Injil Markus 1:15  And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

The Messiah, Jesus, came to set up the kingdom of God among men so that we might be brought into willing subjection to it, and therefore might find salvation in it, and He presented, through the preaching of this gospel, a power going along with it.  It did not go along with traditional thought that men had invented to claim what the kingdom of God would look like when it arrived but it was in accordance with His rule book, the Holy Bible.

The descendants of Father Abraham, have to get right in accordance with the Messiah’s teaching which was in line with the prophets of old but not necessarily in line with the Oral Law and popular Rabbis old who had been adding their own points of view into the mix in the same way Imams do today.  Imams today are adding their own unauthorized opinions to the word of God and then trying to tell their followers that they must not question what they have been told; not only is that taqqiya, what they are doing is shirk of the most evil kind.

Jesus came preaching the good news regarding the kingdom of God.  Unfortunately, it does not appear that the people were as fully aware that the time for the arrival of the promised Messiah, the holy one from God, had come as they really should have been.  They had the sure and accurately preserved word of God and of their prophets but they were not as well versed in them or the signs of the times as they could have and should have been.

They were hoping for Messiah to come in a way differently than the manner in which He came and with a different message.  Muslims have the same problem the people back then had, they are following the traditions of men and ignoring the voice of the God of Father Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Sorry, but the hadiths and fitnahs were written many, many years after when the Quran was supposedly written and they are only man’s words.  Those who put their trust in them will be very disappointed when Jesus, The Messiah, returns.

Jesus was preaching the good news of truth, “You have heard, but I say,” He said over and over again.  It other words He told them and people of our day that it is time to stop with your man-made traditions and get back to what the Word of God actually says.

Jesus preached the good news of hope.  (Col 1:21-23)  The ancient world was a pessimistic world; in some ways our world is a quite pessimistic one as well.  Seneca spoke of “Our helplessness in necessary things.”  In their struggles for goodness men were defeated.  The coming of Jesus brings hope to the hopeless heart.

The optimist says the cup is half full.  The pessimist says the cup is half empty.  The pragmatist says the cup is too big for the job.  Today, because of Jesus, the child of God (the true Christian) can say, “My cup runneth over.”

–Pastor Ward Clinton