Fighting For Real Estate - Part #19: Did Jesus’ Followers Fight for Real Estate?

“Jesus’ Response Amazed Pilate – And our Modern Dispensationalists!” (John 18:36)

By Richard Allen – June 9, 2025

For the past seventeen blogs we have examined many passages from the New Testament – in an effort to understand how the New Covenant Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ radically differs from the Kingdom of God under the Old Covenant. It’s not that the Old Covenant Kingdom was wrong or bad.  It was just a period of “infancy,” or “childhood.” In a previous blog from a different series: “What is God Like? – How Can We Know for Sure? – Part 6,” we looked at how God’s dealings with men took a giant leap forward with the New Covenant Age of the Spirit. Today, God makes Himself known personally by Revelation, teaching all men and women by His Spirit (John 6:45).  And because of this “intimacy and relationship with God in the Spirit,” the very nature of God’s Kingdom has changed. It has matured from infancy, based on Race, Lineage, Gender, Physical Location, Days of the week, Type of Food consumed, Type of Clothing Worn and an Earthly Priesthood offering Blood Sacrifices – to Worship in Spirit and Truth!  Jesus foretold the Age of the Spirit to a Samaritan woman in John Chapter 4:

“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.  You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the  true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth’ ” (John 4:21-24).

The “Age of Worship in Spirit and Truth” which Jesus foretold – was inaugurated by Jesus’ death, resurrection and the Advent of the Spirit – poured out at Pentecost!  Today the Kingdom of God has matured into a kingdom – not fought over with armies and weapons of war, but rather by the Spirit, changing men and women into a “new creation” – through “Regeneration.” Many of the misconceptions and wrong-headed interpretations of Old Testament prophecies, can be traced back to a “natural or carnal interpretation,” that is, looking at the kingdom through the eyes of an immature child – still longing to “worship in the flesh.” All of the excesses and abuses that have happened during the Church Age, that is, the Age of the Spirit, all find their root in a faulty understanding of the Old Covenant and its place in doctrine and practice. To be clear, “All Scripture is God breathed and inspired” (2 Tim 3:16), including all of the Old Testament. But that doesn’t mean that Old Covenant Law, with its Natural and Carnal practices of immaturity are applicable to us today.  

During the infancy period, the faithful believer couldn’t wear different fabrics together or eat certain foods – because that’s how God was worshiped during immaturity!  Those believers also needed human priests to offer daily sacrifices to worship God. And God sent His children out in Armies to conquer and kill those in possession of the Land to obtain their inheritance. It's no longer that way during the "maturity," that is "The New Covenant

Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Believers are now governed by the Spirit and the “Law of Christ” – that is:  “To love one another as Christ loved us!”  So, we should not be surprised when Jesus stood before the Roman Governor in Judea, Pontius Pilate. Pilate was still operating under the old rules which governed “kings and kingdoms,” it was the only system he knew and understood.  In fact, Pilate himself was captive to that “Old-World-Perspective,” so his questions and answers to Jesus are exactly what we should expect:

“So, Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?’ Pilate answered, ‘Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over 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 have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.’ Then Pilate said to him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.’ ” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (John 18:33-38).

Looking at the four underlined questions above which Pilate asked, it’s easy to see that he was operating under an “Old-World Perspective,” and not the “Age-of-the-Spirit,” that Jesus spoke of. Pilate’s reasoning makes total sense from a human-carnal-earthly viewpoint. Twice he asked, “are you the King of the Jews?” As a Roman official, Pilate knew well what human power and hierarchy looked like. After Jesus questioned him regarding Pilate’s understanding of Christ’s royal standing as the “King-of-Kings,”  Pontius Pilate sarcastically responds: “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and religious leaders have delivered you over to me. What did you do?” But then it gets confusing, even for poor Pontius Pilate. Jesus drops a “theological truth bomb” that sends Pilate spinning:  “My kingdom is not of this world, if it were, my servants would fight so that I wouldn’t have been delivered to the Jews and then to you” (Rome). Pilate must have been confused, thinking: “What kind of king doesn’t have followers who fight for him? What kind of kingdom is that?” But Pilate did hear Jesus talk of His kingdom, so he asked again: “So you are a king?” Jesus affirms that He came into this world for that very purpose – to bear witness to the Truth!  Whatever else Pilate thought, hearing that Jesus was “Not Fighting For Real Estate” (along with Rome, Judah, Egypt, Greece, etc.), convinced Pilate that Jesus was not a threat to Rome:

“After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?”  They cried out again, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a robber” (John 18:38-40).

The “Old-World-Order” was being set aside by Jesus and His Kingdom! The Spirit’s work in Regeneration, giving men and women hearts of flesh and writing God’s Law upon them, was a “Radical Change” in God’s dealings with man.  Sadly, during the infancy – God giving men and women still “in the flesh,” rules and regulations to control their behavior – Never Worked! God needed to do something drastic, to “cleanse the inside of the cup,” and “fill us with His Spirit!” This was the “kingdom of which Christ spoke to Pilate.”  And no armies, navies or sieges would establish this kingdom! That’s why Jesus’ real followers never fought with physical weapons. Paul, encouraging the Church in Corinth:

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.  We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). 

We are in a Spiritual Fight for the Kingdom – in this Age – but we don’t fight with “carnal or physical weapons.” If we think of the erroneous prophetic interpretations of John Nelson Darby, Tim LaHaye and other Dispensational writers, it’s clear that they are teaching that “After the Age of the Spirit, God will once again go back to “carnal weapons of the flesh” to fight. Even among the best proponents of this “carnal-immature-system of interpretation," no one has ever produced any Biblical teaching or justification as to “why God would need or want to go back” to the “Old-World-Order!” That would be regressive. In this “Age of the Spirit” – Jesus’ kingdom is absolutely real and not mystical (as some might claim).  As Jesus told Pilate, “His followers were Not fighting For Real Estate, Castles, Land or even a Temple made with dead stone and mortar!”  Even if some say: “This will all happen in the future after the Church is Raptured away” – then God will return to the “Old-World-Order” and have the biggest battle ever in history.  Talk about fighting for Real Estate, 200,000,000 Horsemen (Chinese? Revelation 9:16), along with the Beast and his Armies – all fighting against the Jewish State in Palestine! Something is wrong with their interpretation!

For those misguided “Christian Zionists,” friends of mine who have cheered on Modern Israel and her armies, all hoping for a Military Victory in the future – to usher in Christ’s Millennial Kingdom – just be aware that now as well as in the future: “Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God!”  Here’s what Paul told the Church at Corinth:

“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.  Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,  in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:50-52).

Even longing for a future battle to once again set up a “Physical Kingdom in Palestine with a Palace for Jesus, and a Temple where thousands of animals will be offered daily,” is telling Jesus that He was wrong – His followers will have to fight again, trying to accomplish what can’t be done in the flesh.  If you can imagine, if Jesus had just told the Jews of His day that: “Yes, we’re going to fight tooth and nail to drive out Rome and Caesar, and make Israel into a mighty nation to rule the whole earth” – they would likely have received Him. The “fighting Messiah,” that our present-day Dispensationalists teach, is exactly the kingdom they wanted. At one point they even came by force “to make Jesus king,” but He would have none of it (John 6:15). The Kingdom of God is now within us – the Spirit conquering the minds and hearts of men and women, bringing their every thought under control and submission to Jesus. This is why the writer to the Hebrews could encourage those believers who were living under trials and persecution to persevere. 

“See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of things that are shaken – that is, things that have been made – in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:25-29).

We are awaiting the consummation of Christ’s Kingdom, but we won’t be fighting with armies and navies to bring it to pass.  He’ll shake everything – heaven and earth as He “creates all things anew!”

Soli Deo Gloria