You likely know him as a novelist, but did you know that he wrote a book called The Kingdom of God is within you?

I'm referring to Leo Tolstoy. Of course he's the author of that really big book, War and Peace that was published

in 1869 and other works like Anna Karinina, which was published a few years later. But in 1894 from the pen of Leo Tolstoy came a book called

The Kingdom of God is Within You.

Now this is a fascinating book and in it there is a very false idea but an

interesting idea that is going to get a lot of traction in the 20th century.

He writes in this book of the distinction between the Jesus who comes to us in the sermon on the

Mount or the Jesus who comes to us in the Creed. Tolstoy goes on to say, one cannot believe in both.

And churchmen, that means the church and denominations and theologians, they have chosen the latter.

They're following the Jesus of the Creed.

People who believe in a wicked and senseless God, he says, who has cursed the human race and devoted his own. and people, Tolstoy says, cannot believe in the God of love. And in his view, in the sermon on

the mount, we have the God of love. And we have Christ. We don't have a Christ who came and lived a sinless life and died on a cross and then rose again and ascended into heaven and is coming back physically and visibly in the future as his second coming.

That's not the Christ that Tolstoy believes him.

To Tolstoy, the Christ of the sermon on the mount has already come back. His kingdom is not some future thing, his kingdom

is not some new heavens and new earth, his kingdom is here on this earth and a remaking of this earth and it has much much more to do with social justice and social

equality than it would have to do with righteousness. This is the kingdom of God that he says, Tolstoy says, was

at the focus of Jesus Christ. It's interesting that in Jesus' own words in the

Gospels he says at one point,

don't believe people when they say, look, here's the kingdom,

or look, there it is, because it's not.

And this is what we can say about Leo Tolstoy's view of the Kingdom of God.

Look, there it is. No, that's a false one.

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