My Kingdom is not of this world explained

[The following is the full transcript of this teaching from our new YouTube series ‘What Jesus Meant‘.  Please note that this video, like all videos, features Rose and Masoud speaking unrehearsed–they are unscripted and unedited, filmed in one take.]

Rose: Hello everyone, we are so happy that we can be together again and talk about 'what Jesus meant' when He said "My kingdom is not of this world". So, in this video we are going to talk about what Jesus meant when He was caught by Pilate. They caught Him right before crucifixion. Jesus stands before Pilate who was a king, a man who had a kingdom and a throne. Jesus stands right before him and He says to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world". And so basically, He was really saying that “I'm a King”, while standing in front of a king, talking about a kingdom. But He said that "My kingdom is not of this world". So, we are going to talk a little about this to understand why did He say that.

Masoud, what do you think?

Masoud: Yes! So, that's in John 18. Maybe it's good to go there and just to look at the context of what's happening. I'm going to read from verse 34. It says:

Jesus answered him, are you speaking of yourself about this? Or did others tell you this concerning me? pilot answered, am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You to me? What have You done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now My kingdom is not from here.

So, this is definitely Jesus speaking of His kingdom, and then He talks about the world. Therefore, there is that kingdom of the world, and then there is the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Now Jesus says, 'My kingdom is not like the kingdom of this world'.

That means I will not fight like the way of the world. My servants would not fight. My soldiers would not fight like the soldiers of this world. So there has to be a different understanding concerning His kingdom.

If there is a kingdom of Jesus, what is it? Where is it, how do you fight in it and how do you reign through it? And what is your reward at the end? What are you going to possess if you fight? These are the questions we are going to address based on, mostly, the gospel of John. But we are going to go to different chapters of other books and see what it means.

Now, let's see what Jesus says after that, because in verse 37, Pilate says to Him:

Are are you a King then?

Because Jesus just said that His kingdom is not of this world. So He's confirming that He has a kingdom. That's why Pilate says, "are you a king then"? Jesus answered:

You say rightly that I am a King. For this cause I was born...

Jesus says that I am a King for this cause. So what we are going to read next, will be the way Jesus and His Kingdom will reign. Let's see what He says:

For this cause I was born and for this cause I have come into the world that I should bear witness to the truth.

That is the way of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. That is what He does as a King.  He "bear witness to the truth".

But He bears witness to the truth, to whom? To everyone who was ruled over or reigned over by a kingdom called the kingdom of the world. Now we're going to expand on that and see what it means. But for now we understand that the way Jesus reigns is by bearing witness to the truth. Now let's continue. And He says "for this cause I was born and for this cause I have come into the world that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who who is of the truth hears My voice". We need to consider that we are reading from the gospel of John. And in the beginning of the gospel of John, we have a story concerning the kingdom. We have to go back, to the beginning of the gospel of John and find out how it was started.

It's the story of Nicodemus in chapter 3. Verse 2 says:

This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God. For no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with Him.

Let's quickly, before we continue, go to the book of Acts, because we want to see what  'God be with him' means. Acts 10:38,

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy spirit and with power who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

This verse summarizes the whole story of Jesus. Peter, in this verse, says Jesus was a Man anointed by the Holy Spirit of the living God and received His power, He went  about, fought and set free all who were oppressed by the devil. This is what it means to have 'God with Him'.

So now let's go back to John chapter 3 verse 3,

Jesus answered and said to him, most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again (or born from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God.

You cannot see the kingdom of God unless you are born from above. Now Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. So then where is it from? From above! What does it mean? Romans 14:17 gives us the answe:

For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy spirit.

The kingdom of God is in the Holy spirit. Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not of this world'. So where is His kingdom then? It's in the Holy Spirit. So where is the kingdom of God? In the Holy spirit! Where is the realm that God reigns? In the Holy spirit! How do you fight? In the Holy Spirit? How do you rule? In the Holy Spirit, not in the world, meaning not the way of the world. So now Jesus said, when you actually are in that kingdom, you are a king. And the way you reign is by bearing witness of the truth that comes out of that kingdom. Because in the world you have been oppressed. You have been actually under pressure that comes from every direction and puts you in a place that God never intended you to be. That means there has to be a fight between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. That's right!

Now, Jesus said the first sign of the kingdom operating in you is you hearing the truth, and bearing witness to the truth. First, you listen to the truth, but you also bear witness to the truth. So there is a kingdom inside of you called the kingdom of God, in the Holy Spirit. Out of that spirit, which is the spirit of truth, comes forth the truth. So when you speak that truth, what are you doing? You're crushing a false image which is formed by lies about who we are. That image that is not the image of God, is a false image. It's the image of a man called Adam. So what is the beast? Adam, the old man! It's the carnal mind, it is what we had gained and learned and inherited from our forefathers. Jesus came to destroy that.

Rose: Basically that which has the wisdom of the world, the wisdom that is demonic, that wisdom that is of the earth, that wisdom that is sensual. That's the beast.

Masoud: Yeah, exactly. So it's all one package that comes together. Because right now, let's say all of us have an identity which is formed by the knowledge of God, the wisdom of God, your understanding of God, the counsel of God, the might of God, by the seven spirits of God. Likewise, in the past, there was all that knowledge, wisdom, understanding that came through our false origin, which was the flesh. Jesus said, you must be born from above, not from flesh, to enter this kingdom. And when you are there, then you can do signs because God will be with you. Also, even Jesus said, when He was resurrected,"I will never leave you", "I will be with you to the end of the ages". So God 'is with us'. Even His name, Emmanuel, means 'God with us'. As long as you have the Christ, you have God with you, that means you can do the things of God. You can operate like God. 

Rose: So before we move on, we can say there are two different kingdoms and both kingdoms are inside of us because in John 3, Jesus said, if you are not born from above, you cannot see the kingdom of God. And we read in Romans 14 that the kingdom of God is in the Holy Spirit. So 'the above' is the kingdom in the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God that is within us. On the other hand, there is another kingdom, which is the kingdom of the beast or that or the kingdom of darkness that also must be inside of man. Jesus told the Pharisees that when I cast out demons by the finger of God, the kingdom of God has come upon you. One kingdom has come upon another kingdom which is in opposition to it. The leader of the kingdom of God comes inside of us to destroy the enemies, which is the other kingdom, inside of us. So He comes upon us to destroy all the enemies and the kingdom that is inside so He could rule and reign on the inside of man. And that is called the kingdom from above.

Masoud: Exactly. In any kingdom, a soldier takes order from the authority above him. So let's say if there is a government, the soldiers in the army of that government take orders from the higher authorities. Let's say eventually the president of that country, he's the final authority. What he says they will carry out. His word is the command. When Jesus in John 12 was speaking to the people, He said "I have come not to do My will, but the will of My Father". And "the word that I speak are His command". So there is a kingdom being exercise. There is that word of God coming in the form of a command, exercising all God's authority. Not commanding us to bow down, but He's commanding His freedom to come. He is commanding an alignment with His will on earth. He is commanding a Word that brings the will of the Father, His kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. That means His will be done on earth. So what is that word?

When Jesus was praying in John 17:17, He prayed to the Father, saying:

Sanctify them by your word. Your word is the truth.

Now, Jesus also said that "for this cause I was born to bear witness to the truth", which is to say to bear witness of the Word. In other words 'My kingdom is not of this world but for this reason I came into the world to tell the truth of the word'. Why the Word? Because in session one of this series, we settled that the word God is the sword of God.

The sword of the kingdom is the word of God. That's the thing by which you fight and you reign and you rule and you advance. The kingdom is by the word. Why? Because that word is the word of authority. It's not just mere words, void of any authority, but as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:20, "the kingdom of God is not in words only, but in power". So that means the Word can be exercised. Every word of God can come on earth. Now, everything that Jesus did on earth before His crucifixion was through that Word. So He spoke the word, He spoke the will of the Father, He spoke the command of the Father.

I want to go to 1 Timothy 6 and maybe 2 Timothy 4. Let's see which one we want to start with. Just to understand why Jesus said "My kingdom is not of this world for if it was my servants would have fought". He uses the analogy of a kingdom. That means in His kingdom, where He's the King, His servants would fight, but not the way people of the world fight. 2 Timothy 4:1 says:

I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom.

Paul tells Timothy "I charge you", but he hasn't yet said what he's charging him with. He's going to say what that charge is. In other words, Paul say 'Timothy, because we know that Jesus at His appearing in His kingdom would judge the living and the dead, I charge you...', and in verse 2 adds:

Preach the Word.

The charge is "Preach the Word".

Why? Because God wants to judge according to His Word. How is He going to do it? At His appearing. When is He going to appear? When you speak as a soldier of His kingdom! If you begin to take order from him, which is His word, not what to do and what not to do. When you understand His will and you start declaring it, then you are actually judging. We've already, in session two of this series, showed what the judgment of God is. It is to bring life. It is to bring life into every area that death exists and rules. Paul says because we know that the Lord Jesus Christ would judge the living and the dead, preach the word, and he adds:

Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching.

This is how you reign, by preaching His Word, through teaching, by rebuking, by exhorting, by convincing. And when you preach the word, you give God an opportunity to actually enforce His own authority and power and kingdom where you are doing this. 

I want to jump to verse 7 but it's good to read and understand the content. The context is this:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers.

There will be a time that people would not listen to the word anymore, but they will heap up for themselves teachers. So there is one Teacher, the Lord Jesus, but then there are teachers, and what they teach is not His Word. There are those who say they believe Jesus, but they don't believe His word. Not that they are bad people, they just misunderstand. They have become like those of Hebrews 6, dull of hearing. They don't want to hear anything anymore. They think like, I'm fed enough. I don't need anything. That's all that is there about God. That's all that is there about the MYSTERY of Christ. There is nothing else. And now all that they do is continue to listen to all those teachers that they have had for years. And yet there is only one Teacher, the Anointing of God that He would teach us and Guide us into all truth. Now he says there would come a time that they wouldn't listen, and they will turn their ears away from the truth.

So we have the context, they will turn away from the truth and turned aside to fables. What is a fable? A story. Something that is not real. It's a tradition handed down through the forefathers and you kind of believe in it. Then he continues:

But you be watchful in all things. Endure affliction. Do, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering. And the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight.

Jesus said, if my kingdom was of this world, they would have fought and I would have not been delivered to you. But Paul says, now I have fought the good fight. So this is what Jesus meant about His kingdom and fighting in His kingdom. Let's understand what Paul has to say about this:

I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.

So what was the fight? The good fight, the fight of faith. So what did Jesus say? In My kingdom there would be a fight, but not the fight with the sword of this world. It's the fight of faith, by the Word of God.

The kingdom is the kingdom of the Word of God, and fighting your fight is believing the Word. When you believe the Word, that divides lies that you have believed from the truth, and that means the beast will be dethroned. His kingdom will be destroyed and Christ will sit upon that throne. That's the whole purpose of Jesus, the Word of God, to sit on our throne. This is what Jesus meant when He said, "the Son of man will come in the clouds with power and great glory, and He will judge". We'll have a video about the Coming of the Son of Man in the next few weeks.

That's when He dethrones all the false image that was in us. That image was ruling. That image was reigning and I can show you how it was ruling. It was through an agent called Adam. This is clearly shown in Romans 5. Romans chapter five is a comparison between Adam and Christ.

Paul says every corruption that came, even death, was through Adam. Jesus came to undo all of that. Verse 12:

Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered the world and death, through sin, and death spread to all men because all sinned.

Verse 14:

Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses.

Death reigned through Adam. When we speak of reigning, we speak concerning a king. Death was a king. And had a kingdom. And what is that kingdom? The kingdom of the beast. What is the beast? That which was in Adam, sitting on the throne ruling and reigning because God from the beginning told him in Genesis chapter one:

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the ...”

But now he, instead of ruling and having dominion, became subservient to what he was supposed to rule over. Serpent reigned through Adam. So Adam sat on a throne inside of him. And then serpent came and reigned from him.

Rose: And even when when we look at the book of Revelation, in chapter 13, we see that there is a beast that deceives people so that they can make an image of the other beast. So that's why it says the old serpent gave all the authority of his kingdom to the beast. Serpent gave her kingdom to the beast.

So, we see that there is a kingdom, having a throne, and someone is sitting on it, which is its king. This king brings all his own purposes into fulfillment, through the agents, through the things that are working in his kingdom. Later on, in Revelation 13, we see another beast, coming out of the earth, in the form of a lamb, like a lamb, but deceives people to make an image of the first beast. In the book of Revelation, we see the Lamb of God on His throne. The beast out of the earth is a false lamb, namely false-teachers and false-prophets. They reign through the lies, through the law, the lies that they have believed. They don't reign through the truth.

But when we see the kingdom of God, there is a King on the throne, who has a Sword of the truth in His Mouth. He also reigns through his agents, us. That's why Revelation 5:10 says:

And have made us kings and priests to our God;
And we shall reign on the earth.

Now I have to say, none of these verses are time-related. They're timeless. All we read and understand are revelations we received from the Word, which happened and were written 2000 years ago, when disciples were already turning away from Grace into the Law, again. And they were actually bringing the yeast of Pharisees into the truth of the word of God. They were mixing tradition of men with the truth of the word of God, and they were causing the word of God, which is Jesus Christ, to become of no effect. And Paul said, if I put away the truth of the cross of Jesus Christ, it has become of no effect into my life, no, I will not do that because I realized that it's the power of God. It's where I was crucified with Him, it's where dethroning of the false image, which is the beast happened.

So, if it happened then, why would we read these verses and put them in future, rather than receive the revelation, and live them NOW? So now why would we want to put all these things in a future time and say this is something that will happen in future? It happened 2000 years ago and it's been happening since then. It's happening even right now.

Now when Paul mentions false-teachers, he's not talking about other religions. He's talking about people within the Church. Because they never had the teaching of Christ. They never had the truth. So it's not about deviating to go into Buddhism, but teachings that pollute the teachings of Christ, and still called the truth.

This is about the church and that which is within the church. The truth about who they are in Christ is being mixed with who they were in Adam. All of a sudden that image comes again and is raised inside of them and they suddenly experience Babylon, the exile, and that image inside of them tries to sit as God in them to be worshiped. But that's not the way for it to be. So when we speak the truth, when we speak the word, which is called the Christ, that causes all that false-image to be shattered, broken, and removed, and hence dethroned.

And I want to end with this that I'm just going back to John 18, to see Jesus once again standing in front of a worldly king (Pilate). He never said, one day I'm going to be destroying all kings like you, the king of Rome, the king of Persia, or any king in future. He never talked about those things. He is never going to do this. The kingdom of God can take away the kingdoms of the world when he individually, inside of us, dethrones the beast. That's how the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our God and His Christ, just as a Revelation 11 says. So when Jesus Christ, by bearing witness of the truth, through His Holy Spirit, inside of us, awakens us into righteousness, into who we are in Him, suddenly all that is in Him destroys all that was in Adam. Actually maybe we can quickly go to 1 Corinthians 15, as the last thing, just to see that His kingdom is all about destroying death. 

The entrance of Death into God's Creation is Adam, when Adam didn't take heed to what God had said: "don't eat from the other tree because if you do, you'll die". Adam ate and death entered, and Romans 5 confirms that death came through Adam. Now God's kingdom is all about destroying that death. He must do this in every area of our lives because that kingdom has been expanding itself into every area of our lives, into our mind, into our heart, and into our body. Let's read verse 22:

For as in Adam, all die...

So death is the focus,

...even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

The exact opposite of death, life, and:

...but each one in his own order...

Meaning resurrection,

Christ, the firstfruits afterward, those who are Christ's at His coming.

We are going to have a video on this in near future, about 'His Coming', but in simple language, it's when Adam goes and Christ comes,

...then comes the end when He delivers the kingdom...

It's simple! It's understandable, "when He delivers the kingdom". What kingdom? This one (Masoud pointing at himself), because this one was the kingdom of a beast, but He in His kingdom reigns and destroys all that was in this domain, so that it becomes His domain, meaning His kingdom.

Now he adds,

He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power...

Which is all 'rule, authority and power' within, for He must reign as a King till he has put all enemies under his feet.,

The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

Yeah, it's clear. It's something internal. And that is basically how He's doing it. What He said in John 18 that His kingdom is not of this world, but His kingdom is from above. And by bearing witness from the truth of the above, He makes the kingdom of this world to become His own!

Rose: Right. And we have touched on a lot of scriptures and a lot of subjects here in this short video! We can  expand on every single verse, but I just want to tell you that the online courses are coming up, and one specifically is dedicated to the book of Revelation and because then we have time to go deep and we can go wide and we can go high in the mystery. So that's why I just wanted to say that in this short video we couldn't really spend time on every single verse to back it up by other scriptures to prove what was said. But what we have said, it's already on base of the scriptures because we believe that we should not bring any personal opinion into any scriptures and we believe scriptures should not be interpreted by our experiences, but through another scripture.

If you are interested to know more about the details, we have many other videos on our YouTube Channel that you can watch. There are teachings, sometimes even up to three and a half hour, going deep in the subject!

And I just want to say that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, and thank you so much for watching our video today!