The case against an “I’ll fly away, sweet by and by” Gospel

By Bishop Dave Chikosi

It appears my brother Learnmore Zuze is an ardent Adventist. That is fine as long as we all remember that the 2nd Coming of Jesus, as important as that is, is not the central message of the Gospel. Nor is going to heaven the primary goal of Christianity.

Unfortunately a lot of church teaching has presented salvation solely as a means of going to heaven when one dies. Salvation thus becomes nothing more than one’s personal fire insurance for escaping hell. It has nothing or very little to do with our present life here on this planet. Everything is about heaven and hell after death.

But this is a defective Gospel. It’s one-sided and therefore reductionist. It simply is not the central message of the Gospel that Jesus came to preach.

Jesus came preaching the advent of the Kingdom of God or Heaven. That was the central message of His Gospel. We are told that: “From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17).

We are also told that “Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sicknesses and all kinds of diseases among the people (Matthew 4:23).

The references are too numerous to enumerate here. Suffice it to say that most, if not all, of Jesus’ parables were about the Kingdom. And as for the end of the world, Jesus says “this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:14).

But before the arrival of Jesus was John the Baptist, and after Jesus was St Paul. Both men preached the message of the Kingdom of God, with John saying “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2). Paul, in his emotional farewell to the Ephesian church elders “among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God” lets them know that this was the last time they would ever see his face (Acts 20:25). 

Bottom line: the central message of the Gospel is not “I’ll fly away in the sweet by and by.” The central message of the Gospel is the Kingdom of God. But what is the Kingdom of God? We will start by defining what the Kingdom is not.

Let’s hear it from St Paul: “But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power (1 Cor 4:19:20). 

Evidently Paul had opponents and detractors at Corinth. But these guys were all puff and no power. Eloquent in speech but devoid of visible tokens of divine Presence in their meetings. Paul wants to know what power they have, because if they have none then they are not preaching the Kingdom.

But Paul is not done with these Corinthians. He lets them know that he is not at all impressed with pretty and clever little sermons. “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power (1 Cor 2:4-5).

In other words, if there is no demonstration of the power of the Spirit, then the preacher’s flowery sermonettes don’t amount to a hill of beans. Such power-challenged sermons are actually counter-productive. They only result in the hearers’ faith resting “on human wisdom” and not on God’s power.

So what is the Kingdom of God? It is not an alternative term for heaven, as many Christians believe. Jesus taught that the Kingdom is here and now, not in the sweet by and by pie in the sky. He said: “But if I am casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has arrived among you (Matthew 12:28). 

In other words, the advent (and advance) of the Kingdom is heralded by a direct confrontation with the forces of darkness. And so if a church has never cast out a single demon in its history, then one has to wonder which Gospel that church is preaching. The Kingdom is necessarily confrontational.

But too many Christians are overly pre-occupied with going to heaven to spend the rest of their days as fat babies with wings, floating around on a cloud, wearing halos and playing little harps. How ridiculous.

Christian, if God wanted you in heaven He would have arranged for your death the very day you got saved. But God doesn’t want you in heaven – not right now anyway. There is nothing to do in heaven. There are no enemies to fight, no demons to kick and subdue. The fight is down here on planet earth. This is where nature and evil spirits are running amok and uncontrolled. There are multitudes who have not yet heard a clear presentation of the Gospel. And you want to escape and fly away?

Why do you think Jesus gave believers authority and said “in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover”(Mark 16:18)? 

You can’t preach to sinners, heal the sick and do any of all this wonderful stuff as a fat baby playing a harp on a cloud. Forget that. The Gospel is not about the sweet by and by. It’s about dealing with the nasty here and now. God has furnished the believers with weapons and armor to get the job done here and now.

I am amused that while Jesus is praying “Thy Kingdom come . . . on earth as it is in heaven” some Christians are busy praying for a quick exit to Glory. Cowards.

True Christianity is not escapism. It is receiving life “and life more abundantly” (John 10:10). That’s the kind of life Jesus came to give. Further, salvation is from the Greek word “sozo” which means “to be made in a sound condition.” There is nothing one-dimensional about salvation. It’s much much more than just missing hell and going to heaven.

Salvation is three-dimensional. Jesus died to break the threefold curse of spiritual death (separation from God), poverty and disease. And the poverty-prosperity paradigm is what gives Mr Zuze and many others a lot of trouble.

Mr Zuze correctly observes that you can’t serve God AND money. But what he fails to realize is that you can serve God WITH money. In fact God requires believers to serve Him with their money. That is why the early Church brought their money “and put it at the feet of the apostles” (Acts 4:35). What a man does with his hard earned cash is a good indicator of what is in his heart, “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). But I digress.

Paul is very clear that one of the curses that Jesus died for was poverty (yes, poverty IS a curse. Just read Deuteronomy 28:15-68). He says: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich (2 Cor 8:9). The context of the whole chapter is about monetary collections and offering. This text cannot be spiritualized.

I don’t know where Mr Zuze gets the idea that Jesus was poor. How many poor men does he know who have a treasurer like Jesus had? How many poor men (or rich men for that matter) does he know who have fed 5000 people? How men poor men have people fight over their clothes when they are dead? How many poor men receive expensive gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh at their birthday?

The truth of the Gospel is this: on the Cross Jesus became sin for us, carried our sicknesses and “for your sake became poor.” This is the Gospel and not that other stuff.