...and that the Kingdom of Heaven is closer at hand than we dare think.
Christ is King.
I know this is true because, if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t react to my saying so out loud. Either you’re chiming in with an “Amen!” or—most likely—you’re either flinching, cringing, or triggered into a near-hysterical rage. You might react with hateful mockery towards me and my faith, which, as we all know, you would never do to a Muslim because, unlike me, they’re not commanded to bless their enemies.
Declaring “Christ is King” aloud will get you a reaction no other statement of faith will. There’s an entire religious ethnographic whose faith is based on their seething hatred of Christ Jesus of Nazareth and His followers. If Jesus wasn’t/isn’t real, then why the hate? Why, in their “holy” writings, is Jesus boiling in excrement in Hell? Why did they go out of their way to even insult His mother in their Talmud?
The answers to this are in chapters 5 and 8 of the Gospel of John, with other telling passages in Revelation 2:9, and again in Revelation 3:9. Once you understand, as too many of my brothers and sisters in Christ cannot, that these are most emphatically NOT God’s chosen people, but instead the children of the father of lies and murder, you’ll not only comprehend why they say proclaiming the simple fact of Christ’s Lordship is “anti-Semitic,” but much of the outright evil happening in the world.
Does the god of any other faith give power to a swear word? Why does no one inflict the curse of Allah (“Allah damn you!”) when cut off in traffic? Of what use are the curses you employ if you don’t believe in the God you call on to curse others?
For that matter, why so much energy expended to rebuke a Christian professing his or her faith? Why the hate? Why the desire to ban saying “Merry Christmas,” as if the very “Christ” in Christmas is too much to bear? Then again, for the children of the father of lies and murder, it can’t help but be.
God is real, and you know it and He scares you. Christ Jesus is real, and you hate Him because He expects better from you. The Holy Spirit is real because good people are being moved to do good in an increasingly cruel and murderous world—and you hate those people so moved, because a coward naturally despises the bold.
There are Satanic worship clubs in public schools in the United States now, some even on the elementary level. If God isn’t real, why worship Satan, who, as God’s opposite, should be just as unreal? Why go out of your way to insult a God who doesn’t exist? A pop music performer dressed as the devil for his Grammy Awards performance in 2023 and the network promoted this with, “We are ready to worship!” You can’t say that about the God Most High, Creator of All Things, but…Satan?
“But we’re not really worshiping Satan! It’s just a goof!” So what’s the punchline, then? Another insult towards a God Who presumably doesn’t exist? That mentions of Satan and his church are popping up more and more only tells me the Kingdom of God is closer at hand than most think. At this point, we’re just waiting for the honest-to-awfulness Antichrist himself to appear. (The New Testament mentions there will be many lowercase antichrists throughout time, but the be-all, end-all arises in the end-of-times Tribulations.)
I know my God by His enemies, and they are many. Once more, with feeling: if God does not exist, there is no reason for the hate. Say “Christ is King” in front of the wrong people, though, and you may come to believe in demons, too. You’ll see them in the eyes of the people they occupy, their presence betrayed by a reflexive flash of beyond-psychotic rage that should put the literal fear of God into you. The living God is your best hope for getting through all that’s going on and all that’s to come.
It’s not all negatives, of course. God has blessed me in ways I fear to express because one might think I was boasting, or, worse, preaching a prosperity gospel heresy. I’m certainly not rich by any stretch, but I’m living in a house. Not everyone gets that. I’m married. Not everyone gets that. I have been saved from financial insolvency, several deaths by misadventure, and own suicidally depressed self.
It’s a long story for another time, albeit a critical part of my testimony. Suffice it to say I was brought by God from a deteriorating situation in South Carolina to a good church home in a high valley in southern Colorado. I’ve married and traveled the world with a woman who cared nothing for my lack of prospects. I was baptized into the body of Christ in Anchorage, Alaska. I have grown children I once thought I was too cool to have, but now realize they mean more than anything else I could have done with my life. I’ve never had a good-paying career, but I’ve had some writing published, composed some songs. I’ve worked all kinds of strange pick-up jobs, met all kinds of interesting people, done many interesting and off-the-wall things.
By all rights, I should have been dead by 30. God had other plans. What He can do for you, I can’t tell you because I don’t know. I only know that God changes lives for the better. His Son Christ Jesus is the only way to Him, which is why we pray in Jesus’ name. You’re familiar with the story, right, the crucifixion of the Son of God as expiation for our iniquity, His resurrection, etc.?
You scoff at the resurrection of the dead but you believe middle-aged men who decide they are women and begin wearing women’s clothes are women. You believe it’s okay to destroy children’s innocence by exposing them to such morally and mentally wrecked creatures. You believe the entire universe came from nothing, everything on this Earth just rose up from primordial soup with functioning specialty organs. Et cetera.
It’s all right. If you don’t have the eyes to see and the ears to hear there’s nothing more I have to say but God bless and I’ll pray for you. Once, at least.
I have a long way to go to get to that part where I bless my enemies and do good to those who persecute me. (Good thing what enemies I have are impotent backbiters and I’m not persecuted! So far.) Contrary to what we were told in the grotesquely misnamed Bible Belt in the days when nearly everything, including restaurants, were closed on Sunday, you don’t automatically become a Christian by professing a belief in God and Jesus Christ. It is a process, compared to refining silver.
I would reiterate that it is important not to merely profess belief in the Kingdom of Heaven, but to truly believe it. Just because you don’t see the Kingdom doesn’t mean it’s not there. We could waste the better part of a discussion going on about people we’ve all known with Christ on their lips and nowhere near their hearts. They’ve only been doing their father’s work. Are we doing the work of our Father?
You have a father, whether you know it or not. Whether He is heavenly or merely “spiritual,” is the big question. If you can’t recognize the sadistic, murderous evil going on in this world right now for what it is, may you have the scales struck from your eyes and the plugs from your ears removed. Until God Himself permits that to happen, further discourse is discouraged re: Matthew 7:6. I don’t make the rules, and, knowing my own dark nature, I’m eternally grateful for that.
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