24.5 The prophesies of Matthew 24

I decided a few weeks back that I was going to take the time to study and write about Matthew 24 from a Kingdom perspective in order to cement in my own mind just why I have never been very willing to accept the futurist view of the end times. I call a futurist one who takes the predictions of Matthew 24 and makes them predictions of a time yet in our future but one they are pretty sure is going to happen real soon.  (you might want to scroll down and get some background  before you read the rest of this post)

24:4-28 contains, in addition to the destruction of the temple which we wrote about in 24.4, at least 10 more predictions of events to come during the generation who were listening to Jesus speak, or about 40 years.  I will not refer to all 10 but will touch on a few, including the prediction of a “great tribulation” and an anti-Christ.

vv.4-5 See to it that no one misleads you.  For many will come in My name, saying, I am the Christ, and will mislead many.

The futurist reads these words of Jesus spoken to His intimate friends and immediately makes the leap over 2000 years and predicts they will happen shortly before the end of the world.  So every person that makes a claim to be the Messiah, both crack pot and zealot causes them to say: “see the end is near”.

If Jesus was predicting false claims of messiahship for the generation of His listeners, did He get it right?  Were there impostors attempting to infiltrate the church in the first century?  The answer of course is yes.  When Jesus died there were many who came out of the dark to clam the hearts of the Jewish people, who had a certain kind of messiah in mind.  They were desperate for someone to come and free them from Roman domination.  Their hope and much of their religious system was based on a coming Messiah.  When Jesus died many followers fell away and began to look for someone else and of course, the false messiahs flourished. There is no question that extra biblical history supports this fact.  (Eusebius, The Venerable Bede and others)

vv.6-7 You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars… For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 

When you read these verses don’t you quickly think “that has to be today”?  There is a new war or the rumor of a new war nearly everyday, these days.  But interestingly, that was not the way it was in 1st century Palestine.  There were no signs of war or rumors about war at the time Jesus made this prophesy.  The power of Rome provided a stable and strong environment, even though they made it happen through force.  That period in history is even known as Pax Romana or Roman Peace because no one was even daring to take a run at the Romans.  This is the environment into which Jesus prophesied of coming wars and rumors of wars.

Did the climate around Israel change within the 40 year period after Jesus made this prophesy?  Was Pax Romana interrupted?  In fact wars started erupting all over the Roman Empire and the Jews were forced to live in constant terror.  50,000 Jews were killed in Seleucia and another 20,000 in Caesaria.  in AD 66 50,000 Jews were killed in the city of Alexandria.  Within the span of 18 months, four Roman emperors were violently killed causing civil war to break out all over the empire including in the city of Rome.  It was a time of almost constant rebellion and turmoil in the usually quiet Roman Empire and there was an almost constant flow of rumors of additional outbreaks washing over the Jewish people.

One more for today.  v.7 …in various places there will be famines.

In Acts 11 there is a bold prophesy of severe famine in the region of Judah and in two places in the New Testament we read where Christians took offerings for the believers who were suffering in Judah. (Acts 11:29; 1Corinthians 16:1-3) Obviously this Acts 11 prophesy came true and at the same time Jesus prophetic word as fulfilled.

Knowing of the coming famine and the horrible destruction of Jerusalem on the cross, Jesus said to the women of Israel: Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.  For behold, the days are coming when they will say, “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed” (Luke 23:28-29)   Historical writer Eusebius wrote:  Under Claudius the world was visited with a famine, which writers that are entire strangers to our religion have written in their histories.

Every prophesy of Jesus contained in Matthew 24 can be shown to have happened in the 40 years immediately after He made them.  The prophesy about earthquakes 24:7 happened all over the Roman Empire.  I found mention of 11 cities where history records seismic activity, including the moment Jesus died on the cross and again when He rose from the dead.  (Matthew 27, 28)

The evidence is clear.  The prophesies of Matthew 24 have been fulfilled.  I will do the tribulation and anti-Christ ones later.

Monday morning meanderings. Vol.78

Sayre, Oklahoma

The weather the last several days has been more like Washington then what we are used to in Western Oklahoma.  We have had some beautiful days along the way but cloudy and drizzly days have been the norm.  Hasn’t really rained a lot and we need it here.  (I wrote this last night and it started raining early this morning and is still at it.)

Item one.  This is tornado countryand May is the busiest tornado month of the year.  A couple of weeks ago there were several tornadoes that touched down just north of us about 25 miles.  Here is some great videoof a couple of those tornadoes:

 Item two.  Linda had an enjoyable Mother’s Day.  Church of course, then dinner with good friends and young families who stand in on days like Mother’s Day for our kids and grandkids that are a long ways away.  Then Linda spent an hour talking to her parents on Skype, then an hour or so with Traci on and finished up the day talking with Brad.  Saturday night she talked with Summer for a while as well.  She is a great mom and Nanny and I am proud of the way she cares about her natural/Spiritual children and grandchildren, as well as her Spiritual children.

Item three.  One blog I read often is written by Seattle pastor Eugene Cho.  He is insightful and thoughtful and has a good grasp on the culture.  Andy often says that out here in the Bible Belt we are the last to know about major changes and shifts in the American church.  However if you are trying to “do church” in the Northwest, like Eugene Cho, you know you are on the front line.  Eugene writes about several recent secular press articles about young Christians abandoning the church.  It is a good read and actually makes me hopeful about real change.  Find the article HERE.

Item four.  I know I have been out of touch lately but I had no idea I missed the last day of church.  Who called it?

 

I suspect Pastor Bobby would not like my recent posts on Matthew 24!

Item five.  It has been at least 15 years since I first heard the Newsboys.  I remember it because our kids and their friends were listening to them during the days after son Paul was lost, nearly 15 years ago (I think it was Mike Settle who brought the disk over).  The Newsboys song I seem to remember most was about heaven.  I can’t find the song in their discography so maybe it wasn’t them.  Something about a big, big yard to play football…  Anyone know?

Anyway, here is their most recent release called “In the Hands of God”.  Maybe I don’t get it but I think the Newsboys still got it!

Have a great week.  More 24 coming up!  Don’t get behind or catching up will be brutal.  It is really going to get good in the days ahead!

24.4

Question #1  When will all this take place? (24:3) 

Matthew 23 flows into 24 with, as you know, no chapter break.  In vv.1-2 of 24, Jesus repeats again that the Temple was going to be totally demolished.  Immediately after His prediction, Jesus and His disciples take a walk up on to the nearby, Mount of Olives (24.1)  When Jesus sits down to have a private conversation with his disciples on the hill across from the Temple, they are looking right down on the place they had just left.  Mark’s account of this conversation confirms the disciples were facing the Temple when they asked the 3 questions (see 24.3 for content of 3 questions).

So, if you were one of the disciples and your leader has just told you the building at the heart of your whole religious and cultural life is going to be pulverized, what would you want to know?  I would want to know when this dramatic and life changing event is going to happen, wouldn’t you?

Now, the futurist teacher assumes the disciples were asking about the end of the world, but that is the third question they ask, not the first.  To Jewish boys, like the disciples, their first concern was for the Temple, because destroying the Temple would be such a huge event to them, they had to be wondering if such an event might not be the end of the world.  It had to be shocking to them that God’s holy Temple would be destroyed.  What would life be without it?  To these simple men, whose whole history was wrapped up in the Jewish life and faith, the Temple was as central as anything in their lives.  To think of it being destroyed would easily have made them think their whole world was coming to an end.

We will come to questions 2 and 3 another time, but for now let’s answer the first question with the context just described firmly in our minds.  When is the Temple (and potentially all of Jerusalem) going to be destroyed?

Have these words of Jesus already come to pass or are we still waiting?  To meet Jesus’ time table of the Temple being destroyed within the “generation” of those to whom he was speaking, the Temple would have to be destroyed by AD 70, about 40 years (a generation) after His prophetic statement.  Did that happen?

Within 40 years after Jesus declared judgement, 20,000 Roman soldiers, under the command of General Titus, surrounded the city for four months, starving the citizens of Jerusalem.  Then the soldiers marched into the city and without mercy slaughtered more than one million Jews.  The soldiers set the Temple on fire and took nearly 100,000 Jews into captivity.  Nothing much is heard about the Jews for the next 60 years until they attempted one more rebellion against Rome.  After 3 years of fighting, the Romans crushed the rebellion, killing another 600,000 Jews.  Israel was not recognized as a nation again until 1948.

The Roman soldiers so demolished the Temple that every stone was carried away and the land on which the Temple stood was plowed under until absolutely nothing was left, just as Jesus said it would be!

Jesus’ answer to question one is in 24:34 “I assure you, this generation, will not pass away until all these things take place.”  If we take His answer literally and understand a generation to be 40 years, then Jesus’ answer was right on.  The Temple was destroyed just as He predicted.

Now, the futurist teachers see all of the events in Matthew 24 happening not in AD 70, but 2,000 plus years (and counting) into our future.  They do not accept that the “generation” Jesus declared in both 23:36 and 24:34 is referring to the “generation” alive when Jesus spoke these words.  Sometimes they redefine “generation” to mean “race,” as in the Jewish “race”, so they say the Jewish race will not pass away until the end of the world, which we continue to wait for.  Futurists must give the word “generation” some other meaning, other than the commonly held 40 year period, if they are to make Jesus’ predictions yet to be fulfilled.

But why would you explain it that way?  Why would you not just take a plain, literal explanation of the text?  If you have no Left Behind books, no Scofield Bible, no prophetic TV to watch, no dispensational theology to confuse you, and you read Jesus’ words without any coaching and with only history to study, could you or would you see His answer as referring to something yet to take place, now more than 2000 years into the future? 

The disciples ask a simple question of Jesus, as they look down on the Temple they were just in, from the hill right across from that building. It is the question I would want answered if I had just heard that the religious and cultural center of my life was to be destroyed. 

If you were given a prediction of the total destruction of Washington DC, the White House and all the other monuments in our nations capitol, by a person you considered to be trustworthy and your promised Savior, what would you want to know?

I would want to know “when will all this take place?” and I certainly would not expect the answer I received would be about something totally unrelated and 2000+ years into the future, would you?

I can’t imagine it.  Jesus knew exactly what He was speaking about, and everything He prophesied between Matthew 23:36 and 24:34 took place just as He said it would, during the generation that was alive when Jesus spoke the words.

While this blog is not the place to try and speak to all the predictions found in Matthew 23-24, I will attempt over the next post or two to write about some of the other predictions Jesus made that some how have been moved from the 40 year period that followed His speaking them, to a day yet in the future. (if all of the predictions in 24 are already fulfilled we are free to read Daniel 2, 9 and Revelation in a very different way.  More on that later.)

If you have read this stuff to this point you might be wondering why you should read on or what my point is.  Here is my reason for putting so much of myself into this study and asking you to work hard to understand it:  What Jesus predicts in these verses is ugly, negative, vicious and life changing for those who live or die as they go through it.  The futurists, of all persuasions, tell us these terrible times are still in our future. Some futurists say the Church will be raptured out before it gets real bad and so find “joy” in the signs of the times.  Other futurists predict we will be here for all these events, while some others say we will stay for half  or less of the bad days. If we choose to believe their report we spend our time and energy in certain ways.

However if we see these events as already fulfilled in the 40 years immediately after they were predicted, then we are free to live another way, building the Kingdom that will never pass away, the Kingdom that cannot be shaken, the Kingdom given to us by Jesus to advance, until as His Bride we are fully clothed in His righteousness and purity, radiantly displaying to the world the glory of His presence.  His Kingdom come, His will be done on earth just as it is in heaven.  Why destroy what you have called your Kingdom citizens to advance?

24.3 + a little Henri Nouwen

Before I jump into Matthew 24 here is this morning’s Henri Nouwen devo.  It has Kingdom all over it: 

The opposite of a scarcity mentality is an abundancy mentality. With an abundancy mentality we say: “There is enough for everyone, more than enough: food, knowledge, love … everything.” With this mind-set we give away whatever we have, to whomever we meet. When we see hungry people we give them food. When we meet ignorant people we share our knowledge; when we encounter people in need of love, we offer them friendship and affection and hospitality and introduce them to our family and friends.

When we live with this mind-set, we will see the miracle that what we give away multiplies: food, knowledge, love … everything. There will even be many leftovers.

Now on to 24!

Question #1.  When will these things happen?

The disciples ask Jesus three questions in Matthew 24: …Tell us, when will these things happen and what will be the sign of your coming, and (what will be the sign) of the end of the age?

Some translations, maybe even yours (for example the KJV) ends this sentence with the word “world” and in doing so makes the 3 questions into an inquiry about the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world.  What happens when the word is translated world is it moves the focus of these questions on to a summary of what the world will be like just before it comes to an end, rather than a “simple” asking of questions related to what Jesus has just spoken about.

But the Greek word aion can also be translated, and in my opinion should be translated, “age“.  By translating aion as age, or a period of time, and not world, we are not tempted to move the fulfilment of this text from its first century setting into the 21st century.  The ending of an age and the ending of the world are two very different things.

The Kingdom view attempts to read nothing into the text, to not see a summary, but 3 distinct questions about how the current age, the age the disciples were living in when the questions were asked, would end.  1. When will these things happen?  2. What will be the sign of your coming? 3. What about the end of the age? 

When we make a decision, to let the text say what it says without adding or summarizing,  it frees us to understand the answers Jesus gives to these questions in a very different way than the futurist sees them.

So, first question; When will these things happen?  What are “these things”?  If you have been taught, like I have the futurist view, we immediately think that “these things” refers to events that will happen right before the second coming of Jesus.  But what does the context of Matthew 24 tell us?  Many of you have been reading it and allowing the Holy Spirit to teach you, so before you read my answer to the question, ask yourself, what is the context here? What is the conversation about?  What is Jesus talking to His disciples about?  Take a minute and read the chapter.  Start back in chapter 23 and let it lead you into 24.

Jesus is speaking in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.  The first thing He does is warn the crowd and the disciples to be very careful about the Jewish Temple leadership.  You can see this in vv.2-12.  Next Jesus turns to His disciples and, with no mincing of words, rips the religious leaders.  The flavor of His comments are clear: v.13 … woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.  v.14…Woe to you… v.15…Woe to you… v.16 Woe to you blind guides.  Jesus is ripping into the Jewish Temple religious leadership (and cultural leaders) with an intensity that can’t be missed.  He repeats these same words in vv.23-29.

With even greater intensity, Jesus winds up His beat down in vv.33-36 with a scathing rebuke of these phony and controlling leaders: You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?  Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will beat in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the alter.  Truly I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation. (33-36)

Jesus is passing judgment on a generation of religious leaders who have spilled the blood of “every righteous person, from A-Z, Abel to Zechariah” (in the Hebrew Bible Abel is book 0ne and Zechariah is the last book)  Jesus is telling these religious leaders that the blood of every righteous person in their Holy Book, from start to finish is on them.

Typically in the Scriptures a generation was considered to be 40 years.  So if we assume that the judgement Jesus is passing is going to come true in a literal sense (why would we not take it literally) then those who heard Jesus speak these words could expect judgment to fall on them. (Jesus began this rebuke and judgment back in Matthew 23 and some of the specifics of the judgement are included there (vv.37-38).

A literal reading of these verses makes it really hard to see this judgment happening at any other time than during the generation (40 years or so) immediately following the speaking of the words.

Question 1.  When will these things happen?  What things?  Answer: These things= vv.33-36 23:37-38)  When?  Answer: Over the next 40 years or so, from the time they were spoken. 

I find it hard to make this text say anything at all about the time we are living in today.  How about you?

Almost all prophesy writing of a futurist nature (Left Behind series, Scofield Study Bible, Dispensational theology, popular prophetic writing, etc) moves Jesus’ answers from the 40 years immediately following His speaking to the time we are currently living in.  That is really poor hermenuetics (logical guidelines for interpreting historical writings) and there is no reason for it.  Let the text and the historical evidence speak for “themselves”!

Next post.  Did the words of Jesus in Matthew 24, come true during the next 40 years or so, or are we still waiting for them to happen?

24.1

Most of what I know, especially about the Bible, I learned by doing 3 things:  First, I study the Bible itself.  I have always tried to read whatever I am studying several times and just let it say what it says, as opposed to reading what someone else thinks it says.  (that comes later).  During this step I ask myself questions to try and help me understand what is being said, to whom it is being said, why it is being said, who is saying it and so on.  I take notes, I think about it but most importantly, I ask the Holy Spirit to teach me.

Secondly, I carry what I have read around in my head for a while and let it soak.  Over time, could be a few hours, a few days or in the case of Matthew 24, a few years, but when I let it soak, I usually get something fresh, something I have never heard before.  That doesn’t mean no one else has thought of it but it means the Spirit speaks fresh to me.

In the third step I try to find out if anyone else has written anything about the subject I am studying, something that confirms, challenges or affirms what I believe the Spirit has taught me.  This is always the third step because if I do this first or second I never get to see the Spirit guide me into truth and just end up knowing what other people know (that is not always bad).  When I depend too much on what others think I usually end up in the ditch on one side of the road or the other.

Candidly, I have never liked the whole end times teaching that was part of my dispensational upbringing and training.  I never found any joy or hope in things spinning downward through a Great Tribulation, The anti-Christ, “melting with frevent heat” and all that horror.  But just because I didn’t like it didn’t mean it wasn’t true.  Who was I to challenge or disagree with my professors, who were very intelligent men and very sincere and Godly men besides, who I liked and who loved and cared about me?  Who was I to go against the increasingly strong tide of an end game that looked more and more right on with each new world crisis, new war, new famine, new disaster and so on?  So I joined the pre-tribulational, pre-millennial crowd and tried to force the questions out of my mind.

But still questions would boil in my mind and heart whenever I would hear something about the Great Tribulation.  What about the people in the Sudan, Dufar or any of the other beat down, diseased nations where millions have died, is it possible that there could be a greater tribulation for them, yet to come?  Why is it that most of the pessimistic end times scenarios originate in the United States, the richest and most blessed nation in the history of the world?  How come this view of our Father’s plan for His Family has appeared only recently?  Was it progressive revelation that brought it along or was it more a desire to make sense of the bad things that were happening at the time dispensationalism came on the scene?  Why didn’t Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley and even thinkers further back than them, not buy into the pessimism of this end times view?

Whatever one chooses to believe about how the future is going to play out begins in Matthew 24.  Depending on how one understands the questions the disciples ask Jesus and the answers Jesus gives, sets you on course to see other prophetic passages like Daniel 2 and 9  and the vision of Revelation a certain way.  So in my mind Matthew 24 is central and critical to determining whether we should view the future as going downhill to an ugly end or view the future as a glorious and beautiful Bride welcoming her Bridegroom to a planet where every knee is, by choice, bowing and every tongue confessing that this Groom is Lord, to the Glory of the Father.

So here is my suggestion to you.  Read 24.  Try to read it in something other than a study Bible and maybe use a fresh translation.  Ask the Spirit to guide you into all truth.   Ask questions and write them down.  If you do that you will be in a better place to interact with where the Spirit has been guiding me.

Next week I will begin to open up Matthew 24 as it has been opened up to me and we will go from there.

By the way, step 3 in my Bible study method led me to a man named Harold Eberle who along with another man wrote a book called Victorious Eschatology.  I was doing a search for positive end times scenarios and stumbled upon Harold’s teaching.  I ordered the book and found it very helpful.  But because I had already done my study and had already made some desicions about my personal convictions, Victorious Eschatolgy was confirmation and affirmation that I was on the right track.  I hesitate to tell you about the book, not because you will not need to read what I write, but because I fear you will do what most people do and simply decide what you believe based on what someone else says, rather than doing your own study, but that is really not my problem.  Follow this link to find the book.  HERE

See you next week!

24 (A Kingdom view of the end times.)

Several weeks ago I wrote in this post (HERE) these words:

If we believe what is going on is just a precursor to the End, how does that affect the way we think? If we are just going to duck and cover during these so called “last days” of grave uncertainty and shaking, will we miss the opportunity of a lifetime to actually bring Kingdom values to bear on the crisis?  (BTW, we have no idea if these are the last days, and have no way of knowing, so Jesus said in Matthew 24:36. There is a lot in Matthew 24 we need to understand from a Kingdom perspective, rather than just (dispensational) an end times approach. Anyone want to work on that?)

                      

No one jumped at the opportunity to write anything about Matthew 24 from a Kingdom perspective, didn’t expect anyone would, so I decided I was going to.  So here comes a new series called 24 (A Kingdom view of the end times.)

No doubt this will take a while as I am going to write as I learn.  I will warn you up front that what I write is a departure from my upbringing, my training and the church culture I was raised in.  It will be a departure from what has become the popular American church view of the end times.  It will be a departure from the pessimistic view of the end times made possible and popular with the 1909 publication of the Scofield Reference Bible.  This reference Bible proposed in its footnotes very negative scenarios of the future that were largely taken from the work of John Nelson Darby, the father of a theological perspective called dispensationalism.  Since the time of Dr. Scofield hundreds if not thousands of scary end-time books have come on the scene, none more popular than the Left Behind series, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.  Such books  and related teachings have become so popular and accepted in the American church that a negative eschatology (study of last things) has become the most popular view in the western church.

It should be noted that this view of the future has been popular in the Christian culture for a very short period of time, less than 100 years.  It probably peaked in “popularity” when we moved from the 20th century to the 21st, a few years back.  Some of you will no doubt remember all the hustle and bustle surrounding Y2K and the “end of the world as we know it” ideas that were all over the place. 

This series will be a departure from a pessimistic view of eschatology and will attempt to paint an optimistic view of the future from a Kingdom perspective.  A Kingdom view is optimistic about the future because it understands King Jesus and His Family (the church) will take over this world, not Satan.

I fully recognize that the days in which I am writing these words are not very welcoming to an optimistic or victorious view of the future.  Pessimistic end time scenarios are abundant and it does appear the door is wide open to an eschatology that sees nothing but a down hill slide until finally the Father has had enough and beams the church out of the mess, burns up the planet, defeats the anti-christ and calls an end to this hopeless and defiled planet. 

Many Christians (some are my friends/family) actually are excited about the brokenness of our world and see every new crisis as one more rung on the ladder that gets us out of here. One person told me not long ago that these days of economic collapse didn’t worry him because they just mean we are closer to being raptured then ever before.  In other words all the bad stuff going on all over the world (war, earthquake, famine, disasters of all kinds, swine flu pandemics, economic collapse and so on) are actually good things because they are signs that the end is near.  I don’t blame anyone for seeing things this way, it is hard not to. 

As difficult as it is, in these days, to argue for any kind of optimistic view of our world and the future, I am going to try and present a view of the future, rooted deeply in the Biblical text, that presents not only an optimistic view of last things but a victorious one as well.  Jesus wins and He wins, not by giving up on the planet He died for, but by continuing to work the plan, until every knee bows and every tongue confesses.

I am certain what I write will create disagreement, probably in some cases vicious disagreement and I am probably not inclined to participate in arguments that are raised by what I write.   Ask questions, question my view, whatever, but don’t waste a lot of time presenting the dispensational view, I think I have that one down.  I might be all wrong, but its a blog not a textbook.

What I hope to do is present your Savior as the King He is.  A victorious King with a victorious Bride.  Not sitting around fearfully waiting for the end to get here but a King and His Bride that are quietly, steadily, faithfully, supernaturally, confidently, hopefully, extending His Kingdom into all corners of this planet, in order to present our King with a redeemed and renewed planet over which to rule. 

Drop by and read a little, let me know what you think.

Utterly supreme over everything, everywhere.

Celebrating the Resurrection in Payson, Arizona

I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me–that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said.  He was buried,  and He was raised from the dead on the third day, also as the Scriptures said.  He was seen by Peter and by the twelve apostles.  After that, He was seen by more than 500 of His followers, at one time, most of whom (when this was written) were still alive, though obviously they are all dead now.  Then He was seen by James and then later He was seen again by all the apostles.  Last of all, I saw Him too…

Paul the Apostle (1Corinthians 15:3-8)

The Apostle’s point?  No way this deal was faked!

What difference does the Resurrection make?  Why do we celebrate the Resurrection?  It is the one event in all of history that secures our eternal present and assures our eternal future while at the same time securing the eternal present and future of the unshakable Kingdom.

Then when He has conquered all things, the Son will present Himself to God, so that God, Who gave His Son authority over all things, will be utterly supreme over everything, everywhere.

Paul (1Corinthians 15:28

The Resurrection is our assurance that there is no stopping the advancement of the Kingdom nor the day when every knee will bow…

So what do we have to worry about?

Have a blessed celebration of this monumental Resurrection Day!

Monday morning meanderings. Vol.74

Payson, Arizona

Our time in Arizona is coming to an end.  We leave early tomorrow morning for the 2 hour drive to the Phoenix airport and a flight to Seattle, where we will spend a short week with our children and grandchildren.  Next Tuesday we will return to Payson, pick up our trailer and begin the trip back to Western Oklahoma, arriving just in time for tornado season!  Don’t want to miss that!

Item one.  When we left Sayre a couple of months ago I believed I had heard God about what we were supposed to do with our time.  It was not a wishful thinking plan but one we felt was simply going the next step with some individuals and groups we had been sowing into for some time.  The first month went according to plan and in fact,  things happened that we didn’t expect, and were a real blessing to us. 

This last month has gone a completely other direction from what we thought would happen.  It is easy for me to question if I heard God right when things don’t work out the way I planned and it is hard for me to just go with what is, rather than being disappointed with what isn’t.  Any one relate?  But I have learned a lot about staying in step with the Spirit, doing what is right in front of me, as my friend Doug encourages me to do, and being ok with not accomplishing the plan.  Never easy for me but I am learning. Here are a few things God did while we have been in Payson, that I didn’t plan on or expect.

• We have spent a lot of time with Chuck and Nancy, more than I imagined and that has been good.  We have poured into them, been poured into by them and had some really fun relaxing times which I think they needed maybe more than we did.  I have been able to work several days helping Chuck with their business which has been fun and I helpful, I think.  We have shared a lot together, hearing the Spirit about their future and ours.  While I knew we would spend time together it has been encouraging to do more than expected with them.
• I love to worship and I love to participate in leading worship.  I have played very average guitar for years and have had a desire to do more worship leading but there are always people more gifted than I am around to lead.  Chuck is a guitar player and a worship leader and leads regularly at two meetings each week and he invited me to join him.  So I have been practicing a few times a week and participating in leading worship a couple of times every week and it has been a lot of fun.  My fingers are toughened up, I have increased my skill a little, had a lot of fun and helped some folks enter in to worship. 
• When we arrived in Payson our hosts were in the process of training and certification to open a Healing Room here in this part of Arizona.  I was familiar with Healing Rooms (find out about my experience HERE) and wanted to know more.  Each week we participated in a small group training time with the people who will lead and staff this new ministry in Payson.  Then this past weekend we went to a large group training in Phoenix where we were led by the Southwest Directors for Healing Rooms.  It was a really good learning experience and a good time of ministry in the Spirit.  We now have some experience and training we can use in ministry wherever we are and the potential of starting or being part of a Healing Room ministry in Oklahoma.
• Payson is a beautiful place.  As nice as any where we have been.  The weather is nearly perfect and the sky a beautiful blue almost all the time, with very little wind.  We are parked in Chuck and Nancy’s side yard on a hill, overlooking the city.  Our view is really nice.  It is easy to take these kinds of gifts for granted as we are privileged to be in a lot of really nice places.  I have been trying to not take it lightly, but to bless the Father several times each day for this gift.  The view repeatedly puts me in a place of prayer for this city and for the ministries that go on here, day after day.  It is really an honor to pray for a city and to believe God for breakthrough in the hearts of people you don’t know and will probably never meet.  That has been good for me.

We have now been on this journey for nearly two years.  We really had no idea where it would take us and what we would do.  Our Family at Trinity in Sayre has not only embraced us and given us a place to belong and serve, they have also freed us to travel from place to place sharing what we have been given with others.  They not only took us in when we felt like outcasts and foreigners in our own home, they have launched us into a unigue ministry that is always interesting.  It will be good to return to Sayre and the Family there, and to see what the Father has for us to do next.  I have some plans but remaining open to the Spirit’s direction!

But for now it is Canyon Paul, Sage O, Eyob, Sean and Sloan time!!!! (will spend some time with their parents too!)

A place for the people nobody else wants.

Payson, Arizona

When we first went out to Sayre, Oklahoma it was because, honestly, we had no where else to go.  Since our Father is sovereign, we knew that being led to Sayre, in a way that could only be God, Sayre would be the one place where restoration would take place. 

Trinity Fellowship is not like any church or Family I have ever known.  It isn’t perfect and I don’t always think the same way the leadership does about some things, but I have learned so much about the Father, the Holy Spirit and myself out there and have friends I trust and who trust me.  The Trinity leadership has taken seriously the responsibility of Galatians 6:1, something the church I served for nearly 17 years would not do.  For that I am very thankful and frankly a much better man, follower and servant of Jesus.

Pastor Andy hears from God and when he does he is able to put what he hears in terms most of us can understand.  Early on in the genesis of Trinity Fellowship the Father told him to build the church with “people noboby else wants”.  That Word has become the story of Trinity, taking people nobody (no other church wants to spend the time and money on) else wants and turning them into the people everybody wants (faithful, servant minded, humble people).  I have never seen another church, and I’ve been around, that takes its responsibility for the poor (both economically and in spirit) so seriously, at great cost both in time and money, and I believe the blessing of God is on this Family because it takes this role so seriously.

So when I read yesterday’s Henri Nouwen devotional it made me think of Trinity and why, even with it’s flaws and weaknesses, it works as well as it does building Kingdom on the windy plains of Western Oklahoma.

Nouwen wrote:  There are many forms of poverty: economic poverty, physical poverty, emotional poverty, mental poverty, and spiritual poverty. As long as we relate primarily to each other’s wealth, health, stability, intelligence, and soul strength, we cannot develop true community. Community is not a talent show in which we dazzle the world with our combined gifts. Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted, not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can but as a true source of new life.

The Trinity Family gave me the opportunity to acknowledge my poverty, accepted me for who I was, broken in spirit and orphaned by the church.  They told me I was OK and valuable, actually more valuable broken than I was “whole”.  They restored my soul and allowed healing to come, simply by providing a place for another one of those people nobody else wants, to feel at home. 

Nouwen concludes: Living community in whatever form – family, parish, twelve-step program, or intentional community – challenges us to come together at the place of our poverty, believing that there we can reveal our richness.

Monday morning meanderings. Vol.73

Payson, Arizona

When the time changed last week everywhere else in the country it did not change here in Arizona.  They see no point in it, so they don’t do it.  The rest of the country sees no point in it but they keep right on doing it.  It was nice to not have to change and nice to be in the same time zone with our family on the west coast but it did put us two hours off from our family in Oklahoma.  Now we have to change two time zones for the “move” back to Western Oklahoma, but when we visit Washington in a couple of weeks, there will be no change.  Trade offs.

Item one.  Our hosts here in Arizona own a screen printing and embroidery business and work hard doing all the work themselves.  So I volunteered to help during a big push last week and learned a new skill!  I afixed, with a high heat system, embroidered patches onto about 20 dozen hats over a three day period.  Not really that difficult after the first dozen but good, mindless work that was actually fun.  Now I can drive a tractor/trailer rig, put patches on hats and fold tee shirts!  Now that’s a resume.

Item two.  A week ago I visited a start up church here in Payson led by a young man I met when we were here last year.  New churches have an air of excitement often missing in a lot of established churches.  This church has  no building, no offices, no paid staff and meet in a small room in a grade school that they are already outgrowing.  While I might want to do it differently than they are, it was refreshing, full of happy multi-generational faces and I expect they will do well here in this community.  What seemed to be missing, from my point of view, was any emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit to draw people to saving faith and to heal their hurts and diseases.  If they would allow a place for the supernatural in their format I think it would have greater impact and potential.  Just my point of view as the leaders of this church have thought a lot about how they want to do it.  Did make me think about giving church planting a try, though.

Item three.  Two views of the economy, one right of center, one left.  Right, HERE and left HERE.  Have you seen the Hyundai commercials where they promise to take the car back if you lose your job and can’t pay?  Well here is a church that promises to give back all your contributions if you lose your job!  Find it HERE.  You don’t have to go far, these days, to hear some pretty empty preaching.  HERE is a book that might help. 

Item four.  Had to put this link in a new Item so some of the people who skip over stuff they don’t find interesting might see this one.  I have several friends who believe you cannot be saved if you do not have a Mac.  One is my pastor, one is a natural son and the other, that comes to mind, is a son in the Lord.  You know who you are.  Sometimes I want a Mac just so I can be cool like them and then there are those Mac commercials of the fat, total loser of a guy who has the PC (think me) and then the totally hip cool, young guy who has the Mac (think Brad, Tyler, not Andy!) that make me really feel badly.  Here is a post that brings the fun part of the Mac/PC drama out as well as a serious side of the role of advertising in promoting ideas that are wrong.  Find it HERE on Don Millers blog.  It is a good read and in one place even agrees with my conjecture that Macs are really not that superior to the good old Gateway. 

Item five. Over the weekend we drove over to Wickenburg, Arizona to visit Cody Custer’s parents and attend something called a Cowboy Camp Meeting.  After a great steak dinner at Jim and Dixie’s and some good fellowship with our hosts and friends Destry and Terri Haught, we had an interesting evening in the beautiful guest house.  Jake the Dog (find his blog HERE) decided to eat all the dog food of the Custer’s three dogs.  He is not allowed to eat anything other than his own food.  Thank goodness for tile floors as Jake the Dog proceeded to ralph up several servings of food in several locations in the house.  Yeah, gross.  It was a fun night.

Early the next morning, we all piled in the trucks and drove back up into the mountains, up a dirt road, through some huge ranches (think thousands of acres) to a little church where the Cowboy Camp meeting was to be held.  This is an all day event where western Gospel music, preaching and food all come together for a good time.  Destry gave his amazing testimony and Jim sang some great Gospel songs and we ate doughnuts and ate sandwiches on the tail gate of the truck.  Good thing we had our Wranglers, boots and hats on or we would have looked seriously out of place.  Used our new Flip camera to take some videos I intended to post but with great skill I deleted them all!

We love this whole Western culture thing and are blessed to meet so many great people who quietly go about their lives on ranches and farms and in small communities.  They are for the most part simple people (I don’t mean intelligence) of faith, hard work, family and who care about this country.  We could all learn something from these folks.

Have a great week!