The answer is simple, yet very complex.
Christ said, “and this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world, and then the end will come.”
It has been 2000 years, and Christ’s prediction that it would happen within the life time of some of his disciples never came to pass. And, why is that?
Christ loved his disciples and wholly believed in them. He had complete faith that they would gain understanding after witnessing his brutal murder at the vile hands of the religious leaders.
The heinous murder of Christ was openly displayed on the world stage for everyone to see that the spirit of religion mutilated the Messiah in plain sight.
Christ believed that his dedicated followers would realize who the enemy is and reject religion. He believed that they would continue in the spiritual teachings that he had taught them and take the good news to the ends of the earth, doing greater things than Christ had done. However, that never happened.
The term Kingdom of God is mentioned 85 times in the Gospels and only 28 times in the rest of the New Testament. Christ’s gospel of the Kingdom was phased out and replaced by the Christian gospel.
So, in order to fully understand Christ’s good news message, we really need to start with John the Baptist.
John was a prophet preaching in the wilderness, and although not much is written about him, his general message is recorded—repent, confess your sins, the Kingdom of God is at hand.
And to those people who accepted his message, he performed a mikvah for them in the Jordan River.
So, let’s discuss John’s mission and his message first. We’ll break each piece down and then put it all together to form a clear picture.
The word, repent, in the Greek means to change the mind or change your way of thinking.
Confess your sins. Now, this is profound, because John is asking the people to confess their wrongdoings right there. In the Jewish culture, under the laws of Moses, the ONLY way to get sins forgiven was to take an animal to the temple and perform blood sacrifice.
Interestingly, in the seventh chapter of Jeremiah, he clearly writes that God NEVER gave those commandments to sacrifice or offer burnt offerings when he brought them out of Egypt, but instead, God only wanted his people to know him and to help those in need.
Therefore, John was continuing the work of Jeremiah, who had been stoned to death by the religious leaders five hundred years earlier.
So, John is asking the people to change the way they think about getting forgiveness. Instead of going to the temple and sacrificing, just ask here, because the kingdom of God is at hand or readily available to you to relieve your guilt.
That was certainly good news, especially to the poor who could not afford the sacrificial animals, and people were lining up to accept John’s message. Then, John would perform a mikvah to cleanse them from the blood.
What is a mikvah?
It is a Jewish ritual bath for purifying a person after they have touched blood, anything dead, or any unclean thing before they come into the presence of God.
John was cleansing the people from the blood of sacrificial practice after introducing them to a new way of approaching God. That is why he refused to perform the mikvah for the religious leaders. He called them snakes and vipers, because he knew they were not about to give up that practice, yet they were lining up to make a pious show for the people.
Then, Christ came to have the mikvah performed for himself out of obedience to God, and as a statement to all that he was on board with John’s message. This is the first time in the gospels, where the audible voice of God is heard expressing his delight for what is taking place.
After his mikvah, Christ set out with the message—good news, the kingdom of God is at hand. The good news was that people did not need to go through the religious channel of the blood sacrificial laws of Moses, but God was available to them right there.
Christ not only spread the good news, he showed the people the nature of God by healing the blind, the lepers, the guilt-ridden sinners, and tax collectors, all the people who the religious leaders had condemned as being the filthy vermin of society.
Christ’s gospel of the Kingdom was supposed to be taken to the ends of the Earth, and then he would return.
It NEVER happened, because Christ’s gospel was replaced with the Christian message of—good news, God sacrificed his son as a blood sacrifice for your sins. If you accept, you will go to heaven. If you reject, you will go to Hell.