So where have we come from… where are we going? My very first blog post about revival was in 2006 in which I ask the question “what kind of a revival do you want?”. Much later in 2008 God told me that two things will now happen…

1. Peace everywhere
2. Revival everywhere (Holy Spirit outpouring everywhere)

I began to blog about this along the way (Revival everywhere) as I could see it coming nearer and nearer. In 2008 I blogged this (Tracking the change) because I thought that revival and change to this world was already visible…

Since then Facebook knows revival is coming and Google knows it too. Then on the 31 May 2010 I heard God audibly say to me “It is starting” and I was sure that He meant the long awaited revival. I’ve done my best to keep track of the events and the signs related to the events. You can read a list of signs that I’ve experienced here: Clapping.

Whats new?

Some exciting things are happening… and if you look for them in your area you will see them there too.

Indonesia

Historic Christian prayer gathering in Muslim Indonesia - May 16, 2012

A massive prayer movement is underway, connecting some 500 Indonesian cities with more than 5 million believers. This week, an hour’s drive south of Jakarta, the capital city, Indonesian churches invited more than 9,000 Christians to take part in the World Prayer Assembly 2012. Such a large Christian event has never been held in this majority Muslim country. “We see the WPA as kind of a stepping stone toward the fulfillment of Habakkuk 2:14: ‘For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea,’” Robb said. For five days, representatives of more than 60 countries will network and strategize on how to bring Christ’s salvation and healing to the nations.

NZ

Religious revival among young kiwis – 7 April 2012

… defies all the surveys and statistics that show religion seems headed for extinction in New Zealand, particularly among young people. A United States study last year listed New Zealand as one of nine countries where religion will all but die, and the latest census figures in 2006 showed the number of people ticking the “no religion” box was increasing.

South Africa, Cape Town

NOTE: I live in Cape Town, South Africa

SA prison inmates launch 50 days of prayer for revival - April 4, 2012

Prisons throughout South Africa are embarking on 50 days of non-stop prayer for revival in the nation. This bold, historic initiative, which begins at midnight on Easter Sunday and ends on Pentecost Sunday (May 25), has been arranged in obedience to clear directives by the Holy Spirit, say the organisers. Major prisons in all nine provinces are taking part in this unique prayer campaign in which prison authorities have agreed to house participating prisoners in dedicated “prayer cells” for the duration of the campaign.

NOTE:  Update 25 May 2012: Prisoners in 20 SA jails near to end of 50 days of non-stop prayer it contains amazing information about how this move started and how many prisoners are involved at different prisons. It’s awesome!!  :)

Holy Spirit revival in Cape Town – 30 March 2012

In one case, a few children who had been blessed at a service triggered a group reaction during an assembly at the Shiloah Christian School in Wynberg resulting in lessons being suspended for four hours as children encountered God. He said he was working on a carpentry project at the school when he was called by a concerned teacher and saw about 40 teenagers crying, laughing, prophesying and proclaiming the truths of God.

ANC dedication of SA to ancestors sparks major national prayer initiative - April 25, 2012

The dedication of South Africa to Jesus “should be seen as an official spiritual business transaction” that delivers the nation to God for His Kingdom purposes, say the organisers in abackground document that explains the scriptural basis of the prayer intitative.

More Cape Town churches praying earnestly for revival - April 12, 2012

28 Cape Town churches and 24/7 prayer watches are currently engaging in earnestly seeking God for a spiritual awakening in Cape Town, reports Daniel Brink of Jericho Walls International Prayer Network.

Sardines and springs encourage Cape revivalists - December 22, 2011

Two years ago Jane Smith* heard God say: “I am going to bring in a sardine run of souls in South Africa which will be confirmed in the natural.” She later found out that the famous annual winter run of millions of sardines off the east coast of South Africa had been so poor over the past 10 years that scientists were speculating that the phenomenon had run its course. She says she was discouraged when by the end of June 2010 no sardines had appeared and it was being declared a “non-run” year. But then, at the end of July — a month later than usual — the run began and lasted for four weeks. According to reports it was the biggest sardine run in 25 years and even reached into areas which it hardly ever reached. “This revival is going to bring in a huge harvest- a sardine run of souls. God has got a ‘sardine run of Souls for South Africa’. These nets are too large for a single church or movement to bring in and therefore God is building partnerships of unity between churches at this time.

South Africa, Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth)

Signs and wonders, revival at PE school - April 25, 2012

The revival began at a school assembly on Monday, March 5 when about 500 learners put up their hands when former St Thomas learner, Shannon-Leigh Barry, 25, asked for a response from anybody who wanted to know the Jesus that she had been speaking about. Shannon-Leigh was leading the assembly at the invitation of her father, Mark Barry, a teacher at the leading Northern Areas school which has more than 1 000 learners. Since the March 5 assembly, several hundred more learners had turned to Jesus, and there were regular manifestations of spiritual gifts such as healings, prophecy and speaking in tongues at the ongoing revival meetings at the school during breaks and after school, said Shannon-Leigh in an interview yesterday.

Signs and wonders revival at PE school still going strong - 4 May 2012

I look forward to reading your comments. Please leave them below. If you know of signs of revival starting near you pls post them – with links – in the comments.

Please share this post with your FB and Twitter and G+ friends online. Email it to people who are questioning and you want to give them some answers.

To get the latest posts, please sign up for the email notifications. Please remember that the most recent version of this article is available online, so visit the site!

NOTE I first wrote this down on this blog in 2010 but the original events are in 2007-8. Im highlighting it now just for completeness.

Right at the start of learning about prayer from the Holy Spirit, I suspected that I needed to keep records of existing conditions so that I can track the changes. So all the way back in 2007 when I first began to apply myself to this, I began to keep records. Here, for the first time, is the evidence collected in those first few months.

I lived n Ngunnawal which is in Gungahlin which is in the ACT which is in Australia. Ngunnawal is “neighbourhood watch area 214″.

So let’s create some context. In 2007 the population of Gungahlin was 35,000+ people. By 2008 it had grown to 38,000 because so many new suburbs opened up nearby. The place was and probably still is booming.

I have the local crime stats here with me. I have kept them safe for 4 5 years (2012). The underlying stats are broken down into assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, other theft and criminal damage. I am only showing the totals:

• Jan 40
• Feb 47
• March 31
• April 28
• May 25
• June 28
• July 19
• Aug ?  (in the chart below I just used an average of July 19 and Sept 11, being 15)
• Sept 11

Declining violence in Ngunnawal Gungahlin ACT Australia

As you can see, despite almost 10% growth in people, the crime rate declined by 75% in just 10 months of focused declaration of the finished work of Jesus Christ over this area of people.

This was the very first time I interceded for society in a structured way – and it worked. I was amazed. God would go on to have me pray for the drought in Australia and I was astonished to see that change and break too.

But this story here – above – was the very first time that I set out to find out what Jesus Christ has done… in a measurable way. I collected the data over many months and I prayed and I watched the data change. It was exciting and astonishing.

And this same power… the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ… is available to anyone who believes. To learn how to believe in a way that can make a measurable difference in your community, please take time to read and study this post: Faith speaks in this way (Rom 10:6)

I look forward to reading your comments. Please leave them below. Please share this with your FB and Twitter and G+ friends online. Email it to people who are questioning and you want to give them some answers. Forward it to someone who is hurting and you can see that they do not have to suffer any more. If you are a leader, have the courage of conviction to teach this.

To get the latest posts, please sign up for the email notifications. Please remember that the most recent version of this article is available online, so visit the site!

So I declared until I saw that the war had been won, and until I felt like “me” again – free, relaxed, at peace- and until my surroundings felt like all was ok again, until I felt like there was peace and freedom in the atmosphere again.

I was speaking out scriptures about what Jesus Christ has done on the cross. I could not see or feel the freedom He gave me when I started declaring those truths, but by the end I did see and feel them in me and all around me.

In this sense of freedom, I felt the clearest understanding of this… that when I believe God’s words… any massive truth in the bible… then a JOURNEY begins towards receiving that truth. I received such a profound understanding of this that I don’t think I will ever be able to forget it. It’s a part of me now.

Actually, I am on many journeys, because I have chosen to believe that I HAVE received in many areas of my life. As a result, I am on many journeys in different parts of my life towards the truths He has shown me which I have decided to believe.

Conversely Im not on a journey towards the ones I heard but did not believe – see Heb 4:2

You see… faith speaks in a particular way… look…

Rom 10:6-11 “But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way,

This verse is an explanation of how to have faith. It is a wonderful verse. It continues…

“Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, ” ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart“

Did you see that? It’s in your mouth AND in your heart.

Many people keep on struggling… they believe in their heart… but they don’t use their mouth…

(that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession

is made unto salvation.”

Ok now… did you see those TWO things?

1) We need the heart (believing, being fully convinced with a knowing faith) and ALSO the mouth (speaking out, declaring the truth of what the word reveals to us) and we need both working together.

2) “unto salvation”… I think that too many people misunderstand what “salvation” is. God wants to sve ALL of you. Your marriage. Your life. Your soul. Your thinking.

So when He teaches you that your salvation (of your marriage) comes through the confession of your mouth, then take that seriously!

You must BELIEVE (in your heart) that on the cross Jesus Christ has made all things new, but you must also SPEAK IT (with your mouth) to have the salvation of your marriage.

I have found one sure fire way to turn anyone’s life around, any marriage around, to remove darkness from a life, or from a household and even from a city or a war zone.

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. – 1 Cor 2:2

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection – Phil 3:10

The power is in the declaration of the events of the crucifiction and resurrection… that’s the gospel of Jesus Christ! What Paul was showing us in all of his letters was that the POWER is in the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected!

I am not ashamed of the gospel,
because IT IS THE POWER of God
for the salvation of everyone who believes – Rom 1:16

And as I said, the word “salvation” does not only cover your soul, it means that salvation of all of your life – your marriage, your ministry, city, country, everything!

Grab these scriptures!

And it just so happens that I have a handy list of scriptures about Jesus Christ (crucified and resurrected – the gospel) which you can download and begin speaking out over your life and your marriage, daily, UNTO salvation of your life and your marriage.

Grab it here and believe in your heart, speak it (daily) with your mouth and believe you HAVE received!

Key prayer scriptures(v3!) – “He is the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” - Rom 4:17

Why do we need to keep speaking and speaking and speaking until we have breakthrough? The scriptures are God’s words aren’t they? Well… God says His words are like fire, they burn rubbish up… they are like a hammer that you use to smash resisting objects until they break apart…

“Is not my word like fire,” declares the LORD,
“and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? – Jer 23:29

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. - Hebrews 4:12

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. - 2 Corinthians 10:4

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. - 2 Corinthians 10:5

Who demolishes? We do. Who fights with weapons? We do. What do we use? God’s words.

This is what God uses His prophets for… He places His words in their mouths…

Therefore this is what the LORD God Almighty says: “Because the people have spoken these words, I will make my words in your mouth a fire and these people the wood it consumes. - Jeremiah 5:14

Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets, I killed you with the words of my mouth; my judgments flashed like lightning upon you. - Hosea 6:5

It is a wonderful thing that you believe in your heart… now SPEAK with your MOUTH… unto SALVATION of your life… not just your eternal life, but your present life too!

DO NOT PERMIT the enemy to come and steal from you. DO NOT PERMIT IT! Speak the truth of Jesus Christ (crucified and resurrected) over your life, your marriage, your family, your city and beyond.

Never forget that He has done “exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think” (Eph 3:20). So the freedom and abundance that you have is limited only by what you have faith for. I think this is one of the reasons why Jesus Christ almost always asked the people “do you WANT to be well?” or He asked “what do you want Me to do for you?”  They got ONLY what they believed He could do.

He has no limits and the bible clearly says that on the cross He destroyed the one who has the power of death, that is the devil (heb 2:14)… and the bible says that on the cross He destroyed ALL of the works of the devil (1 John 3:8)… so just with those two truths alone you should no longer be struggling. But you have to mix it with your faith for it to benefit you (Heb 2:4).

The journey to a place He shows you

So then… we come full circle in this post. If you believe scripture in your heart, and you begin to SPEAK it with your mouth, believing that you HAVE received… then you will begin a journey… from where you are to the place that God has shown for you.

When God said to Abram “come to a place I will show you” and Abram went… he began a journey. When God said Abraham’s wife would have a child, they began a journey.

When God speaks to you – hopefully through this writing – and He says “COME” and you choose to believe in your heart and you choose to speak with your mouth and you believe that you HAVE received… then you will begin a journey from where you are to where you should be.

Along the way He will show you new ways of thinking, He will show you new things, He will show you new choices, He will strengthen you, He will change you. Along the way you will have to take land, so He will have to teach you to be strong and very courageous. You may have to learn to submit, or to fight, or to be patient, or to be organised.

The path of the journey can be unexpected! When Noah believed God then he began a journey which probably unexpectedly led to an ark and saving just his family. When Abraham believed God it probably unexpectedly led to Egypt. When Joseph believed God it unexpectedly led to Egypt. When Joshua believed God he had to fight many wars and he had to take much land.

Believe you HAVE received

You job is to believe in your heart that you HAVE received and to confess with your mouth that you HAVE received…

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. – Mark 11:24

… and you will begin a journey… and you will receive.

Please grab that list of scriptures that provided – above – and believe you have received them. Do it daily. DO NOT PERMIT the enemy to steal from you or to lie to you any more.

I look forward to reading your comments. Please leave them below. Please share this with your FB and Twitter and G+ friends online. Email it to people who are questioning and you want to give them some answers. Forward it to someone who is hurting and you can see that they do not have to suffer any more. If you are a leader, have the courage of conviction to teach this.

To get the latest posts, please sign up for the email notifications. Please remember that the most recent version of this article is available online, so visit the site!

• Comparing Christianity and archeological research
• Comparing Christianity and all religions worldwide
• Comparing Christianity and Buddhism
• Comparing Christianity and Eastern Religions

In this post I will compare Christianity with archaeological research.

You could say that all of what I have written is well researched and it holds together… except for one thing… there was no Adam, no Eden and no original sin which ruined a perfect original world.

Well let’s take a look at what archaeology says. The bible says that Adam was in the garden which was in Eden (commonly referred to as “the garden of Eden”).

Where was Eden?

If Abraham was called out of Ur which we know from archeology is in Southern Iraq… and Babylon is also in Iraq but it is slightly further north of Ur (and  Nineveh is further north still)… then the logical progression from the starting point would place Eden somewhere near Ur right?

And if such an important first city really existed with the first human beings in it, then all the surrounding cultures would have stories that archeologists will be able to excavate and read about, right?

And if this is the right area then the tower of Babel should be nearby… and as it happens there are TONS of ziggurats (stepped pyramids) in this region.

Eridu

And interestingly the ISBE says this about a city called Eridu near the Euphrates River in Iraq…

… according to the cuneiform inscriptions Eridu was reputed to have in its neighborhood a garden, “a holy place,” in which there grew a sacred palm tree. This “tree of life” appears frequently upon the inscriptions with two guardian spirits standing on either side.

So did some further reading in Wikipedia. It turns out that Eridu is 5,300 years old which is the right age in terms of the biblical account.

An archeologist wrote a very interesting book called “Historical genesis: adam to abraham” by Richard James Fischer

and you can read the relevant pages online in Google Books by clicking this link. The author’s website does an excellent job of identifying the rivers that are mentioned in the book of Genesis, showing the Ur and Eridu are in the correct position – even identifying Pishon by studying river pebbles.

First he clarifies the source of the information… and it says…

Several fragments of the “Legend of Adapa” were taken from the  Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. One also was found in the Egyptian archives of Amenonhis III and IV of the fourteenth century. Six fragments of the Adapa legend have been discovered written in Semitic languages. Versions and fragments of the Adana myth have been found written in Akkadian, Canaanitish-Bahylonian, Assyrian and Amorite. A Sumerian version similar 10 the Akkadian legend was discovered at Tell Haddad.’

… so the sources seem to be legit. Are you excited yet?

What do they say about Adam?

ADAM, SON OF GOD

In Sumerian, Adam could signify “animal” generically, and specifically “man”. When Rim-Amum was king, a list of slaves was referred to as the adarn-bi.:’ The title, “Son of God,” which often times designated royalty, was recorded on a seal stamp. It maintained a likeness of a seated man who was culled “Adamu.”

In Ugaritic, one of the titles of El, the head of the pan-theon, was il ab adm  ”God is the father of Adam.”

Both of these inscriptions are identical to that used of Adam in Luke 3,38, where the genethogy of Christ originates with “Adam, the son of God.”

And what do they say about the fall? Surely such a huge event with such massive repercussions would have been recorded?

Did Adam’s Fall affect following generations? These two lines are part of one Adana fragment:

[...] what ill he has brought upon mankind,
(And] the disease that he brought upon the bodies of men

Ok so Adam brought disease upon mankind, not just himself. That sounds like Genesis too.

What does it have to say about the garden in Eden?

According to cuneiform inscriptions, “Eridu was reputed to have in its neighborhood a garden, ‘a holy place,’ in which there grew a sacred palm tree. This ‘tree of life’ appeared frequently upon the inscriptions often with two guardian spirits standing on either side.”

In the words of Theophilus Pinches writing in 1908: “This Eridu, as we shall see farther on, was the blessed city, or Paradise, wherein was the tree of life, and which was watered by the twin streams of the Tigris and the Euphrates.”

Pinches was close; the Euphrates was the only source of fresh water, the Tigris was out of reach. Further connecting Eridu with biblical Eden, Pinches continued: “it was represented as a place to which access was forbidden, for ‘no man entered its midst,’ as in the case of the garden of Eden after the fall. . . .”

Ok so… let’s recap the archeology.

From several different sources there is evidence of an Adam who was created by God, a fall with disease (death) entering the world, and an actual place called Eden which was a holy place like a paradise but which could no longer be entered because it was being protected by two “guardian spirits” which the bible says are angels.

Remember that you can read some of the pages of that book online at Google Books if you want to learn more.

So to recap… archeology says that there could indeed have been an Eden… and God created a man called Adam in it… and Adam made a mistake and disease was introduced into this world.

I look forward to reading your comments. Please leave them below. Please share this with your friends online. Email it to people who are questioning and you want to give them some answers.

Please remember that the most recent version of this article is available online, so visit the site!

• Comparing Christianity and archeological research
• Comparing Christianity and all religions worldwide
• Comparing Christianity and Buddhism
• Comparing Christianity and Eastern Religions

In this post I will compare Christianity with almost all worldwide religions.

From a Christian perspective, in the beginning (before the world existed, before the fall) God had a list of names in a book (called the book of life) that He would spend eternity with. That book of life existed before this world began – and this is a very important point as you will see later.

He then built something that was “good” in His eyes. He then created men and women. He then did something that would cause humanity to begin a journey that would be perilous and would last for many thousands of years. But the key thing to remember is that He had already written down the names of the people who He would live with in eternity… and He wrote it down BEFORE the journey even began. THAT is how sure He is of the outcome.

But why? The answer is below…

[The purpose is] that through the church the complicated, many-sided wisdom of God in all its infinite variety and innumerable aspects might now be made known to the angelic rulers and authorities (principalities and powers) in the heavenly sphere.

This is in accordance with the terms of the eternal and timeless purpose which He has realized and carried into effect in [the person of] Christ Jesus our Lord, – Eph 3:10-11

You see this whole journey is to prepare a bride for Jesus Christ, the Son of God! What He is demonstrating is the love of Jesus Christ. He is demonstrating His goodness towards us. There could be any number of things we will learn as we look back on this journey.

So the journey began. God made a world and people and said it is “very good”. Then God introduced a command, a law, and then sin became immediate active. What was the law? He said “dont eat”.

God had warned that the consequence of doing what He had told them not to do (sin) was to experience death. “In that day you will die”, He said. The word for death doesn’t only mean the final end of life in death, but it means the day to day experience of decay and hardship – the things that the force called death brings into our lives.

It is our sin – in all its forms – which gives death greater and greater power. I don’t see any scripture which indicates that Adam and Eve understood that they had an adversary named the devil or satan. Adam committed that first sin and with that death had its entry into this world. As we continued to sin, death grew in power over this world.

The bible is absolutely clear in Romans 5. Through that one man’s sin, death reigned over the whole world.

The serpent knew what he was doing. His plan was to increase his power of death, by causing us to keep on sinning. That same serpent shows up in almost every culture around the world.

You can find the serpent in the head dress of Egyptian rulers – it is a symbol of their relationship with the power of darkness.  Uraeus is the stylized, upright form of an Egyptian spitting cobra (asp, serpent, or snake), used as a symbol of sovereignty, royalty, deity, and divine authority in ancient Egypt. This is the head dress for King Tutankhamun…

The serpent image can also be found in ancient Aztec, Mayan, Toltec and other South American cultures as well. You can click each of these links below to open a wikipedia page which shows the serpent image in that culture…

• 2 Mythological serpents
  • 2.1 Dragons
  • 2.2 Sea serpents
  • 2.3 Cosmic serpents
  • 2.4 Chthonic serpents and sacred trees
  • 2.5 Nagas
  • 2.6 Nagas of Indochina
  • 2.7 Greek mythology
  • 2.8 Nordic mythology
  • 2.9 African mythology
  • 2.10 Native American mythology
• 3 Snake worship in the Ancient Near East
• 4 Serpents in Judeo-Christian tradition
• 5 Serpents in modern symbolism
  • 5.1 Modern medicine
  • 5.2 Modern political propaganda

The Adena “mound builders” in America created an enormous winding serpent mound in 1350 AD.

Australian Aboriginal songlines can contain stories about the rainbow serpent. Australian Aboriginal people appear to be (generally speaking, in my experience) very spiritually aware and they believe many serpents are wound around massive rocks in areas such as the Devils Marbles. These areas are said to have the “devil-devil” in them and they become forbidden areas.

To view art about the rainbow serpent simply search for that in Google Images.

New age and eastern yoga teaches about a snake spirit called Kundalini which entwines itself on the spine and moves slowly up the spine to the base of the neck. Yoga positions are designed to prepare the person’s body to receive the Kundalini serpent spirit – and this is according the their own teachings.

Kundalini is a Sanskrit word meaning either “coiled up” or “coiling like a snake” or “serpent power”

The serpent that was first mentioned in 4000 BC in the garden of Eden can also be found on the side of ancient Hindu temples in remote areas long abandoned in Indonesia, and also on temples in the temple complex in Cambodia.

Just think about it… first mentioned in 4000 BC this same serpent pops up in almost every culture and in almost all religions – and (generally speaking).

In Norse mythology the serpent is called Jörmungandr and he is called the “world serpent” because he grew and grew until he surrounded the world and could bite his own tail.

The same serpent can be found in witchcraft and in druidic times in Europe. Serpent images are often on display at folk and other alternative events like burning man.

satan is behind all of it

Basically… from a Christian perspective… the serpent is present as a symbol in almost every religion that I know of. All of these are the same serpent which tricked Adam and Eve into sin in the book of Genesis. The name of that serpent was identified in 4000 BC as satan, or the devil. Since then he has gone on to found many countless religions in which he is worshipped.

Using the power of death

It is that same serpent which has gone on to enslave and wreak havoc in cultures all around the world by using the power of death.

Aztec and other South American cultures needed to sacrifice victims to appease the “gods” (the serpent) and this of course is a sin – to kill innocent people – and this sin in turn released more death into the hands of the serpent. With a more powerful serpent threatening the people, the people had to sacrifice still more innocent victims to appease him. With more sins, the power of death grows further and the serpent’s rule grows even stronger… and so the demand for more sacrifices increase again.

We can see this same dynamic in the bible, when the leader sacrifices his own son on the walls of the city – a very great abomination, a great sin, a great release of death – and the power released by this act was sufficient to drive the Israelites back…

And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew swords, to break through even unto the king of Edom: but they could not.

Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land. – 2Ki 3:26-27

That abominable sacrifice of his own son turned the war around. The word “indignation” also can be translated “rage or strife”. Whatever it was that occurred, it was harsh enough to cause Israel to give up and go home.

As our sin continued to pile up in this world, the power of death grew all over this world.

The bible says that all people are held in bondage throughout their whole lives to the haunting fear of death.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity
so that by his death
he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil —
and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. – Heb 2:14-15

The bible says that the devil “has the power of death”. He uses it to reward some behaviors and he uses it to punish other behaviors. People are held in slavery by their fear of death.

The OT part of the bible also has many many scriptures that point to “Christ” who was to come and release the world from this power of sin and death. The main characteristic of this person is that He would be “the Lamb of God” Who takes away the sin of the world. He would come and bear all the death which is a consequence of that sin.

There is only one figure in human history, across any religion, which fits this description and that is Jesus Christ.

I look forward to reading your comments. Please leave them below. Please share this with your friends online. Email it to people who are questioning and you want to give them some answers.

Please remember that the most recent version of this article is available online, so visit the site!

• Comparing Christianity and archeological research
• Comparing Christianity and all religions worldwide
• Comparing Christianity and Buddhism
• Comparing Christianity and Eastern Religions

In this post I will compare Christianity with Buddhism.

I’ll make the comparison by using a famous Buddhist painting called “The wheel of life” or Bhavacakra…

Buddhism – The wheel of life – Bhavacakra

Buddha himself encouraged people to draw this image – and as a result it is drawn on almost all Buddhist temples around the world. So for the sake of this discussion, this wheel of life – according to Buddhists – is a very solid starting point.

So here is a quick high level overview

So here is a simplified image of the wheel of life according to Buddhism… please note I have put a red circle around the three words in the center…

In the center of the wheel – highlighted by me with a red circle – Buddhism says are three root causes of trouble – stupidity, lust and anger. Buddhism teaches that if you can master those three things (which the Mongolian Buddhism teacher that I listened to called “sin”) then you will be liberated and live in Nirvana (which we Christians call Heaven).

The Mongolian teacher which I listened to is the highest level teacher in his country and he personally studied under the Dalai Lama. He teaches that these sins cannot be mastered in one lifetime, or even in several lifetimes – and therefore there is no escape from the demon which holds this world in it’s jaws.

So in essence Buddhism agrees with Christianity in three important aspects:

1. that sin is the cause of our problems, and
2. we human beings cannot master sin in one life span, and
3. if you could stop sinning in this lifetime (which you cannot) then you can escape the demon holding the world and you can go to Nirvana (which we Christians call Heaven)

That is pretty much what we Christians believe don’t you agree?

Now for the deeper analysis

You might be surprised to find that Christianity has a lot in common with Buddhism. But we disagree on some VERY important points.

As you read below, please take note that Buddhists express things differently to Christian and our scriptures. They use different words and see things completely differently. The point Im making is just that there are some very broad outlines that we agree on.

Cause and effect theory

Basically we agree that there is “cause and effect”. They call it karma and we say that if you sin then there is trouble. If you love and bless you may be blessed: Some Christian scriptures that come to mind are…

• the consequence of sin is death
• If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” – Gen 4:7
• do unto others and you would have them do unto you
• as you judge you will be judged
• as you measure you will be measured

Christianity explains the root cause of negative things happening is sin and Jesus Christ is the solution to sin… through Jesus Christ you can break out of the negative cycle and to enter into a positive and blessed relationship with God.

Buddha didn’t mention “sin” but in effect Buddhists DO speak of sin when referring to transgressions. The ethnologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf explains…

In Buddhist thinking the whole universe, men as well as gods, are subject to a reign of law.

Here we agree again… the bible explains that this whole world is under His law and it judges everything as either good or bad… Christoph continues…

Every action, good or bad, has an inevitable and automatic effect in a long chain of causes, an effect which is independent of the will of any deity. Even though this may leave no room for the concept of ‘sin’ in the sense of an act of defiance against the authority of a personal god, Buddhists speak of ‘sin’ when referring to transgressions against the universal moral code. (1974: 550)

So both religions agree that there is a cause and effect and both agree that there is sin when we break the law which rules over all of this world.

Hell, demons and the spirit realm

Buddhism (broadly and very basically) also agrees that there is a hell and demons.

• Deva realm: God realm
• Asura realm: Demi-god realm
• Manuṣya realm: Human realm
• Tiryagyoni realm: Animal realm
• Preta realm: Hungry Ghost realm
• Naraka realm: Hell realm

Christianity agrees that there is a ghost/demonic realm and a hell. I find it very interesting that to get to hell you first go through a “great judgement”.

That also is very similar to Christianity isn’t it?

You will see below that for us Christians, God dwells in Heaven which they call “Nirvana” which is outside of the wheel of life.

We Christians would not agree about the “gods” and “demi-gods” realms, we perceive those realms as the spirit realm which has angels and demons in it.

In Buddhism the experience of hell and demons and territorial spirits is very real, just as it is for many or most Christians. In fact Tibetan Buddhism was born in conflict with that realm. What I mean is Guru Rinpoche entered Tibet from India in AD774 and gradually conquered all the “Bon” demons (the previous animalistic religion there) in Tibet and made them protectors of the new Tibetan Buddhism religion.

But here is another big difference between the two religions. Tibetan Buddism seeks to subdue the spirit realm with it’s own spiritual forces. BUT Christians teach that Jesus Christ is the way to resolve spiritual difficulties with these realms, because only Jesus Christ has resolved the problem of sin, He has broken the power of death and He has taken captivity captive and He has destroyed the one who had the power of death  (Heb 2:14).

The evil looking figure holding the wheel of life

If you take another look at that image again, you will see the figure holding the wheel of life in his jaws and in his 4 limbs. You can see his teeth…

When a Christian sees that evil looking figure which has the whole of human existence – including demons and hell – in his control…

• all of this world is in his jaws,
• he has a crown with 5 skulls in it (skulls = death),
• his two hands have a well known “salute” (the two outer fingers raised up)

… we Christians immediately know who this character is: satan. the devil.

I learned about this painting by listening to the top Tibetan Buddhist teacher in Mongolia teach about it. I saw his teaching on tv three separate times. Each time I listened as closely as I could, so that I could really grasp his view on life. Each time he said the same thing, that the character holding the world in it’s jaws was a “demon”. (Wikipedia uses a much more neutral non emotive word for that figure).

So Buddhism and Christianity both agree that this whole world and everything in it is trapped in the jaws of an evil overlord. They say a “demon” and we say “satan/devil”. Again we differ on words, but there is a remarkable similarity. Buddhism has no solution (that I know of) to defeat this evil overlord, but Christians believe that Jesus Christ destroyed the one who has the power of death – that is the devil (Heb 2:14).

Heaven / nirvana

Outside of the wheel of life and beyond the control of the “demon”, in the upper left hand corner, is “nirvana” but we Christians call it Heaven. Of course, Christians and Buddhist would disagree on Who runs it!  :)

In the upper right hand corner is a figure pointing to Nirvana (Heaven). He is encouraging people to escape the jaws of the demon and to escape to Heaven.

So what do we (more or less, very broadly and very loosely) agree on?

Buddhism and Christianity agree that Heaven is beyond the control of satan. We agree that people should aspire to reach Heaven and escape the control of satan who controls this world.

What we do not agree on?

According to the Buddhist tradition, the Buddha told his followers:

I have shown you the path that leads to liberation
But you should know that liberation depends upon yourself.

Buddha taught that you can escape the cause and effect of sin and escape the control of satan and get to Heaven THROUGH YOUR OWN EFFORTS.

To me it is absolutely important to note that Buddhism teaches that you CANNOT overcome sin IN THIS lifetime. That is another major point of agreement that Christianity and Buddhists have… that we cannot overcome sin.

Buddhists teach that it can be overcome during several lifetimes, but since we Christians believe there is only one life and then judgement, the only thing that matters to us is that Buddhism teaches that we CANNOT overcome sin IN THIS ONE lifetime.

We also disagree on how to overcome sin. We believe that everyone has fallen short of the glory of God – the One in Heaven – and we cannot stop sinning, so we need to be washed of our sin.

Because of the “cause and effect” (karma) for every sin there must be a consequence… and we see this as a “payment”. If we cannot make the payment, then we remain in the jaws of the demon (satan). But if we accept Jesus Christ’s payment in our place, we are freed from the “cause and effect” (karma) and we can escape the jaws of the demon and we can go to Heaven.

Summary

I find it amazing that there is so much overlap between the two religions… sin, Heaven, hell, demons, satan having the whole world in his control and a law which judges everything as good or bad (sin).

The two religions agree that sin is the core of the problem and if we can be free of sin we can go to Heaven. But the big disconnect is the solution to sin. In my own travels and my own experiences I have come to the firm conclusion that we cannot free ourselves. We cannot wash our sin away, we cannot pay for our sins.

It is only through accepting the full and complete sacrifice of Jesus Christ as payment for our sin, that we can escape the cause and effect of sin and we can escape to Heaven.

But wait… there’s more!

As I look at the “wheel of life” image, I can see that He dealt with every aspect of that “wheel of life” at each level.

You see… although you may not have been taught this in church (I know I never have been) scripture says clearly and repeatedly that Jesus Christ has done far more than “just” deal with sin.

Jesus Christ also anulled death, He destroyed the one who has the power of death (that is the devil), He took captivity captive, He reconciled everything in Heaven and on Earth back to our Father God (in Heaven), He made all things new and He alone now has the keys to death and to hell (hades).

He did so much more than we tend to think about and believe. In fact the bible says He has done exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we can ask or think of. Amen.

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• Comparing Christianity and archeological research
• Comparing Christianity and all religions worldwide
• Comparing Christianity and Buddhism
• Comparing Christianity and Eastern Religions

In this post I will compare Christianity with three major eastern religions. I’ll make the comparison by using a famous eastern painting called “The Vinegar Tasters“.

The Vinegar Tasters is a traditional subject in Chinese religious painting.

The allegorical composition depicts the three founders of China’s major religious and philosophical traditions: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The theme in the painting has been interpreted as favoring Taoism and critical of the others.

The three men are dipping their fingers in a vat of vinegar and tasting it; one man reacts with a sour expression, one reacts with a bitter expression, and one reacts with a sweet expression.

The three men are Confucius, Buddha, and Laozi, respectively. Each man’s expression represents the predominant attitude of his religion:

• Confucianism saw life as sour, in need of rules to correct the degeneration of people;
• Buddhism saw life as bitter, dominated by pain and suffering; and
• Taoism saw life as fundamentally good in its natural state.

Three Vinegar Tasters

I agree with Confucianism and Buddhism that life – as most people currently experience it – is bitter and sour.

Taoism says that everything is fundamentally good… but this appears to deny the reality of life for most people alive today. Countless people experience wars, sickness, rape, poverty, abuse, divorce etc. In South Africa alone the rape statistics are startling: a woman is raped every 26 seconds. How can any of that be considered “fundamentally good”?

Jesus Christ as a 4th person?

When I first saw this vinegar tasters image, I wondered… what would Jesus say or do if He was in this picture as a 4th person? What would His expression be?

Now… years later I have come to a decision… Jesus Christ changes the vinegar!

Where the other three religions teaches ways to handle the reality of sour and bitter vinegar, Jesus Christ actually dealt with the vinegar itself.

That for me is the most profound difference between most religions and Christianity.

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We are all aware of traditional missionaries who relocate to other nations to serve in mercy deeds or preaching. But I believe the Lord is also highlighting a new type of missionary that is essential to seeing the gospel of the kingdom preached in all of the nations and Jesus returning to earth to rule from Jerusalem as King of kings to be exclusively worshipped by all of His creation. An intercessory missionary is a “missionary“ in the sense that they dedicate their lives in ministry for Jesus and for others like a traditional missionary does. But rather than exclusively serving through mercy deeds, their service is first and primarily through ministry to Jesus in night and day worship and prayer – Joshua Hawkins

Joshua goes on to list several scriptural instances of people praying and fasting before the breakthrough comes. The two wonderful examples of this IMO are…

• Anna fasted and prayed in the temple day and night for decades unto the first coming of Christ, her intercession was pivotal to His coming! - Luke 2:36-38
• Jesus Christ said to His disciples “pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers” so their prayers preceded the sending of laborers into the harvest – Mat 9:36

And if you have read my posts on revival, you will know that history shows that every revival was preceded by prayer and repentance (pray for revival).

So far, so good

So… Ive been praying in this role for about 6+ years now (it’s 2012 now) and here are a selection of things I have prayed for. They have been visible in the menu on the site for some time, but perhaps not everyone has seen them, and I’ve never publically highlighted them before.

The drop down menu across the top of this blog… pls note this is not an exhaustive list of prayers…

Menu items showing intercessions

I try to document my prayers as much as possible to record the conditions beforehand and then record the prayers and then track the change.

My hope is that people SEE the fruit and begin to pray in the same way themselves… “catching the fire” as some people put it. And if they see the fruit they might be moved by the Holy Spirit to support the ministry work.

But regardless of support or no support, I will keep loving people anyway. Ive spent years literally eating bread and tomatos while praying and not working formally. But now more recently Ive been blessed with a safe place to stay and deluxe food. But I don’t have a home of my own, I don’t own a car, I earn very little income.

But as I said, I will keep loving and keep teaching and keep reaching out to as many people and helping them as possible.

A normal missionary… yes, eventually

So that’s what it means for me to be an intercessory missionary. There was a moment, right after praying for Egypt in 2011, when I felt I had to go there. Money arrived within 24 hours and the way seemed clear. But the money was removed and no one else wanted to support. It’s a pity, because I think Egypt lost out in terms of what God wanted to do there. If there was financial support and support from leadership who could perceive God’s plan, then things could have been different there than they are now.

Teaching

I also try to encourage people to learn how to break through. So I tell the story and explain how I pray and what my theology is. In this way I hope other people “catch the fire” in a sense. So I have this download link on all of my pages on this site…

2008-9 Prophecies and Miracles v2 (3MB) – A collection of all blog posts relating to the prophecies and fulfilled miracles during my stay in Australia. <100 pages. Feedback welcome!

And more than that, I try to train people to pray the same verses that i do – because no matter what situation you are facing, Jesus Christ HAS resolved it on His cross.

Key prayer scriptures (v3!) – “He is the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” - Rom 4:17

One size fits all

You might be surprised to hear that I always use those same scriptures, whether I pray for a hurricanes in the USA..

Praying to end hurricanes

… or if I am praying for a civil war (see 2010 DRC) it’s still the exact same prayer of the same scriptures.

The sword of the Lord

Ive helped many people overcome severe difficulties in their lives by showing them how to pray those same scriptures. You see, scriptures are the sword of the Lord.

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. – Heb 4:12

And it’s not just any old scriptures, it’s the ones that declare the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. THATS where the power is found, through Him, through His work on the cross.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating

Ive taught this to many people.

• One lady saw her marital issues resolved and she wrote later “each day is better than the previous”.
• Another one saw the darkness flee not only from their house, but she prayed for a local gang war and it stopped! She and her family began to find rare species of animals in their garden.
• ive been praying over the city I live in and revival is beginning here!

No, I kid you not. I could go on, but I won’t bore you.

You’re not bored, are you

As George Michael said “you gotta have faith”

Jesus Christ is a one size fits all solution. Whatever the problem is, He fixed it on the cross… you heard it, now believe it in order to receive the benefit…

For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. – Heb 4:2

If you read to the end of this post, you might like to support this ministry and what Jesus Christ is doing in it. If you like it and you want it to grow and to touch more people, then pray for me, pray for my character, pray for me to be better connected to the Holy Spirit – and help this ministry financially.

Pls note that I come back and re-edit my posts after I publish them, so pls visit the link to view the latest version.

Please… I welcome your feedback in the comments area. If you know someone who is struggling, if they have depression, or oppression, or marriage problems, or if you know prayer warriors, please email this to them, or share it on your FB or twitter or G+.

Let us not deny the purpose that Jesus Christ came for, which was to destroy the devil and to destroy the works of the devil.

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. – 1 John 3:8

so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death–that is, the devil – Heb 2:14

It is an anti-Christ heresy to deny that Jesus Christ did not do what God the Father sent Him to do. Or to say  that we will see the enemy and his works take over this world.

Those two views are a denial of and in defiance of those two verses and the very reason that Jesus Christ came for.

Instead, let us BELIEVE the words of God and let us BELIEVE the Word of God… and receive the benefit. But for as long as you and I do not believe, we will not see the benefit.

For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. – Heb 4:2

Add your faith to what Jesus Christ did on His cross, otherwise it is of no value to you.

Do you accept what the bible says about the reason the Son of God appeared? Do you believe He fulfilled His work and then said “it is finished”? Why do you think we do not see it? Share your thoughts and leave a comment.

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This morning I was thinking about the prophecy God gave me about the Holy City and I felt the Holy Spirit say it is not a “future” prophecy but a “current” (currently unfolding) prophecy.

You see, I had listed it in my menu as this and He was saying it is in the wrong spot!\

The Holy City - not a future prophecy

The gospel of… ?

I thought about changing it’s location to “current”. And tonight I was reading and a profound shift has occurred in my thinking…

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. – Matt 24:14

Did you see that? What gospel will be preached? The gospel of the KINGDOM. I’ve never seen that before.

On Earth AS IT IS in Heaven

And this has caused me to take these words of Jesus Christ far more seriously

may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven – Matt 6:10

The thing is… I’ve been working towards this, teaching this, praying for this interceding for this for years… but I never ever knew it was absolutely central to God’s plan!

All this time some people told me I was wrong, that it was going to get so bad on the Earth that God will have to snatch His people out of harms way. I argued back as best as I could because I knew that viewpoint was heresy. But look…  God is intent on His Kingdom coming to Earth.

How did I miss this? How did so many of us miss this? Jesus Christ Himself declared it. This gospel of the KINGDOM will be preached to the whole earth.

How far will this change go? Listen…

on earth as it is in heaven - Matt 6:10

Kerpow! Kaboosh! Are you getting this?

Not only will we preach the gospel of the Kingdom, but this world is going to change to such an enormous extent that we will be experiencing Heaven on Earth.

The menu got changed!

Needless to say I have now changed the menu to show this…

Heaven on Earth - a current prophecy unfolding in front of our eyes

Heaven happening on Earth

This is a worthy quote…

… when the kingdom of God comes it results in the life of heaven happening on the earth. … It also works when applied to the ministry of Jesus. Everything Jesus did resulted in heaven happening on the earth. When someone was healed, they were experiencing heaven because there is no sickness in heaven. When someone was forgiven they were experiencing heaven because there is full forgiveness in heaven. When someone embraced the truth they were experiencing heaven because heaven is the full expression of liberating and pure eternal reality. – Brian Medway

Kingdom Authority

From that same author come these words

The sense in which the ministry of the gospel is the ministry of the KINGDOM of heaven has to do with rule and authority.

Kingdom is a word that describes a realm where a king rules.

Jesus came to earth with authority from heaven to establish the rule of God in the earth by arresting the incumbent ruler and removing his authority to rule. Jesus demonstrated this rule over disease, demonic presence and the natural elements. - Brian Medway You can read more in Brian’s PDF here.

To you…

Now listen “closely” to what Jesus Christ said to His disciples – and to you who believe in Him.

He will honor and glorify Me, because He will take of (receive, draw upon) what is Mine and will reveal (declare, disclose, transmit) it to you.

Everything that the Father has is Mine. That is what I meant when I said that He [the Spirit] will take the things that are Mine and will reveal (declare, disclose, transmit) it to you. - John 16:14-15

As I described in my previous post: How to be a Christian it is necessary for believers to hear and understand and ACCEPT what Jesus Christ did for them. And it is necessary for believers to read and understand and ACCEPT  what who you are now IN Jesus Christ. If you haven’t read that post, please take the time to read it, absorb it.

To put it simply, you are not who you think you are. Your job is to bring Heaven (the love, the acceptance, the freedom, the healing, the forgiveness, the compassion and understanding) to Earth. Your job is to preach the gospel of the KINGDOM.

Apart from Him we can do nothing

And never ever forget, apart from Him – Jesus Christ – we can do nothing. He is the way, the truth and the life. Everything of Heaven only comes because the Holy Spirit takes from Jesus Christ and gives it to you. Apart from Jesus Christ, you have nothing to impart to anyone around you.

Has this post touched you? Inspired you, as this revelation has inspired me? How? In what way? Can you recognize the Kingdom of God is coming in some way or another when you pray for people, or when your church is worshiping? Share your thoughts and leave a comment.

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And in the end I have come to this conclusion. Only two things really matter. If you want to know how to be a Christian, or how to be a powerful Christian, or how to overcome the sin and evil of this world… then here is the bottom line.

There are just two things you need to know, and everything else is simply given to you (Matt 6:33) as you take note of these two things…

FIRSTLY: For non-believers the most important thing is not left and right politics, not taxation rates, not abortion or the death penalty or anything else.

It’s the fact that Jesus Christ took the sin of the world – your sin, my sin – and He took it onto Himself and He paid the FULL penalty of death. All of it. Not just some of it but all of it (1 John 2:2). Then He defied death and rose from it. And when He ascended on high He sat at the right hand of the Father and He received gifts for men (and women) and yes for the rebellious also (Ps 68:18). Amongst those gifts that He received was the Holy Spirit, which He poured out ON ALL FLESH (Acts 2:33).

What I am writing SO CLEAR to me that I could cry, in fact my eyes are welling up with tears as I write this. No one needs to suffer. No one needs to be in pain. No one needs to suffer for sin, they can be free! The payment IS made. Everything is done. But it has to be received.

What remains is for us Christians to go and TELL the world and to DEMONSTRATE this truth to people so that they can see and know. You see, we Christians don’t battle flesh and blood, we battle principalities and powers in heavenly places for the people’s freedom.

So that is the first of the two most important things. Here is the second…

SECONDLY:  For believers who have chosen to believe what I wrote above… just as non-believers need to accept that truth in order for it to become theirs and to benefit (Heb 4:2), you the believer need to accept this next truth in order for it to become manifestly true for you (Heb 4:2).

It’s the fact that you HAVE BEEN baptised INTO Jesus Christ through your faith in Him. That is already done. And just as death could not hold Him, it has no hold on you either. Just as He is seated at the right hand of the Father, you too are seated with Him FAR ABOVE everything that can be named in this world. As He is IN HEAVEN, so are you – IN THIS WORLD!

It’s profound, if you believe what I wrote above, then these words I am saying are already true about you. But as the bible says, if you don’t mix the truth with your faith, daily, then you won’t benefit from it (Heb 4:2).

I have been searching the scriptures for years and just recently all my hard work has boiled down to just those two things.

The Holy Spirit says…

But right now the Holy Spirit has just said to me “1 John 2:4″ and it is this verse

Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. – 1 John 2:4

So don’t be fooled by people who say that they believe. If their life is not one of love (His one explicit command) doing not just speaking, then the truth is not in them and they are lying to you.

The scriptures say it too

And wouldn’t you know it… it’s more or less what Paul says is all that is important too… two things…

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. – 1 Cor 2:2

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection  - Phil 3;10

I have come to that same conclusion, but i came to it the long way around. I went through living the covenants, living the law, I went through “father worship”, I made the oils, I anointed myself and my house, I did it all and I did everything. None of it freed me. I bought all the books and all the music. I went to services at the most famous church(es). I did not get freed.

All of it led me to this believe those two simple truths.

We are His bride

You see, we are His bride, we lose ourselves and then we find ourselves in Him. A bride loves her Husband. She is not to focused on her father in law. She does not to desire her father in law. She does not to fawn and adulate her father in law.

And as she comes to know and love her Husband Jesus Christ, through Him she is able to be seated at the right hand of God the Father, right in His very Presence. She becomes adopted by the Father. Her name is changed by her Husband. Her Husband’s God is her God. Her Husband’s people become her people.

Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God – Ruth 1:16

Apart from Me you can do nothing

The Holy Spirit seems to be telling me to quote this next scripture… “apart from me you can do nothing”… and I have no doubt it is for someone reading this…

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. – John 15:5

Does this resonate with you? Do you feel this way? Leave a comment below.

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• Preaching sermons
• Building a church

Preaching… this is another area in which I am not satisfied with what I experience in the churches I have attended. And I bumped into this scripture

“I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead a His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word!” - 2 Timothy 4:1

and this explanation of the word kerusso, which is greek for preaching…

The word that Paul chose for “preaching” is “Kerusso”. This is a style/ method of communication. This is not the same thing as a small group discussion or a fireside chat. These are not kiddie sermons.

Kenneth Wuest says that “Kerusso,”

“at once called to mind the Imperial Herald, spokesman of the Emperor, proclaiming in a formal, grave, and authoritative manner which must be listened to, the message which the Emperor gave him to announce. It brought before him the picture of the town official who would make a proclamation in a public gathering… It is a sharp command in military language. This should be the pattern of the preacher today.” — (Wuest, The Pastoral Epistles in the New Testament, p. 154)

- Preaching the Word in the Family Integrated Church

You see, my inner disquiet with the softness of modern preaching comes from my own experience that in order to shift the Heavenlies and to make the gospel known to the rulers and authorities in Heavenly places, I have had to be strong and bold and courageous – just like Joshua when  he was commanded to take the land.

So if I have to be very bold in my life to find freedom and I have to be very bold when praying for this city or for other people’s lives for them to find freedom… why would I preach without the same military style boldness?

It makes no sense to me… and now I see the exhortation from Paul to “preach the word!” and the word for preach that he used is “Kerusso” and it is an “authoritative manner which must be listened to, the message which the Emperor gave him to announce”.

Now let me be blunt about something I have also been saying on this blog over the years. In a church where the drawcard is music, you cannot bear to offend the people. But in a church where the drawcard is God’s Spirit, God’s Presence and the fruit of the Spirit (love, healings, signs) you can be much more authoritative.

If people come to your church because you are nice to them (seeker friendly) they will leave if you tell them what to do. But if they come because you have TRUTH and that truth sets them FREE… then they have come for the truth and you are free to give it to them in big doses.

The foundation of any church simply MUST be the “signs” that indicate the Presence of the Holy Spirit…

The things that mark an apostle–signs, wonders and miracles–were done among you with great perseverance. – 2 Cor 12;12

and these signs will follow those who believe in my name they will cast out demons they will speak in other tongues and… will heal the sick. - Mark 16:17-18

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” – John 15:8

Please note that I desire that many other things be present as well such as love…

No man hath seen God at any time. If we LOVE one another, God dwelleth in us, and his LOVE IS PERFECTED in us. - 1 John 4:12

But the point of this post is to say that God must initially be present with us and grant His signs to us as confirmation… and then on that basis we can confirm that we have His approval and we can speak boldy in His name.

But without Him, His approval and His leadership… we have to tread lightly and we cannot preach as Paul described: “Kerusso” – the Greek word for “a sharp command in military language“.

Because of this

And through he hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were done among the people. - Acts 5:12

Peter was able to speak very bluntly and boldly about how to get into the Kingdom of God. And people present can see that the Kingdom is near and by that evidence they KNOW that the person speaking actually DOES know how to get into the Kingdom of God.

What do you think? Why do you go to your church? Do you see the signs Jesus Christ said to look for? Leave a comment!

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• Preaching sermons
• Building a church

Many times over the years the Holy Spirit brings me back to thinking about the purpose of a church. Recently that is going through my thoughts again. And tonight I bumped into this verse – and my thoughts have snapped to attention. I get it!

What would a church look like which was based on this verse…

So Christ himself gave

the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,

to equip his people for works of service – Eph 4:11-12

He gives us a leadership team – the church leaders – to do what? To equip His people to DO WORKS OF SERVICE.

What if our churches changed from being a “car parking area” into a highway. Not a mass of seated people, but instead a mass of moving people, moving in groups, each moving in their own calling.

Instead of being “a place of safety” for young Christians to be “saved into”, instead young Christians become a part of a group of people on a journey. Paul was saved one day, filled with the Holy Spirit a few days later… and then he went preaching the gospel the very next day!

Equipping FOR works

What if church equipped all the attendees for works of service? What if the leadership saw their role as helping the attendees in their works of service? I mean… take a moment to think of your local mega church (4,000 people or 20,000 people) and imagine every one of those people doing works of service!

What if leadership saw it’s role as building the people up… SO THAT they can do works of service…

so that the body of Christ may be built up – Eph 4:12

The gates of hell will not withstand

It rocks my world to think that Jesus Christ said that the gates of hell will not prevail against His church. Let’s not gloss over those words. Take a moment to think about them. The assumption He is making is that His church – the people – are attacking the gates of hell. Attacking, not surviving.

Reinhard Bonnke says this…

Christians are not the hunted, they are the hunters. You will not run away from the devil, the devil will run away from you. “Stand ye therefore…” Receive it in the name of Jesus. REINHARD BONNKE.

Church is a place to learn how to attack the gates of hell… and to do so in a supportive community, surrounded by like minded people who are encouraging you… and led by gifted people who want to see you be built up and they see it as their role to equip you for your calling.

Church is not a parking zone, but a flow of people doing works of service. Sunday is the day to be equipped. Monday to Saturday are the days to do works of service. Then back to Sunday to get more equipping. Then get busy Monday to Saturday doing your works of service. Go to church on Sunday to be built up… and then back out there, doing your works of service the rest of the days.

Dynamic!

I don’t know if this is hitting you, but it’s whacking me. I’ve been searching for this truth for years and today I see it! Church is a place where Holy-Spirit-filled-elders are equipping and building up the flock so that the flock are more effective in their works of service.

The basic assumption is that everyone has a work of service – and that alone is revolutionary! 4,000 or 20,000 or 500 or 40 people who are all attacking the gates of hell, following their unique call to impact society in their unique God-given way.

What do you think? Why do you go to your church? Do you see the signs Jesus Christ said to look for? Leave a comment!

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1. There would be peace everywhere
2. There will be revival everywhere

I wrote these two blogs with that claim…

• An end to conflicts and revival (19 May 2009)
• An end to conflicts and revival… (17 Sept 2009) – “it’s … 4 months later. So how are things going?”

I began to blog the changes as they occurred over the years, for example this post: And then there were 8 – peace everywhere prophecy.

It was hard to believe that something so remarkable could occur. Let’s think back to 2008. Fully 30% of the population of this world was involved in war. India, Pakistan, Russia, USA, Iraq, Afghanistan to name just a few places.

According to this interesting document…

The United Nations defines “major wars” as military conflicts inflicting 1,000 battlefield deaths per year. In 1965, there were 10 major wars under way. At the end of 2003 there were 15. As of mid-2005, there were eight Major Wars under way, with as many as two dozen “lesser” conflicts ongoing with varrying degrees of intensity. – The world at war – globalsecurity.org

In the midst of that mess of violence I felt that God said that He would bring peace to this world.

In October 2011 I wrote this post which tracks the change: Increasing Peace. In that post I presented this wikipedia map of ongoing conflicts in the world:

Ongoing Conflicts October 2011

You might be wondering what the light blue and dark blue bits mean…

Now we are in April 2012 – is there any improvement?

What does that same map of ongoing conflicts in the world from Wikipedia look like now?

Good news… there are more than 11 changes – there is much much less war right now!!

Ongoing Conflicts April 2012

All war and all deaths are bad… and unfortunately some new wars have started in 2011-2012 (and they are already on that map). But you have to admit that the trend is away from dark blue and there is much less of any blue on the map.

But consider these amazing words

Violence continues to decline,  or disappear completely, in places like  Iraq, Nepal, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Chechnya,  Congo, Indonesia, and Burundi. – Wars Update

“Violence continues to decline or disappear completely”. Wow. Just let that sink in. Selah.

Jesus Christ is the One Who has done this. I only told you about it, but He did it on His cross.

“Now will I arise,” says the LORD. “Now will I be exalted; now will I be lifted up. – Is 33:10

You have heard these things; look at them all. Will you not admit them? ”From now on I will tell you of new things, of hidden things unknown to you. – Is 48:6

It is all, completely, about Jesus Christ and if you know me and my past story, I am just a broken earthen vessel…

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. – 2 Cor 4:7

NOTE:  There are other sources of data such as UCDP and HIIK and globalsecurity.org but their data can be a year or even two years out of date. Wikipedia’s page is edited every day going back to 31 July 2005 and that is why I’ve had to use it as a baseline.

Claim 2: Revival everywhere!

But let’s not forget the second prophetic claim… “revival everywhere”.

When revival hits we will all know it, or know of it. But for now it’s not easy to show any increase or progression towards the fulfillment of that claim.

Today I found something that might be an indicator. Take a look, I wrote about it in more detail on my Pray for your city blog post called World Revival.

The images below show the number of searches for “revival” done across the world. The darker the blue color, the more searches. The first image is in 2004 with just the USA having blue. The last image is April 2012 and many countries around the world show dark blues.

It’s very interesting to me that the most interest in revival was initially from the USA, but that could be skewed by the fact that the internet had not spread into common use worldwide yet.

The spread in very recent years shows progress worldwide. Remember what God said: revival everywhere!

In 2011 the world darkened slightly in terms of interest in revival, but now in 2012 the world is lighting up with interest in a big way. This is no doubt in response to fervent prayer… and the prayer is in response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

Here are some details of revival history listing 10 revivals and the revival lessons learned from them.

I did some more research and found an interesting spike in interest in revival every September… it’s not important, just interesting  :)

Please listen to these words…

You are My witnesses, says the Lord,

and My servant whom I have chosen,

Before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord, and besides Me there is no Savior.

I have declared [the future] and have saved [the nation in times of danger], and I have shown [that I am God]–

when there was no strange and alien god among you; therefore you are My witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God.

Yes, from the time of the first existence of day and from this day forth I am He; and there is no one who can deliver out of My hand.

I will work, and who can hinder or reverse it? – Is 43:10-13

• The power of prayer
• Prayer for revival
• World revival
• The 9 faces of revival
• Which of the Ten Greatest Revivals most influenced your ministry and why?
• Praying for revival
• When revival came in the fall of 1973…
• Revival history
• Great revivals

Please follow my blogs and post them to your Facebook and Google+ accounts. Leave comments. Interact. Invest. Get the good word out. Remember: sharing is caring

What aspect of revival do you see happening now or coming soon? Which past revival inspires you the most? Do you think repentance is a key to revival? Leave your comments…

• A warning on government leadership, accountability and transparency (final post in series)
• Love, politics, leadership and democracy
• Love (first post)

Leaders are not put in place to dominate the people of the country, control them, spy on them, lie to them, and manipulate them. This is why I favor accountability and transparency for leadership, because it is well known that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

To sin is in our nature – and leadership is made up of people. When leadership goes wrong, it takes the country and sometimes even the whole world with it.

Therefore the bible advocates accountability and transparency – which is meant to be built into constitutions and into democracy – is vital to stop the enemy from doing his evil work through government.

If we lose transparency and accountability, if we refuse to bring our works into the light, then it is just a short matter of time before evil prospers in government – as it already does.

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. – Eph 5:11

Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. – John 3:20

• A warning on government leadership, accountability and transparency (final post in series)
• Love, politics, leadership and democracy
• Love (first post)

In the previous post called “Love” I wrote the following statement about libertarianism. I’d like to expand on my view with some additional commentary.

When libertarianism refers to freedom, individual liberty, and voluntary association I am all in favor of it.

But sometimes people seems to go to extremes in their support for libertarianism and they demand…

• “small government” with no regulations to limit people’s choices, Self
• the government social and medical safety net is removed so that people pay less taxes, Self
• the government should no longer provide any support the poor and to cancel programs to help the disadvantaged so that people pay less taxes, Self
• when they try to cut the taxes for the wealthy elite instead of asking them to carry a greater share of the burden in caring for others who were less fortunate than themselves. Self.

Since writing that I read this: Christians Debate: Was Jesus For Small Government? by BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY

After X passed its budget last month, liberal religious leaders said the budget, which lowered taxes and cut services to the poor, was an affront to the Gospel — and particularly Jesus’ command to care for the poor.

Not so, says Y, who chairs the Z Committee. He told Christian Broadcasting Network last week that it was his Catholic faith that helped shape the budget plan. In his view, the Catholic principle of subsidiarity suggests the government should have little role in helping the poor.

“Through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities — through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community — that’s how we advance the common good,” Ryan said.

UPDATE: 25 April 2012 The Stream of Liberty from Calvin to the Founders and Calvinism and Free Market Economics

One way or the other, collectively and individually, a country is required by scripture to look after it’s own poor, orphans, widows (those who cannot work) and elderly.

Who is responsible for doing this?

The church is explicitly tasked with this role as are it’s people. And the government is an expression of it’s own people in a democracy. If the people of that country truly desire to look after their poor, they will authorize their government to look after the poor on their behalf.

But is it possible for the church to care for the poor?

“Medicaid alone in 1997 cost $172.5 billion. If the 325,000 religious congregations in the United States tried to shoulder that load, each local congregation would have to raise an extra $529,000 per year.” - A Bible argument for government aid to the poor

Scripture clearly shows that leaders are put in place by God with a mandate to lead and take care of the people placed under them. Here is what God’s prophet Daniel said to the leadership of Babylon (the unsaved and corrupt leadership) in Daniel 4:27

Therefore, O king, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue.” - Daniel 4:27

In the NT Jesus spends most of His time speaking to individuals explaining that the judgement is about how you practically loved the poor and those in jail etc.

In the NT in Rom 13:1-7 it clearly says that we are to pay taxes and that governmnet authorities have been put in place by God to do good to us. The pressure is on government to “do good” as Paul wrote.

Proverbs 31 says…

4 “It is not for kings, O Lemuel—
not for kings to drink wine,
not for rulers to crave beer,
5 lest they drink and forget what the law decrees,
and deprive all the oppressed of their rights.

…

8 “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
9 Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

A general observation

Life and politics often seems like it is swinging like a pendulum between two extremes. Sometimes the poles are promoted by the media as left and right, but I reject that view.

The two extremes are God’s Kingdom (of selfless love for others) and the enemy’s kingdom (of exaltation of self). Both kingdoms draw us to themselves.

I think the correct paradigm to choose from is not “left and right” but instead the two poles are self exaltation and selfless love.

• A warning on government leadership, accountability and transparency (final post in series)
• Love, politics, leadership and democracy
• Love (first post)

I have had a profound realization recently. It has been bubbling up for two or three months and tonight I’m ready to publicly put down a marker in my life, to say that I choose this over that and I never want to look back or go back.

Some time back, a few months, I was at a church event and someone prophesied something about a cake being rolled and reshaped… and then he said that it was my love that was doing the rolling.

And over the months since then I’ve mulled this. At first I thought he meant that my love for others means I pray for them and then their lives change. So in that way my love shapes their lives.

But I’ve come to see that it’s something else. It’s profound.

My love rolls me!

My love for any future children I will have has caused me to plan to restrain myself with my (future) wife, to respect her and God and ourselves… because that leaves a legacy that our kids can aspire to. Instead of satiating my own need, I will be delaying my own desire for the sake of any future children, so that they can grow up well.

My love for Christian (people at church) causes me to attend churches and pray and intercede and connect those people to God’s manifest presence. Instead of complaining how the church is not meeting my needs or not healing the attendees, instead I try to connect them to the Holy Spirit so that they can evolve as a church and become the spotless bride that Jesus Christ intended.

My love for the people around me means I argue back, I stand up for what is right, I protect the innocent when necessary. If I don’t stand up for what is right, who will? As Julian Assange says: courage is contageous. As Jesus Christ said: let your light shine SO THAT people SEE your good deeds… and then they will praise your Father in Heaven.

My love for other people means I spend a lot of time seeking God’s view on things so that I can help other people. I seek His view because in my experience He always knows what to do.

My love for other people means I spend much less time talking and I listen to people now… when in earlier years of my life I would have been very busy talking and telling and trying to change the other person.

You know what… I’ve come to learn this… that if I want people to listen to me, then I have to listen to them FIRST.

My love for others means that instead of spending all my money on myself, I give lots away. I take the time to consider life through the eyes of other people, to see what is next for them, to hear what they are struggling with.

The discovery of this kind of love has utterly changed me. My compulsion to love other people has changed me. My compulsion to love other people is rolling me into something new!

The promised new covenant

And this change in my heart is a sign of the new covenant…

Ezekiel 11:19 I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh

Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes

and

Jeremiah 31:31-33

31 “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.

33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

And we know that the law is summed up in one command

Galatians 5:14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Leviticus 19:18 “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

The big surprise to me is how He has changed me. Bit by bit I found myself making different choices.

I started sitting next to people. Just sitting… waiting to see if they needed to talk to someone. I stopped having agendas of what I think should happen and I began to listen to them and hear about their walk with God in their life.

And I’ve been more willing to fight back and be very assertive in other situations where I previously would have walked away and simply protected myself. I stay and fight because I care for the people who are being abused.

When did this happen?

What blows me away is that this change did not occur overnight and it did not happen because there was a lightning bolt from Heaven. It was within me, inside me, a love for other people, a love that just grows and grows. It has been a process of healing and growth.

A few nights ago I heard God whisper this scripture to me

Ephesians 5:28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

It changed something in me, as God’s spoken words always do.

My first realization was this… I need to love myself. And the second was this… I need to love her (the future Mrs) as I love myself. Those words touched me. What would that look like, what would I do to myself, what would I do to her?

My love for her – the future woman – was rolling me. Again.  :)

Again… it was my love that was shaping me, moulding me and rolling me. Just as that prophetic word said it was.

Loving my enemy?

Now… let’s keep some perspective. I can’t say that I love my enemy and would be able to pray for those persecuting me. No. Sorry. I tried that and it didn’t work. I’m not going down that road again. Now I much prefer…

Jeremiah 5:14 Therefore this is what the LORD God Almighty says: “Because the people have spoken these words, I will make my words in your mouth a fire and these people the wood it consumes.

Revelations 11:5 If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die.

But… His work in me is not finished and maybe that kind of love will come at some time in future. Maybe. But frankly, I doubt it.

NOTE: If you are a bad guy reading this and you took advantage of my innocence previously, you should not expect the same easy ride as before, if you come and try your luck again. Start with an apology – and we can see where we go from there.

The enemy’s heart – selfish pleasure

So… tonight… for the first time ever… I spent some time deeply understanding the heart of the enemy, the devil, satan, and his motto is quite literally this: ”Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”  I’m not kidding, that is his stated motto.

His kingdom is based on self. Self aggrandizement. Self with few or no outside limits placed on the our desires.

His kingdom teaches us to desire complete freedom to express ourselves with no one else able to say “no” to us. Our adverts encourage us to “control” every aspect of our lives. It’s all about us and how we look. Self.

And I see this same desire in what some people call “libertarianism” when it is extreme and they demand

• “small government” with no regulations to limit people’s choices, Self
• the government social and medical safety net is removed so that people pay less taxes, Self
• the government should no longer provide any support the poor and to cancel programs to help the disadvantaged so that people pay less taxes, Self
• when they try to cut the taxes for the wealthy elite instead of asking them to carry a greater share of the burden in caring for others who were less fortunate than themselves. Self.

NOTE:  16 April 2012 Christians Debate: Was Jesus For Small Government?

Self also evident in literature about abortion, when we are encouraged to “assert control over our own body”. But if the abortion has no medical reason like saving the life of the mother, you are saying that your body is more important than the life of a person, a child, a human being created in God’s image. Self.

The enemy’s kingdom clearly says that we exist for our own pleasure. No. We are not created just for our own pleasure. Other people are not created just for our pleasure. It struck me so clearly, that is the danger in pornography! The message pornography sends is that sex is just about our own pleasure. Self.

Now hold on… I’m not against pleasure. I like to enjoy myself. It’s fun to watch tv and enjoy music or a glass of wine. Whatever. But pleasure is not what we exist for. We exist to love God, to be loved by Him, and to love one another as we love ourselves.

Empty me Lord, fill me with You

As I read and understood the enemy’s heart and his kingdom, I began to pray “empty me Lord Jesus Christ“. I don’t know where those words came from. I just said it. It was a very natural prayer.

NOTE: That prayer is NOT a desire to cease to exist. I know that when you become a Christian the opposite is true! As a result of love for other people I now STAND UP more, I let my light SHINE, I encourage others to SHINE! We are to be salt and light and water and fruit to this dying world. Jesus Christ came to give us all life… and life ABUNDANTLY.

Seeing the heart of the enemy, the filth he drip feeds into our minds each day… I recognized that same heart is in many of the things I do in my life. (It’s in all of us.) It’s very uncomfortable for me to look and find his ways entrenched in my thinking and behavior.

I cannot change myself. The bible says it clearly, we are helpless against sin. It is only through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ that I know that the Holy Spirit will keep changing my heart.

The whole world is regarded as conquered

God said to me a few months ago “the whole world is regarded as conquered“. I’ve been thinking about those words a lot since then. And over the course of the last few months it has become so clear to me that the enemy’s kingdom has indeed conquered this world. His values are on our tv, in our adverts and fashion shows, in our government, our wars and in our politics.

God’s heart and values are foreign to us and simply non-existent in our culture.

The enemy’s ways of control are even in the church and in church leadership. I can’t remember when last I heard a sermon speaking out against something evil in society, or taking a stand publically against evil legislation.

I don’t ever remember hearing a church encouraging people to give to the general KINGDOM of God (feeding programs, orphans, widows) rather than just to the church that they attend. The Kingdom of God is so much more than the gathering of the saints together, the Kingdom of God is also where the saints reach out – monday to friday – and THAT is where some or most of the money is meant to be!

Tonight I can see that the core values of this world are all about our own desires, our pleasures and we don’t want anyone to say “no you cant” to us. Our economy is based around the purchasing power of the individual. If people don’t buy more this year than last year then we are told that we are in a recession. Self.

Just think about this… entire cities like Las Vegas exist just to give us access to gambling, sex, drugs, alcohol and who knows what else. Seriously… an entire city existing only to give us pleasure. Self.

How to experience joy

Have you noticed… the bible speaks a LOT about having joy. The bible says that the disciples walked from one town to another rejoicing and singing! When last did you walk anywhere and as you walked along you rejoiced and sang? From the bible stories it sounds like these guys had joy in them almost all the time – even in jail!

Jesus Christ said He wants us to have His joy, the very same joy that He had.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. - John 15:11

He explained that and told us where His joy came from and then He explained how we can have the same joy as He had… let’s look:

His joy came from “keeping My Father’s commands”.

Wait. What does that mean practically?

Jesus Christ experienced joy when He healed people, when He encouraged them, when He saw lives being saved, when He imparted life to them, when He saw them grow and prosper.

Jesus Christ experienced joy when He had an intimate relationship with God as His own Father.

Jesus Christ experienced joy because He “knew what His Father’s business was” and He had the priviledge of being involved in that business.

For us to have His joy we are to keep His (Jesus Christ’s) command to love

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. - John 15:9-12

His joy was not a self-centered Las Vegas type of pleasure. A part of His joy came from giving, from improving other people’s lives, from seeing other people prosper and move ahead in a healthy life.

He modeled was something we hardly recognize or notice, something we barely understand. Or maybe you do already understand it, maybe it’s just me catching up to you  :)

It’s a command, not a “calling”

I don’t see this kind of joy much in the church, it seems to be reserved for THOSE people in THAT ministry. And the reason is clear. We are not teaching what He taught us. We have an aspirational Christianity where people want to better themselves and be middle class or higher, to fit in and to live well and abundantly. Self.

But let us begin to teach what Jesus Christ taught us. Let us teach from scripture.

We all – without exception – should be reaching out, using our God given talents, touching lives, loving people all around them, stopping for the poor and the lonely, giving the shirt off our backs… not walking past the poor but stopping and engaging… and in this way we will have His joy.

It’s not for someone else in a ministry, it’s for all of us Christians to do. It’s not a “calling”, it’s His command.

So… that is where I will leave this post.

—

And just in case you’re still thinking about that “love your wife as you love your body” here are 13 scriptures to get you (and me) started…

• “Love your wife as Christ loved the Church.” – Ephesians 5:25
• “Love your wife in the same way you love your body and your life.” – Ephesians 5:28-33
• “Be considerate as you live with your wife, with respect …” – I Peter 3:7
• “Do not be harsh with your wife.” – Colossians 3:19
• “The husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.” – I Corinthians 7:3-5
• “Rejoice in your wife all your life. Let her breasts satisfy you. Be captivated with her.” – Proverbs 5:18-19
• “And that women may be dressed in simple clothing, with a quiet and serious air; not with vanity about her hair and gold or jewels or expensive clothing;” – 1 Timothy 2:9
• “Do not be captivated by other women.” – Proverbs 5:20
• “Call your wife ‘blessed’ and praise her.” – Proverbs 31:28-29
• “Tell your wife how captivated you are with her body.” – Song of Solomon 4:7; 7:1-8)
• “Honor your marriage; keep it pure by remaining true to your wife in every way.” – Hebrews 13:4
• “Be thankful for your wife and realize the favor you have received from God.” – Proverbs 18:22
• “Be one flesh with your wife in every way.” – Matthew 19:5

You can read descriptions of each of those here: WikiHow How to love your wife according to the bible

Another good source of scriptures is this one: The husbands responsibility to his wife and household

What happened? The thing with me is that I am a sincere person. I can’t teach what I am not 100% sure about. As I wrote in the past, everything I write here I have tested myself first.

Although this blog is not meant as teaching, it is just a personal blog which has my thoughts on it, but yet… it is used by people as teaching, and yeah, I suppose I teach on it.

And the bible has a stern warning for teachers…

“Be not [me] many of you teachers, my brothers, knowing that we shall receive the heavier judgment” – James 3:1

I can’t leave this blog public if I doubt the foundations on which it is set. The only solid foundations are Jesus Christ… and if I’m questioning anything foundational, then I have to stop and check the foundations.

I am not the kind of person who can sell “snake oil”. If it doesn’t work, I won’t promote it to you. So when that level of challenge arises, I have to stop, check, test, test more and decide.

Praise God my conscience is not dead/seared…

Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons. These people are hypocrites and liars, and their consciences are dead. – 1 Tim 4:1-2

With the help and leadership of God I believe He showed me that in a dream, that He does want this blog open.

Although my faith is shaken and bruised, Im fine and my faith is stronger than before.

So… WELCOME BACK!  :)

 8.5 MB

As you read this, please would you pray for me?  :)

NOTE: 9 Feb 2012 – I updated the PDF so that it shows heading levels on the left of the document. This helps to jump between dates.

Why publish it?

I am trying to balance the known and the unknown.

I feel that this is from God. In the natural I also feel that it’s nuts. No kidding. But the thing is, there have been times in the past when I did not do something because I could not see the benefit. And years later I could see how doing that thing would have worked out well.

I didn’t do it because I could not see the benefit. I did not trust that God COULD see the benefit.

So I’m in that space now. I can risk of offending many people and the potential downsides… but I know that God is trustworthy and He can see the things I cannot see. So I will publish this on that basis, on that understanding.

What’s the central theme?

The story in this journal is a love story.

To see the love story you have to look past all the scriptures and look past the prayers and miracles and the words and visions that I had. You have to see the Person behind those things.. ask yourself why is He speaking? Listen for His heart.

It’s all about Jesus Christ’s love for His bride. His striving to be with her. His prayers for her. His heart for her. How He waits for her. His love for us – all His people who choose to be with Him – is prophetically mirrored in my love for someone I met a long time ago.

What’s in it?

In this journal you can read about my journey through the bible, through revelation, through scripture. You will read about the things I got right, and wrong, my weakness, my sin, my mistakes – and a lot of revelation that just might help you along in your journey too. I hope.

What’s next?

If you read to the end, you might be wondering: “what’s next”? And the truth is: I don’t know. You might ask “why now?” and again my answer is: I don’t know.

But I know that every time I have gone forward, not understanding why, things have worked out. And the times when I have not gone forward BECAUE I don’t understand, I have regretted it later, because moving forward was the right thing to do.

I apologise in advance to people and countries that I might offend.

No matter what happens as a result of publishing this, I have heard from God and I have peace about this.

In 2008/9 I warned that if we didn’t do the right thing, worse would occur. Worse is now happening.

Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire investor George Soros said he’s “now on the side of the angels” who believe that financial markets have a responsibility to preserve human civilization. “I really think it matters for all of us, for humanity, for hedge-fund managers as other human beings, that our civilization should survive,” Soros said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Erik Schatzker in Davos, Switzerland, today. “I am right now on the side of the angels. Not an easy role to play.” Soros said he is among those “trying to keep the system together.” in trying to keep the global financial system and together. - Soros Says He’s Among ‘Angels’ Who Want Civilization to Survive - January 27, 2012, 7:54 AM EST

Again and again I hear Christian people asking for solutions. I know what God’s solution is… but a few times I have wondered why anyone would listen to me?

Jesus said that we would know that His disciples – the ones that He chose and whom He approves of and has given His Holy Spirit to – because they would be able to heal others and do works of power in His Name.

I’ve been involved in some pretty amazing stuff…

• 2008 Financial Crisis (4 posts)
• 2008-10 Australia (12 posts)
• 2008-9 Atlantic Hurricanes (5 posts)
• 2009 South Africa (4 posts)
• 2010 Afghanistan (17 posts)
• 2010 DRC (5 posts)
• 2011 Somalia drought (2 posts)

… but not healing people miraculously on an ongoing basis. Yes there have been SOME healings – thank You Jesus Christ – but not on-goingly. So why should people have to believe me, if God has not confirmed me as a disciple by enabling me to do what He said His disciples WILL do – and the very things that set His disciples apart from everyone else.

So last night that topic came up again and I prayed about it and my simple prayer was “Lord when You are ready to give me that authority to heal in Your Name, You will do it when the time is right”.

But my prayer times broke through something yesterday and where in the past years my prayers would result in terribly difficult backlash, now there was almost  no resistance and I could see clear visions of things taking place almost effortlessly.

So Im online again this morning and I see another prophecy and I enjoyed the explanation/interpretation and I know God has said the same thing to me (Hosea 3). And Ive been saying how I don’t want to, Im tired, Im exhausted inside, I cant, I don’t want to… and here is God again asking me to, very gently, very quietly.

All the way along He has been showing me time and again what He can do – and it’s virtually anything. You would be astonished if I told you the small things He has done. He’s been showing me why He knows what is coming and how certain His prophecies are and why they are certain.

So I go into town today and I’m dealing with a serious matter – but as I deal with it I can feel Him with me in this and I think of other people’s words in this and I seem to get insight and the right words at the right time and I know it will work out in my favour completely.

So I leave that place and I’m walking along and the Hosea 3 matter comes to mind again – the thing I don’t want to do – and I can feel God’s very gentle Presence with me and I think of all the many many many small proofs that He showed me… and I say yes to what I think He wants. I  don’t know where I got the courage to do it, Ive been resisting for months and saying to Him that Im tired and unhappy and unless the energy and courage comes from Him, I don’t want to any more. But it was effortless and easy, so said yes to what I think He wants.

Immediately I hear God say “I want you to“. That’s all I hear. Short. I wondered if I somehow cut Him off, or something?  :)

Then I go to eat and they are playing worship music – Hillsong: God He reigns. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=078sxzDclZM

… and it’s just awesome. Food goes down so much better when people are singing Haaaaaleelluuuuujahhh!! in the background, don’t you think?

Yes I know this is a long post and I thank you for bearing with me on the back story.

So I go to catch the train, everything still feels quite comfortable, breezy, easy. I cruise down to the carriage. I decide to get onto the next carriage, not this one. I hop on and sit down next to the doorway area.

Shortly a lady comes up. I notice her leg seems still. Like it’s in a plaster cast, but I can’t see any cast? So struggles so much to get onto the train because her leg literally will not bend. I offer to help her get on. She declines and uses BOTH of the silver metal assists on BOTH sides of the doorway to pull herself onto the train.

She begins to sit on the other side of the doorway, away from me. Completely out of character, I tell her “sit over here so I can talk to you”. And she does.

Ive bought TWO cheap ice creams/sticks from the vendor and Im eating one of them, the chocolate one. The orange one is next! (It’s a very hot day).

I ask her what happened to her leg. She answers that she knocked it this morning and she is now in UNBEARABLE pain. I asked if she was a nurse and she said yes. She then said she has a specialist appointment for the morning at her work.

I keep slurping on my yummy ice cream. And I pipe up “are you a Christian?” and she says “yes” so I say “would you like me to pray for your leg?” and she says “yes”. So I tell her that I have two ice creams and I will pray for her after Ive had both. I take my sweet time slurping. The chocolate one ends, I casually unwrap the second one like there is no rush… and it falls on the floor! Plop!

So I take that as a hint and I dispose of it and go pray for her. I sit down next to her. I ask her permission to touch her leg, she says yes, I show her where I will put my hand, I ask her permission again, she says yes. So I quietly begin to pray. By now two people are watching us – a young girl sitting next to Vuyakazi and a tall athletic man sitting where I was until I moved next to Vuyakazi. There are probably more watching, but Im only aware of those two.

So I ask her to let me know if she feels ANYTHING at all. And Im praying for her leg, quietly, nothing out loud, and I have an open vision of her leg bending. And about 1 minute later she tells me that the pain has gone down! I stop praying and talk to her. She begins to bend her leg just a bit. 15% angle degree at most. Not much. But still… she couldn’t move it at all about 2 minutes before.

So we chat a bit and I ask her if she wants me to pray a bit more. She says yes and so on we go. I begin to think about how scripture says that Jesus Christ did what He did for three reasons

1. The power of His Name (Who He is and all He represents)
2. The power of the Holy Spirit working through Him
3. He was doing what the Father was doing, saying what the Father was saying – the Father was working through Him

And right away I visibly saw her leg decrease in size! Her leg shrunk, the swelling simply went down. I actually WATCHED it go down!!  :)

Right away she says “the pain is going” and I take my hand away and she tries to bend her leg.She can bend it and there is no pain. At times like this I try not to hassle the person, because I think their brain is freaking out, the impossible has just happened!

After a bit I ask her “how much better is it? 70% 90%” and she pauses, bends it a lot and replies “90%”. We are excited! Now she begins to tell me how much “unbearable” pain she WAS in earlier etc. and I ask her to focus on the good that Jesus Christ has done here and I remind her of some bible verses and she agrees to focus on the good that God is doing.

I look over that the tall athletic guy who was watching. He seems genuinely shocked, even freaked out! Wide eyes. Hehehe. Ive seen that look before when He raised a bird from the dead through me and another thin tall random guy simply could not cope with what he was seeing. Hehehehe.

I want to pray more and totally finish this off, but she says this is her station. I go back to my seat.

I watch her get up with no difficulty and she walks easily over to the same door that she struggled so hard to get through initially. I watch her step off the train with no problem, then watch her walk across the station and then up the stairs to the overpass – all without any assistance!

Whoohoo Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!

So I turn to the young girl who was sitting next to Vuyakazi and I smile at her, and she is smiling and stunned, and I say something like “that so cool isn’t it?” and she says yes she has only ever seen that on TV! We smile and laugh together.

And at Vuyakazi’s station 4 people get onto the train. One of them has a guitar and squats down next to me in the doorway. He has two singers with him and another guy recording it on his phone. They jam, they sing, they rap… oh boy do they sing! I am so blessed to have them signing next to me. They are so close that his back touches my right arm. And their songs are awesome.

And I look over at the young girl and I blurt out “how cool was that?” and she laughs and is clearly still trying to  cope with what she just saw happen. She says “it was a miracle!”.

Then I get a word for two of the musicians and an encouragement and suddenly I’m at my station. I get off.

Blessings upon blessings! My cup is overflowing!!

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 200,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 9 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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“There is no economy in the world, whether low-income countries, emerging markets, middle-income countries or super-advanced economies that will be immune to the crisis that we see not only unfolding but escalating,” Christine Lagarde said in a speech at the US state department in Washington. – CNN

I would like to remind anyone listening that God has said He will help us rebuild afterwards. We saw His effectiveness in 2008. He did what He said He would. There is no reason to doubt Him now. He WILL help us rebuild.

• This world was create IN love, THROUGH love, FOR love (read this first)
• Marriage – in, through, for love (read second)
• You have been regenerated born again (read last)

I have an even more exciting message for those who have been through difficulties in their life and don’t feel that they were born in love, or don’t feel that their parents wanted them.

You were born IN God’s love

The idea for you to exist is God’s own idea. God personally chose YOU before this world began.

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us – Eph 1:4

He prepared a path for you in life, a path that no one but YOU can walk.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. – Eph 2:10

You see, God showed me that you and I were formed IN His desire for love. It doesn’t matter if you natural birth was by accident or rape or whatever, God Himself formed you just as He formed Adam. Your spiritual birth was planned IN God’s desire to love you and be loved  by you.

You were born THROUGH God’s love

God personally formed you, like He formed Adam, in your mothers womb

“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. – Jer 1:5

It doesn’t matter how your conception happened, God Himself formed you and me. We are born again of the Holy Spirit

²³You have been regenerated (born again), not from a mortal origin (seed, sperm), but from one that is immortal by the ever living and lasting Word of God. – 1 Peter 1:22-23

Not only did the idea of you and I existing come from God’s own desire, but we actually came about because He formed us in our mother’s womb. We were literally born THROUGH His love.

You were born FOR love

And we were born FOR love, because He desires to love us, He wants us to learn to love HIm – and His command is for us to love one another.

If your parents didn’t want you, it doesn’t compare to the truth that you were born again… IN the love of God, THROUGH the love of God, FOR a love relationship with God.

• This world was create IN love, THROUGH love, FOR love (read this first)
• Marriage – in, through, for love (read second)
• You have been regenerated born again (read last)

In the bible it gives us this high calling…

¹THEREFORE BE imitators of God [copy Him and follow His example], as well-beloved children [imitate their father].
and walk in love, [esteeming and delighting in one another]
as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us – Eph 5:1-2

We are to imitate God’s love.

What does that mean for families and marriage?

• Born IN love… Your marriage should come out of the love you and your wife/husband have for each other.
• The marriage should come about THROUGH love, just as God was so intimate with Adam and Eve, highly personal, shaping one another.
• The marriage should be FOR love. The love of each other, the love of God and a Kingdom purpose of loving others around us.

Children – in, through, for love

Children should also be born IN love… they need to be thought about and planned for well before conception. Just as God was already love and then He lovingly designed this world for us, our children need to come out of an overflow of love between a married couple. Children don’t rescue marriages, they are not crutches to distract unhappy parents and to give meaning to an otherwise empty life. Children are an expression of the love that a couple have for one another.

Should come about THROUGH  intimacy between the parents. A loving intimacy. The Message verse of the bible puts it like this…

Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. God draws a firm line against casual and illicit sex. - Hebrews 13:4 MSG

The choice to have children should be FOR love. The love of those children, for the children to receive love from God, for the children to learn to love God… and for the kids to learn to loving others around us.

I believe that this is what God showed me, His heart for myself and my future wife and our child(ren). He is showing me His heart, His desire, His vision. I hope you can catch it before you are married. If you are already married, then catch it now and work with His Holy Spirit to make this your reality.

Through obedience this can be achieved, because with His help it will happen.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit I pray this post will provoke change in your thinking, just as this concept did for me. I have never been the same since He dropped this into my spirit.

• This world was create IN love, THROUGH love, FOR love (read this first)
• Marriage – in, through, for love (read second)
• You have been regenerated born again (read last)

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. - 1 John 4:8

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. - 1 John 4:16

Please read this slowly and prayerfully, letting this sink into you…

IN love

The idea for this world and the people in it came from God Himself. The idea for this world was born IN love… IN God’s desire to have and share love. This world was formed IN God’s desire for love, community and family.

THROUGH love

The world was brought into being when God spoke “let there be” and when the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters and when God created Adam from the dust. Just think… God Himself formed Adam – lovingly – and God Himself put His mouth up against Adam’s nostrils and breathed into them, giving Adam life

⁷Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath or spirit of life, and man became a living being. – Gen 2:7

Isn’t this amazingly personal? Not at all distant. Up close, loving, intimate.  Adam was born THROUGH the loving actions or a loving God. God mouth was pressed up against Adam’s nostrils.

FOR love

For a few thousand years God struggled to get humans to grasp how He wanted us to live.

Then Jesus Christ came and demonstrated God’s heart of love. He walked amongst us, dwelled with us, healed us, brought us back from the dead… and then He commanded us to do the same to each other. He gave us the command to love one another.

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” - 1 John 3:16

This world was created FOR love. God’s intention is that we love one another. And of course that we love Him and believe Him. We were created FOR the purpose of love.

It’s all about love

The bible begins with a marriage between Adam and Eve which was created by God; and it ends with a marriage between Jesus Christ (God) and His bride (all of us).

The whole story of our human existence is a love story. It’s a story where a woman is captured by an evil person and kept captive, away from her husband. Her husband to be eventually marries her and they live ever after.

I asked leadership to learn from history and I gave the example of Martin Luther in the 1500s – but it appears that leadership have shut their eyes and ears to the call to embrace love and mercy as the engine for growth because these things are righteous and attract God’s blessing.

I have written many posts in this same vein, drawing attention to the words written on the side of the Statue of Liberty and trying to explain that it was this committment to mercy and love which attracted the blessing of God right from the start of this once great country.

Abraham Lincoln knew that people must come before profits…

Abraham Lincoln - people not profits

Instead the US Senate recently passed legislation that disrespects its own people…

The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, if signed into law, will signal the death knell of our constitutional republic and the formal inception of a legalized police state in the United States.

Passed by the House on May 26, 2011 (HR 1540), the Senate version (S. 1867) was passed on Dec. 1, 2011. Now only one man — Barack Obama, a scholar of constitutional law — will make the decision as to whether the Bill of Rights he went to Harvard to study will be superceded by a law that abrogates it.

First, let’s be clear what is at stake. Most critical are Sections 1031 and 1032 of the Act, which authorize detaining U.S. citizens indefinitely without charge or trial if deemed necessary by the president.

The bill would allow federal officials to take these steps based on suspicions only, without having to demonstrate to any judicial official that there is solid evidence to justify their actions. No reasonable proof will any longer be required for the government to suspend an American citizen’s constitutional rights. – Huffington Post

Unsurprisingly there is a move now to impeach all the senators who signed this evil legislation.

5 Jan 2012 UPDATE

President Obama could have ignored the NDAA legislation and let it fail under the “pocket veto” rules. Instead, he signed it on new year’s even 2011/2012.

However, on the UPside, it’s one small step for the Justice John Paul Stevens, but one giant leap for the USA! Following on from a similar decision in LA and then Montana, in NY in a landmark decision “Corporations are not people”

Justice John Paul Stevens said “corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help facilitate and structure the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”

http://nycprogressives.com/2012/01/04/ny-city-council-passes-resolution-declaring-that-corporations-are-not-people/

What does God (Jesus Christ) say?

Please let me remind you what I believe God promised as I wrote on 19 May 2009: An end to conflicts and revival.

• Claim 1: Revival everywhere
• Claim 2: The end of conflicts in the world

Claim 1… Revival everywhere… since that post we have seen:

• Churches and church leaders (home churches, groups, formal churches) all over the world are saying the same thing, which is that the Holy Spirit is moving everywhere. Prayer meetings are increasing everywhere. Thousands of groups are forming online where Christians support one another and pray for each other. There is no doubt revival has begun.

Claim 2… The end of conflicts in the world… since that post we have seen:

• Many dictatorships fall
• Democracy has increased in almost all countries, although it declined in the US Europe.
• The US is withdrawing forces from Iraq and Afghanistan – wars that we were told would never end
• Civil wars have ceased in Sudan, Nigeria, DRC and many other countries

Yes there is more to do. Much more. But just days ago I felt God confirming again to me that this – peace worldwide – is still going to happen and it will happen through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on His cross.

I want to add another quote. This time it goes back to my writing on the 14th May 2009 (as I recorded in An End to Conflicts and Revival 2) – this is the longer term vision for this world based on the book of Isaiah…

• I expect the Presence of God/Jesus Christ to increase in the world (Is 60:19-20, Is 65:24, Rev 21:3) and as a result, I expect that revival will begin to come to any part of the earth where people are using their faith to receive from Him
• I expect to see the healing of all the nations to begin and continue (Rev 22:2) and as a result, I expect that sickness, distress and wars will decrease and then entirely stop (Is 60:18, Is 60:20, Is 65:19, Is 65:25, Rev 21:4)
• I expect people to live a lot longer and for death and decay to cease to be a problem (Is 65:20)
• I expect everyone in the earth have a home and live in it, everyone will have work and enjoy their work (Is 65:23)

A last gasp tide of evil that must be resisted

The tide of evil knows the end if near and it wants to entrench itself all around the world.

Locally in South Africa the government is trying to bring in “Protection of Information Bill” laws to suppress the reporting of the media and another law waits in the wings to create a “Media Tribunal” to punish media/newspapers who write information that the government doesn’t want written.

Italy and Greece both had coups a few weeks ago where an elected leader was removed and an unelected official put in power. (In the case of Italy that unelected official is an ex-employee of Goldman Sachs!) In both Italy and Greece these are no plans to have an election to validate their appointments democratically. These were coups, plain and simple.

Sanity begins to prevail…

There seems to be some momentum building to put the life of people first and to devalue “me first” selfishness of our culture.

Three Republican presidential candidates, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Sen. Rick Santorum (Penn.), and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), signed a vague pledge sponsored by Personhood USA affirming their support for an anti-abortion, “human life” amendment to the Constitution. – Huffington Post

I hope they carry through with this and are blessed as a result.

On 12 Feb 2010 I wrote a post called The God Who keeps His promises and I explained that the snow storm the US was facing was in fact spiritual in nature and will result in change. That change was the emergence of the Tea Party from nowhere within 2 weeks after that storm.

In this more recent post (26 Sept 2011)  The feast of Tabernacles, the end of captivity, Sabbath rest I wrote that I felt that September through to October 20th would be pivotal. During that time the Occupy Wall Street movement sprang up.

It begins with us Christians

Governments do not HAVE to be bad. There is no rule or law demanding that leadership does the wrong thing. Governments can do the right thing and attract God’s blessings.

And because in a democratic country the government is an expression of it’s own people, it is the people who have to become morally conscious and begin to value human life and become active in social justice.

That is why I’m excited about the Occupy Movement – is the absolute commitment to put people before profits, social justice, caring for the poor and love in general.

This desire to do the right thing begins in prayer, revitalizes the church, forms social movements (like Occupy) and then results in democratic change.

Occupy is right to say “people before profits”…

the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. – 1 Tim 6:10

Whether they know it or not, they are fulfilling Jesus Christ’s one command, to love one another.

This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. - 1 John 3:11

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? - 1 John 3:16-17

Some more useful links…

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies – Psalm 23:5

How wonderful that God is preparing a table of delicacies and nourishment and tantalizing nibblies for you, faithful servant, to eat… but He prepared it right there, in front of your enemies.

Look at this image below. I know all those people are smiling, but just imagine for a minute they are the ones who secretly oppose you, who try to limit you, who frustrate you and put you down. There they all are! Right there! Scary huh?

Now God has put a massive feast right there for you. And it’s only for you. Is that going to make your enemies happier or even more upset?

Now… will you run away from them, or will you draw near to eat what God has laid out for you?

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies

If your desire to run and be comfortable overwhelms you, you will miss out on the yummy food God has prepared for you.

We greatly underestimate the strength of character needed to be a real Christ follower.

How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you,
which you bestow in the sight of men
on those who take refuge in you. - Psalm 31:19

In that verse the blessing is also given right there, in the sight of people who may be opposing you.

Why? Because as He was trying to do with the Israelites, He wants to make our enemies jealous. He wants them to see His goodness to us. He wants them to want the same for themselves.

Fear can cause indigestion. Anxiety can make the food stick in your throat.

But I have found that I can eat. And I eat well. And I enjoy my food. I don’t let them stress me out. I’m aware of them, but I don’t pay attention to them. My faith is in Jesus Christ. My hope is in Jesus Christ. My trust is in Jesus Christ. The solution to these problems is Jesus Christ.

As He said to Joshua in Josh 1:6-9

 ⁶ Be strong and courageous,
because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.

⁷ “Be strong and very courageous.

⁹ Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.
Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

• I believe that this is where we now stand

This is still waiting to happen when we get our faith sorted out…

• Armageddon, Gog and Magog

These events are completed way back in AD70…

• antichrist – Matthew 23, 24 and 25
• 666 the number of the beast
• antichrist – Luke 21
• antichrist

The bride of Christ, the church in all of it’s diversity, will be given beautiful clean robes to wear…

⁹ One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” – Rev 21:9

To me that means that we will grow in revelation and faith and in understanding of what Jesus Christ has done for us, and when we do that – keeping our eyes fixed on Him – God cleanses us by His Word.

Through our faith in Jesus Christ – in all that He did on the cross – vast changes will be released in this world and it will change utterly. All Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross will become manifest in this world, changing the world entirely, bringing in the 1,000 years of peace.

The motivation for change comes from Him alone and He permits us to wear these clean robes. And as we put them on (and keep them on daily) then all that He did for us on His cross manifests more and more.

The promise to Abraham – about to be fulfilled

The great promise made to Abraham and confirmed by many prophets will finally be fulfilled – to dwell with His people

then to the place that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, and all your finest vow offerings that you vow to the LORD. And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male servants and your female servants, and the Levite that is within your towns, since he has no portion or inheritance with you. – Deu 12:11-12

That same promise was made to many descendants of Abraham. God tried again and again to achieve His plan. Let’s take a quick look through scripture at the times He tried again and again to start over with a group/family/person:

1. God tried to work with Adam and Eve, starting with just them.
2. God called Abram’s out of his idolatry in Ur (Iraq), starting again just with him.
3. God chose Noah, starting again with just Noah and his family.
4. Three times God promised to make a great nation out of Moses, but Moses refused each time. He never went into the promised land.
5. God eventually started again with just the youth of that nation lead by Joshua.
6. God sent the entire Jewish nation into captivity bringing back only the two tribes (Judah and Benjamin) who had been loyal to Him, starting again with only those two tribes.
7. In the book of Romans Paul says that it is possible that if the gentiles don’t cooperate they too could be “cut off”.

Then God spoke through the prophets and He said He would turn to those who had NOT called on Him and He would try through them – the gentiles.

The desire of God’s heart was (and is) to dwell amongst His people – in a place of His choosing. The strategy of the devil was to trap us under sin and use sin to drive away a perfect and holy God. In order to come close to people God had to resolve this, because as you can see (above) people are completely unable to resolve their own sin.

Jesus Christ did something awesome on His cross and reconciled God to His creation and through Jesus Christ is possible for God’s plan to be fulfilled…

And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. - Exodus 25:8

I believe it will now be fulfilled…

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” – Rev 21:3-4

Revival – a deeper revelation of what Jesus Christ did on the cross

What remains is for God to release the full revelation of Jesus Christ’s work on His cross to His bride – the church – through the Holy Spirit. That increase in revelation is what we call revival! The way we release it is by believing God’s words!

Every revival in history has been centered on Jesus Christ, because all prophecy is about Jesus Christ. And each revival gives us a deeper revelation of Who He was and what He did.

Nothing new is added, it’s just a deeper revelation of what we already knew was written in the scriptures. Instead of knowing it, we will live it. It won’t just be head know

• I believe that this is where we now stand

This is still waiting to happen when we get our faith sorted out…

• Armageddon, Gog and Magog

These events are completed way back in AD70…

• antichrist – Matthew 23, 24 and 25
• 666 the number of the beast
• antichrist – Luke 21
• antichrist

So far we have covered many aspects of end times beliefs and so far we have found that they all – without exception – point clearly to the dramatic events of AD70- when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple. Now let’s have a look at Armageddon and Gog and Magog.

And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. ² He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. ³ He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time. - Rev 20:1-2 ⁷ When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison ⁸ and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. – Rev 20:7-8 But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. ¹⁰ And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. - Rev 20:9-10

And then it is the end of this world’s history and the judgement begins.

¹² And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. – Rev 20:12

Now… unless someone edited all the history books of all the nations throughout history, we have not yet had the 1,000 years of peace. Agreed? In v1 the devil is seized and put in chains in order to stop him deceiving the world. After that 1,000 years during which time we Christians reign with Jesus Christ  See Rev 20:4-6.

• I believe that this is where we now stand

This is still waiting to happen when we get our faith sorted out…

• Armageddon, Gog and Magog

These events are completed way back in AD70…

• antichrist – Matthew 23, 24 and 25
• 666 the number of the beast
• antichrist – Luke 21
• antichrist

Let’s start first with Jesus’ words in Matt 23:36. After declaring 8 woes He said…

³⁶ Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.

That is pretty hard to get confuses, don’t you think? And yet somehow people manage to think these things are still coming in the future?! Let’s dig in a bit deeper… Matt 24

 ¹ Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. ² “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

“Do you see these things? He asked”… Jesus was literally pointing to the gleamingly beautiful temple. His words describing it’s destruction were literally fulfilled in AD70. For a complete discussion about the verses verses 4-26 pls read my post: antichrist – Luke 21.Then to wrap up Jesus Christ said this…

³⁴ Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

That also is unambiguous. If you take the time to read this and other posts you will see time and again that all the scriptures and even historical facts point to all of this taking place around AD70.

• I believe that this is where we now stand

This is still waiting to happen when we get our faith sorted out…

• Armageddon, Gog and Magog

These events are completed way back in AD70…

• antichrist – Matthew 23, 24 and 25
• 666 the number of the beast
• antichrist – Luke 21
• antichrist

This is the passage…

¹⁵ The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. ¹⁶ It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, ¹⁷ so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. ¹⁸ This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.

In it we can read a few keys which we should look for

1. “it is the number of a man” – we are looking for a man, a flesh and blood man, not a spirit
2. that person’s “number” is 666
3. the number can be “calculated”
4. this person will stop people from trading unless they have his “mark”

Ok… so let’s find a “man” who has a “name which can be calculated”… and according to 1 John 2:18 was coming and according to 1 John 4:3 was ALREADY in the world AT THAT TIME.

666 or 616?

“The number of a man. That number is 666.” Really? According to the excellent Wikipedia article “Number of the Beast”  many manuscripts give a different number: 616.

666

The Number of the Beast is described in the passage of Revelation 13:15–18 and the actual number is only mentioned once, in verse 18. In the Greek manuscripts, the number is rendered in Greek numerical form as χξϛʹ, or sometimes literally as ἑξακόσιοι ἑξήκοντα ἕξ, hexakósioi hexēkonta héx, “six hundred and sixty-six”.

616

Fragment from Papyrus 115 (P115) of  Revelation in the 66th vol. of the Oxyrhynchus series (P. Oxy. 4499). Has the number of the Beast as 616.

Although Irenaeus (2nd century AD) affirmed the number to be 666 and reported several scribal errors of the number, there is still doubt by a minority of theologians about the original reading because of the figure 616 being given in two of the best manuscripts: C (Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, Paris), by the Latin version of Tyconius (DCXVI, ed. Souter in the Journal of Theology, SE, April 1913), and by an ancient Armenian version (ed. Conybaere, 1907). … ” The NRSV translation for Rev 13:18 includes this translation note: “Other ancient authorities read six hundred and sixteen”. Around 2005, a fragment from Papyrus 115, taken from the Oxyrhynchus site, was discovered at the Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum. It gave the beast’s number as 616. This fragment happens to be the oldest manuscript (about 1,700 years old) of Revelation 13 to date. Another manuscript attesting to 616, even before the P115 finding, is the later Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C, a palimpsest). This text has 616 written in full: ἑξακόσιοι δέκα ἕξ, hexakosioi deka hex (lit. “six hundred and sixteen”). Papyrus 115 and Ephraemi Rescriptus has led some scholars to conclude that 616 is the original number of the beast.

NOTE: So now we are looking for a man whose name can be calculated to be either 666 or 616. Ok, is there anyone who was alive at that time (before AD70) who fits the bill?

Nero

Preterist theologians typically support the numerical interpretation that 666 is the equivalent of the name and title, Nero Caesar (Roman Emperor from 54-68). …

An Aramaic scroll from Murabba’at, dated to “the second year of Emperor Nero”, refers to him by his name and title. In Greek it is Nrwn Qsr(Pronounced “Nerōn Kaisar”). In Latin it is Nro Qsr (Pronounced “Nerō Kaisar”).

Nrwn Qsr

The Greek version of the name and title transliterates into Hebrew as נרונ קסר , and yields a numerical value of 666, as shown:

Resh (ר)	Samekh (ס)	Qoph (ק)	Nun (נ)	Vav (ו)	Resh (ר)	Nun (נ)	Sum
200	60	100	50	6	200	50	666

Nro Qsr

The Latin version of the name drops the second Nun o that it appears as Nro and transliterates into Hebrew as נרו קסר , yielding 616:

Resh (ר)	Samekh (ס)	Qoph (ק)	Vav (ו)	Resh (ר)	Nun (נ)	Sum
200	60	100	6	200	50	616

So Nero was man who had a name which can be calculated to be both 616 and 666.

St Augustine of Hippo

From the Wikipedia article on Nero

In 422, Augustine of Hippo wrote about 2 Thessalonians 2:1–11, where he believed Paul mentioned the coming of the Antichrist. Though he rejects the theory, Augustine mentions that many Christians believed that Nero was the Antichrist or would return as the Antichrist. He wrote, so that in saying, “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work,” he alluded to Nero, whose deeds already seemed to be as the deeds of Antichrist.

Shortly to take place

In Rev. 1:1 there is a warning about the events that were “shortly” to take place. This was before AD70 when Revelations was written.

Blasphemies against God

In Rev. 13:5-8, the Beast was given a mouth speaking in blasphemies against God and His Name. Inscriptions have been found in Ephesus in which Nero is called “Almighty God” and “Savior”.

7 kings

In Rev. 17:10 it says

They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. – Rev 17:10

The phrase “Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come” clearly shows that the book of Revelation was written during the reign of the “one is” – after the five and before the one which was still to come. If we can find a list of those kinds we will know for sure when the book of Revelations was written.

Suetonius’ and Josephus’ enumeration of the emperors was: Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius (the five kings who have fallen at the time that John is writing), Nero (one “who is”), and Galba - one who “has not yet come, but when he does come, he must remain for a little while” – six months.

More about Galba from Wikipedia

Galba was Roman Emperor for seven months from 68 to69. After Nero’s suicide, Galba assumed the title of Caesar, and marched straight for Rome. Following Nero’s death, Nymphidius Sabinus sought to seize power prior to the arrival of Galba, but he could not win the loyalty of the Praetorian guard and was killed. Upon Galba’s approach to the city in October, he was met by soldiers presenting demands; Galba replied by killing many of them.

Therefore we now know that the book of Revelations was written in AD68 to 69 right before the destruction of the Second Temple.

7 hills and the harlot woman

The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. - Rev 13:1 “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. - Rev 17:9

Rome was known in antiquity as the city of seven hills

The Seven Hills of Rome (Italian: Sette colli di Roma) east of the river Tiber form the geographical heart of Rome, within thewalls of the ancient city. The seven hills are:

• Aventine Hill (Latin, Aventinus; Italian, Aventino)
• Caelian Hill (Caelius, Celio)
• Capitoline Hill (Capitolinus, Capitolino/Campidoglio)
• Esquiline Hill (Esquilinus, Esquilino)
• Palatine Hill (Palatinus, Palatino)
• Quirinal Hill (Quirinalis, Quirinale)
• Viminal Hill (Viminalis, Viminale)

Conclusion

The number of a man which can be caclutated, the 7 hills, the 7 kings,m the dating of those kings… it all points to Nero. Add in that St Augustine of Hippo wrote that Christians at that time believed that Nero’s behavior indicated that he was the antichrist.

• I believe that this is where we now stand

This is still waiting to happen when we get our faith sorted out…

• Armageddon, Gog and Magog

These events are completed way back in AD70…

• antichrist – Matthew 23, 24 and 25
• 666 the number of the beast
• antichrist – Luke 21
• antichrist

A spirit AND a specific person

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. - 1 John 2:18

1 John 2:18 confirms the that it was the last hour at the time that letter was written and the antichrist – a specific person driven by that spirit – was coming.

every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. - 1 John 4:3

1 John 4:3 confirms that the spirit of the antichrist was THEN in the world at the time that letter was being written. That is an important issue. There is a spirit of the antichrist, and there was also a person who was coming and was already in the world AT THAT TIME.To find out if Luke 21 points to a date around AD70 or a future date we simply need to consider the scriptures themselves.

Sign – destruction of the temple

Now let us consider Luke 21:5-24 and work our way through this passage…

Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, ⁶ “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”

Notice the words “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down”. Jesus said it clearly… He was literally pointing at the temple which King Herod had built and which was standing there in front of them. The sign of the end was when that temple was in ruins. Not even one rock on top of another. According to the Wikipedia article “Siege of Jerusalem (70)“…

Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury (for they would not have spared any, had there remained any other work to be done), [Titus] Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and Temple… but for all the rest of the wall [surrounding Jerusalem], it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it [Jerusalem] had ever been inhabited… And truly, the very view itself was a melancholy thing; for those places which were adorned with trees and pleasant gardens, were now become desolate country every way, and its trees were all cut down. Nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judaea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert

Signs – prophets, earthquake, famine

⁷ “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?” ⁸ He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. ⁹ When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.” ¹⁰ Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. ¹¹There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

¹² “But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. ¹³ And so you will bear testimony to me.

In the verses above we read about some signs

1. False prophets – The book of Acts records three false prophets – Acts 5:36, Acts 5:37; Acts 21:38
2. Earthquake -  The book of Acts records one earthquake - Acts 16:26
3. Famine – The book of Acts records two famines - Acts 7:11, Acts 11:28
4. Persecution – The book of Acts record the persecution of Stephen and many others - Acts 5:40-41, Acts 7:57-59, Acts 8:1,3
5. Brought before kings and governors – The book of Acts describes this, for example Paul being taken to Rome

All of this happened before AD70.

¹⁴ But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. ¹⁵ For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. ¹⁶ You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. ¹⁷ Everyone will hate you because of me. ¹⁸ But not a hair of your head will perish. ¹⁹ Stand firm, and you will win life.

Sign – Jerusalem surround by armies

²⁰ “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. ²¹ Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. ²² For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. ²³ How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. ²⁴ They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations.

According to the Wikipedia article “Siege of Jerusalem (70)” the in AD70 Titus surrounded the city, with three legions (V Macedonica, XII Fulminata, XVApollinaris) on the western side and a fourth (X Fretensis) on the Mount of Olives to the east. As verse 20 says Jerusalem was literally surrounded and the time of desolation was near AT THAT TIME. There is no reason to believe that Luke will be fulfilled in the future, because Jesus Christ clearly showed it was at that time and history shows that to be true.

Sign – gentiles

I will never forget as I walked up to Jerusalem I heard God say to me “trampled” and I can honestly say that until this moment I did not realise what bible reference it referred to. It is this one. Ever since AD70 this has been true

Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

According to the Wikipedia article “Siege of Jerusalem (70)“ Josephus claims that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege, of which a majority were Jewish, and that 97,000 were captured and enslaved. Since then Jerusalem has literally been trampled by gentiles. According the the Wikipedia article “Second Temple“

Jerusalem was razed by the Emperor Hadrian at the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE when he established a new city called Aelia Capitolina. … But after Hadrian visited Jerusalem, he decided to build Aelia Capitolina which would be inhabited by his legionnaires. Hadrian also decided to never allow Jews to re-enter the city ever again.

The times of the gentiles are now almost fulfilled.  :)

Conclusion

Luke points to AD70 being the time period. It is not a future event.

• I believe that this is where we now stand

This is still waiting to happen when we get our faith sorted out…

• Armageddon, Gog and Magog

These events are completed way back in AD70…

• antichrist – Matthew 23, 24 and 25
• 666 the number of the beast
• antichrist – Luke 21
• antichrist

With great hesitancy Im writing about this. It’s a topic that comes up time and again and which the enemy uses to undermine the church and create fear. I hope to systematically and unemotionally work through each of the aspects of this issue, one by one. I plan to give a scripturally-based explanation of who and what is the antichrist and what we as Christians should be doing about this thing. Please note: The term “antichrist” appears five times in 1 John and 2 John of the New Testament — once in plural form and four times in the singular. The antichrist is also referred to as a spirit and as a person.

1. The antichrist will never prevail

Jesus Christ promised that His church (which is build on the truth that He is the Christ) will prevail and gates of hell will not be able to withstand a church built on Jesus Christ.

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” ¹⁶ Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” ¹⁷ Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. ¹⁸ And I tell you that you are Peter,and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades^[c] will not overcome it. ¹⁹ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be^[ bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” - Matt 16:15-19

The church which is built on the revelation that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God… not even the gates of hell will prevail against such a church. So if someone tells you that the antichrist will prevail in this world, they are contradicting Jesus Christ’s own words. Their words are against the Christ. They have the “spirit” of the antichrist because they deny the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

2. The spirit of the antichrist was in the world before AD70

Take a look at this verse

every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. - 1 John 4:3

If you take note of that verse it says “even now is already in the world” and as we know the books of the bible were written before AD70 when the temple was destroyed.

3. The antichist (person) is coming

Here is another verse which indicates a time period for the antichrist

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. - 1 John 2:18

It is clear that the primary problem is simply a denial of Jesus Christ and at that time – before AD70 – there were many people with that spirit (of denying that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ). And clearly, today in 2011 there are countless people who deny Jesus is the Christ. This spirit is alive and well today.

4. Rapture – it will get so bad that God will have to rescue His children

Some people say it will get so bad in this world that God will have to rapture his people in order to save them. How is this consistent with the words of Jesus Christ? How is it consistent with the OT where it says that the Kingdom of Jesus Christ will increase forever? It is not compatible theology

Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist–he denies the Father and the Son. - 1 John 2:22

Don’t live in fear. The only person who wants you to believe that the devil will be victorious… is the devil himself. Te devil denies that Jesus Christ has come and conquered all sin and death and he wants to scare you into thinking the same thing. The devil denies Jesus Christ and he wants you to deny Jesus Christ too. Don’t do it. Believe what the bible says about Jesus Christ. If your church teaches you something different to what the bible says, then go to a different church. Don’t have your inheritance stolen from you.

Conclusion

The only condition under which the enemy could take over this world is if all Christians were raptured, then our faith in Jesus Christ would no longer be active, we who are the light of the world would no longer be giving light to the world – and only under those conditions the enemy would be able to overcome. Something similar to this situation occurred in AD500 when the Catholic Church removed the bible from the people and removed it from all local languages. The bible became available only in Latin and only in monastries. Consequently the people could not read about Jesus Christ, their faith was reduced and their light was dimmed – as a result literally darkness flooded the world in a time called “The Dark Ages”. Massive new world religions sprang up, massive diseases killed vast parts of the population of Europe, lawlessness prevailed. The situation was reversed when “The Dark Ages” ended in around 1500 when the bible began to be printed on printing presses in local languages. Faith in Jesus Christ increased and light flooded the world. A European revival occurred which is called the Renaissance and massive scientific discoveries were made. The bottom line is this: for as long as Christians are in this world a they believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, there will be light in the world and no ruler motivated by the spirit of the antichrist will be able to dominate. If believers were raptured – removed from this world – then such a person could rise up and dominate.

If we can figure out what Peter believed, then we can believe it too… and we also can walk on water!

So… WHY could Peter walk on the water? What was it he believed? And WHY did he sink when he doubted. What was it he doubted?

Peter believed that everything that Jesus says is true and He is Lord over all. So… if Jesus Christ said he could “come” then Peter knew he really COULD come!

Peter wanted to walk on water, so he ASKED Jesus to invite him to come!

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

“Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. – Matt 14:28-29

So simple. “Tell me to come”… “Come!”… “So Peter went”.

But Peter doubted and sank. While he believed that Jesus Christ had the authority to enable Peter to walk on water he could do it. When he doubted Jesus Christ’s authority, he sank.

Jesus explains the principle

You see Jesus Christ explained this principle three times…

Then He touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith and trust and reliance [on the power invested in Me] be it done to you - Matt 9:29 (AMP)

According to Peter’s trust in Jesus it was done to him.

Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! It will be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that very hour. – Matt 8:13

Peter believed that Jesus Christ is able to do what He said (“come!”) and it was done just as Peter believed it would.

When He reached the house and went in, the blind men came to Him, and Jesus said to them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said to Him, Yes, Lord. - Matt 9:28 (AMP)

If Jesus says you can come… you CAN come. Will you believe… and get out of the boat… and KEEP ON believing while you come? Ignore the waves around you. Ignore the negative voices of the people back in the boat. Ignore all your cultural expectations. Ignore all your geography and history lessons. Ignore the waves crashing around you. For as long as you believe His words spoken to you, you will be able to walk just as He said you can.

The only risk is that at some time in the future you stop believing and begin to sink.

What has He said to you?

The key thing is to believe and keep on believing what Jesus Christ says to/about you. If Jesus Christ (or God or the Holy Spirit) says “come and walk on the water” then believe what He says is true.

For as long as you believe, you will be do what He says.

Think back. Look through your journal. What is it He has said to you? Believe Him – and like Peter, keep on believing Him. Don’t doubt, or you will sink.

What does the bible say about you?

But it goes far beyond this… what does the bible say that Jesus Christ did for you on the cross? What does the bible say Jesus Christ did for the world on the cross? What prophetic words have you heard that you knew were right?

Just like Peter, for the time that you actively believe what God says, then just like Peter you are experiencing that – you are walking on water.

When you doubt, just like Peter, it stops. It totally comes down to faith in what God has said to you – and BELIEVING what He has said about you.

A clip from the first 7:14 in March, Parliament Square – London. 1200 people came.

THE VISION

All over the world, nations are shaking. Politically, economically, socially, environmentally. It’s a time of great challenge and change. In the face of such need, we can often feel powerless, wondering what difference we can make. At times such as these, God calls his people to pray. This is such a time. This is such a call. This is a call to cities. It’s a call to cities to pray for nations. Not just inside, within four walls, behind closed doors. But outside, publicly, in the heart of every city. A visible statement of faith.

Then I saw this verse

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. – Ps 127:4

I began to understand that children are like arrows, they can be aimed and then they fly in that direction.

So HOW do we aim our kids to go in the right direction? Movies, playstation, song lyrics and TV might aim my kids in the WRONG direction. How do I aim them in the right direction?

Aiming our kids – with love

I am convinced that I can ensure my (future) daughter (or son) is a safe young teen and young adult… by loving and showing respect to their mom.

As my baby boy or girl grows up and tries to figure out what is ok and what not to allow in this world of wolves, she will naturally come to me and sit on my lap and ask me many times “tell me the story of you and mom met and got married”.

Here is the key: if I can answer truthfully about how we did not do the wrong things before marriage, how I showed her mom respect, how we waited and made the effort to learn to communicate, to speak each other’s love language, learning to give and receive love from one another, learning about one another’s needs, growing together, talking things through and forgiving… then my daughter (and son) will want the same things for herself (or himself) and in this way they won’t settle for less than what her mom had.

She will be safe from harm, because she won’t settle for less, she will want the same for herself! If a man tries to consume her beauty to make up for a lack in his own life, she will refuse to be used. If a man or woman with unclean hands reaches out to touch my son, he will feel the uncleanness and he will find it unpleasant and he will naturally pull away.

But this only happens because they have experienced and observed the love and kindness and goodness of Christ in me and Christ in their mother and God’s Presence in our home.

Formed in their mind is the desire to be loved like her mother is being loved. They won’t compromise. They won’t settle.

The home

In that same way I will strive to have a home that is filled with warmth from love and the light of God’s Presence.

Why? Because if she (or he) grows up around God’s Presence and thinks that is normal, when she (or he) comes into contact with unclean people or an unclean place, she will immediately pick up on the change in atmosphere and she will know to move away from that person or place because it doesn’t feel nice to be there.

In my life the opposite was true. I was so used to being around anger and darkness that I did not know it was wrong. It was just how it always was. But no more, I stay in the light now. And the more I am in the light, the more I can stop when darkness tries to invade.

By turning this around, by showing my children – both literal and spiritual – that love is normal, that talking and a healthy exchange of views is normal, that respect is normal, that God’s Presence is normal… they will flee darkness and death if they sense a change.

This requires long term self-sacrifice

This will take a life-long commitment from me and it starts now. And then when my future wife comes along she has to see the vision and agree to work in that direction.

Just think, my future wife is not sitting here next to me, but I am already planning to love her and to love any children that we may choose to have. The way I treat my wife is not just for her, but for my son and/or daughter as well. Love is like this… it is the intentional giving of ourselves for others.

In that same way, long before you met Jesus Christ He was already praying for you

Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. – Heb 7:25

A prayer center

And it goes way beyond this.

Long time readers of this blog will know that I have repeatedly asked for financial support to create a prayer center where He will be manifest. I truly believe that God wants a place where people can come and taste and see that the Lord is good. A place where YOU – people of all shapes and sizes and importance – can come and experience what good and right feels like.

You see… the only way to change people’s behavior is by changing their world view. When you go to jail your world view changes – and your behavior changes, sometimes for the worst! When a person is abused their world view changes and their behavior also changes from then onwards. When abandoned children are adopted and loved for the first time, their world view changes and their behavior changes. When lonely people find love, or find a warm accepting loving church, or find God’s love… their world view changes and their behavior changes.

I believe that God wants a place where He will be manifest, a place where we can come to and experience His goodness, His Presence, light and love – and then by finally experiencing what is good, our world view can change and we can return home to our countries with our new world view and changed behavior.

In it I show why it is so important that we believe in Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of all of God’s promises. Sometimes seeing the raw facts helps us to come to grips with a new concept.

You know that the Old Testament is 2.5 times larger than the NT right?

• NT Pages: 430,
• OT Pages: 1070

But did you know that “faith” and faith related words are hardly mentioned in the OT, by comparison to the NT?

• Faith – NT: 230 times, OT: 27 times
• By faith – NT: 43 times, OT: 0 times
• In faith – NT: 10 times, OT: 1 time
• Through faith – NT: 14 times, OT: 0 times

It’s not that faith was not important in the OT, instead it’s that people refused to believe God’s words. Hebrews 11 says that all the great people of the OT had faith… but now in the NT we can see that the word faith and it’s related phrases are common in the NT. Why? Because God has spoken to us through His Son Jesus Christ

but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. - Hebrews 1:2

and it takes faith to receive from Someone Who is not right here next to us, but Who did His work 2,000 years ago in a country most of us might never visit.

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. – 2 Cor 1:20

Did you see that? No matter what the promises are, they are done through Jesus Christ on His cross.

And what does that scripture say is your contribution to this miracle? You simply add your AMEN. “Amen” means to say “I agree” (or “So be it; truly”, “heartily agree”).

¹IN THE beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. – John 1:1

The enemy has deceived us into believing that the bible itself is the Word of God. It is not. It contains the words of God, it is perfect, infallible and that is a wonderful thing. But Jesus Christ is the Word of God. And this is an important distinction, please let me explain.

Here is a book titled Steve Jobs

is that book itself actually Steve Jobs? No. It’s a book about Steve Jobs.

Here is a book titled “The Word of God”

is that book actually the Word of God (Jesus Christ)? No. It’s a book about the Word of God (Jesus Christ).

This is a very sneaky trick the enemy played on us to distract us from understanding that the entire bible, from beginning to end, speaks exclusively about Jesus Christ,  not about itself. It has God’s perfect words about His Son, His relationship with His Son, and our relationship with Him and His Son Jesus Christ.

This trick even fooled the leader of major world wide denomination. I personally saw this man telling his congregation that the bible was a part of God and that it (the bible) was present before the world began. He had confused John 1:1 with the title on the front cover of the bible. He was leading his congregation astray.

The bible SPEAKS of Him

In Genesis after the serpent tricked Eve and then Adam fell, God said He will send Someone to crush the head of the serpent,

he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” – Gen 3:15

That Someone was Jesus Christ and He did it on the cross. We have to get that into our spirit. We must renew our minds. Don’t wait for it to happen… it happened! Don’t ask for it to happen… it already happened. Instead, receive it by faith.

When God was speaking to Himself about His creation, Jesus Christ was already present. The whole entire bible is about Jesus Christ, which is why it was titled “The Word of God” – and praise God it contains the words of God as well, and it is perfect and infallible!!

So why is it so important to get this right? Because a great truth is hidden from us until we get this sorted out…

so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. – Is 55:11

Who was that Word? Jesus Christ! And where is He now? He returned to the Father and is seated at the right hand of God right now. So look again at that verse… God’s Word that comes from His mouth WILL return to Him having accomplished that which He sent Him for. Jesus Christ ACCOMPLISHED what God sent Him for.

That scripture confirms that Jesus Christ achieved everything that His Father sent Him to do. Get it? Not one thing was left undone. Not one promise was left unfulfilled, for all people, for all time. Don”t wait for Jesus Christ to come again and do those things. God’s words in the bible are perfect and infallible. Jesus Christ DID what God sent Him to do, and “it is finished” – just as Jesus Christ confirmed as He hung on the cross.

Don’t lose all that He did for you!

Don’t let yourself be deceived and don’t faith to receive all your free gifts, your inheritance, which He made available to you!

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. – 2 Cor 1:20

Did you see that? They are done. And what is your contribution? You simply add your AMEN. “Amen” means to say “I agree” (or “So be it; truly”, “heartily agree”).

What is it when you heartily agree with something that God has said about His Son Jesus Christ? It’s faith. God once said to me: “Faith is what you agree is true”.

So let me ask you… DID Jesus fulfill the promise of God to send Someone to crush the head of the serpent? Answer: YES. He crushed the head of the serpent, just as God said He would. That is faith!

The reason faith is so greatly focussed on in the NT is because the promises that are  now fulfilled by God through Jesus Christ are RECEIVED by faith, an abiding faith, a daily active faith, confident declarations over situations, declaring the truth, standing firm until it manifestly comes to pass in your life.

Hebrews 11 says that all the great people of the OT acted because of their faith. They acted because of the words of God (rhema). Now we act because of the Word of God (Jesus Christ).

but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. - Hebrews 1:2

His work was perfect and complete. And everything He did is a free gift for all who receive it BY FAITH…

Without a fall, there is no restoration through Jesus Christ. Without sin there is no need for righteousness through Jesus Christ. If we didn’t fall and we cannot be restored… then recovery through Jesus Christ is not possible. If recovery and healing is not possible… then welcome to your cr@ppy life and welcome to this cr@ppy world.

However. There WAS a fall and an initial sin. And Jesus Christ IS the second Adam Who has restored all things. And that is the good news. Nothing has to remain as it seems to be. Marriages don’t have to suffer. People don’t have to suffer. Countries don’t have to fight. People don’t have to be addicted.

Some people need us to believe in evolution because then we won’t believe in Adam and Eve, we won’t believe in God and satan, we don’t believe in the love of God for us by sending His own Son to die for us. But let me say this to you – don’t be defrauded of your inheritance. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is all that there is. That’s a lie.

So that is why I copied these 101 scientific evidences from creation.com and put them on here. The age of the earth is correctly dated by scripture – and here is the scientific evidence to back it up.

Enjoy

Biological evidence for a young age of the earth

1. DNA in “ancient” fossils. DNA extracted from bacteria that are supposed to be 425 million years old brings into question that age, because DNA could not last more than thousands of years.
2. Lazarus bacteria—bacteria revived from salt inclusions supposedly 250 million years old, suggest the salt is not millions of years old. See also Salty saga.
3. The decay in the human genome due to multiple slightly deleterious mutations each generation is consistent with an origin several thousand years ago. Sanford, J., Genetic entropy and the mystery of the genome, Ivan Press, 2005; see review of the book and the interview with the author in Creation30(4):45–47,September 2008. This has been confirmed by realistic modelling of population genetics, which shows that genomes are young, in the order of thousands of years. See Sanford, J., Baumgardner, J., Brewer, W., Gibson, P. and Remine, W., Mendel’s Accountant: A biologically realistic forward-time population genetics program, SCPE 8(2):147–165, 2007.
4. The data for “mitochondrial Eve” are consistent with a common origin of all humans several thousand years ago.
5. Very limited variation in the DNA sequence on the human Y-chromosome around the world is consistent with a recent origin of mankind, thousands not millions of years.
6. Many fossil bones “dated” at many millions of years old are hardly mineralized, if at all. This contradicts the widely believed old age of the earth. See, for example, Dinosaur bones just how old are they really?
7. Dinosaur blood cells, blood vessels, proteins (hemoglobin, osteocalcin, collagen) are not consistent with their supposed age, but make more sense if the remains are young.
8. Lack of 50:50 racemization of amino acids in fossils “dated” at millions of years old, whereas complete racemization would occur in thousands of years.
9. Living fossils—jellyfish, graptolites, coelacanth, stromatolites, Wollemi pine and hundreds more. That many hundreds of species could remain so unchanged, for even up to billions of years in the case of stromatolites, speaks against the millions and billions of years being real.
10. Discontinuous fossil sequences. E.g. Coelacanth, Wollemi pine and various “index” fossils, which are present in supposedly ancient strata, missing in strata representing many millions of years since, but still living today. Such discontinuities speak against the interpretation of the rock formations as vast geological ages—how could Coelacanths have avoided being fossilized for 65 million years, for example? See The “Lazarus effect”: rodent “resurrection”!
11. The ages of the world’s oldest living organisms, trees, are consistent with an age of the earth of thousands of years.

Geological evidence for a young age of the earth

1. Scarcity of plant fossils in many formations containing abundant animal / herbivore fossils. E.g., the Morrison Formation (Jurassic) in Montana. See Origins21(1):51–56, 1994. Also the Coconino sandstone in the Grand Canyon has many track-ways (animals), but is almost devoid of plants. Implication: these rocks are not ecosystems of an “era” buried in situ over eons of time as evolutionists claim. The evidence is more consistent with catastrophic transport then burial during the massive global Flood of Noah’s day. This eliminates supposed evidence for millions of years.
2. Thick, tightly bent strata without sign of melting or fracturing. E.g. the Kaibab upwarp in Grand Canyon indicates rapid folding before the sediments had time to solidify (the sand grains were not elongated under stress as would be expected if the rock had hardened). This wipes out hundreds of millions of years of time and is consistent with extremely rapid formation during the biblical Flood. SeeWarped earth (written by a geophysicist).
3. Polystrate fossils—tree trunks in coal (Auracaria spp. king billy pines, celery top pines, in southern hemisphere coal). There are also polystrate tree trunks in theYellowstone fossilized forests and Joggins, Nova Scotia and in many other places. Polystrate fossilized lycopod trunks occur in northern hemisphere coal, again indicating rapid burial / formation of the organic material that became coal.
4. Experiments show that with conditions mimicking natural forces, coal forms quickly; in weeks for brown coal to months for black coal. It does not need millions of years. Furthermore, long time periods could be an impediment to coal formation because of the increased likelihood of the permineralization of the wood, which would hinder coalification.
5. Experiments show that with conditions mimicking natural forces, oil forms quickly; it does not need millions of years, consistent with an age of thousands of years.
6. Experiments show that with conditions mimicking natural forces, opals form quickly, in a matter of weeks, not millions of years, as had been claimed.
7. Evidence for rapid, catastrophic formation of coal beds speaks against the hundreds of millions of years normally claimed for this, including Z-shaped seams that point to a single depositional event producing these layers.
8. Evidence for rapid petrifaction of wood speaks against the need for long periods of time and is consistent with an age of thousands of years.
9. Clastic dykes and pipes (intrusion of sediment through overlying sedimentary rock) show that the overlying rock strata were still soft when it happened. This drastically compresses the time scale for the deposition of the penetrated rock strata. See, Walker, T., Fluidisation pipes: Evidence of large-scale watery catastrophe, Journal of Creation (TJ) 14(3):8–9, 2000.
10. Para(pseudo)conformities—where one rock stratum sits on top of another rock stratum but with supposedly millions of years of geological time missing, yet the contact plane lacks any significant erosion; that is, it is a “flat gap”. E.g. Coconino sandstone / Hermit shale in the Grand Canyon (supposedly a 10 million year gap in time). The thick Schnebly Hill Formation (sandstone) liesbetween the Coconino and Hermit in central Arizona. See Austin, S.A., Grand Canyon, monument to catastrophe, ICR, Santee, CA, USA, 1994 and Snelling, A., The case of the “missing” geologic time, Creation 14(3):31–35, 1992.
11. The presence of ephemeral markings (raindrop marks, ripple marks, animal tracks) at the boundaries of paraconformities show that the upper rock layer has been deposited immediately after the lower one, eliminating many millions of “gap” time. See references in Para(pseudo)conformities.
12. Inter-tonguing of adjacent strata that are supposedly separated by millions of years also eliminates many millions of years of supposed geologic time. The case of the “missing” geologic time; Mississippian and Cambrian strata interbedding: 200 million years hiatus in question, CRSQ 23(4):160–167.
13. The lack of bioturbation (worm holes, root growth) at paraconformities (flat gaps) reinforces the lack of time involved where evolutionary geologists insert many millions of years to force the rocks to conform with the “given” timescale of billions of years.
14. The almost complete lack of clearly recognizable soil layers anywhere in the geologic column. Geologists do claim to have found lots of “fossil” soils (paleosols), but these are quite different to soils today, lacking the features that characterize soil horizons; features that are used in classifying different soils. Every one that has been investigated thoroughly proves to lack the characteristics of proper soil. If “deep time” were correct, with hundreds of millions of years of abundant life on the earth, there should have been ample opportunities many times over for soil formation. See Klevberg, P. and Bandy, R., CRSQ 39:252–68;CRSQ 40:99–116, 2003; Walker, T., Paleosols: digging deeper buries “challenge” to Flood geology, Journal of Creation 17(3):28–34, 2003.
15. Limited extent of unconformities (unconformity: a surface of erosion that separates younger strata from older rocks). Surfaces erode quickly (e.g. Badlands, South Dakota), but there are very limited unconformities. There is the “great unconformity” at the base of the Grand Canyon, but otherwise there are supposedly ~300 million years of strata deposited on top without any significant unconformity. This is again consistent with a much shorter time of deposition of these strata. SeePara(pseudo)conformities.
16. The amount of salt in the world’s oldest lake contradicts its supposed age and suggests an age more consistent with its formation after Noah’s Flood, which is consistent with a young age of the earth.
17. The discovery that underwater landslides (“turbidity currents”) travelling at some 50 km/h can create huge areas of sediment in a matter of hours (Press, F., and Siever, R., Earth, 4^th ed., Freeman & Co., NY, USA, 1986). Sediments thought to have formed slowly over eons of time are now becoming recognized as having formed extremely rapidly. See for example, A classic tillite reclassified as a submarine debris flow (Technical).
18. Flume tank research with sediment of different particle sizes show that layered rock strata that were thought to have formed over huge periods of time in lake beds actually formed very quickly. Even the precise layer thicknesses of rocks were duplicated after they were ground into their sedimentary particles and run through the flume. See Experiments in stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures, Sedimentation Experiments: Nature finally catches up! and Sandy Stripes Do many layers mean many years?
19. Observed examples of rapid canyon formation; for example, Providence Canyon in southwest Georgia, Burlingame Canyon near Walla Walla, Washington, and Lower Loowit Canyon near Mount St Helens. The rapidity of the formation of these canyons, which look similar to other canyons that supposedly took many millions of years to form, brings into question the supposed age of the canyons that no one saw form.
20. Observed examples of rapid island formation and maturation, such as Surtsey, which confound the notion that such islands take long periods of time to form. See also, Tuluman—A Test of Time.
21. Rate of erosion of coastlines, horizontally. E.g. Beachy Head, UK, loses a metre of coast to the sea every six years.
22. Rate of erosion of continents vertically is not consistent with the assumed old age of the earth. See Creation 22(2):18–21.
23. Existence of significant flat plateaux that are “dated” at many millions of years old (“elevated paleoplains”). An example isKangaroo Island (Australia). C.R. Twidale, a famous Australian physical geographer wrote: “the survival of these paleoforms is in some degree an embarrassment to all the commonly accepted models of landscape development.” Twidale, C.R. On the survival of paleoforms, American Journal of Science 5(276):77–95, 1976 (quote on p. 81). See Austin, S.A., Did landscapes evolve?Impact 118, April 1983.
24. The recent and almost simultaneous origin of all the high mountain ranges around the world—including the Himalayas, the Alps, the Andes, and the Rockies—which have undergone most of the uplift to their present elevations beginning “five million” years ago, whereas mountain building processes have supposedly been around for up to billions of years. See Baumgardner, J., Recent uplift of today’s mountains. Impact 381, March 2005.
25. Water gaps. These are gorges cut through mountain ranges where rivers run. They occur worldwide and are part of what evolutionary geologists call “discordant drainage systems”. They are “discordant” because they don’t fit the deep time belief system. The evidence fits them forming rapidly in a much younger age framework where the gorges were cut in the recessive stage / dispersive phase of the global Flood of Noah’s day. See Oard, M., Do rivers erode through mountains? Water gaps are strong evidence for the Genesis Flood, Creation 29(3):18–23, 2007.

1. Erosion at Niagara Falls and other such places is consistent with just a few thousand years since the biblical Flood.
2. River delta growth rate is consistent with thousands of years since the biblical Flood, not vast periods of time. The argument goes back to Mark Twain. E.g. 1. Mississippi—Creation Research Quarterly (CRSQ) 9:96–114, 1992; CRSQ 14:77; CRSQ 25:121–123. E.g. 2 Tigris–Euphrates: CRSQ14:87, 1977.
3. Underfit streams. River valleys are too large for the streams they contain. Dury speaks of the “continent-wide distribution of underfit streams”. Using channel meander characteristics, Dury concluded that past streams frequently had 20–60 times their current discharge. This means that the river valleys would have been carved very quickly, not slowly over eons of time. See Austin, S.A., Did landscapes evolve? Impact 118, 1983.
4. Amount of salt in the sea. Even ignoring the effect of the biblical Flood and assuming zero starting salinity and all rates of input and removal so as to maximize the time taken to accumulate all the salt, the maximum age of the oceans, 62 million years, is less than 1/50 of the age evolutionists claim for the oceans. This suggests that the age of the earth is radically less also.
5. The amount of sediment on the sea floors at current rates of land erosion would accumulate in just 12 million years; a blink of the eye compared to the supposed age of much of the ocean floor of up to 3 billion years. Furthermore, long-age geologists reckon that higher erosion rates applied in the past, which shortens the time frame. From a biblical point of view, at the end of Noah’s Flood lots of sediment would have been added to the sea with the water coming off the unconsolidated land, making the amount of sediment perfectly consistent with a history of thousands of years.
6. Iron-manganese nodules (IMN) on the sea floors. The measured rates of growth of these nodules indicates an age of only thousands of years. Lalomov, A.V., 2007. Mineral deposits as an example of geological rates. CRSQ 44(1):64–66.
7. The age of placer deposits (concentrations of heavy metals such as tin in modern sediments and consolidated sedimentary rocks). The measured rates of deposition indicate an age of thousands of years, not the assumed millions. See Lalomov, A.V., and Tabolitch, S.E., 2000. Age determination of coastal submarine placer, Val’cumey, northern Siberia. Journal of Creation (TJ)14(3):83–90.
8. Pressure in oil / gas wells indicate the recent origin of the oil and gas. If they were many millions of years old we would expect the pressures to equilibrate, even in low permeability rocks. “Experts in petroleum prospecting note the impossibility of creating an effective model given long and slow oil generation over millions of years (Petukhov, 2004). In their opinion, if models demand the standard multimillion-years geochronological scale, the best exploration strategy is to drill wells on a random grid.” Lalomov, A.V., 2007. Mineral deposits as an example of geological rates. CRSQ 44(1):64–66.
9. Direct evidence that oil is forming today in the Guaymas Basin and in Bass Strait is consistent with a young earth (although notnecessary for a young earth).
10. Rapid reversals in paleomagnetism undermine use of paleomagnetism in long ages dating of rocks and speak of rapid processes, compressing the long-age time scale enormously.
11. The pattern of magnetization in the magnetic stripes where magma is welling up at the mid-ocean trenches argues against the belief that reversals take many thousands of years and rather indicates rapid sea-floor spreading as well as rapid magnetic reversals, consistent with a young earth (Humphreys, D.R., Has the Earth’s magnetic field ever flipped? Creation Research Quarterly 25(3):130–137, 1988).

1. Measured rates of stalactite and stalagmite growth in limestone caves are consistent with a young age of several thousand years. See also articles on limestone cave formation.
2. The decay of the earth’s magnetic field. Exponential decay is evident from measurements and is consistent with theory of free decay since creation, suggesting an age of the earth of only thousands of years. See also: Humphreys, R., Earth’s magnetic field is decaying steadily—with a little rythm, CRSQ 47(3):193–201; 2011.
3. Excess heat flow from the earth is consistent with a young age rather than billions of years, even taking into account heat from radioactive decay. SeeWoodmorappe, J., 1999. Lord Kelvin revisited on the young age of the earth. Journal of Creation (TJ)13(1):14, 1999.

Radiometric dating and the age of the earth

1. Carbon-14 in coal suggests ages of thousands of years and clearly contradict ages of millions of years.
2. Carbon-14 in oil again suggests ages of thousands, not millions, of years.
3. Carbon-14 in fossil wood also indicates ages of thousands, not millions, of years.
4. Carbon-14 in diamonds suggests ages of thousands, not billions, of years.
5. Incongruent radioisotope dates using the same technique argue against trusting the dating methods that give millions of years.
6. Incongruent radioisotope dates using different techniques argue against trusting the dating methods that give millions of years (or billions of years for the age of the earth).
7. Demonstrably non-radiogenic “isochrons” of radioactive and non-radioactive elements undermine the assumptions behind isochron “dating” that gives billions of years. “False” isochrons are common.
8. Different faces of the same zircon crystal and different zircons from the same rock giving different “ages” undermine all “dates” obtained from zircons.
9. Evidence of a period of rapid radioactive decay in the recent past (lead and helium concentrations and diffusion rates in zircons) point to a young earth explanation.
10. The amount of helium, a product of alpha-decay of radioactive elements, retained in zircons in granite is consistent with an age of 6,000±2000 years, not the supposed billions of years. See: Humphreys, D.R., Young helium diffusion age of zircons supports accelerated nuclear decay, in Vardiman, Snelling, and Chaffin (eds.), Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Institute for Creation Research and Creation Research Society, 848 pp., 2005
11. Lead in zircons from deep drill cores vs. shallow ones. They are similar, but there should be less in the deep ones due to the higher heat causing higher diffusion rates over the usual long ages supposed. If the ages are thousands of years, there would not be expected to be much difference, which is the case (Gentry, R., et al., Differential lead retention in zircons: Implications for nuclear waste containment, Science 216(4543):296–298, 1982; DOI: 10.1126/science.216.4543.296).
12. Pleochroic halos produced in granite by concentrated specks of short half-life elements such as polonium suggest a period of rapid nuclear decay of the long half-life parent isotopes during the formation of the rocks and rapid formation of the rocks, both of which speak against the usual ideas of geological deep time and a vast age of the earth. See, Radiohalos: Startling evidence of catastrophic geologic processes, Creation 28(2):46–50, 2006.
13. Squashed pleochroic halos (radiohalos) formed from decay of polonium, a very short half-life element, in coalified wood from several geological eras suggest rapid formation of all the layers about the same time, in the same process, consistent with the biblical “young” earth model rather than the millions of years claimed for these events.
14. Australia’s “Burning Mountain” speaks against radiometric dating and the millions of years belief system (according to radiometric dating of the lava intrusion that set the coal alight, the coal in the burning mountain has been burning for ~40 million years, but clearly this is not feasible).

Astronomical evidence for a young(er) age of the earth and the universe

1. Evidence of recent volcanic activity on Earth’s moon is inconsistent with its supposed vast age because it should have long since cooled if it were billions of years old. See:Transient lunar phenomena: a permanent problem for evolutionary models of Moon formation and Walker, T., and Catchpoole, D., Lunar volcanoes rock long-age timeframe,Creation 31(3):18, 2009. See further corroboration: “At Long Last, Moon’s Core ‘Seen’”;http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/at-long-last-moons-core-seen.html?rss=1
2. Recession of the moon from the earth. Tidal friction causes the moon to recede from the earth at 4 cm per year. It would have been greater in the past when the moon and earth were closer together. The moon and earth would have been in catastrophic proximity (Roche limit) at less than a quarter of their supposed age.
3. Slowing down of the earth. Tidal dissipation rate of Earth’s angular momentum: increasing length of day, currently by 0.002 seconds/day every century (thus an impossibly short day billions of years ago and a very slow day shortly after accretion and before the postulated giant impact to form the Moon). See: How long has the moon been receding?
4. Ghost craters on the moon’s maria (singular mare: dark “seas” formed from massive lava flows) are a problem for long ages. Evolutionists believe that the lava flows were caused by enormous impacts, and this lava partly buried other, smaller, impact craters, leaving “ghosts”. But this means that the smaller impacts can’t have been too long after the huge one, otherwise the lava would have hardened before the impact. This suggests a very narrow time frame for lunar cratering, and by implication the other cratered bodies of our solar system. They suggest that the cratering occurred quite quickly. See Fryman, H., Ghost craters in the sky, Creation Matters 4(1):6, 1999; A biblically based cratering theory (Faulkner);Lunar volcanoes rock long-age timeframe.
5. The presence of a significant magnetic field around Mercury is not consistent with its supposed age of billions of years. A planet so small should have cooled down enough so any liquid core would solidify, preventing the evolutionists’ “dynamo” mechanism. See also, Humphreys, D.R., Mercury’s magnetic field is young! Journal of Creation 22(3):8–9, 2008.
6. The outer planets Uranus and Neptune have magnetic fields, but they should be long “dead” if they are as old as claimed according to evolutionary long-age beliefs. Assuming a solar system age of thousands of years, physicist Russell Humphreys successfully predicted the strengths of the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune.
7. Jupiter’s larger moons, Ganymede, Io, and Europa, have magnetic fields, which they should not have if they were billions of years old, because they have solid cores and so no dynamo could generate the magnetic fields. This is consistent with creationist Humphreys’ predictions. See also, Spencer, W., Ganymede: the surprisingly magnetic moon, Journal of Creation 23(1):8–9, 2009.
8. Volcanically active moons of Jupiter (Io) are consistent with youthfulness (Galileo mission recorded 80 active volcanoes). If Io had been erupting over 4.5 billion years at even 10% of its current rate, it would have erupted its entire mass 40 times. Io looks like a young moon and does not fit with the supposed billions of year’s age for the solar system. Gravitational tugging from Jupiter and other moons accounts for only some of the excess heat produced.
9. The surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Studies of the few craters indicated that up to 95% of small craters, and many medium-sized ones, are formed from debris thrown up by larger impacts. This means that there have been far fewer impacts than had been thought in the solar system and the age of other objects in the solar system, derived from cratering levels, have to be reduced drastically (see Psarris, Spike, What you aren’t being told about astronomy, volume 1: Our created solar system DVD, available from CMI).
10. Methane on Titan (Saturn’s largest moon)—the methane should all be gone because of UV-induced breakdown. The products of photolysis should also have produced a huge sea of ethane. As the original Astrobiology paper said, “If the chemistry on Titan has gone on in steady-state over the age of the solar system, then we would predict that a layer of ethane 300 to 600 meters thick should be deposited on the surface.” No such sea is seen, which is consistent with Titan being a tiny fraction of the claimed age of the solar system.
11. The rate of change / disappearance of Saturn’s rings is inconsistent with their supposed vast age; they speak of youthfulness.
12. Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, looks young. Astronomers working in the “billions of years” mindset thought that this moon would be cold and dead, but it is a very active moon, spewing massive jets of water vapour and icy particles into space at supersonic speeds, consistent with a much younger age. Calculations show that the interior would have frozen solid after 30 million years (less than 1% of its supposed age); tidal friction from Saturn does not explain its youthful activity (Psarris, Spike, What you aren’t being told about astronomy, volume 1: Our created solar system DVD; Walker, T., 2009. Enceladus: Saturn’s sprightly moon looks young, Creation 31(3):54–55).
13. Miranda, a small moon of Uranus, should have been long since dead, if billions of years old, but its extreme surface features suggest otherwise. See Revelations in the solar system.
14. Neptune should be long since “cold”, lacking strong wind movement if it were billions of years old, yet Voyager II in 1989 found it to be otherwise—it has the fastest winds in the entire solar system. This observation is consistent with a young age, not billions of years. See Neptune: monument to creation.
15. Neptune’s rings have thick regions and thin regions. This unevenness means they cannot be billions of years old, since collisions of the ring objects would eventually make the ring very uniform. Revelations in the solar system.
16. Young surface age of Neptune’s moon, Triton—less than 10 million years, even with evolutionary assumptions on rates of impacts (see Schenk, P.M., and Zahnle, K. On the Negligible Surface Age of Triton, Icarus 192(1):135–149, 2007. <doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2007.07.004>.
17. Uranus and Neptune both have magnetic fields significantly off-axis, which is an unstable situation. When this was discovered with Uranus, it was assumed by evolutionary astronomers that Uranus must have just happened to be going through a magnetic field reversal. However, when a similar thing was found with Neptune, this AD hoc explanation was upset. These observations are consistent with ages of thousands of years rather than billions.
18. The orbit of Pluto is chaotic on a 20 million year time scale and affects the rest of the solar system, which would also become unstable on that time scale, suggesting that it must be much younger. (See: Rothman, T., God takes a nap, Scientific American259(4):20, 1988).
19. The existence of short-period comets (orbital period less than 200 years), e.g. Halley, which have a life of less than 20,000 years, is consistent with an age of the solar system of less than 10,000 years. AD hoc hypotheses have to be invented to circumvent this evidence (see Kuiper Belt). See Comets and the age of the solar system.
20. “Near-infrared spectra of the Kuiper Belt Object, Quaoar and the suspected Kuiper Belt Object, Charon, indicate both contain crystalline water ice and ammonia hydrate. This watery material cannot be much older than 10 million years, which is consistent with a young solar system, not one that is 5 billion years old.” See: The “waters above” .
21. Lifetime of long-period comets (orbital period greater than 200 years) that are sun-grazing comets or others like Hyakutake or Hale–Bopp means they could not have originated with the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. However, their existence is consistent with a young age for the solar system. Again an AD hoc Oort Cloud was invented to try to account for these comets still being present after billions of years. See, Comets and the age of the solar system.
22. The maximum expected lifetime of near-earth asteroids is of the order of one million years, after which they collide with the sun. And the Yarkovsky effect moves main belt asteroids into near-earth orbits faster than had been thought. This brings into question the origin of asteroids with the formation of the solar system (the usual scenario), or the solar system is much younger than the 4.5 billion years claimed. Henry, J., The asteroid belt: indications of its youth, Creation Matters 11(2):2, 2006.
23. The lifetime of binary asteroids—where a tiny asteroid “moon” orbits a larger asteroid— in the main belt (they represent about 15–17% of the total): tidal effects limit the life of such binary systems to about 100,000 years. The difficulties in conceiving of any scenario for getting binaries to form in such numbers to keep up the population, led some astronomers to doubt their existence, but space probes confirmed it (Henry, J., The asteroid belt: indications of its youth, Creation Matters 11(2):2, 2006).
24. The observed rapid rate of change in stars contradicts the vast ages assigned to stellar evolution. For example, Sakurai’s Object in Sagittarius: in 1994, this star was most likely a white dwarf in the centre of a planetary nebula; by 1997 it had grown to a bright yellow giant, about 80 times wider than the sun (Astronomy & Astrophysics 321:L17, 1997). In 1998, it had expanded even further, to a red supergiant 150 times wider than the sun. But then it shrank just as quickly; by 2002 the star itself was invisible even to the most powerful optical telescopes, although it is detectable in the infrared, which shines through the dust (Muir, H., 2003, Back from the dead, New Scientist 177(2384):28–31).
25. The faint young sun paradox. According to stellar evolution theory, as the sun’s core transforms from hydrogen to helium by means of nuclear fusion, the mean molecular weight increases, which would compress the sun’s core increasing fusion rate. The upshot is that over several billion years, the sun ought to have brightened 40% since its formation and 25% since the appearance of life on earth. For the latter, this translates into a 16–18 ºC temperature increase on the earth. The current average temperature is 15 ºC, so the earth ought to have had a -2 ºC or so temperature when life appeared. See: Faulkner, D.,The young faint Sun paradox and the age of the solar system, Journal of Creation (TJ) 15(2):3–4, 2001. As of 2010, the faint young sun remains a problem: Kasting, J.F., Early Earth: Faint young Sun redux, Nature 464:687–689, 1 April 2010; doi:10.1038/464687a; www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7289/full/464687a.html
26. Cometesimals. From his studies, astronomer Louis Frank says that 100 million tonnes of water is being added to Earth every year in cometesimals (small comet remnants). This has strong implications for the supposed age of the oceans, if confirmed. See: Bergman, J., Advances in integrating cosmology: The case of cometesimals, Journal of Creation (CENTJ) 10(2):202–210, 1996.
27. The giant gas planets Jupiter and Saturn radiate more energy than they receive from the sun, suggesting a recent origin. Jupiter radiates almost twice as much energy as it receives from the sun, indicating that it may be less than 1 % of the presumed 4.5 billion years old solar system. Saturn radiates nearly twice as much energy per unit mass as Jupiter. See The age of the Jovian planets.
28. Speedy stars are consistent with a young age for the universe. For example, many stars in the dwarf galaxies in the Local Group are moving away from each other at speeds estimated at to 10–12 km/s. At these speeds, the stars should have dispersed in 100 Ma, which, compared with the supposed 14,000 Ma age of the universe, is a short time. See Fast stars challenge big bang origin for dwarf galaxies.
29. The ageing of spiral galaxies (much less than 200 million years) is not consistent with their supposed age of many billions of years. The discovery of extremely “young” spiral galaxies highlights the problem of this evidence for the evolutionary ages assumed.
30. The number of type I supernova remnants (SNRs) observable in our galaxy is consistent with an age of thousands of years, not millions or billions. See Davies, K., Proc. 3rd ICC, pp. 175–184, 1994.
31. The rate of expansion and size of supernovas indicates that all studied are young (less than 10,000 years). See supernova remnants.

Human history is consistent with a young age of the earth

1. Human population growth. Less than 0.5% p.a. growth from six people 4,500 years ago would produce today’s population. Where are all the people? if we have been here much longer?
2. “Stone age” human skeletons and artefacts. There are not enough for 100,000 years of a human population of just one million, let alone more people (10 million?). See Where are all the people?
3. Length of recorded history. Origin of various civilizations, writing, etc., all about the same time several thousand years ago. SeeEvidence for a young world.
4. Languages. Similarities in languages claimed to be separated by many tens of thousands of years speaks against the supposed ages (e.g. compare some aboriginal languages in Australia with languages in south-eastern India and Sri Lanka). See The Tower of Babel account affirmed by linguistics.
5. Common cultural “myths” speak of recent separation of peoples around the world. An example of this is the frequency of stories of an earth-destroying flood.
6. Origin of agriculture. Secular dating puts it at about 10,000 years and yet that same chronology says that modern man has supposedly been around for at least 200,000 years. Surely someone would have worked out much sooner how to sow seeds of plants to produce food. See: Evidence for a young world.

But it’s time. And like David enjoyed smashing giants in public, I’ve been doing that too. But this is the biggie. This one has kept me in emotional and psychological chains all my life. In fact, I’ve used it to keep myself safe as well. I’ve used being over-weight as a way to avoid male-female relationships, because I didn’t want to get hurt. So this is a big, entrenched giant.

But do you know what? No giant, not even satan, is a match for what Jesus Christ did on the cross. And if you want to know more, you’ve come to the right place! I’ve blogged extensively about my search to understand what Jesus Christ did for us.

I have blogged many times about how I’ve interceded with scripture (.DOC) in various countries and situations with great success. I’ve also prayed those same scriptures at church and seen a sort of mini-revival break out with God’s Presence being manifest. I’ve prayed those same scriptures over local regions and seen the crime rate drop. Through  faith in Jesus Christ’s perfect and complete work on the cross rain has come to drought areas and hurricanes have been stopped in their tracks.

There is truly NOTHING that has not been renewed and restored back to God IF we will believe what God says about His Son Jesus Christ.

Why does this work? It’s because it is our daily faith which overcomes the evil of this world. Not just any old faith, but a daily overcoming trust and belief that Jesus Christ really DID do on the cross what the bible says that He did. No ifs ands or buts… He did it.

More recently I began to struggle with how to attain all that God did for me through Jesus Christ on His cross in my personal life. I wrote about this mental shift that was needed in my thinking here: Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you HAVE received it

And after I discovered that truth, God then spoke this to me: “Nothing will be impossible for you” – Jesus Christ.

Tackling this giant

Now I am tackling a new giant in my life. My weight. I have been overweight for most of my life and I’ve never liked it and I’ve never been able to do anything about it. When I got married – looooong ago – I slimmed down nicely, but that didn’t last long and by the end of the marriage I was much bigger than ever before.

So here I am… putting my faith to the test. I believe, I trust, I know, I have faith that Jesus Christ has healed me on His cross. He took it all. He paid for it all. He made me holy, pure and blameless. He made me healthy. I am in Him. He is in me. I am no longer a physical body, but a spiritual body. Etc.

These are the kinds of scriptures I will be declaring in faith 2-4 times a day – and all the while I’m also believing that Jesus Christ has crushed the head of the serpent, He destroyed the works of the devil, He slayed the serpent etc.

This combination of scriptures about the cross of Jesus Christ destroyed poverty in my life since I wrote that blog post: Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you HAVE received it

And I have no doubt that Jesus Christ destroyed all unhealthy sickness  in my life as well. I know that a double minded man gets nothing, so I won’t doubt what He did on the cross.

I began this prayer yesterday (20th Nov 2011) and on the 27th of Sept 2011 I took some pics of myself, because I knew that if my finances turned around, then I would tackle this next. So I took those pics and as of yesterday I have started declaring the truth of what Jesus Christ did for me. And when my body shape and my choices and my thinking changes over the next few months – which is something I have never been able to do in my own strength – you will know for certain that it was not me who did it. You will know Who did it

If it’s DONE, what is my role in all of this?

So let’s take a moment and think this through… when the Israelites crossed into Israel in Joshua 1, God told Joshua to go be strong and very courageous and take the whole land. He told him to conquer it and to NOT make any agreements with any of the inhabitants there. And that is my view too… as we cross over this spiritual Jordan let us NOT make any side deals with our secret addictions or our fantasies.

Instead let us be like the bride of Christ as described in Eph 4

¹²His intention was the perfecting and the full equipping of the saints (His consecrated people), [that they should do] the work of ministering toward building up Christ’s body (the church),

¹³[That it might develop] until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the [full and accurate] knowledge of the Son of God, that [we might arrive] at really mature manhood (the completeness of personality which is nothing less than the standard height of Christ’s own perfection), the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found in Him.

THROUGH JESUS CHRIST we are to come to a full knowledge of Him and become like Him. We become like Him ONLY because He first loved us and now is within us. It is no longer we who live, but He lives in us. That alone is the reason we become like Him. By ourselves we are fallen sinners without hope, but IN HIM we are able to grow and mature into the: the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found in Him.

As the bride of Christ what should we be striving to do? Verse 1…

¹THEREFORE BE imitators of God [copy Him and follow His example]

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and if we imitate God or Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit we are using our very lives to flatter God.

How do you imitate God? How do you follow His example? By reading scripture, understanding what His heart’s desire is, what He deeply desires from us – and then acting on it.

So what does scripture say Jesus Christ wants from His bride?

He wants His bride to submit to Him, learning His ways, adjusting ourselves to Him…

²²Wives, be subject (be submissive and adapt yourselves) to your own husbands as [a service] to the Lord.

And in return, what did He do for us on His cross? He made us clean and beautiful…

²⁶So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, ²⁷That He might present the church to Himself in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such things [that she might be holy and faultless].

Wow, did you hear what He did for you on His cross? He made us spotless, without wrinkle on the cross.

And what does He want His bride to do in return? He asks that we admire Him, worship Him, honor Him, praise Him… exceedingly…

33 let the wife see that she respects and reverences her husband [that she notices him, regards him, honors him, prefers him, venerates, and esteems him; and that she defers to him, praises him, and loves and admires him exceedingly].

Considering all that He did for us on His cross – already done, simply waiting for us to receive it by faith – considering all that, I have absolutely no problem esteeming Him, loving Him, praising Him, admiring Him. He is worthy.

And do you know what, when we truly take hold of all He did for us on His cross, He sees the fruit of the travail of His soul and He is satisfied.

Eat from Him. Drink from Him.  :)

The first part of the passage speaks about the simply awful tribulation that Jesus Christ went through on behalf of the WHOLE WORLD. He suffered for everyone and everything. Whether you appropriate His suffering or not, He still paid the price.

Let’s look at His suffering, before I show you something you might not have seen or realized before…

Isaiah 53:2-10

²For [the Servant of God] grew up before Him like a tender plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He has no form or comeliness [royal, kingly pomp], that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him.

³He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.

⁴Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].

⁵But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.

⁶All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has made to light upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all.

⁷He was oppressed, [yet when] He was afflicted, He was submissive and opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.

⁸By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living [stricken to His death] for the transgression of my [Isaiah's] people, to whom the stroke was due?

⁹And they assigned Him a grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth.

¹⁰Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick.

Incredible descriptions of suffering.

And who did He suffer for? For one thing, Isaiah says in verse 8 that Jesus Christ was killed as a spotless Lamb of God for Isaiah’s people – who lived in 500BC. But in fact Jesus Christ died for ALL people across ALL ages of time. All that we need to appropriate what He did, is to believe and receive.

But while that is a great message, that’s not the message of this post.

Whether you know it or not, He paid the price to make you perfectly whole. If you accept it or not, He paid for your mental, emotional, physical freedom. If your marriage is suffering, it shouldn’t be, because He healed it on the cross.

Look again one more time at verse 5…

the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.

And even as wonderful as that message is, it’s still not the point of this post.

Take a look at the next verse…

Isaiah 53:10-11

WHEN You and He make His life an offering for sin

[and He has risen from the dead, in time to come], He shall see His [spiritual] offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the will and pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.

¹¹He shall SEE [the fruit] of the travail of His soul and be satisfied;

When you… WHEN… when you make His life that He gave… an offering for sin… He SEES the fruit of what He went through… and His soul is satisfied.

Let me explain it another way.

A parent sacrifices everything for her daughter and then on day her daughter is getting married and she stands in front of everyone and says that you to her mom, because without her moms sacrifice she would not be here marrying someone wonderful. And in that (and many other beautiful moments) the parents feel quietly satisfied that their unknown sufferings, late nights, early morning, all were worth it.

The Message Bible says Isaiah 53:10-11 this way

Out of that terrible travail of soul,
he’ll see that it’s worth it and be glad he did it.

Do you see now?

Jesus Christ suffered for every ailment, but only 1 in 1,000,000 sicknesses are actually healed by through faith based on what He did on the cross.  But when we DO have faith in what He did, His soul is satisfied and He feels that His suffering was worth it.

I bless you to received, receive, receive. He paid the price for your freedom. Come out from the jail. Believe what He has done for you.

So long ago, before the Aussie election of Rudd vs Howard, I decided to pray that God’s will is done, because it’s not possible for me to know what the right thing is, because I can’t see all the factors, I can’t see inside people’s hearts.

This approach is great because it means I can stay neutral and simple pray and believe that the right thing gets done, because I am declaring the full and complete and finished work of Jesus Christ over the cities and country.

How do I do that? It’s simply this, I get a map of the country and I declare the truth of these scriptures (Key prayer scriptures DOC) over each of the cities of the country.

I’ve been doing this for bout 4 years, ever since those first heady days of praying over the drought in Australia (see 2008-9 Prophecies and Miracles v2).

Here are two countries that need prayer at this time:

Egypt

28 November – Egypt ,Parliament 1st stage 1st round
5 December – Egypt, Parliament 1st stage 2nd round
14 December – Egypt, Parliament 2nd stage 1st round

Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa)

28 November – Congo Kinshasa, Presidential 1st round and Parliamentary elections

Both are strongly on my heart. These are pivotal elections both both countries. Will they go forward or fall backward? This election will change the lives of tens of millions of people.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has millions of exiles who would like to return home. Egypt has a democratic revolution that has stalled and the army is attempting to entrench themselves as above democracy and with a budget which will be secret and not available to either parliament or the people.

You are the light of this world

Before you launch into prayer on behalf of these tens of millions of people, take a moment to remind yourself who Jesus Christ has made you to be, and how He told us to go about these things.

He taught us that apart from Him – His righteous life, His atoning death –  we can do nothing. But WITH HIM, we are…

“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. – Matt 5:14

WITH Him, it is our faith that overcomes the evil of this world. We do not need to choose sides, we just need to know that He HAS (past tense, on the cross) crushed the head of the serpent.

WITH Him…

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” – Matt 17:20

In this more recent post The feast of Tabernacles, the end of captivity, Sabbath rest again I said that I felt that September through to October 20th would be pivotal. During that time the Occupy Wall Street movement sprang up.

Check out this live map showing the more than 1,000-1,500 locations of protest all around the world.

Look at the sudden spike in protests during September 2011

And it’s worth noting that Tea Party founder backs Occupy Wall Street.

If you are interested, here is the back story for OWS and Day of Rage (see US Day of Rage)

Tim Eastman, a photographer who took part largely out of curiosity but left at about 23:00, says he was wary of becoming involved in yet another “cliched” protest. ”It didn’t seem at first like it would become the sort of monster it became. It looked like it might peter out after a few days.” Like Mr Bray, he returned to the camp when it became clear it was taking off, and is still involved with the Occupy movement. - Occupy Wall Street: The story of the first night - By Brian Wheeler – BBC News, Washington

If you want to follow some of the protest organizations on Twitter go here, to follow the majority of them follow this list and this list (NOTE: each list can only have 500 members, so check if he has a third and fourth over time).

View the financial statistics behind the complaints.

What would Jesus do?

Much of the church is paralysed by teaching which demands that they submit meekly to authority figures and the desire to look good and not lose tithes etc. So… many churches probably not organising the protests – which is a pity since it’s our God given mandate to look after this world.

But Jesus wasn’t like that, was He? If you think He was, you haven’t read the bible!

So… what WOULD Jesus do?

An Occupy banner outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London

This movement is astonishing for one main reason… and any Christian should already be focussed on it. What is God’s one command? To love one another. What did Jesus say we would be known for? For our love for one another.

Here is a great article by Reuters covering the current position of many faiths on the Occupy movement.

There is a growing and very impressive list of published authors from all around the globe who have signed on to support the Occupy movement.

What’s it all about… really?

What is this movement known for? Let’s let Naomi Klein capture this historic movement…

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: “We found each other.”

That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.

…

That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says “I care about you.” In a culture that trains people to avoid each other’s gaze, to say, “Let them die,” that is a deeply radical statement.

- Naomi Klein

Lessons from the life of Martin Luther

Back in 14th December 2008 it was already on my mind to share what happened when Martin Luther sparked change. Way back on the 31st December 2008 I wrote about the changes that I thought were coming – which we are seeing now.

Let me explain the danger. When Martin Luther spoke truth to power – the Catholic Church at the time – he spoke about the awful corruption of religion and the power and wealth illegally acquired by the elite. This Occupy movement speaks the same truth to power about the same issues. It is abhorrent that so few people have so much, while so many die of starvation.

How incredibly wonderful that a movement now has sprung up to recalibrate and rectify. However. What Martin Luther did not realise at that time was that the peasants (the 99%) would go on a rampage and destroy the property of the elite. As they did this they were using his words as their justification for their rampage. And when he then realised was happening, he said this was “the work of the devil” and the elites (the 1%) used his words as justification to crush the peasants – and obviously that was ALSO the work of the devil.

My point is this… while pursuing the objective of equality and justice and equity – the very things I wrote about and used Lady Liberty and the plaque on the side of that statue to prompt us to rethink the direction we are going.

And now, here we are, dictators falling in the middle east, economic tyrants falling under pressure in between 1,000 – 1,500 cities around the world. Apparent coups have occurred in the last few days in Italy and Greece with the EU putting their own un-elected people in leadership there.

So Martin Luther’s lessons looms large to me.

Here’s what matters

Let me quote Naomi Klein again…

A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that don’t matter.

- What we wear.
- Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs.
- Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite.

And here are a few things that do matter.

- Our courage.
- Our moral compass. 
- How we treat each other. 

- Naomi Klein

Wow. Look at that… the key is to have a moral compass and to take note of how we treat each other. Not a word about money or amassing wealth or greed

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. - 1 Timothy 6:10

An ongoing struggle against corruption

But you know… this is not the first time that love emerged as a powerful force during human history.

• Jesus Christ peacefully confronted the Jewish establishment who were profiteering from religion, He asserted that we must help the poor and love one another and that His followers would be known for doing the same

Many other Christians (and non-Christians) have also overcome evil with non-violent behaviour…

• Martin Luther was a German priest who peacefully confronted the Catholic Church (which to it’s credit has issued a statement that the gap between rich and poor must be narrowed).
• Ghandi peacefully confronted a global political power and the result was two nations – India and Pakistan – were born and could determine their own identity and future.
• Martin Luther King Jnr was a Baptist minister peacefully confronted political power and the result was civil rights for all races.
• Archbishop Desmond Tutu is an Anglican priest who campaigned peacefully for change in South Africa.

All of this change came peacefully.

The science of war leads one to dictatorship, pure and simple. The science of non-violence alone can lead one to pure democracy…Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than power derived from fear of punishment. – Ghandi

Naomi Klein again…

Something else this movement is doing right: You have committed yourselves to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken windows and street fights it craves so desperately.

And that tremendous discipline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we saw more of just last night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom. - Naomi Klein

I urge all people involved in bringing a new sanity to this world to renounce violence, because we will lose the high moral ground and provoke a reaction. History shows that change CAN and WILL  occur peacefully.

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always.” – Ghandi

The New York times recently wrote an excellent piece: The New Progressive Movement. In this article it shows how – over time – citizens have had to confront this same malaise of greed and power, each time winning more and more ground…

The first age of inequality was the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, an era quite like today, when both political parties served the interests of the corporate robber barons. The progressive movement arose after the financial crisis of 1893. In the following decades Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson came to power, and the movement pushed through a remarkable era of reform: trust busting, federal income taxation, fair labor standards, the direct election of senators and women’s suffrage.

The second gilded age was the Roaring Twenties. The pro-business administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover once again opened up the floodgates of corruption and financial excess, this time culminating in the Great Depression. And once again the pendulum swung. F.D.R.’s New Deal marked the start of several decades of reduced income inequality, strong trade unions, steep top tax rates and strict financial regulation.

In both of those renewals, the change came peacefully. Let us learn from history.

The supremacy of non-violent love

Naomi Klein puts it in perspective…

We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening.

Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets – like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win.

Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.

Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.

Did Mohamed Bouazizi have any clue at all what he would unleash when he burned himself to death in Tunisia on 17 December 2010? There is no way that he could have known this action would result in such enormous change to the world we live in.

The last word goes to Naomi:

“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” - Naomi Klein

I recently looked at a tumblr (offline PNG version – 4MB) and was stunned by the depth of the sadness that this person appears to feel.

Is everyone not ok? It seems like it. I don’t think this is something new… I think that it’s just now with facebook, twitter and tumblr (etc.) that we are able to see what has always been under the surface.

People are suffering.

And what does God have to say about the pain in this world? I think that is a fair question, don’t you? And it’s a question I would like to answer – from the bible.

My story

Let me take a moment to talk about me so you can see where I have come from – and its not too different from where that person is who wrote that tumblr (offline PNG version- 4MB). If you read my post: What to do when you are feeling empty inside, you will know that I have felt those feelings.

I’m not proud of it, but I will admit that I’ve done many of the wrong things in order to try and make myself feel better. Drugs. Sex. Travel. Marriage. Religion. Worship. I’ve tried many things to try and fix myself. Yes I tried to fix myself using worship. It didn’t work.

As I’ve written many times in this blog, none of it worked. No, religion did NOT work. Get over it.  :)

Emo

This outpouring of emotional sadness and low self esteem that people call “emo”. Is all this venting of sadness helpful? Is it healthy? Is it harmful to the person sharing it? Is it harmful to society to become aware of how awful so many people feel?

I think it’s honest. Emo is short for “emotions”. Emotions are not bad.

But when I look at that tumblr (offline PNG version- 4MB), I get a feeling that what pornography is to hurt men, this stuff might be for some hurt women. I think it may be an emotional trap that people – particularly women – can get caught into. It can be like an addiction. More. More. More.

Honesty is good. Being honest about how you feel inside and how you see yourself is a good thing. But in the emo culture there is no way out, no hope, no solution provided. Hip hop lyrics also expressed hopelessness, but it was a positive message of hope, that through hip hop things can get better. But the emo culture seems to have no hope at all. Some people seem to just wallow in sadness, making a home of sadness, making an identity out of it.

I think it’s great that people are honest and they express the depth of their need, but don’t make a lifestyle and an identity out of it. Let me explain why not.

Take a look at the image below. Is this lady below a monster? I know she says she feels like that, but look at her… IS she a monster? No.

Someone feeling empty inside and worthless... broken

Just because this person is admitting to how they feel, doesn’t mean that IS their value.

God’s advice to you

You see, while this world may not think much of you, I can tell you that God thinks a LOT about you.

This is God’s advice to you and me…

Do not conform to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. – Rom 12:2

Religion tells you that God is angry with you. But the bible says this…

For God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16

While this world send you messages about your value as a woman or a man in a hundred tv adverts and billboard messages each day… all of them telling you that you need some medication, you need to be thinner, you need to be more in control, you need more money etc.

So let me ask you… how thin is thin enough? Should this woman (below) really be worrying about her weight?

How thin is thin enough?

And all of that doesn’t help you, it just tells you that you are not ok as you are.

And we know we are not ok as we are. That’s the truth, isn’t it? Look at how many songs are called “Im not ok”. I did a search here http://www.elyrics.net/find.php for songs named “Im not ok” and found 3208. Wow.

But you know what? I’m not in denial about that. I know who I am when God isn’t holding me up. I’m an addicted mess. Without Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, I would be right back where He found me… and even worse off by now. I’m a sinner, ungodly and an enemy of God… just as the bible says.

Do you want to change?

I wanted to change. And Jesus Christ has changed me. And God accepts me. And now I have His Holy Spirit with me, holding me up, healing me, guiding me, changing me.

Holy Spirit holding me up

When I listened to what the world around me says about me, I felt like sh*t.

NOW I believe what God says about me and I see potential and courage and dreams and hopes.

I have healed, I’ve changed. I’m stronger. I’m healthier. I’m a better man. I’m a better person.

In future I’ll be a better husband and a great dad.

What about you?

Through Jesus Christ, the bible says that you are the bride of Jesus Christ.

Do you know how men feel about their bride? Take a look at the man next time you are at a wedding. He can’t take his eyes off his bride!

The bible says that Jesus Christ sees His bride  - that’s you and me – as beautiful.

He helps her dress in pure white clothing.

God says that His bride’s walls (her safety) is always before Him (in His thoughts).

Did you know that your name is written on God’s hand?

Yes, I have great worth in His eyes. You have great worth in His eyes.

It doesn’t matter to Him if you are not a Hollywood star or have never been on a magazine cover, but in the eyes of Jesus Christ, you are worth His life!

That’s why I have taken the time to write over 1,027 blog posts to try and explain that to everyone and so far 670,000 people have visited and I hope some of them have got the message.

Left to myself, my nature is awful. And it’s like this for most people. Let’s not kid around. LOOK at the world. Switch on your tv and watch the news! We rape, we fight, we are greedy, we grab oil and we loot cities and countries.

But when we come to Him, He redeems us, He shows us that we have value. He makes us His own children and shares what He has with us.

Jesus speaks lovingly about how God feels about the sparrows and the lilies of the field – and then He says to us that we are worth MUCH MORE than them!

Believe what He says!

Your life so far might have been awful. Perhaps people treated you like trash, like rubbish. Perhaps those who should have loved you, instead told you awful things about yourself. Their words should have given you warmth inside but instead it left you cold inside.

Don’t listen to them any more. Come to Jesus Christ and receive the Holy Spirit as your helper… and begin to discover that God loves us and He sees the worth we have. And then learn that He wants us to see our own value. He wants us to believe the words He says about us.

God’s ways are not our ways

If you have lived an isolated life in order to protect yourself, you will probably find God’s ways strange and unexpected.

You might be wondering “what is He doing?” a lot of the time.

I will tell you what He is doing. Are you ready? Got a pen and a paper handy?

Here it is. Drum roll please.

• He is building a family for Himself – to be around for eternity. 
• He is building a bride for His Son Jesus Christ - to be around for eternity.
• He is gathering the isolated sheep (who are lonely and vulnerable) back into the fold of sheep that are being loved and protected by Him.
• He is healing and cleaning up and bringing back to life the people who come to Him for help.

The bible confirms that we must take care of ourselves and take care of one another. We are all precious in His sight which why Paul prays that our eyes will become enlightened to see the potential that we have when we are united to Jesus Christ.

Do you know what happens? We become changed… we become God’s very own children! But yes, His ways are so different to our world and so different to what we have learned, that it can be quite confusing if we aren’t taught by people who have His heart.

He wants us to grow

The bible says that we can only love others in the measure that we love ourselves. Why is that? Because…

• If I have no regard for my own personal safety, then I will have no regard for your safety.
• If I do not care for my own emotions, I will not care for your emotions.
• If I do not see myself as precious in His eyes, I will not see you as precious in His eyes.

To take care of ourselves we might need to learn a LOT of new skills, for example what are good boundaries and how to place limits on other people’s behaviour. I share about this kind of thing in my post: Your personal bill of rights.

According to YOUR faith

If you come to Him, through His Son Jesus Christ, be prepared to learn and grow and change and heal. He won’t leave you as you are – broken, alone, sad. No. He will encourage you to make something of yourself. It happens slowly, at the pace set by YOU. So… fast… slow… you decide. It all depends on what you believe Jesus Christ has done for you.

Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment. – Matt 8:13

Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you” – Matt 9:29

Then Jesus answered her, O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you wish. And her daughter was cured from that moment. – Matt 15:28

According to WHOSE faith? YOUR faith. And don’t worry, you might not have much faith, but with the help of the Holy Spirit that can and will change. I am a living testimony to the power of God working through one person’s faith. He did it through me, He can do it through you.

God is perfect and Jesus Christ said on the cross “it is finished”. Now it’s us who have the speed limit in our faith – and God sent the Holy Spirit to help us grow in our faith in Jesus Christ.

Not pride

My writing is NOT to encourage self-idolatry or pride. In fact I doubt that anyone reading this blog has that problem. Instead the bible says…

think of yourself with sober judgment - Rom 12:4

and that is what I am encouraging. Sober judgement… not too high and not too low.

Not too high, not too low

Think of yourself with sober judgement… not too highly (proud, pompous) and not too lowly (worthless, devalued, hopeless).

Believe!

You know what you can and can’t do in your own strength. Now let’s see what you can do through the power of what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross and through His Holy Spirit within you.

Believe what God says He can make out of you.

Believe what Jesus Christ said when He walked this earth. Believe the kind things that the Holy Spirit says about your potential when He whispers to you.

Now, recently, I have been feeling to pray for Saudi Arabia. I don’t know when the prayer will begin, so I’m just putting this out there as a heads up

Hajj is expected to fall between November 4-9, 2011 depending on the lunar stage of the moon.

Saudi Arabian Cities

Joshua Project - Ethnic People Groups of Saudi Arabia

1. The Global Floods – part 2 (10 October 2010) – Spiritual focus
2. Increasing peace (10 October 2010) – Natural focus

First post: Scripture says that rain is/can be a sign of God’s increasing Presence in the word.
Second post: Shows the changes in this world from a natural point of view… increasing peace and change.

Back in 2009 I blogged that I believed that God was saying that the world would be coming into a time of peace – and He would bring it to pass.

I wrote these two blogs…

• An end to conflicts and revival (19 May 2009)
• An end to conflicts and revival… (17 Sept 2009) – “it’s … 4 months later. So how are things going?”

I began to blog the changes as they occured. Initially I wrote many posts on single changes such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the DRC. Those were big changes.

(I also wrote about the breaking of the drought in Australia and the ending of the Hurricane season in the Pacific during one specific year when things were going haywire. All of that is documented on this blog and I won’t rehash it here.)

Then things began to speed up and I began to write posts containing lists of places that were changing. instead of 5 posts about one change, it was 1 post with 5 changes!

Like this post:

• More good news… an end to conflicts too! Violence has also greatly diminished,  or disappeared completely, in places like Sri Lanka, Iraq, Nepal, Chechnya,  Congo, Indonesia and Burundi.

Where are we now?

Well… do you want the good news… or the good news? In addition to the places listed above…

Violence has greatly diminished,  or disappeared completely, in places like  Chad, Haiti, Nigeria, Ivory Coast. – Strategy Page

The war in Somalia has not stopped, but there has been a big change and aid agencies are able to get in and feed people. This change came IMMEDIATELY after God moved His people to pray for Somalia.

“MOGADISHU — African Union and Somali government forces on Monday seized strategic positions from Islamist insurgents in an offensive to flush out the last pockets of rebellion in Mogadishu.” – ReliefWeb

US troops are withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. These are no longer “long wars” that will take multiple-generations to fight.

“Arab Spring” democratic movements

The list of countries that have entered into democracy – in one form or another – or whose citizens are clamoring for freedoms and democracy, is astonishing. These include at the time of writing:  Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Israel, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco,Oman, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara – according to this Arab Spring post from Wikipedia.

“Occupy” democratic 2.0 movements

Even in existing democracies there is a movement to greatly enhance existing democracy. In September 2011 a new movement broke out in the US. At this time of writing there are protest movements in 492 cities and I have no doubt that we are seeing the seeds of something entirely new being established in those democracies. I call it Democracy 2.0 (or Democracy+)

Here are two links that give you the back story of how it suddenly got started…

• Anti-Wall Street protests take off thanks to a Canadian idea – ROD MICKLEBURGH
• “This is just practice”—the story of the Wall Street occupation - by Nathan Schneider

“In a matter of weeks, Occupy Wall Street has grown from a small group of protesters squatting in New York’s Zuccotti Park to a national movement,” Mr. Olbermann said on his program Tuesday night. “Support from organized labor and progressive groups is increasing by the day, while the protesters — who were once sneered at by most national media and The New York Times — are now part of the testimony on Capitol Hill, part of the conversation on the campaign trail, and part of the calculations on Wall Street.” – NY Times

1) Wars ending 2) Increased turmoil 3) Less wars starting

So there is an increase in turmoil in the world and if we view the Wikipedia map of ongoing conflicts…

Ongoing Conflicts 2011

NOTE: I don’t think that Wikipedia map is correct?! It lists western Sahara as a conflict zone, but this Wikipedia article says there is a cease fire with no major disturbances. That is confirmed by this report written just 4 days ago.

I take encouragement that “only” 4 new wars have started so far in 2011… and if we look at the list, 3 of them are “Arab Spring” uprisings. These are not classic insurgencies or sectarian violence. The 4th is the South Kordofan Conflict within Sudan’s oil-rich area.

1. The Global Floods – part 2 (10 October 2010) – Spiritual focus
2. Increasing peace (10 October 2010) – Natural focus

First post: Scripture says that rain is/can be a sign of God’s increasing Presence in the word.
Second post: Shows the changes in this world from a natural point of view… increasing peace and change.

On 30 August 201o I wrote the post: The Global Floods. In that post I reminded that I believed that during 2008 God had said to  me

“Now will I arise,” says the LORD. “Now will I be exalted; now will I be lifted up. – Is 33:10

and in this post I wrote:

On Weds 29 Oct 2008 I prayed for Australia (as usual) and amongst many things I felt, I particularly felt Is 44:3-6 which is:

For I will pour water upon him who is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground.

and in that same post I wrote

Is 45:8 Let fall in showers, you heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness

and also in that post I again quote Isaiah

In these verses God basically says the same thing FOUR times – and issues a challenge to bear witness to it when it comes to pass!

1) You have heard [these things foretold], now you see this fulfillment. And will you not bear witness to it?

2) I show you specified new things from this time forth, even hidden things [kept in reserve] which you have not known.

3) They are created now [called into being by the prophetic word], and not long ago; and before today you have never heard of them, lest you should say, Behold, I knew them!

4) Yes, you have never heard, yes, you have never known; yes, from of old your ear has not been opened. – Is 48:6-8

Have those things come to pass?

Was there rain and floods? I’ve documented the rain and floods of 2008-2009 Australia extensively, so I won’t go into that again. But the change is beyond just Australia. It’s all over the world.

Scrolling through just this one page shows me the intensity of what people living far away from me are experiencing in 2010. I know and can see in those pictures that there has been a devastating economic cost to countries and there has been loss of life through the inundation. That is the downside and it is a terribly sad aspect to what is happening.

NASA says that in 2010 it rained so hard that the ocean levels fell.  In NASA’s report, worldwide rainfall and snowfall were so extreme, in so many places last year, that sea levels fell dramatically. (Link: NASA report)

It rained so hard the sea levels dropped

And 2011?

“The year 2010 was one the worst years in world history for high-impact floods. But just three weeks into the new year, 2011 has already had an entire year’s worth of mega-floods. “ –Meteorologist Jeff Masters (link to full article)

So did those words come to pass? Let’s recap. On Weds 29 Oct 2008 I shared that I believed that  God said that He would 1) let fall in showers, 2) pour floods on the ground and 3) let the skies rain down. Did that happen? Did it come to pass?