THE DANGER OF A DIFFERENT GOSPEL

IsraelThe Gospel of the Kingdom
Written By Stephanie Quick

We should all rightly pursue the will of God for our lives. The apostle Paul boldly and clearly states that we were made, to the delight of our Father, for “good works prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”[1] But we must first realize that our own personal stories and purposes are woven integrally into our Father’s eternal purposes, which all things are engineered to serve.[2] Some elements of these eternal purposes are breathtaking in their hope: the LORD Himself will apprehend governance of all nations and lead us into a regenerate world without war, for example.[3] But other ties in the railroad upon which we barrel towards the Day of the LORD are staggering in their sobriety and severity; the knee-buckling “time of Jacob’s trouble,” for another example.[4] We would do well to ask why and how these things are and will be, to any extent that the Lord has provided clarity for us—or we will blindly bumble along and simply hope to accidentally serve the assignment laid out for us while we were being woven together in our mother’s womb.[5]

We live now in the world of October 8th;[6] the war-igniting massacre of October 7th, 2023 served us a divisive line in the sand. There is no going back to the world of October 6th. This historical hinge swung the nations into a boiling, unprecedented global confrontation with the issue of Jerusalem, embroiling still more than a year and a half later. Do we, the “people of the Book,”[7] understand why? Does our understanding of the self-disclosure of the Godhead revealed in the Gospel of the Kingdom give us clarity in these days, or are we as confused as everybody else?

As we survey the tumultuous and divisive geopolitical landscape raging today, these words prophesied by Zechariah toll the bells for this “present evil age”:[8]

A prophecy, the word of Adonai concerning Isra’el — here is the message from Adonai, who stretched out the heavens, laid the foundation of the earth and formed the spirit inside human beings:

I will make Yerushalayim a cup
that will stagger the surrounding peoples.
Even Y’hudah will be caught up
in the siege against Yerushalayim.
When that day comes, I will make Yerushalayim
a heavy stone for all the peoples.
All who try to lift it will hurt themselves,
and all the earth’s nations will be massed against her.[9]

His words may answer David’s second psalm wondering “why the nations rage,” and “why the peoples of the earth plot a vain thing.”[10] They also provide something like a bowling alley gutter bumper for us as we discern the holiest ways to spend our own days in a time when the earth seems to reel with this global rage against the people, nation, and land of the Everlasting Covenant[11]—intrinsically requiring the people of the Cross to cultivate clarity on the covenant ourselves. In fact, Paul himself warned against ignorance on this issue for fear of what such ignorance itself could breed.[12] In fact, of all his epistles, this warning was made in his letter to the Roman church; I ask you, reader, did Rome heed Paul’s warning? Or did she brazenly disregard it and deliberately omit the covenantal centrality of Jerusalem and Judaic foundation for the Christian testimony from all creeds? What fruit has this born, two millennia later, if not a petri dish of profound confusion at best?

If the LORD Himself is making Jerusalem a cup of staggering and stupor to confront the nations, should not the people who confess His Name be sober enough to engage their neighbors and nations with clarity on the only message commissioned by Jesus: the Gospel of the Kingdom?[13] Instead, we have historically carved a thousand paths of denominational fractures, each emphasizing their own elements— many of which are engineered to explain away the confusion caused by a lack of clarity on the issue of Jerusalem. This has not set us up for success in the world of October 8th. If we lack Jerusalem, we are untethered from the “sure and steadfast anchor of our souls,” the hope of the resurrection and coming restoration.[14] And in our unmooring, we are unprepared to bear faithful witness of the Gospel of the Kingdom to those perishing without knowledge.[15] Worse yet, the danger of a different gospel is that we may well be perishing ourselves.

Perhaps this sounds too severe; let us review the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Galatian churches, just after his opening greeting:

I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.[16]

This fervent jealousy to guard the message “once and for all delivered to the saints” was not isolated to Paul; it is what compelled Jude to write his own epistle, knowing “certain people ha[d] crept in unnoticed” and “pervert[ed] the grace of our God.”[17] They were, much like those troubling the Galatians, corrupting the core of the only Gospel, the Gospel of the Kingdom, for their own preferences and purposes. But as Paul reiterated to the Ephesians, there is but “one” faith, one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, one baptism, one hope, one God and Father of all.[18] For Paul, it was the message revealed to him from Christ Himself, or bust.[19] We must steward the message carried by the prophets and the apostles with this same fervor. We are not allowed the luxury of tempering the Gospel of the Kingdom to fit our own cultural contexts, culture wars, or denominational creeds and emphases. As Paul told the Galatians, even if he himself returned to them with any kind of distortion, any kind of perversion, of the message he first delivered them—in his words—let him be cursed to hell forever.

Do we carry this kind of sobriety ourselves? Have we reckoned with the potential consequences of teaching a “different gospel”? Jesus warns those who deliberately lead “little ones” astray would be better off tied to a boulder and thrown in the Mariana Trench than to face Him on Judgement Day.[20]

The message we believe and obey is not only consequential for those we disciple and mentor; it bears down on our own days and decisions. If we do not have clarity on God’s eternal purposes has He has revealed them, how can we partner with Him in these things? Or how can we survive the stupor engulfing the globe? If we cannot, we ourselves will become drunk on pagan delusions and begin to oppose His purposes altogether—and those who confess His name will certainly be held to a higher standard than those who’ve never claimed to bow the knee. How many teachers today abuse the name of Jesus to denigrate the City of the Great King?[21] How many pastors espouse a Jerusalem-less gospel that sounds identical to the keffiyeh-clad TikTok influencers and podcast bros pontificating on the Israel-Hamas war? Remember Paul: “Let them be accursed!”[22]

Do we not consider the mighty weight of millstones, or the terrifying depth of the Mariana Trench? Why have we tolerated this kind of deviation from the one Gospel that so glaringly denigrates the Tanakh as “old”[23] and clearly violates Paul’s stern admonition to the Roman church? Why did it take until Vatican II for the Roman church to acknowledge and affirm Israel’s place and position in God’s eternal purposes? I beg God will give us grace to repent. The world of October 8th has no room for the heresies of replacement theologies or cross-less sympathies for the covenantal nation. There is only one name under heaven by which men can be saved, and it is the name held by the seed of Eve, the Lion of Judah, and the Son of David soon coming in fire and fury to reign from His holy hill and lead us into the restoration of all things: Jesus of Nazareth.[24]

October 7th was the line in the sand. It’s time to renounce the “different” gospels neutering the witness of the Body of Jesus worldwide, and proclaim—with clarity—the Good News of the Kingdom of Jesus, soon to be established in the City of the Great King:

Jerusalem.

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What is the Gospel of the Kingdom?
2. Have you adhered at all to a “different” gospel? If so, what are its distinctives?
3. What is the Holy Spirit speaking to you about this, and how will you integrate this into your life this week? (i.e., how can you obey what He is directing you?)

 

Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is the founder and creative director of The Emmaus Table. She lives in the Golan Heights and hosts the TABLE TALKS podcast. Browse her free music, films, and books in THE EMMAUS TABLE App and at stephaniequick.org.

 
Stephanie Quick

Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is the founder and creative director of The Emmaus Table. She lives in the Golan Heights and hosts the TABLE TALKS podcast. Browse her free music, films, and books in THE EMMAUS TABLE App and at stephaniequick.org.

https://www.stephaniequick.org