The Kingdom of God

The following is paper written by my brother, Jonathan. This was penned after a day of ministry to Buddhist monks in Thailand. This really wraps up what Gospel Outreach for Asia is all about: people coming to know God and His Kingdom. We must tell these people before it is too late. As the Bible says in Proverbs 24:11: "Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter."



Sometimes our view of God's kingdom is too small. We spend our days and nights following our dreams  while the world around us blindly walks into a hell that each one of us knows about. They don't know and usually it fits our convenience to keep it that way. Perhaps this is because we don't understand just how dark the cage is that the world has been locked into. The world itself surely doesn't know. There is a correlation between a crazy person and a person lost in sin. The crazy man believes that he is completely sane and normal, and in his mind it makes perfect sense. The lost man usually believes that he is quite alright and normal, and in his world it also makes perfect sense. In reality there is a stark contrast between the free and the bound. Even as Christians we lose sight of this contrast of worlds, we pass by the world while it dies in sin. I wonder how many Christians question why they never see the lights of heaven in their lives. Perhaps if we take more time to see a dying world we would do more to save it. If we do more to save it then I'm sure we will see more of the light of heaven.

I personally find it easy to forget the world's bondage. I too easily lose the urgency that comes from knowing that thousands are dying without Christ. Recently God showed me this in a profound way. I was entering the gate to the Buddhist temple Wat Saun Dok when I looked up and saw a sight that made me stop and think. I was looking over the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand, and up the mountain to the temple Wat Doi Suthep. It had just finished raining and the mountain was clouded in mist and fog. It was dark and stormy around and below the temple, but I could still see it clearly. It stood, a beacon of the lost people searching for truth. Fog and turmoil all around. It's what most of the Thai people have come to know as truth. Just above the temple was an extremely dark cloud. What really took my breath away was that just above this dark cloud the sky was completely light. This clear blue sky was stretching itself infinitely just above the temple. The only clouds were small ones that looked golden in the afternoon sunlight. The clear sky was just several hundred feet above the roof of the temple, but because of the cloud none of it could be seen from the temple itself. It could only be seen from my far off vantage point.

This is how I've come to see God's kingdom vs. the kingdom of this world. The people of this world are covered in a cloud of bondage. It's not a thick cloud but it completely restricts their view. God's kingdom is just above them but they cannot this any more than the people in the temple could see the clear sky above them. They don't know that there is another way to peace and happiness. There is a way out of bondage, but they cannot see it. Only we can see the light of heaven as well as the darkness of the world because we aren't under that cloud of bondage.

We cannot afford to forget how lost the world is. We have to open our eyes and see that people are dying without the light that we have. If the darkness people are lost in doesn't motivate us then maybe the light of heaven will.