Are you seeing the kingdom?

By Apostle A. L. Albury

Kingdom Encounter Ministries International

No doubt we are living in a time when there is much being taught about the Kingdom of God. With this expansion in the knowledge of the Kingdom come many questions. In fact if I were to ask 10 persons, what does the Kingdom of God mean to them, I would indeed get perhaps 10 different answers. Truly the Kingdom of God mean different things to many different people. These differences of understanding stems from the manner in which the Kingdom is understood.

Jesus said that one must be born again in order to "see" or "enter" the Kingdom. However, He does not say that upon being born again one would immediately fully see or completely enter into the Kingdom. Salvation is the precondition or the requirement for first seeing and then entering the Kingdom. Therefore, understanding the Kingdom spiritually and laying hold of it in its reality can only follow the new birth experience, not precede it.

We know from the Word of God that the natural mind cannot perceive the things of God. Until you are spiritually born again, you have neither the ability to see nor the potential to enter into the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is not a physical world. It is the realm of God that functions on entirely different principles than the natural world. It is a new order that one enters into under entirely new conditions. It becomes accessible by the experience of a new life through Christ, a new identity, a new citizenship, a new spirit, a new nature, a new attitude and a new ability.

When we enter onto the world stage, we are born outside of the Kingdom of God because we are conceived in sin and shaped by iniquity. As a result, we are born without the capacity to see the Kingdom. For that which is born of spirit is spirit, and that which is born of flesh is flesh; and fleshly men can only give an uneducated opinion about something spiritual that they do not and cannot understand. There-fore the opinion of a natural man on spiritual matters is nothing more than an opinion. It is as if someone had been standing outside some great building. He has heard that its indoor architectural features are beautiful. He walks all around it and sees nothing that impressive on the outside and leaves saying that there is nothing worth seeing. The part that he misses is that its beauty must be seen from the inside. So must a man enter the King-dom of Heaven and he will SEE the Kingdom of God. He will see the majesty and splendour of the glory of God.

We live in a world of worlds and to enter any of them one has to birth that which is of that world. There is the intellectual world, for instance, which requires the birth of brain power; the musical world, which requires the birth of harmony and ear. A man cannot enter the intellectual world except he has the brains, or the music world except he has a sound ear. The seed of that world or that Kingdom must be created in him. Hence "the poet is born not made, hence a genius is born not made." "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God" (John 3:3). What does this word "see" mean here? In spiritual terms the words "see" and "know" are identical in their spiritual meaning. If I tell a friend something he did not see before, and I am trying to get him to see it, all at once his expressions reveal that he understands. It does not mean that he sees anything with the eye of flesh. It means that he "understands" or "knows" it. I talk to a blind man who has no eyes to see at all. I explain something to him and presently he says, "I see it!" Does he see anything? Not with his physical eyes – but he knows it. So Jesus is telling us that apart from the new birth a man cannot understand, comprehend, or know the Kingdom of God. It is better to know the Kingdom of God by the spirit than to see with physical eyes.

The Kingdom of God is not seen with the physical eye. If so then a drunkard, a prostitute, a rapist or an atheist can see it.

There were many who saw Jesus with their physical eyes but they never once saw the Son of God. They saw the Christ, but they knew not that He was the Christ. They saw His miracles, but they did not know Him. They even rejected Him, despised Him and hated Him, while they looked upon Him. You could see Jesus Himself in bodily form today, but unless your eyes were opened as were the eyes of the men of Emmaus, you would not know Him to be the Christ. Millions of people today see God"s Christ, His many-membered body on earth and yet they know Him not! "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not" (I John. 3:1). They see us but they don't see us, they do not know us by the Spirit. But when you are born of the Spirit you see what other eyes cannot see. You see the unseen and the eternal realm. You know the things that are divine. You see God and you see the Kingdom of God.

Almost all men are devoid of understanding the spiritual things of God. Men are blind to the world of the Kingdom of Heaven. Pulpits today are filled with preachers who are blind leaders leading the blind. Blind men do not see. If you are blind I could talk to you about the beauties of the rainbow, about the spectrum of colours, about rays, reflections, optics, but such discussions as this would be utterly futile. I could continue them for 40 years and you still would know nothing more about sight. Jesus told the religious leaders of His day, "Ye have eyes and see not." Blind! Groping in darkness. These cannot know the true nature of things. And nothing has changed in the religious world in the past two thousand years. They cannot see the Christ who walks in their midst nor can they see the glories of the Kingdom of God.

You cannot understand the things of the Kingdom by memorizing them. You may memorize the whole Bible and yet not understand any of it. You do not understand a thing by hearing it, by seeing it, by reading it. You can only understand by knowing, the knowing that comes by a personal encounter and experience. Jesus said to His disciples: "And I'll tell you something else and this is the truth, that there are some of you right here standing in front of me who will not die before you have had a dramatic insight into the Kingdom of God and how it comes with power" (Matthew 16:28; Mark 1:9; Luke 9:27). It is not to see it outwardly with the eyes, it is to see it inwardly with the understanding. It is not to hear it outwardly with the ears, but to hear it inwardly with the comprehension. It is not merely to repeat, or be able to tell about it, but to know it. If I know the Kingdom of God I will see the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is not a secret it is just hidden for the seekers. "It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given" (Matthew 13:11). "...I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery... which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:25-27). Until you have experienced that mysterious transformation that we call the new birth, you cannot understand any of the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. The word "mystery" in scripture comes from the Greek root word MUO which means "a sacred secret." It was that which in the ancient mystery religions could be known only by the initiates, those initiated into the mysteries. Only members of the spiritual family of God, which is His body, can be initiated into and know and experience the sacred secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The sinful man is dead in trespass. He is dumb, deaf, and blind to the spiritual world of God. To be blind simply means to have no vision of what the Father desires. The natural mind is very dark and without understanding. Only the Holy Spirit can awaken it. Human efforts to enlighten men to the deep spiritual things of God will always fail. ONLY TO CHRIST IS POWER GIVEN TO OPEN THE EYES OF THE BLIND even as the scales fell from the vision of Saul of Tarsus when Jesus purged them away. This explains why the Bible remains to a great degree a closed book to the most educated but unconverted or un-anointed man, while it is an open book to many of the most simple and ignorant of believers. This explains why a man may be educated and trained to hold all the theological degrees that all the theological seminaries in the world can bestow upon him, and yet be utterly blind to the great spiritual revelations of infinite depths and eternal glory within the pages of this blessed Book of Books. This explains why carnally minded men who have read the Bible and have studied it through and through, and know the Hebrew and Greek, will yet fail to find the living Christ or the transforming power of the Holy Spirit or the glories of the Kingdom of God or the wonderful hope of sonship or the ultimate restitution of all things within its pages. It seems strange that with an open Bible before them they do not see these truths which to us are perfectly clear. But, after all, it is not strange, for these things are mysteries known only to those who know the spiritual code and have been initiated into the fraternity of God's family by the miracle of salvation. Jesus said that these things were hidden from the wise and the prudent and that they were revealed to babes. If you have tried to share the wondrous things of God with someone who is carnal and have found them not understanding, then know that you must first pray for their soul salvation and wait for the Father to bring them to that place of spiritual birthing, before you can hope that they will receive anything from your hand out of the treasure house of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Kingdom Blessings,

Apostle A.L. Albury is Senior Pastor, KEMI Tabernacle #31 Pioneer's Professional Plaza, P.O. Box F-43601, Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. To learn more about Apostle Albury and Kingdom Encounter Ministries, Int'l, Email us at: kingdomencounter@ gmail.com.

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