The Unique Relationship of Jewish and African Peoples at the End of the Age

Overview

When we speak of the black community we must clearly include all black believers, both those in Africa and those throughout the earth due to the African diaspora. The call to the black community to take leadership in the prayer movement is a global call because of the immensity of their role at the end of the age.

Many leaders are feeling a prophetic urgency that the black community must take a place of primary leadership in the prayer movement and this prophetic urgency must not be seen as a prophetic whisper, but as a prophetic shout due to the urgency of the hour. It is critical that we understand that this is not a good idea or another man-made attempt at reconciliation. This is a critical issue and there will be massive repercussions in the years ahead based on how we respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit

The prayer movement at the end of the age will be from intimacy, with music, and for the harvest. The Lord has placed a unique gift and divine authority on the black community relating to music and to worship. At the end of the age the prayer movement will be in the context of worship and this unique gift is specifically designed to build the house of prayer.

From the end of the earth we have heard songs… – Isaiah 24:16 NKJV

We must respond both in the place of intercession and in action. While action is necessary, intercession is more necessary. We fail to intercede over this issue because we fail to understand how truly critical it is. Man-made attempts at superficially uniting the races have caused many to ignore the call to unity. We must understand that, in this hour, the call for black leadership in the prayer movement is not a fad, a trend, or another man-made attempt at reconciliation, it is a critical once we understand the prophetic context that we are living in and the context in which the events at the end of the age will unfold.

While we are going to primarily consider the eschatological issues surrounding black leadership in the prayer movement, we must be clear that the Lord strong desires racial unity in the church. The racial separation in the church is a serious concern before the Lord regardless of the eschatological implications we will examine. The conflict between Jew and gentile is the origin of all racism, and from the beginning, the church was intended to be a miraculous demonstration of unity between the Jew and Gentile.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! – Psalm 133:1 NKJV

…where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. – Colossians 3:11 NKJV

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. – Galatians 3:28 NKJV

One of the greatest blights on the church is the initial racial divide that occurred as the gentile community of believers outgrew the Jewish community of believers and began separating from them and persecuting them as early as the 3rd century. This racism had profound implications for the church. This separation is felt to this day in Jewish distrust of the very people that carry their own Scriptures. Beyond the blindness spoken of in the Scriptures, there is a resistance to Christians due to their experience of racism.

Even Christian theology suffered tremendously from this divide as the gentile church divorced itself from the Jewish context of the Scripture and sought to synthesize the Scriptures with other philosophical ideas. In light of our past, While we want to examine the eschatological issues that surround black leadership in the prayer movement, we must acknowledge that the Lord truly desires unity in His church and our separation grieves His heart.

The Purpose of the Prayer Movement

Because we are considering the prayer movement specifically, we must understand why the prayer movement is exploding at this particular time in history. The prayer movement does serve the purpose of unifying the church, laboring for revival, and demonstrating the worth of Jesus; however, those are not the only reasons for the unique night and day prayer movement that is spreading rapidly throughout the earth. Without understanding the full context of the prayer movement, we will not have vision or strength to continue.

A primary purpose for the night and day prayer movement is the crisis that will fall on Israel at the end of the age. The Scripture is very clear that night and day prayer will precede the end of the age. This contending prayer movement is both Jesus’ global welcoming party and will also be required for the events that befall Israel at the end of the age. See Psalms 96:1-13; 98:1-9; Isaiah 30:19; 24:14-16; 52:8; Zephaniah 2:1-3; Zechariah 12:10; Luke 18-8; Revelation 5:8; 8:3-5; 22:17.

The Scripture is particularly clear that night and day prayer exists for God’s purposes in Jerusalem. Isaiah 62 is very clear about the connection of day and night prayer with the urgency in God’s heart to see all His purposes regarding Israel and Jerusalem come to pass:

For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns…I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem [for the cause of Jerusalem]; they shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the LORD, do not keep silent, and give Him no rest till He establishes and till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. – Isaiah 62:1;6-7 NKJV

Contending day and night prayer, which includes day and night worship and singing is a part of the end of the age. As the earth groans, so too the people of God will corporately groan in faith for His appearing.

The Significance of Israel and the Coming Crisis

Not only is night and day prayer significant for Jesus’ appearing, it is required because of the magnitude of the events that are going to befall Israel, and the entire globe, at the end of the age. Much of the church has little or no awareness of the magnitude of the trouble that is coming for Israel. Many assume that Israel’s troubles are mostly over because they are back in the land. The reality is that Israel’s troubles are only about to escalate. The terrors of the day ahead should cause us to have difficulty speaking about these things without weeping.

Alas! For that day is great, so that none is like it; and it is the time of Jacob’s trouble… – Jeremiah 30:7 NKJV

Jeremiah 30-31 describes the time of Jacob’s trouble, an unparalleled time of difficulty and suffering for Israel. Many assume this is past, when a careful study of Scripture reveals that the most terrifying days of Jewish suffering are in front of us. Jewish suffering will not only affect Israel, but it will become an issue throughout the entire earth. The issue of Jerusalem will affect the entire earth as the Jews are persecuted and driven throughout the nations of the earth. Throughout the earth Jews will be on the run and in hiding. What was seen in Nazi Germany was a graphic illustration of what is coming again as the end-time scenario unfolds.

And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples… – Zechariah 12:3 NKJV

In the hour of their greatest suffering, God will be looking at the gentiles, the “wild olive branches that have been grafted in to the natural olive tree” to make provision for and suffer with the Jewish people in order to display His own unending love for Israel.

I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles…For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, who are natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? – Romans 11:11,25 NKJV

The Preparation of a People that Can Endure Crisis

As the hour of trial for the entire earth approaches, the church must be prepared to endure crisis and pressure unlike any point in human history.

For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened. – Matthew 24:21-22 NKJV

Since the prayer movement exists specifically for this time of great tribulation, and the many decades leading up to this time as the pressure begins to build, the Lord will prepare a people for this hour of suffering that are capable of enduring with strength. Particularly in the preceding centuries, people of African descent throughout the earth have endured great suffering and great trial. Because of this suffering, they have a unique history that the entire church is going to need in the hour of suffering to come.

Amazingly, the history of the African people contains unique parallels to the story of Joseph. Like Joseph they have endured persecution, slavery, and being cast aside as a people group. Yet, like Joseph, in the moment of national crisis there are significant consequences if they do not rise and take their place of leadership on behalf of others to prepare for and endure the crisis.

If the church is going to be prepared to endure the hour of suffering, it is critical that the black community take a significant leadership role to begin to prepare the church at large to endure the type of suffering that the black community has experienced over the last several centuries. The entire community of believers around the earth will soon experience the suffering that they endured simply because of skin color.

At the end of the age, this racism will come to its zenith and we must understand that the root of all racism is the divide between Jew and gentile. However, persecution will not be limited only to those that are Jewish by blood though they will take the brunt of the suffering. Those who join themselves to Jacob in that hour will endure the suffering as well. The African people have uniquely experienced the suffering that comes from racism on a global level and therefore have a great understanding of the suffering that will come as anti-Semitism reaches its height in all of history.

Believers of all backgrounds, who join themselves to the Jewish people in this hour of suffering, will begin to experience the full weight of suffering that comes from racism. In this hour, believers of African ancestry have been uniquely prepared to lead the church with strength. Because they have borne the weight of suffering rooted in racism, they will be equipped to lead the entire church as it comes under the weight of racial suffering through faithfulness to the Jew.

This is the hour for the black community to give the entire church strength to endure the persecution that is coming. If they do not their place of leadership the entire church will be unequipped for the eschatological suffering that is coming.

We are bear responsibility to see these things come to pass. There is a call to black believers to receive the love and warmth of other areas of the church who are genuinely repentant towards the history of racism that has existed in many countries of the earth and was effected by many of their ancestors. Just as Jesus forgave those who persecuted Him, so too the black community must forgive so that they can take their rightful place of leadership across the entire church.

There is also a clear call to non-black believers to have genuine love and sympathy for the suffering that the black community has endured. There is a tendency for non-black believers to over simplify the suffering endured by the black community and the issues it has subsequently faced because of centuries of slavery. This over simplification creates a barrier that prevents the black community from coming into their place of leadership over the entire church. Love must become the preeminent value of non-black believers towards their black brothers and sisters.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal…Though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing…the greatest of these is love. – I Corinthians 13:1,3,13 NKJV

The African Witness to the Jews at the End of the Age

Even as the black community is called to strengthen the entire community of believers at the end of the age, they are also uniquely called to minister to the Jew in the hour of suffering and trial. The African history of diaspora, suffering, and slavery has uniquely prepared the black community to minister to Jews in flight at the end of the age. Their shared history of suffering will enable them to minister to the Jews in a unique way.

It is critical that the black community does not see its suffering only through an Afrocentric lens. Yes, God cares about the unique suffering the black community has endured, but the black community must see their own suffering as a unique preparation that allows them to minister at the end of the age in the way that others cannot. (This, of course, in no way justifies the suffering perpetrated on the African people, but rather it is God’s glorious redemption of the wickedness they have endured.)

The black community will only find full healing from the suffering they have endured as they see the incredible gift they now have that will be required at the end of the age. Though there are real issues within the black community that all believers should labor for, the black community themselves cannot allow their own suffering to cause them to lose sight of their call which extends fall beyond their own community.

A primary tool of the enemy at the end of the age will be to make the black community entirely self focused so that they cannot give their unique gift to the Jew and the church at the end of the age. The enemy knows how significant their role is to be and this is why he consistently wars against them coming into true freedom and releasing the power of their history of suffering to the church and, in a coming hour, to Jews in flight.

It also cannot be overlooked that both the African people and the Jewish people are known as a musical people. Isaiah 24:14-16 is very clear that, at the end of the age, amidst all the destruction songs will be heard from the ends of the earth.

From the end of the earth we have heard songs… – Isaiah 24:16 NKJV

As Jews are persecuted throughout the earth, the Lord will cause them to be sheltered by gentile believers who will be singing the very songs of Zion throughout the nations of the earth. In the very hour when the Jews feel least like singing, they will be sheltered by a singing people singing their own songs from the Scripture. This global singing will be a primary witness of Jesus to the Jews at the end of the age. The black community has a unique gift and anointing for song and for music. Not only does the Lord intend to use this gift to fill the earth with prayer and worship in preparation for the Lord’s return, He also intends to use it to minister to the Jews at the end of the age.

Eschatological Urgency

We must always be clear that no one knows the day or the hour of Jesus return, but the Scripture is also clear that we will know the signs of the times as the end approaches. It is unbiblical to act as though we should not anticipate the end of the age or even watch for specific, biblical signs that the end is drawing near. The clear tone of Jesus’ and Paul’s writings is that we are actually in error when we do not recognize the times and seasons.

When you see all these things, know that it is near-at the doors! – Matthew 24:33 NKJV

Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. Matthew 24:42 NKJV

Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near. – Luke 21:28

The Pharisees…came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven…Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. – Matthew 16:1-4 NKJV

Concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you…But you, brethren, are not in darkness so that this Day should overtake you as a thief…Therefore…let us watch. – 1 Thessalonians. 5:1-6 NKJV

Virtually all of the church recognizes the significance of Israel’s return to the land beginning in 1948 and their occupation of Jerusalem in 1967. After 2,000 years of absence from the land, this was a stunning development that shows us very clearly that we have entered a different prophetic season on God’s timetable. While most of the church recognizes there is great significance to the state of Israel, most of the church is still ignorant of the fact that the current state of Israel is not the full fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel and a great suffering exists between what exists now and what God will establish at Jesus’ return.

As we have already noted, the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30-31) is still future and almost no one is preparing for it. History did not crescendo during World War II. It is building to a crescendo.

The current state of Israel will not endure as it is and the Jewish people will experience another disastrous season of suffering that both the holocaust and the previous diaspora were precursors to. While the understanding of Israel’s future suffering has been considered by many to be a fringe idea in the last few decades, not only is the church now growing in understanding of the coming crisis but the actual events that must come before the crisis are beginning to occur with frightening speed.

In the last twelve months, virtually every Arab state around Israel has become embroiled in revolution. While these revolutions are often presented as movements for democracy in the western media, everyone knows that the end of these revolutions will always be a strict Islamic government. The phrase “Arab spring is becoming Sharia fall” is an apt description of what is happening.

Both of Israel’s great allies in the region have suddenly shifted course in the last year. Turkey has gone from a quiet presence in the region that allied itself with U.S. interests to become very vocal against the state of Israel. Egypt, a close ally of Israel, now exists without a real government and, barring miraculous intervention from the Lord, is set to transition to an aggressive Islamic government. Protests in the nation have included calls for a military march on Israel and an attack against the Israeli embassy.

Other surrounding nations are also rapidly positioning themselves to participate in an attack against Israel. Iran has been very clear about its intentions to wipe Israel out of the land. The Palestinians have repeatedly refused moderate land swap proposals and are instead pushing for an internationally recognized state that will be one step to their plan of annihilating Israel. Palestinians have been very clear about their refusal to recognize Israel as a legitimate nation.

Smaller Arabic nations surrounding Israel are all in the midst of turbulence and revolution. As the dust settles in each nation, it will be the radical Muslims who will be in charge of each nation. The current turbulence in the Middle East is very clearly setting up a situation where Israel is surrounded with a hostility that is far more overt than what it has experienced in the last 20 years.

When Israel begins to be overrun by Arabic nations and Jews again flee into the nations of the earth, most of the church who will have no understanding of what is happening will retreat into fear and confusion. Many will even lose their faith and fall away entirely because of unbiblical ideas they had about Israel and the end of the age.

We cannot know if these events are months, years, or decades away, but it is very clear that the Middle East is rapidly transforming to the point where the future suffering of Israel is no longer just an idea, but a reality.

Very little remains, except for the actual military invasion, to set up the final scenario of Jewish suffering. This is no longer just a theological or eschatological idea for us to wrestle debate-it is reality on our evening news.

At this point, it only takes one nation to pull the trigger and a unified Arab coalition in the region could easily unite in military action against Israel. When we understand the reality of our condition, we should tremble at the lack of understanding and, even great, the lack of day and night intercession for the issue of Jerusalem.

In addition, it should fill our hearts with urgency for black believers to take their place in the prayer movement. It is the enemy’s scheme that black believers do not come into their place so that Israel will not be ministered to as the Lord intends in the final suffering. The black church and the Jewish predicament at the end of the age are intertwined and this is why the enemy wages such war against black believers coming into a place of leadership in a unified praying church at the end of the age. If he can prevent black believers from standing in their place and strengthening the church and ministering to the Jews at the end of the age, then he can affect far more damage in his rage against the church and the Jewish people.

The issue of black leadership in the prayer movement then is not just an issue of racial unity, which is extremely precious to the Lord, but it has great eschatological significance. The consequences of black believers not coming into the fullness of their destiny are massive. The scenario in the Middle East should make us tremble with urgency. The events of the end, though they may take decades to unfold, are upon us and yet black believers have still not been brought into their full place of leadership at the end of the age.

The situation is not accidental, nor is it isolated. Let us labor with sobriety to see the black community come into their fullness and to see other believers recognize the awesome responsibility that believers of African descent have in the events of the end of the age. Let us labor with great love to see the fullness of God’s calling for black believers come to pass.

If we do not give ourselves to intercession and to action, whether we are of African descent or not, to see that the black community is established in her place of leadership we are ignorant of the times in which we live and lack understanding of how our actions now will have massive repercussions as the end of the age unfolds with greater intensity.

If you are not familiar with this issue, I would like to encourage you to prayerfully read through both The Holocaust: Where was God? by Art Katz and The Controversy of Zion and the Time of Jacob’s Trouble by Dalton Lifsey.

Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. – Luke 9:51-54 NKJV

Jesus’ Approach to Jerusalem

Luke’s record of Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem in Luke 9:51-54 is set in the context of Jesus’ personal journey to the cross. Earlier in the chapter Luke recorded Jesus’ prediction of His own crucifixion and suffering (Luke 9:22) along with a clear admonition for the disciples to embrace the same determination in their own lives if they want to follow Him (Luke 9:23-27). When we come to Luke 9:51-54 it is clear that Jesus is going to Jerusalem and no man can turn Him from that goal and that He is going to suffer and die in Jerusalem.

The Messianic backdrop is clear when Luke records a calculated approach to Jerusalem. There was a lot of expectation for the day when Messiah approaches Jerusalem and executes judgment on the nations, but the shocking thing that Luke records for us is that the Judge will approach Jerusalem in mercy before He comes in judgment. In understanding the context of Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem, Luke gives us a full picture of the heart of the Messianic Judge.

The King subjects Himself to humiliation before He takes His rightful place as king in Jerusalem. This humiliation reveals the tender heart of the Judge and that the Judge desires mercy before judgment. The shedding of His own blood and the humiliation of His own body reveal the tenderness of His heart and the depths of His desire for and commitment to mercy.

The reader should clearly understand then that Luke is describing this approach to Jerusalem in such a way that it parallels the approach to Jerusalem at the end of the age when judgment will be executed.

The two approaches are remarkably similar. The difference is that the first is to open a window a mercy before the second in which the window of mercy is closed and judgment is executed. That window of mercy was unexpected by Jesus’ contemporaries.

Luke also gives us a very clear picture of the forerunner ministry when Jesus desires to approach Jerusalem at the end of the age. Jesus sent the disciples as forerunners but, like John the Baptist, they were a picture of a much larger sending of forerunner messengers that will precede and accompany His approach towards Jerusalem at the end of the age.

He Set His Face

…when the time had come…He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. – Luke 9:51 NKJV

Luke 9:51 must be understood in the context of Luke 9:21-27. Jesus had already embraced the suffering and rejection that would come when He entered Jerusalem. He knew what was going to happen when He entered Jerusalem and He was determined to enter the city.

The suffering and agony of the cross could not deter Him from His Father’s will. Doing His Father’s will was His primary consideration, not the shame and suffering of the cross. Nothing could deter Him. This is why He called His disciples to have this same sort of resolution in their hearts and follow His heart posture (Luke 9:23-27). He did not just follow the Father’s will fatalistically, but He approached Jerusalem with determination.

Jesus understood the shame of what He was about to do. In this context, He called the disciples to not be ashamed either of Him or His words. He knew His words about embracing the cross were offensive to men. He knew that what He was about to do in Jerusalem would be humiliating and that men would be forever ashamed of the idea of God hanging naked and humiliated on a cross as the means of cosmic redemption. In that context, Jesus spoke very direct and serious words – we are not to be ashamed either of Him or His words. Instead we are to set our face like Him (Luke 9:23).

“For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed…” – Luke 9:26 NKJV

Luke’s description of how Jesus set His face and His heart (Luke 9:22,51) reveals how fierce His dedication was to entering Jerusalem and securing mercy on the cross. It is not a passive commitment to mercy, but a fierce commitment to enter the city and fulfill His Father’s will. When Jesus approaches Jerusalem at the end of the age for judgment, His dedication to His Father’s desire will be just as fierce and terrible. He will execute judgment with the same tenacity that He secured mercy with. The same fierce dedication that caused Him to embrace and run towards the cross will also empower Him to enter the city in judgment and destroy all unrighteousness.

The fierce resolve that covered Him in His own blood on the cross will also cover Him in the blood of the nations when He enters Jerusalem again (Isaiah 63).

He Sent Messengers Before His Face

…sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. – Luke 9:52 NKJV

Luke gives us one of the clearest examples of the forerunner ministry. Jesus was giving a foretaste of the fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3. Once Jesus set His face towards Jerusalem, He sent messengers, or forerunners, before Him to announce His coming.

In ancient times, a king would send an envoy before him to prepare the people to receive the king. This messenger would be entrusted with the authority of the king and command the people to prepare the king. In the same manner, Jesus will send messengers before Him to command the nations to receive Him as the ultimate King and Judge of the nations.

When Jesus prepares to enter Jerusalem again at the end of the age, He will release a forerunner ministry of messengers that will be sent to proclaim His coming with clarity and authority.

Once Jesus had set His face to enter Jerusalem, He sent these messengers to prepare the people for His arrival.It is very likely that we are entering that period of history when Jesus is again beginning to set His face towards Jerusalem and we will begin to see the forerunner ministry released on a global scale to declare to all the nations that Jesus is coming as bridegroom (because of love), king (to rule from Jerusalem), and judge (to judge sin and wickedness).

When Jesus decided to approach Jerusalem, He sent messengers before His face. This has two very clear implications. First, the messengers were sent from the place of intimacy. Jesus will commission messengers that are before His face. He does not send random messengers but those who have sought His face. Those who will be sent as messengers are not those who have sought ministry, but those that have sought Jesus Himself. He will send those who are “Friends of the Bridegroom” whose chief delight is not in their ministry or power, but in Jesus Himself (John 3:29).

One of the primary purposes of the prayer movement in our generation is to prepare these messengers by putting them before Jesus’ face in the place of prayer and fasting. Houses of prayer are incubators where messengers are being formed “before His face” that they might be sent before the earth sees His face.

Forerunners choose to give their life to proclaiming specific messages before the church at large emphasizes them. In the same way, they begin to live before His face in order to prepare the church to live before His face and the nations to experience His face.

Secondly, messengers carry a very serious ministry of preparing the earth to receive Jesus. This is a great and a terrible calling. John recalls that when Jesus sets His face to enter Jerusalem again that the nations will cry out in fear and terror because of the glory of His face.

“But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears?” – Malachi 3:2

…said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come and who is able to stand?” – Revelation 6:16-17 NKJV
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. – Revelation 20:11 NKJV

These messengers both live before His face and are sent out before Jesus’ face appears to the nations to prepare the earth to receive Him. In the kindness of His face towards believers and the terror of His face towards wicked nations we see the fullness of bridegroom, king, and judge.

For some His face will be great comfort, for all it will be great glory, and for many it will be great terror.

Jesus focused most of His ministry on Israel though He interacted with and responded to gentiles that sought Him out. Jesus had previously sent out His disciples and specifically commanded them to only go to Israel and not to Samaria or the nations (Matthew 10:5-6).

However, when He set His face for the confrontation with the enemy in Jerusalem, the messengers He sent went through Samaria. A forerunner ministry not just in Israel but also in the nations precedes the confrontation in Jerusalem, both the first confrontation on the cross and the second one with the nations that is coming.

At the end of the age, the forerunner ministry will not just go to Israel; it will be throughout the nations of the earth. This ministry will take a significant amount of time to unfold because God is going to release a witness in every nation. Not only will every nation hear the gospel of salvation, they will hear the gospel of the kingdom (Matthew 24:14).

At the end of the age, that gospel will be that the King is coming. It is very possible that this ministry will occupy the better part of a generation to announce Jesus’ return and prepare the people for it.

The modern missions movement is going to have to establish strong eschatological foundations for the final missions thrust of history.

Many are focused on fulfilling Matthew 24:14 but few are emphasizing the context of Matthew 24:14 and it is an eschatological context. The gospel is going to the nations is for salvation, but it is also for the preparation of every nation to respond to the return of Jesus. This preparation ministry is to prepare both men individually and nations for His return. It will meet much opposition but it is a required ministry.

They Did Not Receive Him because of Jerusalem

But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. – Luke 9:51 NKJV

The messengers He sends will face incredible opposition. There will be a harvest as many will turn in repentance, but the kingdoms of the world will reject them. The messengers He sends will have the same experience as John the Baptist who turned many to repentance, but also faced stiff opposition.

Many in the church will reject the proclamation of the messengers just as the town in Samaria rejected Jesus’ disciples. Samaritans were an ethnic mixture of Jews and people who had settled in the land. In the same way, those in the church that have tolerated mixture will reject Jesus at the end of the age.

Samaria also represents the nations of the earth that surround Israel. Governmentally, the nations of the earth will reject the proclamation of Jesus as a real, political King and surround Jerusalem to extinguish the city that is Jesus’ desire. Jerusalem will be the divisive issue at the end of the age. It will be a stumbling block to all people.

And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all the nations of the earth are gathered against it. – Zechariah 12:3 NKJV

Israel has always been a stumbling block to the nations and so too at the end of the age. The people of the earth will literally be divided over the issue of Jerusalem and the Jewish people.The controversy that surrounds Jerusalem and the Jewish people is entirely because He has set His face on them.

Jerusalem will be the stumbling block of the nations precisely because Jesus has set His face on it.

For thus says the LORD of hosts: “He sent Me after glory, to the nations which plunder you; for he who touches you [Zion] touches the apple of His eye.” – Zechariah 2:8

The Heart of the Messenger

“Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” But he turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” – Luke 9:54-56 NKJV

Even though the messengers He sends will face tremendous opposition and pressure, it is critical that they have the heart of Jesus. Though He is coming as judge, everything He does is rooted in love. It is the fire of love in Him that causes Him to judge and the messengers He sends must know that flame of love. Jesus rebuked the disciples because they wanted to call down judgment on those who have rejected Jesus. They did not have the true heart of the Judge who loves mercy.

Jesus’ heart is revealed in the fact that He entered Jerusalem for mercy first before He enters Jerusalem for judgment. His mercy is also on display in the gap between the two entrances into Jerusalem. He gives the nations time to respond to mercy offered. The heart of the Judge is for mercy first of all. As Art Katz used to say, “It is not judgment that is penultimate, but mercy.”

His intentional entrance into Jerusalem to face the horror of the cross forever declares the nature of the Judge.

In all His glory, He is seen as a “Lamb slain” in the midst of the throne (Revelation 5:6). He is forever, even as Judge, a Lamb slain who willingly surrendered His life to provide mercy for all who would repent.

And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain… – Revelation 5:6 NKJV

Jesus’ love of mercy is also in display in the intentional sending of messengers before His face into the nations of the earth before He enters Jerusalem. Before He enters the city for final judgment, He wants every nation to have the opportunity to prepare for His coming. Messengers are sent before His face to prepare the nations to receive Him in repentance so that they will not face His wrath.

Messengers must remain fully rooted in the love of God, or the pressures they face will cause them to become bitter and forget what spirit they are of and lose the heart of the coming Judge in the very act of preparing the earth for His approach.

We will tremble at His tenacity as Judge, but tremble even more at the greatness of His mercy.

Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “He Set His Face Towards Jerusalem.”

]]> 1 http://samuelclough.com/519/the-knowledge-of-god-through-suffering/ http://samuelclough.com/519/the-knowledge-of-god-through-suffering/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:47:02 +0000 Samuel Clough http://samuelclough.com/?p=519 More →]]> The following in an excerpt from my upcoming book “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”, a full commentary on the book of Revelation. The book should be available fall 2011.

He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints…Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. – Revelation 13:10;14:12 NKJV

Revelation 13:10 contains one of the more difficult statements for the saints in the entire book of Revelation, but understanding and receiving it opens us up to the knowledge of God. If we do not understand it, then we lack the knowledge of God and risk being offended and alienated from Him in times of trial and persecution. If we understand it but do not receive it, then we register an offense with God which separates us from Him. When we are offended with God, the natural result is either turning away completely or embracing a modified God, an idol of our making devoid of those elements of God that we find offensive.

The main thrust of the passage is that God actually decrees and approves of the persecution of the saints at the end of the age. Before you move on quickly to read the rest of the book, consider very carefully what was just said. The beast will be the agent of persecution against the saints at the end of the age—and make no mistake, he hates them with a perfect hatred—but God is actually the one decreeing and assenting to the persecution. The heart must then ask, how is it that God will allow His own saints to be executed? Why is it that He will give them into the hands of the most cruel man who will ever have lived? How can the God of infinite love, who desires His saints, be content to speak of the saints as those to be taken captive and those to be slain?

This question is not just for the end times, but it is fundamental to our understanding of God now. Jesus Himself promised the saints tribulation (Matthew 24:9, John 16:33). The history of the saints ever since Jesus’ ascension proves His prediction to be true and must provoke us to answer the question that clearly arises from this text.

Is God uncaring? Is God an accomplice of evil? Why does God not act? If we do not answer this question and answer it well, we will either live in superficiality, ignoring a significant question about the nature of God, or we will become offended with God and devoid of any real relationship with Him; even if we continue religious practices and appearances, deep within we will deeply distrust Him.

The issue of the persecution of the saints is a fundamental issue for the saints past, present, and future. First, we must ask why the saints are persecuted. The saints are persecuted because this age is under the delusion of rebellion, and the saints are the sole witness of light against that darkness. Jesus left the saints as His witness in this age (Acts 1:8). The earth is content to remain in darkness, but God is not content for men to perish in their darkness without a witness and thus the saints are witnesses of the light. The same world that executed Jesus to eradicate His witness is then constantly confronted by that same witness in the saints. The saints are the salt in the earth’s wound, constantly declaring the knowledge of God both in their living and in their speaking (Revelation 12:11).

The earth would prefer to forget the ruler of the heavens and succumb to the inebriation of the rebellion. The saints alone stand firm as a reminder that this present age is temporary and is headed for a comprehensive judgment at the end of the age at the hands of the Messiah. The saints spoil the party by being the constant reminder of the judgment to come. While the witness of the saints accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit will lead many to repentance, history shows that most men would prefer to silence the voice of the saints and the reminder of the judgment to come rather than to repent and receive life. This animosity will reach its zenith at the end of the age when the planet is under the sway of the beast. Answering this question, then, is critical to understanding the events that John is describing.

The answer to this question is found at the end of the verse. This declaration is written as a call for the endurance and the faith of the saints (the saints are also called to endurance in Revelation 14:12). Endurance and faith will be the two primary qualities the saints need to match the intensity of the persecution at the end of the age. Endurance will be needed because the persecution will be so intense that the natural response of the human heart will be to give up and succumb to the pressure. The temptation to compromise will never be stronger due to the unique dynamics of that time.

We often think that overcoming is a glorious thing, but there are dynamic times in history when overcoming is simply enduring.

The second call to the saints is the call of faith, or trust, and this is really the core issue. As has been noted several times, God Himself is the architect of the events of the end of the age. He is going to put wickedness on full display so that sin might be fully revealed and Jesus might be fully glorified. The saints will be tempted to feel offense at God when they begin to endure massive persecutions that are actually part of His plan. So many are going to fall away, unable to cope with the present persecutions because of their insufficient understanding of God.

John calls us to have faith, or trust, in God despite the events we endure. We have to have full faith and confidence in the perfection of God. He will judge rightly at the end of the age. So many saints are offended because they expect God to administer immediate rewards as well as immediate punishments and so they have no capacity either to endure or to trust. How many fall away because they perceive their good words to go unrewarded and because they perceive evil to go unpunished? How many cannot deal with what they perceive to be the triumph of evil and tragedy? How often has it been heard amidst wars, disaster, calamity, or personal loss, “how could a good God exist and allow this?” The problem is that our hearts are quick to accuse God when our sense of right and wrong is not satisfied.

Our horizon is so narrow that we desire immediate rewards and immediate judgments rather than God’s ultimate judgments and rewards, which exist outside of the brief span of this age.

Ever since the garden of Eden, the heart of man has been deceived to the point that man believes that he can rightly judge God. We believe that we are capable of determining when God is acting justly and when He is not. While the message of the garden is that man is not sufficient to actually judge what is good and what is evil, we continue in our deception and constantly judge God Himself, weighing His actions according to our own understanding of what is permissible and good.

When faced with a persecution of the magnitude of what is coming at the end of the age, men’s hearts are going to be unable to consider that a good God would allow such violence against the saints. A root of offense will grow in many hearts, and they will ultimately fall away from the faith, completely unable to reconcile their own conviction of right and wrong with the actions of God.

The call to the saints, then, is found in the obedience of Jesus. Faced with His Father’s call, Jesus sweated great drops of blood and even asked that the cup of His Father’s wrath might be avoided. But after offering up intercession, He set His face like flint to obey the Father. He had full confidence that He could trust God.

God handed Him over to the Romans and they promptly humiliated Him beyond the humiliation that any other man has endured. They flogged Him and tortured Him. He was left marred beyond any other man and unrecognizable. They nailed Him, naked and humiliated, to an excruciatingly painful instrument of death. To top it off, He was openly ridiculed by the religious leaders. Through it all, God stood silent as the Son endured agony. The silence was so deafening that Jesus cried out, “Why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46)

Have we fully considered the Son there in agony and humiliation, so devoid of the Father’s presence that He cried out as One totally forsaken? Can any imagine what He was enduring? Now, tell me who among us can nod amen to that agony and humiliation and say that it is the wisdom and beauty of God?

Years and years of Sunday school stories have sanitized the whole incident to the point that Jesus dying on the cross is now thought to be the most logical thing possible.

Saints, to the human heart Jesus’ execution on the cross is not the most logical thing, but rather the most offensive thing possible. The very idea that it was the perfect plan of God to so humiliate and torture Himself is preposterous to human reason. It is no wonder that the Jews rejected the idea of a Messiah who had endured such humiliation. Our lack of understanding of what the Son actually endured is what makes us so quick to embrace the message of the cross. If we could actually see and feel what He endured, our hearts would wrestle much more with the reality of the cross. We would keep asking why God would do such a thing to His own Son until we came into a greater knowledge of God through the offense of the cross.

Because we have not entirely understood the cross, fully appreciating the torment and humiliation of it, we are greatly lacking in the knowledge of God. We are required to consider the man hanging from the cross. We must face the humiliation of God Himself, not just the victory on the other side of the cross, if we are to truly know God as God.

The understanding of the cross in its full human reality is not just a theological significance on our outlines; it contains the revelation of God. To go deep into the very revelation of who God is, we must go deep into the cross and we must go deep into the human reality of it, not just the victory of it. We must plumb the depths of the man whose flesh was shredded before He was nailed to the cross.

The knowledge of God as God on the cross gives the saints the perspective necessary to trust God in the midst of the persecution of the beast. Just as God authorized the agony of the cross, so too God has authorized and decreed the persecution of the saints. Just as the cross ultimately brought glory to Jesus, so too the persecution of the saints will ultimately bring glory to the saints and prepare them to be God’s companions.

The message of the cross is that God even orchestrates pain for our own benefit. We must rest in Him, knowing that He is the perfect Father and the perfect Judge. The perfect Father allows sons to endure pain in order to prepare them to mature them in the image of their Father. The perfect Judge is going to judge all the earth only when iniquity is ripe. He delays judgment to give men time to repent, because once God judges, He is going to judge completely. That is going to be the most catastrophic event in history.

Trust is the root issue. The enemy attacked us in the garden with it by questioning the Father’s motivation in limiting humanity. If the enemy could deceive man amidst perfection and open fellowship with God, how much more will the enemy tempt us as fallen men in a fallen world on the issue of pain, suffering, and evil, in the absence of God’s full presence?

How much more will he tempt us to question the goodness of the One upon the throne when we find ourselves in the midst of tribulation and find that God is actually the author of our tribulation?

This is not just an issue for those who will endure the final tribulation. In every generation, there have been saints who have endured horrific persecution at the hands of wicked men. From the beginning, saints have endured loss and heard silence from heaven in answer to their loss. Western believers are often anesthetized from the reality of life, but loss, suffering, and evil are very real for saints all over the earth now, and so the question that John raises in this verse must be answered within the heart of the believer in order to have an authentic knowledge of God and to not ultimately be offended with Him.

Saints, His wisdom is beyond ours. His love is beyond ours as well. We are incapable of truly judging right and wrong. We must embrace the love of our Father and have confidence in it even through the deepest nights. If we had just a glimpse of what He is preparing us for, our souls would be overwhelmed with the glory that God desires to put on us. He is preparing His saints that they might be His prize companion in all the universe. He is using every trial to fashion for Himself a companion who has shared His own sufferings. If we could clearly see the judgment that is coming, we would never doubt that the Judge of all the earth will do right (Genesis 18:25). The prophets trembled at the visions of the end they saw. Truly, we can be confident that judgment is coming.

So, while God is engineering great glory for the saints and preparing great judgment for the wicked, we are called to endure and have confidence in God in advance of these events. Why? Because when God reveals the fully glory of man and unleashes His judgment against the wicked there will be many, both captivated by the glory and in terror of the judgment, who will cry out to Him with hollow words of commitment and worship.

God is looking for those who love Him now. He is looking for those who can trust Him without having received the full revelation of either the glory or judgment to come.

Those who have confidence in God in this present wilderness will be in the company that trusted and loved God to the point of enduring great tribulation. In a perfect garden, a sinless man and woman were easily persuaded to doubt God’s goodness, even though they had never experienced anything but good at God’s hands. What kind of companion for Himself is God going to produce with the fallen saints who chose to love Him and trust His promises, even though His own hand allows their pain and they have only a small measure of revelation concerning the goodness of His promises?

Oh, saints, God has something magnificent in store for us. He is testing and perfecting us. This earth is the potter’s wheel of our formation. God is going to produce a glorious vessel, and we will dwell with Him forever in glory. In the meantime, at this moment and especially in the tribulation to come, the test of endurance and trust will determine whether we experience great glory or great loss, even to the point of being cut off because of our offense.

]]> 0 http://samuelclough.com/513/the-preparatory-work-of-fasting/ http://samuelclough.com/513/the-preparatory-work-of-fasting/#comments Wed, 22 Jun 2011 18:15:36 +0000 Samuel Clough http://samuelclough.com/?p=513 More →]]> Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “The Preparatory work of Fasting.”

Introduction

Though many in recent times neglect fasting as a discipline, it has been given to us as a gift and it will help develop strength in our inner man if we will simply us it. While there is a purpose and value for targeted seasons of fasting, there is great benefit from a life rhythm of regular fasting every week. Though the idea of fasting regularly every week is foreign to many western believers, throughout history the practice of regular fast days every week has been common.

The first and primary reason to fast is to tenderize the heart. Fasting should be rooted in love for Jesus and out of a longing for His return. Fasting that is rooted in this reality will also serve the purpose of deepening our longing for Him. Jesus set this context for fasting in the Scripture. If you are new to fasting or to this approach to fasting, there are many helpful resources on this topic located here on Mike Bickle’s website.

And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. – Matthew 9:15 NKJV

While our primary motivation for fasting should be out of longing for Jesus’ return, the Lord is also strategically using fasting to prepare a people in this hour for what is coming. God has given fasting to us as a gift in this hour to prepare us. He loves us whether we fast or not, but by embracing fasting we will be better prepared for the coming shaking.

The Preparatory Work of Fasting

The western world has experienced unprecedented prosperity in the last generation, but it is also now on the brink of massive crisis. Everywhere we look there are clear indicators of a coming crisis in every area including the religious, economic, and political components of our world. What has been normal in the last few generations will not be normal much longer. The seasons ahead will not be marked by the abundance that we have known for the last two generations.

While fasting is primarily a tool to strengthen our longing for Jesus, in His kindness God is also giving us fasting to prepare our hearts for the hardships that are coming. Believers who fast now are preparing themselves like wise virgins. They are storing up oil for the hour that is coming by voluntarily developing the muscle of denial before it will be required. The hour is coming when denial and lack will not be an option, but a reality.

The battle that most of us face right now when fasting is the desire to eat what we want, not the desire to eat because our health or survival depends on it. By fasting a day or two a week, most of us do not face actual hunger; we simply battle the desire to eat. It’s not true hunger that is warring against when we fast; it’s the desire to eat the things we want to eat.

For the most part, we are accustomed to the ability to have whatever we want to eat whenever we want it and fasting is uniquely designed to begin to dismantle this mindset.

By saying “no” to the desires of our body one or two days a week, we condition our body to live in subjection to the desire of the spirit. It must be understood that Paul did not believe his body was inherently bad, on the contrary he longed for the resurrection of the body. Fasting must never be the out working of an attitude that despises the body. We must have a healthy view of the body if we are to fast properly. A healthy view of the body begins with the understanding that God Himself, in the person of Jesus, took on a body like ours. Right now a human body sits at the right hand of God with all power and authority. Our body is to be cherished as a masterpiece of design by God, but it is not to dominate us.

Paul disciplined his body so that his appetites stayed within proper bounds and his body did not become a stumbling block to him. He did not despise the body, but he lived so that his body served the purposes of his spirit rather than his body dominating his life and potentially disqualifying him for the things he desired most. The body is healthy and good, but was not made
to dominate a human being.

But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others I myself should become disqualified. – 1 Corinthians 9:27 NKJV

Tragically, the western world is far more dominated by the appetites of the body than most realize. Most westerners see western society as the most sophisticated and advanced society on earth but, in reality, the average western individual lives a life that is completely dominated by the pursuit of the physical desire for comfort, food, leisure, and sex. Fasting is a tool that helps break this addiction and awakens the heart to living for the great pleasure of loving God.

Perhaps the most valuable part of fasting is learning to love Jesus in the midst of self-denial or lack. While most of our lack now is through a voluntary choice when we fast, the day is coming when there will be real lack and, if we have not learned to love Jesus in the midst of voluntary denial, we will be offended with Jesus when we face imposed self-denial.

By choosing lack now, we prepare ourselves to face the reality of the lack that is coming and to be unoffended with Jesus when it comes. Tragically, many believers will be greatly offended with Jesus when they face real lack, because they have not prepared their hearts to love Him in the midst of pressure and lack.

Teachings that distort the nature of God’s blessing have unintentionally prepared believers to be offended with God because they only know how to love Him in the midst of abundance and have no theological point of reference for relating to God in the midst of pressure or lack. As Isaiah says, “They will pass through it hard-pressed and hungry; and it shall happen, when they are hungry, that they will be enraged and curse their king and their God, and look upward.” (Isaiah 8:21 NKJV)

Loving Jesus under pressure and lack is a legitimate heart test that many in this generation will face, some in very extreme ways, because God will expose everyone’s heart through the pressures of the end of the age

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith-the salvation of your souls. – 1 Peter 1:6-9 NKJV

My brethren, count I all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be prefect and complete, lacking nothing. – James 1:2-4 NKJV

Jesus connected weakness and love in the act of fasting. We embrace the weakness of fasting because of love. Fasting doesn’t earn anything with God nor does it get Him to notice us. It is an expression of love from our heart to His born out of the pain of the fact that He is not physically present with us. It tenderizes us to experience His love more.

But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. – Matthew 9:15 NKJV

Love is expressed most deeply in weakness. As fallen men we spend our lives groping for strength and yet love can blossom most deeply in our weakness. Love from a position of strength is different from love from a position of weakness. Love that flows from strength tends to be self-absorbed as the lover is confident in their own ability and their own person. Love from a posture of weakness is a completely different kind of love as the lover focuses on the one being loved and loses sight of self.

At the end of the age, God will use a combination of voluntary weakness and imposed weakness to both expose our hearts and to tenderize them that we might love Jesus more deeply and long for His return with greater desire. Fasting out of voluntary weakness prepares us to respond correctly to weakness that is imposed on us by forces beyond our control.

We cannot choose whether or not we live in periods of imposed weakness, but we can embrace the process and prepare for the possibility by embracing voluntary weakness through fasting.

Understanding the Process of Preparation

We must understand the crisis that is coming. It is foolish to ignore the signs of what is coming. It is also unbiblical to assume that God will protect us from every form of suffering. All over the earth, believers are suffering some very intensely. We are not immune to the same sorts of things. Many believers do not have a theology of suffering. Because of this they are being setup for a great falling away because their view of God does not include the possibility of suffering. This distorted view of God is ignored both of the Scripture and the experience of millions of believers worldwide. It is a western god that God Himself will dismantle.

These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. – John 16:33 NKJV

We must embrace preparation for the crisis. We are not to look at a looming crisis and be paralyzed by fear. We are to have understanding of what is coming and prepare our hearts before God. He will be faithful to give us what is needed. Some feel that a crisis is coming but they fail to prepare. The key to preparation is to value the small things. Faithfulness in “little things” is the preparation to be faithful under great pressure.

He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. – Luke 16:10 NKJV

And he said to him, “Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.” – Luke 19:17 NKJV

Many are aware that trials are coming, but fail to prepare. Some fail to prepare because of a spirit of denial that looks at coming pressure and prefers to ignore it and turn away rather than prepare. This is because the human spirit tends to turn away from suffering rather than embrace it. Others fail to prepare because they are presumptuous. They are either presumptuous that they can already stand, or they are always waiting for a “big event” that will suddenly prepare them to stand.

Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. – 1 Corinthians 10:12

When we are not faithful in little things when we have little pressure we will not be prepared for strong pressure. By the same virtue, faithfulness in little things is what equips us. We must value the small things. Many people never make progress or build a strong life in God because they don’t value small things.

We must understand that preparation for big crisis comes in small, daily decisions. Fasting a day each week, giving small amounts of money, and obeying in small things all really matters.

While the vast majority of people do not fast because it can be difficult, it also must always be understood that fasting is simply a tool one can use rather than the end goal. The end goal is loving Jesus more tenderly and more devoutly. For this reason, those with medical situations, children, pregnant women, and those who have struggled with eating disorders should not fast food in the way that other individuals can. While most individuals can fast with no injury if they take care of their body properly, others should be careful and take the proper precautions. For those who cannot fast food, other type of fasts can be entered into in order to work the muscle of fasting.

Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “The Preparatory work of Fasting.”

]]> 0 http://samuelclough.com/505/living-before-the-throne-responding-to-jesus-intercession/ http://samuelclough.com/505/living-before-the-throne-responding-to-jesus-intercession/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:47:48 +0000 Samuel Clough http://samuelclough.com/?p=505 More →]]> Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “Living Before the Throne – Responding to Jesus’ Intercession.”

This is part 2 of a 2 part series. Part 1 was an overview of Jesus’ intercession and is available here.

“Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” – Hebrews 7:25 NKJV

The Privilege of Interceding Before the Throne

In righteousness, we should be consumed because of our sin, but instead we can stand before Him and actually engage in dialogue with Him. He actually listens to us and we have the ability to hear the thunderous voice that terrified the Israelites at Sinai (Deut. 5:23-26). This is a phenomenal privilege, which is why everything in this fallen age is calculated to cause us to not appear before the throne.

“So it was, when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, that you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders. 24 And you said: ‘Surely the LORD our God has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire. We have seen this day that God speaks with man; yet he still lives. 25 Now therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the LORD our God anymore, then we shall die. 26 For who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? – Deuteronomy 5:23-26 NKJV

Standing before God terrified the Israelites, which is why they pleaded with Moses that he would be an intercessor for them. When we see God’s majesty, we are left undone, unable to speak ourselves and terrified at His voice. Isaiah faced this very predicament when He saw Jesus on His throne (Isaiah 6:5).

The Israelites sought an intercessor in Moses so that they would not have to endure the great conflict in their souls of drawing near to God and hearing His voice.

Moses was a picture of Jesus, and yet Jesus is far greater than Moses (Heb. 3:3-6). He does not just go to God on our behalf; He goes to God so that we can approach. Every moment He stands in a wonderful, terrible place satisfying the tensions of God’s just wrath against sin and His desire to commune with men. He bears the full weight of the holiness of God through His blood and His sacrifice so that we can approach. This is a very real thing that He does moment by moment. If, for one moment, His blood stops interceding for us we stand ready to be consumed by God’s holiness.

Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, – Hebrews 10:19 NKJV
…to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. – Hebrews 12:24 NKJV
Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate. – Hebrews 13:12 NKJV
Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, – Hebrews 13:20 NKJV

The full power of His blood is required for both sides of intercession. It is required for us to appear before Him without being consumed and it is required for us to actually hear His voice. Because of the blood we can stand before Him with the privileges of a son and it is God’s delight to hear our voices. The fact that the Creator would listen to a finite, fallen creature that deserves judgment should actually blow our minds. The fact that He would enjoy this is unfathomable. The desire of His heart is to hear our voices and this alone should be enough to move us to prayer.

You who dwell in the gardens, The companions listen for your voice – Let me hear it! – Song of Solomon 8:13 NKJV

We offer prayers far too glibly. Would we be so casual if the President gave us 5 minutes of his time? The idea of the Creator allowing us to speak to Him and ask Him to do things is beyond all comprehension. This privilege is so significant, that it required the blood of God’s Son to open the way for us to be able to speak to God.

The blood also allows us to hear God’s voice and not be destroyed. While His voice is still as majestic and terrible as it has always been, we also gain access to hear the still, small voice of intimate communion. It is the blood that enables us to hear His voice so tenderly.

The wrestle against you persevering in the place of prayer is not accidental, nor is it the result of boredom alone. The boredom that you feel at times is a calculated tactic of the enemy warring against keeping you from the place of prayer. One of the primary goals of the enemy is to keep men and women from the place of prayer and he is very intentional and strategic about it. There are a lot of other elements of Christian life that the enemy can tolerate, but he will oppose vibrant prayer with every power he has. There are at least two reasons for his opposition.

First of all, when me do not pray, God does not get the intimacy that He desires with men and men do not have the access to the living God that the human spirit cries out for. The enemy’s anger against both God and man is one of the primary motivations he has for keeping men from the place of prayer.

Secondly, God has orchestrated His kingdom on the earth so that men exercise government in the place of prayer. In the place of prayer, we are able to actually participate in God’s government by asking Him to do the things we know He wants to do. God gave the earth to men in the beginning and therefore it has real authority when men to whom the earth was entrusted ask God to do things on the earth. Satan’s primary opposition on the earth comes from praying men.

The enemy will do everything possible in his power to keep men from praying. He desperately does not want men to take advantage of the blood and utilize all of its benefits. He wars against men so that they will not enter into the full benefits of the blood.

The Heavenly Tabernacle

Moses was very clear to record that the entire tabernacle in the Old Testament was a type and shadow of a very real temple that exists in the heavens. It only had glory because it was a copy of another very real temple. In particular, there is a real mercy seat of which the mercy seat in Moses’ tabernacle was only a copy. John also saw the real tabernacle and elements in it repeatedly in Revelation (Rev. 7:15; 11:19; 14:15,17; 15:5-8; 16:1,17).

Now when Moses went into the tabernacle of meeting to speak with Him, he heard the voice of One speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the Testimony, from between the two cherubim; thus He spoke to him. – Numbers 7:89 NKJV

Just as Moses recorded the ministry of the priests in the tabernacle on earth, the author of Hebrews is describing the priestly ministry of Jesus in the tabernacle in heaven. We must understand that this tabernacle is real and His ministry there is real and His ministry has the same purpose as the ministry of the Levitical priests had – to allow men to meet God.

The mercy seat in Moses’ tabernacle was stained with blood from years and years of offering atonement for the people and these bloodstains enabled the high priest to encounter the glory resting above the mercy seat when he entered the holy of holies once a year. Just as the Levitical high priests sprinkled blood on the mercy seat so that they could encounter God and minister to Him, so too Jesus sprinkled His own blood on a real mercy seat in heaven so that other men could come near as priests, experience the glory and hear the voice of God speaking above the mercy seat.

For thousands of years men were separated from God and He only spoke to men in limited ways and times. Moses clearly recorded that God’s voice was heard above the mercy seat, and now the author of Hebrews is telling us that we can stand, not before the mercy seat on earth, but before the actual mercy seat in the heavens and commune with God. Like the mercy seat in Moses’ tabernacle, this one is stained with blood as well. It is the living blood of Jesus. This is a phenomenal privilege.

The High Priest approached the mercy seat on earth trembling in fear of death, but we can approach the heavenly mercy seat trembling, but in the confidence that the blood sprinkled there will allow us to meet God and not die.

Jesus paid the very dear price of putting His own blood on the mercy seat because of God’s intense desire to commune with men again that He might hear our voices and we might hear His voice above the mercy seat. Our separation from God because of sin was very real, but God’s desire to commune with us was even greater than His hatred of sin. That desire caused Jesus to shed His own blood.

Jesus’ blood is actually speaking above the mercy seat crying out to men that the way to communion with God is open above the mercy seat. His blood sits on the mercy seat right now creating a new and living way so that we can appear before God in the place of prayer. It is a living way because the blood on the mercy seat is alive and actually speaks so that we can speak before God. Jesus’ blood is a living way giving us access to God and making atonement so that we can experience the presence of God without experiencing the wrath of God against sin. Life is in the blood and His life is in His blood on the mercy seat interceding for us so that we can appear before the very throne of God.

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul…for it is the life of all flesh. Its blood sustains its life. – Leviticus 17:11-14a NKJV
To Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel – Hebrews 12:24 NKJV
Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh – Hebrews 10:19-20 NKJV

God’s desire to hear our voice is so strong that His own blood is making a way for us to speak before Him. This is God’s desire to meet us in the place of prayer. This is also why the enemy so violently fights men entering the place of prayer. Ever since the fall, men have been blocked from appearing before the throne except for very limited ways. The way is now open because Jesus is making a continual intercession. With this confidence, the author cries out, “Come boldly to the throne of grace!”

Let us therefore come boldly before the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace in time of need. – Hebrews 4:16 NKJV

Called to a Life of Intercession

Not only does Jesus’ intercession call us to appear before God, it also calls us to take on the character of an intercessor. If Jesus placed such a high value on being our intercessor forever, then we should likewise enter into the place of intercession for others.

The life of Moses is one of the best Biblical examples of an intercessor. Moses’ continually stood before God as an intercessor for the people even offering his own life in exchange for the people. Studying the life of Moses as an intercessor is a very valuable exercise and reveals the life of an earthly intercessor. Paul also expressed the same life of intercession with regard to his own Jewish kinsmen. Abraham’s life of intercession is also revealed in his petition for Sodom.

And Abraham came near and said, “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Supposed there were fifty righteous within the city…Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked…Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”…Then he said, “Let not the Lord be angry and I will speak once more: Supposed ten should be found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of ten.” – Genesis 18:23-25,32
Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin…Yet now, if You will forgive their sin – but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.” – Exodus 32:31-23 NKJV
…I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh – Romans 9:2-3 NKJV

In both Moses and Paul, we see that the heart of an intercessor is the one who will stand in the gap and lay down their own life for others that do not deserve it. This willingness to give one’s life for another is the reality of what it means to be an intercessor. This is why Jesus is described in Hebrews 7:25 as the eternal intercessor. He did not just enter into this place with all His heart, He experienced it completely in His death as our substitute.

This is why it is such a serious thing not to fully respond to the work of an intercessor on your behalf. When we do not respond, it means we do not value the life laid down for us.

When we do not appear before the throne it is because we do not fully value the life of Jesus that was given for us so that we might receive access and mercy rather than justice. We are called to live this same life of intercession and to put our own lives in the gap for others. Intercession is more than just speaking words. It is expressed in the way we consider our own lives with regard to the purposes and people of God.

Like Jesus, Abraham, Moses, and Paul, an intercessor uses their favor before God on behalf of others. Moses risked his favor with God to intercede for the Israelites. This is intercession according to the heart of God because God’s own heart is self-sacrificing. This is graphically illustrated for us in the death of Jesus on the cross. His death was not only an act of atonement; it was also a demonstration of what God was like. When Jesus’ body hung exposed, it was God being exposed as He in fact He is before all men. An intercessor will have this same heart posture of trading their life for the lives of the object of their intercession.

Our favor before God is to be used for the benefit of others. Again, Jesus is the ultimate example of this. Jesus had the favor of the Father above all others as His Father’s daily delight (Prov. 8:30) and yet He willingly lowered Himself for the benefit of others (Philippians 2:5-11).

An intercessor boldly uses their favor before God on behalf of others. This is how both Paul and Moses challenged God on behalf of the Israelites. Moses challenged God to cut him off rather than cut off the nation of Israel. Moses had favor with God and he both used it and risked it to secure mercy for the Israelites.

An intercessor knows that God delights in mercy. This is what gives the intercessor confidence to approach God’s throne. The intercessor is actually expressing the desire of God’s own heart when they offer themselves to secure mercy for others. God delights to give mercy and this gives Moses and Paul both confidence to put themselves before God and make such extreme statements.

Let us set our hearts to respond to Jesus’ continual intercession. This means actually appearing before the throne. It would be unimaginable to have an appointment with the President and then not show up. Jesus has given us access at great cost. Let us value the price He paid and actually appear before the throne. In our deep gratitude for His sacrifice, let us go on and ask Him to give us the heart of an intercessor as well.

Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “Living Before the Throne – Responding to Jesus’ Intercession.”

]]> 0 http://samuelclough.com/494/living-before-the-throne-understanding-jesus-intercession/ http://samuelclough.com/494/living-before-the-throne-understanding-jesus-intercession/#comments Tue, 31 May 2011 15:14:06 +0000 Samuel Clough http://samuelclough.com/?p=494 More →]]> Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “Living Before the Throne – Understanding Jesus’ Intercession.”

This is part 1 of a 2 part series. Part 2, “Responding to Jesus’ Intercession” is available here.

“Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” – Hebrews 7:25 (NKJV)

Jesus’ intercession is not just a prayer that He prays; it is a life that He lives. He “always lives” to make intercession for us. He has given His life to the great work of intercession for us. This tells us just how significant this intercession is. Because Jesus’s pleasure is to perform the Father’s will, we also know that this intercession is very dear to the Father. They both see this intercession as worthy of Jesus’ life.

Not only is this intercession dear to the Father and Son, this is a significant work of intercession because it required Jesus’ own life. God has had intercessors after His heart throughout history including Moses, Daniel, Samuel, and Paul (Exodus 32:1-14; Deuteronomy 9; Psalm 99:6; Jeremiah 15:1; Ezekiel 14:4; Romans 9:3) and yet none of them are capable of this great work of intercession. This work of intercession is so significant that it requires Jesus the God-man.

This is such a significant work of intercession that is critical that we understand the purpose of it and intercession in this verse should not be understood simply as Jesus’ praying in the way we typically think of prayer.

Jesus is not praying for us so that we do not have to pray; He is interceding before the Father so that we might approach the throne. Being fallen creatures marked by sin, we have no right to approach the throne and should face the wrath of God if we could approach because of our sin.
However, Jesus’ intercession allows us to approach God because His blood has been sprinkled on the mercy seat and His blood actually allows us to approach God. Without that blood, we would be consumed, but because that blood is making intercession for us, we can boldly approach the throne and speak to the living God.

Just as the priests ministering to God in the camp kept God from breaking out against the congregation (Numbers 1:53), so too Jesus’ intercession keeps the holiness of God from breaking out against us and instead creates a context where we can meet God face to face and hear His voice without experiencing His wrath.

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. – Hebrews 9:14-15 (NKJV)

Therefore brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way that He created for us… – Hebrews 10:19-20 (NKJV)

Many have the idea that Jesus is sitting there praying to the Father for them. While this idea is not entirely wrong, depending on how you define prayer, it is not the entire picture that the author of Hebrews desires to communicate. Instead, the author is telling us that Jesus is interceding for us so that we can pray. The point is that we can actually appear before the mercy seat and pray ourselves. Without His continual intercession, we don’t have access to stand before the throne in the place of prayer.

If we do not take advantage of Jesus’ intercession and actually appear before the throne then we are neglecting the new and living way that Jesus has opened for us to the Father and not fully valuing His life and death.

Jesus intercession flows out of the Father’s burning desire for communion with His people. God is longing for intimate communion with man, and yet at the same time is completely holy and because of this is unapproachable to fallen creatures. The depth of God’s desire is demonstrated in the costliness of Jesus’ sacrifice and His continual intercession satisfies the Father’s burning desire to be able to have communion with us. Because He sits there as a mediator, we can now approach a holy God.

Not only does His intercession satisfy the burning desire of God, it also satisfies the deep desire of the human heart to appear before God. In the God-man we find the perfect intersection of desire.

The desire of God and the desire of man meet perfectly in the person of Jesus. God has desire for us and we grope and long for Him. Both these desires exist simultaneously within Jesus because He is fully God and fully man. Though men give themselves to various things to try to silence the inner ache, it is obvious that man’s inner ache is an ache for God.

There is a brokenness and a wound on every human being and it is a wound that is the result of separation from God. Even in the atheist’s cry, “Show me proof of God!” you can see the wound of the human heart that cries out to again see God face to face. Right now the billions across the planet are putting various bandage on the wound of their heart, but they are dressing a wound that is not healed but only continues to fester.

…that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth-in Him. – Ephesians 1:10 (NKJV)

Only the intercession of Jesus can heal the wound of man and create a doorway for the fulfillment of man’s ultimate desire. Only the God-man can give us access to our own desire while fulfilling the desire of God. This is why God is going to gather up all things on heaven and earth in Jesus. That gathering is the gathering of all desire. The desire of the heavens and the desire of the earth will intersect in the man Jesus and have their full expression. He will express the fullness of God’s desire towards us, which also expressing the fullness of our desire for the Father. Both sides of His being are swallowed up in desire and this is why He ever lives to make intercession for us.

…Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions…who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God – Hebrews 1:9;12:2 (NKJV)

What joy Jesus’ work of intercession is! There is no way we can comprehend the depths of joy that exists within Jesus as He experiences the full measure of God’s desire for us, the full measure of our desire for God, and the full satisfaction of both those desires. It is for this reason that He intercedes for us continually. This joy was worth His suffering and it is why He loves His work of intercession and will continue it forever. Let us enter into the joy of our Master by fully responding to His work of intercession.

Watch for part two of “Living Before the Throne.”

Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “Living Before the Throne – Understanding Jesus’ Intercession.”

]]> 1 http://samuelclough.com/485/the-spirit-of-elijah-and-prophetic-ministry-at-the-end-of-the-age/ http://samuelclough.com/485/the-spirit-of-elijah-and-prophetic-ministry-at-the-end-of-the-age/#comments Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:29:16 +0000 Samuel Clough http://samuelclough.com/?p=485 More →]]> Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “The Spirit of Elijah and Prophetic Ministry at the End of the Age.”

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. – Malachi 4:5-6

Then He answered and told them, “Indeed, Elijah is coming first and restores all things. And how is it written concerning the Son of Man, that He must suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I say to you that Elijah has also come, and they did to him whatever they wished, as it is written of him. – Mark 9:12-13

It is very apparent that the great need of the hour is prophets. This is not to say that prophets do not exist in our day or that the gift of prophecy is not operating, but simply to say that there is a desperate need for the Lord to release prophets again that of the same stature of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel because of the hour in which we are living. The prophetic ministry we have is good, and we should honor it, but we stand at the brink of a crisis that will demand a prophetic ministry that has been extremely rare in our day.

In His mercy, God sent prophets to Israel before and during their greatest hour of crisis. While the prophetic ministry always existed in Israel, the unique ministry of the oracular prophets was given for a specific time and season. The release of prophets in unique periods of history is a divine pattern because there is a direct relationship between a prophet’s ministry and the time period in which they live.

If the Lord released this kind of ministry to prepare Israel for a national judgment, what kind of ministry will He release on the earth to prepare every nation for the Day of the Lord, a period that Jesus warned would be un-survivable unless He shortened the time period (Matthew 24:21-22)?

Many have tried to understand prophets and prophetic ministry purely on the basis of the prophet’s function or the context of the Old or New Testament, but it must be understood that the time period a prophet lives in determines the characteristics of a prophet’s ministry as much as the prophetic gift in general does. As we enter in the last days, God will again follow the divine pattern. As nations increasingly come to the brink of national judgments and the earth as a whole races towards the Day of the Lord, the ultimate judgment of which all previous judgments have foreshadowed, God will again flood the earth with prophets of the same stature as those recorded for us in the Old Testament.

This time one of the most significant differences will be that the prophets that are coming will not be confined to Israel but will be sent to every nation of the earth. In time past, Israel alone carried the mysteries of God when prophets were sent. We are living in a time period where the gospel is being proclaimed to every nation on earth. Every nation has been brought into the revelation that was given to Israel and therefore every nation will be held accountable to this revelation by a company of prophets. Prophets will not just be sent to Israel at the end of the age, but to the nations of the earth. This will be a unique prophetic ministry that will be given because of the unique dynamics of the end of the age.

While there will be some very valid differences between the prophetic ministry that is coming and the Old Testament, for example their prophetic utterances will not supersede or add to Scripture, the time frame that they will minister in will demand that they are prophets of like stature as the prophets of old. This is clear because the oracular prophets of the Old Testament lived in a time period that was a shadow of the end of the age. Because of this, though some differences will exist, when we enter into the time period those prophets actually prophesied towards, we should expect prophets of that same kind to emerge again.

The Spirit of Elijah at the End of the Age

Though Elijah will come, it is also clear from Scripture that the spirit of Elijah will rest on an entire generation at the end of the age. Just as John the Baptist operated in the spirit of Elijah, but was not the actual reemergence of Elijah, so too a company of prophets like John the Baptist will operate in the spirit of Elijah preceding the appearance of the Elijah at the final hour of human history.

The spirit of Elijah is properly understood from Malachi as a turning of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers, but it can only be completely understood in the context of the prophetic ministry at the end of the age. In other words, there will be a widespread turning of fathers to the children and children to the fathers, but there will also be a specific turning of hearts that is directly related to the prophetic ministry that the Lord will release at the end of the age.

We know clearly that Jesus is the actual one who will restore the earth, but He also clearly prophesied of a ministry of Elijah that will precede Him and partner with Him to “restore all things.” (Mark 9:12). Not only is this ministry in partnership with Jesus at the moment of the transition of the age, it is also a ministry that prepares the earth to receive Jesus.

A critical component of receiving Jesus at the end of the age is not just being ready for His actual appearing, but preparation for enduring the pressures of the end of the age and agreeing with the dramatic and difficult process that God is going to use to display His power and enthrone Jesus in Jerusalem.

One of the primary functions of the spirit of Elijah at the end of the age will be to prepare people to be an unoffended bride at the end of the age. The pressures that will come on the earth in the transition to the age to come are so far beyond what we can imagine that it will require a prophetic ministry unlike what we have known to prepare the earth.

The prophetic ministry at the end of the age operating in the spirit of Elijah can be summarized as preparing people to be unoffended during the pressures of the end of the age and love Jesus deeply longing for His return and preparing a people who can partner with Jesus in the restoration of all things. While Jesus alone accomplishes the redemption of the earth, He also has a company with Him that He desires to partner with Him at the end of the age and into the Millennium (Revelation 19:14).

The Sons of the Prophets

Now the sons of the prophets who were at Bethel came out to Elisha and said…Now the sons of the prophets who were at Jericho came to Elisha and said…And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went and stood facing them at a distance, while the two of them stood by the Jordan. – 2 Kings 2:3,5,7

2 Kings 2 contains the story of Elijah’s removal from the earth and the establishment of Elisha as the prophetic heir of Elijah’s ministry. The entire context of the story is Elisha’s pursuit of Elijah in order to receive a son’s inheritance from Elijah. The inheritance Elisha desired was not Elijah’s possessions, but rather Elijah’s prophetic authority.

And so it was, when they had crossed over, that Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask! What may I do for you, before I am taken away from you?” Elisha said, “Please let a double portion of your spirit be upon me.” – 2 Kings 2:9

Elisha was not asking for double Elijah’s power. He was asking for the inheritance of the oldest son. The oldest son received a double portion because he was responsible for carrying on the father’s legacy. Elisha wanted the double portion because we wanted to carry Elijah’s prophetic authority and step into the place that Elijah had occupied.

The story is clear that there were other prophets who were aware of Elijah’s imminent departure because the chapter repeatedly mentions the “sons of the prophets.” These young prophets were even present at Elijah’s departure and observed it. The record of Elisha’s interactions with other prophets is intentionally included in order to give us proper context for the story.

It must be understood that the context of the entire story is prophetic sons. Elisha, as Elijah’s assistant, is clearly positioned to be the “oldest son” but there are many other prophetic sons in the story interacting with Elisha and, presumably, Elijah. Elisha is determined to get the inheritance of the oldest son, which was rightfully his because Elijah had appointed him as successor, but there are also many other prophetic sons that are looking to Elijah and, no doubt, hoping for an inheritance.

The initial evidence of Elisha’s inheritance is the miraculous power he was given, but Elisha also steps into Elijah’s position as a prophetic father to prophetic sons. It is clear from subsequent stories from Elisha’s life in 2 Kings that he has a continuing relationship with the sons of the prophets. It is clear that he is a father figure among the prophets and therefore Elisha received the mantle of Elijah, not just in the realm of the miraculous, but also in the way that he became a father to the sons of the prophets in the same way that Elijah had carried the anointing of a prophetic father.

The spirit of Elijah rested on Elisha and gave him the ability to serve as a father to prophetic sons. This spirit of Elijah is what Malachi prophesied.

While Malachi’s prophecy no doubt includes broader expressions of affection and respect between fathers and children, his prophecy must also include an expression of prophetic ministry between prophetic fathers and sons as exemplified by Elijah. (The context of 2 Kings 2 is sons, but to be clear when the word “sons” is used here I believe there will be both men and women who are used as prophetic vessels in the last days. Just as believers are called “sons of God,” there will be “fathers of the prophets” and “sons of the prophets” who will be both men and women.)

It is significant that the only mention we have of fathers and sons within the life of Elijah is within the context of the prophetic ministry and the transfer of prophetic authority from one generation to the next. In addition to other meanings, Malachi’s prophecy of the spirit of Elijah must also be understood in the context of developing and stewarding the prophetic ministry.

Based on the Scripture it should be expected that the prophetic ministry at the end of the age will contain a unique ministry of prophetic fathers and prophetic sons. The prophetic ministry at the end of the age will emerge in the form of both fathers and sons. In Elijah’s case, Elisha’s ministry began once Elijah’s ministry ended. At the end of the age, it is more likely that fathers and sons will exist together within the prophetic ministry all the way to the end of the age. In the spirit of Elijah, fathers will gladly give their lives to raising up sons that will likely exceed them in their public ministry. Sons likewise, will require the strength and support of prophetic fathers to full exercise their ministry. This mutual dependence on one another will be the only way for prophetic vessels to survive the pressures that will come at the end of the age. Neither Isaiah nor Jeremiah lived through the pressures that are coming.

Just as Malachi prophesied, God is orchestrating a divine dependence between fathers and sons in the prophetic ministry at the end of the age. Prophetic fathers will be required to develop prophetic sons whose ministries will exceed their own. Their test of humility will be to invest themselves fully into vessels who will likely be given more power and greater public platforms than they have. Prophetic sons will be required who will honor and receive from prophetic fathers so that their ministry may come to fullness. Their test of humility will be to remain in relationship with fathers who may have smaller spheres of ministry influence or a smaller measure of power, but much to give them from their experience of life in God.

Prophetic fathers who do not invest in sons will not be operating in the fullness of their gift and ministry. Prophetic sons who refuse to receive and relate to prophetic fathers will find their ministry lacking in the fullness that they are called to. This mutual interdependence will test the issues of pride, ambition, humility, and an independent egocentric spirit and enable prophetic voices to withstand the pressure of the last days.

The Prophetic Ministry at the End of the Age

When Malachi 4:5-6 is viewed in parallel with Mark 9:12-13 and 2 Kings 2, it becomes clear that the ministry of Elijah that is coming will involve both fathers and sons that are set in the prophetic ministry. This is not to say that Elijah himself is not coming, because he is. However, just as John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah to announce Jesus’ first coming, so too a John the Baptist company will emerge at the end of the age that will operate in the same spirit as Elijah. When we examine Elijah’s life with Elisha and the context of 2 Kings 2 and Elisha’s subsequent ministry, it becomes clear that this spirit will raise up prophetic sons.

John operated in the spirit of Elijah to prepare Israel to receive Jesus at His first coming. Jesus is coming again to “restore all things,” and this coming will affect every nation on the earth. Israel alone had the witness of the Scripture when John came, but when Jesus comes again, all nations will have the witness of Jesus (Matthew 24:14). Because all will have a witness, God will also release a final prophetic witness to every nation. There will not be just one John the Baptist in the spirit of Elijah, but rather thousands like John who will be sent out to prepare the nations of the earth to receive the One who will “restore all things.”

One voice prepared Israel for the suffering servant, but many voices will be required to prepare the entire globe for the one who will “restore all things” through a process that will physically affect all nations in a radically different way than the first coming did. The prophetic ministry that Jesus has in mind to prepare the people for His coming and for the “restoration of all things” will be under such pressure that it will require these kinds of prophets. Neither fathers nor sons alone will be able to carry out what the Lord will require. Once a mutually dependent ministry will be capable of releasing the Word of the Lord to all nations and releasing the ministry of preparation for the Day of the Lord. It is critical for the coming days that we understand this aspect of the “Spirit of Elijah” and labor for it until it comes forth.

Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “The Spirit of Elijah and Prophetic Ministry at the End of the Age.”

]]> 3 http://samuelclough.com/432/overview-of-the-beatitudes-and-rewards/ http://samuelclough.com/432/overview-of-the-beatitudes-and-rewards/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2011 14:18:01 +0000 Samuel Clough http://samuelclough.com/?p=432 More →]]>

Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “Overview of the Beatitudes and Rewards.”

Jesus gives the beatitudes as His introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. These heart values overshadow the entire sermon and they are the foundation on which the rest of His teaching is built.
Tragically, many have considered the Sermon on the Mount to represent some type of perfection that is unobtainable but that was not Jesus’ intent in giving us the sermon and the beatitudes. Others have sought a “deeper meaning” rather than simply taking the text as it is written. In reality, the beatitudes are quite clear and plain and therefore it is important that we read them with a simple, literal hermeneutic. They are not difficult to understand; they are difficult to live.

The Beatitudes serve as a measuring stick or “litmus test” for our hearts by revealing the character of God that should be formed in our own hearts. Not only is it a measuring stick for our own hearts, but it is an evaluation tool for our ministry as well. Our ministry should produce the fruit of the Sermon on the Mount in those we minister to.

Jesus was intentional in the Sermon on the Mount to directly correlate a reward with each of the beatitudes. Therefore, each of the beatitudes not only produce fruit in our own heart, but they have significant rewards attached to them. It is critical to understand that the beatitudes have a direct correlation to your future because of the significance of the rewards Jesus offers in association with each of the beatitudes. If we take Jesus’ offer of reward seriously, we will take the beatitudes seriously.

It is my personal conviction that the Beatitudes, together with the letters to the church in Revelation 2-3 were both given by Jesus to clearly and directly prepare us for the Judgment Seat. The Judgment Seat can be a terrifying reality, but Matthew 5, Revelation 2-3, and all of Scripture were given so that we could prepare ourselves to receive great reward when Jesus evaluates our life. We do not have to approach the Judgment Seat passively. We can aggressively prepare because Jesus has already given us insight into how He will evaluate our hearts on that day.

As we approach the Beatitudes as preparation for the Judgment Seat, there are several conclusions we can draw from Jesus’ offer of specific rewards in Matthew 5:

• Often we don’t take the beatitudes seriously because we don’t take Jesus’ promise of rewards seriously and because we fail to interpret His rewards literally which is the way He intended us to interpret them.
• Jesus correlated each beatitude with a significant reward in order to give us the requirements for that specific reward in the age to come. The Beatitudes are a list of “job requirements” for the age to come.
• Jesus plainly offers us rewards for each of the beatitudes because He desires to motivate us to pursue each of the beatitudes. He knows that the beatitudes are in opposition to the spirit of this age and so He offers significant reward to us to help motivate us to go against the spirit of the age and pursue the culture of His kingdom.
• Because Jesus rewards the beatitudes so significantly in His kingdom, we should likewise rewards these beatitudes in our own ministries. Jesus is giving us the values that we should value in ministry. When you build ministry teams and set a leadership culture, you would be wise to value the same things that Jesus does. He is going to invest significant authority in the age to come for those who cultivate the beatitudes in their own heart. In light of that, we should also develop ministry cultures that value those who embrace and demonstrate the beatitudes over and above those who have gifts or talents.
• Jesus desires to rewards us for these heart values. Therefore, we must see the beatitudes are being actually obtainable. Many approach the beatitudes as if they were ideals that are impossible to actually live out. Jesus intends us to pursue the beatitudes are realistic goals for our life. He longs to release strength to us through the power of the Holy Spirit to empower our weakness to actually live the Sermon on the Mount. Many completely miss out on the rewards Jesus desires to give them because they do not believe the beatitudes are realistic. All the while Jesus longs to release strength to our hearts to live them out.
• To neglect the Beatitudes is to position ourselves to suffer great loss at the Judgment Seat. The positive side of that is that embracing the Beatitudes will position our hearts for great reward on that day.

The downloadable teaching notes associated with this post look at each of the Beatitudes in light of the rewards offered to them. I would encourage you to look over these notes and pray through them. Jesus offers massive rewards for the Beatitudes and we are wise to examine each of them so that we may position our hearts to receive the rewards that Jesus wants us to received. Let’s prepare actively for the Judgment Seat by receiving the character of God in this age and positioning our heart to receive His rewards in the age to come.

This is a companion to the post “Preparing to Overcome” that examines preparing for the Judgment Seat through the messages to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3. You can read that post here.

Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “Overview of the Beatitudes and Rewards.”

]]> 0 http://samuelclough.com/400/gods-heart-in-judgment/ http://samuelclough.com/400/gods-heart-in-judgment/#comments Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:23:29 +0000 Samuel Clough http://samuelclough.com/?p=400 More →]]> Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “God’s Heart in Judgment.”

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.” – Hosea 2:14 (ESV)

The Urgency of the Hour

As we begin to transition into an hour of shakings and turmoil, there is a critical need for voices that have prophetic understanding and prophetic insight. Many believers and unbelievers are mostly unaware of the shakings that have begun but will increase exponentially in the coming days. There is a massive need for messengers that can give prophetic clarity on these judgments as well as call men to repentance because God’s judgments must be understood in light of His desire for restoration and intimacy as illustrated in Hosea 2:14-16.

As He did before Israel was sent into captivity, God will again raise up prophets who will speak the Lord’s heart in the midst of the pressure. Many of these messengers will be weeping prophets like Jeremiah and many will probably lose their lives at the hands of the very ones they desire to bring into salvation. This call will be glorious, but also exacting and demanding. Many will turn in repentance because of the judgments of the Lord, but many will harden their heart, reject the message, and persecute the messenger. Most difficult of all, much of the fiercest opposition will come from those who are now part of the church.

The shakings that are coming are going to seem very severe to us. We are going to be severely tempted to question the Lord’s leadership and methods as He shakes the earth. It is easy to be on the Lord’s side so long as it does not touch as personally, but as His shakings encompass the earth and affect all peoples, whether or not we agree with Him will become a personal question rather than a theological or academic question. As the shakings encompass the entire globe, our agreement with the Lord will not be tested on isolated events anymore, but with real effects on real human beings that are connected with us. This will be the real test of whether we have enough confidence in His character to be in agreement with His leadership.

The judgments of God cannot be approached, nor understanding of them sought, until we have full confidence in His heart.

The Revelation of God’s Heart in Hosea

Hosea had a very unusual experience of God’s heart and experienced God’s emotions in a unique way. God called Hosea to experience the same emotions that God Himself experienced by leading him into a marriage that paralleled God’s marriage to Israel. Hosea’s experience is recorded for us into to give us a unique insight into God’s heart and how He feels. Through Hosea’s eyes we see and feel what God has experienced in His plan to redeem a people.

It is impossible to view judgment, or even general shakings, properly without a proper understanding of God’s heart. To often we are interested in an academic question about whether a certain sequence of events are “judgment” or not, but we have not actually entered into the experience of God’s heart in judgment. God’s judgment is entirely different from man’s judgment because God is altogether different than man. His judgments challenge our understanding, not because He lacks love, but because we are too fallen to understanding the violent intensity of true love.

God is also a consuming fire. That consuming fire is love. Our love is weak and sentimental when contrasted against His. His love is so passionate and consuming that it confronts a lack of love. Our dark minds will accuse Him of being harsh and cruel, but the reality is that He confronts us with what real love actually is.

In order to keep our hearts in the coming season, our hearts must be established and firmly rooted in confidence that God is good and everything that He does is good because He does it. Man fell in the garden because he wanted the right to evaluate good and evil rather than living under God’s assessment. When God’s judgments are in the earth, we are forced to agree with Him because of who He is rather than in our evaluation of what we perceive to be good and evil. When His judgments are in the earth, we are brought face to face with both His goodness and our fallenness. These are fundamental doctrines, but they are tested severely when God’s judgments are in the earth. Only those who are rooted in His goodness and humble enough to accept their own condition will have an unoffended heart flowing in love as pressures increase.

Anchored in His Love

“There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. ‘In that day,’ declares the LORD, ‘you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ [literally ‘my baal’]’” – Hosea 2:15b-16

It must always be understood that the intensity of God’s love is the reason for the intensity of His judgments. His judgments are deliberately designed to break off delusion and to position men to see Him rightly and experience His love. God’s love is so intense and consuming that He is not content with being called “my god.” He will be called “my husband” by those who will love Him because this is the intimacy that He desires and He will remove everything that hinders us from drawing near to Him (Hosea 2:15-16).

His love for mankind is so strong that He will have what He wants. He will have a people that know Him as “husband” and live in close relationship with Him and experience His love. His love cannot be denied. Many men will refuse Him, but He will not be refused forever. Many will be lost, but His judgments will also lead many into love. Judgments break off delusion and we are left stripped and naked before Him. Stripped and naked, with all coping mechanisms removed, we have the option to respond in love at the deepest level.

We will not survive the coming season unless we know the consuming nature of God’s love. When we begin to experience the fierceness of His anger, we must understand that His anger comes from the fierceness of His love.

Those who understand God’s heart will receive great reward in the hour of judgment because all who respond to Him will receive the benefits of His love. He will allure us in the desert wastelands of His judgment so that He can speak tenderly to us. There He will mercifully cut us off from everything that competed for our affections. The intensity of the judgments that are upon us will cause many to faint with fear and grow embittered against God, but we must be anchored to His heart and we must begin to instruct many because God’s heart desire is to bring men to repentance so that they might be prepared for the restoration of all things.

The great need of the hour is prophets and teachers who can instruct the earth in the ways of God and give perspective for God’s judgments. We desperately need faithful witnesses with understanding because what is coming is so far beyond anything we have ever known.

Download the notes below for more on this passage and this topic.

Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “God’s Heart in Judgment.”

]]> 0 http://samuelclough.com/395/learning-to-overcome/ http://samuelclough.com/395/learning-to-overcome/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:05:53 +0000 Samuel Clough http://samuelclough.com/?p=395 More →]]> Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “Learning to Overcome.”

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” – 2 Corinthians 5:10

The Judgment Seat and Rewards

The judgment seat of Christ is a terrifying reality. Paul also tells the Corinthians that the fire will test their work and that, in that testing, there is the possibility of very real loss (1 Corinthians 3:13-15). Sadly many disregard the judgment seat entirely, living lives that are not intentional and either hoping for a reward or presumptuously expecting one. Others live in fear of the judgment seat and how their lives will be evaluated. They hope for reward, but live in fear of the evaluation of their lives.

While we must understand the reality of great loss that is possible at the judgment seat, Jesus does not intend it to be a place of loss for us. His heart’s desire is that we will be rewarded on that day. He is looking forward to that day as a day that He can show His appreciation for lives of obedience and faithfulness. The evidence of this is that even a cursory study of the rewards mentioned by Jesus will reveal that Jesus offers very substantial rewards. His rewards are not small and He longs to give them.

He is not stingy, nor is He only looking for the few that are the strongest. He longs to reward all the saints for the way they responded to His love and lived their lives. He understands the measure each one of us has been given and will reward us appropriately.

If we are going to receive rewards, we must take Jesus seriously by examining both the rewards He is offering and the qualifications for those rewards. He has made both the rewards and the requirements for the rewards clear because He wants to give them to us. It is our part to search out these things in the Scripture and then respond so that we might share His joy on that day as He rewards us.

When studying the topic of rewards, two passages must be seriously examined. The first is Matthew 5 and the second is Revelation 2-3. In both of these passages Jesus is very clear both on the rewards being offered and various qualifications for those rewards.

Applying Jesus’ Instructions to the Seven Churches

The progression of Jesus’ messages to the seven churches is unique and, I believe, significant. Jesus is giving us a clear road-map on how to keep our heart and position ourselves to receive rewards at the judgment seat in the progression of the character issues Jesus addresses. The issues Jesus addresses, and the order He addresses them in, are significant.

He identifies very clear issues that will keep us from earning rewards at the judgment seat. Conversely, if we address these specific issues, we are positioning ourselves to receive great reward at the judgment seat. If we perceive it, Jesus’ letters to the seven churches are an invitation to prepare ourselves for the judgment seat. If we “hear what the Spirit is saying” we will be positioned to receive great reward. If we neglect these heart issues, we will suffer loss.

Attached are teaching notes that work through each of the messages to the seven churches clearly, showing the progression of heart issues that must be dealt with if we are to receive reward. These are the issues that will steal our reward and cause us to suffer much loss, but used wisely, the content Jesus gave the seven churches will position us for great reward.

Notes → Click here to download the teaching notes for “Learning to Overcome.”

]]> 0 http://samuelclough.com/393/the-desperate-need-of-preparation/ http://samuelclough.com/393/the-desperate-need-of-preparation/#comments Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:17:04 +0000 Samuel Clough http://samuelclough.com/?p=393 More →]]>

Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. – 1 Corinthians 10:12 (ESV)

My heart is trembling at the desperate need of preparation in this hour. While I am sure the Lord has His prophets hidden in caves, I am also convinced we are completely unprepared for what is coming. Not only are we not prepared, I feel it is going to come much faster than we think and be upon us in a moment. In fact, it is already upon us.

Just last week I sat in a briefing for a prayer meeting with an Egyptian believer. She spoke of how unprepared the church was in the moment of pressure and crisis. She said when the revolution started the force and the pressure on the church to speak on humanitarian issues rather than Jesus was so much stronger than they had ever expected. In her opinion, under the immense pressure, the church was closer to humanism than a bold, clear witness for Jesus. My entire being was shaken to hear this saint who was in Egypt during the entire crisis repeat over and over, “The church is preaching humanism; it’s all humanism; we must preach Jesus, He alone is justice.”

I am still reeling from her words. They hit me like a hammer from the Lord. If Egypt’s church, who is familiar with a measure of pressure, was pressured towards a humanistic gospel in the hour of crisis what does that foretell for us who know almost no suffering let alone persecution? We have not even been tested by small shakings. How will be endure these kinds of pressures? Is there any hope that our gospel will be pure and that we will give a witness to Jesus when there is a palatable, humanistic option available and rejecting that option to preach Jesus only risks our own lives?

We are not as strong as we think. Most of our strength is humanistic and self-centered and will crumble in the hour of crisis. We desperately need a strength that is found in weakness. We need the strength of the Holy Spirit only, not just a bit of the Holy Spirit added to our own self-confidence.

The wisdom of God is that the church will be purified and that the gospel will go to all nations amidst great pressures and shakings. I am trembling that, amidst all our rightful zeal to get the gospel to every people group, we have not read Matthew 24 in sequence. The gospel will go to every nation, but it is in the midst of birth pains and terrible shakings. These shakings will set the hope of the church fully on Jesus and open hearts to receive the gospel.

Saints, not one of us would lead the way Jesus does. We would choose much less traumatic means, but Jesus’ zeal for a people with whole hearted love is so intense that He will use pressure to form a glorious companion. The process will be difficult and one none of us would choose, but the result will be worth it.

Let me be very clear that I do not want to disparage the church in Egypt in any way. Believers there have stood firm as a minority amidst persecution for years. There is a vibrant prayer movement being born in Egypt and I hear that they estimate nearly 2 million conversions to Jesus over the last few years. No doubt that church in Egypt is dear to Jesus and will be a bright and shining light in years ahead.

That said, I believe the Lord wants us to learn from the shaking in Egypt that pressures that we cannot imagine will seize us in a moment. In many places, pressure will probably ebb and flow, but the game has changed this year. Pressure and shaking is upon us. There is no going back. Even now, as the news has turned to Japan, believers are under much more persecution and violence than before or during the revolution.

It is being revealed that what looked like demonstrations for human rights and freedom were actually an open door for an increase or evil. The demonstrations looked noble, but any “justice” movement that does not embrace Jesus as the primary issue of justice is humanism at best and will lead to an increase in wickedness. That is beginning to be seen in Egypt as the world barely notices the believers killed there in Garbage City just last week. The result of “humanitarian protests” last week was that women are without husbands, children are without fathers, and other believers lie in hospitals. The world has “moved on” but the evil of seeking justice without Jesus is being demonstrated clearly in Egypt for those who will look.

Let Egypt be a lesson to us and give us strength to stand up and raise an alarm when the voices of men look noble and just but are devoid of Jesus. It is the time for us to get oil for our lives. It is time for us to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that we can be a faithful witness, a burning and shining light in the hour of testing.

It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. 35 Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning— 36 lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. 37 And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch! – Mark 13:34-37 NKJV

Many in the church have become both weary and wary of eschatology due to false predictions and unbiblical approaches. While we must resist unbiblical ideas or unbiblical predictions about the day of the Lord’s return, we cannot lose sight of the fact that believers are an eschatological people. Jesus is incredibly clear in His discourse in Mark 13 that He expects us to be eagerly watching for His return. Mark concludes Jesus’ description of the events that will preceded His coming with this very clear command. While many have completely focused on Jesus’ remark that only the Father knows the hour of His return, they have completely missed that fact that His entire discourse is designed to command us to have clarity and understanding as we see the times and seasons shift towards His coming.

Mark specifically concludes Jesus’ discourse with a parable where Jesus instructs us to be like gatekeepers watching for the coming of the Son of man. Jesus warns us to never stop watching because we do not know at what hour He may come. Taken in context, Jesus clearly expects that we should be able to perceive the times and seasons when He is coming. He exhorts us to remain vigilant on our watch but that is not because He wants us to be prepared for a secret rapture event, it is because He wants us to recognize the times and seasons and to be fully prepared for His coming. He expects that, as we see certain events unfold, that we prepare ourselves, and others, for His coming.

Far from being an exhortation concerning a secret event, the urgency in Jesus’ words is that His coming will not take us by surprise. He intends us to be watching so intently that we do perceive the season of His coming as we watch events unfold. Jesus is burdened knowing that the human heart quickly grows dull and that is why there is such urgency in His voice through this entire passage exhorting us to keep watch lest His coming catch us by surprise. He intends us to be aware of the times and seasons so that we may be a witness in the midst of eschatalogical events. In fact, this is Jesus’ strategy to fulfill Matthew 24:14.

For the generations that have passed without seeing His return, Jesus’ burden is that they live in urgency because He knows that it is impossible to live rightly in this age without eagerly and constantly watching for His return. Jesus’ words especially carry weight for those who will find caught up in the actual experience of these cataclysmic events. Mark recorded just verses earlier that those days will be so filled with anguish that God has to shorten them for the sake of the saints (Mark 13:20), therefore Jesus is so burdened for that generation that He especially wants them watching carefully so that they will be like a gatekeeper protecting the servants by watching carefully for the Master’s return.

So few are watching for His return day and night like a gatekeeper, yet Mark tells us here that Jesus was releasing this command like a cry to all. The intensity in Jesus’ voice in Mark 13:37 (NKJV) is shocking, “And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” In other words, Jesus did not give this message once or just to a few people, but He was crying out to all. He was crying out to all who would listen to watch. Jesus cried out to all to watch, because living in a posture of looking for the signs of His coming is not option, but required. Just as He preached repentance to all, so too He instructed all to watch. He knew that a posture of watchfulness was the only thing that would keep their hearts prepared.

Right now we see believers of all kinds preparing and focusing on taking the gospel to every nation and even every people group. Knowing God’s jealousy for His Son’s name, this obviously pleases His heart immensely. In the midst of all all the valuable preparations for the final wave of missionary activity across the earth, my heart is burdened concerning whether or not we are also watching like gatekeepers and preparing for the very crises Jesus warned us about because this crises are inseparable from the fulfillment of the task of world evangelism.

Matthew’s parallel account of Jesus’ teaching on the end times specifically positions massive shakings before the promise of the gospel going to every people group. In other words, completion of the task of world evangelism takes place in the context of political and geological shakings so intense that Jesus concludes them by saying that God shortens those days specifically so that the saints will actually survive (Mark 13:20).

While there is a lot of excitement and anticipation, and rightly so, concerning new church planting and missions movements, it is disturbing that there is also little preparation for the intensity of the days when the gospel reaches the ends of the earth. God has so orchestrated the plan of history that the pressure of the last days and the evangelization of the earth are parallel events running together in partnership. The crisis of the last days is one of the primary mechanisms that causes the gospel to spread to every people group on the earth. This is a staggering and terrifying reality.

We must prepare our heart for the pressures of that day so that we can stand. Jesus Himself cried out, “Watch!” To put it simply, to be doing missions, ministry, or laboring in the marketplace without an eschatological urgency is simply foolish. In all of our excitement regarding the spread of the gospel we must remember that Jesus warned that the earth has never seen the kind of tribulation or anguish it will see in that day (Mark 13:19). Think of whatever you see as the most horrible period of pressure or persecution and then consider the weight of Jesus’ words. There has never been a day like the day that is coming and that day will come in the context of global proclamation of Jesus.

It is exciting and terrifying all in the same moment. It means we are living in one of the most exciting, and yet also the most difficult, periods in human history. We must be preparing. We must understand that this is the reason for the prayer rooms that are springing up across the earth. Many believers are excited a the amazing proliferation of prayer rooms that we are seeing as the prayer movement increases, but we also must have clarity on why the Lord is raising up the prayer movement at this time.

There is a very specific strategy in the Lord’s heart for raising up the prayer movement. He knows the pressure that is coming so He is beginning now to build a praying people. Small, weak prayer rooms all around the earth are incubators where the Lord is seeking to grow and develop believers that will be able to endure the pressure and lead others in the moment of crisis. It is critical that we understand the prayer movement from this perspective. If we do not, our prayer rooms will not have the razor sharp focus the Lord desires for them.

The last days, world evangelization, and the prayer movement are bound together like a three-fold cord. You cannot separate them. You also cannot properly understand any of them without the others. God, in His manifold wisdom, has bound these three together. Both the increase of prayer rooms and the possibility of completing the task of world evangelization in the next generation are both eschatological realities. We must see them as such and embrace this reality lest we risk being found like the virgins running out of oil as the midnight hour approached.

And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” – Revelation 4:8 ESV

All around the throne there are voices. Day after day, night after night they never stop. The throne room never knows silence. They live in the presence of the One upon the throne and, though they attempt to cover their eyes, they cannot help but shout out how utterly majestic and different from us He is. There voices are strong and loud as though they are calling all of creation to worship. They shout out what they see, hear, and feel around that throne. They lift their voices that all of creation might cast its gaze steadfastly upon that throne and the glorious One upon it. They desire that all of creation feel the simultaneous joy and terror of being near the Uncreated One.

It is critical that we fully understand the ministry of these creatures if we are to understand what it really means to be human. It is tragic that focus so little attention on the activity in the throne room because, in so doing, we end up missing our own calling. Man was made, like these terrible creatures, to gaze upon and experience the raw reality of the One on the throne. We were made to experience the simultaneous joy, pleasure, terror, and awe that comes from being near the throne. In many ways, our call is similar to the living creatures, but there is also a critical difference. Man was not made just to experience God, but he was made to gaze upon that glory and then cry out calling all of creation to worship. Man is to both experience the glory of God and declare it to creation. Man is meant to be a voice proceeding from the throne.

What is stunning about this is that it is one thing to cry out amidst the weight of the glory of the throne room, but it is altogether a different thing to cry out throughout creation to those who have not known the weight and the glory of the throne room and yet this is the high calling of man. We are to take the glory of the One upon the throne, experience it, and then declare it so vividly, so alive that creatures who have never caught a glimpse of that glorious room will be struck with awe and compelled to worship because of the power of our proclamation of His beauty.

Given the high nature of this call, what man is sufficient to communicate the glory of the throne room to the rest of creation? In order to bring creation into the knowledge of God, man’s duty is not just to cry out concerning the glory of the throne room, but to actually carry the glory of that throne room so that his proclamation to creation may be accompanied by the testimony of the weight of glory resting on him. God does not just intend that we tell creation of His glory, He intends that the weight of glory on us as we describe the Uncreated One is a witness to the words that we speak. Our proclamation is to be confirmed by the weight of the presence on us.

Jesus commanded us to disciple men from every nation, but we must understand that Jesus’ command in Matthew 28:19 was not a brand new command. Jesus was calling man back to his original purpose. Man has always been called to disciple creation. Man was created to communicate to all of creation the grandeur and glory of God. Man was always meant to have the weight of glory resting on him from His privileged place before God and then travel the great expanse of creation declaring the glory of God.

This is why the union of prayer and missions that we are currently seeing is so significant. It is the recovery of man’s ultimate purpose. In the place of prayer, men gaze upon the throne room and the weight of glory begins to rest on them. From that place then, they are to be sent, as voice from the throne, declaring the glory of God and discipling creation. Only when prayer and missions are combined, can the desire of Jesus’ heart be fulfilled. Men must obtain the knowledge of God in the place of prayer where they hear His voice and are then sent like arrows into all the earth to declare what they have seen and heard.

We are called to be voices, not echos, proceeding from the throne. A voice has to have seen and heard and what they have seen and heard must be burning and alive within them. When creation encounters a messenger like this, they are brought into a raw confrontation with God. No longer is the issue one of the message or one of the words brought by the messenger. The messenger did not just bring them a new message, the messenger brought them a confrontation with God. This is what it means to be a voice proceeding from the throne.

When we live in sin and compromise, we forfeit our ability to call the nations to the glory of God. When we forfeit this calling, then creation lacks the knowledge of God because we were made to carry it throughout creation. Part of the reason we so love to explore creation and search out locations is because we were made to carry the knowledge of God throughout creation. God gave us the desire to search out creation so that we might declare His glory and bring all of creation into the knowledge of God.

Your sin does not just destroy you as an individual, it keeps creation from coming into the knowledge of God. This is why the enemy gives so much effort and energy to polluting mankind. So long as mankind is bound in sin, he fails to bring the creation into the knowledge of God. The bondage of man becomes the bondage of creation. This is what is behind the enemy’s temptation. Every pornographic image, every bit of the lust of the flesh and the pride of life is aimed at this one thing. Demons are working night and day to keep men enslaved to sin in order to keep them from bringing the knowledge of God to creation. Your sin then is more than a “failure” it is a war that we do not fully comprehend all aimed at keeping all of creation from coming into the knowledge of God.

If you ever doubted the call of man, gaze at the man Jesus. When man failed to carry the knowledge of God into creation, God’s response was not to call angels to the task, but rather to become a man Himself. He kept His covenant with man. Man forever would be the creature called to declare the glory of God to all creation. Is this not what Jesus constantly did? Throughout His entire ministry He was very clear that He was demonstrating the nature of the Father. He was carrying the message and likeness of the Father. In doing this He was also calling all mankind back into their original calling. This is why He insisted the disciples wait in Jerusalem for the power of the Holy Spirit. He did not just want them to just carry words, He wanted them to also have the presence within, as He did, so that they actually carried the knowledge of God to the nations and not just stories about Him.

Volumes could be written on these things, but from these few words, I call you out of your sin and bondage. I call you out of despair. I set before you the high call of gazing upon the throne and carrying the knowledge of God into all creation. I call you to the redemption and cleansing of Jesus that you may gaze upon that throne. I call you to disciple men in the nations of the earth that creation may encounter the knowledge of God (which it will know fully when the ultimate witness, Jesus, returns to the earth and brings creation into the full knowledge of God as God). I call you to actually fight. You are in this war whether you know it or not. You can be a casualty or a soldier. Power from the throne room is available. Let’s receive the full power of the Holy Spirit under the cleansing blood of Jesus and release a witness in the nations of the earth. Let us become, and raise up, voice proceeding from the throne.

Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me. – Isaiah 49:16 (NAS95)

Though most commentators see YHWH as comparing his tender concern for Israel with the religious practice of marking one’s flesh for religious reasons, one can only imagine what YHWH was feeling when He gave this word to Isaiah. This was not just allegorical or figurative language for YHWH. Centuries later, He was going to actually write them on His hands.

Just outside Jerusalem, YHWH laid open His hands before a Roman guard and allowed nails to inscribe Israel forever on His own two hands. Then nail pierced Him and He felt the agony throughout His body. His heart was throbbing in His chest. His body was already wracked with pain as He lay on His back trying to breath and preparing His frame, which was fading fast, for the agony of the cross. As He opened His hand, Israel was driven into the flesh of His palm.

What YHWH prophesied through Isaiah became real and tangible on that dusty hill just outside of Jerusalem. YHWH’s own flesh was now marked for the sake of Israel. It was a permanent piercing so that, for all eternity, those who gaze upon the throne can see His tender love for Israel physically marked on His palms and in His side. Just as Adam’s bride was taken from his side, so too God’s side now has the scar from which His bride is being formed. The wounds are so real that He even invited Thomas to even inspect the actual scars left on His body.

What kind of love brought the Creator to so humble Himself? He not only inscribed Israel on His palm, but He allowed men to do the inscribing. He submitted in love to take the punishment no man could bear. He submitted to humiliation that no other being could endure. Out of love, He forever carved His people on His very body.

Gaze into those pierced hands and you will clearly see Israel inscribed on them. Though Israel was called out as His own, in inscribing Israel on His palms, He also issued an invitation to every man, woman, and child to come into the promises and blessings of Israel. Look carefully again. Not only is Israel carved into His hands, but you beloved are carved there. He has made a way for You to come into all the promises given to Israel.

How can you not give your all in love to such a one? What sacrifice is too great to know that kind of love? Saints, we are actually written on the very hands of God.

“Don’t be intimidated in any way by your enemies. This will be a sign to them that they are going to be destroyed, but that you are going to be saved, even by God himself. For you have been given not only the privilege of trusting in Christ but also the privilege of suffering for him.” – Philippians 1:28–29 (NLT-SE)

Perseverance of believers in the face of suffering is one of the primary testimonies of the age to come and the truth of the gospel. Not only is it a testimony to unbelievers, it is also a great privilege. The privilege of believing, of coming into the understanding of Jesus, is one thing, but there is an additional privilege in suffering. That privilege is not just coming into an understanding of Jesus, but coming into real, physical participation with His life by living a life of a similar kind as His was. I wonder how many of us consider suffering to actually be a privilege? We do not because we do not understand the significance of suffering.

Not only is suffering a privilege, but it is at the very heart of Jesus’ exaltation and Paul is connecting the believers in Philippi to his description of Jesus’ exaltation in the first 11 verses of chapter 2. Paul’s encouragement to the church to embrace suffering is his logical conclusion to his own consideration of Jesus’ own sufferings which began in the first part of the chapter.

Because Jesus’ sufferings led to His exaltation, therefore he is encouraging the church as well to embrace her sufferings that she might follow her master, both in temporary suffering and in permanent reward from God. Paul is encouraging them to follow the divine pattern. Their reward in the age to come is dynamically connected to their suffering in this age, just as Jesus’ present exaltation as ruler over the universe was the result of His suffering.

Obeying God in blessing can be easy, and this is not to say that God does not release blessing or that all blessing is wrong. However, there is something unique about suffering. Suffering demonstrates the authenticity of love. Suffering is what disarms the powers and principalities because when a heart is unmoved by suffering then a fragrance of love arises that they are powerless against. When love arises in the midst of suffering, the powers are completely stripped of their powers over the one who is full of love in the mist of suffering.

When believers love during suffering, it demonstrates their love for God as a person rather than love for God merely as a benefactor. While God is our source, it is also critical that we understand these two kinds of love and suffering is the tool to demonstrate what kind of love we have. The test of suffering reveals that we love God for who He is and not what He does for us unless, tragically, we fail the test.

When we demonstrate that kind of love, it is a rebuke to the powers and principalities who live only for their own benefit and constantly seduce men to live in the same way. In many cases, it is the suffering of the church that breaks the drunken delusion of the age and confronts lost men with the reality of deception.

The world has no answer for a suffering church. The powers and principalities are stripped and exposed by a suffering church. A suffering church is the ultimate rebuke for this age and it is the ultimate sign of the age to come. When men begin to give their lives and lose their privileges for the sake of the age to come it is the witness that God will save them and a witness to men who live only for their own benefit and pleasure that they will be destroyed.

A persecutor can destroy the body, but he is powerless against those who willingly suffer for their master. Lost men may refuse to hear the words of the gospel, but they are incapable of ignoring the testimony of the suffering of the saints. How many have been converted not just from the words of a gospel witness, but from the demonstration of the gospel in a suffering man or woman? It is easy to reject words. It is another thing altogether to gaze at the one who willingly suffers, even unto death, for the unseen God.

When that kind of suffering takes place, the unseen God becomes visible in front of those witnessing the suffering. It is the ultimate testimony of Jesus. No more are ideas and concepts about God only ideas. Those ideas take on flesh and blood in the suffering saint before them. When lost men and women see the saint willingly giving their life for the salvation of the age to come, it confronts their empty and hollow lives that are relentlessly driven by their own desire for self preservation.

This kind of witness is demanding. It requires a church willing to lay down her life, but it is the call of Jesus. He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him and this is what that following looks like. It is willingness to suffer for the gospel. it is willingness to lose benefit in this life, even to the point of losing our own breath, in order to be a demonstration to this age that Jesus is worthy of love. Not only is He worthy of love in general, but He is worthy of this kind of love in particular.

God is looking for a people that He can trust with suffering because He wants to put the gospel on display. He wants to embarrass the powers and principalities. He wants a rebuke to lost men in this age so that their delusion might be shattered and they might have the opportunity to repent.

Let us set our hearts before Him and commit to take up this cross that His name might be made great. This is not a casual conflict, but a weighty battle. The powers are not intimidated us when we do not challenge them, but when we embrace suffering, we challenge them directly with truth. Grace is needed, but let us not back off from this, but let us embrace suffering as did our Lord.

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, And to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one, And to your offspring, who is Christ. – Galatians 3:16

Abraham only received a part of his promise in his son Isaac. In other words, Isaac was the fulfillment of a promise of descendants, but Isaac was not the promised descendent. There was another descendant that would come from Abraham. Abraham is such a towering figure of faith because, even in receiving Isaac, he had to continue to look forward to promises that his eyes never saw before death.

We are caught in a similar predicament. We receive the Holy Spirit both as a fulfillment of the promise and as a downpayment of the promise to come. We are given the very real gift of the Holy Spirit and yet the Scripture is also very clear that there is a much greater fulfillment coming. This is what causes Paul to use words such as “down payment,” “earnest money,” and “deposit” to describe our present experience of the Holy Spirit.

Just as Abraham received Isaac as a testimony that the promised Son would come forth, we must also receive the Holy Spirit as a testimony that the promised Son will return. Just as Abraham was tested on the promise that a Son would come forth that would give him an inheritance in every nation (Gen 12), we are given the Holy Spirit as a testimony that God will fulfill His promise and resurrect our entire body. Abraham had to wander Canaan as a witness looking for the kingdom the Son would establish. In the same way, believers are spread into every part of the earth, as nomads of heart, waiting for the promised Son to fulfill that inheritance.

Given the low place eschatology, and a solid, real eschatological hope presently has among God’s people, can we honestly say we have the faith of Abraham? Abraham had to trust that God would raise up a Seed to bring blessing to the nations from a barren womb. We are being asked to watch, wait, deny ourselves, and live soberly in anticipation of that promised Seed returning, judging the earth, and bringing restoration to creation. The resurrection of creation is no less a miracle than what Abraham carried in his heart. If we are not living constantly in an eschatological perspective, making decisions with the literal day of the Lord in view, are we living as Abraham did?

Our faith is to be just as active, rugged, and absolute as Abraham’s was. Many of us may be “coasting” feeling like we are living in the fulfillment of what Abraham ached and longed for, but the reality is that living the Christian life as God intended it will require a faith as demanding as Abraham’s. If he could speak, Abraham would be urging us to live with a heart that is just as uncomfortable with the present as his own way. He would be pleading with us to live longing for the second appearance of Messiah as strongly as he longed for the first.

Abraham’s longing caused him to wander with no real home looking for a city that God built. In other words, his heart was so set on a future city that he refused to settled in any of the contemporary cities. He would rather wander uncomfortably to maintain a longing for a future city then to settled in a city and risk losing the ache and the longing. I wonder sometimes if we give credence to the coming city, but dull the ache in our heart by being too settled in the cities of our time.

Abraham received Isaac in joy, but even this child of promise caused his heart to long for the appearance of the ultimate seed that could fulfill all the promises. Do we receive the Holy Spirit with all the joy and eagerness that Abraham embraced Isaac with and then long from the depths of our heart to see the fulfillment of the promises with the Holy Spirit points us to or are we content with what we have now?

We must acknowledge that It is to our shame that we have so little interest in the Holy Spirit. It is as shameful for us as it would have been for Abraham to not embrace the baby Isaac. However, for those that eagerly receive from the Spirit, do we allow the Spirit to do His full work of causing us to long for the appearing of the promise? Abraham was called to sacrifice his son Isaac on a hill so that he would know the ultimate promise was not Isaac, but something greater.

So too, the Holy Spirit desires that we receive all that He will give us, but He longs to point us to something more than we have in this age. He wants to cause our hearts to ache that we might receive something greater in the physical return of Jesus to the planet and the resurrection of our entire being by the Holy Spirit. Abraham did receive Isaac back, but he also crossed over into a confidence that God would fulfill all His promises no matter what happened to Abraham. The willingness to sacrifice Isaac was not just an issue of Isaac, it actually changed Abraham’s heart and joined it to God’s promise in a new way. Like Abraham, we need to have our hearts bonded to God’s promises.

Again, do not make the mistake of despising what God has given now, but do not make the critical mistake of losing sight of the ultimate promise that is coming. What is given now is given unto inspiring faith to believe that God will do all that He has promised. In other words, the Holy Spirit and eschatology are inseparably linked.

The clear evidence of this is found in Acts 2. The Holy Spirit so filled Peter with faith, enabling him to believe that God would do all that He had promised, that Peter immediately connected the gift of the Holy Spirit with Joel 2. Since that time, whenever there is an unusual outpouring of the Holy Spirit one of the primary results is a sudden urgency with regard to the return of the Lord. Believers suddenly feel the nearness of His return and it becomes an integral part of their proclamation.

What this also means is that when believers give testimony to the Holy Spirit but have little or no real interest in the return of the Lord, in the sense that it alters the way that they live, that something is lacking in their experience of the Spirit. Perhaps God is asking many of us to sacrifice our present enjoyment of the Holy Spirit, as Abraham did Isaac, that we might no longer consider what we enjoy now to be the fulfillment but that, like Abraham, we might exercise faith in looking for a greater fulfillment. The heart transformation that would come from such a sacrifice is real and substantial.

The issue is not to lay aside our experience of the Holy Spirit. God forbid we should ever do that! The issue is that our present enjoyment of the Holy Spirit must not be an end in itself, but rather we must sacrifice our present satisfaction that we might allow the Holy Spirit to transform us into pilgrims like Abraham. If He is given full control, He will do this work. So long as we are content with just a little of the Holy Spirit now, we are like Abraham refusing to sacrifice Isaac. We are like little children so enamored with our present gift, that we have no faith for a future promise that God is calling us to.

God is looking forward, let us not look back. We must take all that has been given, not despising any of His present gifts, but we must also keep pressing forward looking for the “Day of the Lord” which will be the fulfillment of the promises regarding the Seed. God is looking to see if there are any men who consider His promise worthy actually rearranging their lives around it. He is looking for saints that believe His word, in spite of all opposition, and are looking forward to the complete fulfillment of the promise first given in the garden. Anything less is not following in our Father Abraham’s footsteps.

And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. – Ephesians 5:2 (ESV)

The fragrance that arose from the cross up to the very throne in the heavens was rich and so full beyond the glorious act of the atonement. Jesus did far more on the cross than atone for sins. Recognizing this does not take away from His atonement because that was a massive work that no other being in the universe was capable of accomplishing. Just the consideration of it requires a holy tremble within our heart. However, we must look beyond the doctrine of the atonement and look into the person of YHWH if we are going to perceive the totality of what was happening on that cross. Looking through the atonement to the person will ultimately make the atonement even more rich because it will become rooted, not just in an action of sacrifice, but in the person that accomplished that act.

The cross was an offering with a fragrance and aroma that we cannot even understand. As Jesus of Nazareth hung naked gasping for each breath, an incredibly fragrant aroma rose from that cross and permeated the entire universe. There was a smell everywhere for those that perceived it and it was the very fragrance of God Himself. As Jesus hung there exposed and dying, He exposed for all men the very heart of God. Nowhere is the very nature and identity of God on display as it is on the cross. On that tree, God exposed Himself and demonstrated God as God in fact is. YHWH was put on full display as the Jewish Son of God hung dying, innocent of every accusation. All could see exactly what the nature of God was like by viewing the Son of man gasping, self sacrificially, on that cross. The cross was YHWH at His most vulnerable moment as He willingly allowed His life blood to escape.

As Jesus of Nazareth gasped for breath, tenderly exposed for all who stood by and mocked, a fragrant aroma filled the universe. Every angel could see an aroma rising up just outside of Jerusalem as God was being put on display. From the cross, a divine smell rose and permeated the universe. Angels stood shocked as they smelled the very incense that they have smelled coming from the throne for millennia rising up from a broken, dying Jewish man on a cross.

Demons recoiled in anger and hate as they smelled that fragrance. The were fixated on the suffering and death of the Son of God, but as He hung dying their glee turned to disgust and anger. The fragrance that was rising from that cross and increasingly permeating the universe was their first hint that their plan had gone very wrong. They sought to kill God and as God lay dying, the very fragrance of God will being spread throughout the universe, from the depths of Sheol to the highest heavens. They sought to destroy His revelation through Jesus of Nazareth and instead caused His fragrance to abound.

It is a real tragedy that our minds have been dominated only by the act of redemption on the cross. That act was massive and deserves our focus, but there is another revelation on the cross that is critical and that is the very revelation of the person of YHWH. We are interested in the atonement to secure a release from hell, but what if YHWH is primarily concerned with the revelation of Himself to us over and above our rescue from hell? What if our escape from hell is not primarily about our pleasure, but rather about YHWH’s desire to have a people that know Him intimately and long for deeper companionship with Him so deeply that they cannot even conceive of pleasure apart from intimate union with YHWH and the knowledge of His heart?

We are called to be the bride and I am afraid that most of us are more content with being relatives of God rather than a bride. We want the benefits of knowing the King and living under His benefits, but do we have deep desire for the King Himself? Do we want to lay aside our name and our desires in life so that we can unite with His name and know His desires? Has His happiness become our happiness? Are we truly devoted to YHWH “for better or worse” or are we simply using Him for His benefits?

I am convinced right now, at this moment, the heart of YHWH is pained that so few really gaze deeply into that moment when He exposed Himself tenderly and even vulnerably so that mankind could see the heart beat that is at the center of God. What heartache must be in His holy heart as He reflects on how few can even smell a token of the fragrance that filled the entire universe in His most vulnerable moment when He made His bold declaration of love for a race of beings; most of whom could hardly care if He exists.

I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. – 2 Corinthians 7:35 (ESV)

2 Corinthians 7 contains Paul’s well known views on sexuality and marriage. Paul begins by stating his opinion that it would be better for more individuals to be single as he was so that they could be wholly devoted to the Lord. For Paul, there was an urgency to prepare for the Day of the Lord, so it was completely natural that he would exhort believers to lay aside anything that could potentially divert their focus from preparing for, and laboring in light of, that day.

At the same time that Paul advocates for his lifestyle, he also validates marriage by specifically addressing the sexual component of marriage. This is unique because usually when addressing behavior that is unhelpful for the church, Paul simply exhorts the saints to lay it aside or, simply put, stop it. However, in the case of sexuality, Paul’s logic throughout the chapter affirms sexuality and it would be fair to summarize Paul’s argument as being that celibacy is advantageous, but if an individual’s desire is too strong then it is appropriate to marriage in order to have an outlet for that desire.

This tells us what we already know which is that there is something very unique about sexual desire. I am not quite sure we understand fully the sexual desire, the uniqueness of it, or God’s ultimate purpose in it. I also fear our present society is so sexualized that it could be almost impossible for us to come to a full, proper understanding of sexuality which properly recognizes its power and God’s gift in it while also refusing to allow it to become an obsessive and compulsive thing.

Regardless, in the midst of Paul’s clear instructions on sexuality we are prone to miss Paul’s primary point. Paul’s ultimate directive on sexuality and marriage is that one should choose the path which enables them to be most devoted to Jesus. Paul argues this point by initially saying he believes it best to be fully dedicated to the Lord without being engaged in marriage or sexuality and then shifting that argument by saying that if an individual’s desire is too strong and overwhelms them that they should marry so that they can express that desire.

What is Paul’s point? Paul’s point is clear. Sexuality and marriage are to be lived out in such as a way as enable each individual to best devote themselves to Jesus. For some, this means receiving the gift to abstain and, in so doing, devoting themselves completely to Jesus. For others, whose sexual desire is too strong, it means marrying so they can express that desire and have their hearts free to love Jesus more deeply then if they were constantly bound up by desire. Ultimately, neither way is sin and the way we choose to live should be based on what enables us to be most devoted to Jesus.

While Paul’s conclusions affirm, and validate, the incredible strength of sexual desire, I wonder if we truly approach marriage and sexuality with Paul’s ultimate value system? In our sexuality, whether abstaining or indulging, are we choosing the path that allows us the greatest measure of devotion to Jesus?

Whether we pursue marriage or a celibate life is a decision to be worked out before the Lord. However, what is critical is that we express our sexuality in a way that deepens devotion to Jesus. Sexuality is not just an isolated experience or desire. It is a part of us and therefore should be managed and expressed so that we can be most dedicated to Jesus and live for the glory of God. As we consider sexual issues, let us no longer make it primarily an issue or marriage or not marriage or one thing or another, but let us, like Paul, make the primary issue devotion to Jesus.

Given that most choose to marry, I would extend Paul’s logic by saying to those that have chosen to indulge in sexuality should evaluate their sexuality in light of what strengthens their devotion to Jesus. Our culture is so sexualized that sexuality has no longer become simple, even for believers. For those that marry, you must realize that sexuality is not divorced from the rest of your person. Set your heart when considering sexual matters to choose the path that leads your and your spouse into the deepest level of devotion to Jesus. Like Paul, let’s make the primary issue, not the sex act, but rather our devotion to Jesus in all things. How glorious it is when men and women choose every in every are of life, whether food, drink, vocation, education, or sexuality, the path that frees their heart to be most devoted to Jesus and experience the deep joy of being properly related to God.

Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. – Hebrews 13:3

In all the news about the war in Afghanistan, it is rarely mentioned that the “new” government that the US has supported in place of the Taliban has no freedom of religion at all. Shockingly, a member of the Afghan parliament recently openly called for the execution of Christians in Afghanistan. Even more shocking is that our government continues to work closely with the Afghan government rather than addresses this fundamental injustice. Amazingly, Americans seem concerned about terrorism, but completely ignorant of the fact that the government we support in that nation is willing to execute Christians as policy. May God touch you with the reality of their persecution as you read the letter below from the Afghan Christian community. Here the ache in their voice and the fear that their pain is unfelt and ignored in the rest of the world.

To the Body of Christ:

“This letter is written by the Afghan Christian Community in India which is a small community of 150 Afghan Christian refugees and asylum seekers.

“We left our country because we were sentenced to death on the account of our Christian faith (conversion), as Afghanistan is a Muslim Country, the Afghan Government is an Islamic government, and Islam is the only formal religion of the country, and according to the Constitutional law of the Afghan Islamic Republic, conversion is considered as a big crime, Christian are called pagans and infidels and are sentenced to death by the Afghan Government. Christians are considered criminals. Death penalty is waiting for all those who want to leave the darkness and come to the true light, repent from their sins, and put their faith on the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Lord and Savior of all human being.

“We believe that you (the Body of Christ) have already heard that some pictures and movies of the Afghan believers (from Delhi and Kabul) were shown by an Afghan Private TV (Noorin TV), this TV channel showed these picture in a especial program (Sarzameen Man), and the Government and people were encouraged and provoked to think about the issue of conversion, to make a stand against it and to take serious and practical measures and actions to destroy Afghan Converted Christians (Sons of God) and those who share the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Lost.

“The Afghan Parliament, Senate, Religious Council and Islamic Parties and leaders made statements that the Afghan Government has to search, find, arrest, deliver to courts and executes all Afghan Christians, and the Christian NGOs and Organization have to be stopped too. University students protested against Afghan Christians in Kabul and Herat Provinces, and the Afghan Government also made a statement that all Afghan Christians will be arrested and executed, and the Christian NGOs and Organizations which involved with the issues of conversion will be closed.

“Mr. Mujajdi, the Chairman Of Afghan Senate, said that if the Afghan Government does not take serious action, he and other Islamic leaders will call and request the Afghan people to take practical measures to kill all Afghan Christians. President Karzai himself showed his personal interest in this regard and said that all Afghan Christians will be arrested and executed and Christian organizations which are involved with this issue will be stopped. He ordered the Afghan security organs to take serious measures in this regard.”’

“The Afghan Home Minister and the Chairman of the Afghan Intelligence told the Afghan Parliament that 4 Afghan Christian individuals and one family have been arrested and they are under investigation, 13 NGOs have been named and suspended, the names of Afghan Christians have been listed, and the Afghan Intelligence agency is trying to arrest them. Two Church organizations have been closed. As we are in contact with our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan, many believers are arrested, our houses are checked by police and intelligence people in Afghanistan, our families and parents (though they are Muslim) are under investigation and even arrested, and all Afghan believers are misplaced.”

The letter-writers, “(Afghan Christian Community) along with our other Afghan Christian brothers and sisters who are in Afghanistan” request you to:
“Pray for us and for this critical situation, pray for those who are arrested, and those who are under investigation. Please come together and help your Afghan brothers and sisters in Christ, as we are sentenced to death, we are arrested, we are under investigation, the Afghan Government kills us because we believe on Jesus Christ, we know that we should consider it pure joy when we suffer (James 1: 1 -4), and we are enjoying all suffering all joy. But we also know that faith without deeds is useless (James 2: 14 – 17), and this is the time to raise your voice for your brothers and sisters, for our children, for our old parents, for the execution of thousand Afghan believers. “This is the day that all of us should come together and pray, think, help and raise our voices to the International Community, to put pressure on the Afghan Government to stop killing, persecuting and executing Afghan Christians, to give us freedom of religion, to respect and accept us as Afghan Christians.

“We do not know how the whole world and especially the Global Church is silent and closing their eyes, while thousand of their brothers and sisters (Body of Christ) are in pain, facing life danger and death penalty, and are tortured, persecuted and called criminals because they believe in the Truth.

“We need to wake up, get up and speak up today, and to prove it that we are really in concern, and care for our brothers and sisters in Christ, we should help the persecuted part of the body of Christ, for His Glory. If we really believe that Lord Jesus Christ is God, then, He commands us to love Him and to love our neighbor, if our own brothers and sisters, are in pain and suffering, and we are silent and we ignore them and their suffering, then the question is that do we really obey Lord Jesus’ commandment to love Him and our neighbor?”

The letter concludes: “So, dear brothers and sister (the Body of Christ), we (Afghan Christian Community in New Delhi) on behalf of all Afghan Christians request you to support us by your prayers and practical measures, let us tell the Afghan Government that we are not pagans and infidels, we are not criminals because of our Christian faith, and let us tell them not to sentence us to death.”

You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased. – (Revelation 4:11 NLT-SE)

There is also a very personal application found in this verse in the fact that God created what He desired and what pleased Him. This means that, as Creator, He has deep desire for His creation because it was created out of desire. It was not an accident, nor something from which God is emotionally removed, but rather God has intimate desire for each thing He created. Though so much of creation is necessarily under judgment because of sin, creation still exists because God desired it and because He created things that gave Him pleasure. Properly understanding this gives us both confidence and a high vision for the way we live.

Understanding that we were created for His pleasure gives us boldness and confidence before the throne of God. So long as we were bound in sin, we were enemies of God but, because He desired what He created, He was not content with man’s sin and made a way of salvation. Therefore, if we are right standing with God, having repented of sin, believed in Jesus, and received salvation, understanding that we exist and were created because God desired us enables us to stand before God with great confidence (see Hebrews 4:16).

Knowing that we exist because of His desire gives us strength to overcome the lies of the enemy because the evil one will constantly try to drive a wedge of separation between us and God and one of His most common attacks is in this area of confidence in our position before God. When we are lost in sin, we are right to have no confidence before the throne because of our rebellion, but when we have come into repentance and salvation, we can stand in confidence knowing that our very existence is not something that was accidental or something that has no relation to the desire of God’s heart, but rather our very existence is for the pleasure of God.

Not only does this gives us confidence, but it should also give us a high calling and vision for our lives. If we were created for His pleasure, then we must ask the question, are we living in such a way to give Him pleasure? In other words, do we connect to the reality of this verse to the way we live in a tangible and material way. Do we sit before God and consider the things that give Him pleasure? Do we live our life before Him with the constant desire that our lives give pleasure to Him or are we so self absorbed that we see God only as a vehicle that we can use for the pursuit of our own pleasure? Sadly, many fall into this trip and use God for feelings of peace, an escape from hell, or to obtain prosperity in some way. In reality, this is a very low vision for life because it is essentially a self absorbed life, and it is also dangerous because the self absorbed life always leads our hearts into the bondage of sin. Saints, we have a much higher calling and that is to a life that gives God pleasure.

This is not merely an abstract idea, but a reality and we can live in such a way that God receives pleasure from our lives. Not only can we give Him real pleasure, but our own hearts will feel the reality of His pleasure. Tragically, the deception of this age has obscured the reality of what true pleasure actually is. So many are in deception believing that real pleasure is found in pleasing self and therefore most individuals are completely self absorbed. In reality, the highest pleasure is found in living for God’s pleasure and then experiencing His pleasure upon us. Living for the pleasure of God is a high calling, while living for our own pleasure is a low and base calling. Living for God’s pleasure will lead us to beauty, purity, holiness, and joy. Living for our own pleasure will lead to selfishness, sin, and bondage.

Not only is living for God’s own pleasure a high calling, it is actually the way to experience the heights of human pleasure. The reality is that man was made for God and there is no way we can escape this reality. No matter how far we run or rebel, we were made for God. Because of this, our highest fulfillment and pleasure is found only in living for God in communion with Him. It is not enough for us to live in the same universe with God and seek our own pleasure, we were made to live under Him in constant communion with Him that we might reflect Him. When we live in this intimacy we experience the highest and deepest pleasures (Psalm 16:11). When we reject this, we become subject to all sorts of deception and come under the bondage of sin and self.

The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into His fields. – Matthew 9:37b-38 (NLT)

No one would deny the great need for laborers for the gospel in this hour. Not only is there the great need among the nations of the, but previously evangelized cultures in the western world are growing more and more ignorant of the gospel and more and more in need of a gospel witness.

The need for the gospel to go forth with power is clear and the need is as great as it has ever been in history. There are more men lost and in bondage on the earth now than ever before in human history. God is laying this burden on the hearts of believers all over the earth, but it is imperative that we do not merely respond to the call but that we return to the apostolic method of missions whether we have in view missions to the lost in our neighborhood or to an unreached people group.

What are we to do when are hearts are burdened by the great need of the gospel to go forth in power? Though our first impulse is to zealously enter into activity, Jesus summarizes the apostolic missionary method in Matthew 9:38. Before we undertake any activity, if we are truly burdened for the overripe harvest fields, we are to enter the place of intercession asking God to send out laborers into the fields and I fear that our familiarity with the language of the Scripture has masked just how radical Jesus’ instructions are.

Human Zeal

Most of us, burdened with the great need of the gospel to go forth, immediately devise ways of motivating others to the call. We find new and innovative ways to call people to the great need of the sharing the gospel. We use charts and graphs to clearly indicate the great need. We devise powerful sermons that move the human heart to respond. We create training programs to equip individuals to evangelize. We teach new and innovative methods to communicate the gospel. In other words, once we get even a hint of the burden of God’s heart for the gospel we set ourselves immediately to activity and completely bypass Jesus’ instructions on how to respond to an overly ripe harvest.

We fall prey to this error for many reasons, but one reason this course of action is so deceptive is because the activities we have already listed are all necessary to the cause of world evangelism. Individuals must be called to share the gospel. They must be trained and equipped. Believers must understand how critical the hour we are living in is. It is not that what we are doing is wrong, the issue is that, in the rush to activity; we are setting the cart before the horse. Matthew 9:38 exposes our error in clearly declaring that laboring for an apostolic sending of men from heaven is the horse that must pull the cart of missions.

Saints, we have had a lot of gospel activity but the reality is what we have had little fruit. A lot of sweat, tears, blood, effort, and money have been expended and yet we have not seen the kind of results that the apostles saw. While there are many reasons for our lack of fruit, Matthew 9:38 identifies one of the critical errors.

The Apostolic Pattern

Saints, if we desire to again see apostolic missionaries of the same kind as the early apostles were, we must return to the apostolic method of missions and the apostolic method is to first pray to the Lord of the harvest to send laborers. The most well known apostolic missionary, Paul, was sent out of a community in Antioch that was obedient to the apostolic pattern. In Acts 13:2, the saints were in the place of prayer and the Spirit expressly sent Paul and Barnabas forth to the gentiles and so began the career of one of the greatest apostolic missionaries of all time.

Part of the secret of Paul’s success was that he did not just go to the gentiles with a burden and under the compulsion of human emotion, but he was sent by the Spirit. After all, that is exactly what is means to be apostolic. Apostolic simple means a “sent one.” In fact, it is a clear indicator of our lack of understanding of what it means to be apostolic that we constantly attempt to define what is apostolic according to role and function. We define an apostle by what he does, but an apostle is defined by who his is. To be apostolic is to be sent and only the Holy Spirit can effect a sending. When we begin defining what is apostolic by the activities that accompany it rather than by the God initiated sending that is the basis of all that is apostolic, we have already lost the essential elements of what it means to be apostolic.

The Holy Spirit is the Grand Architect

We must understand that man is not the grand architect, nor even the executor, of the plan of world evangelism, but rather that the Holy Spirit is the architect of the cause of Jesus on the earth. In the book of Acts we clearly see the Holy Spirit actively directing the work of the church. While we would acknowledge the work of the Holy Spirit, we are much more prone to use the “wisdom” of 2,000 years of history to prop up human effort while we give the Holy Spirit lip service and then ask Him to provide the miraculous power when we need a “sign” or a “wonder” to back up our gospel claims.

And is it not part of our fundamental problem that our gospel campaigns our often our campaigns and not His? Saints, the Holy Spirit has not changed His role. He is still God. He is still the grand architect of the church as He is the one that makes known to us the mind of Jesus and tells us what is on His heart. Is it not the height of arrogance that we build so much of our gospel activity on human wisdom and human zeal and then ask the Holy Spirit to sprinkle a few miracles on it as though He is simply power for our programs?

We ignore the Holy Spirit as a person and as the all-wise God and instead use Him for power and then we stand amazed that so little power is on the gospel. Frustrated, we read the accounts of the apostles and become disillusioned that there is not power on the gospel, but when we have not followed the apostolic pattern, we should not wonder that the Holy Spirit does not gives His full endorsement to our activities.

We must again give the Holy Spirit His place as the grand master architect of missions and as the possessor of the mind of God if we expect His power to accompany our proclamation. It is true that He always uses men and that is precisely where the confusion comes in. He uses men and then we come to believe that something is intrinsic in man and so we seek to duplicate the pattern we see played out in a man rather than go back to the place of the sending of the Holy Spirit that is what made the man unique in the first place.

Apostolic Sending

The issue of missions then is putting the Holy Spirit back in His place through the application of Matthew 9:38 and one of His primary roles, as the initiator of gospel activity, is to send men and women. As already noted, this is foundational to the understanding of what is apostolic because contained within the very definition of apostolic is the understanding that one who is apostolic is one who is sent.

It is true that the community of saints must send and individual, but that sending must be a secondary sending. When a community sends an individual whether it is to pastor a local church, or to go labor across the earth that sending must be an affirmation and acknowledgement of a sending that has already taken place, because before one can be properly sent by men they must have been marked as a sent one by the Holy Spirit.

Saints, one sent men can do more to turn the world upside down then a thousand believers sent by human effort and motivated by human zeal. The great need of the earth right now is not laborers, it is sent laborers and there is a tremendous difference. There is a reason that Isaiah 6, Jeremiah 1, and Acts 9 are such pivotal passages and the reason is that they mark the sending of a man from heaven. Men that are sent from heaven change history. Men that are sent from man merely increase activity. God, in His kindness, may give some measure of blessing to man’s efforts, but He will not give an apostolic outcome where the apostolic pattern is not followed.

If the great need then is sent men is there any way we can increase the number of heaven sent laborers in our generation? Matthew 9:38 holds the promise for us. Are you burdened for the gospel? Do you feel the Lord’s heart both for your own nation and for the nations of the earth? If so, then the first thing is not to preach your burden or call others to missions, although that may very well come, the first thing to do is drop to your knees and ask the Lord of the Harvest to send men.

If you truly understand the great need of the harvest and the vast need for laborers you will understand the gross inadequacy of human effort and be pressed into the place of intercession crying out that God would send men knowing that a sending from heaven is the only solution to the great need of the earth in our hour.

Contending for Sent Laborers

The place of prayer is the place where the great missions enterprise is lost or won, for it is only in that place that we can secure the favor of heaven to send men for white harvest fields demand sent men, not merely laborers sent of energy, zeal, and humanistic motivations. Jesus’ instructions to His disciples were radical. They were ready for His call to lay down their lives and labor in the harvest fields, but I suspect they were surprised to hear Jesus’ admonition to rather pray that God might send men. As a measure of how significant Jesus’ words were, Acts 6 reveals that the apostles learned this lesson well as they gave themselves to prayer and the Word that sent ones might go forth and they shook the powers in their generation because their labor in prayer secured sent ones.

How different Jesus’ value system is from ours! We rush to activity, and the fact that we rush so quickly to activity betrays the fact that we have so little confidence in prayer and the reason we have little confidence in prayer is that we have little confidence in God Himself. We are more confident in our ability to labor than we are in God’s ability to send, though it is the heaven sent ones that are truly apostolic and that change history.

Does laboring on our knees preclude laboring in works? Certainly not. We must put our hands to the tasks in front of us in obedience to Jesus. He certainly calls us to labor, but He calls us first and foremost to the labor of prayer. He calls us first to gaze upward and cry out for sent ones to again walk among us and advance the gospel with power as the apostles of old did. We will labor until our bodies are exhausted and spent, but we must labor as sent ones from heaven, and it is the place of prayer that will secure this sending. Jesus’ command does not give us the luxury of praying and then refusing to go when sent.

The Holy Spirit has not changed. He is still jealous for Jesus’ glory. He is still the grand architect of the gospel enterprise. He waits only for a company of people who will resist human initiative and lay hold of Him in prayer beseeching Him to send men of His own initiative into the harvest. He will send men if we stand before Him and ask for apostolic witnesses. He will anoint the gospel with power when it goes forth according to the apostolic pattern.

By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the rightesouness that comes by faith. – Hebrews 11:7 (ESV)

Have we fully considered the faith of Noah? He believed what he heard from God in spite of what was around him. We find that he alone had confidence in the word of God and the promise of God. What is even more amazing than his belief is the fact that Noah’s obedience condemned the world. The very way that Noah lived pronounced a judgment on the age in which Noah lived. (It is important to understand that, in the context of the verse, condemning the world is more rightly described as condemning the age rather than the earth. It is a condemnation of the systems and values of this age rather than a condemnation of the creation.) The word used here has the idea of declaring the verdict but not necessarily executing it. The execution of the verdict belongs to God always, but our very lives are a part of declaring the verdict.

How then should we live? As our lives are lived under firm confidence in the Word of God, our lives are proving the truth of His promise by the way His promises shape our lives. Our unseen, mostly future, hope then becomes the very evidence that the unseen thing for which we hope exists (Hebrews 11:1). Our lives are designed to be a witness and testimony to the truth (Acts 1:8).

Have we considered that our very lives are going to be testimony against the damned? God is calling us to live in such a way that we give a witness to the truth that is so authentic that it condemns those who do not believe. Saints, do we live this way? Do you live in such a way that your life pronounced a judgment on all who turn away from the gospel? Are you such a vibrant witness to the living, risen Son of God that for men to reject your witness is to condemn themselves?

Jesus did not leave the world without a testimony. We have the testimony of the infallible Scriptures. We have the testimony of creation which Paul argues in Romans is sufficient to bring one to at least a rudimentary knowledge of God. We have the inner witness in man that we call the conscience that leads a man into truth. We have the testimony of the very Spirit of God who convicts this world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8).

Besides these witnesses God has given, He also intends us to be the primary witness to the world. How that should cause our hearts to tremble. Who we are and how we live is to give vibrant and living testimony of Jesus. In other words, on the day of judgment when men stand before Jesus, should a man try to claim ignorance, Jesus will point to you and me and say, “They were a living flesh and blood example of Me. They were evidence that every word I spoke was true. There is no way you could have seen then and not seen Me. You are without excuse because the testimony of their lives was too compelling.”

Who is sufficient for this? Can you and I honestly say that we are witnesses to the extent that a man encountering us is as though he has encountered Jesus Himself? Does our witness have the power to condemn men? Can men who have seen us be condemned for having seen the reality of God and rejecting it? This is what the author is saying of Noah. Noah so carried what God had spoken in his heart that to reject Noah was to reject God Himself. Noah was a man of flesh and blood just like you and me, but what he carried in his life was so vibrant, so alive, that it was enough, in God’s eyes, to be a revelation of Himself to the unbelieving world.

Are our lives so much a revelation of Jesus that they would count as a verdict against the world? Are we enough of a witness to condemn the world when it rejects us? Remember the inverse is true as well. If our lives are so authentic that they can bring condemnation that means they are also authentic enough to bring men to life. It means that we are so full of the living God that there is a river of living water flowing from us (John 7:38) from which men can drink. If our lives are a real enough testimony to condemn men then they are also real enough to bring men into life.

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.