Gospel of the Kingdom By Conrad Gaard

In these days of uncertainty and confusion, it is encouraging that there is a very lively interest in the coming elections. People are becoming aware of the fact that the fate of our nation and the world now hang in the balance. But it is a sad, and even a tragic, thing that most of our people and pratically all of our leaders completely ignore the instructions and the admonitions which have been recorded for us in the Holy Scriptures. Christians generally understand and accept the free gift of everlasting life offered to every dying child of Adam individually and personally in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, but very few of them understand the plan and the pattern for the establishment on the earth of that kingdom for which Jesus told his disciples to pray. The Bible story deals primarily with two aspects of the Lord's program for the restitution of all things which he hath revealed throught the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began, namely (1) personal salvation from the condemnation of death under which every child of Adam is born, and (2) the establishment of God's Kingdom of righteousness and justice among men right here on earth. According to the clear revelations of the prophets, the Lord called out and set apart a servant people, whom he has been training and preparing to become the nucleus of his kingdom on the earth, and in the scriptures we find hundreds of marks of identification by which these servant peoples were to be known in the last days. Furthermore, the prophets have given us a pre-written history of these called out peoples. When we compare these marks of identification and the pre-written record of the prophets with secular history and the discoveries of the archeologists we are forced to the inescapable conclusion that the freedom loving Celto-Anglo-Saxon and kindred peoples are the ''people of the book'' and then too we find that our own nation, ''We the People of the United States'' and the ''British Commonwealth of Nations' are the ''Great People'' and the ''Great Company of Nations'' to whom the Lord has assigned a definite mission in the consumation of his great plan of the ages. However, many honest souls, often times ask me: ''Well even if the Celto-Anglo-Saxon peoples are the so-called 'lost sheep of the house of Israel', what difference does it make?'' This is a fair question and I shall present some of the facts which go to show that it really does make a difference whether or not we are the Bible people and a Bible nation. First of all the inspired writers of the Bible make it very clear that it is the Lord's avowed purpose to establish his own kingdom of righteousness right here on this earth and when we read the Bible story carefully it also becomes very clear that this kingdom of God on the earth is as literal and as real as are the imperfect kingdoms of this world under which we now live. Furthermore, through his prophets, the Lord emphatically declares that the ''children of Abraham'' which come down through the line of Isaac and Jacob-Israel are to become this great servant nation which all of the other peoples and nations of the earth shall be blessed. And the Biblical writers tell us most definately that the resurrected Christ shall be the king ruling over this great nation. The prophet Isaiah wrote: ''Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder,'' and in the next verse he explains: ''of the increase his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgement and justice, from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.'' Now David's throne was in the old kingdom of Israel, therefore this prophecy means that this promised son is to ''order and establish judgement and justice'' in the restored kingdom of Israel. This is also borne out by the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, that the Lord God would give unto her son, ''the throne of his father David and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever.'' Under the circumstances, does it make a difference whether or not we are modern Israel? It most certainly does - for if we are modern Israel in the world today it means that we must, and we shall, fulfill the mission that the Lord assigned to his servant people. And it therefore follows that we must as a people and a nation give heed to the lord's admonitions and instructions to his people. Through his prophet Moses, the Lord codified his own ''eternal rules of order and right'' as the commandments, statutes and judgements of the Lord and he ordained that this codified law should be the national constitution and body of law for his servant nation. Now if we are the people whom the Lord called as his servant people, then we must adopt that divine constitution for the administration of judgment and justice in the nation. To sum up the matter - if we are modern Israel in the world today, then we must acknowledge Jesus Christ as our actual king and we must return to God's own perfect national constitution, under which Jesus, as king, shall administer judgement and justice to the people. So we see that it does make a very real and vital difference whether or not we are modern Israel. There is also another aspect of this matter which must also be taken ito account, for if we are modern Israel - i ''We, the People of the U.S.'' are the ''Great People'' which the tribe of Manasseh should become in the last days, according to Jacob's prophecy when he blessed his sons - then the instructions for the administration of national and international affairs as given by the Lord through his prophets, apply to the very problems now causing so much controversy in our nation and the world. Now one of the basic administrations given to us as a nation is that we should not enter into pacts and agreements with those nations which do not accept the fundamental principles of truth and justice and righteousness which must be the foundation of the administration of equal justice to all men. And through his prophets the Lord told us that ant attempts to establish peace and security in the earth through pacts and agreements which rest on no higher authority than armed might will not bring peace to the peoples of the earth. For instance, the prophet Isaiah warns: ''associate yourselves, ye nations, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel together and it shall come to naught.'' Surely it should be apparent to everyone now that all attempts to ''associate the nations of the earth'' have failed, and all the ''counsels of the nations'' have come to naught.'' I am well aware of the fact that the collectivist one worlders would call the instructions of the Lord, as given through his prophets in the scriptures, isolationist and reactionary: and, while I do not propose to enter into any argument or debate on this matter, I do want to point out that the so-called ''internationalists'' have dominated both national and international policies of all of the free western nations for more than a century, during which time the rights of free man have been abriged and circumscribed on the spurious pretext that this was necessary to maintain freedom and to give more freedom to the people of the earth. The essence of the collectivist world program seems to be that we can ''give freedom to other men'' by giving up some of our own freedoms. I know that sounds foolish, but honestly now, isn't that just what we are doing at the present time? Let's be realistic in this matter. Freedom is not a commodity to be divided. In other words no people can give freedom to other peoples by giving up a part of their own freedom. Such a course of action is merely playing into the hands of bureaucrats and would-be masters. And the collectivist planners tell us that we must give control over our lives and actions to governmental commissars in order to control the production and distribution of the necessities of life, but here to the fallacy of this program is proven by the testimony of history. In all the history of time no people have ever become prosperous under the control of dictators. But America showed the way to prosperity and freedom for all when men were free to work out their own destinies under simple ''rules of order and right'' designed to protect the individual in the free enjoyement of his rights as a free man. It is a matter of record that our American free way of life was established of the eternal ''rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained,'' and the prophets have warned us that we will lose our free way of life if we enter into pacts and agreements with those nations and peoples who do not acknowledge these eternal ''rules of order and right.'' In Psalm 33, the Psalmist cries: ''YHVH bring the counsel of the nations to naught; he maketh the plans of men of none effect. The counsel of YHVH standeth forever, the purposes of his heart to all ages. Blessed be the nation whose God is YHVH; and the people he hath chosen for his own inheritance.'' After WW1, the nations of the world ''took counsel together'' to preserve peace and democracy in the earth, but all these counsels were of ''none effect.'' And then when WW2 ended the nations of the world again took ''counsel together'' but these counsels too proved ineffective. But still the only program our statesmen and leaders and politicians offer is to continue such international counsels. When, oh when, will our people awaken to the fact that in the scriptures we have a perfect ''peace program'' for the very times in which we now live, for; the counsel of YHVH standeth forever, the purposes of his heart to all ages.'' Such a return to the Lord means more than merely accepting Jesus Christ as the saviour of the individual, we must collectively and nationally return to the laws of the Lord as the foundation for the administration of our national, as well as our personal, life and actions. In the scriptures we find the perfect blue-print for the perfect government program which it is our divinely appointed mission to establish on the earth. And when we, as a people, turn to this perfect plan for social organization then, not only shall we insure lasting peace and security and freedom for ourselves, but we shall also become a ''light to all of the other peoples and nations of the earth'' to lead them ino a truly new order of the ages, namely, the Kingdom of God on the earth, FOR THAT IS THE DESTINY OF AMERICA.