What ever happened to the Kingdom?  Jesus said,

But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Luke 11:20

We have lost sight of the Kingdom.  Jesus came to set the captives free.  We can prophesy, we can cast out demons in His name, we can do might works and miracles, but we have lost the Kingdom.

I am not waiting for another dispensation for some grandiose allotment of power and authority from heaven.  Jesus declared sufficiently, after His passion and resurrection, that ALL authority in Heaven and Earth was His (Matthew 28:18).  We are not waiting for God to flip a switch in heaven; He already did that.  All we are waiting for is for the switch to be thrown in us.

What are we doing in church?  What are we doing with our Christian walks?

We’re just idling by, hoping the Kingdom will come by our careful observations.  It has never come that way (Luke 17:20).

We must be diligent.  We must be faithful.  We must forsake all.

It is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom (Luke 12:32).  He is not the hold up, we are, with our compromise and our lazy approach to the Gospel.  He wants us to have it.

The Kingdom of God has come with power (Mark 9:1).  Yet, where are the meetings where young people can come and get delivered?  There are some these days, but not enough.

The Kingdom may not be of this world (John 18:36), but it is more substantive, and more real than anything we can see or touch (Hebrews 11:3).  There are more possibilities in the Spirit than anything we could possibly make up ourselves, if we can simply listen, hear, and obey.

The realms of marketing and ministry as a business must be passed aside, and we must come to the place of simple trust.  If we open up that place of Kingdom within our midst, we are told by Jesus himself that it will be more than we could ever accomplish on our own (Matthew 11:11).

What ever happened to setting people free in our meetings?  What ever happened to sick people being made well?  We cannot get where we’re going without it.

What ever happened to seeking God, and praying until He comes, and empowers us to change things?

The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power.  If anyone tells you they have the doctrine of the Kingdom, can explain it to you in four easy steps, and cannot demonstrate it, they are a liar, and you should shake your dust off from your feet.  My God’s name is the LORD of Hosts, that is Lord of the angelic armies of heaven.  IF THERE IS NO DEMONSTRATION, THERE IS NO SUBSTANCE TO THEIR MESSAGE (2 Corinthians 12:12).

What ever happened to the Kingdom?  Today, the churches are merely mimicking the Sadducees and Pharisees of Jesus’ day.  One group believes there are evil spirits, one does not.  They bicker and argue (despite the fact that if you say there aren’t, you make Jesus into a liar, because He cast them out).  They sit and with their careful observations, have their weekly meetings, and go to and fro to their market-place banquets.

We have come a long way in the age of the church.  I wonder if the time of the Gentiles being fulfilled isn’t the gentile church coming right up to the very spot the Jewish “church” did when Jesus walked among them.  If you strip the supernatural out of the church, you don’t have a church.  Not a Jesus church anyway.  Perhaps, as John wrote, a church (Synagogue) of satan (Revelation 2:9, Revelation 3:9).

There will be false prophets and false teachers teaching false things and doing false signs and wonders, yes.  And, the only way you will know the difference is if you have SUPERNATURAL DISCERNMENT (1 Corinthians 12:10), a supernatural endowment (one that you didn’t have before you received the Holy Ghost or Jesus), not MERELY an observation of outward manifestations and behavior.  As many point out, if there were to be no TRUE miraculous works, no TRUE God-given prophets, then the writer would have simply written, “beware of prophets and miracles”, but he instructed us to be watchful, and to watch out for the false.

If you do not have the power, you do not have the Kingdom.  If you do not have Him working in your life, speaking into your ear, turn right or turn left, “This is the way; walk ye in it” (Isaiah 30:21), you do not have all that Immanuel, God with us, means.  Revelation 19:10 says, “[T]he testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy!”.  If you do not have the spirit of prophecy, you do not have the testimony of Jesus in your midst.  That is a sad state for much of the church today, to have none of the testimony of Jesus.  Let me say that again, if you do not have the spirit of prophecy, you do not have the testimony of Jesus.

Isaiah the prophet declared:

“As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the LORD. “My Spirit, who is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth, or from the mouths of your children, or from the mouths of their descendants from this time on and forever,” says the LORD.

Isaiah 59:21