Prophetic Remnant on the Frontlines: Your Role in Returning the Nation to God

What is the Kingdom of God?

While Isaiah prophesied the coming Messiah, Daniel was more concerned with predicting the coming Kingdom of God, beginning when he interpreted a dream of Nebuchadnezzar (a statue representing the kingdoms of this world was smashed by a rock): “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever” (Daniel 2:44 NIV).

By AD 27, Jews were eagerly expecting this new kingdom age, a time when Heaven and earth would be once again united (as they were in the Garden), and the whole earth would be filled with the knowledge of God’s glory—an epoch when everything that rebels against God’s reign is defeated and washed away, and the King’s will is done on earth, just as it is in Heaven.

Just then, Jesus began to preach His core message that, “Good news! The Kingdom of God is here!” The long-awaited Kingdom had been inaugurated and was—is—right here, right now.

However, it wasn’t quite as simple as it sounds. First-century Jews expected that this would look like a worldly power, a strong, nationalistic, geographical, and undeniably physical presence on the global stage. Then, as the centuries progressed, Jesus’s followers begin to similarly think that the increasingly powerful and structured church was equal to the Kingdom. But Jesus and His apostles never used the words Kingdom and church interchangeably!

The Kingdom of God is uniquely spiritual, more like another dimension that exists alongside our own. Jesus broke the curse of evil, sin, chaos, and death, that creation sat under. Now, like Spring arriving in the frozen wastes of Narnia, we see ever-growing evidence of the Kingdom of God. Some of its signposts are deliverances, healings, signs, wonders, miracles, and salvations. The Kingdom of God expands because Jesus has gone to the Father, and it manifests in us, and through us.

One day, Jesus will return to renew the earth and re-unite it with Heaven. Until then we live with the paradox that the Kingdom of God is both now and yet also not yet!

We Are to Be Revolutionary Forerunners

Good news friend! God is leading us away from being a reactionary, stagnant church structure and transforming us into a revolutionary, forerunning church movement.

• We are shifting away from the days of defensive commentary, protective punditry, and stubborn maintenance of the church’s status quo, and into a speaking ahead of the curve about the changing epochs with words that are transformative to people.

• We, the ecclesia of God, are to be engaged in prophetically signposting and constructing the future and serving the people, and their lands, into transformative change.

• We will shift from only being able to remark, unhelpfully, that “one day every- thing will change” (which is the rhetoric of stating the obvious!), as we now step into our true forerunning call, which resists the kingdoms of this world, and leads with words and decrees that reframe with a Kingdom perspective and set things in a heavenly order.

• We will end our partnership with fear that has kept us quiet for too long—a fearful silence that tolerated grave, sinful errors— just in case people would reject us.

• We will understand that maintaining godly integrity and boldly forth-telling revelation will often risk our reputation.

With the rise of war, intense shakings, and God terrifying the earth, but also great harvest and a purified prophetic church that leads the way, we need mindsets that are prepared for the future, not stuck in the shock of a moment. The contemporary prophetic movement has caused many to turn and jeer at prophets because of a host of inaccurate words that left people scrabbling around for clarity. Our inability to take ownership of the words only further compounded our reputational demise in many circles, both within and without the church.

Perhaps our so-called “revelation” has merely demonstrated that those of us who claimed to prophesy have been living more as citizens of the world than of Heaven. Especially—and this has been really painful over the last few years—we have been exposed as having been preoccupied with our own nations, more than we have been captivated and transfixed by the Kingdom of Christ Jesus!

Consequently, it is not unusual to find prophetic words being released that mis-create reality. What I mean by this is that trusted leaders in the body of Christ have a positional authority that molds how those under their care and influence see the world. So, when these leaders and prophets misspeak, their words become their followers’ reality.

Prophetic people, let me tell you, if we are not fully in the Kingdom in our thinking, then we mislead and mis-assign hope—arguing from inside the world and therefore far from the truth of how the Kingdom actually works!

We must be really honest with ourselves: have we have become so deter- mined to defend the places we have secured for ourselves, the reputations that we have built for ourselves, and the righteous opinions that we think we must have, that we have become partially blind to the story that the Kingdom of God is outworking? In that atmosphere our prophetic words and visions can sound and look plausible—and we may truly believe that they are from God—but they have come from the atmosphere of the world, rather than carrying the weight of the substance of another realm entirely—the Kingdom of God.

Therefore, it is imperative that “Kingdom of God Truth-Tellers” emerge in this hour! More than ever, it is vital that we discover what and how God thinks about things—especially nations, politics, and justice—so that the church can better reflect Him in its compassion and in its transformative, Spirit-filled power.

Prayer

Jesus, I repent of all the times when I am reactionary, defensive, and easily offended. Would You lift off me all the weight of trying to justify before men and women things that I do not need to protect and defend. By this confession to You, I release myself of this burden and acknowledge that You are Lord, You are true justice, and You do not need me to fight these battles. I want to live not being so easily triggered. Jesus, would You put on me Your mindset, that of a forerunner who knows how to think revolutionary thoughts and who resists the comfort of the moment. I want to be a useful voice to steer people into the future. Lord, my life is Yours! Amen.