The Kingdom Of God and the nature of God........

The Kingdom Of God and the nature of God.....the question I would like to ask.

Recently I came across the "Lost Message Of Jesus" by Steve Chalke (pub: 2003). On page 28 he says "But by far the most shocking, outrageous and scandalous thing about this version of the Kingdom [presented by Jesus] was that it wasn't just for Israel but for the whole world." He then goes on to quote the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner on page 45 "The most daring statement that has ever been made in human language 'God is love' (1 John 4:8)." Then again on page 28 he makes the familiar Christian statement "The heart of Jesus' message was simply this: 'The Kingdom, the in-breaking of  shalom [meaning peace, completeness and general welfare], of God is available to everyone through me." The question I would like to ask is that if you believe in the nature of God and the Kingdom of God presented very clearly in this book, then is there any overwhelming difference between believing in these things and believing in Jesus? Does the believe in God and his Kingdom, amount in terms of inner substance, to the same level as a specific believe in Jesus?  A clue lies in another quote from the book "In the words of John Stott, perhaps we in the West 'have been dogmatic about what we should be agnostic about and agnostic about what we should be dogmatic over.' "

I think this book is dead on target, however I wonder how many Christians will ever really believe in the Jesus beyond the slogan. As one reviewer on amazon put it, with depressing inevitability, "Unfortunately, his arguments only reveal his own misunderstanding of basic Christian doctrine. The idea of Penal Substitutionary Atonement that Chalke is so keen to dispel is taught again and again and again throughout the Bible, and even a casual glance at Romans confirms that Chalke's thesis is totally unbiblical." I think John Scott was right.