The gospel of the kingdom is the most powerful message in the entire Bible. So powerful its net effect is to radicalize people to Jesus Christ.
The glorious gospel of the kingdom is not about going to heaven or making the world a better place.
It’s a piercing message that is far more profound. It is the gospel that Jesus, Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles preached.
The result? The world was shaken to its core.
The best word to describe the gospel of the kingdom is insurgence.
What Is the Insurgence?
During the last weekend of July 2017, I spoke at a conference in Central Florida. People attended from all over the United States, Australia, New Zealand, China, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the UK, UAE, and Canada.
The conference was marked by great diversity. Racial diversity, diversity in age, culture, social status, and so forth. It
was a microcosm of God’s kingdom.
What took place that weekend was remarkable. A piece of heaven broke through to all of us.
During the conference, I did my dead-level best to unleash the titanic, explosive, cataclysmic, earth-shaking, life-altering gospel of the kingdom that was preached by all the apostles in the first century and that turned the world into a mad rage.
The second night of the conference, something incredible happened. A number of people pulled me aside after the meeting and said things like, “I’ve not been so shaken by the Lord through a message.” Another said, “What took place was electric. Something very special happened in that room that I can’t fully describe.” Others said they were deeply stirred and rocked by what took place.
We didn’t plan this nor foresee it, but the next morning, a number of people expressed their desire to be baptized. So I asked a brother and a
sister in Christ to baptize anyone who wanted to respond to the gospel of the kingdom. Those who responded were baptized in the hotel pool where the conference was held.
Each person being baptized gave a moving testimonial about severing their ties with the world system and making their entrance into the glorious kingdom of God. More than half the conference attendees came out to witness the baptisms and rejoice. (At a public hotel pool!) I was on the tenth floor observing the entire event, and I could hear the clapping and singing from there. The sight brought me to tears.
The next day, I returned home humbled and profoundly thankful. To my mind, the weekend was historical. Many who attended wrote me testimonials of how their lives were turned upside down.
Here is the moving testimony of a woman named Ruth. She wrote it, then read it aloud to everyone just before she was baptized Saturday afternoon.
Thirty-four years ago I responded to a very weak and inaccurate gospel message that I had been taught all of my life. It was a message that was mixed with half truth and half lies. It was a perverted “gospel message” based on works and fueled by fear. I was baptized into that system of control. It’s important for me to be re-baptized today to declare my renunciation with that system and my commitment to the real, true gospel and to our Lord Jesus Christ. So today I do this before you as witnesses, God, and all the heavenly beings, both holy and the demonic beings, because they need to hear my renunciation and proclamation:
By my baptism today, I publicly declare my intentions to completely break ties of loyalty to and come away from this world’s systems and all of its entanglements, distractions, and counterfeits. I choose to forsake all that gets in the way of me fully coming into the kingdom of God—into the Lord Jesus Himself.
I repent of being baptized into a legalistic system that taught my acceptance by Him was based on my performance in addition to what Jesus did for me. I renounce any agreement with the fear that this belief produced in me if I didn’t measure up. Although I believed I would go to heaven, I did not know then what it meant to forsake all and to fully enter His kingdom; to “come follow Him.”
I sever my ties to a mixture of lies and half truth, which resulted in a lack of seeing the power of the pure gospel’s effect in my life. I repent of not receiving the fullness of the power of the resurrected Christ in my heart, but instead followed a lie of Him still on the cross. I choose to live by the power of the resurrected Christ and by His grace to appropriate my full inheritance that He paid for, to be a radical laid-down lover of Jesus who will bring this kingdom everywhere I go, to be the royal mature bride that my Beloved deserves and to impact the world with His love.
By His grace, I have counted the cost as best as I know, and I choose to be “all in” toward Him and all out of the world today and forever. I go under the water so that I might die to myself and everything that has tentacles around me, including compromising the gospel. I come up in newness of life, into His glorious light, putting to death all known or unknown agreements to darkness or to living by my flesh or man’s systems. I will be a new creation, a new citizen who is fully immersed in God’s kingdom! I will live by Jesus’ gospel, not any version of man’s invention. Today is a new day, a new start!
~Ruth
What I’ve described above is an example of the insurgence.
The insurgence is no less than the recovery of the radical gospel of the kingdom of God—a gospel that I believe will once again shake this earth.
A Prayer for the Insurgence
Lord, I ask that You push back the limits of Your mercy. I confess that the message in this book is beyond me. I’m totally incapable of
delivering Your Word within these pages, so I lean hard on You as I craft each sentence.
Give every person who reads this volume a deeper comprehension into Your eternal purpose and everlasting kingdom. Motivate
and inspire each one to complete this book and take action on its challenging, yet liberating message. And out of it, gain a people for
Yourself who will raise a new standard in the earth of what it means to obey the gospel of the kingdom.
Make them a witness and a testimony of the present—yet ancient—insurgence.
Amen.
Adapted from Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom by Frank Viola
