Description
Understanding the Kingdom Preparing for Kingdom Experience and Expansion The Kingdom Principle by Myles Munroe Ebook
While writing this book, I have at some time privately pondered the following
questions:
1. Why is there so much hatred in the world?
2. Why do we discriminate against people who possess human value?
3. Why is there racism in the world?
4. What are the benefits of war?
5. Why do men in every generation pursue power at the expense of peace?
6. Why are there so many religions?
7. Why do the religions conflict?
8. Why can’t we love one another on earth?
9. Why is no one religion good enough for all men?
10. What can I do to make a difference in this world?
11. Why is there always tension between politics and religion?
12. Will there ever be global peace and harmony on earth?
13. Why has man’s scientific and intellectual advancement not been able to solve his social,
cultural, and religious problems?
14. Is there hope for our world?
15. What about the future for our children? What kind of world will they live in?
Simply asking these questions can ignite a spirit of depression and despair because they
expose the deficiencies and defects of humanity and cast a somber cloud of doubt about our achievements as a race as well as our potential to improve our lot.
However, I wish to declare with positive hope and excitement that this book presents the solution—an idea that is older than time yet as fresh as tomorrow in addressing the heart cries of humanity in our search for a better world. This solution is not found in religion or politics but in an idea that has been misunderstood for six thousand years—a concept that was established at the foundation of creation but then was lost. It is an idea that provides for the value, equality, significance, and purpose for each of the over six billion humans on this planet, all of whom deserve the best in life. This idea is about you and me and something that was always ours by divine right. It is a beautiful idea that has been lying dormant for centuries awaiting our rediscovery.
This book is about your original purpose for existence and the source of meaning behind your life. In these pages you will discover the Creator’s divine motivation, design, and mandate for His creation and your role in that creation. After reading this book, you will be equipped with the knowledge to answer some of the questions listed above. I am convinced also that you will come to believe, as I do, that there is hope for mankind, but only as we reconnect to the source of creation and our Creator’s original concepts for life on planet earth.
Moses, the great freedom fighter and former prince of Egypt, first recorded this idea 3,500 years ago in his writings, documenting the creation narrative. But it was already an ancient concept even in his day. Then, 2,000 years ago, this wonderful idea was reintroduced by a
young country teacher from Galilee but later was misunderstood and lost in the complicated formation of another religion.
What is this idea? The Kingdom!
When one hears the word kingdom, immediately many different ideas, concepts, and pictures come to mind. Most of our concepts in life are the result of our culture, social development, and formal and informal education. We are products of our culture and interpret the world through our mental conditioning.
The concept of kingdom in its original and pure sense has been lost to our modern world. Kingdom as a concept does not exist anymore in the minds of people in Western civilization, particularly in the past few generations, because all the prototypes either have been destroyed or abandoned. Because there are no kingdoms or remnants of kingdoms left in the western world, we live in a generation where the true meaning of the greatest message ever told cannot be fully understood.
It is this concern that this book will attempt to address. The goal of this book is to reintroduce the concepts, principles, and nature of true authentic kingdoms as presented by the Creator and show the superior and advantageous nature of kingdom as compared to any religion, political ideology, government system, or social program. Join me as we explore and understand the precepts and principles of “the Kingdom”
Introduction
The greatest threat to civil society is mankind. Every day the flood of images on our
television screens tells the sad story. Blood, death, diplomacy, conflict, hatred, fear, poverty, starvation, rape, genocide, refugees and human migration, natural disasters, daily bombings, economic uncertainty, immigration, corporate corruption, moral decay, sexual revolution, and clash of counter cultures—all of these testify to the undeniable fact that we are our own worst enemy.
All of our universities, cyber-space technology, blackberries, think tanks, G-8 meetings, fiscal and immigration policies, medical advancements, social experiments, religious conferences, peace marches, and declarations of cease-fire and peace on earth all seem to collapse at the mercy of our own self-imposed destructive spirit. We build buildings and then bomb them; we make weapons and then use them on ourselves; we invent medicines that heal and then withhold them from the sick; we improve the World Wide Web to enhance global communication and then use it to destroy the moral fiber of our children. We are our own greatest enemy.
THE SOURCE OF RELIGION
All of this is compounded by our establishment of sophisticated religions into which we retreat to escape the social chaos we have created. Religion is the most powerful force on earth. Despite the claims of many to the contrary, everyone on earth is religious. Religion is defined as the adherence to a set of beliefs that regulate the moral, social, and ritualistic behavior of the individual. This definition would include the so-called atheist, secularist, communist, socialist, humanist or agnostic, for they all adhere to a belief system of some kind, even if it is the belief that there is no providential component in creation or life as we know it, or a belief in the power of the human as the supreme measure of truth and right.
Virtually every major problem in history and in our contemporary world can be traced to some religious foundation. Religion has motivated the massacre of millions over the years in such horrific events as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and wars related to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counterreformation. Slavery, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, segregation, racial discrimination, and other oppressive practices all have been justified by some religious code or system.
Even this new millennium commenced with definitive acts of religious terrorism. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 sent shock waves through the global nervous system of mankind and continues today to fuel the fires of conflict, hatred, fear, and murder throughout the world. How ironic it is that religion, the very thing that by its nature is supposed to provide the solution to mankind’s problems and provide hope and faith for life, has itself created more problems throughout history than it has solved.
Perhaps this is one reason so many millions have turned away from all forms of institutionalized religions and opted to embrace such philosophies as humanism, communism, and agnosticism. Some have simply given up and lost all hope in humanity. I myself have struggled long to come to grips with this dichotomy of human nature—our desire to worship
and serve some deity that we claim to be benevolent and loving, while at the same time demonstrating a destructive zeal motivated by our “allegiance” to this same deity. Along the way I too lost faith in the concept of religion and in a real sense had to seek for something beyond and superior to these defective practices created by man.
Yet religion is a natural phenomenon that exists in some form in every human culture—and always has. Primitive and modern human societies alike manifest religious rituals that define their culture and communal life. This raises the natural question: What is the source of religion, and why is it such a natural, inherent characteristic of the human spirit?
Thirty-five years of research and personal exploration of this question have led me to the conclusion that religion is the result of an inherent hunger in the human spirit that man cannot define yet must seek to satisfy. This indefinable hunger, arising from a vacuum created by the loss of something man used to possess, drives him to pursue answers beyond his own realm. Generations of humans have attempted to satisfy this hunger through superstitions, sophisticated rituals, customs, and practices that often seem to defy human logic and reason. Most human religious activities attempt to deal with the questions of mankind’s existence and purpose as well as life after death and the unknown spiritual world. Many of these religions are attractive because they promise their adherents power to control the circumstances of their daily lives. Whether or not they can deliver on this promise is another matter.
The purpose of this book is to help you address these questions and to present to you a proposition that goes beyond religion straight to the heart of mankind’s greatest need and offers a solution to this universal human search. I am convinced that every person on earth ultimately is searching for two things in life: power and purpose. All of us look for meaningfor our existence and the power to control our lives and our circumstances; power to determine the future and predict the unknown; power over death and life. We seek this purpose and power in many ways: religion, politics, money, fame, notoriety, recognition, influence. Our pursuit of purpose and power is the primary source and motivation for the development of religion.
ALL RELIGIONS ARE THE SAME
All religions are the same in the sense that they attempt to answer the questions of power and meaning. They all promise power to control life and circumstances and to explain life and death. They all claim to have the truth. They all claim superiority over each other. They all compare and compete with each other. They all demand adherence to their particular belief system while denying the others. They all are motivated by contention and usually thrive in an isolated culture that excludes other segments of humanity. In fact, all religions seem to glory in a spirit of segregation and separatism. Rather than uniting humanity with common power and knowledge of purpose, religion has proven itself instead to be the great divider of mankind.
THE NONRELIGIOUS ANSWER
This is not a religious book but a book about a concept that was introduced at the beginning of the creation of man. That concept is the source of the human search, and its absence is the reason why man “invented” religion. Before I can attempt to discuss this dynamic concept, it is necessary to refer to the document where it was first introduced. In the “book of beginnings” the first book of Moses, the great Hebrew writer and freedom fighter, these words explain the reason for mankind’s search for purpose and power:
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:26 NKJV, emphasis added).
This statement documents the most important declaration ever made regarding mankind. It declares the motivation, nature, purpose, and mandate behind mankind’s creation. As this statement makes clear, dominion is the purpose for man’s creation and existence. The word “dominion” here translates the Hebrew word mam-lakah, which can also be translated as “kingdom,” “sovereign rule,” or “royal power.” In essence, mankind was created to have rulership over the earth.
The first thing man was given by his Creator was a “kingdom.” This initial assignment and mandate of “kingdom” is the Creator’s primary purpose and motivation for His human creatures. Dominion sets the framework for all the desires, passions, and activities of mankind and is the key to his fulfillment and personal and corporate peace. It is also the foundation and source of his need to control and rule his environment and circumstances. It is this kingdom mandate that validates man’s desire for power. Power is natural to the human spirit.
THE LOSS OF POWER
Mankind’s failure through disobedience to his Creator resulted in the loss of his dominion over the earth. He lost his kingdom mandate, his gift of divine power. In short, man lost his kingdom. It is important to note here that when man fell from grace, he lost a kingdom, not a religion. He lost dominion over the earth; he did not lose Heaven. Therefore, mankind’s search is not for a religion or for Heaven, but for his kingdom.
This is why religion can never satisfy the deep hunger in the heart of man. Religion is itself the search. No religion can substitute for the kingdom or fill the vacuum in man’s soul. The hunger of the human heart is for the lost kingdom.
THE MESSAGE OF THE BIBLE
A careful and honest look at the biblical Script will reveal that the fundamental message of this greatly misunderstood Book is about a King and a Kingdom. The Bible is not primarily about a religion or rituals, but about the establishment of a kingdom rulership on this planet from the heavenly realm. It is about a divine project of governing earth from Heaven through mankind. In practical terms, the Bible is about a royal family mandated to colonize earth from Heaven.
This kingdom assignment is the priority of God the Creator and the object of mankind’s inherent pursuit.
MISUNDERSTANDING JESUS
I believe no one who has ever lived has been misunderstood more than the young teacher who happened to be born, not by preference but by promise, through the line of the Old Testament Hebrew patriarch Abraham—Jesus the Christ. Misunderstanding Jesus has caused Muslims to reject Him, Hindus to suspect Him, Buddhists to ignore Him, atheists to hate Him, and agnostics to deny Him. But it just may be those who claim to represent Him the most— Christians—who have in fact misunderstood and, therefore, misrepresented Him the most.
If my last statement sounds outlandish and way off the mark to you, let me encourage you to read the rest of this book before closing your mind to this possibility. In my own life I have had to come to grips with my own personal defects related to my understanding of Jesus and His message. This book will demonstrate beyond doubt that Jesus’ message, assignment, passion, and purpose were not to establish a religion of rituals and rules but rather to
reintroduce a kingdom. Everything Jesus said and did—His prayers, teachings, healings, and miracles—was focused on a kingdom, not a religion. Jesus was preoccupied with the Kingdom; it was His top priority, His heavenly mandate.
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