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SearchError in the Gospel Taught by the Apostles
These men had been trained and instructed that the gospel which they should preach was the
fatherhood of God and the sonship of man, but at just this moment of spiritual ecstasy and
personal triumph, the best tidings, the greatest news, these men could think of was the fact of the
risen Master. And so they went forth, endowed with power from on high, preaching glad tidings
to the people — even salvation through Jesus — but they unintentionally stumbled into the error
of substituting some of the facts associated with the gospel for the gospel message itself. Peter
unwittingly led off in this mistake, and others followed after him on down to Paul, who created a
new religion out of the new version of the good news.
The gospel of the kingdom is: the fact of the fatherhood of God, coupled with the resultant truth
of the sonship-brotherhood of men. Christianity, as it developed from that day, is: the fact of God
as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, in association with the experience of believer-fellowship
with the risen and glorified Christ.
It is not strange that these spirit-infused men should have seized upon this opportunity to express
their feelings of triumph over the forces which had sought to destroy their Master and end the
influence of his teachings. At such a time as this it was easier to remember their personal
association with Jesus and to be thrilled with the assurance that the Master still lived, that their
friendship had not ended, and that the spirit had indeed come upon them even as he had
promised.
These believers felt themselves suddenly translated into another world, a new existence of joy,
power, and glory. The Master had told them the kingdom would come with power, and some of
them thought they were beginning to discern what he meant.
And when all of this is taken into consideration, it is not difficult to understand how these men
came to preach a new gospel about Jesus in the place of their former message of the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of men.