Excerpted from The Jesus I Never Knew

Each fall the childhood church I attended sponsored a prophecy conference. Silver-haired men of national repute would stretch their prophecy charts—stitched bedsheets covered with Day-Glo renditions of beasts and armies— across the platform and expound on "the last days" we were living in.

I listened in fear and fascination as they drew a straight line south from Moscow to Jerusalem and sketched in the movements of million-strong armies who would soon converge on Israel. I learned that the ten members of Europe's Common Market had recently fulfilled Daniel's prophecy about the beast with ten horns. Soon all of us would wear a number stamped on our foreheads, the mark of the beast, and be registered in a computer somewhere in Belgium. Nuclear war would break out and the planet would teeter on the brink of annihilation, until at the last second Jesus himself would return to lead the armies of righteousness.

That scenario seems far less likely now that Russia has declined and the Common Market (now European Union) has expanded beyond ten members. What sticks with me, though, is not so much the particulars of prophecy as their emotional effects on me. I grew up at once terrified and desperately hopeful. In high school I took courses in Chinese and my brother studied Russian so that one of us could communicate with invading armies from either direction. My uncle went further, packing up his family and moving to Australia. Yet in the midst of this terror we also had hope: though I felt certain the world would soon end, nevertheless I banked all my childhood faith on the belief that somehow Jesus would conquer.

Later, as I read church history, I learned that often before—during the first decades of Christianity, the end of the tenth century, the late 1300s, the Napoleonic era, World War I, the Axis of Hitler and Mussolini—visions of the end times had bubbled to the surface. As recently as the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was being branded the Antichrist, the new trigger-man for the apocalypse. Each time, Christians went through a passionate cycle of fear, hope, and sheepish disillusionment. The end times had not arrived after all.

I also learned that the Jewish race has repeatedly undergone the exact same cycle, never more poignantly than in the first century A.D. At that time many Jews expected the Messiah to arise and liberate them from the terrors of Rome, a hope that the man from Nazareth had first ignited, and then dashed. To understand Jesus and the mission he left behind after his ascension, I need to return once more to his own era, to place myself again in his time, to listen to him speak on the topic he favored more than any other: the kingdom of God. What he said about God's kingdom in the first century has great relevance to me today in the twentieth.

In Jesus' day, Jews were poring over the same passages from Daniel and Ezekiel that would later figure so prominently in the prophecy conferences of my childhood. We disagreed on some details— Northern Europe was then a forest full of barbarians not a Common Market, and Russia was unknown—yet our visions of the Messiah matched: we expected a conquering hero. Anyone who declared "The kingdom of God has come upon you!" would surely awaken in his listeners' minds the image of a political leader who would arise, take charge, and defeat the most powerful empire ever known.

In such an environment, Jesus well understood the explosive power of the word Messiah. In William Barclay's judgment, "If Jesus had publicly claimed to be Messiah, nothing could have stopped a useless flood tide of slaughter." Although Jesus did not use the title himself, he accepted it when others called him Messiah, and the Gospels show a gradual dawning on his disciples that their teacher was none other than the long-awaited King.

Jesus encouraged such beliefs by using the word that quickened the pulse of his people. "The kingdom of heaven is near," he proclaimed in his very first message. Each time he spoke it, that word stirred memories to life: bright banners, glittering armies, the gold and ivory of Solomon's day, the nation of Israel restored. What was about to happen, Jesus said, would far surpass anything from the past: "For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it." On another occasion he announced provocatively, "Now one greater than Solomon is here."

Zealots stood at the edge of Jesus' audience, armed and well-organized guerrillas spoiling for a fight against Rome, but to their consternation the signal for revolt never came. In time, Jesus' pattern of behavior disappointed all who sought a leader in the traditional mold. He tended to flee from, rather than cater to, large groups. He insulted the memory of Israel's glory days, comparing King Solomon to a common day lily. The one time a crowd tried to crown him king by force, he mysteriously withdrew. And when Peter finally did wield a sword on his behalf, Jesus healed the victim's wounds.

To the crowds' dismay, it became clear that Jesus was talking about a strangely different kind of kingdom. The Jews wanted what people have always wanted from a visible kingdom: a chicken in every pot, full employment, a strong army to deter invaders. Jesus announced a kingdom that meant denying yourself, taking up a cross, renouncing wealth, even loving your enemies. As he elaborated, the crowds' expectations crumbled.

By the time Jesus was nailed to wooden crossbeams, everyone had lost hope and fallen away. Scholars report that first-century Jews had no concept of a suffering Messiah. As for the Twelve, no matter how often or how plainly Jesus warned them of his impending death, it never sank in. No one could imagine a Messiah dying.

The word kingdom meant one thing to Jesus and quite another to the crowd. Jesus was rejected, in large part, because he did not measure up to a national image of what a Messiah was supposed to look like.

A question has long puzzled me. In view of their expectations, why did Jesus keep arousing his followers' hopes with the word kingdom? (It appears fifty-three times in Matthew's gospel alone.) He insisted on associating himself with a term that everyone seemed to misunderstand. What did Jesus mean by the kingdom of God?

It is a great irony that the one who so failed the expectations of his people became known to all history as a king—so much so that a form of the word became his "last name." Christ, or Christos in Greek, translates the Hebrew word Messiah, which means anointed and refers to the ancient manner of coronating kings. Now, all of us who call ourselves Christ-ians carry an echo of the word that so baffled the people of Jesus' day. I wonder, Do we understand the kingdom of God any better?

Jesus never offered a clear definition of the kingdom; instead he imparted his vision of it indirectly through a series of stories. His choice of images is telling: everyday sketches of farming, fishing, women baking bread, merchants buying pearls.

The kingdom of heaven is like a farmer going out to sow his seed. As every farmer knows, not all the seed you plant ends up yielding crops. Some falls among rocks, some gets eaten by birds and field mice, some gets crowded out by weeds. All this seems natural to a farmer, but heretical to a traditional kingdom-builder. Are not kings judged by their power, their ability to impose their will on a populace, their strength in repelling enemies? Jesus was indicating that the kingdom of God comes with a resistible power. It is humble and unobtrusive and coexistent with evil—a message that surely did not please patriotic Jews intent on revolt.

Consider the mustard seed, a seed so tiny it can fall to the ground and lie unnoticed by human beings and birds alike. Given time, though, the seed may sprout into a bush that overtakes every other plant in the garden, a bush so large and verdant that birds come and nest in its branches. God's kingdom works like that. It begins so small that people scorn it and give it no chance for success. Against all odds, God's kingdom will grow and spread throughout the world, bringing shade to the sick, the poor, the imprisoned, the unloved.

The kingdom of heaven is like a businessman who specializes in rare gems. One day he finds a pearl gorgeous enough to make princesses drool with envy. Recognizing its value, he liquidates his entire business in order to buy it. Although the purchase costs everything he owns, not for a moment does he regret it. He makes the trade with joy, as the crowning achievement of his life: the treasure will outlive him, enduring long after the family name has disappeared. God's kingdom works like that. The sacrifice—deny yourself, take up your cross—turns out to be a shrewd investment, its outcome not remorse but joy beyond all telling.

These are the stories Jesus told. As I review the parables of the kingdom, though, I realize how far my own understanding has drifted from such homespun images. I tend to envision the same kind of kingdom the Jews did: a visible, powerful kingdom. I think of Constantine leading his troops, crosses emblazoned on his armor, with the slogan "By this sign conquer." I think of the armies marching across the bedsheets at the prophecy conferences. Obviously, I need to listen again to Jesus' description of the kingdom of God.

Those of us in the twentieth century, an era that has few literal "kings," conceive of kingdoms in terms of power and polarization. We are the children of revolution. Two centuries ago in the U.S. and France the oppressed rose up and overturned the reigning powers. Later, in places like Russia and China, Marxists led revolts with an ideology that became a kind of religion: they began, in fact, to view all history as an outgrowth of class struggle, or dialectical materialism. "Workers, unite! Throw off your chains!" cried Marx, and so they did for much of our bloody century.

For a period of time I tried to read the Gospels through the eyes of liberation theology. Ultimately I had to conclude that, whatever else it is, the kingdom of God is decidedly not a call to violent revolution. First-century Jews were doubtless looking for such an upheaval. Battle lines were clear: oppressed Jews versus the bad-guy Romans—pagans who collected taxes, trafficked in slaves, regulated religion, and quashed dissent. Under these conditions the Zealots issued a call much like Marx's: "Jews, unite! Throw off your chains!" But Jesus' message of the kingdom had little in common with the politics of polarization.

As I read the Gospels, Jesus seems to speak a two-pronged message. To the oppressors, he had words of warning and judgment. He treated the powers of government with an attitude of mild contempt, dismissing Herod as "that fox" (a Jewish expression for a worthless or insignificant person) and agreeing to pay a temple tax "so that we may not offend them." He placed little store in politics; it was government, after all, that tried to exterminate him.

To the oppressed, his primary audience, Jesus offered a message of comfort and consolation. He called the poor and the persecuted "blessed." Never did he incite the oppressed to rise up and throw off their chains. In words that must have galled the Zealots, he commanded, "Love your enemies." He invoked a different kind of power: love, not coercion.

People who looked to Jesus as their political savior were constantly befuddled by his choice of companions. He became known as a friend of tax collectors, a group clearly identified with the foreign exploiters, not the exploited. Though he denounced the religious system of his day, he treated a leader like Nicodemus with respect, and though he spoke against the dangers of money and of violence, he showed love and compassion toward a rich young ruler and a Roman centurion.

In short, Jesus honored the dignity of people, whether he agreed with them or not. He would not found his kingdom on the basis of race or class or other such divisions. Anyone, even a half-breed with five husbands or a thief dying on a cross, was welcome to join his kingdom. The person was more important than any category or label.

I feel convicted by this quality of Jesus every time I get involved in a cause I strongly believe in. How easy it is to join the politics of polarization, to find myself shouting across the picket lines at the "enemy" on the other side. How hard it is to remember that the kingdom of God calls me to love the woman who has just emerged from the abortion clinic (and, yes, even her doctor), the promiscuous person who is dying of AIDS, the wealthy landowner who is exploiting God's creation. If I cannot show love to such people, then I must question whether I have truly understood Jesus' gospel.

A political movement by nature draws lines, makes distinctions, pronounces judgment; in contrast, Jesus' love cuts across lines, transcends distinctions, and dispenses grace. Regardless of the merits of a given issue—whether a pro-life lobby out of the Right or a peace-and-justice lobby out of the Left—political movements risk pulling onto themselves the mantle of power that smothers love. From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.

If I am tempted to see the kingdom of God as one more power structure, I need only turn to the account of the trial in Jerusalem, a scene that brings together the two kingdoms in striking opposition. On that climactic day the rulers of the "kingdom of this world" confronted Jesus and his kingdom face-to-face.

Two kings, Herod and Jesus, personified very different kinds of power. Herod had legions of Roman soldiers to enforce his will, and history records how Herod used his power: he stole his brother's wife, locked up all dissenters, beheaded John the Baptist as a party trick. Jesus too had power, but he used it compassionately, to feed the hungry and heal the sick. Herod had a gold crown, palaces, guards, and all the visible tokens of royalty. For Jesus, the closest thing to a formal coronation, or Messiah's "anointing," occurred in an embarrassing scene when a disreputable woman poured perfume over his head. He got the title "King of the Jews" as a criminal sentence. His "crown," made of thorns, was merely one more source of pain. And though he could have called on a legion of angels for protection, he declined. Consistently, Jesus refused to use coercive power. He knowingly let one of his disciples betray him and then surrendered himself without protest to his captors. It never ceases to amaze me that Christian hope rests on a man whose message was rejected and whose love was spurned, who was condemned as a criminal and given a sentence of capital punishment.

Despite Jesus' plain example, many of his followers have been unable to resist choosing the way of Herod over that of Jesus. The Crusaders who pillaged the Near East, the conquistadors who converted the New World at the point of a sword, the Christian explorers in Africa who cooperated with the slave trade—we are still feeling aftershocks from their mistakes. History shows that when the church uses the tools of the world's kingdom, it becomes as ineffectual, or as tyrannical, as any other power structure. And whenever the church has intermingled with the state (the Holy Roman Empire, Cromwell's England, Calvin's Geneva), the appeal of the faith suffers as well. Ironically, our respect in the world declines in proportion to how vigorously we attempt to force others to adopt our point of view.

Sheep among wolves, a tiny seed in the garden, yeast in bread dough, salt in meat: Jesus' own metaphors of the kingdom describe a kind of "secret force" that works from within. He said nothing of a triumphant church sharing power with the authorities. The kingdom of God appears to work best as a minority movement, in opposition to the kingdom of this world. When it grows beyond that, the kingdom subtly changes in nature.

For this reason, I must say in an aside, I worry about the recent surge of power among U.S. Christians, who seem to be focusing more and more on political means. Once Christians were ignored or scorned; now they are courted by every savvy politician. Evangelicals especially are identified with a certain political stance, so much so that the news media use the terms "evangelical" and "religious right" interchangeably. When I ask a stranger, "What is an evangelical Christian?" I get an answer something like this: "Someone who supports family values and opposes homosexual rights and abortion."

This trend troubles me because the gospel of Jesus was not primarily a political platform. The issues that confront Christians in a secular society must be faced and addressed and legislated, and a democracy gives Christians every right to express themselves. But we dare not invest so much in the kingdom of this world that we neglect our main task of introducing people to a different kind of kingdom, one based solely on God's grace and forgiveness.

Passing laws to enforce morality serves a necessary function, to dam up evil, but it never solves human problems. If a century from now all that historians can say about evangelicals of the 1990s is that they stood for family values, then we will have failed the mission Jesus gave us to accomplish: to communicate God's reconciling love to sinners. Jesus did not say, "All men will know you are my disciples...if you just pass laws, suppress immorality, and restore decency to family and government," but rather "...if you love one another." He made that statement the night before his death, a night when human power, represented by the might of Rome and the full force of Jewish religious authorities, collided head-on with God's power. All his life, Jesus had been involved in a form of "culture wars" against a rigid religious establishment and a pagan empire, yet he responded by giving his life for those who opposed him. On the cross, he forgave them. He had come, above all, to demonstrate love: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son..."

When the Roman governor Pilate asked Jesus point-blank whether he was king of the Jews, he replied, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." Allegiance to a kingdom "not of this world" has emboldened Christian martyrs who, ever since the death of their founder, have met resistance from kingdoms that are of this world. Unarmed believers used that text against their Roman persecutors in the Colosseum, Tolstoy used it to undermine the authority of the tsars, and civil rights marchers used it to challenge apartheid laws in the southern United States and in South Africa. It speaks of a reign that transcends the boundaries—and sometimes the laws— of nation and empire.

On another occasion, Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come. He replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

Clearly, the kingdom of God operates by a set of rules different from any earthly kingdom's. God's kingdom has no geographical borders, no capital city, no parliament building, no royal trappings that you can see. Its followers live right among their enemies, not separated from them by a border fence or a wall. It lives, and grows, on the inside of human beings.

Those of us who follow Jesus thus possess a kind of dual citizenship. We live in an external kingdom of family and cities and nationhood, while at the same time belonging to the kingdom of God. In his command, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's," Jesus underscored the fundamental tension that can result. For the early Christians, loyalty to God's kingdom sometimes meant a fatal clash with Caesar's visible kingdom. Historian Will Durant, in The Story of Civilization, concludes:

There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned and oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.

We have seen vivid demonstrations of the clash of kingdoms in our own time. In communist countries—Albania, the U.S.S.R., China—the government forced the Christian church to go underground so that it became, quite literally, invisible. In waves of persecution during the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, Chinese believers were fined, imprisoned, and tortured, and local regulations prohibited most religious activities. Yet despite this government oppression, a spiritual revival broke out that could well be the largest in the history of the church. As many as fifty million believers gave their allegiance to an invisible kingdom even as the visible kingdom made them suffer for it.

In fact, problems seem to arise when the church becomes too external, and gets too cozy with government. As one U.S. legislative aide said after a tour of China, "I believe there is a word of caution for us in the apolitical nature of China's underground church. They fervently pray for their leaders but maintain a careful independence. We are privileged to live in a participatory democracy, but having worked in American politics for almost a decade, I have seen more than a few believers trade in their Christian birthright for a mess of earthly pottage. We must continually ask ourselves: Is our first aim to change our government or to see lives in and out of government changed for Christ?"

To rephrase her question, Is our first aim to change the external, political kingdom or to further God's transcendent kingdom? In a nation like the U.S., the two easily get confused.

I grew up in a church that proudly displayed the "Christian flag" next to the Stars and Stripes, and we would pledge allegiance to both. People would apply to the United States passages from the Old Testament that were obviously intended for a time when God worked through a visible kingdom on earth, the nation of Israel. For example, I often heard this verse quoted as a formula for national revival: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." The principle may apply in a general way, of course, but the specific national promise was given as part of God's covenant relationship with the ancient Hebrews; its occasion was the dedication of Solomon's temple, God's dwelling place on earth. Have we any reason to assume God has a similar covenant arrangement with the U.S.?

Indeed, have we any indication that God now judges the U.S. or any other country as a national entity? Jesus told his parables of the kingdom in part to correct such nationalistic notions. God is working not primarily through nations, but through a kingdom that transcends nations.

As I now reflect on Jesus' stories of the kingdom, I sense that much uneasiness among Christians today stems from a confusion of the two kingdoms, visible and invisible. Each time an election rolls around, Christians debate whether this or that candidate is "God's man" for the White House. Projecting myself back into Jesus' time, I have difficulty imagining him pondering whether Tiberius, Octavius, or Julius Caesar was "God's man" for the empire. The politics of Rome were virtually irrelevant to the kingdom of God.

Nowadays, as the U.S. grows increasingly secularized, it appears that church and state are heading in different directions. The more I understand Jesus' message of the kingdom of God, the less alarm I feel over that trend. Our real challenge, the focus of our energy, should not be to Christianize the United States (always a losing battle) but rather to strive to be God's kingdom in an increasingly hostile world. As Karl Earth said, "[The Church] exists...to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to [the world's] own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise."

Ironically, if the United States is truly sliding down a slippery moral slope, that may better allow the church—as it did in Rome and also in China—to set up "a new sign...which is full of promise." I would prefer, I must admit, to live in a country where the majority of people follow the Ten Commandments, act with civility toward each other, and bow their heads once a day for a bland, nonpartisan prayer. I feel certain nostalgia for the social climate of the 1950s in which I grew up. But if that environment does not return, I will not lose any sleep. As America slides, I will work and pray for the kingdom of God to advance. If the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church, the contemporary political scene hardly offers much threat.

In Stuttgart, Germany, in 1933 Martin Buber held a discussion with a New Testament scholar on why he, a Jew who admired Jesus, nevertheless could not accept him. To Christians, he began, Jews must seem stubborn as they steadfastly wait for a Messiah to come. Why not acknowledge Jesus as Messiah? "The church rests on its faith that the Christ has come, and that this is the redemption which God has bestowed on mankind. We, Israel, are not able to believe this..., We know more deeply, more truly, that world history has not been turned upside down to its very foundations—that the world is not redeemed. We sense its unredeemedness." Buber's classic statement took on added poignancy in the next few years, for 1933 was the year Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, putting to rest any doubts about the unredeemed character of the world. How could a true Messiah allow such a world to continue?

The only possible explanation lies in Jesus' teaching that the kingdom of God comes in stages. It is "Now" and also "Not yet," present and also future. Sometimes Jesus stressed the present aspect, as when he said the kingdom is "at hand" or "within you." At other times he suggested the kingdom lay in the future as when he taught his disciples to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Martin Buber is correct to observe that God's will is apparently not being done on earth as it is in heaven. In some important ways, the kingdom has not fully come.

Probably Jesus himself would have agreed with Buber's assessment of the state of the world. "In this world, you will have trouble," he told his disciples. He also warned of impending disasters: "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come." The presence of evil guarantees that history will be full of strife and that the world will look unredeemed. For a period of time, the kingdom of God must exist alongside an active rebellion against God. God's kingdom advances slowly, humbly, like a secret invasion force operating within the kingdoms ruled by Satan.

As C.S. Lewis expressed it,

Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil: Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying: He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.... God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.

Jesus' closest disciples had difficulty grasping this double view of the kingdom. After his death and resurrection, when they understood at last that the Messiah had come not as a conquering king but as one clothed in humility and weakness, even then one thought obsessed them: "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" No doubt they were thinking of a visible kingdom to replace the rule of Rome. Jesus brushed aside the question and commanded them to carry word of him to the ends of the earth. That is when, to their amazement, he ascended out of sight and when, a few moments later, the angels explained, "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven." The kind of kingdom they yearned for would indeed come, but not yet.

I must confess that for many years I avoided thinking about the Second Coming of Jesus—partly, I'm sure, as a reaction to the prophecy mania of the childhood church. The doctrine seemed an embarrassment, the kind of talk that attracted people who believed in flying saucers. I still have little certainty about details of the Second Coming, but now I see it as the necessary culmination of the kingdom of God. To the degree that the church loses faith in Christ's return and contents itself to be a comfortable part of this world and not the advance guard of a kingdom from another world, to that degree we risk losing faith in a sovereign God.

God has put his reputation on the line. The New Testament points to a time when "every knee should bow...and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." Obviously, that has not yet happened. Several decades after Easter, the apostle Paul spoke of the whole creation groaning in labor pains for a redemption not yet realized. Jesus' first coming did not solve the problems of planet earth, rather it presented a vision of God's kingdom to help break the earthly spell of delusion.

Only at Christ's second coming will the kingdom of God appear in all its fullness. In the meantime we work toward a better future, always glancing back to the Gospels for a template of what that future will be like. Jurgen Moltmanna has observed that the phrase "Day of the Lord" in the Old Testament inspired fear; but in the New Testament it inspires confidence, because those authors had come to know the Lord whose Day it was. They now knew what to expect.

When Jesus lived on earth, he made the blind to see and the lame to walk; he will return to rule over a kingdom that has no disease or disability. On earth he died and was resurrected; at his return, death will be no more. On earth he cast out demons; at his return, he will destroy the Evil One. On earth he came as a baby born in a manger; he will return as the blazing figure described in the book of Revelation. The kingdom he set in motion on earth was not the end, only the beginning of the end.

Indeed, the kingdom of God will grow on earth as the church creates an alternative society demonstrating what the world is not, but one day will be: Barth's prescription of "a new sign which is radically dissimilar to [the world's] own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise." A society that welcomes people of all races and social classes, that is characterized by love and not polarization, that cares most for its weakest members, that stands for justice and righteousness in a world enamored with selfishness and decadence, a society in which members compete for the privilege of serving one another—this is what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse give a preview of how the world will end: in war, famine, sickness, and death. But Jesus gave a personal preview of how the world will be restored, by reversing the deeds of the Four Horsemen: he made peace, fed the hungry, healed the sick, and brought the dead to life. He made the message of God's kingdom powerful by living it, by bringing it to reality among the people around him. The prophets' fairy-tale predictions of a world free of pain and tears and death referred to no mythical world, but rather to this world.

We in the church, Jesus' successors, are left with the task of displaying the signs of the kingdom of God, and the watching world will judge the merits of the kingdom by us. We live in a transition time—a transition from death to life, from human injustice to divine justice, from the old to the new—tragically incomplete yet marked here and there, now and then, with clues of what God will someday achieve in perfection. The reign of God is breaking into the world, and we can be its heralds.

PHILLIP YANCEY, a best-selling author and columnist for Christianity Today, doesn't even know New Attitude exists. But that's okay because we got to excerpt this hard-hitting, perspective-adjusting chapter from his book anyway. Taken from The Jesus I Never Knew by Phillip Yancey. Copyright © 1995. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.