“Look around at the nations; look and be amazed! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it.”
This is the first word that I ever received from the Lord, and I had been saved for about three months. It was the fall of 1985. Continue reading “Why The Nations?”
Follows is an excerpt of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Speech, which we may find quite revealing:
A Decline in Courage [. . .]
may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but Continue reading “A Decline in Courage”
As Christians, our lives follow a process of preparation that we can observe in the scripture. In many ways, we follow the same course of preparation that Jesus followed, and that we can observe in the Gospels. We can see ourselves, and recognize not only the process, but actual events in our lives can parallel what happened to Jesus in remarkable ways. He was tempted in every manner as we are, yet without sin. He lived as an example to us, and all the lives of people in the scripture are given to us as examples, upon whom the end of the ages have come, and are now coming.
One thing that I noticed or recognized some time back, which is an example of this fact, is a particular temptation that came to Jesus when he was in the wilderness that also comes to each of us, as Christians. There are some very high profile examples of this that I have observed, and I have also observed it in my own life, and in the lives of others close to me. It seems a universal part of the process that we go through. I will attempt to explain this in as few words as possible. Continue reading “Passing a Crucial Test”
The institutionalization of the Lord’s church, and of various ministries and Christian organizations, continues. Once an organization or group reaches a certain mass, it will tend toward institutionalization. I don’t think this happens at the same mass for every example, and it will likely vary, depending on a lot of different factors. However, once it begins to be institutionalized, it’s mission will be changed from what it was originally, to self-perpetuation. At this moment, if not before, it will also begin to calcify and lose it’s flexibility. It will respond in a natural way to threats, to silence or marginalize them, and also remove dissenting voices from it’s midst. This is often done with the proclamation that the group is more important than the individual, which has an element of truth, but is the wrong comparison. In Christ, we should be following Christ, not the group, or the individual. Systematically, Christ Jesus and His leadership fade into the background, and the original mission becomes the focus of marketing efforts, though it has likely been supplanted by a motive that the “organization” must continue. This is one of the reasons why the institutions of man are temporary, but what God does lasts forever.
More thoughts on this later….
