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Here it is, folks. The 5 season series called "Tales from Jesusland" will connect all 5 of the Jesusland books through storytelling and conversations about the Kingdom of God. Book 1 available on Amazon. Enjoy and remember to reply with your thoughts, prayers, and questions.
I have a question to ask you. Do you ever get frustrated with church in this modern era? Like how sometimes it feels like a bit of a performance or like you're just going through the motion? Do you sometimes look at the Western Christian culture and just shake your head? If that's you, then I have a story to tell you.
Kevin Neville:I am Kevin Neville, and you are listening to Tales from Jesusland Okay, this week we begin the story at a ticket booth outside of a fictitious theme park in Christendom. Imagine yourself walking into Jesus' Land. First, you have to pay the entrance fee. It's about 10% of your annual income that will do. Oh, and then any seed faith pledges will also be greatly appreciated.
Kevin Neville:Then you have to get out your map. You have to decide where to go first as Financial Blessing Ville, the Mighty Miracle Mountain, Fire Preaching Frontier, the Satan Stomping Stampede, or perhaps you're gonna fill your rumbling stomach at the Fellowship Feast food court. You could try your aim at the Heretic Heckler range. Maybe get your tickets for the old razzle dazzle sermon battles. Maybe catch a show at the Pius Political Pavilion or ride the rapids at the Great Whitewater Gossip Gorge.
Kevin Neville:Don't forget your bless their heart life preservers and the complimentary, I'll pray for you paddle. Now every Sunday morning, you could watch the beautiful people don their skinny jeans as the patriotic praise parade marches down Holy Street. Take some selfies with the families, family in front of the disciple diorama, or by the wax reproduction in the Super Saint Sanctuary. Of course, no day at Jesus' Land would be complete without an extensive visit to the sanctified souvenir shack, where you could buy your double length worship albums, custom written sermons from your favorite megachurch pastor, or witty quasi Christian t shirts informing everyone how y'all need Jesus. I actually have that t shirt.
Kevin Neville:Oh, and while you're there, pick up a super pack of portable communion elements and a wide assortment of gauze pills to cure, you know, whatever ails you have. Don't worry about missing it. All paths lead to the shack. Finally, pack your sleepy kids into the car with those stuffed anthropomorphic veggie souvenir and head home, knowing that God has been well pleased by your weekly adventure to the Kingdom of Jesus' Land. Okay, so I was having a little fun, a little tongue in cheek silliness there.
Kevin Neville:But you know, one doesn't have to look too hard to see that the Western Church has accomplished making Christianity into a successful entertainment and commodity business. Many followers of Christ will be quick to point out their discomfort with this truth, but not really knowing what to do about it. I mean, is it wrong to have fun in an environment that is edifying and uplifting? What's so bad about giving your hard earned profit to those who are doing so much good for the Kingdom of God? It's all just part of the might and miracle of Christendom, is it not?
Kevin Neville:In 1955, they opened a real life Holy Land USA in Waterbury, Connecticut. It was an 18 acre wonderland where you could follow the stations of the cross, visit a reproduction of the catacombs, wander leisurely around a cinder block Hebrew village. Of course, the chapel awaited all pilgrims who were inspired by the 56 foot cross, the Bible statue standing beside the illuminated Holy Land USA sign. Although at its peak it could boast over 40,000 visitors a year, it eventually grew out of favor. And in 1984, it had to shut its doors.
Kevin Neville:It quickly fell into disrepair and was vandalized. It actually gained a cult following for urban explorers who would really want to sneak in and explore the ruins at their own risk. I often imagine this desolate and forsaken place as a picture of the kingdom of man's failed attempt to bring the kingdom of God to earth in its own power. One more story. It's about Jesus when He too got frustrated with the modern religious culture and their exploits.
Kevin Neville:In the second chapter of John, we see Jesus at the beginning of His ministry with a homemade whip in hand, clearing out a similar situation in the temple courts. Sheep and cattle scattered as this passionate and perplexing Jew proceeded to send pables toppling, vexing vendors and creating chaos in this previously orderly environment. Perhaps the onlookers couldn't help but think what the Psalmist had written: Zeal for your house consumes me. Here at the beginning of His ministry, it wasn't the only time Jesus did this. During the last week in Jerusalem before the Cross, Luke tells us how He was up to it again.
Kevin Neville:Luke nineteen forty five-forty six When Jesus entered the temple courts, He began to drive out those who were selling. It is written, he said to them, my house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. Every day he was teaching at the Temple, but the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the leaders among the people were trying to kill Him. So clearly the religious leaders were not happy with Jesus' action. But why did He do it?
Kevin Neville:Not only at the beginning of His earthly ministry, but at the end? Did He deliberately want to ruin the Passover festivities? All He was doing was disrupting some well meaning merchants who were just trying to make a buck off the swell of tour tourists that came into town that day. Right? Look.
Kevin Neville:Here he is declaring, my house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. The problem was that they had taken a holy place and made it into a marketplace. They specialized in ripping off the poor and the travelers. It made it more difficult for worshipers, especially especially the poor ones, to come into a closer relationship with God. And all this wasn't done, was done with the intent to gain profit.
Kevin Neville:In much the same way, we often try to mix Jesus into our culture in attempt to make our lives easier with the side benefit of more financial profit and personal happiness. But Jesus didn't come to improve our Kingdom. He called us to leave it aside and to take up a new citizenship. What makes the difference in all of this is one thing alone: it's a matter of citizenship. Citizens of the Kingdom of God are in a relationship with their King.
Kevin Neville:To be a citizen of Jesus' land, it is more than just an emotional response. It is a choice. It is more than a passionate faith adjusted. It's more than a passive faith adjustment. It's a journey.
Kevin Neville:It's more than a religion. It's an immigration. Much more than just a cultural adjustment from the place we live now, but a whole separate kingdom that is fully at odds with the kingdom that we're born into. It's time we realize that the old has gone and the new has come. It's time to jump into this new with both feats.
Kevin Neville:So, on behalf of the Immigration Committee, and all who have gone before and the King of this Upside Down already not yet on earth as it is in heaven off the map kingdom, welcome my friends. Welcome to Jesus' land. You know, that does remind me of another story of when Jesus taught his shortest parable that made the biggest impact. But let's save that story for next week. So we're gonna switch gears now, and we're going into part two.
Kevin Neville:And part two is going to be a conversation. Now I'm sitting here by myself, so the conversation might have to, you know, be you guys. If you if you happen to see this in your life, I do get your your comments and quotes. This somehow I could bring this add to the broadcast. If you want to have a conversation about this, please send me send me a post.
Kevin Neville:If you're watching this live, if you're watching this afterwards, it's not gonna it doesn't travel back through time. I'm sorry. You just have to tune in for the next broadcast. So we will have a conversation about a different topic on the kingdom of God, and the church, and the modern church, and what God has called us to and out of. We'll have guests on here, and we'll sometimes we'll we have prerecorded, but sometimes we'll do live.
Kevin Neville:And again, if you wanna be a guest on this, I would love to have you. It's probably one of the reasons I'm doing this is just to lure some of you in so we could have conversations, the great kind of conversations you have that just you need endless cups of coffee to have those. So I know a number of you out there are those people, and and that would be so much fun. But today's topic is something that I just I wanted to set the stage for because this is a conversation that I think we need to have because so many places, all my life, I've been hearing one thing. Revival is coming.
Kevin Neville:Revival is almost here. Andrew said, the latter rain revival. And so I spent my life studying. I've been a revivalist, studying the history of revival, going back to the Great Awakenings, traveling even further back. We're gonna talk about some of the history, both right here in Rochester when it has to do with the Rochester Bible Training School and and Ivan q Spencer and the Duncan sisters, and then going even farther back to Charles Finney, and then even farther back to the English revival to the first great awakening.
Kevin Neville:We're gonna talk about all those because I believe when we look at the past, we could see God's fingerprint in what he's doing for the future, for this next generation. And and that's what we're gonna talk about today because it's easy to say there's revival coming, and I believe it. We are going to dive into what we believe God is saying to different leaders of the Church as we prepare for that, as we look at the generations, as we look at the Church getting ready. But there's something I believe that has to come first. And that is Reformation.
Kevin Neville:Let me tell you a little bit about history and then we're going to look at it when it has to do with the Kingdom of God. Because it began 10/31/1517. All howard How How Halloween. All howard Eve in Wittenberg, Germany. And that was when Martin Luther decided to nail the 95 Thesis to the door of the Church because he had had enough.
Kevin Neville:The Church, as we knew, it was the Catholic Church at that, was the only Church at the time, Catholic being universal Church. But they started to they had for many years become obsessed with power and corrupted, and they started to do things that were designed, supposed to be for the kingdom of God, but really was all about the kingdom of man. They started to to sell indulgences and and and and teach wacky, weird things like like the how we needed the pope as the as the in between between God and man. And finally, people like Martin Luther had enough, and so they nailed these 95 theses to the door and said, we need a reformation. And and that's for those who know the church history that men like Martin Luther and John Calvin and Heidrick Zwingli and John Wycliffe, a number of them, instrumental of saying to the to the Catholic church, to the church that had lost its way, We need to return to the truth of the word of God.
Kevin Neville:So they put together the five solas. Five guidance. Things like sola scripture was the one leading the way. Oh, hi, Kathleen. Yes.
Kevin Neville:Welcome. She sees me. It's nice to be seen. The are gonna be somebody I definitely wanna bring on to the show. We're gonna be talking to you guys soon.
Kevin Neville:But, yeah, they they came up with the five solas. Solar scripture was the one that led the way. Solar was by by the scriptures alone. And the other five were sola gratia sola fida sola s Christas sola degloria The problem was they had these great intentions of saying we need to pull the church back from its its divergence from the kingdom of God. And we need to look at the word of God and use that as our guidance, as our basis of everything we do.
Kevin Neville:And so they did. The problem was is as the Protestant church was formed and the Catholic church dug in their heels, both of them weren't ready to give up the idea of power. And so war broke out. Lots of wars, like the thirty year war, and and so much so that depending on where you live, on what kind of a church you are part of. Which means whose realm his religion.
Kevin Neville:In other words, if your prince was Catholic, that means you were Catholic too, because that was the society you were born into. And if your prince was Protestant, that means you had to be Protestant too, because that was the kingdom you were born into. And again, we had this great reformation except for the fact that a lot of things didn't change. Yes, we had the Bible and it was there for us to read and study, but still we were living not like the kingdom of God called us to, but like the kingdom of man who always wanted power. So the students of these reformers, they looked at them and they began to say something interesting.
Kevin Neville:They began to say, you, this is a great start. Yeah, we don't need a pope to stand in between. And even though, you know, we lost the pope and I'm very sorry for my Catholic friends out there, I know he was a good man. But we don't need a pope to stand between us and God, because we have Jesus and we have the Word of God that could show us the way. But as much as Sola Scriptura was the leading of the Reformation, the students of the Reformation began to look at those solas and say there's one there, there's one there as important as they all are, there's one there that really stands out above the rest.
Kevin Neville:Solas Christus. By Christ alone. And he said, thank you reformers for giving us the Bible, for showing us that that's what we need, But we haven't gone far enough because we still don't look like Jesus. We aren't acting like Jesus. We aren't taking the words of Jesus seriously enough.
Kevin Neville:So they had another reformation. They called it the radical reformation. And the premise there was we need to take the words and actions and life of Jesus more seriously. Things like the Sermon on the Mount. They call it the Radical Reformation because it stood up against everything that the Kingdom of Man was saying that you needed.
Kevin Neville:They still on both Catholics and the Protestants still had infant baptism and the radical reformers were saying no we see Jesus has believers baptism, adult baptism, baptism of people that decide to follow Jesus, not just born into it. We also want to look at the Sermon on the Mount. We want to look at the idea that Jesus came to bring peace, to bring the cross, not the sword. So we're going to dive into this more, but this idea was offensive to both the Catholics and the Protestants, because here's the deal: you were born as a follower of the Prince. Whatever the Prince believed, you believed too.
Kevin Neville:But no matter if you're Protestant or Catholic, both of them believe that you were born into part of the state. The state and church had power, and by you saying, I don't want infant baptism, I want to make that choice myself, you were taking the power away from the church. By you saying, I'm not going to stand up and fight against the other church because I don't believe that's what Jesus taught. You are taking power away from the church. So it became an issue of power.
Kevin Neville:The power of the kingdom of man. And so one thing the Catholics and the Protestants agreed on for a while is these new radical reformers, they started calling them the Anabaptists because they want to be baptized again, do they? The one thing they agreed on is, let's just kill these Anabaptists. And so it was bad times for them. And and now the Anabaptists weren't perfect either.
Kevin Neville:They they there was some interesting things about their history we would dive into another time. But the the bottom line being that there was a calling for the Church, not just to adjust the power, who has the power and how it's used, but to do something entirely different. To leave the kingdom of man and immigrate to something that was entirely on its head. The kingdom of God. Well, the greatest of all is the servant of all.
Kevin Neville:Where we put down the sword and we take up the cross. Where we see our enemy and we love them. You know, all the things we read about in the, what I call, the Manifesto of the Kingdom of God, the Sermon on the Mount, which was a guide of how we live as immigrants in the servant of in the Kingdom of God. So that is exactly what our society needs now. We look at it now and we look at the church wants what's power, the state wants this and we scream and fight over this.
Kevin Neville:But God is preparing for us something. Not just a revival, but for the Church a reformation. A radical reformation that is saying we need solus Christus. We need to take seriously Jesus, the King. What He said, what He did, His words, His deeds, His actions, and we need to take the Kingdom of God as our calling, not just try to live, Not try to do things for the kingdom of God and the power of the kingdom of man.
Kevin Neville:Because it's a whole another kingdom. And this is where I believe Jesus' own prophecy in Matthew 2four 14 comes in. Now Jesus began to prophecy and a lot of people believe this prophecy is the happens at seventy AD with the temple. Some people believe it happens at the end of the times. I believe it's both.
Kevin Neville:I believe he goes back and forth, but there's one verse there that I believe sums up every the reason why I've been writing this book, the reason why I'm talking about this radical reformation, the reason why I believe Jesus is calling the Church to a third way. And this is what Matthew 2four 14 says: And the Gospel of the Kingdom The Gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed in all the world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. So that is the conversation we are going to have moving forward. Guys, thank you for those who tuned in, for watch part of it, for those who are watching after the fact. We're gonna come live every week.
Kevin Neville:We're gonna read or tell the stories from the book from Jesus' land. We're gonna have conversations. We're gonna have guests on. If you wanna be a guest, please let me know. We'll start the conversation about what we're gonna talk about.
Kevin Neville:The week you are on, something that's passionate in your something about the Kingdom of God, something about this radical reformation that we are being called to getting ready for revival because we want to see the generations that are coming. We want to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom in all the world. It's gonna be a good time. Thank you guys for joining me. This is Kevin Neville.
Kevin Neville:Thank you for tuning in to Tales from Jesus Land, and keep growing in the kingdom. I will see you guysnext week