Kingdom of Heaven

A word of Hope for 2010!

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Want your Prophetic Word for 2010?
Maybe you've heard some optimistic 'words' proclaiming 'greater increase, glory and blessing' for the coming year? Nice thoughts, but how?
You've probably also heard the doom-and-gloomers pessimistically predicting the sky is falling, icecaps are melting and oceans are rising?
Perhaps you've heard the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 so the world will end then also and you've got 2 years to figure out how to make the most of your life before then?
How do we discover what this New Year really holds? Perhaps we should try to break the 2010 code and decipher 20 = 2(double) X 10(the number of unbelieving spies who kept Israel out of the Promised Land) so does that mean there will be twice the opposition this year?
Predicting the future through such darkened lenses gets ridiculous and confusing. Some 'words', unfortunately, are more pathetic than prophetic. However, turn to the Word of God, the simple original blueprint, and we'll gain a clearer, more objective perspective. Take a step back to 1910, not the year, but the foundation of all prophetic words, 19:10... Revelation 19:10 - 'the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy'.
The Church desperately needs a restoration of the revelation of this sure foundation in Christ, rather than the fluff of speculation that's so often passed off as prophecy. Prophecy must come through this grid of truth: Jesus Christ. Has it passed the tests which witness a true testimony of Jesus? Has it crossed over from the Old Covenant to The New through Christ's open, new and living way? Has it come through God's plumbline: The Cross, or is it just regurgitated Old Covenant concepts in New Covenant forms? Does it exhort, comfort and edify the body of Christ to be who He says we truly are in the earth, or is it merely a sad parody of psychic prognostications?
The world needs the Revelation of Jesus Christ, not some pseudo-substitute... even if it doesn't understand this. True signs, wonders, dreams, visions, angelic visitations, supernatural encounters, and trances all point to Jesus! Often God resorts to them only when men haven't heard Him the first time. Ask Balaam. God had to put Peter in a trance in order to get it through his thick Jewish head that the New Covenant already included Gentiles.
The Cross changed the world's perspective. Let it change yours.
Miracles, wonders and prophetic signs are to follow us, not us them.
All Old Testament prophecy was a sign pointing to The Messiah: Jesus Christ. And the overwhelming majority were fulfilled in His 1st Coming!
"For all the promises of God in Him are Yes and in Him Amen,to the glory of God" (2Cor 1:20)
But it's the last phrase here that, I believe, God wants to highlight for 2010: This is all happening "through us," not in spite of us.

The Church is God's prophetic sign in the earth. Not some natural nation, but a supernatural body. A people birthed by His Word and Spirit, the true Temple of the Holy Spirit and City of God! This year God wants to reach an unbelieving world through us: His chosen vessel, His Church, His Bride, His New Jerusalem!
It's all here... in the Bible, the prophetic Word of God. Ephesians, the Epistle of the Church, Chapter 3 outlines the 'mystery' of how He brought Jews and Gentiles together into one body . Paul writes that this revelation became our call
"to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery....
to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church..." (v9-10)
I used to read this with the view that God's objective was to somehow make this wisdom known to the church. But that's not what it says!
I was reading from a self-centred perspective that it's all about me, us, the church, when it's really all about Jesus through us to the world!
My focus was wrong: it wasn't to the church, but through the church! Same thing in 2Cor 1:20: Jesus wants to live through us!

The prophetic Word then cuts through further unbelief when it challenges the church to make this revelation known to principalities and powers in heavenly places (v10); that is, proclaim it against demonic forces that formerly had authority in the earth, but were stripped of their power at the Cross, and are now bound up and cast down. 1Jn 3:8 declares: 'Jesus was manifested to destroy the works of the devil." He did it at His 1st Coming! Why wait for something that the Bible reveals has already happened! It will become fully evident at His 2nd Coming, but let's not cower in unbelief until then. Let faith stir us to walk in this testimony HERE + NOW!

Ephesians 3:11 continues, "according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus Our Lord." That's not 'will be' accomplished (future), but 'already has been' accomplished (completed in the past + effective in the present). That means it's already taken place! That's how much Jesus effectively completed at the Cross: no less! Either it's true or it's not. There's no middle ground grey area here.This is an all-or-nothing statement. And since it's true, it's time for His church to believe, see and receive this revelation, battle from His victory and not just for it, and make this known throughout the earth!
Col 2:15 also proclaims that this has already taken place: "He has taken it (the handwriting of requirements that was against us = the law) out of the way... nailed it to the cross." While He was accomplishing our salvation, Jesus simultaneously "disarmed principalities and powers ...made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them." (v16) Our focus needs to be God's focus. It's The Cross here, not the 2nd Coming! Too much of the church has its eyes on a future 2nd Coming which will one day accomplish what a proper reading of God's prophetic Word declares has already been accomplished in Christ's 1st Coming!
And this is the gospel the world needs to hear and see... through us!
Heb 12:1-2 exhorts us to be 'looking unto Jesus", not as a Coming King, but "as the One who endured the cross... and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." To see Him on the throne is to see Him for who He is NOW on the basis of what He has done in the past at His 1st Coming! He is already crowned. NOW He is seated on the throne of the universe, at the centre of God's will, ruling and reigning, and we are to live and move in this revelation.
We need to see how and what God sees. Get your Son-glasses on! See Him: Jesus, on the throne, NOW! The King, already crowned; not just the coming King; He's Here NOW! by His Spirit.
Stephen, the church's first martyr, saw this. Check it out in Acts 7:55.
The only way through the tests is the testimony of the Revelation of Jesus!
And it's His Church's privilege and responsibility to receive and proclaim it in all the earth! He's accomplishing this through His body: we're the vessel through which God has chosen to reveal Himself: His Body, Temple, City + Nation: The Church of Jesus Christ!
That's why He suffered, bled and died for and rose again.
This is the Revelation of Jesus Christ the world needs today through the Church!

When the Church doesn't see this, it rather buys into a fear-mongering, escapist, all-hell's-breaking-loose Doomsday scenario message.
Then we're more the problem than the solution!
Then we merely offer the world dead, boring, lifeless religious forms: poor substitutes for the life Jesus gives.
He came to destroy the works of the devil. (1Jn 3:8) He did and so must we!
He came to bring new life abundantly. (Jn 10:10) He did and so must we!
He came to establish His kingdom. (Mk 1:14-15) He did and so must we occupy, do business, break old horizons and take new ground for Christ!
The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof!
Unfortunately, if we live as many Christians 'unbelieve', you will think the devil's still in control here. Like, please tell me how a title like 'Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth' turns out to be a best-seller in Christian bookstores?
Focusing on anti-Christ misses the Revelation of Jesus Christ!
The Holy Spirit is prophesying New Covenant reality: our Identity as sons of God released into their Destiny and inheritance. Too much of the Western Church has wallowed in lesser self-deception, blindly bowing in servitude to materialist pleasures rather than worshiping our loving God!
We need a Revolution in the Revelation of Jesus!
We need to see Him as He truly is and that's what the Book of Revelation is all about: The Revelation of the Lamb slain and the Lion's reign!
His sacrifice not only accomplished our full salvation, but His Presence fills the courts of heaven, spills over and overflows: even now "your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven." Too many 'believers' have lost the original Bible vision. Christ's kingdom is filling the earth NOW... not in some distant, fanciful, speculative millenium. We have again been seduced by demonic enticements, deprived of our true focus, ensnared in distractions. The pursuit of personal peace, pleasure and happiness have taken pre-eminence. Only Christ Himself is worthy of that honour. In all things, Christ must have pre-eminence. We need to be refocused on the Light, centred on Christ, not a foolish, futuristic, won't-it-be-nice-then mindset. Such myopic vision only produces delusion. The devil loves it when we're so preoccupied with his view of things that we are no longer 'looking unto Jesus,' but reacting when we should be effecting Christ's kingdom in His earth.
It's time to know Christ for all He is and follow Him NOW!
The Spirit of God is moving, bringing in a harvest to fill the earth, not just an endtime remnant (Old Covenant term) to then destroy it. That script might sell a lot of movie tickets, but it's not New Covenant. At best, it's repackaged Old Covenant gobbledy-gook.
New Covenant Revelation of Jesus shows He came, He saw, and He conquered, better than any Roman Caesar. And now He's riding forward, calling us to follow Him and reveal His victory from glory to glory!
You cannot enter the next glory until you leave yesterday's glory behind. Last year's glory was good, but this year promises even more: His best!
And it comes through a Revolution in the Revelation of Jesus!
 

Whats Christmas all about?

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More than a Holiday

The miracle of Christmas is much more than celebrating another calendar holiday or searching for a reasonable hope that indeed something brighter exists during these shortest, darkest days of the year. When we learn to 'read the white between the lines', often a wealth of light and revelation in colour appears in what had been otherwise merely a murky mystery in black.
I recently watched The Nativity Story, one of the latest movies about the birth of Jesus, and came away impressed, not only by how the movie stayed true to Scripture in its message, but actually discovered new territory for me.
I definitely appreciated Joseph in a whole new light. Largely unheralded in the Bible narrative, here the storytellers bring his dilemma into believable reality. His purity of heart and character stand out all the more when he discovers his fiancee, Mary, not only very pregnant, but affirming that somehow God is to blame. Translate that into our contemporary setting and I'm certain few of us would find that scenario very easy to believe. No wonder God intervened with angels and dreams to reveal to Joseph the truth of what was really happening. God had to not only supernaturally communicate that He was doing something outside of Joseph's 'box', but also that he, Joseph, was somehow crucially and intimately involved in this project's ultimate success.
Joseph's faith accepts the dreams he sees to be truer than the offenses he feels.
He would have been legally right to have Mary stoned or 'put away' at best, but God worked this potentially destructive situation for His righteousness and justice. He found His willing vessel in Joseph. The Bible story speaks volumes to our hearts if we will take time to meditate and drink in more than our minds can grasp in surface readings. A man's depth lies not only in what is written about him, but often in what isn't. Joseph was such a man.

I was also impressed by how the nativity story presents more than a dramatic birth and survival. Heaven and earth are filled with drama, throngs of angels trumpet fulfilled prophecies, the magi follow a miraculous star, a wicked Herod destroys Bethlehem's infants. And all of these are mere backdrops to the 'main event', a birth to transcend all births.
I was stirred to review familiar events in new light and struck by how the story integrates two 'impossibles' to yield truly 'conceivables'.
Both Elizabeth and Mary were naturally unable to conceive children.
Elizabeth was too old. The Bible doesn't say she was barren, but childbearing was not in her picture.
Mary, on the other hand, was young, but not married and had never known a man.
Childbearing was physically impossible for both of them. John the Baptist and Jesus were not naturally born.
Their births had to be supernatural. For Elizabeth, a child seemed too late in life; for Mary, too soon.
For one, hope was lost; for the other, premature.

But just when everything seemed completely impossible, the God of the impossible supernaturally intervened in the hopeless history of mankind to bring His solution, His Saviour, His Son.

God is painting so many pictures together here on one canvas! The human mind boggles and must bow in awe to His artistry, wisdom and beauty. Man alone could never have woven so many intricate 'hopes and fears of all the years' together into such a simple, yet magnificent tapestry of 'peace on earth, goodwill to men'.
The Christmas story speaks to our hearts across the centuries: empty wombs of unfilled dreams and premature longing are fulfilled in this Christ of Christmas. Jesus was born 'in the fullness of time'. Just the right time then, and again to present-day Bethlehems, the Prince of Peace comes. When The Eternal God of the Now speaks, faith rises, life comes forth and nations bend their knees. Death, fear and unbelief can only fall back into their shadows and graves, agog at what God has done and is presently doing in hearts that open to His King.

Merry Christmas! and may the life of Jesus be birthed afresh through each of you throughout this New Year!
 

The Revelation

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The Revelation is …. Jesus Christ!

Move over, Hollywood. When it come to script-writing, you've got nothing on the Bible. In this field, the Oscar goes to... pause, drumroll... GOD.! And not only for this year's performance, but every year, His amazing tell-all Scripture continues probing and revealing both the heights and depths of the human heart and its history.
But even God breaks His own records in His last volume, The Revelation. When it comes to high drama, there's nothing like waiting for the seventh trumpet to sound.
You want special effects? How about a 200 million-man army and four thundering horsemen charging across the landscape, leaving war, famine and death in their wake?

Hollywood even selectively borrows from Revelation's abundance of names and symbols to fuel its own blockbusters. For example, check out 'Armageddon' (which had nothing whatsoever to do with the fortress in the Middle East, but everything to do with a meteorite threatening Earth's very existence). But when it comes to the real thing, somehow the movie capital misses the whole issue and The Passion of the Christ is relegated to the celluloid cutting floor and doesn't even make it onto the nominations list. It's amazing how this last book of the Bible, the only one to promise, right at its beginning, a special blessing to those who read and heed, has been so misunderstood that a large segment of the church avoids it like the plagues it describes.
When was the last time you heard your pastor preach from this book? It's become too controversial for many. Its vivid descriptions too graphic; its cataclysms too breathtaking; its interpretations too divisive.
We prefer that kind of stuff for our entertainment, but not for examining our hearts for truth.
Not one to avoid controversy, I therefore feel it necessary to open the discussion by lambasting a few of the common presumptions, prejudices and misconceptions that many hold out there about this book and launch out to proclaim and receive that awesome blessing it promises and delivers. Over the next while, I invite you to join with me as we take a walk (or come on eagles, let's fly and soar even!) in the Spirit and discover new horizons beckoning us into deeper realms of God's kingdom glory. You need not fear: Jesus will never get boring and His well will never run dry: it's rivers of living water for those who are thirsty!
First of all, verse 1 (check it out) holds the key. It is The Revelation of Jesus Christ! Not anti-Christ! It's mind-boggling to hear who people think of first when this book is mentioned. Right away the race is on to Chapter 13 to decipher 666, discover the number of the beast, where its secret computer is in Belgium, what the mark is and whether we've received it yet.
All this and 'anti-Christ' isn't even mentioned in Revelation –not even once!
Besides, why do so many remain ignorant of the first-mentioned mark - the Seal of the Living God - which is given to protect all true believers six chapters beforehand?

Again in the first verse, it's The Revelation --singular, not Revelations plural. Yes, there is a series of startling visions recorded here, but there is such unity in their progression that it is essentially one vision, reiterated again and again, first from one perspective and then another. That is ...The Revelation of Jesus Christ! who He is and what He has done, His Person and His Purpose, His Identity and Destiny openly revealed.

Do you see Him? Not only in this last book, but throughout the entire Bible? Jesus said to the Pharisees: 'You search the Scriptures and in them you think you have eternal life: and they are those which testify of me ...that is, Jesus! (John 5:39) It's all about Him! If we're not seeing Him on every page, we're only skimming the surface, we're not getting the full-meal deal. We're being cut short, robbed. Are you hungry? There's so much more! So take off those cool-looking Pharisee shades and put on Holy Spirit-fitted SON-glasses! You'll find Him everywhere!

Also, many presuppose Revelation is all about events of the end-times, the Lord's Second Coming, something like Arnold Schwarznegger's 'I'll be back!' However, as I read the text in its context, I realize the end-times already started when Jesus said, 'It is finished!' I am steadily being convinced the Holy Spirit desires to reveal a Prophetic Person more than prophesy events. We need to see Jesus more clearly and appreciate what really happened at His First Coming rather than speculate about the Second. Jesus Himself just said, 'Be ready!' to His disciples. He didn't give them the year, day or hour of His Second Coming. His 1st Coming was so vital that He raised up Daniel to pinpoint the very year Messiah came at least 570years beforehand! Rather than guesstimate or presuppose about the future, our world, and the Church especially, would benefit more by focusing on and appropriating the fullness of what God's Word has already prophesied and shown fulfilled in Christ than merely presume what we think might happen.

Furthermore, I am constantly amazed at how people in general, even Christians in particular, fear this book, when its purpose is wholly to dispel fear and let the love of Christ shine. I even found a copy of the recent DVD 'The Apocalypse' filed under the Horror-Sci-Fi section in the video store!
The Revelation has been used and abused over the past generations to:
castigate and even demonize political enemies;
stir up hell-fire and brimstone fears to promote and manipulate through false guilt;
encourage people to purchase fire insurance against hell rather than a life assurance relationship with a loving Saviour;
promote fear-mongering schemes such as the Y2K fiasco;
and increase book sales of spurious and unfounded speculations,
ultimately bringing disrepute and scorn on the Church and even the Word of God.

It's time to redeem the book from such such a maligned and undeserved reputation. It's the Revelation of the only and most beautiful Saviour this world could and will ever have, The Lord Jesus Christ!
Let's see Him and let Him be known for who He truly is! Come and join me! Let me know your thoughts as we begin together; it's a fascinating journey!

Written by Henry Schmidt