“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15 – NKJV)
“God has an awesome Kingdom, the greatest world imaginable, a world worth giving up everything for (Matthew 13:44-46), an eternal world full of the best things in life including a huge family, lots of great friends, the fullness of love, joy, and peace, and no death, evil, or suffering of any kind (Romans 14:17, Revelation 21:4). The best part of God’s Kingdom is God Himself; He is the most awesome being you could ever imagine and He is the Kingdom’s star attraction, so much so that everything is centred around Him (Revelation 21:3, Matthew 22:36-38). We human beings however are unworthy of living in this kingdom because we are sinners, which means we are all evil (Romans 3:23, Luke 11:13). Specifically we are people who do things such as lie, commit immorality including sexual immorality, think and act in perverted ways, worship gods who are not God, and commit violence including kill. We truly are an unrighteous, evil people before God and are completely unworthy of His presence and His righteous Kingdom. Consequently God has rejected us and kicked us out of His Kingdom because evil is not allowed there (Genesis 3, Isaiah 59:2, Matthew 13:41-42, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Ephesians 5:5, 2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:27). In truth this should be the end of the story. We should be kicked out and never allowed back in. The Bible calls this state of existence death and hell, which foundationally is where you live for eternity and never get to be with God and live in His Kingdom (2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation 20:14-15). This is the true penalty for committing evil in God’s world, even evil in its smallest of forms (Genesis 3, Romans 6:23). Fortunately for us however God loves us and doesn’t want us to spend eternity in hell so consequently He came up with a plan to save us from it (Romans 5:8). This plan involved Him sending His Son Jesus into the world to pay the penalty of our sin by dying for us (John 3:16). It also involved Jesus rising from the dead so that we can be justified and declared righteous by believing in Him (Romans 3:21-22, Romans 4:25-5:1). Because of what Jesus did the way of salvation is very simple for us: all we have to do to be saved and forgiven of our sins is believe in Jesus (John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8-9, Acts 13:38-39). The bottomline to what this means is we need to believe in Him as our Saviour who paid the penalty for our sin and we need to believe in Him as our Lord and submit our lives to Him (Romans 10:9-10). The bottomline to what this means is we need to repent (Matthew 4:17). Specifically we need to turn away from living sinfully, including turning away from our lying, immorality, sexual immorality, perversion, worship of other gods, and violence (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Revelation 21:8, Matthew 4:10). Then we need to turn to Jesus and follow Him, which means living according to His word and Spirit and ultimately according to love, doing good for others and not doing bad, which is what all of His commands are based on (Acts 20:20-21, Luke 9:23, John 8:31, Romans 8:14, Romans 13:8-10). If we do this we will be judged by Jesus Himself to be people who believe in Him and we will be saved from hell and given eternal life in His Kingdom (John 3:16, Matthew 25:33-34). We will also be permitted to become a part of His Kingdom in a spiritual sense right now while we live our lives in this world, complete with numerous benefits that are meaningful to our lives today (John 1:12-13, 2 Peter 1:2-4), including things such as healing, joy, and peace in our hearts, help for getting through this life and all of its troubles, a huge family to be a part of, and a personal relationship with God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit, which is what eternal life is all about! (Luke 4:18, Romans 14:17, John 16:33, John 14:15-18, Matthew 12:47-50, John 14:23, John 17:3). If we do not do this however we will remain outside of God’s Kingdom and we will be condemned by Jesus Himself to spending eternity in hell (John 3:36, Luke 13:3, Matthew 25:41).”