"SALVATION is predicated upon belief in the messenger and in the message he brings from God" (Elpis Israel, page 173). Here is a profound statement, to which we would do well to take heed in our own day, when the influence of the "Jesus movements" and "Jesus cults" is abroad. It can so easily be forgotten that to "believe in Jesus", or simply to believe that "Jesus is alive", is only part of the Gospel message. For the Apostles the important thing about Jesus was that he is "the Christ the Son of the living God", and that in his sufferings, death and resurrection the believer has present comfort in the forgiveness of sins, a motive, or even a "motivation" for living, and a hope of personal resurrection and a part in the coming kingdom. For early Christadelphians it was through the proclamation of the Kingdom as a literal kingdom that substance was added to their hope. They had, in the words of a teenager looking in vain for a message in the religious teaching in his school, "something to look forward to, something to come". The connection between the Gospel of the Kingdom and the national hope of the people of God comes out clearly in our early writings and was the basis for all their preaching of the Gospel (see Mark 1:14).

ALFRED NICHOLLS, Remember the Days of Old, pages 68-69