It has always been God’s purpose to bless man. More than this, it has been God’s purpose from a past eternity to exalt His beloved Son as man and to place Him as head over all things, both in heaven and on earth. Thus, when God created man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, He came down “in the cool of the day” to enjoy fellowship with His creature. But then sin came in, and all seemed spoiled. Man no longer felt comfortable in God’s company, and eventually he had to be put out of the garden, lest he eat of the tree of life. Even in all this, however, God’s purposes would not be frustrated, but rather God would use the fall of man to exalt His Son and to bring man into far greater blessing than if sin had never come in. A hymn puts it well:
“Though our nature’s fall in Adam
Seemed to shut us out from God,
Thus it was His counsel brought us
Nearer still, through Jesus’ blood.”
The Everlasting Gospel
This brings us to the subject of the gospel, which literally means “good news.” In spite of the fall, God had good news for man, which was announced right at the very beginning. In pronouncing the curse on the serpent (Satan), the Lord said, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise [or crush] thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). Here we have the essence of what is termed “the everlasting gospel” in Revelation 14:6. Right at the very beginning, God assured Satan, in man’s hearing, that while he (Satan) might crush the heel of the seed of the woman (Christ), he (Satan) would not be victorious in the end. No, God will have the victory in Christ, and man blessed in spite of the fall.
Although the term is not used until the end of the Bible, the everlasting gospel pervades the whole of Scripture, and especially during the Old Testament times, when as yet “life and incorruptibility” had not been “brought to light ... by the glad tidings” (2 Tim. 1:10 JND). Thus believers during this time of limited revelation took hold of God’s statement of future blessing and trusted in God for its fulfillment, while not knowing just how it would all happen.
Connected with the term “the everlasting gospel” is the expression found in Revelation 10:7: “In the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as He hath declared to His servants the prophets.” All through the centuries, ungodly men have questioned God’s dealings with this world and have often found fault with the suffering and evil in the world, as if God were at least allowing it, if not perhaps the author of it. When Christ will appear to set up His glorious millennial kingdom, this mystery will be finished, and men will see the full result of all God’s ways, some of which seemed hard to understand. At that time the world will see Christ displayed in glory, with His church, and head over all things, whether in heaven or on earth. It will be the culmination of the everlasting gospel.
The Gospel of the Kingdom
Connected with the term “the everlasting gospel” is what Scripture calls “the gospel of the kingdom.” This term is first used in the Word of God in Matthew 4:23, where we find that “Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom.” It was really the same gospel that had already been preached by John the Baptist, who had gone about saying, “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). It is part of the everlasting gospel, but with a specific message at that time to a specific people — the Jews. Many believed, and the result of faith in the message was evidenced by their being baptized with “the baptism of repentance.” The evidence of faith was a change in their lives and a turning away from their sins, so as to be ready for the coming King. The gospel of the kingdom announced the coming of the rightful King and promised earthly blessings, as had been clearly brought out by many Old Testament prophets. It never promised heavenly blessings; it was, and will be in a coming day, earthly in character.
We well know that the rightful King — the Lord Jesus — was rejected and crucified, and thus the glorious kingdom for which the Jews were waiting was postponed. However, after the church is called home, we know that this same gospel of the kingdom will be preached again. This is clear from Matthew 24:14, where the Lord Jesus prophesied that “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” It will be preached by those of the nation of Israel, some of whom God has preserved with Jewish hopes and aspirations and who will, after the Lord has called the church home, quickly go out and begin to announce the coming of the Messiah to set up His kingdom. This time, however, the message will not merely be to Israel; it will go out “for a witness unto all nations.” As a result, not only will many from Israel be saved through believing this gospel, but also “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” (Rev. 7:9). These will be saved, not for heavenly blessings, but for earthly blessing in the millennium.
Between these two distinct preachings of the gospel of the kingdom, we have the gospel presented in an entirely different way. The gospel preached by the apostles after the Lord’s resurrection took on a fullness and breadth that was not known before our Lord’s resurrection. In John 20:22, it is recorded that Jesus “breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” Thus the preaching was characterized by the coming of the Holy Spirit, bringing with it the power of a risen Christ in glory. Works of healing attested to the truth of the message and confirmed the Word. The truth of the Lord’s resurrection and His place now in heaven were urged on the listeners, and as a result, eternal forgiveness of sins could be theirs through faith in that One now risen from the dead.
However, this gospel, while preached from a risen Christ in glory, did not detach believers from this earth. It was preached mainly to the nation of Israel, giving them “one last chance” to accept the Person of Christ as risen from the dead. While those who believed looked for the Lord to return, it was a return to this world that was before them. Doubtless there was a wonderful unity among believers that had been formed by the coming of the Holy Spirit, and they were all members of one body, but they did not as yet know this truth. As another has aptly put it, “The scene was a beautiful expression of God’s grace to man on the earth.” The two cardinal truths presented were the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the coming down of the Holy Spirit as a witness of this fact. But the whole picture is still one of earthly hopes and earthly blessings.
Paul’s Gospel
But this wonderful message, while it was believed by many, was rejected by the bulk of the Jews. They gave expression to this hatred of the Lord Jesus by stoning Stephen, thus sending a messenger after the Lord, saying, “We will not have this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14). As a result, God set Israel as a nation aside for a time, and we read, “Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in” (Rom. 11:25). God then saved from among the Jews one of the worst persecutors of believers and sends him, not to the Jews, but to the Gentiles. Unlike the other apostles, Paul’s first contact with the Lord Jesus was to hear Him speak from heaven, and his ministry, also unlike the other apostles, was characterized by a heavenly, not an earthly, calling.
After being struck down on the road to Damascus, Paul (then Saul of Tarsus) spent several days without sight, not eating or drinking, and was evidently spoken to by the Lord. He received revelations from the Lord concerning the church — revelations of truth that had been “hid in God” from before the foundation of the world. When he preached, he did not merely preach Jesus as Lord and Christ; he preached Him as “the Son of God” (Acts 9:20). His ministry took men up to heaven rather than leaving them in this world, for earthly blessing.
What Paul preached had a dimension that was never known before, for God was bringing out a gospel that was given directly to Paul and to no other. Elsewhere in this issue we have elaborated on the gospel Paul preached, so we will not repeat it all here. However, it is important to notice that the other apostles preached mainly about man’s need and how God had met that need through Christ’s work on the cross. Paul preached all this too, but began, not with man’s need, but with God’s purposes in Christ — purposes that originated before the foundation of the world.
Thus Paul’s preaching — what he calls “my gospel” — is a gospel that is called both “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24) and “the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4 JND). God has glorified His beloved Son, but He is going to have His church associated with Him in that glory — a church “not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing” (Eph. 5:27). What Paul calls “my gospel” (Rom. 16:25) is associated with the revelation of the mystery — the mystery [or revealed secret] of Christ and the church. All the counsels of God have now been revealed, and all of God’s ways from a past eternity to a coming eternity have now been brought out in Paul’s ministry. This is the fullest gospel that was ever or will ever be preached to man.
This gospel will come to an end when the Lord Jesus comes to take His church home. At that time all who are part of that church will be snatched away, to spend eternity with Christ in glory (1 Thess. 4:15-17). Then, as we have mentioned, the gospel of the kingdom will again be preached.
There are many other details that could be mentioned, but these will, I trust, give the reader a brief outline of the word “gospel” as it is used in Scripture and help us to be “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).
W. J. Prost