“Thy Kingdom Come”–The Gospel of the Kingdom of God

The true gospel is the good news of our Father’s government literally coming to fill the whole earth with His righteous ways.  

Christ in this section of the “Lord’s Prayer” teaches us the importance of the Father’s kingdom.  A kingdom is a literal form of government headed by a monarch.  He is the King.  Thy kingdom come…in earth as it is in heaven.  His kingdom already rules in heaven; shortly it will rule completely on earth. 

This is the good news proclaimed in the four gospels in the so-called “New Testament” of the Bible.  Many scriptures back this up.  “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15).  Believe what gospel?  The “gospel of the kingdom of God.”  He is saying, God’s government is here.  Because it is at hand, you need to repent from your old selfish life, and believe this good news of God ruling on earth. 

“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14),  It is this gospel, this true gospel of the kingdom of God that must be proclaimed throughout the whole world before the end of the age will come.  The gospel that is going out now is another gospel of Christ–one of salvation, a salvation that usually does not include the death on the cross of the person’s old self (See Romans 6:6…( http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/yahch27.htm ).  Salvation is precious but it is just the first step.

In the next verse, Christ quotes the prophet Daniel concerning the end times.  In Ch. 2 Daniel saw the Father’s kingdom coming down out of heaven smashing the world system to pieces. 

“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms.”  These are four literal, political, historical world governmental systems–Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome}.  At this present time we are seeing the last revival of the old Roman Empire.  Think “Euro, the EU”.  We are coming to the end of “the days of these kings.”  “Thy kingdom come.”

To God’s faithful, this collapse of the present world system is “good news.”  To others it will be “bad news.”  Good or bad, the Father’s Kingdom is coming in a fullness.

We, then, should pray with this grand and glorious vision that Christ had, when He taught His disciples to pray.  A vision of an earth free from corruption and cruelty–free from addiction and selfishness–free from hunger and desperation–free from greedy leaders who cast the poor in chains of lies and deceit–free from husbands and wives betraying those who love them the most–free from broken-hearted children thrown out like trash by selfish parents–free from the evil that rapes and pillages every soul on earth–

This is the gospel of the Kingdom of God.  This is the good news that will fill the earth when Christ comes back and sits down on the throne of our invisible Father.  And His sons and daughters will sit alongside Him in His kingdom right here on earth.  And He will dispatch us His princes and princesses out into the ravished earth to rebuild and restore what the evil ones wasted.

“Thy kingdom come” evokes much about the glorious vision God has for His earth.  We need to pray toward this end.  He told us to not ask for things for ourselves, but rather, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”  Kenneth Wayne Hancock  

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Hallowed Be Thy Name, Yahweh

Your Father’s name is Yahweh–if you consider yourself a child of the Hebrew God of the Bible. 

Christ is saying in the “Lord’s Prayer” that the Father’s name is “hallowed,” holy and extremely special.  How are we to appreciate it and make it holy if we don’t even know the Father’s name?

 Not many know that the Hebrew God of the Bible was known by Moses, Daniel, Isaiah, and all the rest of the prophets and apostles by His name Yahweh. 

“The Hebrew national literature centres in the thought of God. It is Yahweh who is all and in all, the father, the leader, the hope, the hero of his people” ( www.1911encyclopedia.org/Christianity ).  This quote is from the article “Christianity” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition, entirely on-line at this link.  There are 142 articles that mention Yahweh (www.1911encyclopedia.org/index.php?q=yahweh&title=LoveToKnow_1911%3ASearch&site=1911&fulltext=LoveToSearch ). 

We’ve been told that “God” is His name.  But “God” is a common noun that has been capitalized.  “GOD, the common Teutonic word for a personal object of religious worship. It is thus…applied to all those superhuman beings of the heathen mythologies who exercise power over nature and man…The word “god,” on the conversion of the Teutonic races to Christianity, was adopted as the name of the one Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe” (www.1911encyclopedia.org/God).  It was adopted, but God is not the name of the Father.  Yahweh is His name.  “This is my name forever,” Yahweh said to Moses (Exodus 3:15).

Some think that the Father’s name is “LORD.”  But “LORD” is merely a title of the Father.  This started when the King James translators substituted “the LORD” for the Hebrew name “Yahweh” over 6,700 times.  Only once did they leave “Yah” (the shortened form) in Psalms 68:4: “Sing praises to his name…Jah.”  The editors of the New King James Version corrected “Jah” to “Yah” ( www.yahwehisthesavior.com/sonspreface.htm  I’ve published two books on the subject.  I’ve placed both on-line; they can be read here free).

When Christ was teaching the disciples (us) how to pray by saying “hallowed be thy name,” He wants us to revere, keep holy, consecrate, and venerate the Father’s name.  That is what the word “to hallow” means. 

But first the Father’s name must be restored to our knowledge.  We cannot truly make His name holy and consecrated in our hearts if we don’t know His name. 

And the Father’s name is Yahweh.  We must keep this in our minds when we communicate with Him.  For His name is extremely important to Him.  So it should be of extreme importance to us His princes and princesses.  Or how else could we address the King?

Armed with this knowledge, the scriptures about His name will open to us.  It is a key.  But be forewarned.  The knowledge of the Father’s name is a pearl, a gem.  And Christ warns, “Cast not your pearls before swine, for they will turn and rend you with it.”  Be careful who you share this with.  It is dynamite knowledge and needs to be handled carefully.  You will be vilified and derided for sharing this knowledge–usually by those close to you. 

Share your thoughts with me about this or any topic addressed on this blog.  For it is your platform, too.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

    

“Which Art in Heaven”–God’s from Above, Not Beneath

Our Father is the God of heaven, not born of the imagination of earthly man.  This is what we are to take away from the words in the Lord’s prayer, “Which art in heaven.”  There are “gods many, but for us there is only one God.”  These “gods many” are conjured up by natural unregenerated man–“cunningly devised fables,” false conceptions of Christ.

And the masses are deceived.  “Satan deceives the whole world.”  How can he do that?  “For Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.  Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness” (II Cor. 11:14-15).

Wait a minute.  Paul has just said that Satan will come as a messenger of truth and light by having ministers, pastors, and preachers bringing forth sermons about Christ and His righteousness!  Satan’s ministers will be preaching Christ in the last days.  But it will not be the true “gospel of the kingdom of heaven.”  It will be “another gospel” other than the one that apostle Paul preached.  It will not be from heaven, but from beneath.

It will be a gospel concocted by the vain imaginations of natural thinking men.  It will be based on “what God can do for you,” and not “what God can do through your vessel.”  They will claim to be His servants, but at the end, He will say, “Depart from me you workers of iniquity.  I never knew you.”  You wanted prosperity instead of Me. You wanted your spin on the end time and not My timetable.  You wanted a rapturously easy way out of the hard times ahead and not “to endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ.”

This false gospel from beneath will emanate from an “earthly, sensual, and devilish” wisdom and not from heaven above.  This false gospel will spout “in Jesus’ name” but their hearts will be far from the God of Heaven and His heart.

This false gospel comes in many colors and flavors.  Most people shop around until they find a church with their kind of “Jesus” in it.  Most depend on the pastor to do their studying for them.  Few dig deep and “prove all things” with the Spirit’s help. This false gospel of Jesus is not from our Father, which is in heaven.  It is not from above, but from beneath. {Note: Church is a waystation only on our pilgrimage to the Holy City.  We must eventually leave the waystation, grow out of it, etc.}

Our Father and His plan of reproducing Himself in His sons and daughters is from heaven, not from sinful man’s imagination of what they thought God meant.  No, our Father eminates from the finer spiritual dimension we call heaven.  He is far above the selfish, conniving imaginations of unspiritual man trying to be religious, leaning to his own understanding.

His thoughts are not our thoughts.  It is a heavenly vision, a heavenly faith, a heavenly destiny, a heavenly plan, a heavenly purpose, a heavenly blueprint, a heavenly way, a heavenly thought of a heavenly Father, who is above all this on earth and is in us whom He has called.

We must keep this in mind in our communication to Him because He is “Our Father, which art in heaven.”  He’s from above and not from beneath.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

“Our Father”–The Father of the Sons and Daughters of God

God is not everyone’s Father.  He is the Creator of all, but not Father of all.  I’m just saying; that’s what the English says.

Christ told the Pharisees, who were very religious, “You seek to kill me, a man that has told you the truth…You are of your father the devil…a murderer from the beginning…a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:40:44).

We see, then, two spiritual fathers at work in the earth: “Our Father”  and “your father the devil.”  And to help the sons and daughters of God, Christ left us the salutation in His Blueprint Prayer, “Our Father” to distinguish our Father from their father.  (To read more on them and their father, see “Children of the Wicked One” under “Recent Posts”).

The words, “Our Father,” also signifies an engendering by God, begetting several spiritual offspring.

The LORD (Yahweh in the Hebrew), told the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee” (Jer. 1:4-5).  God knew Jeremiah before his earthly conception and gestation!  And God chose him and ordained him a prophet before he “came forth out of the womb.”  Jeremiah was “born from above”–begotten by God long before coming to earth.  Jeremiah was in the very heart of God–and so were we, His sons and daughters, before the time of our earthly, fleshly sojourn.

Our Father “has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).  He knew us before and has pre-destinated us “to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29).   He has given us a destiny to be like Christ before the world was ever founded.  This is nothing less that God’s purpose–reproducing Himself.

And so the cycle goes: seedtime and harvest.  God the husbandman has great patience waiting for His children to grow up until they are “conformed to the image of His Son.”  He will endure the “vessels fitted unto destruction” in order to create His “royal priesthood,” His ruling offspring.  This is our destiny, ordered for us by “our Father.”

For make no mistake.  Christ told it like it is.  He warned that in the last days, many will be deceived by false prophets and false teachers who lead the sheep through the wide and broad gate to destruction.  They are wolves in “sheep’s clothing.”  They show themselves as God’s spokesmen, but are really modern day Pharisees, whose father is not “our Father.”

And to the many who are deceived by them Christ warns: “Many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name done many wonderful works?  And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:13-23).  They mouthed a bunch of half-truths but didn’t do the will of “our Father which is in heaven” (v. 21).

There is a lot in the phrase “Our Father, which art in heaven.”  We must begin to pray with the understanding of His words.  It is a great privilege to call Him “our Father.”  Not everyone truthfully can.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

The Lord’s Prayer–Blueprint for Building God’s Temple–Us

The Lord’s Prayer is a blueprint showing us how to become His temple, which is the habitation of God.  It is not a ritualistic chant.

An architect’s blueprint contains blue lines and white paper that to the trained eye reveal what the building should look like.

The Lord’s prayer is a spiritual blueprint that shows us what the temple of God looks like and how to build it. Christ said that His house “shall be called of all nations the house of prayer” (Mark 11: 17).  And in His example prayer to us, we understand what those prayers consist of in His temple.  And His temple is us (I Cor. 3:16).  We, His sons and daughters, born from above, born of the King, are now His princes and princesses in training to rule with Him.  “To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Rev. 3:21).

So what do we do with a blueprint?  A building contractor would not stand around repeating the dimensions found in the blueprint. By merely reading and repeating the words and figures found on the blueprint, the edifice would never get built.  Rather, he has to study it, visualize it, believe in the vision of the architect for the building, and get to work in order to make it a reality.  This is what God’s children need to be doing–studying out His example prayer and understanding what it means, and then do it.

To illustrate, the disciples asked Jesus (Yahshua in Hebrew–the same name as the anglicized name “Joshua”… <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/joshua> ).  “Teach us to pray.”  And He told them, “After this manner pray,” and then He spoke the model prayer.

“After this manner…”  After this way.  Make your communication to God based on these precepts I’ve given you in this example prayer, He was saying.  And the precepts are based in selflessness.

But many prayers that are offered up to God are shameless petitions for self–asking for material things.  These prayers cannot penetrate the brass of heaven’s dome.

To be heard by the Almighty, we must get on His wavelength.  And God’s all about reproducing Himself.  We are now “born of that incorruptible seed, the word of God.”  But that is just the start.  We must grow up into him, no longer content to be little babies in Christ, always wanting something from Him.

We must study to unlock the secrets of His kingdom, secrets held close to the heart of God, secrets that He will reveal to them that are in awe of Him, secrets encrypted in a spiritual blueprint called “The Lord’s Prayer.”

So, let us dig into it, line by line, phrase by phrase, extracting His thoughts about how He is going to get Himself down into His temple, us.  This I hope to do in the next few posts, beginning next time with “The Lord’s Prayer–Our Father.”  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

The Lord’s Prayer Is NOT an Incantation, Chant, or Ritual

There’s no magical powers in repeating the Lord’s Prayer.  And let’s face it.  Churchianity has reduced it to a chant, to a ritual of repetitious words with the intent that –poof!–magically our sins are forgiven or our requests are granted.  Please.

Chanting the Lord’s Prayer is taking his blueprint for prayer and using it as a “verbal charm” to enchant God into giving us what we want from Him.  Doing this is using an enchantment (which God forbids) and is the very definition of “incantation.”

“incantation–the chanting or uttering of words purporting to have magical power; a spell or charm”   <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/incantation>

“incantation–ritual recitation of verbal charms or spells to produce a magic effect; a conventionalized utterance repeated without thought”  <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/incantation>

   “Repeated without thought…”  Isn’t that what’s being done with the Lord’s prayer?  Reducing it to a chant?  Definition of “chant”:  “The use of religious phraseology without understanding or sincerity; empty solemn speech, implying what is not felt; hypocrisy.” <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chant> )

   To mindlessly repeat the Lord’s Prayer “without understanding” its profound depths of meaning is cheapening it; it is futile and vain.  In fact, Christ warns us to not do this very thing. “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Matthew 6:7).  Heathens use incantations, enchantments, sorcery and spells.  “Be not ye therefore like unto them” (v. 8).

   We as His sons and daughters must press in, dig deep, and seek to know what He’s saying to us in the Lord’s prayer and to use it as a blueprint in our communication to Him and for Him.

   A blueprint is a “detailed outline or plan of action.”  His model prayer contains God’s thoughts, plan, and purpose.  And we are to pray in accordance with its precepts.

   Prayer is communication with God.  So God wants us to first know His thoughts, plan, and purpose so that we can commune with Him on what He wants to accomplish here on earth.  And He wants to use us. KWH

{To read more on this, check out ch. 13 of my book, The Unveiling of the Sons of God found at the top of this sites homepage}

The Immortal One–A Poem About a Son of God

 

Be quiet, they were saying.  The Immortal One is about

to speak.  Come on.  We want to see him.  We want to see the man who healed our land and helped us through the end.  Sit down in front!  We want to see!

  

And then he appeared at the bottom of the natural

amphitheater of grass that led down to a small lake. The crowd fell silent as if that, on cue, all had held their breath.  He was not one to be desired on looks alone.  He was plain, and one had to strain to distinguish him from the others that lined the edge of the lake.  He did not stand out until he spoke.  His words resounded over the people:

 

When I came here just months ago,             

I found a people whose heart lay heavy with grief              

     over the loss of so many loved ones.

I found a people in great need of direction.

I found a people blind, nowhere to go, no reason to live.

I found a people who had given up,

          Who long before the tribulation began,

          Who long before the hailstones fell,

Who long before the sun was turned into a shroud for     earth,

Who long before the bloody moon had ceased to be a

    light of love,

Who long before comets colliding and sealanes   

          thrashing and dry land churning with foaming

          salt and sand,

Who long before blood had filled their streets,       

          sweeping out the day’s rubbish and bodies,

Who long before the eyes had cried themselves

          dry, with heaving breasts and bitter moans of

          loved ones lost,

Who long before had demanded rocks to fall on them to         end living death’s sore agony,

Who long before all these woes and more,

Had sought their own retreat from the battle some call life.             

 

And my Father and yours, the King and Creator Himself,

Came to your aid by showing you signs and wonders,

Miracles done through these very hands.

And you fell on your faces before me.

Your tears as streams of joy did soak the thirsty earth.

And you worshipped me as God, and I told you, Do it not,

For I am but one sent from the King Himself.

Worship Him who can grant you immortal life—

Who granted me this life of power you see me have,

Whose evidence you see by your dead raised up

To hug your necks again and kiss your cheeks again,

And say, Mother, I love you. Father, thanks for loving me.    

 

Your fields of hope were burned.

The rivers of your dreams were molten sand and rock.

You wandered dazed in fields of sorrow.

You cried to your gods who have no ears to hear.

But the King heard and was moved in His heart and said,

Go to them whose fields are black,

Whose steams are coals and tell them about me.

Tell them of my kingdom and my righteousness

     and my law.

 

And so I came to you.

You were mine to heal and mine to show the way.

But I did not tell you all the secrets of the King.

You did not ask.

It was not time to enter mansions

Whose rooms are gold with light,

Whose doors lead joyful pilgrims on to praise.

But that time is now.

That time is now.