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SearchThe Full Truth Eluded the Apostles
What has happened to these men whom Jesus had ordained to go forth preaching the gospel of
the kingdom, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man? They have a new gospel; they
are on fire with a new experience; they are filled with a new spiritual energy. Their message has
suddenly shifted to the proclamation of the risen Christ: ―Jesus of Nazareth, a man God approved
by mighty works and wonders; him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, you did crucify and slay. The things which God foreshadowed by the
mouth of all the prophets, he thus fulfilled. This Jesus did God raise up. God has made him both
Lord and Christ. Being, by the right hand of God, exalted and having received from the Father
the promise of the spirit, he has poured forth this which you see and hear. Repent, that your sins
may be blotted out; that the Father may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you, even
Jesus, whom the heaven must receive until the times of the restoration of all things.‖
The gospel of the kingdom, the message of Jesus, had been suddenly changed into the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ. They now proclaimed the facts of his life, death, and resurrection and
preached the hope of his speedy return to this world to finish the work he began. Thus the
message of the early believers had to do with preaching about the facts of his first coming and
with teaching the hope of his second coming, an event which they deemed to be very near at
hand.
Christ was about to become the creed of the rapidly forming church. Jesus lives; he died for men;
he gave the spirit; he is coming again. Jesus filled all their thoughts and determined all their new
concept of God and everything else. They were too much enthused over the new doctrine that
―God is the Father of the Lord Jesus‖ to be concerned with the old message that ―God is the
loving Father of all men,‖ even of every single individual. True, a marvelous manifestation of
brotherly love and unexampled good will did spring up in these early communities of believers.
But it was a fellowship of believers in Jesus, not a fellowship of brothers in the family kingdom
of the Father in heaven. Their good will arose from the love born of the concept of Jesus‘
bestowal and not from the recognition of the brotherhood of mortal man. Nevertheless, they were
filled with joy, and they lived such new and unique lives that all men were attracted to their
teachings about Jesus. They made the great mistake of using the living and illustrative
commentary on the gospel of the kingdom for that gospel, but even that represented the greatest
religion mankind had ever known.