"It is not the business of those who are called to the ministry of the Word to speak with authoritarian compulsion. We speak as emissaries of God, but we plead and do not demand, we persuade and do not drive. We implore men to open their hearts that the Word of His Kingdom may have its fruitage in their lives. But men can reject it. They can spurn the Gospel of the Kingdom…
"This is mystery of the Kingdom: Before the day of harvest, before the end of the age, God has entered into history in the person of Christ to work among men, to bring to them the life and blessings of His Kingdom. It comes humbly, unobtrusively. It comes to men as a Galilean carpenter went throughout the cities of Palestine preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, delivering men from their bondage to the Devil. It comes to men as his disciples went throughout Galilean villages with the same message. It comes to men today as disciples of Jesus still take the Gospel of the Kingdom into all the world. It comes quietly, humbly, without fire from heaven, without a blaze of glory, without a rending of the mountains or a cleaving of the skies. It come like seed sown in the earth. It can be rejected by hard hearts, it can be choked out, its like may sometimes seem to wither and die. But it is the Kingdom of God. It brings the miracle of the divine life among men. It introduces them into the blessings of the divine rule. It is to them the supernatural work of God's grace. And this same Kingdom, this same supernatural power of God will yet manifest itself at the end of the age, this time not quietly within the lives of those who receive it, but in power and great glory purging all sin and evil from the earth. Such is the Gospel of the Kingdom."– George Eldon Ladd
[FYI: Ladd talks about the "mystery of the Kingdom" not as a "dark, deep, difficult" thing. Rather he sees the New Testament refer to the "mystery of the Kingdom" as "something which has been kept secret through times eternal but is now disclosed". And that mystery is that the Kingdom has come, but secretly and slowly, not in "irresistible power" and overwhelming glory. Christianity Today considers Ladd's book one last century's most influential works. Buy Ladd's landmark book, written in 1959, HERE]