King, Kingdom, Citizen

Book excerpt: How well do you know the Bible? For too long we have read through the Scriptures as though they were composed in a timeless vacuum - but the peoples of the Ancient Near East and the First-Century knew things that we are no longer aware of, and saw the world in ways that are foreign to modern readers. The last 100 years of archaeology have upended much of what we thought we knew about the most important Book ever composed - the Bible. Archaeology, far from detracting from Biblical credibility - has solidified it. The sixty-six witnesses to the ministry of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were written to specific people, and were composed in specific languages in the recognized literary styles of the time. That we have strayed from those ways of thinking and writing in no way invalidate the legitimacy of Scripture, but it does provide us with the unique challenge of needing to go back in order to see the Scriptural accounts from the eyes of the ancients. What did Covenant mean in the ancient world? What were the Kingly mandates of Justice and Righteousness? How do we know that the Land of Israel belongs to the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob forever and that the Levitical Priesthood will and must be reinstated in the future? How do we know that the Messiah of Israel has already come and will return? What was the real debate raging in the First-Century Assemblies - was it about Grace versus Law or the Identity of the incoming Gentiles? King, Kingdom, Citizen is a book written to reintroduce God as our King, the Kingdom of Heaven as a real-world entity, and who we are in Messiah - through the eyes of those to whom this information was originally presented. Let me show you what Moses, the Prophets, and the Apostles knew about the Kingdom of Heaven.