Preparation for the Kingdom By Ogden Kraut

Preparation for the Kingdom by Ogden Kraut 

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Section I

Introduction

Christ verses Lucifer

Many centuries ago two very powerful beings met on top of a high mountain. One showed the other all the kingdoms of the world, and said if you will serve me, “All this power will I give thee and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will give it.” (See Luke 4:5-7)

But the Master of the two would later explain that “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matt.16:26)

Farrar, in his Life of Christ, gives an example of such a person:

There was one living who, scarcely in a figure, might be said to have the whole world. The Fabian Emperor Tiberius was at that moment infinitely the most powerful of living men, the absolute, undisputed, deified ruler of all that was fairest and richest in the kingdoms of the earth. There was no control to his power, no limit to his wealth, no restraint upon his pleasures. And to yield himself still more unreservedly to the boundless self-gratification of a voluptuous luxury, not long after this time he chose for himself a home on one of the loveliest spots on the earth’s surface, under the shadow of the slumbering volcano, upon an enchanting islet in one of the most softly delicious climates of the world. What came of it all? He was, as Pliny calls him, “confessedly the most gloomy of mankind.” (p. 105)