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Två dikter av MARGARETA MELIN

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Ur diktsamlingen KÄRLEKEN - EN BRO
av Margareta Melin

Bokförlaget Libris
ISBN 91-7194-898-8

The Mystery of Israel and the Church

by Art Katz

Chapter 7 - Israel and the Kingdom of God

There is a great corrective that is needed in the Church, all the more in those segments of the Church that are most applauded, where we presume to think that we have a 'full gospel' and the 'fullness of the Spirit.'  Any part of the Church that is not preoccupied with the jealous guarding of that which pertains to the glory of God as its central and foremost consideration, or has substituted the needs of men, however real such needs may be, is no longer the Church in any true or apostolic way.  The glory of God is going to be realized in the coming of the King and His theocratic kingdom in these final and consummating Last Days.

Though we may be persuaded that the kingdom of God is exclusively 'within,' and something personal and subjective, the kingdom of God, in its most awesome aspect, should be understood as a ruling entity over the nations.  There is a God who is actually going to rule out of the nation, Israel.  There is going to be a law that will go forth out of a literal and geographic Zion in Jerusalem.  The result of that rule will be that men will not study war any longer, they will beat their swords into plowshares, and nations will come up to the God of Jacob in the place where He will have established His sanctuary, His dwelling, and the locus of His theocratic rule out of a restored Israel.

Our failure to know, believe, expect and desire this has had great consequence for the Church.  It should be central to our every perspective and our every preoccupation with the faith.  When the Lord inserts the critical key of an apostolic and prophetic perception of the centrality of Israel, as being significant and foremost in the Church's own consideration, all of the separate and isolated good things, given of God, come together in a new coherence that makes the faith the faith indeed!

God has not forsaken His ancient people, Israel; His promises and covenant intent will yet be fulfilled, or how shall He then be God?  Probably the greatest presumption of the Church is its triumphalistic assumption that it now is the Israel of God, and that this ancient and original people have lost it, and have no place of return or restoration in God's purposes.  That is a tragic error, and has condemned the Church to something much less than the glory, power and significance of God's intention.  The issue of Israel is central for the Church's own recognition of itself as the Church, and to remove this aspect from our consideration is to leave us lopsided and out of joint, and subject, therefore, to every whim, every passing fad, and every hope for something to fill the void that is sensed and needed.  We must restore the thing that God Himself intends, not because Israel necessarily deserves that consideration, but because God has spoken, because God has promised, because God is the God of covenant, and will keep it even when His own people will not. 

Because the kingdom is the kingdom of David, so must it be established from the throne of David in Zion.  These are not mystical, poetic allusions; these are concrete and specific indications of the scandalous specificity of God, of a literal people and a literal place that must be the seat and locus of His rule over creation.  That we are not jealous for that rule is an embarrassment to the Church, and I trust that our human governments, however much we may hope in them, will invariably show their inadequacy.  When we say, "Come, Lord Jesus!," we are not praying for escape, but for righteousness to come into the earth through the rule of God from the place which He has designated, and which will not be obtained except through the instrumentality of the Church to the Jews in these Last Days. 

This is to be accomplished by a self-sacrificing Church that demonstrates the very mercy of its God, not in a corner, but must take place before the face of all nations.  The nations will have to acknowledge that the God of Israel, the God of Jacob, the Creator of the heavens and the earth is alone God, to the eternal praise of His glory.  The nations presently have given scant consideration to the God of Israel.  They see Him only a contending deity among the whole bewildering array.  But the God of Jacob is alone God, and the demonstration of His mercy to Jacob, after His judgment, will persuade the world that He alone is God, for they will witness both the expulsion as well as the return of His own people through their own nations.  God has said that He will not do this in a corner, but before the face of all nations (Isaiah 52:9-10).
We are at the conclusion of the age; an antichrist time of great severity, challenge and devastation is coming, not only upon Israel, but also upon the saints.  What we lack, and what was distinctive of the early Church, and needs to be restored, is the significance of Israel in the eschatological (pertaining to the end) and apocalyptic (judgment and devastation) content of the faith.  The first Church anxiously awaited the Lord's appearing, which in turn gave to the Church the sense of urgency, a dynamic of great and high seriousness, altogether the antithesis of the lightness that has characterized our 'charismatic' time.  To not have these components as a vital center in our Christianity disfigures our Christianity, and relegates it to the kind of harmless and innocuous culture by which the world perceives us.  The issue of Israel is the issue of the Church, but it is the issue of Israel rightly understood, and not idealistically minimized. 

The turning point for the Church will be the discovery of Israel in the sense that we are describing it, not in the condescending acknowledgement of the present, Zionist state and its success, for which many hope, but in the sense of the mystery central to God's redemptive glory and theocratic intention.  Significantly, a merely benign and sanctimonious approval of present Israel does not threaten our petty kingdoms; rather it leaves them strangely quite intact.  The revelation of a redeemed nation resurrected out of the death of the present one, like its Lord before it,  shatters all our petty kingdoms, all of our categories, and requires and makes necessary anew the review of our understanding even of God as God.  One can know that one has apprehended the issue of Israel rightly when it jostles and requires a complete realignment of one's entire understanding, and the forsaking and foregoing of one's own petty kingdoms. 

Will God go that far?  We anticipate a soon-coming catastrophe that will eclipse the Nazi time, and the Church has not the slightest awareness of its coming, and has made no preparation, either physically or spiritually, to expect it.  In fact, most of the Church has presumed its own absence at that time.  This puts the great premium on our relationship to the Holy Spirit.  Only He can bring the perception of reality and understanding that has been so lost to us that it cannot even be humanly communicated.  Even Paul speaks of it as mystery, and warns us to not be ignorant of it (Rom. 11:25).  It is the only mystery of which Paul gave such a warning.  We might miss some of the other mysteries, but if we miss this mystery, there is a consequence that is fateful for the Church, namely, it will become wise in its own conceit.  It will remain pompous and inflated, and believe that it has become the Israel of God, and that it will bring the kingdom of God to the earth; that the Church, in fact, is the kingdom of God, the 'kingdom now,' and that it is going to influence and take over society.  God has, on the contrary, called the Church to a humbling and secondary role.  We are called as a proviso in order to bring back to Himself a people who have been broken off from the tree into which we, in their place, have been grafted.
When we perceive the issue of Israel rightly, we are compelled to consider the God of Judgment, to consider apocalyptic devastation; to consider people being dispelled again into the nations, exile, and a subsequent return; to consider suffering and its significance; to consider the meaning of the Cross and the suffering that precedes the glory, not only for Jesus, but for that nation called in Exodus 4:22, "My firstborn son."  And that son has a destiny more comparable to its Pattern Son and Messiah, and must, in substantial measure, also follow Him in a road to Calvary.

If God will take sin that seriously as to judge His ancient people so devastatingly, how well do we know Him?  And what 'Jesus' is it that we promulgate?  Is it, in fact, really the Son of God?  The One who is going to judge the earth in equity and justice?  Do we know God as God?  And can we know Him if we have dismissed the revelation of Himself, so accurately set forth in His full triune Godhead except in His dealing with the people Israel?  This is the divinely chosen context of God's own self-revelation.  The absence of that critical knowledge has made the Church light and frivolous, open to the celebration of personality, feeling, experience and excitement, to the point where our souls have been so indulged that we cannot scarce tell now where soul ends and spirit begins.  We can hardly distinguish between the faculty of soul and spirit, and have equated the one as the other.  How much do we realize that our souls are being stirred through hype, through all of the various devices that betray a foundational emptiness in the Church for the lack of that centrality God intended as normative?  Little wonder there is a pride in the Church that is reluctant to give to the Jew place of prominence in the Last Days.

There is a remarkable episode of an incident that occurred in another age, in an hour when the Spirit of God prevailed in such magnitude and purity that the very same act which might well be applauded today resulted, in that day, in sudden judgment and death.  Let someone come today with a great contribution (as with Ananias and Sapphira - Acts 5:1-10), and we would not ask too much about its source or the spirit by which it was offered.  Probably such a person would be given a place of honor and acknowledgement, a deacon, at least, if not an elder, but the Church that identified the lie, and was not impressed with the sum, is quite contrary to the Church of today.  The Church then was in its glory because it was alert to the issue of truth and deception; it knew that before the Spirit of God is the Spirit of power, He is first and foremost the Spirit of truth.  When truth is compromised, we will find that the Spirit is not going to be around to perform the expressions of power that serve our needs and gratify our souls, especially if we have forsaken Him and His first designation and identity as the Spirit of truth.  There needs to be a jealous regard for the truth, and Peter was therefore able to discern the pretence of a man and his wife, giving a sum of money as to be the whole, when it was only the part.13

Almost in the next breath we hear that "with great power, the apostles gave testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ," and that when the shadow of Peter would fall upon those who were sick and infirm, they would be healed.  The respect for the Spirit of God as the Spirit of truth allowed for the demonstration of the Spirit as power.  It is much easier to try and reverse that order, and many have, and have celebrated the power, the signs and wonders, and relegated truth to a distant consideration, if indeed, any consideration at all.  And who of us has not played the game of giving the part and making that to appear as the whole?

The distinctive character of truth is that it is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or it is not the truth.  Any disqualification, any cutting of corners, anything less than what is whole and full converts what seems to be impressive into the lie.  So much of our fellowship life does not have the modesty and humility appropriate to a Church whose Lord is the Lamb, whose essential character is meekness.  We are too often full of exaggeration, pompous ambition and activity, and think that the appearance constitutes the whole.  The greater part that is missing, and that would have made us to a large extent whole, is the part that that has to do with the centrality of Israel in the Church's consideration.  It needs to be restored if the Church is to be the Church of the Last Days, and thereby become the very provision of God for the redemption of His people whose time has come, for that is the time to obtain the kingdom.14

It is Israel's kingdom, not exclusively for national aggrandizement, but out of the nexus of their Jerusalem, and out of their Zion, shall the law of the Lord go forth to all nations, which can only go forth from them as the redeemed nation.  God has made promises to their patriarchs and to themselves that must be fulfilled.  A deliverer must come out of Zion and take transgression from Jacob according to the covenant that He has made with them (Rom. 11:26-27).  

We need to ask ourselves whether we are doing anything different from what Ananias and Sapphira did when we seek and expect the evidence of power while consecrating ourselves only in part to the Lord, while yet presuming to have given ourselves wholly.  We all want the semblance of these things, the comfort of the Spirit, the intimate communion, but we want it at the lesser price of acknowledging truth as only being doctrinal, or the issue of being biblically correct rather than as the very sum and substance of the reality of our lives.  There is a way we can delight to speak truth, but, in our deeps, we do not want to be true.  We want correct words, we want to acknowledge truth, but we do not want to obey it.  We are bringing our partial, phraseological truth, and making that to stand for the whole, as if we have already the reality that we are describing!

To tolerate one's deceit is to violate the whole truth.  To be ninety-nine percent true, or mostly true, and represent that as the whole truth, is to lie utterly.  To sin in one part is to sin in the whole.  We can talk about our love for the Lord, and our submission to Him, but the issue of truth is found in the place where we are most tempted to keep back for ourselves.   There is always one final and ultimate reservation that keeps us back from that utterness towards God.  This is the thing that makes truth really the truth, and brings to the Church the reality of His presence and His glory.

How true is true if we are still celebrating the Church over Israel as being the essential center of God's enduring glory and rule?  The issue of truth, stubbornly awaiting our consideration, will require an alignment in terms of our traditions and understanding.  Until we do, dispositions remain that have opened us for deception, for pseudo-revival, for experience, for emotion, for the kinds of things that are questionable and dubious at best and may actually be demonic at worst.  There is something about the radical apprehension of the centrality of Israel as the Zion of God over every other consideration.  Once apprehended, we find that the power of deception is broken; it puts an iron into our souls that steadies us, and keeps us from being disposed to the kinds of things that make for deception.

The New Wineskin

The proper recognition of Israel's centrality is the greatest provision of God for the Church, and the absence of that provision has left us in a questionable condition.  Even the best of what we have known charismatically has not been the answer.  Perhaps it is because the wineskin was always inadequate.  We are suggesting that the wineskin is more a wineskin of comprehension of an apostolic and prophetic way of perceiving all the faith, thus fitting the Church for its apostolic mandate and indeed, the very purpose for God pouring out His Spirit.  Is not the Holy Spirit rather a provision to prepare us for the suffering, the opposition and the persecution that will come with our identification with Jews in the Last Days, when they will be a hated people among all nations?

When the predominantly Gentile Church receives the Holy Spirit, we are in fact appropriating the promise made first to Israel.  We need to understand that, and to be humbled by that fact.  The error of the charismatic and other similar movements is that we have forgotten the auspices by which the Holy Spirit has come to us, out of Israel's own promise, and have extrapolated Him for our own purposes even at Israel's expense.  Why was the Spirit initially given to the Gentiles?  Why was it not enough to give it to the 3,000 or the 5,000 original Jewish converts?  Why has God turned now to the 'foolish nation,' Gentiles?  In our opinion, the eschatological Spirit was given that we might be a witness to Israel, moving them to jealousy.  In other words, we have stopped short of the issue of the glory of God and the resurrection life, the ends for which the Spirit was given.  We have lost both the eschatological framework and God's strategy.  Paul magnified his office so that he might have a humbled people who would so express the Shekinah glory that Israel must say, "Now there is our God!"

We are saying that this is the new wineskin, not as it is currently understood as a change in ecclesiastical forms or church structures, but as an apocalyptic framework of understanding.  Like Paul, our gospel needs to be one that is according to the revelation of the mystery hidden in other ages. (Col. 1:26).  It is a context of an Israel that would stumble, of a Son of Man who would be rejected and crucified by His own nation, and then a calling out of a foolish, Gentile people, a 'no people,' to move Israel to jealousy.  What is the gospel if it is not preached in this context?  What is lost?  Paul preached his gospel in that context, and it is a context that should compel and direct our attention to the issue of death and resurrection, which then restores the gospel as 'Christ-centered.'  It restores Jesus to the true center as King, because it recaptures the theocratic context, and this, we are saying, is the 'gospel of the kingdom.'

When we talk about 'the mystery of the kingdom,' or 'the mystery of the gospel,' we are talking about the context of the mystery of two comings of Messiah to Israel.  This is the key to the whole mystery, and if we do not understand that the Messiah came a first time to make Israel stumble, as a judgment, an eschatological judgment, and that we are living between the two advents of Messiah, under and during the judgment of Israel.  There was a plenitude of salvation promised to Gentiles, of Israel going forth to the nations as a priestly, theocratic kingdom, the knowledge of the Lord would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.  In other words, if God was just interested in evangelism, He would have restored Israel and the Gentiles would have had an abounding access to the grace that would come to them.  Now that will be true in the Millennium.  "For if their rejection be the reconciliation of the world [nations], what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?" (Rom. 11:15).  In other words, if their fall has brought this much grace to the Gentiles, how much more will their fullness bring but more abundant grace to the Gentile nations!

The first Jewish believers in Messiah knew that when Israel was to be restored, the nations would be blessed, and Abraham's promise be fulfilled, but what they did not conceive, or consider, was that God would be calling out a people from the Gentile nations "to move Israel to jealousy," and that the gifts of the Spirit would be given to a "strange and another people" to make Israel jealous as a judgment, as a testimony against them.  Both Moses and Paul were in agreement.  That context has been lost, but it is a theocratic framework that constitutes the mystery.
…according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith (Rom. 16:25b-26).

Only a gospel preached in this context will do that.  Is this not the plumbline that divides between the true and false church?  Israel is the missing link, and nothing so accentuates and underscores the core of the gospel, namely death and resurrection, than the issue of Israel.  God has given Israel to underscore in her own experience the issue of death and resurrection.  And He has given the Gentiles to Israel to press that reality home to them.  Israel has been given to us to compel us to that reality, and we, in turn, to them.  That Israel would not know the 'time of their visitation' was foreordained of God.

In the absence of this theocratic context, the gospel that has been promulgated has been reduced to something personal, rapture-oriented, 'place in heaven,' and enjoyment, satisfaction, and prosperity in this life.  Or, as the institutional religion of Rome, the gospel is completely of a 'displacement' orientation.  It takes to itself all the prerogatives that God intended for theocratic Israel.  It conceives of itself as the theocratic entity in the earth, a kind of millennial phenomenon.  In other words, being identified with another gospel results in our establishing a present kingdom on earth, exempting Israel's national restoration, her resurrection from the dead, the glory of God forever!

The whole interim that the Gentile Church is in now is a 'between-the-times' phenomenon, and it is given as a call for repentance, to prepare the way of the Lord for the coming of the apocalyptic, intervention of His kingdom.  We enter by the Spirit now, into the kingdom that must come to Israel.  We are entered as a first fruit, a foreshadowing of Israel's millennial glory in ourselves.  The reality of that kingdom should have a power and a presence now, but it should be with one view: to preparing a people for that kingdom, which will bring the restitution of all things spoken of by the prophets (Acts 3:21).  The first saints were living in the imminent expectation of the destruction and overthrow of Jerusalem, and the imminent restitution of all things.  It was a time of great urgency, but that apocalyptic framework has, for centuries, been lost, exacting, thereby, an enormous toll.

Unless the Spirit of God and the gifts of God are understood and are seen in the context of the apostolic framework of God's intention as a besieged community in the midst of a sea of hostility and worldly hatred, then we make the Spirit of God and His gifts serve a lesser purpose.  They accommodate us rather than God, and one wonders if God is in that business, providing that accommodation, or, that something questionable has come in its place, and that we have not the discernment to distinguish.  If it seems to bring a measure of excitement, a measure of enjoyment, a measure of relief, a measure of healing, which the Powers of this world can easily provide in order to bring in an ultimate deception.  The Holy Spirit needs to be restored to the context of God's intention, of which the center is the restoration of a people who have not even the faintest notion of their eternal destiny or a desire for it, and want only to be as other nations.  Nevertheless, God's word toward them, and the gifts and callings of God, must be fulfilled, for they are irrevocable and without repentance, or God is voided as God.

Let us not lose this ultimate and apocalyptic expectation, the dynamic that gave the early Church its distinctive.  To substitute lesser 'excitements' leaves completely unchallenged the Powers of the air in the heavenly places, who rage against God and against His Anointed, and whose final defeat comes only with the restoration of Israel through the Church.  To forfeit this eschatological calling constitutes a Last Days' apostasy, the great falling away of which Paul spoke.  However much we might be occupied with the benevolent needs of men, for their healing, their deliverance, even their salvation, etc, it is to be occupied only in part, rather than in whole.  It is the occupation with the whole that is the radically requiring aspect.  It is little wonder that we shun the Jew, "the enemy of the gospel," and that we would much rather engage one another than to take up the central task of the Church, and, indeed, in a great part, the divine strategy in the salvation of Gentiles "so as to move them [the Jew] to jealousy."

In the unfathomable wisdom of God, the issue of Israel, rightly and prophetically understood, is God's provision for an errant Church, because it alone provides the framework by which the Church itself is to be understood.  Its origins are derived from Israel, "for salvation is of the Jews."  By being grafted into her tree, and living by the Life that is expressed through her root, the Church has a destiny as God's salvific agency for the restoration of that people in moving them to jealousy and showing them the face of their own God, who is full of mercy and unconditional in His love. 

What has been too long confused is that the Church is not the kingdom, per se, but an interim provision in Israel's restoration, and it is time now to restore the kingdom of David to that literal people on David's throne, on the holy hill of Zion.  The kingdom of God will either go forth from that place, or it will not go forth at all.  Until that kingdom comes, no true divine law will go forth to the nations.  Wars, suffering, death, incest and every kind of vile mayhem will continue to prevail over the world until the law of God can go forth from the one place specifically designated.  Only one redeemed nation has the honor of expressing it, and whose redemption has come through a Zion (the Church of the Last Days) out of which, alone, their Deliverer comes (Rom. 11:25-27).  

There is something foundationally wrong when we desire to enjoy a semblance of the Spirit, and its 'excitement,' without the Cross.  We want the reality of God without the suffering that precedes that glory.  Church, as every earnest believer knows, is a place of suffering, before it is a glory.  The Church is a means, not an end in itself, but by being that means, it obtains, at the consummation of the age, something more glorious than that of the redeemed millennial Israel herself, namely, a ruling and reigning with Christ in the heavenly places.  We, who are a "no people" as the Church, have become the "people of God" to move to envy a nation, Israel, that has lost that very identity.  In the final frenzy, which is even now brewing, Jews will likely regard us, the Church, as enemies and a threat to their Jewishness in the anti-Semitic furor of the Last Days' persecution.  In the failure to recognize that ours is a heart of love toward them, we may possibly have to suffer martyrdom even at their hands, as Stephen did, as a critical necessity, a sacrifice, to bring by it, if that alone is the final requirement, the revelation of the Lord that turned Saul from persecutor to apostle, and will bring that nation from opposing God to its own apostolate in blessing all the families of the earth.

Our coming under these purposes of God for Israel's redemption, this first-born among the nations, is calculated for our humility.  We must not expect Jewish understanding, let alone gratitude for our sacrifice on their behalf, and, like Christ dying for us as sinners when we were dead in our transgressions, we also must 'suffer' for them while they are yet in their transgressions.  In that mutuality and in that willingness to suffer for them as He suffered for us, we show forth the essential character of their God.  The crisis that the Jew of the Last Days brings to a Church called to their redemption will reveal the truth of our condition in its depths, a condition calculated by God to bring us to the need for a full sanctification, which would not otherwise have been recognized, nor sought.

Roger Larsson Frälsningsarmén, Anja Pärson, Ingemar Stenmark, Henning Sjöström, Martin Lundström, Assar Rönnlund, Torgny Lindgren, Sara Lidman, Lars Lundkvist och P-O Enquist samt... Martin Lönnebo, f.d. biskopen ...

MARTIN LÖNNEBO 75 år

Söndagen 27 februari

Läs om hur han firar dagen: i Norrköpings Tidningar

Martin Lönnebo växte upp som det åttonde barnet i en bondefamilj i Kågeträsk, Västerbotten på 1930-talet. Föddes 27 februari 1930. Yngst av åtta syskon. Han tjänade bl a som bonddräng men fick möjligheten att läsa vidare och började med filosofi.
Sådan är också hans gärning: kombinationen av det jordiskt praktiska och det andliga tänkandet och reflektionen över skapelsen.
En kort sejour som EFS-predikant i Bohuslän. Doktorsavhandling om Albert Schweitzer. Engagemang i handikapprörelse och miljörörelse. Ökenäventyr när han gick vilse på Sinai och var nära att dö …
Som biskop i Linköping mellan åren 1980-1995 blev han snart mycket känd över hela landet med sin blida men konsekventa personlighet som tjänat som andlig förebild för många människor.
En av hans viktiga deviser är att andlighet måste övas!
Förutsättningen för Lönnebos andlighet är att han står med båda fötterna på jorden, lever i världen, men inte av den.

Hur ser pensionären Lönnebos vardag ut? Frågas i en intervju när han pensionerats och Lönnebo berättar: Stressar inte. Stiger upp när man behöver. Först samlar han tankarna. Äter gröt, klassisk musik och lingonsylt är bra på morgonen. Om jag sedan inte skall resa iväg någonstans för att undervisa så går jag kanske till datorn och skriver på en bok. Tröttnar jag så lägger jag mig ett tag på soffan tills det blir kaffedags. På kvällen samlar jag mina tankar innan det blir TV-Aktuellt klockan 18. Man måste följa med i tiden. Sedan blir det promenad eller jogging, lite sport i TV, en stunds begrundan över dagen som varit och så somnar jag vid 23-tiden. Men en annan dag kanske jag ägnar mig åt att gräva i trädgården. Laga mat har jag blivit rätt bra på om jag bara får viss handledning, jag har lärt mig att följa recepten.

I en intervju Aftonbladet 1999 med akademiledamoten Torgny Lindgren född i Raggsjö Västerbotten berättar Lindgren:

Jag har sett ett stamträd som börjar med en karl på 1700-talet, jag har glömt hans namn. Men följer man grenverket ner till sista raden blir det rätt intressant. Där står till exempel jag själv, förre biskopen Martin Lönnebo, Sara Lidman, Lars Lundkvist och P-O Enquist. Vi är släkt på långt håll allihop.

Se:  Zakrissläktens stamträd

Där finns en stamfader Zackris Nilsson född 1675 och anfader till författarna som nämnts ovan. Detta är om inte annat så en mycket märklig plantskola för Västerbottensförfattare...

Martin Lönnebo har berättat om hur han som liten hade han de starkaste upplevelserna av Gud i naturen, när han satt i en eka på en blank sjö eller gick under en norrskenshimmel. När himmel och jord var nära. Jag tänkte att allt detta är Guds hus. Här hör jag hemma. Det lilla, enkla och det stora är så sammanbundet.

Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka 1 Iwas

Syrianska ortodoxa kyrkan i Sverige är en av de många invandrarkyrkorna vi har i den stora kyrkofamiljen som vi kallar Den svenska kristenheten.

Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka 1 Iwas på bilden ovan är en av de ledare som dessa kyrkor hör samman med.

Så här presenteras denne ärkebiskop på >> en syriansk ortodox hemsida:

His Holiness Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka 1 Iwas
Patriarch of Antioch and all the East
Supreme Head of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church

Extracts from H.H.'s Biography
 
H.H. was born on 21st April, 1933, into the faithful family of Iwas in Mosul, Iraq.
H.H. obtained his elementary studies at the school of Our Lady's Parish then was transfered to St. Thomas school.
In the year 1946 H.H. joined the Theological Seminary in Mosul, and was called Zakka.
In the year 1948 He was ordained as a deacon at the rank of Reader.
In the year 1953 promoted to the rank of Half-Deacon (Afodyacno).
In the year 1954 honoured with the Monk's rank.
In the year 1955 promoted to the rank of Deacon.
On 27th November 1957 was ordained by H.H. Moran Mor Ignatius Yacoub the third as a priest, and in the year 1959 was honoured with the Holy Cross.
H.H. at the beginning of his service with the clergy became the Secretary of the Patriarchate, when H.H. Moran Mor Ignatius Afram Barsoum the First (1933-1957+) appointed Him as the Patriarchate Secretary, then became the personal secretary for His Holiness. He maintained this position for a while at the time H.H. Moran Mor Ignatius Yacoub the Third became a Patriarch (1957-1980+)...

Läs fortsättningen på hemsidan ovan.

EMANUEL från Vetlanda

Så här berättar Emanuel Henrysson:

- Hur kan en vanlig människa på 21 år bli intresserad av Kazakhstan?
Jag heter Emanuel och kommer från en liten by utanför Vetlanda i Småland. Jag har egentligen aldrig varit utomlands, Norge och Danmark räknas knappt. Men detta skulle till att bli ändring på - en dag så fick jag frågan om jag ville följa med till Kazakhstan....

Första gången jag var i Kazakhstan var våren 2002. Sommaren 2002 var jag i staden Taldykurgan i Sydöstra Kazakhstan och höll en datakurs för barn och ungdomar med rörelsehinder.

Se: www.silkeslinan.tk 

År 2003 tom 2004 fick jag möjligheten att arbeta på den kristna TV-kanalen CNL. Det är en kanal som sänder från Almaty i Kazkhstan.

SE: Emanuels egen hemsida: http://www.emnia.com/index.php

Se också hans www.jesussajten.se som är en sajt i uppbyggnad av en framåt webdesigner och IT-entreprenör. Endast 24 år gammal är han redan i fullt arbete ute på fältet.

Emanuel Henrysson från Vetlanda är inte riksevangelist som Roger Larsson som fyller 70 i dagarna men verkar i sin generations särskilda IT-kunnande som global webevangelist med Kazakhstan just nu som missionsstation. Läs om Roger Larsson

/Dag

The European Prophetic College
 
 
 
Ravenhill presenting Theodore Austin-Sparks
 

Ask any minister "Where's a good place to eat around here?" and he will quickly list off a plethora of options-from his favorite steak house or Chinese buffet to the best Italian or Mexican restaurant in town.
My late father, Leonard Ravenhill, was not a connoisseur of fine cuisine. He did however have a keen nose for finding the "finest of the wheat" from which to satisfy his spiritual hunger for solid revelation and insight into God's word. When I was a young man on the mission field, my father would send me boxes of books that included a variety of writings from T. Austin Sparks. These are now a cherished part of my own personal library.
After 35 years of ministry, I too can recommend to the next generation, that these writings are a "must" if they are going to effectively "serve the purpose of God in their generation."
 

Several years ago, my wife and I gazed in awe at one of the greatest art works in history, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. This incredible fresco by Michelangelo had just been painstakingly restored by a process that had taken many years. Prior to this restoration, art historians had declared Michelangelo to be one of the greatest sculptors of all time, but said that he was an artist who "painted with a dark palette." Following its completion in 1509, this incredible masterpiece had suffered the devastating effects of carbon soot that had ascended from the numerous candles and lamps used to light this magnificent chapel. The November 1991 issue of Life magazine carried this headline on its cover: "First pictures of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel as it hasn't been seen in five hundred years - A CLEAR VIEW OF HEAVEN." The restoration, finally completed, revealed for the first time in centuries the blaze of brilliant and vivid colors. Suddenly, this once drab fresco now confounded and embarrassed the experts who had concocted their own theories of its dark look.
 

Likewise, the writings of T. Austin Sparks strip away the centuries of misunderstanding that have caused us to accept the Church in her present condition. In these spiritual masterpieces, the writer seeks to recover God's original intention for His Church. This, says Sparks, is the true essence of prophetic ministry. What we have in his writings is an insightful look at the true nature of the prophetic - that of "recovering the Lord's testimony in fulness."
 
How I long for this day of restoration, when once again God reveals His workmanship in all her radiant glory, as the world watches in embarrassment and awe. I pray that the eyes of your understanding will be opened afresh and you will never again be satisfied to make the excuse that God painted "with a dark palette." Reserve for yourself a quiet corner in the "restaurant of the Spirit" and feast at this succulent table of wisdom and revelation. Allow the strength of this meat to sustain, strengthen, and enliven you as you seek to co-labor with Christ in "recovering His testimony in fulness."
David Ravenhill
 
 
 
BIOGRAPHY
T. Austin Sparks, 1888-1971
 
THEODORE AUSTIN SPARKS was a native of south London, educated there and in Scotland. His father moved in the musical world and had little time for God, but from his mother's side he inherited a long tradition of evangelical Christian faith handed down among Baptists of a Suffolk farming community. He himself however remained unmoved by the Spirit of God until one night, at the age of 17, he was suddenly arrested by the earnest preaching of the gospel in the cold open air of a Glasgow street. That night he went back to his room and gave his life to the Lord. It was a committal from which he never withdrew.

 
Started in business in Glasgow he engaged also in children's missions and slum work, and gathered a group of friends for Bible study in his home. Soon also he felt the call of God to proclaim the good news of redemption in several small mission halls, there and in and around London. Sensing that he might have a gift from God in this field, but lacking the means to secure a formal training for the ministry, he did the next best thing; he began to read widely, and used his free time to go and hear some of the last of the great turn-of-the-century preachers and Bible expositors. Notable among these were Dr. G. Campbell Morgan of Westminster Chapel, London, and F.B. Meyer, who was to become a firm friend and counsellor.

 
His devotion to God had begun to be recognised and at the age of 25 he was unanimously called to serve a congregational church in Stoke Newington, north of the Thames. He accepted the pastorate at a time when the church was at a low ebb, and was to leave them nine years later, "well-instructed and firmly founded on the ever-enduring truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ." While there, in 1915, he married Florence Rowland, daughter of godly parents, who from then was to prove his life- long support and spiritual companion.

 
From Stoke Newington he moved on in 1921 to the charge of Honor Oak Baptist Church in an undistinguished south-east London suburb. It " was while here that he began to be more widely known as a gifted and original minister of the Word. His health was never good, but backed by a faithful praying group in his own church he began to travel more widely in Britain.
In 1925 he paid a first visit to the United States as speaker at a Victorious Life Conference in Keswick Grove, New Jersey. He had begun to see, perhaps more clearly than many of his contemporaries, that the cross of Christ is central, not only to world history but also to human experience. To "lose his life" is the disciple's safe but costly way of entry to a service that is marked by eternal gain, and the discovery of this fact explains and gives meaning to so much in life that the Christian otherwise finds difficult. One day in his study, while waiting on God for the t needs of His flock, the truth that "it is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me" dawned freshly upon him with compelling power. Afterwards he often spoke of the "open heaven" beneath which, from that day on, he ministered.

 
The Baptist congregation grew, but, with his emphasis on the Christian's walk of faith, so too did dissatisfaction with what his deacons began to see as materialist methods of fund-raising favoured at that time by the British Baptist Union who held the church property. Thus it came about that in 1926 they, together with almost the whole congregation, supported a move to a vacant rented property - a school hall and residence - in the same general locality of Honor Oak. His lately redesigned church magazine A Witness and a Testimony continued from the new address to be issued bi-monthly, free of subscription, with a modest but increasingly worldwide circulation through until his death in 1971.

 
The New Christian Fellowship Centre, with its thriving local church and regular week-end conferences and its occasional longer training sessions for young men, became a place of pilgrimage for many. In 1931 this was supplemented by a Scottish summer Conference Centre on the Firth of Clyde at the well-situated house of Heathfield, Kilcreggan.
Meanwhile others of like vision had joined him in the ministry. He had dropped the title "The Reverend," and they shared an ideal of ministers and elders working "together in unity"; though always his unquestioned gift of preaching set him a little apart. A small press was started for publication of the magazine and of collections of his largely unedited spoken messages.

 
Down the years there were developments in emphasis in the ministry of the Word, "as", in his words, "there should ever be where there is life and growth, provided that the essential foundation remains true and unchanging." So the gospel was faithfully preached, but with it there was a strong emphasis for believers on the life in the Spirit, the eternal purpose of God in His Son, the Christian's spiritual warfare, and the heavenly nature, vocation and destiny of the Church, the Body of Christ.
This last emphasis on a Church-based witness worldwide meant effectually that the missionary vision of the local church at Honor Oak found strong encouragement from, and sympathy with, the rising indigenous movements of the Spirit of God overseas that, for a while during the thirties and forties, seemed a problem to leaders of the old-established missionary societies.
As a consequence church prayer meetings, always a mainspring of the local testimony at Honor Oak, now ranged in vision over a wide area of the work of God in the earth. Missionaries went forth to work in fellowship alongside such movements, and Mr. Austin-Sparks himself was privileged to travel widely in ministry, not only in Europe and North America but also further afield in India and the Far East. Such opportunities for fellowship with those in whom the Spirit of God was doing His own original work were to afford him lifelong joy.
 

From his early years he had believed in the power and significance of the spoken Word of God, and that all developments of its exposition and application should be vitally related to the actual and growing needs of the spiritual life of representative bodies of God's people. Through His Word God would meet His own, but His way of giving to His servants was not merely through bookish, cloistered or studied matter. Rather it was made necessary, drawn out and given meaning by the call and answer of living conditions. Its value - if it was to be anything more than words - lay in its being able to touch the Lord's people at the point of experience and need which had been the occasion of its original calling forth.

Such was the special calling of T. Austin-Sparks, a man ploughing a furrow perhaps a little apart from his contemporaries, but always true to Christ Jesus his Saviour and Lord, and committed to a vision of spiritually fruitful harvests throughout the whole field that is God's world.

 
(As submitted by David Ravenhill, from the library of his late father, Leonard Ravenhill)
 

*******************
The European Prophetic College
EPC@Comhem.se

 
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THE SET OF THE SAIL
A.W. TOZER

CHAPTER 12
God's Love and Ours

GOD BEING WHO and what He is must love Himself with pure and perfect love.
The Persons of the Godhead love each other with a love so fiery, so tender,
that it is all a burning flame of intense desire ineffable.
God is Himself the only being whom He can love directly; all else that He
loves is for His own sake and because He finds some reflection of Himself
there .
God loves His mute creation because He sees in it an imperfect
representation of His own wisdom and power. He loves the angels and seraphim
because He sees in them some likeness of His holiness. He loves men because
He beholds in them a fallen relic of His own image.

Potentially God loves all men alike, but His active love lights upon some
men more than upon others, the degree depending upon how much of Himself He
is able to impart to them. The truly Christlike soul enjoys more of God's
love because God sees in it a truer image of Himself than in a soul less
purified. God loves His Son with infinite perfection because He is "the
brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person."
God desires that all men should become Christlike, for in so doing they
present larger and more perfect objects for the reception of His outpoured
love.
Conformity to the nature of Christ on the part of a redeemed man restores
the image of God in the soul and thus makes it possible for God to lavish on
the soul without restraint all the boundless love of which He is the
original fountain.

It is hard for a sinful man to believe that God loves Him. His own accusing
conscience tells him it could not be so. He knows that he is an enemy of God
and alienated in his mind through wicked works, and he sees in himself a
thousand moral discrepancies that unfit him for the just enjoyment of so
pure a love. Yet the whole Bible proclaims the love of God for sinful men.
We must believe in His love because He declares it and avail ourselves of
the sanctifying grace of Christ in order to receive and enjoy that love to
the full.
"For our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it
overpasseth the knowing of all creatures there is no creature that is made
that may fully know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker
loveth us. And therefore we may with grace and His help (behold) with
everlasting marvel this high, overpassing, inestimable love that Almighty
God hath to us of His goodness. And therefore we may ask of our Lover with
reverence all that we will."

God is love, and is for that reason the source of all the love there is. He
has set as the first of all commandments that we love Him with all our
hearts, but He knows that the desired love can never originate with us. "We
love him, because he first loved us," is the scriptural and psychological
pattern. We can love Him as we ought only as He inflames our minds with holy
desire.
Yet there is also a love of willing as well as of feeling. Though we may not
be conscious of any great degree of inward sensation, we may set our wills
to love God and the feeling will come of itself. Let us bring ourselves
under obedience to His revealed Word and our love for Him will grow.
Obedience will strengthen faith and faith will increase knowledge. And it is
a well-known law of the spiritual life that our love for God will spring up
and flourish just as our knowledge of Him increases. To know Him is to love
Him, and to know Him better is to love Him more.

The previous ten chapters are available on request  -  EPC@Comhem.se

ITEMS AVAILABLE BY A. W. TOZER:

The Pursuit of God, 10 chapters
The Knowledge of the Holy, 23 chapters
The Root of the Righteous, 46 chapters

Whatever Happened to Worship, 10 chapters
Worship, the missing jewel of the evangelical Church, 3 chapters

Paths to Power, 7 chapters
Jesus, Our Man in Glory, 12 chapters
Jesus, Author of Our Faith, 12 chapters

A Cross at the core of the Christian life and living  -  articles on the
subject of the Cross.

As usual, sent on request as ordinary e-mail or as MS Word files via e-mail.
Zipped files are also available via e-mail.
EPC@Comhem.se

Please, allow these articles to be circulated among your friends.
To become partaker of the regular flow of mailings from the College, mail us
a request.

Lars Widerberg
The European Prophetic College
Storskiftesgatan 87
S-58334 Linkoping, Sweden

Phone + Fax:  +46 13 213630

VISION för Den svenska kristenheten

Om man jämför predikningar från Den svenska kristenheten, både ser och förstår man att både förenande likheter och åtskiljande olikheter föreligger.   

Under samma oktav - den Andra söndagen i Fastan - sammanställde jag fyra predikningar, tre från Jönköpings kyrkor och en från nätet.

Se Predikan 1.2.3.4 under:

Månadens förkunnelse/1.Predikan/2.Predikan osv

Två av predikningarna gjorde jag som åhörare anteckningar från i söndags; pater Joseph Maria Nilsson i Franciskus kyrka och missionsföreståndaren i SAM Anders Bengtsson i Råslätts kyrka. Från Pingstkyrkan hämtade jag utlagt utkast av pastor Sam Wohlin´s predikan samt från webben SvenskaKyrkan.se/Andrum/TankarInforHelgen av Kerstin Pettersson.

Fyra predikningar från samma söndag och oktav i Den svenska kristenheten. Förenande likheter ser vi om vi läser sammanfattningarna Predikan 1.2.3.4 ovan på denna website. Vi möter Nåden och vi möter utmaningen från Jesus Kristus. Vi möter förutom den förenande enheten i mångfalden också en del åtskiljande olikheter. Dock är dessa olikheter mindre än de förenande likheterna.

Därför är visionen vi bär tillsammans om Den svenska kristenheten inte alls en omöjlig vision eller mission…

Försöken att dra några små visionsstrån till denna missionsmyrstack är inte omöjliga. Mänskligt men också praktiskt teologiskt tycks företaget omöjligt, ett Mission Impossible. Vi kan hålla med varandra om det nästan absurda att kunna se någon öppning i konflikten som finns mellan "Särintressena" kring bl.a. Missionsprovinsen och Svenska kyrkan och dess lära och bekännelse idag. Vi kan se det omöjliga hur att kunna se gemenskap mellan Ortodoxa kyrkor och Sveriges frikyrkor. Vi ser det vi ser. Och allt synes omöjligt både teoretiskt och praktiskt.

Visionen som finns i Himlen vet vi inte mycket om. Men vi kan nog alla ana där finns större och andra himmelska perspektiv på Den svenska kristenheten än vi själva har i våra kyrkor och samfund. Vi ber dock gemensamt alla bönen:

'Tillkomme ditt rike…'  

'såsom i himnmelen så ock på jorden...'  

'ske din vilja…'

i bönen som är 'Fader v-å-r…'

Kyrkans egen Herre Jesus ber själv i Joh. 17: 

9 Jag ber för dem. Det är inte för världen jag ber utan för dem som du har gett mig, eftersom de är dina. 10 Allt mitt är ditt och allt ditt är mitt, och jag är förhärligad i dem. 11 Jag är inte längre kvar i världen, men de är kvar i världen när jag går till dig. Helige Fader, bevara i ditt namn dem som du har gett mig, för att de skall vara ett, liksom vi är ett. 12 Medan jag var hos dem, bevarade jag i ditt namn dem som du har gett mig. Jag vakade över dem, och ingen av dem gick förlorad, ingen utom fördärvets man, för att Skriften skulle uppfyllas. 13 Nu går jag till dig, och detta säger jag medan jag är i världen, för att deras hjärtan skall vara fyllda av min glädje. 14 Jag har gett dem ditt ord, och världen har hatat dem, eftersom de inte är av världen, liksom inte heller jag är av världen. 15 Jag ber inte att du skall ta dem ut ur världen utan att du skall bevara dem för det onda. 16 De är inte av världen, liksom inte heller jag är av världen. 17 Helga dem i sanningen, ditt ord är sanning. 18 Liksom du har sänt mig till världen, så har jag sänt dem till världen. 19 Och jag helgar mig för dem, för att de skall vara helgade i sanningen.
 20 Men inte bara för dem ber jag, utan också för dem som genom deras ord* kommer att tro på mig. 21 Jag ber att de alla skall vara ett, och att såsom du, Fader, är i mig och jag i dig, också de skall vara i oss, för att världen skall tro att du har sänt mig. 22 Och den härlighet som du har gett mig har jag gett dem, för att de skall vara ett, liksom vi är ett: 23 jag i dem och du i mig, för att de skall vara fullkomligt förenade till ett. Då skall världen förstå att du har sänt mig och har älskat dem så som du har älskat mig.
 24 Fader, jag vill att där jag är, där skall också de som du har gett mig vara med mig, så att de får se min härlighet som du har gett mig, eftersom du har älskat mig innan världens grund var lagd. 25 Rättfärdige Fader, världen har inte lärt känna dig, men jag känner dig, och de vet att du har sänt mig. 26 Jag har gjort ditt namn känt för dem, och jag skall göra det känt, för att den kärlek som du har älskat mig med skall vara i dem och jag i dem."

/Dag Sr

The Mystery of Israel and the Church

by Art Katz

Chapter 6 - Israel And The Glory

The genius of God in the mystery of Israel is not merely His purpose for Israel, or even the Church's role in that restoration, but it is the profoundest revelation of God Himself as He in fact is.  In Romans chapters 9 through to 11, there are many references to one principal word: mercy.  Mercy is a central attribute of God Himself.  When the knowledge of God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas, it will be the revelation of the mercy of God, what God Himself is.  Something of God's mercy is going to be revealed in His final dealing with Israel, as will not be seen in any other place.  If we lose the mystery of Israel, we are not only losing the dynamic of God's dealing with that nation, we are losing God in the way in which He chooses to communicate and reveal Himself.  What then is the knowledge of God that we are presently communicating if it does not eventuate in a call to repentance?

We need to ask what God's ruling purpose was from the beginning in electing Israel as a nation.  Why did God need to have an earthly representative?  He employs men in His purposes, but Israel, as a nation, is called to show God forth.  Israel was to be a literal, physical and visible presence in the earth, communicating the reality of God by the visible demonstration of the glory that God has invested in His people.  In fact, when you really get down to the question, can there be glory except it be exhibited through an earthen vessel?  Can glory be glory except it has a structure that shows it forth, be it a tabernacle, a temple, an individual believer, a fellowship, or a nation?  That is why Paul ends chapter 3 of Ephesians with,
...to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.  Amen.
This is astonishingly literal: a habitation of God by the Spirit in a people who are joined together, who have been fitted together, where His Spirit is not grieved, or alienated, and can abide and dwell.  That is why the nations will come up to Jerusalem in the millennial age, because His manifest glory will dwell there.  It will be His sanctuary, His tabernacle and His dwelling place.
For Paul, the revelation of God's glory is the whole issue.  He saw the restoration of Israel and the role of the Church as means to this greater end.  The issue is, and has always been, the glory of God, and that He should be glorified forever.  The significance of Israel in the Last Days, restored through the instrumentality of the Church, is that this will be the last time when this issue can be met and answered.  God's glory is going to be visibly demonstrated at the end of the age by Israel's restoration through the Church, but it is a glory of such a kind that it endures forever.  Once the age ends, there is no longer a second shot at it.  You cannot go back and do it over.  The key is not a lapsed Israel, but the Church as an active, dynamic agent of God operating out of its own freedom to fulfill its enormous mandate, namely, to be God's instrument as Israel's 'deliverer.'  The Church is the key, but not a Church that is having its arm twisted; rather one who freely and voluntarily gives itself for the fulfillment of these purposes.

You cannot understand how jealous God is for His own glory, and that He will not allow any flesh to boast.  The whole mystery is from Him; the fulfillment will be through Him in order that the glory be to Him forever.  This puts the Church on a radical ground.  Is that descriptive of the modern Church's mode of operating now?  Can the Church say that what we do and what we are about is through Him, or even from Him, or consciously to Him?  Paul is absolutely insistent on this formula.  The mystery of Israel will not be fulfilled on any other basis than from Him, through Him, and to Him (Romans 11:36a).

This mystery is certainly not going to be fulfilled by human expertise.  Modern-day Israel was established by Jewish prowess, expertise, ability and savvy.  There was a day in 1948 when the United Nations had a vote and Israeli statehood was established.  We are, however, talking about the Israel that will be the millennial glory of God, and that will come, not by the dictates of men or their agreement politically, but through the sovereign, supernatural work of God out of death.  There can be no other way because this must be from Him, through Him and to Him.  It even raises the question of whether God has not allowed a political preliminary state to be formed merely to contrast what men can establish to what God Himself will establish.  Present-day Israel is perhaps humanly impressive, but there is one thing that it lacks, namely, the glory of God.  What God will establish out of His own sovereign power will be glory to Him forever.

We may think that the present resettlement of Israel is a masterful stroke of God's success in the affairs of men, but from the heavenly perspective, can we bring ourselves to consider that it must be a profound failure?  The only reason that we applaud it is because we do not see as God sees.  God allows what we call successful to become a failure in order that He might bring forth something that is larger than the issue of success, namely, the thing that pertains to His eternal glory.  We think humanly of the things that we desire, but we do not think of God's desire, or the things that pertain to His name, His honor and the fulfillment of His eternal purposes.

Our problem is that we have been so desirous to see the nation Israel receive some kind of relief and satisfaction.  Humanly speaking, we want to see them established.  But what is our focus?  What is our object?  What is our jealousy?  Is it their establishment and their deserving satisfaction at last, or the glory of God?  If our jealousy is not for God's glory, then we may have to suffer the pain and the anguish of watching present-day Israel subside into death.  Mere sentimentality is as destructive to the purposes of God for Israel as outright rejection or anti-Semitic disdain.  Everything in you will want to rush to Israel's bedside and lay hands on, pray for, and lift her up and help and sustain her.  When Jesus heard that His friend whom He loved, Lazarus, was sick, that is precisely what He did not do.  He did not rush to the bedside of Lazarus, to bolster up and to preserve that natural physical life, though He loved him.  Jesus remained longer where He was, sufficient for that life to die, and said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified by it (John 11:4)."
The same thing that makes Paul an apostle is the very same thing that makes Jesus the ultimate, quintessential Son of God.  They both had a passion for the glory of God.  This passion has a higher criterion than the sickness of a friend.  What anguish of soul are we willing to suffer for that glory, because suffering must necessarily precede glory every time, without exception?

No Cross, No Glory
Israel will not be saved or restored except by a Church so intensely jealous for the glory of God that it will exhibit the obedience of the Son by not acting prematurely out of its own humanity, its own compassion, or its own desire to alleviate suffering.  It will allow death to have its full course, that there might be a resurrection from the dead that will glorify God and the Son of God.  And there will be no entering into, and identification with, suffering unless there is a very actual, existential and real expectation of the glory that follows.

The Church at large is more or less content to talk about the glory of God, but has not any realistic expectation to see that glory.  It wants its own success and the perpetuation of its own establishments.  What will it take to restore this apostolic and prophetic vision to the Church?  Where are the candidates?  Anyone who brings this vision will likely be a threatening figure, because everything that we are talking about, the intensity of facing issues of truth and reality, is everything the Church does not want.  What it wants is turning up the amplifiers, the euphoria and the impression of an alive fellowship, without the costly foundational and unmistakable reality.  In fact, a good definition of present day Christianity is that it wants the sense of the power of God, and of the gifts of God, but without the Cross of God.  The crisis of Israel, then, is not only for Israel's sake, per se, as it is for the Church.  Nothing less will raise it from its torpor; nothing other will obtain its glory.

PREDIKAN 20 febr 2005

Pastor Sam Wohlin
Pingstkyrkan

FÄLLORNA - VÄGEN BORT FRÅN GUD

Fällorna - Vägen bort från Gud. Temat för dagens predikan är "Fällorna - Vägen bort från Gud". Jag predikar om det idag för att försöka hjälpa dig att undvika fällorna i livet, där man riskerar att gå vilse, och förstöra sitt liv. Mitt mål är att försöka ge dig tydlig, andlig vägledning inför de många svåra livsval vi alla ställs inför. Och jag tänkte använda mig av de sju dödssynderna för att bli konkret.

Ordspråksboken 4:10 - 5:15

Vishetens väg
1. Bevara ditt hjärta ty därifrån utgår livet!
2. Tag vara på mitt tal, vänd ditt öra till mitt ord
3. Gör dig fri frun munnens falskhet, låt läpparnas svek vara långt ifrån dig
4. Låt dina ögon se rakt fram, rikta din blick rakt framför dig
5. Tänk på var din fot går fram, låt alla dina vägar vara rätta
6. Vik inte av till höger eller vänster, håll din fot borta från det onda

De sju dödssynderna - Syndens problem!
1. Avund
2. Vrede
3. Likgiltighet
4. Frosseri
5. Lusta eller orenhet
6. Girighet
7. Högmod

Detta är de sju fällor som alla leder oss bort ifrån Gud, så se upp med dem!

Korset och nåden!

Men skriften säger: "Om vårt hjärta dömer oss, kan vi inför honom övertyga det om att Gud är större än vårt hjärta och förstår allt." (1 Joh 3:19-20)
Och i Joh 3:16 står det "Så älskade Gud världen att han gav dn sin ende son, för att de som tror på honom inte skall gå under utan ha evigt liv."
Vi läser i 1 Joh 1:9 "Om vi bekänner våra synder är Gud trofast och rättfärdig, så att han förlåter oss synderna och renar oss från all orättfärdighet."

Välj livet - 5 Mos 30:15-16

Samtala om detta utifrån innehållet i de olika punkterna, om problem, om synd, om nåd och vishet. Fundera över Bibelordens betydelse.

PREDIKAN 20 febr 2005

Lyssnarens notiser:

Missionsföreståndare SAM
Anders Bengtsson
Råslättskyrkan

FÖRVANDLANDE NÅD
Text: Luk 7:36ff

Trons olika förhållningssätt enligt Simon & Synderskan

Simon:
Kollande, Korrekt, Kylig

Synderskan:
Känslor, Kyssar, Kärlek

Simon ville veta vem Jesus var. Hade hört om honom som "en profet". Belevat bjuder han in honom.

Kvinnan har uppenbarligen mött Jesus tidigare.

Liknelsen i v. 41. Vem älskar mest?

Gravstenen på Öckerö; "vår biskop" Jan-Arvid Hellström. Gravstenen är prydd med en natursten med texten "Nåden är som havet". Öckerö omsluts av havet.

Rektor Stig Wikström på Missionsskolan i Örebro talade om nåden med hjälp av vattnet och havet. Joh 1:16 Av hans fullhet har vi fått nåd utöver nåd. Grundtextens innebörd av Nåd: hämtad från havet; våg efter våg sköljer fram. Så med nåden.

John Newton, slavhandlaren som blev omvänd. Författare och präst. Skrev psalmen "Oändlig nåd" Sv.psb 231.

Den som erfarit Nåd kan inte låta bli att låta Herren Jesus få våra känslor och kärlek.

PREDIKAN 20 febr 2005

Ur lyssnares notiser:

Pater Josef Nilsson
S:t Franciskus kyrka

GLÄDJEN I ATT LEVA GUDS VILJA

Kyrkan ger oss tron. Vi ska vara förvaltare av tron.

De tre barnen i Fatima: Francisco, Jacinta, Lucia. Läs om barnen i Fatima

  
Lucia levde i glädje. Påven sade i samband med hennes död:

Vi kan förvandla historiens gång i och genom vår tro. Genom trons lydnad.

Kallelsen för oss är att leva ut tron. Leva kristendom. Sann tro i kristet liv är en anstöt. Vår kallelse är att leva till Guds ära. Som Kristi efterföljare. Är vi "snälla och goda" samhällsmedborgare eller lever vi så att det blir till anstöt i samhället?

Påven påminner oss om att Europa måste evangeliseras på nytt. Folk säger att Kyrkan ska inte lägga sig vad vi gör med pengar eller i sängen. Har Gud något att göra med hur vi lever? Det är inte bara att knäppa händerna. Det är att vara Ordets görare. Varför festas det på fredagar? På Jesu dödsdag? Det är viktigt hur vi gör våra val i sättet att leva. Så att vi gör vad Gud vill. Det är skillnad på hedningar och kristendom.

I dagens heliga Evangelium på berget Tabor får vi en inblick i vad lärjungarna att kallade till. Till att bli förvandlade! Vem är min moder, syster och broder; jo, det är de som gör min himmelske Faders vilja. De är min familj, säger Kristus.

Vi är kallade att bli förvandlade och att förändra historiens gång.

PREDIKAN 20 febr 2005 

Websajt: SvenskaKyrkan.se
Kerstin Pettersson

TRO PÅ TROTS

Nej, nu är du för tokig, sa jag till talgoxen, som satt och spelade i den kala linden. Det är inte vår riktigt än! Men fågeln fortsatte sitt spelande trots den dumkloka tvåbeningens kommentar och trots de blåsvarta molnen i väster, som varslade om snö.

Jag lämnade den lilla kaxiga fågeln åt sin spelglädje. Egentligen gjorde den alldeles rätt. När yttre händelser får oss att vackla kan det behövas lite frisk trotsighet att förankra tron i.

Köksfarstun är iskall på vintern, jag skyndar mig upp och ner för de gropiga trappstegen. Sällan lyfter jag blicken. En morgon formar östersolen konstverk med isrosorna på fönstret. Den belyser en till synes alldeles förtorkad växt på vinterförvaringshyllan. "Se på fikonträdet", säjer Jesus till mig. Jag lyfter blicken.

Högst upp vinkar de ljusgröna bladhänderna till mig och fikonknopparna trotsar kylan och har börjat svälla. Återigen påminns jag om hur det går att hoppas och tro - även i vatten och stormkatastrofernas tid.

Marken här utanför är hårdfrusen och glimtvis täckt med snö. Jag lyfter undan lite granris. Sju knoppar har strävat upp ur marken, violetta till färgen. Lägger tillbaka granriset och får min tredje tankepuff framåt. Jag ser för min inre blick hur de violetta julrosorna kantar vägen mot Jerusalem, de visar på smärtans väg för Jesus.

Inte långt från Jerusalem ligger Betania. Simon den spetälske har besök av Jesus och lärjungarna. Medan de låg till bords, kommer plötsligt en kvinna, objuden, in till dem. Hon bryter toppen av en flaska och häller innehållet över Jesu huvud. En paradisisk doft uppfyller rummet. Protester från de snålt kalkylerande tystas av Jesus.

Messias, den Smorde, är beredd och det av en kvinna, kärleksfullt generös, och med en tro som kämpade igenom alla hinder.

Ur djupen ropar jag till dig, Herre,
ge mig ork att tro,
trots vattenvågors kraft,
trots rotvältors lömska grepp,
trots mångas hemlöshet,
trots krig och flyktingars lott.
Herre, hör min bön,
lyssna när jag bönfaller dig!
I Jesu namn.

Presentation Ingmar Ytterbrink
Ledare för Sverige för Kristus under många år och fortfarande Still goin´ strong i evangelisation i Sjömarken där han numera bor.
Se: Agape Sverige och SVERIGE FÖR KRISTUS

Så här skriver Ingmar Ytterbrink i dagarna:
- Om vi i Kristi kyrka i Sverige centrerade oss kring uppgiften att undervisa om Andens fullhet och Andens frukt, skulle vi upptäcka hur nära vi står varandra i kristenheten och vår energi skulle kunna riktas mot världen och det onda (i stället för att diskutera varandras svagheter). Som bekant är det inte fråga om mångfald när det gäller Andens frukt. I 1981 års översättning är Gal 5:22 felaktigt översatt med pluralis: frukter, men det stämmer inte med grundtexten. Där skiljer sig Andens frukt från Andens gåvor där det finns en mångfald och var och en får sin speciella gåva eller gåvor. Andens frukt däremot är den gudomliga kärleken som erbjuds alla som låter sig fyllas av Anden. Denna frukt tar sig uttryck på olika sätt: i glädje, frid o s v.

VISION i MISSION
 
När det gäller vårt uppdrag att sprida Evangelium vill jag här gärna anknyta till en definition jag hörde på Kyrkornas Världsråds generalförsamling år 1975:

Ett evangelium som man inte delar med sig av till andra är en omöjlighet.
 

Min vision börjar därför med oss som kallar oss kristna. Det vi behöver hjälpa varandra med är att upptäcka evangeliet i dess fullhet och vara villiga att ta emot detta evangelium i våra hjärtan. Då behöver vi inte tala så mycket om marknadsföring, strategier m m. Inte heller behöver vi sysselsätta oss så mycket med andras teologier och trosuppfattningar. Evangeliet i sig är en sprängkraft (dynamis, Rom 1:16)) som man inte kan ha i sitt hjärta utan att det får konsekvenser i kontakten med andra. Man kan inte vara privatkristen. Sprängkraften i evangeliet är så stark att man i likhet med Petrus och Johannes kan säga: Jag kan inte tiga med vad jag har sett och hört!

 
Privilegiet för oss som lever i Nya Testamentet - efter Kristi förhärligande -  är att Gud erbjuder var och en av oss att bli fylld av hans helige Ande och att dagligen på nytt fyllas av denne Ande så att vi ständigt lever ett Ande-fyllt liv (1 Kor 2:14- 3:3, Ef 5:18).  Detta är Guds verk och kräver inga prestationer av oss, endast att vi lär känna Gud (genom Jesus Kristus) som den fullkomliga Kärleken, så att vi inte har några rädslor eller förbehåll  mot honom, utan längtar efter att han skall fylla våra hjärtan,  d.v.s. ta hand om alla sektorer i våra  liv (relationer, ekonomi, hobbies, val av yrke, livspartner o s v). 

Gud kan emellertid inte samsas med obekänd synd i våra hjärtan. Därför behöver vi ständigt tömma våra hjärtan på allt i våra liv som inte stämmer med Guds vilja (ord, handlingar, attityder och underlåtenheter). Detta sker genom att vi omedelbart i bön bekänner dessa avvikelser från Guds vilja.  Inga synder blir bättre av att bli gamla: vänta därför inte med bekännelsen till aftonandakten eller söndagens gudstjänst, utan gör det omedelbart när Du upptäcker misstaget. Ta emot förlåtelsen för Jesu Kristi skull.  Och be samtidigt att Gud på nytt fyller Dig med sin helige Ande, en leverans vi kan lita på sker omedelbart. (Luk 11:13)
 

Att leva ett Ande-fyllt liv ökar Guds möjligheter att använda oss. Guds ord lovar oss att Anden producerar den frukt i våra liv som är den gudomliga villkorslösa kärleken, som yttrar sig i glädje, frid, tålamod, vänlighet och allt annat som är uppbyggligt för oss och vår omgivning. (Gal 5:22, I Kor 13)

Utan att vara fylld av Guds Ande skall vi inte ens försöka missionera eller evangelisera. Det är en omöjlighet.(Apg 1:8). Ingen skall pressa en medkristen eller församlingsmedlem att evangelisera. Förmedla i stället evangeliet i dess fullhet så att vederbörandes hjärta blir så fyllt av Guds kärlek att man inte kan låta bli att berätta för andra om Jesus Kristus, när det blir lämpligt tillfälle. Anden ger oss vishet så att vi inte tränger oss på någon utan avvaktar till dess vårt samtal närmar sig existentiella frågor. Vi kan ju försöka styra samtalet dithän, vilket inte brukar vara svårt eftersom människor ofta har en längtan efter att höra vad det innebär att vara kristen. Då kan vi försiktigt fråga om vår samtalspartner skulle vilja veta  hur man kan få  personlig kontakt med Gud. Alltså endast en information om hur han/hon skulle kunna få denna personliga kontakt med Gud, om han/hon skulle vilja!  Det är ytterst ovanligt att någon inte är nyfiken nog att vilja höra hur en sådan kontakt med Gud skulle kunna gå till. Utgången av samtalet behärskar vi inte, utan resultatet får vi lämna åt Gud.

 
Det som har skett under de senaste decennierna i vårt land är ju att praktiskt taget alla människor är intresserade av andliga ting. Vårt folk är idag ett sökande folk. Men kunskapen om vem Jesus Kristus verkligen är saknas ofta.  Det som nu behövs är att vi kristna upptäcker Guds erbjudande att vilja bo i våra hjärtan och ha oss till medarbetare i den viktigaste uppgiften som Gud har kvar här på jorden, nämligen att låta Jesus Kristus bli känd i världen.  Det är då den stora glädjen kommer i våra liv. Vilket i sin tur påverkar vår omgivning!

/Ingmar Ytterbrink

Politiskt talar man emellanåt om "särintressen" när det gäller mycket små grupperingar och minoriteter med intressen som inte omfattas av en majoritet i samhället. Det som är intressant är att när man på det politiska planet talar om särintressen så är verkligheten egentligen en minoritetsdiktatur i det svenska parlamentet av idag.

På det kyrkliga planet finns i Sverige ett motsvarande förhållande. Under 1980-90 talet kände trosrörelsen av detta. Idag är det andra grupper som betraktas ungefär som politiska särintressen. Detta är smärtsamt det är många som varit delaktiga i den typ av gemenskap som betraktats som högkyrklig eller numera fundamentalistisk. Det är både smärtsamt och konfunderande att vi som är Faderns barn och varandras syskon - bröder och systrar - har svårigheter att ens tala med varandra som jämlika parter. Det tycks som en särgrupp är förvisad till kylan, eftersom opinionskyrkan eller institutionen säger att de andra ställt sig utanför. Det blåser mycket snålt för grupper som både skaffar sig och inte skaffar sig en egen orgel. Dit hör som man säger "särintressena" Kyrklig samling, Kyrkliga Förbundet, Synoden, Gammalkyrkligheten, SSB, Bibeltrogna vänner, aKF, Linköpingsmötet och högkyrkliga grupperingar m.fl. samt inte minst Missionsprovinsens folk. Namn som förknippas med dessa s.k. "särintressen" är heller inte vilka namn som helst i nutida svensk kyrkohistoria. Det är personer som haft välsignad och stor betydelse. Några av dem är Gunnar Rosendal, Bo Giertz och Bertil Gärtner. 

Förutom dessa svenska grupperingar skulle också läggas kristna kyrkor och församlingar med kultur och organisation från invandrarländerna. Dessa är många gånger lika "avvikande" såsom de svenska kyrkliga särintressena, men tycks slinka förbi tros- och åsiktscensuren i den demokratiskt styrda kyrkan. 

Låt oss också ta med "opinionen" i bedömningen av de kristna/kyrkliga särintressena. Opinionen är den överhet som ensam och suveränt styr i den demokratiska folkkyrkan. Kan och får man verkligen säga att det i Den svenska kristenheten är på det sättet?

Demokrati är hittills det minst dåliga styrelseskicket, men inte det bästa. En av dess allvarligaste begränsningar är majoritetsdiktaturen, inte minst när demokratin blir en folkkyrkans styrinstrument. De flesta stora ting i denna värld har utförts av minoriteter. Det främsta exemplet är Jesus Kristus. Kirkegaard beskrev en gång majoritetsproblemet med orden: "Massan är lögnaktig." Majoriteten kan ibland ha rätt, och minoriteten kan ibland ha fel. Den som förletts att tro att majoriteten alltid har rätt, den bör fundera över de historiska exemplen Kopernikus och Galileo. Henrik Ibsen skildrar i dramat En folkefiende hur Doktor Stockmann, huvudpersonen, funnit gift i stadens vattentäkt. Stockmann ropar till folkmassan som kastar sten genom hans fönster: "Jag revolterar mot den urgamla lögnen, att majoriteten alltid har rätt… Hade majoriteten rätt, då den bara stod och såg på, medan Jesus korsfästes?" 
En av demokratins allvarliga vanföreställningar är att majoriteten alltid har rätt. Men, det är väl inte sant. Den har nästan alltid fel…

Vad säger Bibeln om opinionen som regerar i det sekulära samhället - och i kyrkan?

· Var och en som bekänner mig inför människorna, honom skall också jag bekänna inför min Fader i himlen. Men var och en som förnekar mig inför människorna, honom skall också jag förneka inför min Fader i himlen. Mt 10:32-33

· Fader, helga dem i sanningen, ditt ord är sanning. Jh 17:17

· Jag skall be Fadern, och han skall ge er en annan Hjälpare, som alltid skall vara hos er, sanningens Ande, som världen inte kan ta emot. Ty världen ser honom inte och känner honom inte. Jh 14:16-17

· Var och en som är av sanningen, lyssnar till min röst. Jh 18:37c

· Kärleken har sin glädje i sanningen. 1 Kor 13:6

· Vet ni inte att vänskap med världen är fiendskap mot Gud? Jak 4:4

· De bytte ut Guds sanning mot lögnen och tog sig för att dyrka och tjäna det skapade i stället för Skaparen. Rom 1:25

· Du skall inte följa mängden och rätta dig efter den i det onda. 2 Mos 23:2

DEN SVENSKA KRISTENHETEN består av många kyrkor, samfund och församlingsgrupperingar. Vi har observerat kyrkliga "särintressen" ovan, men det finns också små grupper som har den s.k. "husförsamlingen" som sin tillhörighet, ofta med samfundsanknytning, men inte alltid.

När vi ser ut över Den svenska kristenheten fylls vi av stor tacksamhet över rikedomen i olikheterna och skillnaderna, eller hur!? Men många av oss ser också på den verklighet, där det tycks mycket, mycket svårt att hitta vägar framåt.

Här står vi. Så här är det. Detta är denna situation som Den svenska kristenheten lever i. Och - vi har definitivt flera frågor än vi har svar…

Mät aldrig bergets höjd förrän du nått toppen.
Då skall du se hur lågt det var.

/DS

Oasrörelsen har sin grund i evangelisk luthersk tro och vill tjäna Svenska kyrkan med en öppenhet mot andra samfund.

Oasrörelsen är ett utflöde av den världsomspännande karismatiska förnyelsen. Den har nära kontakt med Oasrörelsen i det svenska stiftet i Finland (Borga stift), och med OASE i Norge och Danmark samt med motsvarande rörelser över hela världen. Mer än 500 miljoner människor identifierar sig idag med denna förnyelse. Det är den största väckelse någonsin i kyrkans historia!

Detta gör vi
Inbjuder till inspirationsdagar och konferenser i hela landet. I samband med helger, på kvällar eller som endagssamlingar. Under sommaren anordnas stora sommarmöten med flera tusen deltagare på olika platser i landet.
 Ger ut tidskriften "Oasbladet" 4 ggr/år. Där finns artiklar i aktuella ämnen, information om Oasrörelsens arrangemang m.m.

Oasrörelsen vill tjäna Svenska kyrkans församlingar. Genom att hjälpa människor att återupptäcka:' Bibelns sanning, bönens kraft, nattvardens närvaro, en levandeförsamlingsgemenskap och nådegåvorna till tjänst för Kristi kropp.
 Samarbetar internationellt och i Norden. Förmedlar kontakter med personer och sammanhang som kan berika, uppmuntra och inspirera. 

 Oasrörelsens huvudord är "förnyelse, evangelisation och enhet på evangelisk  luthersk grund"

Läs mera på Oasrörelsens Hemsida: Oasrörelsen

Bilden: J. Gunnar Olson ICCC

VISIONÄRER...

Vilken yrkesgrupp tror eller vet du har de flesta visionärerna i sina led?

Ett antagande som säkerligen kan vara på rätt spår för att besvara den frågan är följande svarsförslag:

Entreprenörer, företagare och företagsledare har flera visionärer i sina led än något annat yrke eller profession, präster och pastorer inräknade. Paulus var tältmakare, en driftig sådan. Vad var Petrus, i fiskebranschen. David var herde och fårfarmare. Vi har många bibliska belägg för tesen som drivs här ovan.

Åtminstone är denna hypotetiska utsaga ett utslag av 40 års erfarenheter i möten med präster, pastorer, andra yrkeskategorier och företagare/företagsledare. Det vore mycket intressant att få reaktioner och feedback på denna mina iakttagelser.

En kristen organisation med företagare är ICCC. Läs mera om ICCC International och om den svenska delen av ICCC - 19-27/2 har man internationell konferens i Cairo.

Frågor och Info om ICCC

via kontoret i Örebro; ordf är Dag Wilund.

/DSr

The Mystery of Israel and the Church

by Art Katz

Chapter 5b

To Him be Glory in the Church
We have been brainwashed and have consciously or unconsciously accepted the world's definition of Church, for which we receive their tax-deductible accommodation.  They give it because they want us to agree that the Church is only a social institution serving human need.  This is an absolutely perverse definition of what the Church is.  Serving human need is incidental.  Its whole purpose is to serve Divine need and to glorify God, and there is no other agency given in the earth whereby that glory is to be obtained than the Church:
To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen (Eph. 3:21).
A fellowship that has lost the meaning of the word 'glory' has voided itself as church.  If the purpose of church is that God might be glorified throughout all generations forever and ever, and if we ourselves have lost the sense of what that glory is, then what are we about?  Glory is not just a fanciful word.  God intended His glory to be normative, a radiance to permeate His creation.  There is a whole world that does not know what glory is, but God has so calculated it that there is only one means by which His glory is to find entry into the earth and be made known, namely, through the Church.  A fellowship that has already opted for programs and for things that will only serve the needs of its congregation has, by that very means, disqualified itself from being the agency through which God's purposes can be fulfilled.   And if we miss the glory, we resign ourselves to becoming merely institutional.  We will find ourselves accommodating to men and their human need, but we will have missed their greatest need, namely, to make the glory of God known.  We shall never come to kingdom righteousness so long as our need is the predicate of our lives, the hub and pivot around which all things turn.  We will never come to sanity and wholeness, nor will we ever come to the end of all our deliverance and inner-healing ministries so long as our real sickness is our self-centeredness.
To come into the eternal purpose of God will ruin us for church programs and the various other kinds of things we think we need in order to pacify those in the pew.  Even to have programs is a statement that the fellowship has lost this apostolic view, and like the world, it has got to make available services and benefits to hold the attention of its congregants.
This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord (Eph. 3:11).
What kind of a fellowship can there be that does not make as its first priority the taking to itself God's eternal purpose?  A fellowship that does not live for the eternal purpose of God is not living. It is hardly more than a succession of services. It has lost, if indeed it ever had, this vital perspective as the reason for its being.  A congregation that has been gripped or apprehended by this understanding cannot possibly have boring services.   In fact, are we truly saved unless we have been fully apprehended by the purposes for our salvation?  We are in an unbroken continuum with those who have embraced the purposes of God, for which reason they were hacked to death, tortured, murdered and butchered in a kind of satanic fury that seeks to nullify this ultimate intention of God through the Church.  That is why there are so few who want to hear the call of God, because God calls us, not to our own purposes, but to His costly ones.

The Two Wisdoms
Wisdom does not mean what we would ordinarily think it to mean.  It is not wise sayings, but more like a value system.  As noted, the wisdom of the gods of this world is a system predicated on force, violence, threat, fear, ambition, lust, intimidation and the terror of men to preserve themselves and to make their own survival the first law of life.  It is the unchallenged premise by which the world lives its life, namely, the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure.  The world makes that the foremost principle of being.  The ability to lay down one's life and not to consider one's life as dear to oneself is the wisdom of God and is predicated on contemptible weakness and foolishness.  The one wisdom lives for itself, its own preservation and its own advantages, while Gods wisdom lives for another; it is selfless.  It is the wisdom of the Son of God who never initiated anything in Himself, or for Himself, but lived entirely for the gratification of His Father.
This is contrary to human nature and how we think we have to live.  Anything that is resolved through violence is the wisdom of this world.  That is the way the world has lived its life throughout history.  God's wisdom is to relinquish, to give up, to yield and to believe that there is something greater than death and, by that, not to fear death.  It is a wisdom that is centered in the Cross of Christ Jesus, namely, to serve and glorify Him.  We will know that we have aligned ourselves with God when we constitute a threat to the realm of spirit Powers that brood over us.  The overcomers of the end of the age are not those who avoid pain and pursue pleasure, but who overcome,
...because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death (Rev. 12:11b).
The world cannot bear this kind of wisdom.  The only one who can live like that truly is one who does not think that this life is the whole story, and who realizes that there is a life beyond this life for which this life is preparation.  There is an eternity, and it is the true appreciation of that reality that enables us to be fearless in this life.  If we suffer the loss of our life, we are fully persuaded that it is not mere happenstance or accident, but ordained of God, and that there will be eternal reward for that sacrifice and suffering. 

Defeating the Powers
If we ourselves are insecure, fearful, jealously guarding our lives, afraid to take the risks of faith, playing it safe, then the Powers of the air are not required to acknowledge us at all.  They are only impressed with the same thing they saw in both Jesus and Paul, namely, apostolic authenticity.  They have only one incumbent requirement, and that is to recognize that which is authentic, namely, of God and like God, as authentic as He Himself is.  God is wanting authenticity (a synonym for apostolic) in His people: heavenliness, truth, unfeigned love and all the gritty things that are so painful to obtain.  We all are the products of a devious civilization that majors in appearances and outward things, but where the Powers see the truth of God in the life of His people, they will retreat.  They know whom to fear and whom to acknowledge.
We cannot defeat them by turning up the amplifiers in our worship, or by shouting them down.  It is not noise that impresses them, but character.  It is the truth of life where we really live, not the brave show that we put on when we think we 'have it all together.'  They have got to see in our conduct and character the visible evidence of our freedom from the influence of the Powers.
The wisdom of God was superbly demonstrated at the Cross when the supreme Son of God relinquished the right to His own life and gave it up by the Eternal Spirit, the Spirit of sacrifice, without spot and without blemish unto God, without complaint and without answering His mockers back.  He was as a lamb who went silently to the slaughter.  He was goaded by His own people to come down from the Cross before they would believe Him.  He suffered that anguish for others while at the same time hearing their taunts and mocks, when anything that is left in a person that has to do with self-justification and self-vindication would rise up and say, "You fools!  I am doing this for you!  Don't you understand?"  But, instead, He says, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."  Another wisdom was expressed, contrary to the logic that the agonizing moment would have justified. 
It was at the Cross that two systems of wisdom collided.  God's wisdom does not seek for itself, but does the Father's bidding, even unto death.  Jesus would not speak His own words, or do His own thing, though He was supremely capable in Himself of doing anything He pleased.  He fully absorbed the fury of the Powers of darkness, who wanted to utterly destroy Him, and thought that by doing so, they would obliterate the threat that He represented to their kingdom.
When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him (Col. 2:15).
At the Cross, Jesus disarmed and brought a foundational and devastating setback to the Powers of the air by demonstrating the self-sacrificing wisdom of God.  The Powers of the air exhibited their wisdom: threat, intimidation, and the use of force and violence, in order to get Jesus to react in kind, and to rail against those who were railing against Him, but Jesus demonstrated something consistently unto death by voluntarily bearing the worst that they could inflict.  Wisdom is not something that is only vocally expressed; it has got to be demonstrated in life.  Ultimate malignity met ultimate magnanimity, the ultimate graciousness of God, the forbearance of God, the humility of God and the forgiveness of God.  Meekness triumphed over viciousness.  It is the same demonstration that will again make God eternally vindicated, but this time through the Church, for which reason He has created all things.
The Powers thought they had won because they had brought Jesus into death, but Jesus bore that death in a way that revealed the wisdom of God, and that defeated them.  If force cannot compel a man to react in kind, what else can they use?  If they cannot manipulate us to be like them and to protect our carnal and bodily lives, and cry out and compromise and do anything to stay alive, then they have no more power over us.  We have defeated them, because the worst that they can do has come upon us, and we have stood and remained faithful to God, and exhibited the character of God in that very suffering.
If the Powers of this world had only known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8).  They did not realize that by imposing their full wisdom, which is predicated upon force and destruction, they were releasing a resurrection and a Life that would billow out over mankind throughout all generations, and would bring the final triumph of God and the raising of the dead.  It set in motion the very things that would establish His throne, in the very city where He was put to death.  Through His death, and out of His rent side, would be birthed a Church.  The Holy Spirit would be poured out from the Throne of God that would give an enablement to the Church to fulfill its mandate and commission of ushering in His millennial glory and Kingdom upon the throne of David.  The Powers suffered a severe setback with the crucifixion of Jesus when He made an open spoil of them and took the keys of death and of Hell.  He disarmed them, but He did not inflict the final defeat.  Their final defeat remains to be fulfilled by the Church in the mystery of God.

A Corporate Demonstration
We are coming to the end of the age, and the magnitude of this eternal purpose and demonstration is of such a kind that it cannot be made by mere individuals alone.  It is for the Church in its entirety, because the Church is the Church only in its corporate make up and in all of the diversity of what constitutes it.  We are in something together, both the minister and the housewife, and we need to be consciously aware of that, and to prepare ourselves for the final conclusion of this mystery.  It requires a people freed from the influence of the Powers of the air; a people who are not insecure, fearful, and living for themselves, who are gloriously freed from mammon, who are indifferent to shopping malls, who can have their car crunched in an accident and walk away smiling, who can suffer affliction and inexplicable things without becoming undone.  They are those who can receive the stripping of their earthly goods with joy, knowing that they have in heaven a more enduring substance (Heb. 10:34).
In fact, the only people who can fulfill this mystery are those who would be strangers, pilgrims and sojourners in the earth.  They have risen above and beyond their national culture.  They are not fearful, but gloriously free from intimidation and threat.  They know that their security is not from the Government or from their employer, but from God.  And if that should dry up, the Lord has alternative sources, and if it pleases Him not to provide for them, then they will prefer to die in faith rather than that they should subsist and prolong their bodily life by initiating some course of action out of themselves.
When Elijah was at the brook Cherith, being fed by ravens in a drought that had been occasioned by his own word of judgment, you have a man submitted to the wisdom of God.  It says that he watched the brook dry up, but he did not allow the visibly decreasing water supply, which is life, to affect or determine his next move.  He was not moved by things external or seen, but by the word of God only.  Imagine an entire fellowship like that!  Jews will be coming to us in their most ungainly condition, frothing at the mouth, having been suddenly uprooted from their places of security and affluence, and find themselves in threat of death, pushed, prodded and driven through places they never would have chosen.  It will be an ultimate test for the Church.  There must be a people on the earth in the Last Days that are not moved by circumstances, or by dwindling streams of supply, but only by the word of God, for that is the greater wisdom.  It is a people who are free from fear, who, like Job, will yet trust God, though He may allow them to be slain (Job 13:15).
Let the Church become an apostolic entity and a forerunner to a kingdom that will displace the Powers of this world, and you will see the world take off its mask and come at it with gnashing teeth.  Unless we get this into our spirits and understand the cosmic proportion of the Last Days' struggle between kingdoms and wisdoms, we will not understand how Israel has a place in this and why the Powers of darkness are intent upon Israel's destruction.  So long as Israel exists on the face of the earth, they are a statement of God's intention to establish His rule over His own creation, which rule has come under the influence of the Powers since Adam's fall.
If there shall ever be a kingdom of God upon this earth, then it must of necessity be the kingdom promised to Israel upon the throne of David.  God is a God who keeps His promises.  The Powers of darkness know better than the Church what God's scheme is.  They see the restoration of Jews to their God and to their Land as a threat.  They will seek, therefore, to eliminate that threat through the instrument of death, their wisdom.  That is why we are going to see a relentless pursuit of the Jew in the Last Days: hatred, prejudice, escalating anti-Semitic fury, skinheads and neo-Nazis.  As in the Nazi era, this phenomenon will become increasingly prominent.  Having its origin amongst the gutter elements of Germany, it was not long before it took possession of the whole nation, and if it could happen in Germany, how then shall any nation be able to withstand it when that demonic power shall be released and allowed by God, with a fury poured out (Ezek. 20:33-34)?
This is the final showdown.  The Powers of darkness are not going to give up and let go of the vested interests they have enjoyed undisputed since time immemorial.  They intimidated and manipulated the German people in a space of less than a decade.  Who will be able to stand in opposition to a system of government when it becomes totally captive to the demonic, and makes anti-Semitism a principle of its rule?  It will be the Beast system prevailing over the world.  How else can we understand that all nations shall come against Jerusalem to destroy it?  The only reason that any of Israel will survive that Last Days' bitter fury is because of the mercy shown to them by Gentiles, who have received their covenant mercies, or those same Jews would have perished.

WILLIAM BOOTH och FRÄLSNINGSARMÉN

Vi kan göra ett par intressanta reflektioner inför en förnyad vision för Den svenska kristenheten genom den hållning och attityd Frälsningsarmén har.

Detta är ett för övriga kyrkor och samfund utmanande uttalande, ett slags "Statement of Faith":

"Frälsningsarmén är ett samfund som firar gudstjänst. Vi delar tro med svenska kyrkan och de andra frikyrkorna."

Förutom detta Statement of Faith finns också det starka sociala utgivandet och tjänsten för människor i nöd. Dessa två sidor i Frälsningsarméns liv och verk har något att säga den övriga Svenska kristenheten. Frälsningsarmén kanhända är ett viktigt redskap som inspirationskälla och utmanare i svensk kristenhet, eller hur!?

Låt oss därför nedan kort repetera vad som var William Booths drivande motivering i sin tjänst.

· Så länge kvinnor måste lida och gråta,
· så länge barn och ungdom saknar skydd och vård,
· så länge våra fängelser är fyllda,
· så länge det finns en drinkare kvar,
· så länge det finns en vilseförd flicka på våra gator,
· så länge det finns en själ utan Guds ljus vill jag kämpa,
· jag vill kämpa ända till slutet!

… så var inställningen hos Frälsningsarméns grundare William Booth.

William Booth drevs av tre huvudtankar när han startade Frälsningsarméns verksamhet i London 1865.

· Han var fast besluten att kämpa sig fram i världen
· Han hade en stark önskan att förbättra de fattigas förhållanden
· Framför allt hade han en brinnande längtan att lära känna Gud!

Läs mera >>

/DS 

Vision om Webbmission

Mission är en viktig del av kristenhetens uppdrag. Vi har ju 
missionsbefallningen som utgångspunkt. Men därifrån till att se resultat 
kan steget i många fall vara både långt och tidskrävande. Vi kan bedriva 
mission i traditionell bemärkelse eller söka nya vägar.

Vi talar ofta om att nå de "onådda". Då tänker vi ofta på etniska 
folkgrupper. Men jag tror att vi kan se andra typer av grupper också. Och 
en ofta förbisedd grupp är nog surfarna. Det finns många som tillbringar 
mycket tid på Internet och som inte direkt söker sig till någon kyrka 
eller till Gud.

Radio HCJB som tar hjälp av modern teknik för att sprida evangeliet 
lanserade för några år sedan det vi kallar HCJB Web Club.

Om vi frågar oss: "Om Jesus levt idag, skulle han då ha använt Internet?"  
så tror jag svaret är: "Jesus lever idag och han använder Internet."

Missionsbefallningen skulle kunna formuleras så här: "Gå därför ut i 
cyberspace och gör alla surfare till lärjungar."

Detta är lite av utgångspunkten för vårt arbete med webbmission. Vi vill 
försöka att använda Internet för att nå en grupp som vi inte når genom 
"traditionellt" missionsarbete.

Därför har vi nyss startat om med en ny hemsida www.hcjbwebclub.org som vi 
hoppas ska ge lite nya tankegångar för att göra surfare till lärjungar. På 
hemsidan finns artiklar och information för att inspirera dig att bli 
"webbmissionär". Titta gärna in, ta del av informationen, bli medlem och 
få vårt nyhetsbrev direkt till din e-post.

Radio HCJB - www.hcjb.se
HCJB Web Club - www.hcjbwebclub.org

Sture Nordquist
HCJB Web Club
Radio HCJB

VISION i MISSION

10 februari 2005