The Wine of the Kingdom

Jesus was the long awaited king of the Jewish nation. His teaching about the nature of the impending kingdom of heaven was not peripheral but a central focus. His kingdom perspective was critical for the small handful of Jews who comprised his inner circle. It enabled them to see the kingdom advance beyond their small community of faith, even beyond broade cultural and religious boundaries to the ends of the earth. That kingdom perspective is just as critical for us today for the same reason. A kingdom perspective removes unnecessary barriers to the advancement of the Gospel in our immediate surroundings as well as into unfamiliar territory, even to the uttermost parts of the earth. This book attempts to foster a kingdom perspective among Jesus's followers by directing attention to his statements about the kingdom and taking them seriously.

This book explores the implications of some of Jesus's teaching about the nature of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is penetrational, in contrast to congregational. The kingdom is inner and spiritual, in contrast to external and physical. The kingdom is relational, in contrast to impersonal. The kingdom manifests itself in humility, weakness, and obscurity in contrast to domination, position, and visibility. The kingdom begins small without recognition but achieves great influence. The kingdom is entered by a second birth, but one's first birth is a valuable indicator of and contributor to one's calling within it. The kingdom is now. The kingdom is future. Kingdom teaching has been largely ignored and contradicted throughout church history by the various institutions of Christendom, but children of the kingdom have been present both within and without those institutions. This book is a call to focus on the centrality of Jesus's teaching, to embrace kingdom values, and to proceed accordingly.

Steve Slater, a native of Southwest Virginia, was founder of Vektor Communications in Long Beach, California. In 1985 he began representing a Long Beach aerospace firm and a Dutch trading company in Russia. He formed the joint venture Divek in Moscow and later opened an affiliate of Vektor in Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk—the Siberian city of scientists, an academic center and home to numerous scientific institutes. He is a graduate of Carson-Newman University in mathematics and physics. He was a licensed minister in the Southern Baptist Convention and later commissioned by the Grace Brethren Churches. He has served on the international staff of The Navigators for the last 36 years. He met his wife Kit in Brighton, England, where they were married. Three years later they moved from there to the Soviet Union with their one-year old daughter Julie. They resided in Moscow and Siberia for 12 years.