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truth to communicate a message. Many of these stories started with the phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is like . . . ” The stories were most consistently told to help us to understand the kingdom.
    After Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, before He ascended back to the Father in heaven, He appeared to the disciples and actually spent forty days instructing them, pouring into their lives. We miss this sometimes. We get this idea somehow that Jesus rose from the dead, appeared immediately to handful of people, and then quickly ascended back to heaven; but that wasn’t the case. Now if someone rises from the dead to teach you about something, it’s probably worth paying attention to, wouldn’t you agree? What did He spend these important last days instructing His disciples about? “After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).
    Not only did Jesus primarily speak about the message of the kingdom, when He sent His twelve apostles out on their first missionary journey, He gave them these instructions: “When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:1–2). Out of all the messages Jesus could have instructed His disciples to preach, what message did He instruct them to communicate? It was the message of the good news of the kingdom.
    A little later Jesus sent not just the twelve apostles but also seventy-two followers on a missionary journey, and He gave them all some very clear instructions about what message to preach: “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (Luke 10:8–9).
    Even after Jesus’ earthly ministry was completed and the apostles continued His work on earth without His physical presence, yet empowered by His Spirit, we read in the Book of Acts that they preached the message of the kingdom. For instance, Luke, summing up the life and ministry of the apostle Paul, wrote this about him, “He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!” (Acts 28:31).
    The message of the kingdom was the primary message Jesus preached and was the most consistent message Jesus preached. He charged His apostles to make it their primary message, and they did. I believe the assignment has not changed. We, too, are called to primarily preach the gospel of the kingdom. Much of the church has mixed this up and simply preached a gospel of salvation, that through faith in Jesus you can go to heaven when you die. That’s true, but it is an incomplete message. We are not to simply preach the gospel of salvation, but the gospel of the kingdom.

Chapter 3

RESTORING THE KINGDOM
    T HE MORE I have studied, the more I have become convinced that when Jesus began His ministry with the proclamation “the kingdom of God is near,” it was the central thesis statement of His entire ministry. Everything else Jesus taught and everything else Jesus did was simply commentary on what He meant when He said the kingdom of God is near.
    In some translations of the Bible the phrase “the kingdom of God is near” reads “the kingdom of God is at hand” ( NAS ). When Jesus said, “The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near.” (Mark 1:15), I believe it is a clear indication that the time had been fulfilled for His kingdom to come and replace another kingdom that was already in place. This is definitely how the Jews in Jesus’ day understood it. They had been watching and waiting for centuries for the Messiah to arrive and usher in the kingdom of God here on earth.
    So when Jesus arrived and pronounced the kingdom was near, at hand, or arriving