The President of Moody Bible Institute Speaks on the Gospel of the Kingdom

{The following is a transcription from a Moody Presents broadcast from earlier this year.  I happened to catch this broadcast while I was driving home from the grocery store back when it was on the air.  The entire broadcast is available at this link:  Prophecy-It Does Matter, Part 2}

…There is martyrdom, there is death, there is chaos. As lawlessness reigns on the earth and every man is a law unto himself.

Now you might think, “Can anybody survive in a situation like that?”

You have wars, you have famines, you have persecution, you have lawlessness, can anybody survive?

Well many will be killed, but some will survive and that’s what He talks about in verse 13. He says, “But the one who endures to the end, he shall be saved.”

And don’t misunderstand that to refer to spiritual salvation. When He’s talking about the one who’s enduring to the end shall be saved He’s talking about physical deliverance, he shall be physically rescued. The same word means that just a few verses later down in verse 22. He says unless those days are cut short no life would have been saved. Preserved, rescued. It means the same thing up in verse 13, so what He’s saying is the one who makes it to the end will be physically rescued because there is a coming King and a coming Kingdom that is going to set everything straight and so there’s this hope at the end. And He says that it is this message of hope that is proclaimed throughout all the world. Look at verse 14:

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations. And then the end shall come.

Now some have misconstrued this verse. I’ve heard missionaries say that they want to hasten the return of Christ by preaching the gospel in all the nations. I get that, but that’s not what this verse is saying, because that would make the fulfillment of God’s purposes and the second coming of Christ dependent upon the obedience of people, and that’s not true with a sovereign God. And furthermore, notice Jesus specifically says “This gospel of the Kingdom, this gospel.” Which gospel? The gospel that He just talked about, the good news that He just talked about there in verse 13, and that is the one who preserves (sic) to the end will be saved, will be preserved because there is a coming King, there’s a coming Kingdom and this is all going to be set straight. Gospel means “good news”. So He says the good news is that there is a King and a Kingdom coming.

And that means that this is a little different than the good news we share today. The good news that we share today is Christ died for our sins and He rose again from the dead. This good news is similar to what John the Baptist shared during Christ’s first coming when he said “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” That is, there is a kingdom coming, get ready. And it’s the same thing here.

Jesus says this good news will be preached throughout all of the world and then the end will come. The era will be over, and finally the prophesied Messianic Kingdom will commence…