We often speak of the “Kingdom of God” or the “Kingdom of Heaven” in Christian circles but I am afraid that very few of us actually know what we are talking about.  I say this because there seems to be volume upon volume written on the kingdom, each volume trying to present the kingdom slightly differently and, at the end of the day, it seems most believers are confused as to what the kingdom actually is and are unable to clearly articulate the kingdom when asked to define exactly what the kingdom of God is.   I have seen a teacher pose that question to seasoned believers and the saints questioned looked dumbfounded and were at a loss for words to clearly articulate exactly what the kingdom is.  It is a significant issue that we struggle to understand something that is at the cornerstone of Christian theology and is at the heart of the apostolic proclamation of the gospel.

Now, obviously I cannot give the kingdom a full treatment in one post.  Volumes have been written on the kingdom so any small thing I can post here cannot even begin to be exhaustive.  However, I believe a few short words about the essence of what the apostles, and Jesus, actually meant when they used the term “The Kingdom of God” may help to demystify the kingdom making it much more approachable and understandable.

Two Primary Misunderstandings

I believe there are two primary misunderstandings that have caused confusion about what the kingdom actually is.  The first misunderstanding arises in the fact that the word kingdom is a foreign word to the western mind.  We operate in  governmental structures that are rooted in the ideas of democracy and, to a lesser extent, a republic and so the word kingdom is foreign to us.  For us it is a word that we encounter only in fairly tales and ancient history.  It is not something that we can tangibly relate to.  Dictator would probably be the closest word to kingdom that we could understand, but it has negative connotations that make its use unsuitable.

The second misunderstanding that causes confusion is the influence of Greek thought on Christianity.  Because of Greek influence on western thought and culture, we spend more time looking for the “ultimate meaning” of a passage rather than wrestling with the literal words in front of us as the Hebrews would.  Compounding the issue is Matthew’s description of the kingdom as the “Kingdom of Heaven” which, because of the Greek dualism which separates “heaven” and “earth” that we have embraced, makes the kingdom even more ethereal.  So, because of our heritage of Greek thought, we are looking for the ultimate meaning of a kingdom that seems just as ethereal and mystical as “heaven.”  Because we think that “heaven” is some other ethereal realm, we struggle to create ways to make the “kingdom of heaven” relevant and tangible to existence on the earth.  Understanding the misunderstandings that have clouded the definition of the kingdom for us, let’s now look at a few simple concepts that will help us gain a better understanding of what the kingdom actually is.

The Kingdom is Simply a Government

The simplest way to properly view the kingdom, coming from a western perspective, is to use the word government rather than kingdom.  When you swap this word it is amazing how clear Biblical passages become.  When Jesus or the apostles declare the “kingdom of God” they are essentially declaring the “government of God.”   When you read a passage and substitute the word government for kingdom,  just that word substitution will immediately enable the western mind to better understand the passage as the apostles intended.

The second concept that can help us understand the kingdom, or government of God, is understanding why Matthew uses “Kingdom of Heaven” rather than “Kingdom of God.”  First, Matthew never wrote “Kingdom of Heaven.”  He wrote “Kingdom of Heavens.”  (Use any Bible software, or consult commentaries, and you will see clearly that heaven in the book of Matthew is always plural even though it is translated in English in the singular.)   Now, this did not make sense to the Greek mind and so translators have rendered it “Kingdom of Heaven” in accordance with the Greek concept and model of reality which defined two distinct realities consisting of “heaven” and the physical, or earthly, realm rather than according to the Hebraic understanding of one unified reality consisting of both the heavens and the earth.

So what is the “Kingdom of Heavens”?  This is explained in Genesis 1:1 when we are told that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  God created the heavens as the place of His throne, or His government, and then created the earth as man’s place of government.  The earth then was under the heavens, or subservient, to God’s throne.  This idea is all throughout the Old Testament once you understand what the language means and understand that the word “heaven” is never in the Old Testament as a singular but is always plural.

The Old Testament is filled with consistent references to the heavens as God’s dwelling place and as the seat of all power and authority over the earth.  This was the Jewish, and apostolic, understanding of the universe.  The key is understanding that the Greek idea of “heaven” is foreign to the Jewish mind.  Once you understand the basics of the Jewish concept of “the heavens” the Old Testament becomes much more understandable and the simplicity of the Jewish understanding of the cosmos becomes very apparent when you read the Scriptures.

The Apostolic Proclamation of the Kingdom

Now it is a popular misconception that earth is under satan’s rule until Jesus returns.  This is actually false.  The earth is still completely under the power of the heavens.  This is actually the correct understanding of the sovereignty of God.  The sovereignty of God is not primarily His ability to manipulate events to produce a desired outcome, but rather His present rule over all of creation.  The Bible makes this completely clear in multiple places.  Just a few references that are helpful on this subject are Daniel 4:32, Psalm 103:19, Romans 13:1-2, and 1 Peter 2:13-23.  (Leave a note in the comments if you are struggling to understand the present authority of God and I’ll try to write a post on that topic in the future.)

So we now can understand that “kingdom” is another word for government and “heaven,” or the more accurately “the heavens” is a reference to the throne of that government.  Now notice how Young’s Literal Translation helps us understand this even futher:

And in those days cometh John the Baptist, proclaiming in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, ‘Reform, for come nigh hath the reign of the heavens,’ – Matthew 3:1-2 (YLT)

Young’s translation, being literal, makes the text clear.  John was proclaiming the the ruler of the heavens, in other words God Himself, was coming near to them.  Can you see now why the people flocked to John to repent and to cleanse themselves in an act of baptism?  John was not announcing some sort of ethereal or “spiritual” kingdom, but rather was declaring that the ruler from the throne over all creation was coming near among the people.  The ruler of the heavens, the location of God’s throne, was now coming near His people as a man.

If ever anything would drive men to repentance this would be it!  And so it did with the people flocking to John to prepare their hearts for his arrival.  They knew full well how disastrous it was when God appeared to His people in the wilderness during the Exodus so they were now preparing their hearts for His visitation in their day and time.  You can see now also why Matthew used the phrase “Kingdom of the Heavens.”  He was writing to a Jewish audience so that phrase clearly conveyed what he was trying to convey which is that the very ruler of the government of God was among them.  In addition, the Jews would have read “the Heavens” as a euphemism for God since the heavens are His dwelling place.  This would allow Matthew to clearly convey the Kingdom of God to a Jewish audience.

The other writers were targeted on a wider audience than Matthew so they used the phrase the Kingdom of God because the Greeks, and others, did not necessarily have the same understanding as the Jews of the heavens so they, rather than using the euphemism that Matthew used, just plainly used the term the kingdom of God which clearly communicated that they were referencing the very government of God.

And Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus – Acts 17:7 (ESV)

We can see clearly that the apostolic presentation of the gospel continued in this same vein.  They clearly preached the government of God.  In fact, this is one of the major factors in the early persecution of the Christians.  The Jews shared the morality and monotheism of the Christians, but it was the aggressive message of the early apostles of a real and present government over the government of Caesar and the coming of the ruler of that government, Jesus, to shatter all the governments of the earth that caused such an uproar.  The Romans could not tolerate such preaching because they were declaring another kingdom that was going to usurp Rome.

In fact the Greek words used to refer to the preaching of the gospel in the New Testament are the same words that were used of a messenger of Caesar who was delivering Caesar’s decree to the people in remote places.  In other words, the proclamation of the gospel was a governmental decree carried by messengers of God’s government called “apostles,” which simply means “sent ones.”  The apostles were offering the people redemption and forgiveness that they might have right standing with God’s government and be kept safe in the hour when God Himself chose to smash the rebellion of the nations and to move His governmental headquarters from the heavens to the earth.

Can you see now why Paul who write letters encouraging the saints of their citizenship in the kingdom of the heavens and their role as ambassadors of this government?  The early church clearly understood the “Kingdom of God” to be a governmental reality that they were declaring, both as a present reality and as a coming reality in the installment of Jesus as an earthly, as well as in the heavens, king and the destruction of all unrighteous government.  This why the church in Thessalonica, though Paul was only with them a very short time, had been taught eschatology.  Paul simply declared the government of God and the repentance that was necessary before that government destroyed the rebellion of other governments.  The apostolic proclamation of the kingdom was governmental.

This is also why Jesus could say that the kingdom was within us when our hearts were submitted to His government.  The earth at present is in rebellion against His government and is in the delusion that the rebellion is successful.  Those who have repented understand that there is a higher government consisting of a present king that is also coming to destroy the delusion and rebellion on earth.  In their repentance, they now become messengers of this government, carrying the reality of it in their hearts and in their witness.   This coming government, along with the offer of redemption and immorality through the Spirit, is the cornerstone of the apostolic proclamation of the gospel.

Why is the kingdom demonstrated when signs and wonders occur?  It is simple.  Healing and other signs serve two purposes.  First they demonstrate the nature of God’s government.  Satan has deceived man that God is a tyrant who desires to inhibit man from true freedom.  Healing and deliverance oppose that lie by demonstrating the true nature of God’s government.  These signs clearly demonstrate that satan is actually the tyrant and it is God’s government that brings the maximum freedom and pleasure to man.

The second purpose these signs serve is to validate the governmental proclamation of the gospel.  We are to declare a present ruling King as well as a King that is coming.  How are men, under the delusion of the present rebellion, to know that this proclamation is valid?  In order that men might know, God grants signs and wonders as a miraculous testimony that our proclamation is true because they demonstrate an authority beyond that which man, or satan, can exert.

There is much more than can be written on this topic, but this should help to simplify the issue of the “Kingdom of God” or the “Kingdom of Heaven.”  Hopefully you can see that it is much simpler than we have made it out to be.  It is simply God’s present government which also includes a future military action, led by Jesus, in which He will destroy all rebellion and relocate the headquarters of His government from the heavens to the earth.  Many valid insights have been taught over the years, but I fear we have made the kingdom too mystical and not as practical and real as it is.

Let us return to the roots of the faith and the simplicity of the gospel proclamation rather than trying to examine the apostolic proclamation through hundreds of years of philosophy and cultural mindsets that are different from the cultural understanding that Jesus and the apostles preached from.

To The Honorable Senator Nelson,

I was so proud of your stand for life against the current health care bill. No matter what the President or other leaders might say, we all know that the ultimate goal is to craft a plan that will provide Federally funded abortions. That has been patently obvious with the rejection of every simple amendment to the bill that clearly prohibited federally funded abortions, and that is why your stand was so inspiring especially considering the pressure coming from the leadership of your own party.

That being said, it was so disappointing to see that your stand for life ended in a compromise and in securing some funding to assist your state. While I understand the pressure on you is immense, citizens all around the nation were looking for you to stand firm and were extremely disappointed to see that the pressures of the moment overcame your own personal convictions and gave way to a compromise that ultimately will not protect us from the government sponsored execution of the nation’s own children.  Make no mistake Senator, making abortion “safe and rare” or putting a few conditions on a federal abortion are not the same thing as protecting the lives of the unborn.

You could rightly argue that many of us do not understand the pressures and intricacies of federal politics.  No doubt this is very true.  Few of us have known the kind of pressure that can come from the leadership of the nation.  It is also true that politics is, by its nature, a game of compromise.  However, it is also true that history is made when a politician stands firm for what is right and rejects the mechanics of compromise when life and death issues are at stake.  There are plenty of bills where compromise is good and necessary for without it our government would come to a grinding halt.  However, when the lives of children are at state, the time comes to make a stand and lead the nation into what is right.  An a historical example, could you imagine William Wilberforce agreeing to a “compromise” on human slavery?

You could also rightly argue that many of us compromise our heart values on a daily basis when much lesser things are at stake.  Sadly, you would be right there as well.  Millions of us compromise on a daily basis to avoid confrontation, pain, and cost preferring ease or the hope of some opportunity over staying true to what we know, deep down, is right.  However this is exactly why we need you. We are a nation with precious few heroes.  We need men like yourself to stand up unflinchingly for what is right and inspire us to also discard the compromise in their own lives and stand for what is right no matter how little or how great the cost.  We have become a week kneed compromising society and we need heros to look to that stand unflinchingly for what they know in their heart is right that we might be inspired to do the same.

The good news is that there are still several days before the final vote. There is still time for you to vote your heart, rather than vote, under pressure, for something that you know is wrong and not in the best interest of the country. If you vote for this bill, this will be a vote that will haunt you your entire life.  It is not enough to be personally opposed to abortion if you do not make a public stand, without compromise, for life.  There is a reason this bill has been put together in private rather than publicly as the President promised. There is a reason there is such a rush to get it passed with claims that the bill does not fund abortion while any amendments that secure that promise are quickly rejected.

You and I both know that the leadership of both the senate and house are counting on using the process of reconciling the bills to remove any abortion restrictions.  I am sure, Senator, that you would argue that your stand did secure a measure of restriction on abortion, however, I would expect that these restrictions will be reduced to paperwork or eliminated by the time the actual final bill is formed.  They are securing your vote only so that they can push a bill forward.  Based on the response to amendments restricting abortion funding and the development of the bill behind closed doors, we all know well and good that they know how to eliminate all abortion restrictions from this bill by the time it is made law.

Your compromise then will not even secure the restrictions you asked for, your compromise will only enable those who seek to provide full federally funded abortion.  This is the cost of compromise on moral issues.  In the end, the compromise does not even secure the ends that are desired.  This is why moral issues cannot be compromised.  By their very nature, once compromise has entered the picture they are lost.  Do you want your vote to be the enabling vote to a process that has proven thus far that it is committed to a final outcome that will include the federally funded extermination of our children?

Public opinion polls show clearly that the health care bill is not the top agenda in the minds of citizens. Public opinion polls also show that the nation is becoming increasingly pro life. This is a bad time to hastily compromise and rush through a very significant bill that will have negative implications for the nation for decades to come as well as help to promote the slaughter of millions of our unborn children.  The very fact that they are trying to rush this bill through so quickly before an election year when it is not the top agenda of the America people along should give you pause in making last minute compromises.

Senator, many of us are praying for you. We are praying that you will make history by standing firm in your convictions, as those who make history must do, rather than succumbing to political favors to vote for something you know in your heart is wrong.  Voting against this bill, at this point, may look like political suicide.  However, better that than suicide of the heart.  I have to believe the people of the great state of Nebraska, whether they agreed with you or not, would respect your history making stand to refuse to vote for this bill in its current form.  Men of character are hard to come by and I, for one, would be proud to see my Senator set his face like flint and stand for what is right.

Stand firm Senator, and be an example to the nation. Know that there are millions looking to you for a strong stand even if that means, at times, a stand against our President.

Blessings,

Samuel

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. – Matthew 5:4 (ESV)

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. – Genesis 6:5-6 (ESV)

The Call to Grief

Is not the call into the place of mourning, the call to share God’s own heart? We often feel like we know God in His love and, we sometimes see His anger or other parts of His personality recorded in the Scriptures, but who has known the grief of God? Who among us has asked the share the pain in God’s heart? True we have asked to share in His joys, and this is correct as He invites us into His joys, but there is another level of relationship and that is to be be found in sharing in His grief.

God made man for relationship and valid relationship contains the experiences of both joy and pain. The angels are His servants, and no doubt companions of a sort, but they are not made in His image and likeness. They do not have the same capacity we do to feel the way His heart feels. No doubt they have some level of emotion, but God made our heart after the pattern of His own, so we are be the ones that have the capacity to share His emotions more than any other creature and therefore we should be the ones to carry grief with Him.

The word Jesus used here for mourning can often be used in the sense of mourning or grieving for the dead. It can include the idea of lamentation. While Jesus’ context is not specifically the dead, we must ask who mourns for the death that pervades creation? True we have felt a measure of the pain of the effects of our sin and the glad release of our forgiveness in God, but there should be a mourning as we continue to consider the effects of sin that remain on our body and the weight of sin that remains on the earth.

God’s Grief Over Creation

We were made to be the express image of God and yet we continue to destroy creation with our own sinfulness. Our sin destroys the earth even as we see our own bodies deteriorate because of sin. Do we really consider that man is actively destroying creation with His sin? To make it personal, have you considered that your own sin destroys God’s creation? Furthermore, beyond the issue of death, who mourns for their own sin?

Romans 8 tells us that all of creation is crying out under a burden for its own release. If all of creation is mourning for release to come, how can we not be as well? You see not only does sin destroy you, which is no small thing because you were created for God and in destroying yourself you are destroying the thing that God made for Himself and robbing Him of His creation, but you must realize that nothing is done in isolation.

Every act, whether we perceive it our not, reverberates throughout creation and our sin, no matter how minor in our eyes, does not end with us, but rather effects all of creation. Every secret sin reverberates throughout creation adding to the weight of bondage the creation is already under. We do not have time to fully develop this issue here, but remember that just one sin in the garden so marred creation that it fell to its current state. Our sin destroys God’s creation which is why in Revelation God’s judgment against the wicked is celebrated with the song, “The nations raged, but your wrath came…for destroying the destroyers of the earth.” (Revelation 11:18)

Why We Do Not Mourn

Our lack of mourning is rooted in a lack of perspective. We do not mourn because we lack perspective. We are content with an earth and an age that is so marred by sin it barely demonstrates the glory of the original creation. If we understood the original glory of creation and if we understood the honor that Jesus is to have on the earth, and what will happen to the earth when He begins ruling from Jerusalem, our hearts would be filled with mourning in this age, longing for the glory of the age to come. It is our own lack of expectation, understanding, and desire for what is to come that causes our hearts to be content rather than to mourn at what man has done to God’s creation.

If we even barely understood the sacrifice of Jesus, we would be in mourning for His global exaltation. How can we not feel the weight of the Father’s sorrow at the earth’s rejection of His act of redemption? God gave everything He had, eternally marring His own being in the man Jesus and the earth He came to redeem rejected Him unto death. Who cannot mourn? Whose Son has been so abused? Whose Son is so worthy of honor? Who cannot feel the pain of the Father over the issue of the Son and His global exaltation?

Do we consider that Jesus, right now, is highly exalted in the place of rulership over the heavens and the earth and yet, on earth, a cloud of deception persists leaving most men totally ignorant of His rulership? Can we mourn with the Father that most of mankind, His most glorious creation, will ultimately be destroyed because they have persisted in darkness and rejecting the very One that was sacrificed so that they might have life? Can we mourn over how few will receive the advantage of His costly sacrifice?

Who reads the prophets and the book of the Revelation and mourns over the judgments to come? Who has fully considered the events that are going to hit the earth as man’s wickedness are put on full display and Jesus finally breaks in releasing the judgments of God to purge the earth. Anyone who considers these events should come away shaking inside, unable to fully consider what is coming. The shaking coming to the planet is beyond all we can conceive. Can we not mourn with God over what is coming? Can we not share God’s grief over the birth-pains that are to come? The birth-pains coming are the most violent, destructive things coming and God’s heart no doubt is mourning over what the earth must endure in the transition to Jesus’ rule from Zion.

Does anyone grieve with the Father over the trials that are coming to Israel? Does anyone weep over the holocaust to come? To give just one example, Zechariah records two thirds of the nation perishing (Zechariah 13:8-9), but do we weep over it? The Father weeps that His very chosen people are under a cloak of blindness, rejecting the One that can give them live. He is in grief over the events that will fall on His chosen people at the end of the age. We analyze and evaluate the events of the end, but do we mourn with the Father over the things that must come and the real implications of those events?

Many of us are content for the earth to be destroyed, but God is not. The way we would mourn over a son lost in sin, longing to see him restored rather than destroyed, so God longs to see His creation restored rather than destroyed. We must ask for the revelation of God’s love over all creation that we may feel His present grief over the condition of it. His grief is deeper than any parent’s grief over a prodigal son. His handiwork is constantly destroyed as the ones He gave stewardship to continue to defile it.

We need a vision of God’s brokenheartedness over a world that rests under a weight of constant sin rejecting the very One that gives life. We need an understanding of the liberation of creation to come. God is not coming to the planet to destroy it, but to liberate it from sin gloriously. We are offered this moment in time to share in God’s grief. There will be a time when our own bodies, and all creation, will be liberated from sin in the ultimate act of comfort and we will share then in God’s joy over the restoration of creation. In this age, though, it is the time of mourning. We mourn over the damage of sin in own hearts first and then the damage of sin in the entire cosmos. It is a unique invitation to mourn, because it will not always be available.

Those that mourn now will have shared God’s grief with Him. When we step into the age to come those who have shared His grief will have an unusual friendship with God. We cannot mourn unless we share His heart. To enter into the place of mourning, we must have revelation from God to our hearts about what He really feels about creation.

We must know what is in God’s heart as His Son is mocked and disparaged day after day. We have to feel what is in God’s heart as He watches man destroy man with brutality. We need to feel God’s heart as the innocent girl is seduced and the love she was created for destroyed by a man’s sexual drive. We need to consider the longing in God’s heart to restore creation and install His Son in His rightful place as king over the earth. We need revelation to enter into this place of mourning.

Sadly, we are often too content with this age to share God’s grief over it. We wait for some sort of release, which we call heaven, from our present trials but the reality is what we’re really wanting is to just be free of some difficulties. We fail to perceive the real weight of sin that rests on the entire creation, even in it’s joys.

We fail to feel the oppression that is constant so long as sin is not banished completely. We are escapist looking to fly away to heaven when God is set on redeeming the earth. We fail to love what God loves. God loves the earth and intends to gloriously renovate it and restore it. God has bound Himself to earth, both in promises, and in taking on the very dirt of the earth in His own incarnation.

The Precious Opportunity for Eternal Intimacy with God in Present Mourning

Intimate relationships are not just forged in joys, they are forged in sorrows. When you consider those who are closest friends, it is those who shared your grief with you. You may be separated from those friends by distance and life changes, but you always feel a connection to those who shared your griefs with you. Anyway can laugh with you, but it is only a select few who can cry with you.

Innately we often hide our pain from one another because we know that if we lay out the burden of our hearts on an acquaintance it is uncomfortable for them. Likewise, if another unloads their sorrows on us our first response is typically discomfort unless we are closely related to the person. While joys may be shared freely, sharing grief with others is uncomfortable and awkward without intimacy . We know that in life there are only a handful of friends that will share our sorrows. The sharing of sorrows requires intimacy.

God too shares His sorrows with His friends. In the age to come those that shared God’s grief with Him now in this age will have a special place in God’s heart. Many desire to share the joys of His heart and the blessings of His nearness, but few turn aside and ask Him to also share His grief.

While we come, time and time again, asking Him to minister to our hearts, and rightfully so, let us turn aside and ask Him how we can minister to His heart. Let us, like the friends of Job, come sit with God just to share His grief. Let us come just to minister to Him as man was made to do. Real relationship is forged as we walk with God through the sorrows of this age and not just the joys.

In His grief preparing for the cross, Jesus asked the disciples to pray and watch with them, but they could only sleep. They were weary and ignorant of the depths of pain that was in Jesus’ heart. He longed for some companions and yet He was forced to grieve alone. Obviously they could not have born the depth of His own grief over what was coming, but they could have comforted His heart in some measure. God was looking for men to share grief with Him, even if they did not understand it, and they were unable to comfort the Lord’s heart.

Are we able to comfort our God’s heart? The earth is racing towards a final judgment. The earth is under a weight of sin that causes a pain in God’s heart that we cannot understand. Moment by moment men die eternally lost and God grieves. Those He made for Himself choose destruction. We cannot bear the weight of pain in the earth, but do we mourn? Do we even make ourselves available to share His heart in grief or are we, like the disciples, too ignorant tired or distracted to share our God’s grief?

In the age to come, as the reign of Jesus on the earth restores creation, these sorrows will be destroyed. They will be a memory in God’s heart and in our own. However, those that shared those sorrows with God will have created a depth in their relationship with God that will last forever. Today, let us set our hearts to minister to the living God in sharing His sorrow. Let us examine our hearts rightly and mourn before our God for everything in our hearts, and even our bodies, that bears the marks of sin. Let us fix our eyes on God’s dream, the liberation of redeemed man and all of creation through the rule of His Son.

It has been very encouraging to my heart to see more and more people studying the book of Revelation studying it to find the revelation of Jesus (Revelation 1:1) and to prepare their hearts to both boldly declare the gospel and endure persecution.  Because of this, I plan to share some ideas on how to study the book of Revelation in a very practical way in a future post.  The book is full of very practical information with regard to what the Lord ultimately sees as important in our lives and in preparing our hearts for coming storms and for the coming storm.

As a mentioned recently in praying the Bible, taking specific promises and warnings from a passage of Scripture and praying them can help us to really root the Scripture in our hearts.  It also helps us to develop a more clear picture of exactly what the Lord is saying to us in a passage.  At the bottom of this post is a link you can use to download a document on praying the book of Revelation.  For those that are frightened of the book of Revelation, take a few minutes and read it.  You will be amazed at how practical this is.  I am finding a lot of material in the book for prayer.

The book of Revelation is filled with a lot of sobering material for devotional prayer.  There are very specific admonitions that will keep us from disaster in the faith and there are very specific exhortations concerning weighty rewards that are available.  I fear what it might cost our hearts to neglect the critical issues that Jesus addresses in this book.

Click Here to Download Praying the Book of Revelation.

“For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? – Deuteronomy 4:7 (ESV)

This phrase “a god so near” should cause us all to fall down in worship before the God who would utter such a great phrase. The word itself has the literal meaning of “near kinsman.” Truly do we grasp that God describes Himself, in relation to those who follow His statutes, as a “near kinsman?” How can we fail to encounter the God that draws near? How faithless must we be that we are content with the concept of an absent God rather than gazing upward, crying out to Him out of a heart in pain that He might remove everything in our hearts that obstructs the experience of God as a near kinsman? How much more, at this time, is God a near kinsman than when Moses penned these words?

At that time God was in close proximity to the people but it was a nearness that also created distance and separation due to the requirement of God’s holiness and the condition of the people. Truly God was near, but the people were terrified of that nearness as it caused death and separation. Truly His nearness was a fascination to Moses, Joshua, and other but a terror to the nation at large. Sadly, this condition has not changed and today there is still a minority few who find God’s declaration of His nearness as an invitation to the pursuit of the gloriously terrifying God, while most of the people demonstrate the coldness of their hearts by being content with a distant God, even having the audacity to accuse God of causing the issue.

The children of Israel struggled with this nearness and In Deuteronomy 18:17 God declares that the people are correct in their expression of the need for a human intermediary, or intercessor, to properly relate to God. God affirms their need and promises a prophet who will arise as that mediator. The people then expected another man like Moses, but God had a shocking move in store. His desire for nearness to His people was so great and so strong that He Himself had chosen to become that mediator.

He would become the One that at the same time was God among the people and also the mediator preparing and introducing people to the uncreated God. He did not just send us another Moses, He Himself became a better Moses. We should be bursting with amazement and joy at the mystery of the incarnation. If we just had an accurate perspective, we would realize how truly radical it is that the transcendent God put on human flesh and how unfathomably near He now is.

Have we allowed the incarnation to show us how deeply God’s heart yearns for nearness to His people? Jesus is God’s plainly spoken declaration of His desire for nearness. First, He declared that He was God among us. It was a thought that was blasphemy to the Jewish mind, so rightfully lofty was their concept of the divine, and yet Jesus was clear that He was God actually living among us, speaking face to face with us.

Not content with this, Jesus then poured out God’s Spirit on us that we might have the living God indwelling us. How radical was that? God had become one of us but He was not content with interacting with us only externally as that limited His nearness to us to those who could come into close physical proximity. In God’s heart a nearness limited to physical proximity was unacceptable and therefore He poured out His Spirit into our very hearts. Who among us has considered this fully?

How can God even place Himself in fallen man? How is it that your frame and mine can actually carry the living God? God has come to dwell inside, not just in one man, but in every redeemed man (Note that we still must maintain the proper division between Jesus’ divinity and our non-divinity). Saints, if we could only perceive the majesty and mystery of this thing! I fear our language and our doctrinal statements have numbed our hearts to the glorious reality of the indwelling God and the implications to our experience of Him.

Our pursuit of “power by the Spirit” has obscured the very real indwelling of God which has power as its side effect and the revelation of God to the human heart as its primary effect. He desires to be our near kinsman, and too often we are taking that gift and trying to manipulate it for a more powerful ministry or to solve the problem of our boredom with Christianity.

Finally, as though all this nearness was not enough, God closes out Scripture with the very clear promise in Revelation 21 and 22 that when Jesus takes the throne in Jerusalem, leading the earth in the millennial reign, His express purpose will be to prepare us for face to face interaction with the Father. He will draw us near to the One whom the Israelites in the desert found unbearable. Can we not see how intense God’s pursuit of being a near kinsman to us has been? God agreed in the desert with the people that His nearness was unbearable, so He gave us Himself as an intermediary and having become the ultimate near kinsman, He continues to pursue nearness with us until He gets the nearness that He Himself desires.

Can we not see that history is the very story of a God doing all that He might be near to us? How can we be content with a distant concept of God when God has so invested Himself in us? Is the radical passion in God’s heart for nearness, illustrated by His ongoing pursuit of nearness with us, not brilliantly clear, or are our hearts too blind to see? If it is not clear to us, we must ask, “Why is my heart so blind to God’s desire?” If God’s desire for nearness is clear to our hearts and yet we are content with distance, we must ask, “Why am I so dull in heart that I am content to remain apart from the glorious God?”

Saints, God wants a people that are near and He will get that people. The question for you and me is whether or not we will be part of that company. God has done all that He can. He has clearly demonstrated and declared His intentions to us, and yet we remain distant. To address the question of “why do we remain distant?” is to put our heart on full display. It is to uncover the hidden things and expose what is truly there, seeing just why it is that we avoid God.

We place the blame on the God who is distant, but He, with eyes of fire, looks directly into our hearts melting all our excuses exposing our lack of desire for His nearness. It is one of the greatest tragedies that we as believers in the 21st century consider God aloof and distant. We must allow the Spirit to expose and search our hearts that it may be clear to us just why we have settled for the distant God when the story of history clearly shows God’s increasingly radical steps to draw near to us. Why then do we do not believe that He is near to us? Perhaps there are many reasons, but there are two that stand out clearly.

For one, we do not have ears to hear the invitation. Jesus often cried out to them that have “ears to hear.” There are two common reasons that we do not have ears. For one there are few trumpets declaring to God’s people that they must ascend the hill. Sadly, often instead ministers protect their ministry by unconsciously promoting a model where they ascend rather than the people. This breaks God’s heart and yet it is a pattern that we continue to follow even though we’ve broken the tyranny of Roman theology and all nod our heads in assent to the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Those who love God deepest and are given a place to minister must, like Moses, call the people to the mountain of nearness with God, not be content to be an intermediary.

God Himself alone is the intermediary now. For a minister to place himself in that place is a dangerous place and, even when accidental, is in active opposition to God’s desire for His people. This does not invalidate ministerial gifts, but rather sets the standard for them. Valid ministerial gifts do not serve as an intermediary between God and the people but rather function as a friend of the bridegroom (John 3:29), exhorting and leading the people to face to face communion with the living God with no intermediary other than the man Jesus. For those that minister, there is safety in ministering as though you were trying to work yourself out of a job, freely giving all you have to those under your ministry and actively calling and empowering them to the place where you are in God.

The second issue with regard to “ears to hear” is that our ears are so dull and continually filled with other voices and amusements that we do not have ears to hear the voice of God inviting us up the hill. We spend precious little time meditating on the Word of God and hearing the Spirit breathe on it until we know the heart of God for us. We turn our imagination lesser things, becoming satisfied by cheap, empty thrills rather than allowing our ears and appetites to change until only a word from God will satisfy the longings of our hearts. We must cut off lesser voices that we might hear the voice of reality from the throne beckoning us to come near.

The second primary obstacle with God’s nearness is that we do not ascend the hill due to the issue of cost. Like the Israelites of old, we are afraid of what it will cost us to draw near to the place where the fire burns and the voice speaks. We are content to remain with dark, dull hearts because it might be costly to draw near to God. Deep within we know that what we are is painfully short of what we are made for, but like a madman we continue to resist the radical change necessary that our hearts may be fully alive. Can we imagine what an affront this is to God? He has provided the intercessor that was necessary, freely places the fire of the mountain in us by the Spirit, and concludes Scripture with the promise of face to face interaction, yet we remain unresponsive.

Our God promises to be near to our call. His promises it not be be near our whim, but our call. Our call contains within it a cry and desire for Him that offers up all of our being. It holds nothing back but invites the fire of God to purge everything in our heart that we might be near Him. It is this sort of cry that brings His nearness. A lesser cry will not suffice. It is the lack of a cry of this kind that causes us to remain distant from the One who is ever near.

We must call out and cry to Him with a longing heart. We must cry, with the Spirit and the bride (Revelation 22:17) that He come, no matter what the cost to us or, ultimately, the cost to the planet in the day of the Lord. When He comes the mountain quakes and our heart is filled with fear, but if we have a proper cry in our heart none of this matters so long as He comes. A valid cry is one that says, “even if I die, I must have Him near. Let Him come near and my being be burnt up, let every other thing I love be shattered, but just let Him come because I cannot remain living so long as He is distant.”

He has left us with a promise to respond to a cry and with no obstacle to drawing near, but our response, typically not in words but in lifestyle, is to remain distant in our own hearts while blaming God for how distant He is. The demands of nearness have caused us, like the children of Israel, to stand back content to ask others to go to God for us. Again, have we really comprehended what a rejection of God this is?

He has called us near and provided the one and only intercessor and still we continue to look to others to ascend the hill for us. He has paid an awful price to enable us to ascend the hill and yet we spurn His invitation content to fill our lives with much lesser pleasures. This is heresy in a day and age when all men have been given access to the living God. Whatever the cost may be to live in the manifest nearness of God, it is truly far less than the cost of living a dull life in bondage to lesser things.

Saints, have we considered how deeply this must hurt His heart? Our God is near. Let anyone who doubts that fact be silenced. It is us who are distant. Let us set our hearts to pay the cost and draw near to the heart of the living One. Let us be those that fill His heart with joy. Man’s consistent rejection of the God that is in pursuit has already caused our God more pain than a human frame can comprehend. Our God has promised to be near when we call. Seeing as our God cannot lie, the issue must remain in our lack of calling rather than in His lack of nearness

As a final note, there are those desperately longing for God who are enduring seasons of wilderness. For those dry and lonely and yet longing for God with every fiber of your being, willing to obey any call for Him to be near, do not feel condemned, but rather encouraged that the God who holds your days in His hand longs for nearness greater than you do and is, in truth, much nearer than you perceive Him to be. Remain steady. He is near. Your perception of His nearness will change if you remain faithful.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 5:3 (ESV)

One of the core issues of embracing poverty is the issue of self-existence. What makes God unique in all the universe is that He is self-sustaining. Only He can sustain Himself by Himself. All the rest of the creation is dependent on God both for its very existence and for its continued sustenance. When Moses pressed God for a name in Exodus, God declared Himself to be the self-sustaining One that exists with no dependencies on anyone or anything. He is the One that exists irrespective of the existence of any other.

Man, on the other hand, as a created being requires the sustenance from God that He might live and this is at the root of the issue in the garden. The enemy was attempting to divorce man from His reliance on God. He presented this as a deception so that man would imagine that becoming self sustaining, choosing for himself what things are good and evil, would allow Him to ascend to a place like God when in reality it would bring him into a place of death and decay. The glorious life that man was given required the sustenance of the Creator. Man is not self-existent, but lucifer was determined to deceive man because of the tragedy of his own revolt.

As the most beautiful being yet created, lucifer challenged God because his heart was so full of pride that he imagined he could sustain his own beauty. When he staged a rebellion based on the confidence that he could sustain himself without the Creator, to his own horror he became the most horrific and corrupt creature in all of creation. No longer exalted and beautiful, a death of a sorts came in when he attempted independence from the sustainer and it destroyed the beauty in him corrupting all that was beautiful into something horrific and hideous. Lucifer now became satan.

Satan, filled with pride and now finding himself in this horrible place where he was still in subjection to God but now as a hideous, evil being rather than one of beauty, expressed his anger towards God by taking aim to corrupt God’s prize creation. He immediately went to man in the garden and offered man the same decision that he himself had made without telling man of the horrific consequences. Man fell to the same temptation that had seized satan’s heart, that of being self-sustaining or independent of God’s wisdom and sustaining power, and immediately man’s being fell from a place of glory to a place of death. The most beautiful of God’s creatures in the heavens, lucifer, had fallen and become infected with death. Now, the very height of God’s creation, man, had also fallen for the same ruse and now death infected man in that same way that evil had destroyed lucifer’s beauty.

We find this same foundational issue in the next great temptation in human history when satan comes to Jesus in the desert again trying to thwart God’s plan by taking advantage of Jesus’ humanity in the same way that he destroyed the man in the garden. The scene is no longer a plush garden, but this time it is a barren wilderness. When satan first tempted man, he had to convince man there was something better than the beauty and provision of the garden. This time, Jesus was in a barren wasteland. He was surrounded by a hard place and desperately hungry. Surely satan imagined he had the advantage. In the garden, he had to be deceive a man that was completely provided for, living in bliss and in communion with God. This time he only needed to offer a deception of relief to a man exhausted in a dry and barren place that so illustrated man’s fallen condition. Surely he could get Jesus to escape this place. Surely Jesus would long for the place of comfort and sustenance.

With this in my mind, satan went straight to the primary issue and attacked Jesus with the temptation of self sustenance. Satan came and immediately challenged Him to use His divine power to self-sustain Himself as a man in turning bread to stone. Jesus clearly understood what was at state and quickly replied, from the Scripture, that man should not live by bread alone but by every word proceeding from the mouth of God. In other words, man must rely on something proceeding from God to live. Even if He could turn the stones to bread, the issue was that He, as a man, would be sustained by God and not by Himself. Jesus refused self sufficiency as a man, even when it could be obtained using His own divine power, rebuking the enemy by declaring that man, as a creature, was designed to live dependent on God. Satan had begun with the temptation that caused his own fall and that he used to effect the fall of man, but this time Jesus immediately resisted.

In order to make the issue even more clear, God has also given us a parable in our own bodies. Scientists tells us how our bodies are self-sustaining with the cells constantly replenishing themselves until the aging process shuts down cell replacement and we slowly die. From this we can see that the human body was made to sustain itself and live immortally as the Bible teaches. However, no matter how marvelous the human body’s capacity may be, it requires food. Though the body can sustain itself once it obtains fuel, we are still dependent on an external source of nutrients to supply our bodies with the fuel necessary to sustain life. Though our bodies were designed to live forever, they were designed so that they cannot live without any external nutrients. We are dependent on external food sources to fuel the life that is in our bodies.

So too our spirits are designed to live forever and yet are dependent on a fuel which we receive from the only One that is ultimately self-sustaining. We can live in a delusion that we have enough to supply ourselves because we may be popular or talented in ministry, but the reality is that our spirits starve and die if we are not constantly being fueled from the One who is the sustainer of all things. It is those who, like Jesus, live in that place of dependence on the eternal One for daily fuel for their spirits that will be fit to participate in the heavenly government. The poor and the hungry eat everything that is offered to them. It is only those that imagine themselves to be full that push away the gift of food from another. When we truly know our inner poverty, it will cause us to lay hold of the One that can supply and sustain us. Living in that manner will fit us to stand before the One who alone is self-sustaining as we understand, acknowledge, and even celebrate our great need of His abundance.

Really the root issue is dependence. Creation is made to be dependent on God for its supply. Not because God is some sort of ego, but rather because He simply is the only self-sustaining One that exists and He sustains His creation with love and tender care.  However, when creation refuses this dependence, death enters the equation because once you cut yourself off from the One that is eternal life the only option is death. If you get the root of the issue with those in the western world that mock the gospel and are the most vocal opponents of the gospel it will come down to the issue of dependence.  The mockers of the gospel refuse to be in the place of dependence.  They do not want to depend on Him for their life and they refuse to depend upon Him for the definition of morality.  Man desires to do what he wants, the way he wants, even when it ends in death. This is the corruption whose only remedy is poverty of spirit.

This is why in John 17 Jesus defined eternal life as the intimate knowledge of God (John 17:3).  Apart from intimate communion with Him from a heart posture of poverty, there is no life.   I fear that we are too full in our spirits and unaware of how much fuel we really need from the One upon the throne that our spirits may have the fuel that is necessary. Let us go to Him daily in poverty of spirit that He might fuel us with Himself.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 5:3 (ESV)

Jesus promises a governmental position in the government, or rule, of the heavens to all those that are poor in spirit. Remembering that the heavens, being the location of God’s governmental throne, are clearly above the earth, we can see that Jesus is promising a place of authority in His own personal government that is ruling over all that exists both on the earth and above it. What is clearly implicated here is that poverty of spirit is a necessary requirement for ruling in God’s government. Lucifer was cast down because he lost poverty of spirit and chose to embrace the power and strength of his own spirit. This led to him becoming so deluded that he challenged God in his own might, resulting in a flash when God cast him down from his privileged, governmental position.

When lucifer embraced personal power in his own spirit, he changed from being one of the most beautiful of all creatures to being the most dark and terrible of all beings. He was transformed from one filled with light to one filled with oppressive darkness. His rejection of poverty of spirit transformed his being into a selfish, dark, and evil being with a capacity to destroy that has brought destruction not just to his own nature, but has also brought manifold destruction to others in his corruption of one third of the angels and his subsquent acts in corrupting all the earth. Lucifer so successfully transmitted this disease to humanity, that we too embraced strength in our own spirit, with the end result being that our inner man became corrupt and depraved as well and human history has became the tale of the dark deeds of humanity. Do we consider the disastrous consequences of embracing the strengh of our own spirit, rather than the poverty of it as Jesus exhorts us to do? Do we consider that strength of spirit may be cloked in religious language and religious ambition so that we may end up pursuinig the very thing Jesus desires us to reject within a religious framework?

Jesus, on the other hand, calls us to poverty of spirit. He calls us to return to the primary issue of the garden and re-embrace the leadership of God in refusing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Rather than embracing the promise of its fruit, we are to bring our spirit in poverty before God desiring to once again know the thrill of being filled with His spirit rather than dominating others with our own. His Spirit alone is capable of ruling over others while keeping the well being of others as His first priority. Our spirits are not equipped to rule as His is and so any time we attempt to live out of our own spirits, the inevitable result is selfishness, pain, and suffering. Only God’s Spirit has the capacity to rule others in a way that is ultimately selfless. We do not have that capacity in our own spirits and to thing otherwise is delusional, though it be couched in religious language.

For this reason, only those that embrace poverty of spirit will be equipped to rule in the government of God. This is truly a high call because Jesus is offering us access, not just to the government of the earth, but to the government of the heavens. As we noted at the start, the government of the heavens sits over all creation and is the location of God’s very own throne. How high an exaltation Jesus offers us! Yet, at the same time, the qualifications for that exaltation are paradoxical. To ascend to the high place, our spirits must embrace a low place. We sit enthroned in government with God only when we acknowledge our total lack and poverty, not when we stand on our own accomplishments and power. Who can embrace such a thing? Who will empty themselves that they might be exalted by God? Who can lay aside from our natural methods of improving ourselves? Who can reject our human ideals of embracing power, ability, and stature thinking that our strength offers something to God that is necessary to His government? Do we desire what Jesus offers or do we have the secret desire that we may rule over our brethren in the age to come?

Only the poor in spirit can stand in the place God desires us to stand. Only the poor in spirit will endure in that place. Anyone else, no matter how talented, gifted, or accomplished, when raised to the right hand of God will fall in corruption just as lucifer did, corrupting both himself and others. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything any creature in creation does reverberates throughout creation impacting others. For that reason, God cannot allow an individual to be open to the place of corruption because an individual’s corruption never remains isolated. When you and I fall, others fall as well. Our corruption touches all those that we make contact with and so our corruption is not just an issue of our own personal nature, but it is an issue of our effect upon others. For this reason, a ruler in God’s government must lay aside his own strength, which will enslave and corrupt others, that he might be filled with the strength and Spirit of God which alone is fit to rule over others in a benevolent way.

Poverty in spirit is not just a phrase, it is a critical reality that you and I are called to embrace. To neglect this offer is to suffer great loss for Jesus is offering us an incredible place of privilege if we are willing to embrace His requirement. The offer is great, but the cost of that position is high as well. Forget your own achievements, ministerial or otherwise. In Matthew 5:3 Jesus gives you what He wants to see on your resume if you desire a place in His government, and it’s a poverty in your own spirit, not the massive strength that sadly we spend so much time pursuing. Let us embrace His paradigm so that on that great day, He can invite us with joy in His voice to sit on His very own throne with Him participating in His brilliant rule.

In short, the answer is clear. Embrace lack that you might prosper. Ask for emptiness that you may be filled.  Beware the temptation of your own spiritual fullness though and in your filling, stay in the place of poverty.

Praying the Scripture is something that I believe is often overlooked, but has incredible value. Recently I’ve been making an intentional effort to pray the Scripture and it has really moved my heart. Just to clarify what I mean by praying the Scriptures, I am not talking about what I call “pray reading.” Pray reading is where, as you read, you turn phrases and verses into prayer and basically dialog with the Lord over the Scripture. This is much slower than just reading the passage, but also helps bring real life into the passage and helps apply it deeper to your heart. This method of devotional reading is very valuable but it not what I am talking about here. If you’re not familiar with this, just leave a comment or send me an email and I can point you to some resources.

What I mean by “Praying the Scriptures” is extracting key phrases, promises of rewards, commands, warnings, and blessings from a book of the Bible or a passage of Scripture and creating a prayer list from these verses. For example, the book of Revelation uses the phrase “ears to hear” at least seven times. From that you could create the following point on a prayer list: “God give me ears to hear. Let me hear what you are saying, both to my heart, and my generation.” Under that prayer you write out the seven verses, reading those verses as you are praying so that your heart is filled with the combination of your own personal heart cry and God’s language describing the need of the human heart.

What this does is help really drive the Scripture into your heart. It does not replace reading and studying entire passages because that is very valuable, but by taking specific action points from the Scripture and specifically praying those we take God’s direction, or His law, and plant it deep in our heart all the while using the Biblical language that God gave us. It is an incredible way to go deeper in the Word and to plant in our hearts what God says really matters. By following the study of a passage with the repeated praying of the passage’s action points over time it helps us to set our hearts to obey the Scriptures in an intentional way rather than just hoping to remember what the Scripture says.

Using this method you will also start seeing patterns in a passage of Scripture. Often God hits the same topic more than once. How often something is repeated in the Scripture is very valuable because it underscores the importance of the directive to our hearts. The sad truth is that we quickly forget much of what we read, but when we intentionally pray the action points that the Scripture gives us, we begin retaining specific things that God directed us to do, to seek for, or to avoid.

The goal is to use this type of prayer as a pattern of heart engagement with the Word and obedience to the Word that we might be found obedient and mature on that great day. Without using techniques like this, there are many promises, and warnings, in the Scriptures that will never stay in our heart.

As far as methodology goes, praying this way does not have to be a rigid type of liturgy. As you develop prayer lists from various passage or books, keep a written record of them and periodically review them in your personal prayer time. God may highlight one particular thing in your prayer list one day and, if He does, just focus on that one thing. The goal is not to follow a certain liturgy or get every prayer point covered that one day, but that over time the Scripture goes deep in our hearts and, in doing so, increases our fellowship and communion with the One who is Holy and to whom we will give account.

In future days, I’ll post some examples of prayer lists I have developed from passages of Scripture. I would love to hear comments or see lists that others have developed.

…For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. – Revelation 19:10b (ESV)

I’ll admit up front that this post is long, but the topic is critical and the full consideration of it is has profound implications for how we interpret Scripture and therefore how we live.

Revelation 19:10 is an absolutely critical passage containing a massive, hidden gem. I’ll admit up front that we all know that Scripture repeatedly provides us with multiple meanings from a single passage. However, what follows is a critical, and I might argue the primary, meaning that is often lost on readers and has significant repercussions for the way you interpret Scripture. In short, Revelation 19:10 unlocks all prophecy by providing the key that is necessary to rightly interpret the prophetic Scriptures. Now let’s examine that key.

Given just how much of the Bible is dedicated to the writings of the prophets and how much of our theology is based on the proclamation of the prophets, understanding this key rightly has massive implications for how we read and understand the Bible. Once you grasp the key of Rev 19:10, you can better navigate the entire Scriptures and especially the Old Testament prophets. The lack of the application of this key has caused many to be confused as they read the Old Testament and also caused the development of faulty hermeneutics that allegorize passages that are intended to be literal. Let’s break down Revelation 19:10 then and find the critical key contained within it.

I want to focus on the final sentence of the verse. The verse says, depending on your version, that the testimony (or witness) of Jesus is the spirit (or essence) of prophecy. So we have the spirit, or essence, of all prophecy being connected to the witness of testimony of Jesus. So then at the root of prophecy you will find the declaration of Jesus and a testimony of Jesus. Prophecy, by nature, is a forward looking gift. We also know from I Corinthians 13 that prophecy will cease at the end of the age when Jesus comes. Therefore, the witness of Jesus given by the spirit of prophecy is forward looking but only necessary before the end of the age. In other words, it exists only to give testimony of Jesus in this age.

Therefore so long as prophecy exists, there must be a testimony of Jesus still to be given. Implied in that is that for prophecy to cease, the testimony of Jesus contained within prophecy, must no longer be necessary. In other words, in our current age which is filled with darkness, we have need of prophecy to point us forwards to a testimony of Jesus that is yet future, but when we enter an age of light we will no longer need prophecy as a testimony to Jesus. Now we know that the majesty and mystery of Jesus will be proclaimed for all eternity. Therefore prophecy is aiming at a specific testimony of Jesus that is desperately needed in this age, but not in the age to come.

The one thing that marks the age to come above all else is that Jesus will physically reign in Jerusalem. The present age and the age to come are separated by many things, but the one primary thing is that presently we await Jesus’ return from the heavens whereas in the age to come He will be openly reigning over the whole earth from a throne in Jerusalem. So then prophecy gives a needed witness of Jesus until Jesus Himself is reigning on the earth bringing “that which is perfect” and eliminating the need for prophecy as we know it.

From that we can clearly say that the spirit of prophecy is aiming towards the installation of Jesus as King over the Earth at the end of the age. After that event occurs, prophecy is no longer needed. But why is the spirit of prophecy necessary in this age? It is because men’s hearts and minds are blind to the judgment to come and to the reality of Jesus’ rule. They are as mockers in Noah’s day (Matthew 24:37-38) and it requires the spirit of prophecy to confront the cloud of deception on the earth with the bold declaration that Messiah is coming.

Understanding this, we could now re-write Revelation 19:10 in the following way: the Spirit of prophecy, or the root life and essence of it, is the full revelation of the Messiah ruling over the whole earth. Implied in that definition is the declaration of the events that will lead to the installation of the Messiah on the earth at the end of the age. Therefore, prophecy’s life consists, not merely in its present accuracy with regard to current events, but rather in whether or not it contains the essence of the eternal mystery of God’s glorious day of judgment whereby God installs the Messiah over the earth, judges all wickedness, and restores creation by the Messiah.

The prophets collectively refer to this event as the “Day of the Lord.” The spirit of prophecy then always contains, not just direction concerning the situation at hand, but a witness to the ultimate “Day of the Lord.” This is quickly illustrated by a brief examination of the prophetic Scriptures. Not only is this found in the prophets, but a careful reading of the New Testament will point out continual references to the day of the Lord showing its preeminence in the minds of the apostles.

Here is how the lack of this key has caused confusion among many in reading the Scriptures. In the Scriptures, the prophets may address a particular situation, leader, or dilemma but as you read the prophetic words you begin to notice that prophecies almost always include elements of language that seem to supersede or go beyond the issue at hand. The prophetic will address an event but then add climatic language, usually in the first person for God, describing an ultimate victory or destruction always accompanied by a Divine claim of personally visiting the planet and extreme events that accompany that appearing. The problem that some face is that the specific event being addressed is clearly understood, but the climatic language almost seems to be hyperbole when it is only considered in relation to the actual events that unfolded.

The language of the prophets then becomes confusing for many and, not understanding the spirit of prophecy, is interpreted as allegorical by others. The reality is that these prophecies are merely operating according to the spirit of prophecy which means that, at their core, they are always aiming at the ultimate revelation of the Messiah on the Day of the Lord. The exaggerated language or visual language that supersedes the issue at hand is not allegorical, but rather it is the prophet seeing that the moment at hand is merely a picture or a parable of actual events and an actual day to come.

In a moment or crisis, the prophet is also seeing the ultimate crisis of the end of the age. In a period of judgment, the prophet may erupt in terrifying language which is not out of character with the prophecy but rather is connecting the present prophecy with the ultimate judgment at the end of the age. The description of rulers and characters in the prophets accompanied by unusual language is serving to illustrate something concerning the Messiah or something that is anti-Messiah.

The reality is that the ultimate events of the end of the age which are the full revelation of Messiah, the ultimate judgment of all evil, and the permanent installment of the Messiah as the supreme ruler and representation of God on the earth, are intricately interwoven with every period of history. In the age to come we are going to see that all of history was an exact parable illustrating the human predicament and constantly foretelling the ultimate conclusion of the age. We are going to find that God was so kind and loving that virtually all the events of human history are illustrations of some facet of the drama concluding in the restoration of all things.

Once we understand this paradigm, we will see that the correct hermeneutic when interpreting the Scripture is far more literal than we thought it was. We read over the prophets thinking that their predictions refer only to events past and pass over the extreme language where the prophet sees a glimpse of the judgment at the end of the age in the midst of the present judgment. In reality, we were meant to consider the tragedy the prophet was confronting as a picture and then carefully consider the prophet’s language and prepare our hearts with trembling for the yet future day that the prophet was seeing.

Jesus Himself obviously communicated a literal hermeneutic to the apostles when He opened the Scriptures for them because when you read the New Testament you see the writers interpreting Old Testament passages that perhaps could be seen as allegorical or figurative before the appearance of Jesus, as literal. If you sift through the Old Testament references used by the apostles you will find them connecting all sorts of verses that we would not naturally consider to be literal and using them as literal prophecies of elements of Jesus and His life.

Amazingly you will find a tremendous amount of the apostles theology came from the Psalms, a book which we look at primarily as emotional and figurative. That alone should give us pause because the Psalms have far more to say about the ultimate events of the age and the installation of Messiah as a global ruler than they do of His first appearance as a redeemer.

Since we are approaching so many of these passages in hindsight after the Lord’s first appearing, we don’t seem to notice that, absent the knowledge of the first coming, we would not naturally interpret these passages as literal. This becomes especially terrifying when we consider the events of the second coming because most of our interpretation of the Day of the Lord and the ultimate events of the age is not literal.

We seem constantly in search of a code to explain the Scripture rather than wrestling with the Scriptures as a literal record of the events and issues of the age. The Angel’s declaration to John in Revelation 19:10 clearly directs us that the prophecy and events recorded in the Scriptures is critical for us since all true prophecy contains a witness to a great and terrible day that is yet future. It should radically affect the way we live when we realize with clarity that these prophecies are not hyperbole, nor merely symbolic, but literal declarations of a day to come.

We were recently discussing some of the ways prayer is misused and it immediately came to me that perhaps some of our error in praying is that we have so mystified it that we really do not have a solid paradigm for exactly what we are doing when we pray. Because our governmental model of the universe is not sound and because we do not see intercession as a primarily governmental occupation, our prayer suffers and is subject to all sorts of frustrations and excesses. We may use a lot of volume and many repetitions (Matthew 6:7) and even consistently “bind satan” and yet our prayers seem to have little effect.

My argument here will be that the lack of a governmental model of prayer is at the root of many of our issues in prayer. Now, while this is entitled “Demystifying Prayer,” I will acknowledge up front that prayer is inherently mystical in the sense that fallen man is communing with the Divine which is a relationship that is beyond human capacity. The issue though is that we have added a mystical layer on top of prayer that makes it frustrating and unfruitful. If we remove the unnecessary mysticism we will find that we begin to pray in a much more Scriptural and far less frustrating manner. Understanding the governmental model behind prayer helps to clear our hearts so that we see prayer less as an ethereal thing and more as something substantial and real.

Rather than seek to examine all the possible errors of our methods of prayer as if we are the proper authority on prayer, let us simply examine the proper paradigm of prayer. When we pray out of the proper paradigm, we will naturally adjust the way we pray.

We obviously do not have the space to examine Luke 18, but let us suffice it to say that Luke 18 presents the model for intercession. We can get a basic grasp of how we are to prayer from Luke 18:1-8. If you’re not familiar with the passage, take a moment now and read it. We learn the following from Luke 18:

• There is injustice, sin, and evil on the earth. It is caused by the adversary working through fallen humans and the systems of this age.
• We are affected by it in a substantial way. In fact, it is the oppression from evil that we experience and observe that becomes the groundwork for our intercession.
• The proper response then to the predicament we find ourselves in is to go to the judge who alone can rescue us and beseech him until He answers.
• The judge may appear silent, but each request is moving him. He will act. In fact, Jesus asks the leading question of whether He will find men interceding with a confidence that God will act. Even if He withholds His action until the Day of the Lord, we are still to have faith that He will act.

If we properly understand the governmental paradigm of Luke 18, it will clear the fog that surrounds intercession and lead us to more effective praying. The problem is that we have so thoroughly adopted Greek dualism that we see God as completely dwelling in another realm and do not see Him in His governmental position over our realm. Some see our job in prayer as trying to get Him to cross the boundary of His realm into our reality and do something. Others see our job in intercession to be attacking opposing spirit beings so that God can do what He desires in our realm. The reality is that intercession can be long, painful, and deep but our model for it does not need to be confusing, nor overly mystical.

In short, to intercede is simply to approach the throne of grace to find help in our time of need. When we pray we are approaching a King. This King is enthroned above all other kings. He presently, at this time, has full authority and dominion over all of creation. When we perceive the need for wrongs to be made right, we simply stand before the King, as did Queen Ester, and beseech Him to act on our behalf and break in.

We must see that prayer is primarily a governmental function. The secret to prayer is not figuring out which spirit is the problem or which language will finally move His heart, but to realize that when you step into the place of prayer the Scriptures tell us that you are standing before a very real God on a very real throne that hears the cries of His people (Exodus 2:23). We do not fully consider the idea of God as a real and present King reigning over the earth, but this is the Biblical paradigm. Just consider some of the most significant theophanies in the Scriptures and you will repeatedly see the revelation of a King upon a throne and the recipient of the vision being undone at the present ruling majesty of the living God over both the recipient of the revelation and the entire earth.

Just the recognition that you are approaching the King of the universe in a governmental capacity should dramatically alter your perspective of prayer. You are beseeching this great King, asking Him to move on your behalf. We are subject to His rule and yet He invites us as men to take on His heart and beseech Him for the very things He desires to do. This is a stunning partnership that few of us really take the time to comprehend, and this partnership takes place in a governmental paradigm where we beseech the King to act.

Beyond the issue of partnership, is the core, fundamental motivation behind intercession and that is the issue of evil. Most of our intercession at this time arises primarily from the problem of evil. The problem is that, absent the proper governmental paradigm, we lose our way and can end up trying to attack evil in our prayers rather than following the Luke 18 model of simply going to the King and asking Him for justice. To better illustrate this, if you were in a kingdom and there was a usurper propagating evil what would you do? Would you go to the usurper and ask him to stop, or would you go to the king, the one who has full power and authority, and ask him to drive the usurper out of the kingdom?

The obvious answer is that we would enter the king’s courts and appeal to the king. Is this not exactly what the Scriptures exhort us to do? What then should be our primary approach to evil and spiritual warfare? Should it be to incessantly bind the devil, which the Scriptures clearly say is bound at Jesus’ coming and not until then, or should it be to appeal to the King to break out in power and stop the infusion of darkness?

Now, as we ask the King to break in, we recognize from Luke 18 that we are also in a place where we are awaiting the ultimate justice of the Day of the Lord. This keeps our hearts in faith with regard to the issue of delay. The question is not whether or not the King will act on our behalf, but rather it is a matter of when. Remember that in the book of Revelation, it is bowls of the saints prayers that sure as the fuel for God’s judgment as He breaks in on the earth. All the intercession throughout the ages that has been delayed, is finally answered in that great day. On that day full justice comes and the usurper is totally destroyed.

Intercession then, seen in its complete context, is to stand before the creator and to ask Him to break in now and demonstrate a preview of the goodness, kindness, and liberation that is coming in His ultimate act of justice on the Day of the Lord. When we ask Him to execute justice, heal, deliver, or liberate men we are asking Him to demonstrate who He is now as a prophetic picture of what He will ultimately do on a global level in the present.

How much would it alter your prayer life if you began to see your intercession as literally standing before the Judge of the universe beseeching Him to break in a rule on a particular issue? What if, rather than searching for more powerful language or new techniques, you merely closed your eyes and saw yourself before the throne of Hebrew 4:16? How would that alter the entire way you approach prayer and the language you use? What if you began to understand that when God delays His justice that He is also filling a bowl in heaven with the cry for justice and that bowl is going to overflow one day when the world is immersed in the justice and judgment of God? Your “unanswered” prayers are not unanswered, but rather assembled by the King into a great bowl of prayers that He is going to answer in His time and in response to His saint’s continued cries.

What if that King not only tolerated your petitions as the king did with Esther, but what if the King had actually invited you to come and beseech Him in your time of need? In our case we are welcomed by the Sovereign of the universe to approach Him and make known our needs, or our injustices.

Read Revelation 4 and consider the throne room of the King of the Universe, the “One upon the throne.” Then, take the thing you need to intercede before the Lord as though you were a subject being welcomed by the King to petition Him for the thing that you need Him to act on. You will find that addressing God in the proper governmental context is far more satisfying than trying to find better language, stir up more volume, or attempting to randomly bind spiritual enemies. Approach and address Him as a just and willing King. You just may see your prayer time transformed.

Recently I was spending some time with one of my daughters and at her request, we ended up watching one of her videos. When it stopped, the television defaulted to a Christian channel and they were showing a movie of Noah and the ark. She begged to watch it, so we watched some of it. It was a great example of what I would call “Biblical film making.” The dialogue was a little humorous in that the language was so archaic that it made King James English almost seem conversational. At the same time Noah seemed to always be looking off into the distance making profound statements with an air of wisdom about him. Regardless of Noah’s depiction, their depiction of the ark was actually interesting. They had an interesting view of how the ark was laid out and what life was like inside the ark both for people and animals. However, after the initial ark scene, I was totally unprepared for what was about to happen.

After the ark was loaded, Noah and his family were secured in the ark and soon the rain began to fall. As the rains fell the ark slowly began to be lifted and drift on top of the waters. At the same time the people outside the ark were panicking and frantically climbing to the highest places they could find to escape the water that was slowly overtaking them as a steady and unstoppable force. In the midst of this, there is a scene inside the ark where you can hear the muted sounds of screaming and shrieks from from all those that are lost outside the ark and frantically trying to escape the ever encroaching waters. As you hear these sounds, Noah’s wife has a look on her face of horror. Up until now the family hasn’t fully considered their predicament, and suddenly the full realization of what is going on strikes them. Noah’s wife looks to Noah and their eyes meet. Her expression is begging the question, “am I really hearing what I think I’m hearing?” Here Noah’s family is saved in the midst of cataclysmic destruction and yet the realization is finally hitting them that everything is real. Everything Noah had been preaching had been words up until this point, but now those words were reality and the terror of the reality was more than any of them anticipated.

I was so struck with that scene that I trembled on the inside. My mind raced to the Scriptures and I considered more and more how every time I pick up the Scriptures I am seeing such a clear declaration of the coming Day of the Lord. Whether it is the historical books, the prophets, the gospels, the acts of the early church, or the apocalypse of Revelation, there is a consistent and persistent declaration of the Day of the Lord in the Scriptures. It is almost as if there is a veil causing us to miss the preeminence the Day of the Lord has in the Scriptures and when that veil begins to lift, one is astounded as just how much of the Scriptures is given over to declaring that God is coming to the planet and that coming is something so dramatic that words fail in the description of it.

The prophets saw and declared this coming day. The Jews so anticipated that day that when John Baptist declared that Messiah was coming, they were baptized in repentance to prepare themselves for the day. In fact, the primary stumbling block for the first century Jews was that they were expecting the ultimate day of the Lord and not a coming that, in kindness, made available a redemption prior to that cataclysmic day. In Paul’s writings, we find that he motivated both himself and the saints he wrote to by exhorting them that they would be found in Christ on that day.

The coming of that day and the ensuing events were the cornerstone of the apostolic proclamation and the motivation to declare the gospel to the earth that as many as possible might be saved in the great day of God that was coming.  Remember that salvation Biblically is mostly presented as a future thing and what we have failed to perceive is that future salvation is not just salvation from hell, but salvation in the great Day of the Lord.  This doesn’t negate the present need of an encounter with God or of being born again, but rather our present experience of redemption and the indwelling presence of the Spirit, among other things, gives us assurance of full salvation on that day.

Every temporal judgment is a warning of an ultimate day of reckoning for the earth and those who have walked upon it. While we often focus on whether current events are judgments or not we miss the fact that any present judgment event is merely an illustration that is meant to point us to that ultimate day and warn us of a judgment that far surpasses anything we have presently experienced. Even the flood, as cataclysmic as it was, was not an event in itself, but rather meant to be an prophetic picture to shock and awaken us to the nature of what’s coming when God comes to the planet.

The issue of God’s coming is not an issue merely of an angry deity, but rather the issue of what happens when the One who is truly perfect and good comes into full contact with all the evil on the earth and in man.  The drama of that day is actually part of the love and kindness of God because the present evil that we tolerate is having horrific effects on creation that we don’t even recognize because we are so numb to it.  Since we are part of the environment and over it we can’t even see the full effects on our environment of the evil dwelling within us.  God is not content to see this destruction continue forever and so His coming brings a massive judgment that is rooted, not in anger, but in perfect love.

I have to believe that, like Noah’s family, this event may be a part of our creeds and theology, but that our hearts have not truly anticipated just how devastating and traumatic this day is going to be. The Scriptures clearly describe an event that man cannot endure and that even the earth can barely endure. Regardless of how literal your hermeneutic is, and the further I go the more convinced I am that the Scriptures are far more literal than we have imagined, as you read the prophetic scriptures concerning this day, anyone who seriously considers these events will come to the conclusion that this day is going to be beyond anything any of us have imagined.

Jesus said that the end would be “as in the days of Noah.” He chose the days of Noah as the example of the end. Just as in the days of Noah, men live totally ignorant of the impending judgment. Men scoff at the idea that God is going to judge all wickedness and restore the earth in purity and goodness just as He has promised. As in the days of Noah, God has made an ark of escape in Jesus that we might endure that terrible day when God comes to earth in holiness and in zeal to cleanse and redeem the earth.  And the real terror of that day is that, as in the days of Noah, the horror of what is coming will not be fully evident until the event is fully in motion and there is nothing that can be done. 

The real horror of the look on Noah’s wife’s face is that she only understood the magnitude of what was happening after it was too late to take any more action. By the time she fully understood what was going on it was too late to do anything about it.  It was too late to prepare any more.  It was too late to warn others, and it was too late to rescue any more souls.  The door was closed and the deluge had come and there was nothing that could be done to stop it.  So too the real terror of the Day of the Lord is going to be that we will only fully grasp it on that day and on that day it will be too late to prepare our hearts to face the fullness of God and too late to declare to others the need to repent that they may be saved in that day.  What has been done will have been done.  In that moment, the fog will lift and we will clearly see our lives and actions for what they were and the pain of regret, which for some will be an eternal terror, will be immense.

Just like Noah’s family in the movie, believers are living in intellectual assent to the idea that Jesus is coming but with virtually no understanding of just what that day is going to be like and no preparation for it. Our theology may be correct in our hearts, but in our hearts we live as though everything that day will destroy is actually permanent.  That day will literally shake the earth. Men will seek the escape of death because of the appearance of a holy God on the planet. We must begin to read the Scriptures simply, taking them at face value, and see that throughout the entire book there is a consistent declaration that God is coming to physically dwell on the earth among His people, and that coming will demand a complete judgment of all that is wicked and a restoration of the earth. We must also begin to see that all other themes in Scripture are in the context of this coming day and God’s purpose for it.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; – Isaiah 61:1-2 (ESV)

We are presently living in the year of God’s favor. It is the time period when salvation is made available.  God in His immense love and kindness has repeatedly, though His Word and through messengers each generation, warned us of the events to come and provided, at the cost of His own blood, an ark of escape in that great day.  However, this salvation makes little sense without the context of the day of vengeance against all wickedness, no matter how minor or how subtle,  that is coming. One thing is sure: Something is coming far beyond what we can imagine. We are presently blessed with a period of time to come under God’s mercy and allow Him to prepare us that we might stand on that day, but this blessing will be a curse in that day if we find, like Noah’s family, that it never was real to us.

If you are not right with God through Jesus Christ, I don’t have words that are strong enough to urge you to turn your heart to the cleansing in Jesus Christ that you might be prepared for that day. If you are already a believer, I would challenge you that you probably do not live in preparation for that day. Like Noah’s family, we have heard the message but we really haven’t anticipated exactly what that day will be. Most of us are expecting the inauguration of some sort of utopia and heavenly retirement age and this bears no resemblance to the way the Scripture describes this day.  While the end result is a cleansing and a perfect dwelling with God, we have grossly estimated the trauma of that process and the full purity of our God.

The reality is that this coming day is so dramatic that none of us can fully anticipate what is coming. Even those who give their hearts to prepare will, in some measure, stand like Noah’s family trembling under the weight of it all when it actually unfolds. Saints, that day is clearly described in Scripture if we only open our eyes to read it. Let us prepare our hearts in accordance with what the Scriptures really say while allowing our hearts to take the message to all those who are unprepared for this day. Malachi perhaps has the best summary of our predicament:

But who can endure the day of His coming, and who can stand when He appears? – Malachi 3:2a (ESV)

Recently the Chinese government has re-arrested Gao Zhinsheng.  His crime is publicizing the kinds of abuses the Chinese government regularly inflicts on its own people. A website named “Free Gao” has published information about Gao including a video re-enacting Gao’s first imprisonment.  As you watch the video consider that this is the kind of reality that believers in many parts of China face each day.  They know that following Jesus may lead them into this kind of torture and yet they continue to evangelize passionately knowing that Jesus is the only hope for China.  Older believers even teach the younger ones how to escape the police and how to endure persecution when caught.

For most of us, China is a little unreal.  It is a place very far away possessing a culture we find unusual.  Sadly, China in the America mind is often merely a collection of labor and factories producing all our consumer goods at cheap prices.  It is the country that we both love and hate.  We love its low prices and efficient industry even as we decry the fact that it’s “cheap” and “communist.”

In the church, we often hear of Chinese Christians but their experience is also more of a detached reality for us.  Take a few minutes and allow God to knit your heart together with the Chinese, not only enjoying their stories of evangelistic success, but also sharing in their pain.

Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies. – Hebrews 13:3 (NLT)

Visit the Free Gao site and take a moment to learn more of what happens behind closed doors in China.   Remember, the saints there are part of our family.

Here’s the link: http://www.freegao.com/ .

I wanted to make everyone aware of a new work available by Art Katz titled  The Anatomy of Deception.  This book was published posthumously from Art’s messages.   Recently a friend was kind enough to send me a copy of it before I was even aware that it was available for purchase and I am very grateful for his kindness.  Years ago Art’s writings were for me a deep drink of refreshing water amidst an arid land.  He gave perspective to yearnings in my soul and helped form the basis of a Biblical, New Testament theology in my heart.  After just spending a few moments in the introduction of this book, my heart was again stirred in a similar manner.  As I read through this work, Art’s words were again proving to be a deep drink of refreshing water.

In this Art takes aim at the critical issues in the church which, when unaddressed, lead us into deception and become avenues for even greater deceptions and delusions.  While manifestations of power are important to the church, Art takes aim at the deeper issues of our heart before the Lord and our life, both individually and together as believers, and demonstrates how, when these things are lacking, power can become a dangerous thing and ultimately even a means to deception.  This book is an excellent examination of things that we often fail to examine and in so doing cause great harm to ourselves and the church.  If you have a burden to see a church that is genuinely apostolic and prophetic, you would do well to spend a few hours in this book and let it test and try your soul.

In the days ahead, we are going to desperately need the kind of truth that is found in this little book, so I have to encourage you to get a copy of it and read it.  I also wanted to make a note of the fact that this is a relatively small book and I also found it to be one of Art’s easiest books to read.  In fact, if you’ve never read Art before this would be a fabulous book to begin with as it’s relatively short and very approachable while clearly communicating Art’s burden.

I wanted to add one last comment about the issue of signs and wonders.  Some saints might walk away from Art’s writings with a cynical heart towards the miraculous.  I want to encourage us all, as saints, to not become cynical towards signs and wonders simply because of their misuse.   Signs were an important component of Jesus’ ministry as well as that of the early apostles.  When we hear of God working in an extraordinary way, we should be like the Bereans who were both excited to hear of what God was doing and, at the same time, verified the word to be sure that it was true.

The reality is that we desperately need the power of God accompanying the gospel in our day and we must understand that God sometimes works in amazing ways through individuals that are imperfect and that imperfection does not necessarily invalidate the signs themselves.   In fact, we even see apostolic correction and tension even in the New Testament between Paul and Peter at one point.  My point here is to ensure that we properly apply Art’s message and do not let the enemy twist it so that we develop a cynical spirit.

That having been said, Art’s message may seem to some to be very strong but remember that when the pendulum swings too far in one direction we often need an equally exaggerated message to bring us back to the full counsel of the Lord.   While I have warned against developing a cynical spirit, at the same time realize that without the word Art brings in this book being applied, we will not have the ultimate depth that God requires and any signs in our mist will not be capable of having God’s intended effect and could even end up being tools in the hands of the enemy.

You can get a copy of The Anatomy of Deception at the Art Katz Ministries Online Bookstore which is located at http://artkatzministries.org/online_bookstore/.  If you have not read Art’s other major works such as Apostolic Foundations and the Spirit of Truth, go ahead and order those as well.  They will add a depth to your life will be greatly needed for the days ahead.  While you are visiting the Art Katz Ministries site you may want to sign up for updates because I believe there are also some other new works that will be coming out in the future that you will want to take advantage of.

Works such as The Anatomy of Deception are rare and valuable.

Politics is like marrying and crying and laughing and buying. We should do it, but only as though not doing it – John Piper.

The Christian response to the recent elections has been somewhat troubling to me.  On one side, there are the despondent ones.  These act as though the Kingdom of God is almost subservient to the government and seem to believe that God is finished with America since the government is in the control of the “liberals.”  On the other hand there are those that are engaging in a bitter spirit of political contention.  They tend to appear to be more passionate about conservative talk show hosts than Christ, and are more energized by the liberal versus conservative debate than they are the eternal elements of the kingdom.  They seem to have forgotten that God is not a Republican, nor a Democrat, and that no system of man, moral or not, is a substitute for the coming kingdom and the coming King.

Please do not understand.  I know the moral policies that the government embraces are significant and have significant consequences.  I believe in passionate intercession for the nation and understanding the criticality of the hour the western nations are in.  Yes, we must vote and maintain a voice for righteousness.  By all means let us cry out that God might have mercy and overturn unjust laws and give us righteous leaders.  However, let us always keep this in eternal perspective and realize just whose kingdom we truly are citizens of.   I believe you will find John Piper’s post election comments to be a refreshing exhortation that is valuable in mainting the proper perspective.

Read on here for the rest of what he had to say:

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14639

I have had some tell me that when they click the link, they cannot read the entire article.  Apparently the article is available if you are referred by Google, but not by other sites. Here is how to read the article:

• Go to Google.  Enter the following as your search: “Marry. Cry. Rejoice. Buy. john piper”
• The article will be the first search result.  Click on it and World magazine will display the entire article.  Yes, I know this is bizarre, but it works.

John Piper also wrote essentially the same thing before the election and you can read it at the Desiring God block by clicking on this link.

I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, if anyone steadfastly believes in Me, he will himself be able to do the things that I do; and he will do even greater things than these, because I go to the Father. – John 14:12

Many of us have heard this passage preached many times with various interpretations of the passage.  While I do not want to try to evaluate what the proper interpretation of the passage is, I do want to propose that there is a nugget in this passage that could radically affect the culture of ministry that we operate in.

The Ministry Culture of Jesus

If you examine Jesus’ ministry, one thing that immediately stands out is how limited His sphere of ministry actually was.  While His ministry was spectacular, it is also amazing how He limited Himself to a specific area, refused the promotion of men, devoted only 3 years of His life to public ministry, and poured Himself into His disciples.  To understand why Jesus orchestrated His ministry in this way, it is critical that we examine how He launched the gospel through the disciples.

What is so amazing is that rather than seeking the largest public platform, Jesus poured Himself into the disciples.  In some cases, His ministry was limited to the 12 and in other cases it was the 70, and at times it included some other followers.  Regardless of the exact number, the point is that Jesus really only gave Himself to a small number of followers.  He also freely shared His power with them even when they were immature.  Not only did He send the disciples out with power, He even sent Judas out with supernatural power on him.  That alone should astound most of us.

Have you considered that Jesus invested His life in this small group of people and then He entrusted them with the propagation of the gospel to the nations?  If you think about it, it is almost inconceivable that Jesus would ascend just after His moment of triumph and leave the declaration of His victory to a handful of unstable followers.  If we are honest, we have to admit that we would consider Jesus’ ministry strategy to be ridiculous. 

How many of us would adopt that kind of strategy?  How many of us would repel the crowds that were ready to exalt us and instead invest in a small group that were struggling with proper theology?  How many of us would put power on a group of young men still struggling with their own egos?  How many of us, at the very height of victory, would step aside from visible ministry and instead give our spirit to others that they might be empowered to take the gospel to world and do great exploits?

Now, understand the point here and don’t read too much theology into it, but if you judge Jesus purely by ministry output you will see that the apostles superseded Him in virtually every way.  Most of them had much longer ministries, affected much wider areas, and produced more converts.  What was so radically different about Jesus’ value system that caused Him to minister in this way?  The answer has profound implications for just how deep our own ministry can go.

Greater Works

To find the root of Jesus’ ministry philosophy, we now must turn our hearts to the issue of greater works.  Whatever else this passage may in fact mean, I believe it was the ministry philosophy of Jesus to so invest Himself in others that they would do greater works than He Himself did.  He poured Himself out on behalf of the disciples with a heart burning to see them exceed the works that He Himself had done. 

No one has greater love than to lay down (give up) his own life for his friends. – John 15:13 AMP

Just before He went to the cross, Jesus gave another critical insight to His ministry philosophy in this classic verse in John 15.  Jesus described the heights of love as laying down and giving up one’s life for his friends.  The problem is that this verse is typically limited to the romantic idea of taking a bullet for a friend or performing some other ultimate kind of sacrifice for another.  While that kind of ultimate sacrifice was demonstrated by Jesus and is definitely included in the meaning, could it be that Jesus is aiming at something deeper?

The deepest depth of love is not to just surrender your life for another in a moment, but to give your life each day for another.  There is a daily laying down of our lives in the mundane, day to day existence that very well may supersede dying for another in a moment.  In many ways it is the daily death that is the more costly and painful.  We are called not just to consider giving our lives in a moment, but to live in such a way that we are daily laying down our life that those around us might live.  We are to so invest ourselves in others that we put our talents, our giftings, and our callings at risk so that we can see the talents, giftings, and callings of others grow and supersede our own. 

Is this not what Jesus did?  Did Jesus not define this greater love, not only by His sacrifice on the cross, but also by His daily ministry of preparing the disciples to minister on a stage that would exceed His own?  We tend to think of love as something that we may posses, but the Scriptures teach us that God is love.  Love is defined by what God is and what God does, and here Jesus is showing us what Love does.  Love invests itself in others so strongly that the other grows and flourishes beyond what we ourselves accomplish.  This is love.  It is the intentional laying down of our own lives that others may exceed us.  It is not just being complicit with another superseding us because they have greater talent, but actively investing ourselves in others with an intentional aim to equip them to supersede us whether they are naturally more talented than us or not.

Could this philosophy of ministry be contained in Jesus’ declaration that the disciples would do greater works?  Again, the passage quite certainly has other implications, but is it not possible that Jesus was defining His own ministry philosophy of equipping His disciples and followers to exceed Him in ministry?  Have you consider the weight and depth of that statement?  Is it not a majestic statement that God in the flesh would look at a handful of young men with no advantages with regard to the flesh and declare to them that they should exceed Him in ministry?  This statement should baffle your mind and ultimately lead you to prostrate yourself in worship before the God that would show such love to men.

Ministry Culture

In order to see the reality that Jesus died for, we must apply Jesus’ value system to our present culture.  To apply it, we must ask the hard question, “does our present ministry culture call on each individual to raise up others to a level that exceeds their own giftedness and then make room for those whom they invested in to display their greater giftedness?”  I’m afraid the answer is that we do not.  More often than not we tend to try to obtain some level of giftedness or blessing and then use that gift, not to equip others for greater works, but to make room to put our ministry on display.  When we do have a measurable ministry impact on others, sadly more often than not we use the individual we impacted to validate the effectiveness of our own ministry rather than being content to silently stand by rejoicing and provoking them to do “greater works” than we have done.

How many individuals called by God are repressed because leaders fear the giftedness of a lay person or of a younger minister?  How many are forced out from where they are initially called because of insecure leaders who fear giving room to another whose gifts might supersede their own?  Likewise, how many young and gifted leaders refuse to give room to other more seasoned in the faith fearing that the more seasoned one may overshadow their youthly zeal?

At this point, many of you are immediately thinking of ones who may have prevented you from expressing what God has put in you.  You may be thinking of a repressive leader or another who, because of fear or jealousy, would not give you room to express what God gave you.  Saints, that is not the purpose of this exhortation.  We must forgive those who have sinned against us and then turn this understanding inward and allow it to judge the thoughts and motives of our own hearts.  The reality is that we often look at another with thoughts of fear when we perceive another in our sphere whose giftings challenge our own.

Is your ministry philosophy set so that whoever you minister to, whether it be an individual or a group, you minister to with the intentional goal of enabling that person to exceed you?  Are you willing to take what it has taken you 15 years in the wilderness with God to obtain and freely give it away in a moment to a young, immature believer that you know may well exceed you in ministry?  Do you freely give away in a moment what took you years to obtain even if the recipient is seemingly unworthy of such a thing?  Are you willing to stand by with a heart of joy and see other believers demonstrate gifts that go beyond your own?

God has called us to be a peculiar people that are a demonstration of His nature and character.  Part of that demonstration is to be a people that freely lay down our lives for each other.  What kind of people would we be if every one of us actively committed ourselves to doing all that we can to enable others to exceed us in ministry?  What kind of demonstration would happen if the people of God celebrated the work of God advancing as it advanced in others?  What would happen if, rather than simply acknowledging when God raises up a gifted individual, we committed our lives to equipping the saints around us so that their giftedness exceeded our own and then actively gave room for them to express gifts that exceed our own?  What might God do if we actively worked to replace our own current ministry through investing in and raising up another?

This sort of ministry culture is not cheap, but I dare say it is apostolic.  It is full of difficult and painful choices.  This kind of culture will test us in the deepest way as we have to trust God to make room for the ministry He has placed in us as we daily, actively do everything we can to make our own ministry giftings secondary to another’s.  That being said, I have to wonder if the failure to adopt this sort of culture has prevented the church from growing in the way that it is designed to grow.  Perhaps we have failed at the exponential growth the early church saw because we were not willing to embrace this culture.

One thing is for sure, God is going to get a people that are willing to demonstrate this culture.  When He does, all the world is going to take notice as God pours out His Spirit on these people in a way unlike anything in history.  Once a people make the expression of God flowing through another the priority over the expression of God flowing through themselves, God will be free to trust them with power that He cannot trust others with.  The key is for us to adopt this culture and then begin to intentionally implement it in our daily lives. 

The action plan is simple.  Forget what others have done to you or are doing to you.  Forgive any who operate from a place of fear or jealousy.  Commit yourself to lose sight of the burden of maintaining your own ministry calling and give yourself today to investing in others.   Invest in them so radically that the only possible outcome is that they grown so deep in God that they supersede you and are far more effective in ministry than you have ever been. 

Commit that from now one you will do everything you can to make your ceiling every one else’s floor.  Commit that you will make room for the more gifted ones, whether they be older or younger.  Commit that you will not defend or protect your ministry but freely relinquish it to God and allow Him to place you on the stage or under the stage at His own whim.  Finally, celebrate when God exceeds what He has done in you in the life of another.  When you can truly contribute to and rejoice in God’s work through other surpassing your own ministry, your culture is shifting.

The balance to this is that God will still need those who are leaders and mature for His purposes of guiding the body.  That being said, those that are mature must still adopt this ministry culture to enable the life of the Spirit the freest possible expression.  Those that will make a commitment to this culture are going to form a people that are the expression of God’s desire.  Nothing will stand before them and it will be a sign and a wonder to all the earth.  It is what Jesus died for.

I have been considering the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.  The siege and the ensuing conquest stands out as one of the most painful and graphic events in history.  In taking Jerusalem, it is recorded that the Romans killed nearly 1.1 million people.  The Jews were so starved that Josephus says they staggered around looking for anything to eat, even chewing leather.  It is even recorded that at least one person ate their own child.  Escaping Jews were crucified all around the city to the point that the Romans ran out of crosses.  The Jews, though bickering among themselves, desperately fought the Romans to the end in a losing battle.  It is said that the Romans, when they finally broke through to the temple area, were in such a passion of anger against the Jews that they did not even follow Titus’ orders but brutally slaughtered anyone and destroyed everything.  In the heat of this passion, a soldier threw a flaming torch into a room around the temple which started the temple burning.  Though Titus apparently did not intend to destroy the temple, the fire grew out of control and the temple was soon completely destroyed.  In the process, man, women, and children were burned to death and those that did escape were slaughtered by the Romans.  It is recorded that Titus refused to accept a wreath of victory for the conquest, saying that there was “no merit in vanquishing people forsaken by their own God.”

When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” – Luke 19:41-44

After solemnly considering these events, I believe this event has grave implications for us.  Consider just for a moment all the brutality, death, and destruction during the fall.  Consider that the area around Jerusalem, previously lush and desirable, was left practically a desert.  Why did Jeruslaem fall in such a dramatic way?  According to Jesus the city was going to suffer tremendously because it did not know the day of its visitation.  The city that rejected God in the flesh and condemned Him to a cross, just 40 years later was surrounded by a multitude of men on crosses as the Roman war machine steadily tore down the Jewish resistance.  They rejected one man on a cross and so were surrounded by the death of the cross.  Some translations in verse 41 show that Jesus wept audibly.  His heart was in pain because He knew what was coming.

What we must realize is that this event is a graphic foretaste of the end of the age.  One reason why we struggle with various prophecies in books like Revelation, Daniel, and the other prophets is because of the extreme nature of the events the prophet foretells.  The events seem so far beyond what we are accustomed to and so we tend to discard what the text actually says trying to ascribe symbolism to the text.  The fall of Jerusalem stands in contrast that that method of hermeneutics, instead demanding that we take prophecy literally.  In the fall of Jerusalem, God is gave us a foretaste of what the entire world will experience due to the global rejection of His Son.  If Jerusalem suffered so violently because it did not know the day of its visitation, how much more will the entire world suffer having not known the last 2,000 years of visitation?

We must realize that violent days are coming upon us.  The Scripture tells us that the earth will stagger like a drunkard.  If Jerusalem suffered so terribly for rejecting Jesus in their day, what is going to happen when God calls the entire world to judgment for the rejection of His Son?  What are the days going to be like when God unleashes the destruction, not just of one city, but of the world?  If one city could suffer so much for rejecting 3 years of ministry,  it should cause us to tremble at what the world will endure for rejecting 2,000 years of light.

We must begin to prepare out hearts for what is to come.  I do believe the Lord will keep us in the day of His wrath, although we will suffer to an extent just as Jeremiah suffered along with the others in Jerusalem in His day.  That being said, we must begin to trumpet a wake up call because the earth has no idea what is coming.  The earth has been lulled to sleep.  Humanity is in the same position as they were just before the great deluge.  The idea of such a flood was beyond their comprehension and so they ignored it until the rains finally fell and it was too late.  Let us not be like those that ignored Noah’s pleas, but rather let us be like Noah a preacher of righteousness preparing for the days ahead and warning men that they might be saved.

The best way to prepare our hearts is to begin to take the Word of God literally.  We must begin to read the Word and realize that there are things to come and those things are not exclusively symbolic, but rather are real events that must come to pass when God chooses to call the world to accountability for their treatment of His Son.  Yes, God is rich in mercy and even now calls men to repentance, but there will come a day when the fruit of the earth is fully ripe and God will swing his great sickle into the harvest of the earth.  Those that are His will welcome that day, but the earth though will experience the wrath of God against the great rejection of His Son.  What happened in Jerusalem in 70AD is merely a terrifying foretaste of what will come all over the earth in that day.  Let us live our lives in light of that day and let us warn others to throw themselves upon the merciful arms of the living God while He still delays His final days of reckoning with the earth.

One thing is for sure:  God is going to vindicate His Son, and I don’t think we have the slightest comprehension of what it will look like when God decides to vindicate His Son on a global level.

The Great Need of Mercy

You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. – Matthew 5:48 (AMP)

As we consider the requirements of God’s morality upon the inner man, we see that absolute need of Christ.  We see that there is no way any living human being will ever be able to assert any measure of morality against the standard of God, for we are all left completely helpless before His requirements.  When we finish the words of the Sermon on the Mount, if we have truly understood it, our hearts cry out, “What shall we do?”

The requirement of God is so deep, so vast, and yet so just that you and are are left without excuse and without hope before the judgment bar of God.  This is not without purpose however, for we are left in this great place that God may be all in all.  God Himself, in His own perfect love for man in our predicament, brings salvation through His own right hand in the person of Jesus.  By understanding the law, and its present application, we can understand more than ever the great need of the person of Jesus.  Jesus said, “those who are forgiven much love much,” and as the law of God penetrates our heart, our inner man should sing the highest praises to the One who has made a way for us to be redeemed from the just and proper condemnation of God’s law.

Let us now see that great paradox that God uses our very violation of the law to bring us into the demonstration of its requirements.  As the gospel is proclaimed in truth and power our hearts become heavy under the weight of condemnation and conviction.  This condemnation is just and true for we can never fulfill God’s requirements on us.  Many avoid this pressure point by lessening God’s requirements, but the solution is not to lessen God’s requirements, but to come into the reality of our spirit’s situation and then receive God’s solution.

While we struggle under the weight of our own condemnation and the black hell of hopelessness closes in on our hearts which have been awakened to God’s law, God comes in like a shaft of light and presents Himself as the ultimate sacrifice and rescue from our own black heart.  We see Him in that instant as the liberator from all that we are and all that we have become.  This experience is slow for some and quicker for others, but for all there is that moment when light dawns and we see that the very One who has condemned us by making just requirements of our heart, now offers Himself to us as the very redeemer for our blackness.  At this moment, we are born again as we grab onto the glorious hope of God whose love is so vast that He is, in that moment, both the One who condemns and the One who rescues.

God’s plan is so glorious though, that it continues from there.  Being liberated by His glorious love, the natural response of the human heart is then to love Him desperately, passionately, and completely for His act of redemption from our own condemnation.  In the wisdom of God then, it is the pressure of our condemnation that forms in a heart a love for the God who rescues us and this love then naturally begins fulfilling the first great commandment of God’s law to love God with all our hearts.

You see, it is the knowledge of the depth of our depravity and condemnation that leads us to the heights of love.  We become those with the capacity to fulfill the law only once we have been awakened to our birth position as those under the condemnation of the law.  Only the wisdom of God could take the very thing that condemns us and sets us at odds with Him and use it as the seed of eternal love and holiness in His redeemed people.  Once again, we find that God is all and all and that Jesus is worth of supreme adulation for His great redemption.  He alone provides mercy for our sins as we stand helpless before the judgment bar of God.  Let us love Him desperately for the mercy He provides and then vigorously share that mercy with others understanding that God uses the tool of condemnation as the key to open the door to divine mercy.

The Gift of Grace

We often declare that we live under grace and by that we typically mean that we are no longer under the requirement of God, but rather live in a time when God stands quick and ready to forgive all things and so we need not worry too significantly about how we live.  The irony of this way of thinking is that as believers we declare grace over every area that we feel we personally fall short, but then we make requirements of other believers when they sin and stumble.  In other words, though we claim “grace” we often live in an Old Testament way expecting other believers to conform to certain norms of behavior while we then claim “grace” for those aspects of our behavior that we feel unable to change.  We need a new understanding of grace.

Hopefully by now, we all see to clearly our great need of the mercy of God.  There is no solution to the weight of our offense before God other than the person of Jesus Christ and how glorious is His perfect deliverance!  For those of us that have been redeemed, we do indeed live under grace, but we need to understand what the nature of the grace we live under is.

True, God’s grace covers our sin, but His grace is also active empowering us to live in accordance to His law.  Grace is an active gift that God gives us, not only to cover our sin with His mercy, but also to empower us to keep the commandments Jesus gave.  God intends to have a people that are not only forgiven, but also who demonstrate His nature in the way that they live.  If we see grace only in the context of forgiveness, we have missed the demonstration that God desires to make through His people as grace empowers them to live in the context of Jesus’ commands.

By this shall all [men] know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. – John 13:35 (AMP)

We can easily see from the Scriptures, that Jesus expects the saints living under grace to demonstrate His commandments so that the world may receive a witness to the reality of the gospel.  Jesus’ primary witness to the world of His resurrection is the life of His people on the earth (Acts 1:8).  We are to be His witnesses, not just in the words we use, but in the life that we demonstrate.  It is this witness that not only is the evidence of Jesus resurrection to the world, but is also the ultimate blow to the powers and principalities that oppose the gospel.  They can oppose rhetoric and theology, but they cannot oppose the witness of a people demonstrating the operation of the law of God within their midst.

The New Testament Sinai

While Jesus declared His law to us, He knew that the saints would not be able to demonstrate the practical working of this law without supernatural power.  It is for this reason, that He instructed them to tarry until they be endued with His own Spirit.  The church had already received forgiveness through Christ’s death and resurrection, but God desired something far greater than forgiveness.  He wanted a people that were a demonstration and the only way to get that demonstration was to fill people with His own Spirit.

So then, on the day of Pentecost, Jesus poured out His own Spirit upon His body that the saints might be empowered, and not just forgiven.  This empowering was the fullness of God’s grace being poured out on the people.  Not only had He forgiven them, He now gave them power to walk in a way that was in keeping with His law.

In many ways the events in that upper room were a parallel to God’s law giving at Mt. Sinai.  In both instances, God came in fire, only this time rather than resting on a physical mountain away from the people, this time the first came and dwelt upon and within the people themselves.  Just as there were voices at Mt. Sinai (some translations say “thunders” where it more properly should be voices that proceeded when God came down at Mt. Sinai), so too now there were supernatural voices that emanated and those voices came as God supernaturally spoke through His people rather than to His people.

This is significant.  In times past, the voice came from God to His people from above.  Now the voice was coming through God’s people.  God had now indwelt His people empowering them to be the demonstration that He desired on the earth.  God, now incarnate among man in the person of Jesus Christ, speaks on the earth now through men.  No longer does the voice come from heaven, the voice is now on the earth.  It is the voice of God, but it is the voice of God through men.  Since God has chosen the mystery of His Son, in keeping with that mystery, He extends His ministry on the earth through other men that are in union with His Son.  What a mystery this is and how little the church has looked into it!  I fear we barely understand the incarnation.  It is a doctrine of theology that we associate with the babe in the manger, but we have not plunged the depth of the eternal mystery of the incarnation.

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was their Husband, says the Lord.  But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel: After those days, says the Lord, I will put My law within them, and on their hearts will I write it; and I will be their God, and they will be My people.  And they will no more teach each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.  For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. – Jeremiah 31:31-34 (AMP)

Amidst the voices and the fire at Pentecost, God wrote His law again by His own hand just as He did on Mt. Sinai.  For Moses, God wrote on tablets of clay because His declarations to Moses were earthly and external.  They were requirements upon the outward frame of man, or the clay part of man.  Now God has filled up His law and He makes His requirement upon the very heart of man.  On Pentecost then, God wrote His law again but this time on tablets of men’s hearts.  The law that He wrote is now proclaimed, not through a clay tablet, but through the witness of a people whose lives form a demonstration of the law written by God Himself on their own hearts.

Let us as a people approach the law of God with all the seriousness of its requirements as well as with all the joys of its fulfillment through Christ.  Truly we should be a joyous people that God would so honor us as He has with the requirement of His law.  Our hearts should be filled with rejoicing that the very God who makes such high requirements of us, makes a way of redemption for us and then, as if redemption is not enough, He empowers us as a people to keep His law and further more uses us as His demonstration both to the earth and to the powers and principalities of His great law.

Saints, we are God’s image on the earth and the display of His beauty and wisdom through His law.  Let us ask Him to give us full understanding of His law and the power to live under a complete New Testament understanding of the law, rather than our misguided understanding of His law.  Let our hearts be fascinated by the God whose nature is so perfect and so high above ours and yet stoops so low as to cover our sin and give us access to participate in His nature and demonstrate His law.  Truly, what other people has a God like this?

In addition, the point has been made repeatedly that it is critical that we live in light of the fact that we are still under a divine law and in light of that, we must acknowledge that God continues to have the right to place demands upon on.  While we have examined these characteristics of the New Testament Law, we have not examined what the declarations of the New Testament law are.  We have seen clearly that the scope of the law extends to all things, and we have seen that the depth of the law presses it deep in the heart of man, but is there a clear list of the directives of this law?  Well, though it receives little attention, Jesus clearly details for us the requirements of the New Testament law.

The Definition of the Law

In a very real sense, the Sermon on the Mount could be seen as a law giving moment.  Just as Moses ascended a hill and descended with the written requirements of God, so to Jesus ascended the hillside and clearly spoke forth the code and law He came to bring.  In that sense, we should see the Sermon on the Mount, not just as a nostalgic ideal, but as the present requirement of God.  God does not simply give us instructions and values that we might then live “under grace” in the commonly understood meaning of the term.  We can never discount grace, and we will address it in the final post, but God desires that grace become something that empowers us to live within that which He demands.  To understand the New Testament law, the Sermon on the Mount then is the proper starting place so long as we can begin to see it as Jesus’ parallel to Moses’ directives given from Sinai and not just as an idyllic sermon that is not actually binding on every day life.

While the Sermon on the Mount is perhaps the foundational passage for the New Testament law, there are a few other passages we should examine.  These passages are all familiar, but we have not considered these passages to be as weighty as they truly are.  Consider Jesus’ answer to one seeking salvation:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  These two commandments sum up and upon them depend all the Law and the Prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40 (AMP)

Notice that just before the cross, Jesus affirms this requirement to His disciples:

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love and live on in it, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commandments and live on in His love…This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than to lay down his own life for his friends…You are My friends if you keep on doing the things which I command you to do…This is what I command you: that you love one another. – John 15:10, 12-14, 17 (AMP)

Again, we are familiar with these Scriptures, but we must ask ourselves if we see these passages as Jesus’ requirements for His people or do we see them as cute phrases and New Testament ideals? I fear that because of a misunderstanding of grace that we do not consider the full weight of these passages.  In these passages, Jesus is putting a requirement on us and defining the way that He expects His people to live.

No one would deny that believers often fail to experience the full materialization of the promises recorded in Scripture, but could is be that we fail to obtain some of the benefits of the gospel because we have not esteemed the requirements of the gospel as such? Perhaps if we saw these commands as just as binding upon us as Moses’ Law was on the nation gathered around Sinai, we might become a radically different people.

The Weight of the Law

We began by pointing out that Jesus filled up the law and turned its requirements inward that He might deal with the very root of sin rather than merely prescribe good behavior. That consideration alone has the power to greatly alter our understanding of Jesus’ statements. After coming into that understanding, we have now considered some of the direct commands that Jesus gave to believers.

Now, we must ask an honest question which is who can fulfill such a law? While we are rightfully grateful that Jesus freed us from the outward bondage of Moses’ law, we fail to consider with much gravity the requirements of the law Jesus instituted. While Moses’ law was full of outward obligations that one might follow in some measure, Jesus law completely supersedes all outward observances and leaves men under greater condemnation than before.

If we honestly examine what He required, we must say, “who can fulfill such things?” for Jesus’ law is all encompassing. Can we not honestly say that every mode of life comes under the requirement to love God with all that we have and then extend love to others just the same as we would love ourselves? Beloved, this is a weighty requirement indeed. Moses’ law at least had specific requirements and limited scope, but Jesus’ law decrees that every thought, every desire, and every action are to be with regard to the supreme love of God and love of one another.

Can anyone among us have the audacity to declare that they could fulfill such a law? Can you see now that when the Spirit gives unction to preach such a law that there is no man who can stand in smug, self-righteousness? Saints we need to pray that God puts power on us again for the proclamation of this gospel. We have awkwardly proclaimed, at the same time, both the conviction of the Mosaic Law and the freedom from it, but we have not pressed men with the Law of Christ.

The reality is that God has not changed His demands upon man; He has only now intensified them in the revelation of Jesus. In the revelation of Jesus, He reveals what he created man for all along. You see, God does not intend to have a people that can merely follow a few moral axioms or fulfill religions ceremonies, He desires a people that are a physical display on earth of Himself.  This is what it means that man is made in the image of God.

We are made in His image and so He presses upon us the same law that He Himself demonstrates in all that He does. He makes a requirement on us that no man can possibly fulfill, and yet He has every right to demand it because He made us in His own image that we might live as a physical demonstration of Himself and spread the knowledge of God by our very living.  This requirement should crush all our righteousness and drive us to Christ both for forgiveness and for transformation to live in this manner, but tragically our gospel proclamation seems to have lost the weightiness of both of these values in its rush to declare us free from Moses’ prescribed diet and ceremonies!

Because we have lost these values, our evangelism is weak and anemic and our proclamation to the saints is hollow.  We are content to gaze horizontally at our own righteousness and not gaze upwardly that we might demonstrate Him; the very thing to which we are called!  We are content to demonstrate something a little better than other men rather than putting on display the glory of God and that is the fundamental issue.

Outward vs. Inward Law

Can you see now why Jesus superseded Moses’ law?  What place can a ceremonial law have for people when God has declared something much higher and deeper? If we are to live under the law that Jesus proclaimed, then we will naturally fulfill every value of the more primitive law given under Moses. As His law now judges every intent of the heart, there is no longer any use for laws governing outward behavior.

In considering the New Testament law, we see how the incarnation of God in Jesus is the defining foundation of our covenant with God. God’s people lived under an outward law so long as their experience of God was outward. The children of Israel related to God as a physical, outward entity. They observed Him as a pillar of fire, but did not, and were not, able to receive Him as the pillar of fire in their own hearts. As their experience of God was outward and physical, so God gave them an outward and physical law.

In the incarnation, God revealed His ultimate plan to come and participate in the flesh of man. He became one of us that we might have eternal union with Him. From that moment henceforth our relationship with Him was to be in the inward parts of man. This is what the New Testament law ultimately demonstrates. When God injected Himself into humanity and took on flesh, He naturally brought His requirements to bear upon, not just our behavior, but upon our very nature as well. Now that He was man, He could do nothing less that require man to be a demonstration of His character. When His nature became intermingled with man’s, this was the necessary result.

Saints, the incarnation is the great mystery of the ages.  When God became man, man came into a requirement for a new way of living after the nature of God Himself.  In Adam, man was made in God’s image outwardly at creation.  All the angels gasped to see a picture of God in the flesh.  In the incarnation, man was made after God’s nature.  The inner man was formed in the likeness of God in the person of Jesus.

When God took on flesh that flesh now more than ever must conform, not just to the physical image, but also to the very nature of God.  An outward and physical law is no longer valid because God no longer has an outward, physical relationship with man.  God pressed His nature into the very essence of man and so now there is an inward requirement made upon man.  God has demonstrated His perfection in man and so man is now beholden to demonstrate that perfection, as God’s image on the earth, to creation.

Can we not see what a glorious thing it is then that God makes these demands of men? For every other creature God defines a law and creates them to live within certain limits.  God is completely external to them, so He makes no demands on the inward natures of the other earthly creatures.  He merely gives them instincts and physical limits. But with man, it is altogether different. Because God now dwells inside of man in the person of Jesus, He relates to us in inward requirements.  Every demand of God is now aimed at the inward nature of man.

Who can fulfill such a law?  Can you not see the depth of this law?  Consider in your daily interactions whether every action taken is done so in the supreme love of God and then a love for others as yourself.  God gives us no rules and not requirements to follow but a burning love for Him that expresses itself both towards Him and towards others.  This is how Jesus can rebuke the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2 after recounting all their incredible accomplishments with the stinging words, “But I have this against you: that you have left the love that you had at first.  Remember then from what heights you have fallen.” (Revelation 2:4-5)

Saints, if we are honest most believers are trying to accomplish the very things Ephesus was praised for in a belief that God’s favor will be secured in these accomplishments.  The error is that this is an Old Covenant way of living that shows our own ignorance of the nature of the New Covenant.  The fundamental issue and requirement is the passionate love of God continuing on into the love of one another.  The love of God causes us to value and esteem all that He is and in that esteem we will necessarily desire to be an imitation and reflection of Him to all creation.  In doing this, all the law will be fulfilled.

Now that we have some definition around the New Testament law, click here to read on and consider the glory of Christ in this law.

Beyond our theology, there are also three things that evangelism uniquely reveals.  First, it reveals how we view man’s interaction with God.  The way that we communicate the context and requirements of the gospel reveal how we practically believe that man and God relate.  Secondly, it reveals how we view ourselves.  In our interactions with others and the sharing of our “testimony,” we reveal in a great measure how we view ourselves in general, and in particular how we view ourselves before God.  Thirdly, our evangelism reveals what we think about others.  The way that we relate the gospel to others, or whether we relate it at all to others, shows how we view those who are presently dead in sin.

The Effects of the Law on our Gospel Presentation

As we have demonstrated, most believers have a decidedly Old Testament understanding to God’s law rather than the New Testament understanding that Jesus clearly laid out in the Sermon on the Mount.  While many might dispute that point, the reality is that our methods of evangelism illustrate this disconnect perhaps better than any other place.  Let’s examine a few characteristics of western evangelism that illustrate the great ignorance of the church with regard to the law.

To begin there is the issue that we have already covered which is that we know only how to apply the law to outward behavior, rather than to the inward motives of the heart.  This brings several problems both to our gospel presentation and also to our own understanding of ourselves.  For one, because we are so outwardly focused, we tend to be quite ignorant of our own inward depravity.  The depravity, or wickedness, of man as it is inherited from Adam is one of those things that we might be able to check off on a theology quiz, but it is not a doctrine that we believe to the point that it affects the way we view ourselves and others.

Because we do not truly grasp our own inward depravity, we are at a loss to press the gospel upon another individual who appears to be relatively moral outwardly.  We are at a loss for words when they fail to have an interest in a salvation that they do not see the need of.  Why do they not see the need of salvation?  Because we have largely presented them with an outward salvation over an inward one and this flows from the fact that we do not articulate the inner requirements of God’s law, only the outward requirements of a law that, once they are saved, we argue against lest we embrace “legalism” over grace.

Because we do not truly understand, or perhaps even believe, in the depravity of man, we are also tempted to justify wicked behavior in both ourselves and others.  As we noted, the people we present the gospel to often have a level of moral conduct that is very similar to our own.  When we try to present the need for Christ, we fail because we do not know how to properly convict the heart at the root of the issue.  We struggle and stumble to present to an individual their great need of Christ because the reality is that we are not really convinced that the person is all that bad, mostly because we have not ever considered ourselves to be “that bad.”

In fact, from this lack of understanding of depravity has arisen various modes of comparison, such as “good person” compared with “bad person” and the idea that some sin is worse than others.  True, some sin has more extensive effects in this age, but in the eternal age, all wickedness is evil.  We fail to understand this because we fail to see unredeemed man, “good” or “bad” as essentially wicked.  We fail to see them as essentially wicked, because we do not clearly see how the law of God cuts beyond behavior into the very essence of each thought and impulse of the heart.  The proof of man’s wickedness lies not in what impulses he restrains and what impulses he allows, the proof of man’s wickedness is that fact that the evil impulse arises at all within his being.

When our gospel is aimed at outward actions rather than inward corruption, we necessarily have trouble presenting the case for Christ.  When people do not see themselves as hopelessly dead and lost, then why should they call upon Christ with the tenacity that is required for genuine salvation?

Therefore I tell you, her sins, many [as they are], are forgiven her – because she has loved much.  But he who is forgiven little loves little. – Luke 7:47

Another way to illustrate the effect of our gospel is to examine the issue of the fruitfulness of the believers in our churches.  When you hear about someone who is really zealous for the gospel and really making a difference, subconsciously you assume that they had a dramatic conversion and a difficult past.  Why is that?  It is because whenever we hear a testimony of a very fruitful believer or leader we are accustomed to hearing how their lives had taken them into the depths of sin and wickedness and the cried out to Jesus in desperation.  Why are so many of the individuals that are so very fruitful ones that had horrible pasts?  Jesus reveals that to us in Luke 7.

It is those who truly understand their position before God and their absolute hopelessness that are the most grateful for His gift of mercy.  When we do not press the issue of man’s hopelessness, he really has nothing to be deeply grateful for.  When a man sees that he is hopelessly wicked, enslaved by sin, and living a vile lifestyle, then he is deeply grateful for redemption.  Because we have made the issue of the law an external issue, it is those who have outwardly embraced wickedness that first see the depth of their depravity.  They are quick to receive Christ’s salvation and it has its full effect in their heart.  They immediately see their need of redemption and their need of a full repentance so when the gospel is offered they grasp it with everything that they have.  This is blatantly obvious in the success of Jesus with the “sinners” over His success with the religious leaders.

Those who have a measure of outward morality are far less moved by their own sin and do not see themselves as utterly lost and in need of full repentance.  Therefore, they may walk down an aisle feeling a little uncomfortable and thinking that they need Jesus in some way, but they do not come to Him with desperation in their heart, nor do they have the enduring love and gratitude that makes a true disciple of Jesus.

Historical revivals provide a great illustration of this point.  Historical revivals always begin with deep heart works in those that are already religious.  It usually begins with church attenders, church leaders such as deacons, and others that are outwardly considered to be respectable and moral individuals.  When God truly comes and presses Himself on them, all the illusions are shattered, their hearts are cut and a deep repentance happens.  As they see themselves inwardly, they then cling to Jesus for His mercy, some for the first time and others in a deeper way, and their heart soon is filled with the devotion and gratitude that we associate only with the “worst” sinners.

These church goers are then revived becoming full of life, joy, love, and good works.  They immediately press into the One who has rescued them and cannot be restrained from telling others about what God has done.  You will consistently find this sort of phenomena is characteristic of revival and is what happens when God begins to really move among a people.  The “lost” are saved in a revival only after God breathes on those who are lukewarm in their love, perhaps even not redeemed though they occupy church pews.

Another effect this ignorance of the law has brought through our evangelism is the proliferation of “cheap grace.”  While we rightly understand that the Law of Moses is no longer binding, because we fail to fully examine what Jesus taught, we have a dangerous tendency towards antinomianism, or in other words, “no law.”  Because we do not see that God still makes a requirement upon men and it is that very requirement that leads us to the mercy of Jesus, we have embraced the idea of cheap grace.

In our desire to be free of the outward displays of the Mosaic Law, we fail to consider God’s requirements and embrace a grace that is not Biblical.  Whether we say it or not, the grace that we embrace goes something like, “there is no law in this gospel age;  God loves and forgives everyone; therefore it does not really matter how I live so long as I ask Jesus to cover my mess.”

Cheap grace is a monstrous problem that has come through the door of evangelism.  We do not really esteem salvation because we do not really see clearly that there is much to be saved from since our theology has taught us that Jesus really ended God’s demands upon men.  We have already noted that this creates believers who are lukewarm because they never truly saw their predicament and are not bound to Jesus with chords of desperate gratitude.

Not only does cheap grace make our gospel presentation all that weaker to the lost, it also produces believers who are weak because they do not have an understanding of that which God has a right to demand of them.  It is only when we have an understanding of what God demands of men, as they are made in His image, that we then can have an appreciation for what Jesus has truly done for us.  In summary, because in our gospel Jesus’ sacrifice makes little or no demand on the lost man or the “saved” man, it follows that it is not esteemed as “highly valuable” but rather as cheap and common.

The Breeding of Hypocrisy

It is worth mentioning one of the more dangerous side effects of the abandonment of the New Testament Law in evangelism is the breeding of hypocrisy.  When we build a church of individuals who never really see their position before the present requirements of God and the great need of a rescue and new birth in Jesus, we end up with people that naturally have confidence in their own morality.  They may see God more as one who needs to help them with a few rough edges or bad habits rather than one who needs to rescue and revolutionize them due to the cancer of wickedness in the very core of their being.

Because these individuals inwardly remain fairly positive about their own morality, they naturally tend to remain aloof from those they consider “wicked.”  What we end up with is a church of people that tend to act morally outwardly and expect to fellowship with other people like them.  Because they never saw themselves as desperately wicked before God, they do not tend to extend mercy as readily to those that appear more outwardly wicked.

It is only when we can see ourselves as rescued by Jesus and just as inwardly wicked as the most vile sinner we know, that our hearts will be filled with genuine longing and compassion for every individual we see regardless of their current condition.  Without this, we naturally tend to appear aloof, arrogant, and judgmental and those attitudes are clearly recognized by the lost.  They can clearly recognize that we have become a people group all composed of similar people with similar morality that look judgmentally on their morality.  In fact, when our message becomes one of competing morality it can oft produce nothing more than anger in the one whom our message is aimed at.  While we may consider their anger the reward of persecution, it may simply be anger because we are moralizing rather than presenting the universal depravity of man and the single solution of Christ.

The issue is not that morality does not matter, because it does, the issue again is that we must press the issue of inward morality so that the most moral among us sees themselves as just as wicked a sinner as the more flagrant sinner.  When we press this issue, we can build a people who are all deeply grateful for their redemption, clinging to Jesus in absolute love, and actively pressing that love upon all that they meet regardless of what type of sinner they may appear to be.  Without that, we breed an aloof hypocrisy in our churches that is decidedly unloving and has no effect on the lost.

The Message of Behavior Modification

Because we do not press the issue of the law of God and inward corruption, we have resorted to a message that amounts primarily to behavior modification.  We no longer preach that men need God because they are hopelessly wicked within their hearts and they desperately need a new birth.  Rather we preach that they need Jesus because their marriage is a mess, their children are a mess, they have no peace, they have no joy, they are going to hell, they are in financial difficulty, they need purpose, and so on ad infinitum.

The result is rather than preaching Christ as the great rescuer of men that makes them into His own image as they pass through the process of repentance, we preach Christ as the one who can fix their issues and enable them to be the best they can be.  In short, we create a humanistic gospel where man remains the focus.  God is not the focus, we are because the issue of the new birth is not presented as the chance to have our old self destroyed and a new self, alive in God, birthed in it’s place but rather it is presented as the thing that will remove those aspects of your present life that currently trouble you.

Not only is this focus blatantly obvious in our evangelism, it continues on throughout the teaching given to believers.  Glance upon most of the content that is preached in churches.  Is God the preeminent focus?  Are we called to the consideration of God Himself?  I fear not.  I fear most sermons revolve around us.  They revolve around enhancing our life and solving our problems through the person of Jesus as though He were our personal butler or rich uncle that can clean up our little messes.  Now hear me clearly, I am not making a call to intellectual sermons that are devoid of life and merely pretending to be “deep” under a facade of spirituality, but saints we must again make Jesus Himself the focus of our preaching.

If we are to love Him with our hearts, minds, soul, and strength then that love should be self evident in all that the church does which includes preaching.  After all Biblical preaching is the proclamation of the King and His Kingdom, not pseudo-psychological remedies for man’s personal shortcomings.   We are not to preach behavior modification, mere facts or even dry theology, but to preach out of a vibrant, burning heart alive in relationship with the living God.  This endless focus on behavior modification, which is what sadly dominates a vast number of evangelical pulpits, is essentially man centered and will never produce the vibrant Christianity of the New Testament.

The Issue of the New Birth

While there is not room to address this issue, it is worth noting that the issue of the new birth must again be presented first and foremost in our evangelism.  We should not be so eager to get men to pray a prayer or make a decision, but rather we must lead men into and through an authentic wrestling with God.

While God has many unique ways of bringing a salvation experience, it must be a new birth.  Some may be more outwardly dramatic than others, but a new birth is required.  A birth requires that one move from one realm and one way of living to the next.  In a birth, the child has been living in liquid and now must breath air.  They have been sustained by a cord and now must be sustained by food and drink.   The child has been accustomed to darkness and now must come into the light.  They have been held captive in a small area and must now live in wide spaces.  In order to make this transition, the child must be pressed through a painful and disconcerting process so that they pass from one realm to the next.

So to, we must see believers “delivered” through a process where God presses salvation on them and they wrestle with Him until we see them pass through the canal of regeneration into becoming a new person.  Just like a natural birth, this process may be virtually instantaneous in some and take longer in others.  It may have more outward drama in some and less in others, however it must be a new birth.  Decisionism won’t due.  Leaving meetings with a more positive emotion will not do.  Nothing less than a new birth will do.  We may expect new believers to demonstrate some immaturity and make some messes as young children do, but we must see the evidence of a new life.

Final Notes on Evangelism

I have to make a final note here on evangelism.  The issues raised here are issues we must consider if we are to understand evangelism rightly.  That being said, we must always realize that the Spirit is the one who draws men to repentance.  Salvation is a supernatural process and a supernatural God can bring men to repentance however He wishes.  We see this example in Jesus who interacted with different individuals in different ways.

What is important is that we have a proper concept of what salvation really is, what the estate of man really is, and what must happen if men are to truly be redeemed.  The exact process that God takes an individual through may be unique to that individual, but God will bring these issues to bear on the individual in His own way.  While we must contend for these things that our evangelism be right, let us be careful not to declare a work that God has initiated in a heart invalid if it does not conform to the pattern or sequence of events we expect.  While we want to have correct understanding of the things of God, we must always be careful not to turn an understanding of His principles into a rigid formula.

Now, we must also note that in God’s mercy there are those who receive salvation without being completely aware of their inward iniquity.  While this may happen, if such an individual goes on in God they will reach a point where God will begin to show them what is truly in their heart.  This will lead to a deepening of their spiritual life as they begin to see what they perhaps did not see initially and that is the root of evil in their heart that God has come to cut out.

Now that we have tacked the issue of evangelism, let’s look at the definition of the New Testament law.

Defining Repentance

Repentance is a fundamental concept to the Christian faith.  John Baptist and Jesus both began their ministries preaching repentance.  With such a clear precedent, we can likewise expect that the church in our day should be preaching repentance as well.  So, if the church has a requirement to preach repentance, and many churches do preach repentance, why is it that it seems to have so little effect?  Well, a significant part of the problem could be whether or not we actually know how to define repentance.

When we define repentance in the church at large, what we generally have in mind is turning from sinful behavior to holy behavior.  Different streams of theology would define exactly what that looks like in practice a little differently, but that is the essence of the understanding that commonly persists.  The problem is that there is a fundamental error in this definition of repentance and that is that this is a distinctly Mosaic view of repentance and it is at odds with the New Testament directive regarding repentance.

New Testament Repentance

Remember now, that the critical issue is that the law in the New Testament goes right into the heart of man whereas the Old Testament law focused on external behavior.  New Testament repentance then is not focused on external behavior, but on the inward life of the heart.  If you do not understand this, you will never understand the ministry of Jesus.  This understanding is crucial to seeing how Jesus could minister to tax collectors and prostitutues with greater success than He could minister to moral, religious individuals.  When you can see outward evil in your life, it makes it easier to accept inward depravity.  Conversely, when you believe your outward morals to be sound, it makes it harder to receive the message of inward depravity.

In light of this, a true New Testament repentance preacher will bypass externals and pierce men directly in their heart.  This sort of preaching may well expose the life long church-goer as a man more in need of repentance than the town drunk because the root of iniquity can exist in a religious man just as strongly as it can in an irreligious man.  In fact, at times it can persist even more strongly in a religious heart as it provides fertile ground for the sins of pride and self-righteousness.

The New Testament message properly sees external behavior as a secondary issue that is at best a symptom of sickness of the heart.  The call to repentance is not primarily a call towards behavior modification, but rather the call to repentance is to dig deep within.  It is a call like unto Abraham’s whereby each individual is called to take their own personal Isaac, which is their own inner morality, up the dark mountain of sacrifice.  Once on that mountain, you must bind him to the altar, and allow God to replace your treasured Isaac with Himself.  Once would think that this is elementary.  Who would not want God’s rule over him?  Who would not think that God is the most perfect one to rule and reign in a man’s heart?

Saints, if nothing else illuminates for you the depravity of man, let this one example illustrate for you the sickness of the human heart.  There is no battle known to man, even to Christian men, that is akin to the battle one faces when God comes into take over.  The very One we should welcome with open arms we resist with all our strength.  This is the issue of heart repentance.  This battle shows our inner animosity towards God no matter how moral our outward behavior.  Praise God that He alone can conquer such a heart and fill it with His own Spirit.

Genuine repentance bypasses everything external and requires this sort of turning within a man.  The call for repentance goes deep into the essence of the man, confronts him with the supremacy of God and the right of God to rule the individual and then calls for that man to turn whole heartedly from his own life, religious or not, to a life consumed by God.

This turning from a life where man is obsessed with himself, which may or may not be moral and religious, to a life where man is wholly given over to God is repentance in the Biblical sense.  Many of the problems in our churches arise because we are dealing with individuals that have never truly repented and part of the reason they have never repented is because they have never heard a proper message of repentance that has the power to cut through their soul and their behavior to the essence of what God is after.  If we are to see men genuinely repent, we must begin to proclaim a message of genuine repentance to them.

The Church in Crisis

There is a real crisis in our churches over this issue of repentance and many do not see it clearly.  If you consider most of the content of our preaching, our books, and our conversations within the church you will see that we are completely preoccupied with outward behavior.  We measure one another by outward behavior.  So long as a believer can keep up appearances we consider them to be soundly in the faith.  Whenever a believer falls into an outward sin, we immediately call him to repent.  Now I am not saying we should not call one who has fallen outwardly to repentance, but the problem is for every one that falls outwardly, how many more are there who inwardly are unrepentant and yet believing that they are living genuine, Christian lives?

Is it not an indication that our gospel is sick that our bookstores are so crowded with books that resemble self help and spiritual psychology manuals more than they do the New Testament?  We have to spend so much time trying to manage our behavior because we do not understand, practice, or preach Biblical repentance.

Perhaps you have heard that the law is a tutor to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24).  The problem is that when we use that phrase what we typically mean is that the inability of man to meet the requirements of the law, as typified by the Mosaic Law, reveals to man his own inability to save himself and thus he sees his own need of Christ.   Again, we are thinking primarily in terms of behavior.  While this is true, we must go on to an additional step and that step requires an understanding of the New Testament law.  While some preachers know how to bring the law of Moses to bear that men may see their need of Christ, far fewer know how to bring the New Testament law to bear and it is just as, if not more so, necessary.

The Mosaic Law can bring a man to conviction as his heart is illuminated with the wickedness of his deeds.  The New Testament law brings a man to conviction when his heart is illuminated by the indwelling wickedness of his heart.  It is one thing to declare to a man that he needs to drop a few lousy habits.  It is another to tell a man he needs an entirely new start because his present life is corrupt beyond rescuing.  Both convictions are necessary, but only the second one can bring a heart to the place of genuine repentance, and sadly we often fail to go beyond the first.

Because we tend to preach a repentance rooted only in the violation of Moses’ Law, which is not even binding at this point, we have shallow believers who have seen some evil in their behavior, but have never looked deep into their heart to see the dramatic need of a change in nature.  Jesus’ interactions with Nicodemus provide a wonderful illustration of this point.  When Nicodemus came to Jesus, Jesus did not address the need to change any of Nicodemus’ behavior, but rather, he looked him in the eye and told him he needed a new birth.

The sad truth is that most of us, being familiar with Nicodemus’ exemplary morality, would have spoken kindly to him and assured him that the devil was behind his gnawing doubts and that he should be secure in his spirituality.  Jesus, however, was adamant on the need for the new birth.  Why did Nicodemus need a new birth?  Because man is inwardly corrupt, irrespective of outward corruption, and must be re-born from heaven.  His only hope is to be re-born of heaven’s perfection.  He needs to receive the divine seed of God that alone can regenerate a man with a root of genuine righteousness.   The goal of true repentance is a change in the very nature of the man and that is why it must result in a new birth if it is to be successful.  Anything less is simply not New Testament repentance.

We have been preaching repentance that results in a decision to modify behavior.  Those who try to come into the kingdom this way continue to struggle because they never went through the pain of having the root of iniquity pulled out of them and the seed of God implanted into them.  They then create an incredible burden of maintenance for the church because while the church should be advancing and preaching true repentance and rebirth to the world, it is spending an inordinate amount of time trying to manage the behavior of church members that decided they wanted to change their behavior but were never truly reborn.

Saints, we must not lead men to behavior, but to Christ.  We seek not to change what a man does, but rather we must change who a man is and this is a fundamental change.  Churches are full of moral people that will go to hell and I fear how many more are languishing in their Christianity because the church affirms them in their good, faithful behavior, never presenting a message of Biblical repentance.  Part of the reason that message is lacking is because of our lack of understanding of the New Testament law.  Let’s ask God to give us revelation of this law that we might again see the life that comes on the church when it walks in New Testament repentance.

Click here to continue on and address the issue of the law and evangelism.

Do not think that I have come to do away with or undo the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to do away with or undo but to complete and fulfill them. – Matthew 5:17 (AMP)

I was reading through a message by John G. Lake on the question of Sunday or Saturday worship and found in it some startling insights into the relationship between the law and the believer.  As I considered what John was saying the implications of what he was saying hit me, and what hit me was far beyond the question of whether or not our primary worship gathering should be on a Saturday or a Sunday.  As I continued to ponder this issue, I began to realize that what I was seeing was so simple and so clearly the gospel and yet at the same time, I believe there is something here of the relationship of the believer to the law that has been lost.  I believe it is vital that we understand with a new clarity the appropriate relationship between the believer and the law because it vitally impacts many different areas.  With that in mind, I’ll break out these thoughts across several posts so that each can be digested separately.  Each part of the series will build up to the conclusion, so you’ll want to read through each one to participate in the complete conversation.

The Mosaic Law

The first thing we must consider is that the Mosaic Law, as a means to the sanctification and redemption of God’s people, utterly failed.  There are obviously many purposes for which God gave the Mosaic Law, but for one He gave it that men might demonstrate whether they had the ability to adhere to even an outward display of righteousness.   God dealt with men on the basis of outward behavior during this time and men fell woefully short.  When the Israelites were given over to judgment, it was not just the judgment of a nation, but the judgment of systems of external morality.  It was not just the failure of the Jewish nation; it was the failure of mankind to keep covenant with God by virtue of man’s own will.

What we find then is that outward requirements were incapable of dealing with inward corruption.  While this may sound like an elementary principle, we will find a little later that most of the church has not yet fully grasped this issue.   Seeing as the law could not produce a righteous man then, we must see that the law is powerless to do anything but demonstrate that man has a corruption that cannot be cured by himself.  As an aside, the astute reader might notice that to fully grasp this statement is also to bring a question around much of our present evangelism.  Our evangelism primarily revolves around telling “lost” people, whom the Bible actually calls dead not lost, that they need to make a decision of their will to choose Jesus.  Without exploring this topic here, if the wills of the ancient Israelites did not have the capacity to choose good even in the face of the demonstrations on Mt. Sinai, what makes us think modern man’s will has the capacity to make a choice that brings salvation?

The Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount, the height of the gospel declaration, gives us insight into the operation and direction of the law in the New Testament.  As quoted at the top, in Matthew 5:17, Jesus makes the bold claim that He has come to fulfill the law.  Most of us read that merely in the sense that Jesus is ending the Mosaic law, but if you look at the Greek word for fulfill, which is “pleroo” you will notice the meaning includes the following: “to make something full, or fill it up, or render it full or complete.”

Jesus follows this in verse 18 to say that nothing will pass away until the law has been accomplished.  In other words, the law was given for a purpose that has not yet been accomplished.  What is that purpose?  The purpose is to have a people set apart, or sanctified, unto God.  The law was given towards that purpose, but it failed to accomplish it and thus God injected Himself into the process in the person of His Son in order that God’s law might be extended and come to its marvelous conclusion.  Do we consider that God is looking for an accomplishment to His law, or are we so eager to loose ourselves from the Mosaic requirements that we fail to consider the great accomplishment of God’s law that Jesus desires?  Saints, God has in mind something more grand and glorious than our liberation from a ceremonial law.  His law is going to accomplish something of eternal significance.

Jesus continues from this statement to declare that the righteousness of the people must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees (vs. 20).  In other words, God is about to require a righteousness greater than those that best understood, best kept, and publicly contended for the Mosaic law.  Now this created a very real problem for the people of God listening to Jesus.  Not only was there no one who could obtain righteousness under the law, but now they find that God is going to require an even greater righteousness of the people.

Jesus then explains that statement by giving examples of the righteousness that God requires (vs. 21-32).   He begins each shocking new example with the phrase, “you have heard that it was said,” clearly referencing the law, in which He makes examples of what we would consider to be “major sins.”   In order to be perfectly clear, Jesus does not use the example of “small sins,” (as if there were such a thing) but rather he uses the blatant sins like murder and adultery so that no one will misunderstand the gravity of His message.

Jesus then continues to destroy every man’s hope for righteousness by looking at the most holy among then and declaring, “You have looked at a woman and become sexually aroused and that is the same as the adultery for which you would convict a brother.”  He looks then to a religious leader and declares, “Your anger with a fellow Jew is the same act before God as the one who murders another.”  The audience is now spell bound.  What will Jesus say next?  Their very hope of standing with God, the law, now that it has been expounded by Jesus has been found to be their greatest enemy.

Furthermore, Jesus is filling up and completing this law that it might come to God’s glorious conclusion, but in that filling up the requirement of the law is enlarged.  Who will be able to stand before this new law?  Understand though that this was entirely within the expectation of the people because of John Baptists’s ministry.  John’s ministry had been, “repent for the ruler of God’s kingdom (the Messiah) is coming.”  People responded to John and repented precisely because they wanted to cleanse their hearts before His appearing so that they would be numbered among the righteous and not the  wicked when Messiah executed judgment.  Now the people, already having trembling hearts, are sitting before Messiah Himself and He is enlarging the concept of righteousness beyond what they had already failed to keep.

What we miss is that Jesus is introducing the basis here for the New Testament law.  We sometimes are so pre-occupied with the desire to be free of modes of worship and kosher foods that we fail to see that while Jesus did liberate us from the Mosaic Law, He also brought it to fullness and brought into place a complete law which we fail to examine or consider.

The Root Issue

What Jesus revealed in the Sermon on the Mount is that man’s actions are not the source of his guilt before God.  While the physical actions a man takes may establish guilt or innocence before his fellow man, those actions are not the source of guilt before God.  The source of guilt before God is the heart from which the actions flow.  This may seem like an elementary concept, and it truly is, but it is one that we must understand if we are to really grasp what salvation is and is not and if we are to relate the gospel correctly to the world around us.

So then, man’s guilt before God is not because of what he does, but because of who he is.  It is the secret longings in a man’s heart that bring the wrath of God to bear against Him, not what the man may or may not have done.  Taking specific actions may require specific punishments in this age, but with regard to the issue of ultimate righteousness before God, the physical actions are irrelevant as the guilt is determined in the heart not in the level of self control.

This is how we can clearly know, as Paul declared, that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).  All have sinned even if they have never violated Moses’ commandments because they have violated the law of God that Jesus presented in the Sermon on the Mount.   Any evil act physically committed serves only to confirm and demonstrate the evil that is already within.   While the court of man can judge the evil acts performed by men, the court of God judges the evil resident within the man without regard to its physical demonstration.

Why can God look at a man that is a “good man” by our standards, having never violated a moral code, and justly condemn him to hell?  It is because of the evil within.  God looks within the man and sees the fountain from which desires and thoughts flow and that fountain is full of iniquity.  The man may have some success in controlling his outward actions, but he cannot control the fact that within him is a well of corruption constantly bringing before his mind the consideration of a million evils.

Why then is God so jealous for what is within a man? It all returns to the book of Genesis where God declares man to be His image.  It is because we are God’s image that the root of iniquity is so significant.  We are created purely as a demonstration of God to creation.  We are made to be His eternal companion.   No corruption can ever come into God’s heart.  No sin can ever tempt His mind.  This is the ultimate meaning of the holiness of God.  It is not just that everything He does is perfect, though it is, but that every consideration of His heart and mind is, at all times, full of absolute perfection.  This perfection is required of man because man is made in His image.

When man contains corruption within, regardless of whether he demonstrates it without by his actions, his essence is corrupt and so God’s unfathomable purity burns against this sin.  In fact, I believe that this is the issue of hell.  In hell men experience the burning of God’s perfection against sin.  It is not the “meanness” of God on display, but rather it is the display of God’s purity burning against evil that it may be consumed.  The eternality of hell comes from the fact that man, being made in God’s image, can never be destroyed.  Men are immortal creations and so God’s burning against the root of evil in men’s heart must necessarily continue on into eternity.

Being made in God’s image goes for beyond the issue of having a spirit and a mind, having dominion over the earth, or being the eternal companion of God. It is that we are called to think as God thinks and feel what God feels.  We are called to be like Him in His very essence.  Obviously we will fall short of His fullness as He must ever be the creator and we are always the lowly creation and yet we, above every other creature, are to demonstrate His nature.  His nature is one of such deep purity that even the thoughts in the hidden places of His heart are always pure and so too the inner thoughts of His created image must be pure.

In our next post, we will take the subject of repentance and see how it relates to the law of God in the New Testament.  After considering other topics, we will conclude with seeing the absolute majesty and beauty of Christ in being the ultimate and only solution to man’s dilemma.

Continue to Part Two, Defining Repentance.

I realize that title of this post is a little misleading as it is a question that cannot be answered in a single post.  In fact, books have been written on this subject and I would propose that there are still books that need to be written on this subject.  Up front I have to say that, as always, I highly recommend Art Katz’s classic Apostolic Foundations when seeking illumination on the apostolic church.  So, while I cannot examine the subject in one post, I want to add a few thoughts to the discussion and perhaps even re-direct our common considerations of the apostolic and the prophetic.

I have to admit that recently I have become a little weary of the phrase “Apostolic and Prophetic.”  It is probably because the phrase seems to have become yet another buzzword.    At the moment it seems like everyone is posturing their ministries to make sure they are “Apostolic” or “Apostolically aligned,” and, while I am not criticizing for that, I have to wonder if we have lost something in the mix.

Most definitions of what is “apostolic” seem to revolve around leadership structures or functions and I believe this is where we go astray.   For example, if someone leads a large enough group then they are apostolic or if they can plant another fellowship and send out individuals then they are considered apostolic.  I believe it is fair to say that if we examined most of our present teaching and our actions around the words “apostolic and prophetic” it would revolve around authority structures or functions.  The question I think we need to ask is what if that is not the essence of the apostolic and the prophetic?  What if they are defined by something entirely difficult than a leadership role or a function?  What if there is something entirely different to be demonstrated in these gifts that we are missing but is very necessary?  Could it be that the very progress of the church is impaired for want of a correct understanding of these terms?

For those of you, like me, that get confused or wearisome of some of the apostolic and prophetic rhetoric, for a moment let’s lay aside all that we have previously known and examine this for a moment and see if God does not open up something entirely different.

First of all, if we consider the New Testament it will become apparent that by defining the apostolic and prophetic just in terms of a leadership structure is to miss the mark.  This is not to say that apostolic and prophetic men are not leaders or that leadership should not demonstrate elements of these giftings, but only to make that point that wherever leadership qualifications are described in the New Testament, no mention of giftings is included.  This gives us insight into how the early church chose leadership and how they saw the correlation between giftings and leadership.  The critical elements of any leadership qualifications in Scripture are character and maturity.  What this shows us is that, while we would expect apostolic and prophetic men to be leaders, organizational leadership is based primarily on calling and character over gifting.  In other words leaders are selected according to God’s call, their own character, and their maturity and not by virtue of their gifting.

Why is this point significant?  It is significant because we find that many places where the apostolic and prophetic discussion is taking place are going to great lengths to make sure their leadership structures are “apostolic and prophetic.”  Now, I’m not arguing against that, but questioning the definition of “apostolic and prophetic” and proposing that these are to be characteristics, not merely of leadership, but of the entire body.  In many cases the net effect of this is that titles are applied to pre-existing leaders merely so that they fit in this new leadership paradigm.

In other groups, we find the attempt to define the apostolic ministry based on function.   As an example, they would say that an apostle is one that goes on missionary journeys, or plants other works.  The definitions of what is an apostolic function may vary, but many groups attempt to define the apostle via function.  The problem here is that the Scriptures do not seem to define the apostle based on function.   To make an analogy, you can show someone a light and say, “that is electricity,” but the light is not the essence of electricity it is merely one function or manifestation of it.  In the same way, some times we are attempting to define what is apostolic based on the function or manifestation of a specific individual and missing the essence of the gift.

So what is apostolic?  Examining two scriptures in John provides significant insight into the essence of what it truly means to be apostolic.  Let’s consider two scriptures:

“There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.” – John 1:16 (AMP)

“And this is eternal life: to know You, the only true and real God, and to know Him, Jesus Christ, Whom You have sent.” – John 17:3 (AMP)

Notice the word “sent” in both these Scriptures.  This is the word “apostello” in the Greek.  Now we must consider the word apostle from Ephesians 2:20 where Paul describes the church foundation as being built upon the “apostles.”  The word there is “apostolos” and its word origin is from “apostello.”  In other words, we could alternately translate the word “apostle” into “sent one” or “one who is sent.”

In the passages noted above, John Baptist was clearly described as one sent from God.   Did John heal?  Did John plant works?  Did John even prophesy in the way that we would expect a prophet to prophesy?  The answer to all these is no.  And yet John is a “sent one.”  John shows us that just as the apostle’s essence as an apostle is not necessarily equivalent to his personal function in ministry, so to a prophet is described by his essence and not by his ministry.

In fact a prophet can be a prophet and not even have the gift of prophesy.  We do not have room to consider that here, but look at the New Testament and you will see a clear differentiation between the prophet and the gift of prophesy.  The prophet can often have the gift, but it is the essence of the prophet that makes him a prophet, not the possession of a gift of prophecy.

So then, the apostle can be defined best as “a sent one” and this definition has great implications for the church.   This means an apostle may or may not be an organizational leader.  He also may or may not found other churches or ministries.   These things are not critical to the definition of an apostle, the critical things is that he is sent.   In fact, we find the pinnacle of what is means to be an apostle in the person of Jesus.  Jesus is the ultimate apostle or “sent one.”  He was sent out from God and this sending and issuing from the Father is what made His ministry and effect so dramatic on the earth, and while we do not issue from the Father in the flesh as Jesus did, we are to be sent ones in the Spirit.

An apostle then is one whose very life issues out of the Father.  He is one who cannot help telling what he has seen and heard (Acts 4:20).   An apostle carries the scent of heaven because he has been sent from heaven.  He carries an eternal viewpoint and an eternal urgency because he has been sent out by heaven.  The prophet likewise carried the urgency and vision of heaven in the Old Testament and now in the New Testament he carries this joined together with the Apostle.  We can clearly see this apostolic foreshadowing in the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 6 when God asks, “whom shall I send” and Isaiah answers, “here am I, send me!”  We see here the union between the prophetic man and the “sent one.”   When the prophetic burden combines with a sending from heaven, we have the distinctive ingredients of what makes an apostolic gift.

Once we free our understanding of what is apostolic and prophetic from the issue of organizational leadership or mere function, we can gain a greater understanding of how this is to operate in the church at large.  God does not desire merely leaders that are “apostolic” or missionaries that are “apostolic;” rather He longs for an entire church that is apostolic.  God intends that the gift carried by this sent one is to permeate and be manifest, not in leadership only, but also in the church at large.   A teacher, evangelist or pastor may be called to lead and qualified by his character and yet the body over which they lead can be apostolic because the essence of the apostolic goes much deeper.

These two foundational gifts, the apostle and the prophet, then are to be pictures to God’s body.  They are to carry, in themselves, an intensity concerning the nature of God and the mission of God that is to permeate throughout the entire body.   They are to be stewards of His mysteries, carrying them with the gravity and value which they demand, and leading the body in the receiving of these mysteries and the demonstration of them.  The apostle is not merely a role God that gave; it is a gift.  He desires the church to take the gift and open it.

It has been said that those with the need to put “apostle” or “prophetic” on their business card probably aren’t actually apostolic or prophetic.   While I would not want to use that to speak ill of a genuine brother or to insinuate that we never need to recognize those among us that are gifted in this way, that comment makes a critical point that becomes obvious once we have lost the paradigm of describing the apostle or the prophet by virtue of their organizational calling or function in the body.

Once we understand that these gifts are dependent upon a heavenly sending then that sending is something that one is loathe to use as an advertising gimmick or a qualifying title.  The title does not qualify them, the fact that they are sent qualifies them and the demonstration that they are sent is the demonstration of the One who inhabits in eternity not a demonstration that they can put on display by their own talent, accomplishments, or volition.

Once an individual has touched the eternal and been sent, they, like Isaiah, are so marked by that sending that they are aware, above all other men, of their own personal insignificance and lack.  If they are sent for their own purposes, on their own qualifications, or because of their own successes, they are not “sent ones.”  “Sent ones” are sent from Him to His body for His purposes.  They are infatuated with Him, not themselves, and are destined to be uncomfortable both in and to this world until Jesus sets His feet on the planet.

They are sent out of the presence of the eternal One that they may represent Him to the people until He comes.  Jesus was sent out of the Father and we find the culmination of His sending at the end of Revelation is the Father coming down to earth.  Likewise, we are sent by the Spirit that we might point forward to the coming kingdom and the culmination of the sending of the apostolic church will be the return of Jesus.  The sending of apostolic men in our day must be seen as a part of the sending of the Son from the Father for the purpose of ultimately preparing the way for the Father to dwell among men on the earth.

In fact, this is part of the apostolic mystery that is demonstrated in Jesus.  God desires to rest in men that will be sent that they might prepare the earth to be His dwelling place.   The pinnacle of this incarnation is the Godman Jesus, issuing out of the Father both in the flesh and in the spirit.  Our flesh is born of human impulse, but our spirit is to issue forth as a new birth from the Father that we might participate in God’s great union of man with Himself and might prepare the earth to be His dwelling place.

There is much that can be written on this, and this is meant only to be a teaser to cause us to consider these things in greater detail.   If nothing else, we can walk away with the understanding that we need to describe what is apostolic primarily in terms of a heavenly sending.  To define it in terms of organizational leadership or individual ministry function is to miss the meaning of the word.

In the future I am considering using this space to consider this issue more deeply.  In the meantime, God wants us to contend with Him until we again see the operation of “sent ones” among the church.  We are not to forsake or disparage teaching, pastoring or any other gift in the pursuit of what is apostolic and prophetic, but our essence must be that of “sent ones.”  Unless we are ambassadors of another realm that have been sent from another realm, how will we have any message to this place and this time of any eternal authority and how will we declares ourselves to be, as Paul did, citizens of another kingdom?

One of the crisises that may well be brewing in the church in America is that the average churchgoer has little appetite for theology.  Now, lest you think I am promoting intellectually driven seminaries (some would call them “cemeteries”) or large, dusty books written by well educated men debating nuances of doctrine let me explain myself.  Theology is simply the study of God.  It is what we believe about God.  Now, the core essence of God is perceived by the Spirit and transcends human understanding.  It is important that we understand that, or we will be given to boxing God into human models of understanding.  With that being said, God gave us a capacity to think and to know.  This capacity is modeled after His capacity because we are made in His image and yet it is far beneath His capacity.

While this capacity must necessarily operate below the revelation of God’s Spirit to man’s spirit, it is still a vital part of our makeup.  Because of this it is vitally important how and what we think about God.  When we do not think rightly about God, it causes great loss to the believer and ultimately the church.  We must become very jealous for the issue of theology.  We must always be careful not to reduce God to diagrams and systems of theology that man can comprehend, and we must remain ever vigilant of a concept of God that is man derived and man comprehended.  With those proper guardians watching over our heart, we must then make every effort to allow God to reveal Himself to us that we might think great thoughts about Him.  We must also be ruthless in discerning and rejecting thoughts and ideas about God that are untrue.  These ideas can taint the lens through which we view the world causing us to miss God’s revelation and fall into error.

Now with that being said, let me set a few caveats in place.  Dispensationalism, like any other movement or doctrine, does exist across a wide spectrum.  An examination of every particular flavor of it is certainly beyond the scope of a blog post, so let it suffice to say that we will examine specific effects of the results of dispensationalism thinking rather than examining every individual dispensational tenet.  I am not attempting to paint all dispensationalists as heretics with a single broad stroke, but rather want to examine specific ideas that have been associated with or have come as a result of various streams of dispensational thought.

I also acknowledge up front that I am not an expert in dispensational theology, so theologians of that persuasion may have addressed some of the issues that I raise; however my primary concern over specific tenets of doctrine is the effect of this way of thinking on believers at large.  So, again, I am dealing with the effects of ideas and ways of thinking over specific beliefs and have no desire to paint a broad stroke of “heresy” on anyone.  In that spirit, just because we see some dangerous ideas, let us not label everyone from here on that uses the word “dispensation” as a heretic.  Let’s continue in Christian love and charity contending for proper ideas and thoughts about God, but not allowing ourselves to execute improper judgment on individuals simply because of the use of a single word or phrase.  With these warnings and caveats out of the way, let’s now examine the effects of dispensational thinking.

One great tragedy is that most believers, especially in America, really do not know what they believe in terms of theology.  Compounding that issue is that fact that Americans tend to take a little from here and a little from there and often have more of a buffet style of spirituality than saints did in time past.   This is to be expected as America is the “melting pot” of the world. This is both good and bad.  It is good because often two competing ideas in Christianity (assuming both are under the umbrella of orthodox Christianity) are merely two sides of the same coin even if they seem to conflict on some level.  This is what we would call the paradoxes of the faith.  Sadly, groups in time past, and in time present, have split up and persecuted each other over these issues.  So, it is good to see the honorable parts of theology from various groups and assimilate that into our understanding.  However, it is also bad in the sense that it can create believers that really do not know the origins or the implications of what they believe, randomly combining various ideas simply because they heard them from a prominent minister or read them in a book. Combining various streams of theology without regard for the implications of such a combination can be damaging.

This is rampant throughout modern Christianity.  While we certainly do not want to become too narrow minded or label and categorize believers, it is important to understand the origin of specific ideas, doctrines, and systems of theology.  The reason is that often a deception starts with a mixture of truth and error.  This mixture maybe mostly truth with just a little bit of error or visa versa.  However, if it goes “mainstream” it ends up being adopted by the “non theologians” in the church with little thought or hesitation.  Generations of believers then are taught certain doctrines as facts and come to adopt them as orthodox Christianity when in fact they may ultimately be spurious, contain spurious ideas, or lead to spurious effects.  Not to belabor the point, let’s continue on with understanding dispensationalism that we might see what effect it has upon our view of God and the Scriptures.

The Issue of Dispensationalism

In the case of dispensationalism, it has been widely spread because a few authors adopted it in their study Bibles.  Very popular study Bibles such as Darby and Scofield taught dispensationalism and so many in the church adopted it because it was the framework they were given in their study of the Scriptures.   In this way, the beliefs of a few men have massively influenced the church (To be fair, I am quite sure those men also contributed valuable things in their various study aids as well).

As its core, dispensationalism splits time into various dispensations.  During these times God dealt with man in different ways (typically with man failing to respond to God properly during each dispensation).  You may have seen various Bible teachers categorize these things.  While at first glance this may seem quite logical, the problem is that we then begin to logically split up the Scriptures and ultimately God Himself.  We begin thinking, “God acts and responds this way in this time and this way in another time.”  The problem is that this is a half truth that has led to all sorts of ills and has had a real negative impact on the way we perceive and think about God.

When we begin to see God a certain way in a certain time and another way in another time, it adds a certain incongruity to the Scriptures and the story of redemption.  We then begin to look at God nature as expressing itself differently in different seasons of time while God affirms, “I change not.”  What this leads us to is a single minded focus on the dispensation we believe ourselves to be living in and an inability to comprehend a more complete revelation of God.  A complete revelation of God from the Scriptures requires us to begin at Genesis 1:1 and finish at Revelation 22:21.  However, when we are thinking dispensationally, we look more to what we believe to be our present dispensation for our revelation of God.  We begin to think, “God acts this way now” and then “God used to be that way then.”  This leads to a very distorted view of God that exaggerates certain attributes while minimizing or totally neglecting other attributes.  Let’s look at several areas where this has had a deep impact.

The Scriptures

This is the fundamental issue of dispensationalism and I believe we are unaware how deeply this has crept into our Christianity.  This is revealed in the great chasm in most believers’ minds between the New and Old Testaments.  Whether we acknowledge it or not, we tend to see them as two totally different books that are at odds with each other in many points.  Many believers almost totally neglect the study of the Old Testament, or at best see the Old Testament only as something figurative and almost allegorical that is no longer relevant to us outside of it’s figurative and allegorical qualities.  What is especially ironic is that in the midst of this, somehow we are missing the fact that the first century church used the Old Testament exclusively for their text for practice and preaching while turning the world upside down.

Now to be clear, I am not saying that the things of the Old Testament have no symbolic value.  I am not saying that many things were not prophetic, looking forward to their fulfillment in Christ.  What I am saying is that we must see the Scriptures as a single cohesive unit.  Yes, there are things in Scripture that are figurative.  Yes, there are things in Scripture that have been fulfilled.  However, the Old Testament has massive depth that we do not plumb.  The critical issue here is that there is an incredible revelation of God contained within it that we have tended to ignore thinking the New Testament wiped out and superseded the revelation of Himself that God gave us in the Old Testament.

Until we see the Scriptures as one cohesive book, with both the Old and the New Testament still speaking authoritatively to our hearts, we will not receive the full revelation that God desires to give of Himself through the Scriptures.  We must see that the primary issue of both the Old and New Testament is the revelation of God and of His Son and we will not have the depth of that revelation without knowing the full text.

The Revelation of the Nature of God

The pre-eminent burden on Paul’s heart, and what should be the apostolic burden of our day, is the revelation of the mystery of Jesus.  There are mysteries in God and in His purposes and plans and these mysteries reach their zenith in the person of Jesus.  Again, this is where our dispensational thinking can cause many to go astray.

Many individuals, both believers and not believers, almost see the Father and the Son as two different deities.  They may acknowledge the trinity so as to have orthodox theology, or recite the creeds properly, but they have a fundamental tension between the Father and the Son and that tension is a cancer that prohibits the proper revelation of God.  The vast majority of people see the Son one way and the Father in another way.  They find Jesus as kind and forgiving in a way that relates more to Gandhi than it does to the Son of God, while at the same time seeing the Father as harsh and demanding in such as way that he seems more of a tyrant than the God revealed in the Scriptures.  This is not to say God has not revealed unique aspects of who He is as the Father or the Son, but rather to say that the revelation of the Father and the Son is one of total harmony.

While forgetting that Jesus was very clear that He was revealing the Father, and likewise that Father was revealing Himself in a deeper way in the person of Jesus, this stubborn view that sees the Father and Jesus through two different lenses persists.  Again, this tension is exacerbated, I might even argue encouraged, by the dispensational way of thinking.  Since we create separate redemption strategies and assign them to two totally different time periods, we necessarily position the Father and the Son distinctly into those two differing time periods and ascribe to them the attributes that we believe to be most fitting to those time periods.

If we would see the entire redemptive history as a single, increasing revelation punctuated by significant events such as the giving of the Mosaic Law, the incarnation, the redemption, and the resurrection we would have a more complete revelation of God.  For example, when we consider a complete picture of Jesus in the New Testament and join to it the complete prophetic description of Him in the Old Testament, including both the fulfilled and the unfulfilled prophecies, we find that Jesus, while demonstrating the love of the Father and the mercies of God, is also going to administer terrible judgment on the earth.  We find that He is terrible and majestic as well as merciful and loving ultimately demonstrating not only God love, but also administering His ultimate wrath on the earth.

Likewise, when we consider the Father fully, we will see that the love Jesus expressed is the love of the Father and, far from being a new revelation that is at odds with the previous era of wrath, Jesus expresses the love that was always in the heart of the Father. In fact, if you carefully read the Old Testament, even in the most intense prophetic passages, you will find that God is rarely able to announce His judgment very long before He begins giving promises of ultimate redemption and mercy.  The kindness of God in the face of His people’s apostasy is so amazingly present in the Old Testament that it is a scandal that we miss it.  Our view of the Old Testament is so tainted, and not merely by dispensational thinking, that we are losing much of the revelation of God that it is intended to reveal.

The Issue of Israel

While I acknowledge that I have heard more modern “progressive dispensationalists” have attempted to remedy this fatal error, the fact is that dispensationalists have lost promoted a distorted view of Israel and an improper understanding of Israel can have profound implications for the church.  This distorted view basically falls into one of two errors.  The first is to create a dualism where the church exists separate from Israel.  In this view the church is God’s spiritual plan and Israel is God’s earthly plan.  The glaring error here is that Jesus Christ was God’s ultimate statement of God’s desire to unify both the spiritual and earthly realities into one.  However, dispensationalists have promoted the idea that Israel and the church continue with two distinct purposes and places in the plan of redemption.   As this viewpoint of Israel was foundational to dispensational theology, you can easily see how this sort of dualism has crept into the church in the other ways we have mentioned with regard to the Scriptures and the very nature of God.  Hopefully, we are beginning to see that this kind of dualism is incredibly damaging to the revelation of God.

The second error would be replacement theology.  Now, the astute reader would point out that replacement theology precedes dispensationalism and that the two are typically pitted against each other as differing systems of theology.  While that is all true, I believe the promotion of dispensational thinking to have a distinct role in the promotion of replacement theology.  While the original dispensationalism promoted the dualism of the church and Israel that we already noted, the issue is not just “orthodox dispensationalism” but the effects of dispensational thinking upon the people.

Thus, while replacement theology as a system would normally be considered to be at odds with dispensationalism, when the believer in the pew begins looking a the world in a dispensational way, he then becomes very open to the error of replacement theology because once the believer begins to see redemptive history in distinct dispensations then it becomes easy to adopt the idea that Israel belongs only to a particular dispensation and the church to another.  Thus, though dispensationalism does not promote the idea of replacement theology, it opens the door, or at least reinforces one already opened, to the two primary errors with regard to the issue of Israel.

The Issue of the Prophet

As the issue of the prophet and prophetic ministry is dear to my heart, I must give this last example of the effect of dispensational thinking.  One of the great conflicts in the church now, unnoticed by most, is the issue of the “New Testament prophet” and the “Old Testament prophet.”  First, let me give a few caveats.  There is the issue of the office of the prophet compared with the gift of the prophet.  These are two different things.  There is also the increase of prophetic ministry and the prophetic gift made possible by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Paul affirms this in Corinthians (I Corinthians 14:1), though we should be careful to note that this is nothing new as Moses declared his desire that all of Israel would prophesy (Numbers 11:29).  So we do have new expressions of prophesy and prophetic ministry in the church.

These things being acknowledged, we tend to focus on what we consider a “New Testament” expression of the prophet and in that process assign the “Old Testament” prophet to another time and another dispensation.  I believe one of the critical needs of the church in this hour that may very well be hindering the full expression of the church is the lack of prophets after the manner of the “Old Testament” prophets.  Now, this is not merely an issue of their prophecy or the nature of their prophetic words, but rather it has everything to do with the core nature of the man that God would call “prophet.”

Thousands of pages could be written on the essence of what makes a prophet and the need of the prophet so I will refrain from doing that here.  However, we desperately need men that look more like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Daniel, and Amos than they do our current understanding of the prophet.  Our current expression of the prophet and prophetic ministry certainly has some blessing, and I do not mean to criticize or tear down anyone with these comments, but we desperately need again men like the prophets recorded in the Old Testament.

The issue is not to destroy the valid prophetic ministry that may presently exist, but rather than we need the addition of this manner of prophet.  Without these men, the church is missing a foundational element (Ephesians 2:20) and will not be the complete expression of God.  We must see the prophet as a foundational gift and office that transcends both the Old and New Testaments and again see men of the caliber and message of those men that exist from Genesis through to Revelation.  We need the full revelation of the prophetic, not merely part of it.

Conclusion

I intentionally did not deal with dispensationalism point by point as a system of theology.  What I want to address specifically is the effects dispensational thinking has upon our theology, whether or not that effect was an intentional distinctive of dispensationalism.  Hopefully these few examples illustrated this point.  The point is not to attack or discredit any person that uses the word “dispensation” but rather for us to remove the harmful effects of this way of thinking so that our hearts might be enlightened to see God as He is and not as we might have been taught that He is.  Again, it is critical how we think about God and so our theology is vital.  This does not mean that our miniscule minds can comprehend the fullness of God, nor does it mean that we have to understand things in our minds before we can respond to God in the Spirit.  It merely means that what we do think about God is critical and affects us tremendously.

This post was primarily written to make a point of the cohesive nature of the story of redemption.  It is critical that we begin to see God’s story of redemption as one cohesive story where each part of the story is revealing a critical facet of God as He in fact is, and not merely as He “was” at some point of time in history.  As the mystery of redemption has been unveiled, we do see that God dealt with us first after the law and now deals with us in Christ.  I have no intention of muddying those waters or taking away from the glory, majesty, and mystery that is Christ.  That being said, we must see the story of redemption as one fluid unveiling which reveals God at each point.

If you believe in dispensationalism, you could perhaps argue that I have not really invalidated the system of theology and that that many parts of it are valid.  To that argument, I would respond that you very well may be correct as my intention in this work is not necessarily to tear down the tenets of dispensationalism, but to deal with the negative effects of dispensational thinking upon believers.  Perhaps more academic believers can ascribe to systems like dispensationalism and not fall into the errors I have noted here, but I am looking at the average believer and see how the effect of teaching such concepts can bring confusion into their hearts.

As I noted in the example above, this concern has been clearly validated by present beliefs among many in the church, whether or not the origins of these beliefs come from a study of dispensational theology or from another root.   These believers in the pew may or may not know the tenets of dispensationalism and may or may not even know what the word means, but their thought process has been tainted by concept arising from viewing God in a dispensational way.  This is the thing I take aim because of the criticality of how we think about God.  We must think about Him rightly that our hearts, minds, and spirits are open the full revelation of God as He in fact is.  This is the thing I ultimately contend for.

First from John Piper, Hunger for God, p. 14 -

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of the triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.

The Second from Allen Hood, The Excellencies of Christ -

Satan the adversary, the ‘bringer of light,’ opposes the advances of the Gospel primarily through the realm of ideas and deception.  The object of his deception and the subject matter of his deception is who?  It is Jesus.

That is why for the first four-hundred years the Church fought vigorously for the Person of Christ, to the shedding of blood to the laying down of their life.  There is a reason why they could not worship at the emperor’s altar.  Beloved, if Jesus is just a good teacher, if He just shows you the way to God, then they can easily worship at the altar of the emperor.  Yet hundreds and hundreds of thousands of believers year after year after year were led to the lions, were filleted alive, were skinned alive, were run through, were crucified upside down, were hung on crosses, they were burned and set on fire.  Why?

Because He is not optional.  He is the unique, supreme, revelation of the Living God.  When you have Him you have it all.  When you do not, you do not.  Satan will oppose that revelation over everything, and he will do it through the most popular polished people on the globe.  He does not mind feeding the poor.  He minds the testimony of Jesus who is the only King who will return and set the poor truly free… [The testimony of Jesus Christ] is the subject matter that will enflame our hearts and set us on fire and make us fearless before the most powerful men and women of the earth.