The Kingdom Election

By Michael Wolff

Since John the Baptist came proclaiming "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" everything has changed! It's just most don't truly understand what those words mean.The truth is, there are two totally separate and opposed kingdoms here on earth vying for our citizenship. One we are born into that Satan seeks to keep us blindly ignorant of,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reconnections, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869007162

Book preview

Introduction

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen. John 3:11

God leads writers to first live their stories and then tell them. Until now, the stories He’s led me to tell have impacted specific areas of life. This work, however, is different because what He’s led me to know and testify to what I have seen is foundational and impacts every aspect of life!

After 400 years of silence, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand was God’s carefully crafted announcement to sum up His Son’s mission to earth. Now the revelation of the existence of a literal kingdom of heaven on earth has changed the way I perceive, and react to, everything! I believe the impact of first understanding, then pursuing and engaging that kingdom, can be utterly transformational for anyone who elects to.

Those who truly wish to follow Jesus Christ have a clear and critical choice to make: one that will determine the life we lead, the fruit we bear in this world, and perhaps our very salvation. It’s an election of literal citizenship between the only two kingdoms that exist on earth: the kingdom of man and religion, and the kingdom of heaven on earth. One is the easy road that is ours by default and the other the hard road that must be chosen and pursued. One is the matrix Satan uses to keep us blinded to and the other an entirely new reality God wants us to discover!

This book arose out of the Spirit speaking to me about the critical nature of understanding a paradigm shift in normal human thinking: the kingdom that can’t be seen is our true reality and the one we can see is the illusion. We can elect to shed our former paradigm, live in this new reality, and come to find how making the leap of faith into His kingdom answers every other question we may ask. Or we can do nothing, and life trapped in the matrix goes on.

The first time the kingdom of heaven on earth arose in power, Jesus brought it to us along with a stated mission: to open the eyes of the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 10, 15). History has come full circle today as, according to their own polls, over 90 percent of born again Christians have evidently become lost in God’s houses of worship once more.

This has happened because the kingdom has always had an enemy: religion. The powers of darkness use it to deceive those with some faith into thinking they are following Jesus when they are not. Pandering to our desire to maintain citizenship in both kingdoms, religion leaves us in a twilight zone where we are not truly citizens of either. In a word: lost. The gospel Jesus preached—the gospel of the kingdom—exposed both the poser and the truth and awakened those lost children! I believe, like the problem, His answer today is the same as it was then.

In anticipation of Christ’s return, many feel God’s kingdom is arising with purpose and power not seen since Jesus first came to us. Judging from the many voices now being heard from around the world espousing the kingdom of God, I believe this is the message the Spirit most wants us to embrace today. I hope this book will open your eyes to a clear understanding of those nine words and call you to a new conversion: one just as important as the one you experienced when you first felt salvation’s touch.

If you sense there’s more to life with God than you now experience, you’re not finding it at church, and you want that, read on! I now know making the daily election to seek first His kingdom (Matt. 6) is the mountain in life God most wants us to summit. The journey is full of obstacles and steep grades, but Jesus came to show us the way to that something more!

You will not succeed, however, if you cling to your past religious perspectives and church traditions. You must let that old wineskin break and be ready for the new wine of the kingdom the Spirit wants to fill you with. Isaiah’s words must be your constant companion on this journey: Do not call to mind the former things or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new and now it will spring forth. Will you not be aware of it (Isa. 43)?

The greatest something new God ever did was Jesus bringing His kingdom from heaven to earth, it is now springing forth again, and we dare not miss it! We are living in times that demand, if we are to endure them, we elect citizenship in the right kingdom and utterly forsake the other. Once elected, we must then pursue that kingdom as if life itself depends upon it. It does, and once you come to understand it and the role you play, I think you will agree with me.

Expect that something new as moving into the most important nine words ever spoken. Let them begin to sink in, transforming your former perspectives, and with that how you believe and understand and live life. Open your mind to grasp what residency in God’s kingdom of heaven on earth can truly mean to you and let your election process begin today!

Chapter I

The Matrix and the Rabbit Hole

Easy livin’, and I’ve been forgiven, since You’ve taken Your place in my heart.

Uriah Heep

Many Matrix analogies to many subjects have been made since the first movie in the blockbuster trilogy was released in 1999. And when talking about two so starkly contrasting realities fighting for the souls of believers on this earth, a better or more revealing comparison would be hard to find.

In one corner of these paradoxical realities, we have the alluring kingdom of man and its religions, keeping people enslaved to the false influences of the world they are born into. And make no mistake, this kingdom is full of light to lure us in and keep us. Second Corinthians 11 tells us Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, and his servants on earth disguise themselves as workers of righteousness. But it is a false light and a false righteousness.

This kingdom is ours by default, we find comfort in the delusions that make up that false image, and they keep us from looking beyond to other, far better options. For all its seeming comforts and securities this kingdom, like all falsehoods, proves lethal in the end.

In the other corner is the kingdom of heaven on earth. Jesus said we must be born again into this kingdom, and thereafter diligently pursue it, which in the end brings life itself (John 3). These two realities, both in the movie analogy and in life, exist together but cannot be embraced together. His people trying to do so is what led to Jesus’ mission of bringing the kingdom to the lost children of the house of Israel then and what has caused a crying need for that message to arise again today!

Jesus’ stated mission was not to evangelize the gentiles. He would leave that to the apostles to follow. Rather, it was to bring the lost children in His own house into a new kingdom. If the condition of God’s house isn’t right, it can’t possibly portray a proper picture of Him to those on the outside looking in.

What caused God’s children to become lost in their own house? Today, we see history repeating itself because something has caused, according to the polls, over 90 percent of those who call themselves Christian to be lost in their own houses of worship once again.

Jesus is coming to us now through the Holy Spirit to reach these precious lost sheep with the same message He brought in the first century. Nowhere in America is revival more needed than among the sleeping masses in our pews, and nowhere will revival have a greater impact. We have many calling the unsaved to salvation, but who is discipling and calling the saved into the kingdom? How has this current imbalance in emphasis worked for us—for you?

This work is dedicated to those who, like Neo in The Matrix, can’t shake that gnawing feeling something is wrong with modern-day Christianity, and Jesus has so much more to offer them. There is, and He does.

We’ll spend most of our time looking into what the kingdom of heaven on earth is, but for now we can look to the apostle Paul to describe what it is not, which is the kingdom of man, flesh, and religion, and what is behind them. In Ephesians 6:12, he says, For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness—against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

The forces behind the world and the flesh are our true enemies. Powerful forces exist behind both kingdoms. The powers that rule over the kingdom of man and enslave the naïve, the ignorant, and the disobedient are the issue.

Paul also speaks to the weaponry of this kingdom when he says, See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ (Col. 2). So, we see the kingdom of man and religion are backed up by powerful forces using human philosophies, worldly traditions, and deception to keep us from first understanding the kingdom of heaven on earth and then moving into it.

Finally, Paul addresses how disciples of the kingdom of heaven on earth fight the alternate one: We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10). The powers, the deceptions, and the battles are symbolized well in the movie, The Matrix. So, let’s join Neo on his journey from one to the other to begin to understand what is ahead of us.

Are You a Neo?

In The Matrix, Neo (Thomas Anderson, portrayed by Keanu Reeves) is a young man who, by all appearances, is living the good life, yet he senses something is missing. His doubts lead him to encounter a woman named Trinity. She tells him he’s in danger, that she knows all about him, and that she knows a mentor named Morpheus who is looking for him. She says she was seeking the same answers to life Neo is, which led her to Morpheus. She says those same questions are bothering Neo, and the answers are out there. She claims Morpheus will find Neo if he wants to find the answers badly enough.

Many believers caught up in the system of western Christianity—a system I will hereafter refer to as religion or modern-day temple worship, because it mirrors the religious system of buildings and seminary-trained teachers like the one Jesus encountered—are like Neo. By all outward appearances these people are doing well: going to church on Sunday, enjoying good jobs and well-adjusted families, and looking forward to a bright future. But still, something is missing.

These churchgoers read their Bibles and witness men and women living a faith that seems totally foreign to them, leaving them unfulfilled. They compare those lives to what they are gleaning from the religious matrix they can’t see, but are living in, and the two just don’t connect. They know there must be something more to this thing called faith, and they long to live lives like the dangerous, exciting lives of those they read about in the Bible.

They’re looking for answers to life, but they don’t realize the very place they go to get answers is what causes their confusion in the first place. The messages meant to placate, reassure, and calm they receive every Sunday morning and the system of worship they witness at church are actually keeping them from the kingdom lives they seek.

Like Neo, they need people like Trinity to help them find Him, the holy spirit of the movie named Morpheus. Trinities are kingdom citizens who have paid the price themselves and have been sent out to bring others in. I hope to be a Trinity in your life. My mission is to the Neos going to church who think they’re doing it all right but leave every Sunday morning worship service unfulfilled, with a gnawing feeling in their soul there’s so much more to it.

To the many looking for revival in the form of a huge harvest of new souls, I say there is a far greater source of power available to the church. I propose that a million who already know Him becoming fully mature through revival in the kingdom would be far more effective than a million new babes in Christ brought in to begin the journey. We’ve seen the fruit of centuries of new converts being exalted as the answer, but Jesus didn’t command us to make converts. He commanded us to make disciples, so I’ll put my hopes and energies into bringing lost sheep into the kingdom.

That is the revival I believe is coming and the one this book seeks to help foster. But it will start with those lost children like Neo in the beginning of the movie—with you?—being willing to question everything they’ve accepted concerning God and the Christian life, then wanting the answers badly enough to face the gauntlet they will have to run to find the pearl of great price the kingdom is (Matt. 13).

The next character we meet in The Matrix is Morpheus, the Him who calls Neo and says he’s been looking for him. Morpheus then guides Neo away from the agents (Satan’s minions from the kingdom of man and religion) who sense Neo is asking the wrong questions and beginning to see through their counterfeit reality.

When the agents come to his office to find him, Neo follows Morpheus’ instructions to flee. But Neo is captured by the agents, interrogated, and accused of living two lives [in our case, exactly what Jesus’ lost sheep are doing]. They say they know Neo has been contacted by Morpheus, and that Morpheus is the most dangerous man alive—a terrorist in fact.

As promised by Trinity, Neo kept looking for Morpheus until Morpheus found him. Whenever any of religion’s converts keep following the Spirit’s leading to ask the right questions and begin moving toward the kingdom of heaven on earth, the Holy Spirit finds them, and a life and death struggle begins in what were formerly comfortable lives. As is typically the case, the Enemy turns up the heat when he senses he is losing one of his formerly religious churchgoers to true and living faith.

The Devil knows once the convert of religion becomes a citizen of the kingdom, he or she becomes the most dangerous person on earth—a terrorist to his cause, as Neo became to the machines of the Matrix. Satan will begin tracking and sending his minions to confuse and tempt those whose eyes are opening to the truth. He will do all possible to dissuade them from continuing to seek answers to their questions.

Moving on, Morpheus contacts Neo again to tell him he has value he can’t imagine. He says while Neo may have been looking for Morpheus for a short time, Morpheus has been looking for Neo all his life. He then sends Trinity to get Neo. When Trinity finds him, she asks him to trust her and tells him she has been down his road and knows exactly where it leads. She promises a better way, and he decides to go with her. From the moment Trinity arrives and Morpheus enters the scene, Neo’s formerly comfortable life becomes a battlefield! No more comfort, but oh, what revelation of truth and renewed purpose!

God knows those who will be His even before their eyes are opened to the truth. Ephesians 1 tells us He predestined us for adoption before the foundations of the world were established. He will send Trinities into the lives of all who are truly chosen to follow Him, and they will guide them.

Our God, who loves us, will proactively pursue those who desire the transition from the religious matrix to kingdom truth. The Trinities He sends to help us will remove the lie Satan has planted in us, as they did with the mechanical bug the agents planted in Neo. The lie that living with one foot in the kingdom of man and one in the kingdom of God is acceptable is what must be removed.

If you are to take the journey, you must begin by questioning the matrix of flesh and religion that keeps you comfortable. You must come to trust the promptings of the Spirit and the people God sends into your life to bring you into a new reality. Then you must step out in faith and elect the kingdom with everything that is within you! Jesus, the Great Trinity of the Father said, Follow Me (Matt. 4). Paul, a Trinity of Jesus, twice said, Be imitators of me (1 Cor. 4). Trinities are worthy of their high calling and imminently worthy of emulating.

Then Morpheus tells Neo he imagines Neo probably feels a bit like Alice in Wonderland tumbling down the rabbit hole, and that Neo looks like a man who accepts what he sees but is expecting to wake up. Morpheus asks Neo if he believes in fate, and Neo says no because he doesn’t like the idea he’s not in control. Morpheus explains that Neo and he have come together because Neo knows something but can’t explain it. Somehow, he’s felt his entire life something is wrong in his world and doesn’t know what the answer is, but he knows it’s out there. Morpheus says, It’s like a splinter in his mind, driving him mad.

Standing at the precipice of the kingdom of heaven on earth feels a bit like you are Alice standing at the precipice of the rabbit hole. All your Christian life you’ve accepted religion, its compatibility with worldliness, its warm and comfortable pews to settle in on Sundays, and its constant feel-good message of grace, love, and more grace being there for you regardless of what you do with it. You’ve prayed the standard salvation prayer, you believe you’re going to heaven, and all is good.

This is a gospel that’s been driven into your mind since you first prayed that prayer with someone and started going to church. Its message allows you to live any way you want, be as worldly as you want, cause the name of Christ to be sullied by your attitudes, actions, non-actions, and words, and all is forgiven under the banner of grace for the faithful temple worshiper. You can take Holy Communion every week as your Get Out of Jail Free card, and then continue to live the lie, and all’s good with Jesus.

But you might have experienced this gnawing feeling inside that won’t let go. It’s the Holy Spirit telling you that you were made for something far greater than to be a nice person who looks only a bit more righteous than those who hold to a secular, or worldly, lifestyle do. You believe in God but letting total control of your life go doesn’t sit well, for this false gospel tells you that God and control of your own life is possible. You’re trapped in a twilight zone you were not created for, and it’s driving you mad because you know something you can’t explain but you’re assured, like Neo was, it’s out there.

The good news is that splinter of doubt driving you mad is the conviction of the Holy Spirit. He wants you to follow Jesus more closely, abide more deeply, and fly higher than you ever thought possible! He’s revealing the illusion to you in hopes you will seek the truth. The bad news is the doubt won’t go away until you make a decision or, by constantly ignoring it, you continue to be one of the numb souls in the house of God’s lost sheep.

Next, Morpheus asks Neo if he wants to know what the Matrix is. He says it’s everywhere, all around them and can be seen and felt every day. He says it’s an illusion that has been pulled over people’s eyes to blind them to the truth. Morpheus explains we are all slaves born into bondage, in a prison we can’t smell or taste or touch—a prison for our minds.

Morpheus then pulls out two pills: one red and one blue. He tells Neo it is time for him to make a choice. He can remain in his false existence or climb into the rabbit hole and accept a whole new reality. He then explains that after this choice is made there is no turning back. If Neo decides to remain blissfully ignorant and takes the blue pill, the two of them are done, and he goes on believing whatever he wants to believe.

However, if Neo takes the red pill, the two will move on together, and Morpheus will show him the depths of the rabbit hole. He says all he is offering Neo is the truth. Neo takes the red pill, and Morpheus smiles and says, Follow me.

John 4 tells us the Father is seeking those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth, and in John 14 Jesus proclaims Himself to be the way, the truth, and the life. But we will never get to the place where we worship this way or come to know God on the level He desires if we never see through the veil of worldly forces and religion that have been pulled over our eyes to blind us to the truth.

We’re born into bondage in this life. We are sinners before we make Jesus our Lord, and we need to see the true light to be set free. Unfortunately, religion comes along with its gospel of salvation that claims to free us from bondage to sin but doesn’t. It only places us in a different sort of bondage to the deception of a peaceful coexistence between two diametrically opposed kingdoms. This is the matrix believers face, and it becomes the prison for our minds—minds God wants to be transformed through renewing into the freedom of the truth (Rom. 12).

If you relate to Neo and you sense what I say is truth, I hope you can envision me standing before you, holding two pills. One is a safe, comfortable placebo of religion, which will allow you to go on leading the ignorant existence the kingdom of man seeks to trap you in. This is particularly true in a place of plenty like the United States, so similar to the one the folks in Laodicea evidently enjoyed (Rev. 3). Their environment, like ours, led them to be very tepid in their faith, while at the same time believing all was good because they lived in the lap of false comfort and security. It’s not the exciting lives of faith you witness in the great saints of the Bible, or those you respect as authentic Christians you may know, but it’s comfortable and requires little of you.

Like the quote at the beginning of the chapter from one of my favorite rock bands growing up, it’s easy livin’ and you’ve been forgiven since He’s taken His place in your heart. It’s easy, convenient, and comfortable, but in the end it just doesn’t fulfill. And worse, as Morpheus says to Neo, if we choose the placebo, we stand a very good chance of the Spirit being unable to motivate us to obedience.

Envision in my other hand a dangerous, uncomfortable pill leading to a gauntlet of the challenges, defeats, and victories true faith and entrance into the kingdom of heaven on earth are comprised of. Like Morpheus, I’m not promising you a rose garden as religion does. I’m certainly not promising you comfort in this world, just the truth. Comfort in a worldly sense was not in the lexicon of those kingdom saints that in the depths of our souls we wish to be like. Their lives, along with their Master’s, were like running a gauntlet in this life for the ultimate prize in the next.

Jesus promised the gate would be narrow, and the way difficult, that led to life (Matt. 7). In John 12, He warned that those who loved their lives here would lose them, and those who hated their lives in this world would gain eternal life in His kingdom. He also said in John 15 and 17 that the world would hate us if we elected to allow Him to take us out of its grasp. Comfortable? Easy? I don’t think so.

And so, the equation is simple: love worldliness and the worldly will love you, or love Jesus and the worldly will hate you. Love Jesus and you will be off on an adventure that promises no such worldly comforts but is never, ever boring. You cannot reconcile the two kingdoms. There is no red-and-blue pill. If you do not choose to elect the right one, your decision will have been made by default. That is precisely why the kingdom Jesus calls us to is an election. It is choosing that narrow gate, and totally forsaking your life in this world to step through it. It is all on you.

The rest of the movie follows Neo’s journey as he endures a rather painful born again experience, emerges free of the Matrix, and learns to accept and trust in his newfound gifts and life. He becomes a warrior in the battle with the machines and their agents that rages on with few ever even seeing it. He experiences a walk of faith that contains more challenges than he could have imagined. However, the gnawing questions and his boredom with life are things of the past. The journey results in Neo becoming more than he