own disciples). Hence, the Armstrongist notions about the gospel message are misguided and flawed. The “good news” is about much more than a physical Kingdom on this earth. It is about Christ superseding all of man’s systems and saving humankind from its own sins and errors. Indeed, the very heart and core of the gospel message is the salvation that is available to humankind through Jesus Christ of Nazareth! It is a message about the efficacy of his life, teachings, death, resurrection, and ascension for humankind.