The issue of the Gospel is not entrance into Paradise but into the Kingdom of God. To be saved is to be delivered from God's wrath when the Kingdom of God comes to the earth. The Christian Gospel is not the Gospel of Paradise but the Gospel of the Kingdom. The thief did not enter the Kingdom of God on the basis that the Lord invited him to enter Paradise.

No person can see or enter the Kingdom of God until he or she is born again. Being born again means Christ is born in us. The part of our personality that is of Christ is the part of our personality that is of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is as a seed that grows in us until it consumes our entire personality.

We cannot bring sin into the Kingdom of God. The part of our personality that is sinful is not as yet in the Kingdom of God.

As we said before, as long as we are pressing into the Kingdom of God, the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus covers our transgressions. The blood serves as a bypass while the highway is under construction. The blood never is employed as an alternate means of entering the Kingdom of God.

Since the Kingdom of God is a transformation of what we are in personality, to attempt to balance the preaching of the laws of the Kingdom of God with appeals to grace and mercy is not appropriate. It is not logical. It will prevent people from entering the travail that forms Christ, the Kingdom, in us.

It is correct and necessary to keep reminding the disciple that the grace of God is covering and protecting him as he struggles forward, and that God loves him, because otherwise he would become discouraged. Entering the Kingdom of God is a fight, a race, a never-ending struggle to overcome, through Christ, the world, Satan, and our own lusts and self-will. As long as we are fighting the good fight of faith, the blood of the cross is keeping us without condemnation.

But today the grace of God is not being preached as a protection and comfort for the embattled soldier of the cross, it is being presented as a substitute for diligence. The worldly, self-seeking, spiritually lazy, careless, lukewarm "believer" is being told he can never be lost, his name can never be blotted from the Book of Life, that God loves him so much he will never be called on to suffer for the Gospel's sake.

The self-serving ministers continually are "comforting" the believers with this satanic lie because they want people to "keep coming to church."

How many people in our congregations would remain if they were told that Divine mercy and grace do not temper the eternal Kingdom law of sowing and reaping?—that if they do not take up their cross and follow the Master they will reap destruction in the Day of the Lord, and no appeal to God's love, mercy, and grace will change this one bit?

How many would remain? The answer is, the majority would flee and look for a "church" where the pastor informed them that "good old Jesus" would never let them suffer.

To be continued.