David:   Karen, back in October of 1986, that’s over 33 years ago, I recorded three Chapel of the Year programs with Chuck Colson. The topic was our Lord’s teaching regarding the Kingdom of God.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David at Karen Mains.

David:   Together we just listen to those once again. What did you think?

Karen:   Well, David, did you say that we recorded 33 years ago?

David:   Yes.

Karen:   You know, they could have been recorded for today. They’re prophetic, prophetic as far as, of course, Chuck Colson was involved in the whole Watergate scandal with Nixon. He actually went to jail, became a Christian and started a prison fellowship. Yeah, he was all in the impeachment of the president. It could have been recorded yesterday. You know, it was timely. It was pertinent to everything we are experiencing in our national culture and life today. But what was amazing to me is that Colson had an understanding of the Kingdom of God, of that theology in a way that many people who’ve been Christians all of their lives. And I think he’d been a Christian about 12 years or so when we recorded this that I think we need to listen to as Christians today. So, these are pertinent broadcasts.

David:   You don’t have to say it. As soon as people listen, they’ll feel the very same way. Okay, let’s go for the first one.

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David:   Chuck Colson in the Chapel of the Air, we have just finished a series related to Christ preaching about the Kingdom of God. I’m wondering if that term, the Kingdom of God, has any meaning to you?

Chuck: Well, it’s interesting that you’ve just finished a series on that because for me, that has become a kind of a blinding revelation. God has given me certain insights that in 13 years as a Christian I had not had before. Actually, I got them when I was in India last fall and former Prime Minister Singh issued a statement to Prime Minister Gandhi saying, “Stamp out the Christian missionaries lest their converts seek political independence.” And I couldn’t understand why it was in a Hindu nation, hundreds of millions of people, the most religious nation on earth, where they are so very tolerant. You know, a Hindu believes that everybody finds their own way to God, all roads lead to heaven. They are extremely tolerant of different religious faith. If you love Jesus, that’s fine. If he’s your guru, everybody else has their guru. Why are they so resistant to Christianity? And why around the world does Christianity constantly seem to come in conflict with the cultures of the world? And as I was flying between New Delhi and Bombay, it suddenly hit me. It’s because the very nature of the message of Christ is that a new king has arrived who is sovereign over all the kings of the earth.

And former Prime Minister Singh and Prime Minister Gandhi and Mr. Gorbachev and rulers and leaders and Ronald Reagan are all ruling at the sufferance of the King of Kings. Christ’s message is the most radical message of all time because it is proclaiming that the kingdom of God has landed on earth. It is not simply a message of salvation, of hope, of a Messiah who will lead us from our sin. It is a political message in the theo-political sense. God’s political reign has come. It’s the most extraordinary message ever in human history, and it has given me a whole new insight into really what the gospel is.

David:   You think that message of the Kingdom of God is there in the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

Chuck: Oh, I think it’s the central message. The interesting thing was I came back to the United States from my trip to India, and it was kind of like having the whole, the Bible, opened up for me completely fresh, completely new. I started to realize that Christ very first message, his very first preaching in the temple in Nazareth when he picked up the scriptures out of Isaiah, and the crowd at first liked it, and then they ran him out of the temple. I’d always read Luke 4.18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the good news to the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed.” I’d always read that in prisons, meaning liberation for the captives. It means much more than that. It is the messianic message. It is the fulfillment of the scriptural prophecies of the coming of the Kingdom of judgment. And then you go all through the New Testament. You find the parables all deal with the Kingdom of God. You find admission into the Kingdom, the new birth is admission into the Kingdom. and you find, ultimately, that Jesus was tried, wrongly, I believe, but nonetheless tried for the political offense of being king.

David:   Do you think Chuck Colson that the Kingdom has relevance to our present day? Some people would say the Kingdom, obviously, is what’s in the future. It’s heaven.

Chuck: I do not think you can understand the gospel of Jesus Christ without understanding the theology of the Kingdom. I think it is absolutely central. The New Testament, to me now, no longer makes any sense except in the context of the Kingdom of God.

David:   And the Kingdom is present with us now, you’re saying?

Chuck:  Oh, yes. Indeed, that’s precisely what Jesus Christ was announcing. Jesus was announcing the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe. Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. His declaration was that the Kingdom would come. Now, it was not the kind of Kingdom that the Jew at the time expected. The Jew at the time expected that the Kingdom would be represented by a military leader, by a man riding on a horse, that the foes would be vanquished, that the ax would fall at the root, the judgment would come. Jesus came instead to die on a cross, thus, to make men holy, thus to make the world acceptable for the coming Kingdom, but to announce the reign of the King now. That is that the Kingdom of God had come in the person of Christ and that the good news was opened to all people. It is a Kingdom not in political terms. That’s the problem today. We try to think of it in terms of geography, domain, a nation state, the same way the Jews did.

David:   Or the way this Indian official might have it.

Chuck:  Precisely. But the Kingdom is something wholly different. It is announcing not a reign, but a rule, not a realm, or a geography, but the ultimate sovereignty of God over all things.

David:   So, it’s his kingship, in a sense.

Chuck:  Yeah, it is the fact that Jesus is Lord, that God is the sovereign King of kings.

David:   Can you bow before Jesus as Savior and not bow before him as King or Lord?

Chuck:  No, it’s impossible. That of course is why the earliest baptismal confession of the Christian church was Jesus as Lord. That was the affront. That was what caused the persecution of the church and the Roman Empire. That has been the cause of 2,000 years of tension between Christianity and the world. The interesting thing, David, that really fascinates me is that most Christians don’t understand this. But non-Christian rulers understand it very well, because they see it as a threat to their throne. We have nothing but Herods in the world today. Herod went out to kill the Christ child because he realized that it was a threat to his puppet regime. And every ruler and tyrant in history since has tried to kill Christ because Christ proclaiming the kingdom threatens the rule of the rulers of this world.

David:   Often I thought what an electrifying message this must have been when Christ went out and proclaimed himself an alternative king when the Romans were actually occupying Palestine. It’s amazing.

Chuck: Oh, sure. When you study really the history of Palestine at the time and you see all the diverse groups and the rivalries and the religious factions and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and those who did not believe in a resurrection, and all of a sudden in the midst of this comes this man proclaiming that he is the Messiah, that the king has come, but that the kingdom has come not just for the Jew, but for everyone. And then on the triumphant week when he rides in and the crowds are shouting, “Hosanna, save us to the king”, he rides on a donkey, not a horse. And people simply were bewildered. They could understand. He went around saying that he knocks on the doors of our lives asking to come in. What king ever knocks on a door? A king expects someone to open the door for him. What king washes the feet of his servants? What king goes to the cross to die that his subjects might be made holy?

David:   Marvelous.

Chuck: But it’s a whole new kingdom.

David: Yeah, Jack Colson has becoming a citizen of Christ’s kingdom minimize you’re thinking, regarding being a U.S. citizen at all?

Chuck: Well, it all does it greatly. I’ve been a fly-waving patriot, ex-Marine captain, love my country all my life, and I still love my country greatly. I don’t think it is un-Christian to love your country. Augustine once said that we are placed in a certain place at a particular time. A sovereign God has put us there. We are to love the world, but we can’t love the world. The way in which we love the world in general is to love the world in particular by loving the people around us. And so, we have family and close attachments to family, and we have an extended family. C.S. Lewis called the nation an extended family. We love them, but it is not an uncritical love. You love your children, and you love your cousins, and you love your neighbors, but you don’t love them blindly. You love them so much that when they do wrong, you want to correct them. Therefore, the Christian loves his country, but as a citizen of the kingdom of God, he never suspends moral judgment. A Christian scholar, Richard John Newhouse, says that loyalty to the civitas, that is to the state, can only be safely nurtured when one is ultimately loyal to a higher allegiance, that is to God.

Because then your loyalty to the state is not blind, your loyalty to the state is the real love, the tough love that corrects things when they are wrong. Also the kind of patriotism that a Christian exercises is not going on waving flags and being chauvinistic. The kind of patriotism a Christian exercises is serving and loving his neighbors. We should as Christians spend more time washing feet than waving flags.

David:   Jack Colson will talk about patriotism tomorrow in both of these kingdoms. I’m wondering, can there ever be a kingdom of God candidate, or a political candidate for whom all Christians or kingdom members should vote?

Chuck:  No, probably the greatest heresy in 2000 years of Christianity is to equate the church with the kingdom of God, because it’s a false utopianism. It’s the mistake that was made in the Middle Ages that led to the Crusades. It was the mistake that was made by the social gospel, is the mistake of liberation theology, it is the mistake of far-right conservative politics.

David:   So, you’re saying there couldn’t be a given person who will always represent Christ’s kingdom. However, there can be Christians who are involved in the political process.

Chuck: Not only can be, but should be Christians involved in the political process, as salt and light to make a difference that the Christian impact might be felt in the political system. But if we think we are going to elect a messiah, we are making exactly the mistake that the Pharisees made.

David: Jack Colson will be my guest again tomorrow here in the Chapel of the Air. We’ll talk about patriotism as it relates to the kingdom of God. Is waving the U.S. or the Canadian flag the same as waving the kingdom banner? We’ll discuss it as thoroughly as possible. Join us then.

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David:   It makes you want to hear more, doesn’t it?

Karen: It does make you want to hear more.

David:   And the beauty is we’re going to hear more. We’ll take a different angle at it. But again, it’s prophetic. It is absolutely amazing when you listen to these words.

Karen:   He was an amazing man. I mean, even with the scandal of that in his background, he had a terrible reputation, pre-Christian, as far as he would have stomped over his own grandmother to get his… But the essence of his character core, particularly after Christ had changed him, was just a stunning sort of thing. It was wonderful to be a friend of sorts with Jack Colson during those years.

David:   He had an amazing ability to just synthesize all kinds of resources. I thought to myself, this is absolutely phenomenal. And it brought him alive. I remember being with him several times, seeing him. He was a friend.

Karen: He was a friend.

David:   Let’s listen to the second one.

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David:   What about it, Jack Colson? Becoming a Christian puts you in conflict about remaining a patriotic American.

Chuck: Well, yes and no. When you become a citizen of the kingdom of God, you have to remember that your first allegiance is to the King of Kings. That’s precisely what Jesus came to proclaim, a new rule on earth. What had been simply a theocracy for the Jew was now the universal Kingdom of God reigning over earth for all men and all women. And so, when you become a Christian, your loyalties transcend the loyalties to any nation-state. Now, that doesn’t always mean an inconsistency, of course. Being a good citizen, serving well, after all, government is ordained by God to preserve order and justice in society. So, to be a good citizen, as Paul tells us in Romans 13, is part of your responsibility as a Christian, to pray for those in authority, to be in submission to lawful rulers.

And so in that sense there is not. But what happens when a government, any government, takes a position which is wholly contrary to the teachings of the kingdom of God? Where is your allegiance? Your allegiance must be first to the King of Kings. You must stand. As Wesley once wrote to Wilberforce, when Wilberforce, the young British member of parliament, was fighting the slave trade, you must stand contra-mundum. You must stand against the world. You must resist even your own nation when your nation acts contrary to God’s teachings, clearly so. Or when it in any way attempts to prevent the proclamation of the gospel. When Christians in the Soviet Union today are resisting their own state, they are not violating Romans 13, they are resisting their own state because their own state is in some ways preventing the proclamation of the gospel. And by the way, that is not just the Soviet Union, that can happen here in the United States.

David:   Let’s talk about the United States, or North America more specifically. I believe that Christians are more and more becoming involved in politics and political issues. Do you see this as a good trend?

Chuck:  Yes, by and large I do, because what it says is that Christians are getting involved in the political process in order to witness their Christian faith, in order to bring Christian values to bear in the governmental process, in order to make our laws more in conformance with Christian teaching. And that’s right, that’s what we should be doing. In a free, pluralistic society, it’s our job to get out and make a Christian witness in the media, in the arts, in business, in government, in every walk of life. What we mustn’t do is to wrap the flag around the cross. What we mustn’t do is to think that any one nation, the U.S., Canada, or anywhere, is ushering in the kingdom of God. That’s a false utopian notion. It’s a dangerous notion. It’s a notion of civil religion. But we ought to be involved in the process in making a difference. You know there’s an interesting paradox here. As a Christian, as a private citizen, my job is to try to Christianize my country. That is to bring Christian values to bear, to be as strong a Christian influence as I can, and to lobby legislators, to pass bills that uphold Christian principles. But if I’m elected to office in a pluralistic society as a Christian, my first duty is not to impose Christian values or to seek special favor for a Christian position. My first duty is to seek religious liberty for all citizens, because that’s what’s guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States and many of the Western societies.

David:   It’s a little tricky, isn’t it?

Chuck:  Yeah, well it’s a very rough area. I’ve been spending a lot of time, David, studying this, because I’m writing a book on the subject, and I’ve discovered that it really isn’t as simple. Most of the people who argue this issue make it terribly simple. Most of the people miss the issue precisely because they miss the meaning of the kingdom. It is because we fail to see what Herman Ridderbos, a great Dutch reformed scholar, said is the essence of the New Testament. The essence of the New Testament is not a covenant, is not a personal relationship with God. It is the kingdom of God, entrance into the kingdom. And once you begin to understand that, you can then see that the kingdom of God is made up of three institutions. The kingdom of God is made up of the family, which perpetuates the human race. It is made up of government, which restrains the sin of man as a result of the fall, and it is made up of the church, which is the community of the redeemed, to bear witness to the kingdom. God has ordained three institutions and made them not divine as institutions, although the church, of course, is divine in that sense, but divinely ordered in order to preserve order in society, the family, the state, the church. But each have a different role, and one can’t take the job of the other. The state can never take the job of the church or the family, and the church should not attempt to take the job of the state.

David:   You said the church models the kingdom. So in a sense, it says, if you’re looking for justice, come on over here. We’re modeling it for you. You’re looking for love. We’re demonstrating it before you. Is that what you’re saying?

Chuck: The church’s principal role, it seems to me, is to evangelize, to lead men and women to Christ, to provide the gospel of good news. In the process of doing so, it is living with the teachings of the kingdom of God, and that becomes a model for society. Society is able to see what happens when people live by God’s teaching instead of by man’s teaching. When we begin to put God on the throne of our lives rather than thinking that the world revolves around us or political leaders who would like to have us think the world revolves around them, we in the kingdom of God live by the teachings of Christ and therefore become a witness. We become a model. We become a way in which people can see that there is something better that God is offering.

David:   What happens when the church doesn’t model the king’s rule?

Chuck: Well, that’s what often happens, and that’s what’s happened so much in Western societies today. That’s why I like to go to the Third World. I go to the Third World and I can see Christianity being lived out by people who proclaim Christ as Lord because they have to, because the culture has forced them into confrontation. Whereas in America, and Canada, and Britain, and certainly all over Europe, Christianity has been homogenized. It’s sort of just become another function or facet of life. It just becomes part of the cultural scene. So, you can’t really tell any difference between Christianity or anything else. It’s just something that goes on in Sunday mornings. People go, sit in the pew, listen to a sermon, grumble about it, and go home and live their lives the rest of the week the way they did before. They’re ignoring the fact that Christianity is not a creed or a set of beliefs or a philosophy or a teaching. It is the declaration that God has established, his rule over the world through Jesus Christ. And that to be in relationship with him is intensely political because it demands our ultimate political allegiance.

David:   Yes, very much so. We were talking about patriotism. I got us off of that a little bit. A patriot is a person who in my mind probably displays the flag. This individual knows some of his American history. This person is going to vote. What are the things that would characterize an American patriot?

Chuck:  I think the most significant thing that characterizes an American patriot is the fact that he is not self-centered, materialistic, egocentric, sitting back, figuring what his country is going to do for him to use John Kennedy’s phrase, but that he is a service-oriented individual. You realize that the needs of the community are greater than the needs of each individual. You are willing to sacrifice yourself for the good of the whole. A Christian patriot in particular is one who demonstrates that his Christianity means that he is a servant. He would lead, let him serve. A Christian is serving his neighbors and thus being a true patriot. A true patriot is not a one who sits back and puts a flag bumper sticker on his automobile. A true Christian patriot is one who serves the needs of others because he is enhancing the good of the whole, which is what the nation state is created for.

In the providence of God, that is precisely what the nation is for, to preserve order and to provide a community of helping people assisting one another. I think John Adams was right when he said a true patriot has to be a religious man because a religious man has an interest higher than himself. A religious man does out of the love of God.

What a non-religious person can only be forced to do either out of self-interest or government coercion. So, Christians willingly, lovingly participate in the processes of their community, which means their country. We love our country, but we don’t love it without exercising critical judgment any more than we love our own family without exercising critical judgment. If you just give carte blanche love to your children, you’re not loving them. That’s license. You’re letting them do anything they want. You love them by applying moral judgment.

David:   Do you have a book titled for what you’re working on?

Chuck:  No. At the moment it’s kind of tentatively titled, Kingdoms and Conflict, because it really is about the fact that from the time Christ made that incredible dramatic stirring announcement in Nazareth that the acceptable year of the Lord is here. He’s come to proclaim that the prisoners are set free. When he read from Isaiah, he was reading a messianic prophecy for the coming of the kingdom of God that it had landed in that time. And from that time until this, the kingdoms have been in conflict largely because Christians have not understood the kingdom, but those hostile to it, the rulers of this world have, which is why Christianity is persecuted.

David: Tomorrow, Chuck Colson, I want to talk with you about the kingdom of God in the church. Do we hear about the kingdom of God enough from our pulpits?

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David: So much said in such a little time, Chuck Colson, the amazing Chapel of the Air programs. This is going to set up a series, Karen, because we have very strong feelings regarding the kingdom of God teaching in the scriptures. Where are we going to go next?

Karen: Well, we’re going to start talking about Tales of the Kingdom. And those were the, there are three books to this set.

David: These are books you and I wrote.

Karen: I used that theology of the kingdom and sermons you had done on the kingdom of God when you were pastoring. And we integrated that into these prize award-winning stories. But the purpose of the book was to teach children and the adults who would be reading to introduce them to this concept, this theological concept, in a way where they would fall in love with the King and the Kingdom of God.

David: And I’m not going to read the whole series of tales of the kingdom. There are 36 tales, but we’ll hear some of them. Okay, so that’s after this, but we still have more to hear from Chuck Colson.

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David:   Talking with Chuck Colson, Chuck, how important a part of Christ’s preaching was this theme of the kingdom of God?

Chuck: I think it was the central theme of the New Testament. And I do not think you can understand the New Testament except in the context of Christ proclaiming not a new nation state, but the rule of God over all of his creation. That’s what the kingdom of God means. It’s God’s order of things. It is the way in which God has established his rule.

David:   Okay, now can you identify with hearing this kingdom theme preached at all. You were converted when you were an adult. But have you heard messages about the kingdom a lot?

Chuck:  No, one of the fascinating things to me, David, is the fact that for 13 years as a Christian, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon on the kingdom or really read very much about it. And largely, I think that’s because say over the last 50 years, the term kingdom has been used as an adjective to describe all sorts of things, kingdom ethics, kingdom building. And there have been schools of Christian thought which said that you go off and establish kind of an alternative lifestyle to be a model to the rest of the world, and you neglect the world, and that will be the kingdom building apart from the world. And so, the term has been grossly misused. But if you bring it back into its full theological context, that is what Jesus meant by it. It has to be central to everything we preach. I think it’s a lost doctrine, kind of a lost understanding. And it’s one of the reasons that we have a church today, an evangelical church, of 50 million people so-called, who really are making very little impact on this country. The moral condition of America continues to deteriorate. Visibly so, families breaking up, 50 % of the kids being born in the inner cities, being born out of wedlock, value clarification going on in the schools so that you can’t teach right and wrong, religion being expurgated from textbook, books. I mean, it’s an extraordinary thing in a so-called Christian nation. The reason is that Christians have come to think of their faith as simply another belief system. It is not another belief system, which makes Christianity unique of all the religions, of all time, of all beliefs, is that Jesus comes saying there is a personal creator God. He has revealed himself. You can know him. He has established his kingdom, of which this world and the nation states are but a part. When you come into that kingdom, you now are in a personal relationship with a living God who has established his order over this earth. It’s an extraordinary. It blows your mind to think about it. It is not just go to church and join a religion. It is live a whole new life and a whole new order of things that God has established. That’s the kingdom.

David:   So, you’re a citizen under his reign and whenever the king speaks on any subject you’re to obey.

Chuck:  That’s another thing. That’s very difficult for North American audiences to understand. We live in a democracy. The kingdom of God is absolutely totalitarian. God’s rule is authoritative, absolute, unquestioned, unchallengeable. God being God created us and as the creator has absolute unquestioned control. We’re always expecting committee meetings, town meetings, votes, majority rule. Anyway, God does not work that way. It is so wholly different than our concepts of government and that’s why people go around saying, “Well, God doesn’t really mean this. God doesn’t mean that.” God does mean this. God has revealed himself. He’s spoken with his authoritative word.

David:   Is it possible to be a member of the kingdom of God and say, “I like the compassion of the king but I don’t like some of his rules as to how I should live? I don’t like it that I’m supposed to love God with all my heart and love my neighbor as myself so I want to be accepted in the kingdom, but I don’t want to live by the rules of the king.”

Chuck: No, it’s preposterous but it’s also part of our culture today. We all want to be citizens of the United States or Canada and live in a free country. We have all the benefits but we don’t want to pay the price of citizenship which is responsibility, civic duty, serving in the military if called, paying taxes, caring for neighbors.

With every right goes a responsibility. Never more so is that clear than in the kingdom of God where the great benefit of eternal life, the great benefit of a relationship with God, the great benefit of that peace in the heart that comes from being at one with our Creator is free. God gives it unmerited favor. Grace of God is poured out, but it costs us everything.

David:   What are some of those specific responsibilities that it does cost us to be a part of the kingdom?

Chuck:  Well, how do you love God? You love God by keeping his commandments and so first of all we take the scripture, and we decide we’re going to live that way. And you take the scripture and live by in today’s world, and you are laughed at and ridiculed, mocked, people do not take you seriously. We get intimidated as a result of it. Sometimes it may cost you everything and one of my books I told the story of a judge in Indiana who could not obey the commands of the world and also be true to his God and he resigned his judgeship.

He simply had to resist. There are people in all of the world who are in prison because they refuse to proclaim all the middle legions to the rulers of the nations in which they live because they say “Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King.”

David:   Do you face this conflict in your life at all? Do you find tension because of bowing before King Jesus that sometimes puts you at variance with the rules of man?

Chuck: We often run into that particularly in the prisons where we’re told that we can’t violate the separation of church and state, can’t preach certain things. We preach them. If they don’t want us, that’s fine. I find that matter of fact. I find that many times in America where I’ll go to speak at a civic gathering or where I’ll go on television. I recently went on television and the producer of the show said, “We know what your life is all about but you can’t talk about Jesus on this program because we want to talk about some other things.” I said, “Well, get yourself another guest because my life is Christ.” There’s a subtle kind of a censorship in America because we kind of feel it’s out of fashion to talk about that. People look down their nose at so-called Bible thumpers. Well, call us what you want. I’m going to proclaim the truth of the kingdom of God because it’s the only reality there is.

David: What if the church just preaches Christ as Savior, as Lord, as shepherd, never talks about Him as king, never talks about the kingdom? What does the church lose?

Chuck: Well, the church simply becomes then like a rotary club that meets on Sunday mornings, the only difference being that a rotary club, if you don’t attend every week, you get kicked out and the church, you cannot attend and still be a member. All you’re doing is listening to somebody give a philosophy. Christianity is not a philosophy. Christianity is an order of life established by a personal God who has spoken and who offers us the invitation to live with Him in His realm, that is the kingdom of God.

David:   Where are you Chuck Colson in your thoughts about how North America is doing spiritually? Are we on the verge of a real spiritual breakthrough?

Chuck:  I don’t really think so David. I think that what has happened to Christianity in North America is that it’s today a mile wide and an inch deep. I think there’s a lot of people who profess Christianity and a lot of people who are very sincerely wanting to be serious, committed, active, involved Christians. But Christianity has fallen into the trap of being sort of self-gratifying. It’s kind of like the culture, what’s in it for me. As a result, we sort of have lost the cutting edge. I think there are two things that are happening today. And because a lot of good Christian teaching, but I don’t think they’re relating it to our responsibilities as to how we live in the world. And thus, you have people learning a lot about Scripture but not learning about what Scripture mandates that you do with your life. Thus, we go out of our churches waiting to come back a week later and get another good teaching session. Failing to realize that the whole object of the church is to lead men and women to Christ and lead them to worship and disciple them, that they might then in turn be ministers of the Gospel within the world. And so, the purpose of being equipped is to make a difference in the world around us. And this is what is not happening in the Christian church today.

David:   Is the revival message a kingdom of God message?

Chuck:  Oh absolutely. You can’t. The revival means that the church comes to realize its real role as the witness of the kingdom and culture. And that’s what revival is. And awakening is when that impact is felt throughout the society.

David:   Just real quickly, I’m curious, what Bible character do you identify with?

Chuck:  Bible character? Oh, there have been times when I’ve identified with Joseph because of being in prison. Nehemiah because I see building a wall through all that we’re doing in prison fellowship. I guess I know how the apostle Paul felt because I’ve had the same kind of a dramatic conversion that he has. I’ve certainly, Peter’s a real good friend of mine because I know what it is to feel weakened in your faith sometimes and stumble when you boast out loud but you really don’t carry it out inside. I guess there are lots of characters in the Bible that I can identify with.

David: People see you as very strong but there’s also the humanness in you, isn’t there?

Chuck:  We all have feet of clay and we’re all very human and we all struggle with lots of problems and the sanctification process goes on day by day. It’s a real struggle.

David:   We’re all subjects of a great king, however.

Chuck:  Well, that’s my element of assurance. The verse that I have come to love the most is the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ because I know that’s the one truth I can depend on. You know, as part of a kingdom of man, the most powerful political organization, the most powerful administration in history, I saw it all crumble in two years. The king I now serve, I realize, is there for eternity and I can trust my life to him. There’ll be no water gates in the kingdom of God.

David:   Amen. My thanks to Chuck Colson, the prison fellowship ministries for visiting with us again here in the Chapel of the Air. May Christ continue to keep His hand on you, Chuck. And on all of us who seek to serve Him as King.

Outgo:    You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is Copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60189.

David:   Karen, back in October of 1986, that’s over 33 years ago, I recorded three Chapel of the Year programs with Chuck Colson. The topic was our Lord’s teaching regarding the Kingdom of God.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David at Karen Mains.

David:   Together we just listen to those once again. What did you think?

Karen:   Well, David, did you say that we recorded 33 years ago?

David:   Yes.

Karen:   You know, they could have been recorded for today. They’re prophetic, prophetic as far as, of course, Chuck Colson was involved in the whole Watergate scandal with Nixon. He actually went to jail, became a Christian and started a prison fellowship. Yeah, he was all in the impeachment of the president. It could have been recorded yesterday. You know, it was timely. It was pertinent to everything we are experiencing in our national culture and life today. But what was amazing to me is that Colson had an understanding of the Kingdom of God, of that theology in a way that many people who’ve been Christians all of their lives. And I think he’d been a Christian about 12 years or so when we recorded this that I think we need to listen to as Christians today. So, these are pertinent broadcasts.

David:   You don’t have to say it. As soon as people listen, they’ll feel the very same way. Okay, let’s go for the first one.

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David:   Chuck Colson in the Chapel of the Air, we have just finished a series related to Christ preaching about the Kingdom of God. I’m wondering if that term, the Kingdom of God, has any meaning to you?

Chuck: Well, it’s interesting that you’ve just finished a series on that because for me, that has become a kind of a blinding revelation. God has given me certain insights that in 13 years as a Christian I had not had before. Actually, I got them when I was in India last fall and former Prime Minister Singh issued a statement to Prime Minister Gandhi saying, “Stamp out the Christian missionaries lest their converts seek political independence.” And I couldn’t understand why it was in a Hindu nation, hundreds of millions of people, the most religious nation on earth, where they are so very tolerant. You know, a Hindu believes that everybody finds their own way to God, all roads lead to heaven. They are extremely tolerant of different religious faith. If you love Jesus, that’s fine. If he’s your guru, everybody else has their guru. Why are they so resistant to Christianity? And why around the world does Christianity constantly seem to come in conflict with the cultures of the world? And as I was flying between New Delhi and Bombay, it suddenly hit me. It’s because the very nature of the message of Christ is that a new king has arrived who is sovereign over all the kings of the earth.

And former Prime Minister Singh and Prime Minister Gandhi and Mr. Gorbachev and rulers and leaders and Ronald Reagan are all ruling at the sufferance of the King of Kings. Christ’s message is the most radical message of all time because it is proclaiming that the kingdom of God has landed on earth. It is not simply a message of salvation, of hope, of a Messiah who will lead us from our sin. It is a political message in the theo-political sense. God’s political reign has come. It’s the most extraordinary message ever in human history, and it has given me a whole new insight into really what the gospel is.

David:   You think that message of the Kingdom of God is there in the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

Chuck: Oh, I think it’s the central message. The interesting thing was I came back to the United States from my trip to India, and it was kind of like having the whole, the Bible, opened up for me completely fresh, completely new. I started to realize that Christ very first message, his very first preaching in the temple in Nazareth when he picked up the scriptures out of Isaiah, and the crowd at first liked it, and then they ran him out of the temple. I’d always read Luke 4.18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the good news to the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed.” I’d always read that in prisons, meaning liberation for the captives. It means much more than that. It is the messianic message. It is the fulfillment of the scriptural prophecies of the coming of the Kingdom of judgment. And then you go all through the New Testament. You find the parables all deal with the Kingdom of God. You find admission into the Kingdom, the new birth is admission into the Kingdom. and you find, ultimately, that Jesus was tried, wrongly, I believe, but nonetheless tried for the political offense of being king.

David:   Do you think Chuck Colson that the Kingdom has relevance to our present day? Some people would say the Kingdom, obviously, is what’s in the future. It’s heaven.

Chuck: I do not think you can understand the gospel of Jesus Christ without understanding the theology of the Kingdom. I think it is absolutely central. The New Testament, to me now, no longer makes any sense except in the context of the Kingdom of God.

David:   And the Kingdom is present with us now, you’re saying?

Chuck:  Oh, yes. Indeed, that’s precisely what Jesus Christ was announcing. Jesus was announcing the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe. Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. His declaration was that the Kingdom would come. Now, it was not the kind of Kingdom that the Jew at the time expected. The Jew at the time expected that the Kingdom would be represented by a military leader, by a man riding on a horse, that the foes would be vanquished, that the ax would fall at the root, the judgment would come. Jesus came instead to die on a cross, thus, to make men holy, thus to make the world acceptable for the coming Kingdom, but to announce the reign of the King now. That is that the Kingdom of God had come in the person of Christ and that the good news was opened to all people. It is a Kingdom not in political terms. That’s the problem today. We try to think of it in terms of geography, domain, a nation state, the same way the Jews did.

David:   Or the way this Indian official might have it.

Chuck:  Precisely. But the Kingdom is something wholly different. It is announcing not a reign, but a rule, not a realm, or a geography, but the ultimate sovereignty of God over all things.

David:   So, it’s his kingship, in a sense.

Chuck:  Yeah, it is the fact that Jesus is Lord, that God is the sovereign King of kings.

David:   Can you bow before Jesus as Savior and not bow before him as King or Lord?

Chuck:  No, it’s impossible. That of course is why the earliest baptismal confession of the Christian church was Jesus as Lord. That was the affront. That was what caused the persecution of the church and the Roman Empire. That has been the cause of 2,000 years of tension between Christianity and the world. The interesting thing, David, that really fascinates me is that most Christians don’t understand this. But non-Christian rulers understand it very well, because they see it as a threat to their throne. We have nothing but Herods in the world today. Herod went out to kill the Christ child because he realized that it was a threat to his puppet regime. And every ruler and tyrant in history since has tried to kill Christ because Christ proclaiming the kingdom threatens the rule of the rulers of this world.

David:   Often I thought what an electrifying message this must have been when Christ went out and proclaimed himself an alternative king when the Romans were actually occupying Palestine. It’s amazing.

Chuck: Oh, sure. When you study really the history of Palestine at the time and you see all the diverse groups and the rivalries and the religious factions and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and those who did not believe in a resurrection, and all of a sudden in the midst of this comes this man proclaiming that he is the Messiah, that the king has come, but that the kingdom has come not just for the Jew, but for everyone. And then on the triumphant week when he rides in and the crowds are shouting, “Hosanna, save us to the king”, he rides on a donkey, not a horse. And people simply were bewildered. They could understand. He went around saying that he knocks on the doors of our lives asking to come in. What king ever knocks on a door? A king expects someone to open the door for him. What king washes the feet of his servants? What king goes to the cross to die that his subjects might be made holy?

David:   Marvelous.

Chuck: But it’s a whole new kingdom.

David: Yeah, Jack Colson has becoming a citizen of Christ’s kingdom minimize you’re thinking, regarding being a U.S. citizen at all?

Chuck: Well, it all does it greatly. I’ve been a fly-waving patriot, ex-Marine captain, love my country all my life, and I still love my country greatly. I don’t think it is un-Christian to love your country. Augustine once said that we are placed in a certain place at a particular time. A sovereign God has put us there. We are to love the world, but we can’t love the world. The way in which we love the world in general is to love the world in particular by loving the people around us. And so, we have family and close attachments to family, and we have an extended family. C.S. Lewis called the nation an extended family. We love them, but it is not an uncritical love. You love your children, and you love your cousins, and you love your neighbors, but you don’t love them blindly. You love them so much that when they do wrong, you want to correct them. Therefore, the Christian loves his country, but as a citizen of the kingdom of God, he never suspends moral judgment. A Christian scholar, Richard John Newhouse, says that loyalty to the civitas, that is to the state, can only be safely nurtured when one is ultimately loyal to a higher allegiance, that is to God.

Because then your loyalty to the state is not blind, your loyalty to the state is the real love, the tough love that corrects things when they are wrong. Also the kind of patriotism that a Christian exercises is not going on waving flags and being chauvinistic. The kind of patriotism a Christian exercises is serving and loving his neighbors. We should as Christians spend more time washing feet than waving flags.

David:   Jack Colson will talk about patriotism tomorrow in both of these kingdoms. I’m wondering, can there ever be a kingdom of God candidate, or a political candidate for whom all Christians or kingdom members should vote?

Chuck:  No, probably the greatest heresy in 2000 years of Christianity is to equate the church with the kingdom of God, because it’s a false utopianism. It’s the mistake that was made in the Middle Ages that led to the Crusades. It was the mistake that was made by the social gospel, is the mistake of liberation theology, it is the mistake of far-right conservative politics.

David:   So, you’re saying there couldn’t be a given person who will always represent Christ’s kingdom. However, there can be Christians who are involved in the political process.

Chuck: Not only can be, but should be Christians involved in the political process, as salt and light to make a difference that the Christian impact might be felt in the political system. But if we think we are going to elect a messiah, we are making exactly the mistake that the Pharisees made.

David: Jack Colson will be my guest again tomorrow here in the Chapel of the Air. We’ll talk about patriotism as it relates to the kingdom of God. Is waving the U.S. or the Canadian flag the same as waving the kingdom banner? We’ll discuss it as thoroughly as possible. Join us then.

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David:   It makes you want to hear more, doesn’t it?

Karen: It does make you want to hear more.

David:   And the beauty is we’re going to hear more. We’ll take a different angle at it. But again, it’s prophetic. It is absolutely amazing when you listen to these words.

Karen:   He was an amazing man. I mean, even with the scandal of that in his background, he had a terrible reputation, pre-Christian, as far as he would have stomped over his own grandmother to get his… But the essence of his character core, particularly after Christ had changed him, was just a stunning sort of thing. It was wonderful to be a friend of sorts with Jack Colson during those years.

David:   He had an amazing ability to just synthesize all kinds of resources. I thought to myself, this is absolutely phenomenal. And it brought him alive. I remember being with him several times, seeing him. He was a friend.

Karen: He was a friend.

David:   Let’s listen to the second one.

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David:   What about it, Jack Colson? Becoming a Christian puts you in conflict about remaining a patriotic American.

Chuck: Well, yes and no. When you become a citizen of the kingdom of God, you have to remember that your first allegiance is to the King of Kings. That’s precisely what Jesus came to proclaim, a new rule on earth. What had been simply a theocracy for the Jew was now the universal Kingdom of God reigning over earth for all men and all women. And so, when you become a Christian, your loyalties transcend the loyalties to any nation-state. Now, that doesn’t always mean an inconsistency, of course. Being a good citizen, serving well, after all, government is ordained by God to preserve order and justice in society. So, to be a good citizen, as Paul tells us in Romans 13, is part of your responsibility as a Christian, to pray for those in authority, to be in submission to lawful rulers.

And so in that sense there is not. But what happens when a government, any government, takes a position which is wholly contrary to the teachings of the kingdom of God? Where is your allegiance? Your allegiance must be first to the King of Kings. You must stand. As Wesley once wrote to Wilberforce, when Wilberforce, the young British member of parliament, was fighting the slave trade, you must stand contra-mundum. You must stand against the world. You must resist even your own nation when your nation acts contrary to God’s teachings, clearly so. Or when it in any way attempts to prevent the proclamation of the gospel. When Christians in the Soviet Union today are resisting their own state, they are not violating Romans 13, they are resisting their own state because their own state is in some ways preventing the proclamation of the gospel. And by the way, that is not just the Soviet Union, that can happen here in the United States.

David:   Let’s talk about the United States, or North America more specifically. I believe that Christians are more and more becoming involved in politics and political issues. Do you see this as a good trend?

Chuck:  Yes, by and large I do, because what it says is that Christians are getting involved in the political process in order to witness their Christian faith, in order to bring Christian values to bear in the governmental process, in order to make our laws more in conformance with Christian teaching. And that’s right, that’s what we should be doing. In a free, pluralistic society, it’s our job to get out and make a Christian witness in the media, in the arts, in business, in government, in every walk of life. What we mustn’t do is to wrap the flag around the cross. What we mustn’t do is to think that any one nation, the U.S., Canada, or anywhere, is ushering in the kingdom of God. That’s a false utopian notion. It’s a dangerous notion. It’s a notion of civil religion. But we ought to be involved in the process in making a difference. You know there’s an interesting paradox here. As a Christian, as a private citizen, my job is to try to Christianize my country. That is to bring Christian values to bear, to be as strong a Christian influence as I can, and to lobby legislators, to pass bills that uphold Christian principles. But if I’m elected to office in a pluralistic society as a Christian, my first duty is not to impose Christian values or to seek special favor for a Christian position. My first duty is to seek religious liberty for all citizens, because that’s what’s guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States and many of the Western societies.

David:   It’s a little tricky, isn’t it?

Chuck:  Yeah, well it’s a very rough area. I’ve been spending a lot of time, David, studying this, because I’m writing a book on the subject, and I’ve discovered that it really isn’t as simple. Most of the people who argue this issue make it terribly simple. Most of the people miss the issue precisely because they miss the meaning of the kingdom. It is because we fail to see what Herman Ridderbos, a great Dutch reformed scholar, said is the essence of the New Testament. The essence of the New Testament is not a covenant, is not a personal relationship with God. It is the kingdom of God, entrance into the kingdom. And once you begin to understand that, you can then see that the kingdom of God is made up of three institutions. The kingdom of God is made up of the family, which perpetuates the human race. It is made up of government, which restrains the sin of man as a result of the fall, and it is made up of the church, which is the community of the redeemed, to bear witness to the kingdom. God has ordained three institutions and made them not divine as institutions, although the church, of course, is divine in that sense, but divinely ordered in order to preserve order in society, the family, the state, the church. But each have a different role, and one can’t take the job of the other. The state can never take the job of the church or the family, and the church should not attempt to take the job of the state.

David:   You said the church models the kingdom. So in a sense, it says, if you’re looking for justice, come on over here. We’re modeling it for you. You’re looking for love. We’re demonstrating it before you. Is that what you’re saying?

Chuck: The church’s principal role, it seems to me, is to evangelize, to lead men and women to Christ, to provide the gospel of good news. In the process of doing so, it is living with the teachings of the kingdom of God, and that becomes a model for society. Society is able to see what happens when people live by God’s teaching instead of by man’s teaching. When we begin to put God on the throne of our lives rather than thinking that the world revolves around us or political leaders who would like to have us think the world revolves around them, we in the kingdom of God live by the teachings of Christ and therefore become a witness. We become a model. We become a way in which people can see that there is something better that God is offering.

David:   What happens when the church doesn’t model the king’s rule?

Chuck: Well, that’s what often happens, and that’s what’s happened so much in Western societies today. That’s why I like to go to the Third World. I go to the Third World and I can see Christianity being lived out by people who proclaim Christ as Lord because they have to, because the culture has forced them into confrontation. Whereas in America, and Canada, and Britain, and certainly all over Europe, Christianity has been homogenized. It’s sort of just become another function or facet of life. It just becomes part of the cultural scene. So, you can’t really tell any difference between Christianity or anything else. It’s just something that goes on in Sunday mornings. People go, sit in the pew, listen to a sermon, grumble about it, and go home and live their lives the rest of the week the way they did before. They’re ignoring the fact that Christianity is not a creed or a set of beliefs or a philosophy or a teaching. It is the declaration that God has established, his rule over the world through Jesus Christ. And that to be in relationship with him is intensely political because it demands our ultimate political allegiance.

David:   Yes, very much so. We were talking about patriotism. I got us off of that a little bit. A patriot is a person who in my mind probably displays the flag. This individual knows some of his American history. This person is going to vote. What are the things that would characterize an American patriot?

Chuck:  I think the most significant thing that characterizes an American patriot is the fact that he is not self-centered, materialistic, egocentric, sitting back, figuring what his country is going to do for him to use John Kennedy’s phrase, but that he is a service-oriented individual. You realize that the needs of the community are greater than the needs of each individual. You are willing to sacrifice yourself for the good of the whole. A Christian patriot in particular is one who demonstrates that his Christianity means that he is a servant. He would lead, let him serve. A Christian is serving his neighbors and thus being a true patriot. A true patriot is not a one who sits back and puts a flag bumper sticker on his automobile. A true Christian patriot is one who serves the needs of others because he is enhancing the good of the whole, which is what the nation state is created for.

In the providence of God, that is precisely what the nation is for, to preserve order and to provide a community of helping people assisting one another. I think John Adams was right when he said a true patriot has to be a religious man because a religious man has an interest higher than himself. A religious man does out of the love of God.

What a non-religious person can only be forced to do either out of self-interest or government coercion. So, Christians willingly, lovingly participate in the processes of their community, which means their country. We love our country, but we don’t love it without exercising critical judgment any more than we love our own family without exercising critical judgment. If you just give carte blanche love to your children, you’re not loving them. That’s license. You’re letting them do anything they want. You love them by applying moral judgment.

David:   Do you have a book titled for what you’re working on?

Chuck:  No. At the moment it’s kind of tentatively titled, Kingdoms and Conflict, because it really is about the fact that from the time Christ made that incredible dramatic stirring announcement in Nazareth that the acceptable year of the Lord is here. He’s come to proclaim that the prisoners are set free. When he read from Isaiah, he was reading a messianic prophecy for the coming of the kingdom of God that it had landed in that time. And from that time until this, the kingdoms have been in conflict largely because Christians have not understood the kingdom, but those hostile to it, the rulers of this world have, which is why Christianity is persecuted.

David: Tomorrow, Chuck Colson, I want to talk with you about the kingdom of God in the church. Do we hear about the kingdom of God enough from our pulpits?

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David: So much said in such a little time, Chuck Colson, the amazing Chapel of the Air programs. This is going to set up a series, Karen, because we have very strong feelings regarding the kingdom of God teaching in the scriptures. Where are we going to go next?

Karen: Well, we’re going to start talking about Tales of the Kingdom. And those were the, there are three books to this set.

David: These are books you and I wrote.

Karen: I used that theology of the kingdom and sermons you had done on the kingdom of God when you were pastoring. And we integrated that into these prize award-winning stories. But the purpose of the book was to teach children and the adults who would be reading to introduce them to this concept, this theological concept, in a way where they would fall in love with the King and the Kingdom of God.

David: And I’m not going to read the whole series of tales of the kingdom. There are 36 tales, but we’ll hear some of them. Okay, so that’s after this, but we still have more to hear from Chuck Colson.

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David:   Talking with Chuck Colson, Chuck, how important a part of Christ’s preaching was this theme of the kingdom of God?

Chuck: I think it was the central theme of the New Testament. And I do not think you can understand the New Testament except in the context of Christ proclaiming not a new nation state, but the rule of God over all of his creation. That’s what the kingdom of God means. It’s God’s order of things. It is the way in which God has established his rule.

David:   Okay, now can you identify with hearing this kingdom theme preached at all. You were converted when you were an adult. But have you heard messages about the kingdom a lot?

Chuck:  No, one of the fascinating things to me, David, is the fact that for 13 years as a Christian, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon on the kingdom or really read very much about it. And largely, I think that’s because say over the last 50 years, the term kingdom has been used as an adjective to describe all sorts of things, kingdom ethics, kingdom building. And there have been schools of Christian thought which said that you go off and establish kind of an alternative lifestyle to be a model to the rest of the world, and you neglect the world, and that will be the kingdom building apart from the world. And so, the term has been grossly misused. But if you bring it back into its full theological context, that is what Jesus meant by it. It has to be central to everything we preach. I think it’s a lost doctrine, kind of a lost understanding. And it’s one of the reasons that we have a church today, an evangelical church, of 50 million people so-called, who really are making very little impact on this country. The moral condition of America continues to deteriorate. Visibly so, families breaking up, 50 % of the kids being born in the inner cities, being born out of wedlock, value clarification going on in the schools so that you can’t teach right and wrong, religion being expurgated from textbook, books. I mean, it’s an extraordinary thing in a so-called Christian nation. The reason is that Christians have come to think of their faith as simply another belief system. It is not another belief system, which makes Christianity unique of all the religions, of all time, of all beliefs, is that Jesus comes saying there is a personal creator God. He has revealed himself. You can know him. He has established his kingdom, of which this world and the nation states are but a part. When you come into that kingdom, you now are in a personal relationship with a living God who has established his order over this earth. It’s an extraordinary. It blows your mind to think about it. It is not just go to church and join a religion. It is live a whole new life and a whole new order of things that God has established. That’s the kingdom.

David:   So, you’re a citizen under his reign and whenever the king speaks on any subject you’re to obey.

Chuck:  That’s another thing. That’s very difficult for North American audiences to understand. We live in a democracy. The kingdom of God is absolutely totalitarian. God’s rule is authoritative, absolute, unquestioned, unchallengeable. God being God created us and as the creator has absolute unquestioned control. We’re always expecting committee meetings, town meetings, votes, majority rule. Anyway, God does not work that way. It is so wholly different than our concepts of government and that’s why people go around saying, “Well, God doesn’t really mean this. God doesn’t mean that.” God does mean this. God has revealed himself. He’s spoken with his authoritative word.

David:   Is it possible to be a member of the kingdom of God and say, “I like the compassion of the king but I don’t like some of his rules as to how I should live? I don’t like it that I’m supposed to love God with all my heart and love my neighbor as myself so I want to be accepted in the kingdom, but I don’t want to live by the rules of the king.”

Chuck: No, it’s preposterous but it’s also part of our culture today. We all want to be citizens of the United States or Canada and live in a free country. We have all the benefits but we don’t want to pay the price of citizenship which is responsibility, civic duty, serving in the military if called, paying taxes, caring for neighbors.

With every right goes a responsibility. Never more so is that clear than in the kingdom of God where the great benefit of eternal life, the great benefit of a relationship with God, the great benefit of that peace in the heart that comes from being at one with our Creator is free. God gives it unmerited favor. Grace of God is poured out, but it costs us everything.

David:   What are some of those specific responsibilities that it does cost us to be a part of the kingdom?

Chuck:  Well, how do you love God? You love God by keeping his commandments and so first of all we take the scripture, and we decide we’re going to live that way. And you take the scripture and live by in today’s world, and you are laughed at and ridiculed, mocked, people do not take you seriously. We get intimidated as a result of it. Sometimes it may cost you everything and one of my books I told the story of a judge in Indiana who could not obey the commands of the world and also be true to his God and he resigned his judgeship.

He simply had to resist. There are people in all of the world who are in prison because they refuse to proclaim all the middle legions to the rulers of the nations in which they live because they say “Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King.”

David:   Do you face this conflict in your life at all? Do you find tension because of bowing before King Jesus that sometimes puts you at variance with the rules of man?

Chuck: We often run into that particularly in the prisons where we’re told that we can’t violate the separation of church and state, can’t preach certain things. We preach them. If they don’t want us, that’s fine. I find that matter of fact. I find that many times in America where I’ll go to speak at a civic gathering or where I’ll go on television. I recently went on television and the producer of the show said, “We know what your life is all about but you can’t talk about Jesus on this program because we want to talk about some other things.” I said, “Well, get yourself another guest because my life is Christ.” There’s a subtle kind of a censorship in America because we kind of feel it’s out of fashion to talk about that. People look down their nose at so-called Bible thumpers. Well, call us what you want. I’m going to proclaim the truth of the kingdom of God because it’s the only reality there is.

David: What if the church just preaches Christ as Savior, as Lord, as shepherd, never talks about Him as king, never talks about the kingdom? What does the church lose?

Chuck: Well, the church simply becomes then like a rotary club that meets on Sunday mornings, the only difference being that a rotary club, if you don’t attend every week, you get kicked out and the church, you cannot attend and still be a member. All you’re doing is listening to somebody give a philosophy. Christianity is not a philosophy. Christianity is an order of life established by a personal God who has spoken and who offers us the invitation to live with Him in His realm, that is the kingdom of God.

David:   Where are you Chuck Colson in your thoughts about how North America is doing spiritually? Are we on the verge of a real spiritual breakthrough?

Chuck:  I don’t really think so David. I think that what has happened to Christianity in North America is that it’s today a mile wide and an inch deep. I think there’s a lot of people who profess Christianity and a lot of people who are very sincerely wanting to be serious, committed, active, involved Christians. But Christianity has fallen into the trap of being sort of self-gratifying. It’s kind of like the culture, what’s in it for me. As a result, we sort of have lost the cutting edge. I think there are two things that are happening today. And because a lot of good Christian teaching, but I don’t think they’re relating it to our responsibilities as to how we live in the world. And thus, you have people learning a lot about Scripture but not learning about what Scripture mandates that you do with your life. Thus, we go out of our churches waiting to come back a week later and get another good teaching session. Failing to realize that the whole object of the church is to lead men and women to Christ and lead them to worship and disciple them, that they might then in turn be ministers of the Gospel within the world. And so, the purpose of being equipped is to make a difference in the world around us. And this is what is not happening in the Christian church today.

David:   Is the revival message a kingdom of God message?

Chuck:  Oh absolutely. You can’t. The revival means that the church comes to realize its real role as the witness of the kingdom and culture. And that’s what revival is. And awakening is when that impact is felt throughout the society.

David:   Just real quickly, I’m curious, what Bible character do you identify with?

Chuck:  Bible character? Oh, there have been times when I’ve identified with Joseph because of being in prison. Nehemiah because I see building a wall through all that we’re doing in prison fellowship. I guess I know how the apostle Paul felt because I’ve had the same kind of a dramatic conversion that he has. I’ve certainly, Peter’s a real good friend of mine because I know what it is to feel weakened in your faith sometimes and stumble when you boast out loud but you really don’t carry it out inside. I guess there are lots of characters in the Bible that I can identify with.

David: People see you as very strong but there’s also the humanness in you, isn’t there?

Chuck:  We all have feet of clay and we’re all very human and we all struggle with lots of problems and the sanctification process goes on day by day. It’s a real struggle.

David:   We’re all subjects of a great king, however.

Chuck:  Well, that’s my element of assurance. The verse that I have come to love the most is the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ because I know that’s the one truth I can depend on. You know, as part of a kingdom of man, the most powerful political organization, the most powerful administration in history, I saw it all crumble in two years. The king I now serve, I realize, is there for eternity and I can trust my life to him. There’ll be no water gates in the kingdom of God.

David:   Amen. My thanks to Chuck Colson, the prison fellowship ministries for visiting with us again here in the Chapel of the Air. May Christ continue to keep His hand on you, Chuck. And on all of us who seek to serve Him as King.

Outgo:    You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is Copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60189.