  It is interesting that, as a Seminary graduate, I am now having to almost completely change my understanding of something as fundamental as the Gospel (The Good News). The Gospel is so central to everything and yet I don't feel like I know it anymore. I should say I don't know it as I used to.
It is like a person that I knew from the outside in one way, but as I searched and learned and discovered what is really there I began to see a totally different person. This discovery for me begins in discontent. There were certain dots that I could not connect. There were certain aspects of the Gospel that didn't make sense to me, and I knew I couldn't explain it to anyone who was not already entrenched in Christian culture.
In the beginning it manifest itself in a strange uneasiness I would feel when I looked at the Scriptures that people used to explain the Gospel. I saw that often times the Scripture used may have been only indirectly speaking to the point it was tied to, and that many times it was grossly torn out of context. It didn't seem that the Gospel described in Scripture was the same as the one I kept hearing in the invitations.
For example the Gospel as preached by John the Baptist and Jesus was "Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. " Where's the invitation? Where's the prayer? Where's the faith? Where's the Heaven? And if the Kingdom of Heaven is "Heaven," what does it mean that it is "at hand" or more literally "has drawn near"? This uneasiness spread to the questions about the very point of the Gospel. If the point of the Gospel is to answer the question about how to get to Heaven when we die, why is Heaven barely on the radar screen for the whole first half of the book (OT)?
Why do we need a new way to get to Heaven, if the people before Christ already had one? When we try to understand the OT on its own terms, I can only find a few intimations of the hereafter. What I mean by this is that - especially in the OT - salvation was conceived of almost complete "this worldly" terms. In other words, God was going to do thing like deliver Israel from their enemies or return to Jerusalem and bring a new, restored age marked by things like peace, the restoration of nature, the presence of God among men, and the return of all nations to worship him.
The OT leaves us with the hope that the Lord will one day return and establish his rightful reign on earth by exacting justice on the wicked and rescuing and restoring his faithful remnant. Many people acknowledge this, but then see the NT as taking a more "spiritual" twist. All of sudden in the NT the concern is not for law but faith. The concern is not for Israel but the whole world. The concern is not tied to land but Heaven.
The concern is not for the physical but for the spiritual. The concern is not that God comes to earth but that we get to him. I began to ask the question, where does this change take place? Certainly it is not with Jesus. "The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near," seems to fit perfectly as a continuation of the OT hope. Jesus sees himself as fulfilling Isaiah's prophecies proclaiming "the Gospel to the poor," "release to the captives," "sight to the blind," and "freedom for the downtrodden. " Every healing, exorcism, and miracle was a sign that God's reign had indeed "come upon them. " As I see it the "spiritual" shift doesn't really take place.
Even the very end of the NT ends not with everybody going to Heaven and Hell to spend the rest of eternity, but with God once again dwelling among men on earth, wiping away every tear and destroying death itself. Although this post is too long, the thoughts are too immature and brief. In closing, I guess my concern is that the Gospel I have known and the Gospel I continue to hear is anemic.
It doesn't compel me, and I can see why it might not be compelling to a non-Christian. What is so "good" about the news that God has made a way to get to Heaven when he already had one? The Good News was/is that through Jesus God has overcome the sin, the death, the disease, the bondage, and the injustice that mar this world.
Through Jesus, God is reestablishing his reign on this renegade planet (one soul at a time); so that we can affirm what our hearts already tell us, which is that this is not the best of all possible worlds, and begin to experience the work of reconciliation and restoration that God has begun and has promised to finish in Jesus Christ. 
