Not By Any Way Except the Kingdom of God

By Pastor Glynn Adams

May 26, 2024

For over forty-five years, I was an evangelical Christian and pastor.  I so much wanted America to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and do the things that pleased Him.   For twenty years, I was a member of the Moral Majority.  We worked hard recruiting other evangelicals to vote for Ronald Reagan for President.  We thought if we could get Ronald Reagan elected President, America would turn completely to God.  We had a promise from Mr. Reagan, that when he was elected President, He would abolish the Department of Education, close the border, and deal with the problem of immigration.

President Reagan appointed Bill Bennett, a popular conservative, to head the Department of Education.   We never got anything of substance from Bill Bennett.  While President Reagan was supposedly defeating the Soviet Union, what we did get from Mr. Bennett was a deal between Prime Minister Gorbachev and the U. S. educational system to incorporate the Soviet mind-control, indoctrination techniques into our public school system including colleges and universities.

That was the year our public school system quit teaching our students and begin to indoctrinate students in Marxist/Communists/Socialistic ideology and the rest is history.  We have gone from the very best educational system in the world to the worst.  Those who wish to dismantle our Constitution has used the media, music, movies, video games, and a host of other venues but mostly our public school and university systems to change this nation.

I learned some things out of my disappointments in dealing with governments.  You can’t depend on most politicians or any form of government.  Governments are of this world system and are not Christian although they are ministers of God to bear the sword against evil.  Most nations and their cultures are not Christian but are a part of the kingdom of this world system controlled by Satan.

The American Church was ineffective during this time for a various of reasons.  The main reason is evangelicals tried to fuse the Kingdom of God with a preferred version of the kingdom of the world (whether it’s our national interests, a particular form of government, a particular political program, or so on).  Rather than focusing our understanding of God’s Kingdom on the person of Jesus Christ.  I believe many American evangelicals have allowed our understanding of the Kingdom of God to be polluted with political ideals, agendas, and issues.   We ignored the Kingdom of God and put our emphasis on getting the right people elected and what has it gotten us?

Years ago, myself and other evangelicals thought the Kingdom of God was largely about, if not centered on, “taking America back for God,” voting for the Christian candidate, outlawing abortion, outlawing gay marriage, winning the culture war, defending political freedom at home and abroad, keeping the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, fighting for prayer in the public schools and at public events, and fighting to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings.  We thought if we could just get that done, America would change for the better.

All this has gotten us nothing.  We are largely a pagan nation now.  This indulging in the world system and ways have had negative consequences for Christ’s church and for the advancement of God’s Kingdom.  Even more fundamentally, because this myth links the Kingdom of God with certain political stances within American politics, it has greatly compromised the holy beauty of the Kingdom of God to non-Christians.

The only – let me repeat – the only chance we have to change America toward God is to get back to the Kingdom of God and the Way and conduct of Jesus Christ.  The Kingdom Jesus Christ came to establish is “not from this world” (John 18:16) for it operates differently than the governments and nations of this world system do.  By God’s design, this is how the Kingdom of God expands like a mustard seed and transforms the world.  As we allow Christ’s character to be formed in us – as we think and act like Jesus – others come under the loving influence of the Kingdom and eventually their own hearts are won over to the King of Kings.

The rule or reign of God is thus established in their hearts, and the Kingdom of God expands.  We are to manifest God’s beauty by sacrificially loving our enemies, serving the poor, feeding the hungry, freeing the oppressed, welcoming the outcast, embracing the worst of sinners, and healing the sick, casting out demons, and proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom just as Jesus did.  And there is no way to do his without at the same time revolting against everything in our own lives that keep us self-centered, judgmental, condemning, angry, greedy, unloving, and apathetic toward the plight of others.  (It’s called dying to our flesh and abiding in Jesus.)

Nor is there any way to do this without revolting against everything in society – and – we shall see, in the spiritual realm – that keeps people physically, socially, and even the left or whoever spiritually oppressed.  In the Kingdom, we do not war against flesh and blood, but against powers, principalities, and demonic forces of darkness – Satan.

This process may seem slow but God in this Kingdom process, with our allegiance and obedience, can do more in one day than we can do with governments and nations and people in our lifetime.  If Christians don’t change our ways in our nation, we will continue to destroy the church in America and the Kingdom of God will not expand in this nation but evil will continue to expand and influence our citizens as it is doing now.  We must cease from being participants in the kingdom of the world by trusting that if we get certain people elected or certain laws passed, it will control behavior.  Only the power of sacrificial love can change hearts.

At eighty-six, I have absolutely nothing to show for my evangelical and Moral Majority days but a wasted worldly and fleshly effort.  I was sincere but sincerely wrong.   We did it our way but accomplished nothing so I have repented, and God has forgiven me, and has given me a revelation of the Body of Christ in America and the Kingdom of God.  I now have His purpose and I now embrace His Kingdom of God Way, His Kingdom of God truth, and His Kingdom of God Life which is the only Way with Jesus, and I am warning the Body of Christ in America that if all of us do not do the same, nothing else of our human efforts will work but Jesus and the Kingdom of God.

We have to make a choice between the Kingdom of God on earth and the kingdom of man on earth.  When you have something other than the Kingdom of God at the center – mammon, self-seeking, things-seeking, pride, race, hate, lust, lack of love, religion – then you are on the wrong side.  “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.”  (See Matthew 6:25-33 to see what these things are).  Seek first something other than the Kingdom of God and everything else will be subtracted from you.

Things given to us by God are now being subtracted from our nation and our people.  We no longer seek the Kingdom of God.  We seek happy church, easy belief system with no commitment, ear-tickling, we seek titles, riches, numbers and on and on while God is looking for seekers of His Kingdom.  Our nation is now in rebellion and alienation and is unraveling.  If we won’t live with God and seek His Kingdom, then we can’t live with ourselves as a nation.

For many years now, we in the American Culture Church, has actually reduced the Kingdom of God by making it synonymous with the Church.  We have made the Church the Kingdom.  But the Church is relative to something higher than itself – the Kingdom of God.  The Church is built up, the Kingdom is built in – built into the structure of your being from the foundation of the world.  We get into the Church by joining it, you get into the Kingdom by being born again, or from above.

The Kingdom is our structural destiny and without your decision to make it your own makes it coercion and not conversion. If the Church takes you beyond itself to the feet of Jesus and His Kingdom, this is beautiful.  But if the Church makes itself the issue, then this makes the Church self-serving and idolatrous.  Think about this when it is all about our church, our ministry, and our programs.

The American Culture Church has rendered the Kingdom inoperative by identifying the coming of the Kingdom with the second coming of Jesus.  Many think the Kingdom will not come till Jesus Christ comes.  So, we feel we can do nothing now except save individuals; an individual answer now but not a total way of life.  That cuts the nerve of the Kingdom by postponing it till the coming of Jesus.  But Jesus taught that the Kingdom is a total way and program for life NOW.  He went out preaching the gospel of the Kingdom now; it is within you, it is at your door, you are to seek first the Kingdom, heal the sick and brokenhearted, cast out demons, and resist the evil and powers of darkness before us.

So, what Jesus demonstrated to us while He was on this earth was that the Kingdom was an issue and a total issue and total program for the total life now.  We have to fight to establish the Kingdom of God in America.  Each of us has a unique place in the Kingdom and we need to stop competing against each other.  Jesus and the First Century Church in the Book of Acts confronted the issues of His day and He expects His Body in America to do the same.

To not embrace Jesus and His Kingdom of God, has eternal consequences because one day all this will culminate in the return of the King accompanied by legions of angels, at which time Satan’s rule will end, the earth will be purged of all that is inconsistent with God’s rule and the Kingdom of love will be established once and for all.  Those of us who are ruled by Jesus in His Kingdom on this earth will rule with Him in the Millennium.

And all other people who refused to be ruled by Jesus and embrace Jesus’ Kingdom of God process for the very short time we are on this earth but instead embraced the traditions of men in our religious organizations will not fare well at the judgment for Jesus will say, “Why call Me Lord, Lord and do not the things I say, depart from Me, I never knew you.”

God bless, I remain His Warrior and Watchman, Glynn Adams (Thanks for the wonderful men of God such as Dr. Gregory Boyd, Frank Viola, the late Myles Munroe, and E. Stanley Jones on their knowledge of the Kingdom of God.  Also, thanks for the late Jerry Falwell, the late D. James Kennedy, and the late Francis Schaeffer and all my other Moral Majority friends for the learning experience)