the kingdom in the pit

Pentecostals are good at waiting.

We know the language well: the blessed hope, the soon return, the day Christ makes all things right. We sing it. We preach it. We cling to it—especially when life is brutal.

And Life CAN be brutal.

Depression does not disappear because you believe the right things. Bills still come. Bodies still fail. Grief still interrupts prayer. Some days, faith feels less like soaring expectation and more like staying upright while everything pushes at once.

This is where the gospel and Theology either sustains you—or abandons you.

Jesus did not preach a Kingdom that only mattered later. He announced something present and disruptive: “The kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). Not postponed. Not deferred. Near. Pressing in.

Pentecostal theologian Gordon D. Fee makes this point relentlessly: the Holy Spirit is not a consolation prize while we wait for heaven. The Spirit is the down payment of God’s future already active in the present. The future has begun to intrude.

This is something that has struck a chord in my personal study. As Pentecostals our emphasis is heavy-handed in eagerly awaiting the eschaton. However the eschaton, as I have accepted, is not only for then, it is for now.

That intrusion does not erase suffering—it reframes it.

Paul names the tension honestly: “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:22). Groaning is not failure. It is what happens when something new has begun but has not yet finished.

This is the NOW AND NOT YET.

Macchia describes Spirit baptism not as escape from the world, but as participation in the coming Kingdom before it is complete. The Spirit does not remove us from the impeding collision; the Spirit empowers us to live faithfully inside it.

That is why the mosh pit works as a metaphor.

A pit is disorder. Bodies collied. You lose Balance. You get Knocked down, possibly given a good smack or kick. But you are not passive—and you are not alone. You learn how to move, when to brace, when to push back, when to pull someone else up. Survival is dependent on community in the pit. Motion matters.

Standing still gets you crushed though.

Christian hope often looks like that. The Kingdom is real, but resistance has not stopped. Power is present, but it does not come as insulation.

If the Spirit is poured out on all flesh beginning in Acts, the n Pentecostal hope must speak to embodied, social, and emotional realities now—not just future glory. Not after dath. Not after history ends. In the Spirit. Now.

This does not deny the blessed hope. It makes it that much more impactful!

We still confess Christ’s return. We still pray, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). But waiting does not mean withholding life until the end. Jesus says plainly. “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Abundance is not the absence of pressure it is life animated by God in the middle of it.

Some days, abundance looks like joy.

Some days, it looks like endurance.

Some days, it looks like staying in the pit when leaving would be easier.

The altar teaches us surrender.

The pit reveals what surrender actually costs.

The kingdom is here—but unfinished.

The fight is real—but not final.

Pentecostal hope is not about surviving until escape. It is about learning how to move, breathe, and even rejoice while the future presses in and the present pushes back.

Scripture itself uses the language of instability and endurance. “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19). Anchors are not for calm waters. They are for conditions where drift is inevitable without resistance.

Hope, in Hebrews, is not denial of chaos—it is what keeps you from being carried away by it. An anchor does not remove the storm. It holds you in it.

This is crucial for Pentecostals who live inside the now and not yet. Hope is not escapism. It is not floating above suffering while waiting for extraction. It is the practiced refusal to let the present violence of the world sever us from God’s future.

In the pit, this matters. Bodies collide. Pressure comes from every side. Without an anchor, you are moved wherever the force is strongest. But hope—firm and secure—keeps you from losing your place even when you can’t control the movement.

The Spirit does not pull us out of history.
The Spirit anchors us inside it.