Liberalism and the Word - "What THE BIBLE really TEACHES" -- Keith Ward

The time has come for me to set out what I think the Bible does say about itself, about the coming of Christ in glory, about who is saved and how, about Christ's saving death on the cross, about eternal life, and about the moral law. On all these matters, the fundamentalists seem to me, and to most Christians, to have it wrong. At the very best, they have just one highly debatable reading of what the Bible really teaches. It is not a very ancient one, and it is not one that most Christians accept. I still respect my fundamentalist friends, and am grateful to them for the vital experience of Christ to which they introduced me. But they do not, as they seem to assume, have privileged access to what the Bible really means. There are many other interpretations, more ancient and widespread than theirs. And on quite a few very important matters they seem just to have got it wrong. 

Keith Ward 

What the Bible Really Teaches SPCK 2004

The Good, the Bad and the Evil - The Protoge

"see most people are good, Mr Hays, and occasionally they do something they know is bad."

"Some people are bad and they struggle every day to keep it under control."

"Others are corrupt to the core and just don't give a dam, and that would be me."

"But evil, Evil is a completely different creature, Mr Hays evil believes bad is OK, its actions justified; violence divorced from conscience, no matter what toll it takes or whome it takes it upon. And there my friend is where we part ways."

The Protoge

Ideals - Alfred Adler

 

 It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

 

Alfred Adler Biography

Misreading the Scripture - E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien

 

THE FOREIGN LAND OF SCRIPTURE

Christians always and everywhere have believed that the Bible is the Word of God. God spoke in the past, “through the prophets at many times and in various ways,” and most clearly by his Son (Heb 1:1). By the Holy Spirit, God continues to speak to his people through the Scriptures. It is important that Christ’s church retain this conviction, even as it poses certain challenges for interpretation. We can easily forget that Scripture is a foreign land and that reading the Bible is a crosscultural experience. To open the Word of God is to step into a strange world where things are very unlike our own. Most of us don’t speak the languages. We don’t know the geography or the customs or what behaviors are considered rude or polite. And yet we hardly notice. For many of us, the Bible is more familiar than any other book. We may have parts of it memorized. And because we believe that the Bible is God’s Word to us, no matter where on the planet or when in history we read it, we tend to read Scripture in our own when and where, in a way that makes sense on our terms. We believe the Bible has something to say to us today. We read the words, “you are … neither hot nor cold” to mean what they mean to us: that you are neither spiritually hot or spiritually cold. As we will see, it is a better method to speak of what the passage meant to the original hearers, and then to ask how that applies to us. Another way to say this is that all Bible reading is necessarily contextual. There is no purely objective biblical interpretation. This is not postmodern relativism. We believe truth is truth. But there’s no way around the fact that our cultural and historical contexts supply us with habits of mind that lead us to read the Bible differently than Christians in other cultural and historical contexts.

One of our goals in this book is to remind (or convince!) you of the crosscultural nature of biblical interpretation. We will do that by helping you become more aware of cultural differences that separate us from the foreign land of Scripture.3 You are probably familiar with the language of worldview. Many people talk about the differences between a Christian and a secular worldview. The matter is actually more complicated than that. Worldview, which includes cultural values and other things we assume are true, can be visualized as an iceberg. The majority of our worldview, like the majority of an iceberg, is below the water line. The part we notice—what we wear, eat, say and consciously believe—is really only the visible tip. The majority of these powerful, shaping influences lurks below the surface, out of plain sight. More significantly, the massive underwater section is the part that sinks ships!

Another way to say this is that the most powerful cultural values are those that go without being said. It is very hard to know what goes without being said in another culture. But often we are not even aware of what goes without being said in our own culture. This is why misunderstanding and misinterpretation happen. When a passage of Scripture appears to leave out a piece of the puzzle because something went without being said, we instinctively fill in the gap with a piece from our own culture—usually a piece that goes without being said. When we miss what went without being said for them and substitute what goes without being said for us, we are at risk of misreading Scripture.!

Sound complicated? An example will help. When Paul writes about the role of women in ministry in 1 Timothy, he argues that a woman is not allowed “to teach or to assume authority over a man” because “Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1 Tim 2:12–13). The argument may strike us as strange, since Paul’s point hinges on the implications of being first. But what difference does birth order make in an issue such as who is eligible to serve in ministry? To answer that question, we instinctively provide a bit of information that goes without being said in our context; we read into Paul’s argument what first means to us. For us, first is better. We express this cultural value in lots of ways: “No one remembers who finishes second,” or “Second place is the first loser” or “If you are not the lead dog, the view never changes.” We have a strong cultural value that first is preferred, more deserving and better qualified. What goes without being said for us—and thus what we read Paul to be saying—is, “Adam was first, and thus better, than Eve.” That is, by virtue of being “formed first,” men should be pastors because they are more deserving of the office or better qualified than women.

In Paul’s day, however, something quite different went without being said. The law of the primogeniture stated that the firstborn child received a larger inheritance, and with it greater responsibility, than all other children—not because he or she was preferred or more deserving or better qualified in any way, but merely because she or he was firstborn. Esau was the firstborn (until he sold his birthright), yet the Bible indicates clearly that Jacob was the more deserving brother (only a lousy son sells his birthright for a cup of soup). And the firstborn is not always the favorite: “Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons” even though he was the tenth of twelve brothers (Gen 37:3). In other words, Paul’s original readers may have understood him as saying that men should be pastors not because they are innately better qualified or more deserving but simply because they are the “firstborn.” In this case, we need to know what we take for granted—as well as what Paul’s audience took for granted—to keep us from reading “males are more deserving than females” into this passage.

In other situations, what goes without being said for us can lead us to miss important details in a Bible passage, even when the author is trying to make them obvious. Mark Allan Powell offers an excellent example of this phenomenon in “The Forgotten Famine,” an exploration of the theme of personal responsibility in what we call the parable of the prodigal son.4 Powell had twelve students in a seminary class read the story carefully from Luke’s Gospel, close their Bibles and then retell the story as faithfully as possible to a partner. None of the twelve American seminary students mentioned the famine in Luke 15:14, which precipitates the son’s eventual return. Powell found this omission interesting, so he organized a larger experiment in which he had one hundred people read the story and retell it, as accurately as possible, to a partner. Only six of the one hundred participants mentioned the famine. The group was ethnically, racially, socioeconomically and religiously diverse. The “famine-forgetters,” as Powell calls them, had only one thing in common: they were from the United States.

Later, Powell had the opportunity to try the experiment again, this time outside the United States. In St. Petersburg, Russia, he gathered fifty participants to read and retell the prodigal son story. This time an overwhelming forty-two of the fifty participants mentioned the famine. Why? Just seventy years before, 670,000 people had died of starvation after a Nazi German siege of the capital city began a three-year famine. Famine was very much a part of the history and imagination of the Russian participants in Powell’s exercise. Based solely on cultural location, people from America and Russia disagreed about what they considered the crucial details of the story.

Americans tend to treat the mention of the famine as an unnecessary plot device. Sure, we think: the famine makes matters worse for the young son. He’s already penniless, and now there’s no food to buy even if he did have money. But he has already committed his sin, so it goes without being said for us that the main issue in the story is his wastefulness, not the famine. This is evident from our traditional title for the story: the parable of the prodigal (“wasteful”) son. We apply the story, then, as a lesson about willful rebellion and repentance. The boy is guilty, morally, of disrespecting his father and squandering his inheritance. He must now ask for forgiveness.

Christians in other parts of the world understand the story differently.5 In cultures more familiar with famine, like Russia, readers consider the boy’s spending less important than the famine. The application of the story has less to do with willful rebellion and more to do with God’s faithfulness to deliver his people from hopeless situations. The boy’s problem is not that he is wasteful but that he is lost.

Our goal in this book is not, first and foremost, to argue which interpretation of a biblical story like this one is correct. Our goal is to raise this question: if our cultural context and assumptions can cause us to overlook a famine, what else do we fail to notice?

READING THE BIBLE, READING OURSELVES

The core conviction that drives this book is that some of the habits that we readers from the West (the United States, Canada and Western Europe) bring to the Bible can blind us to interpretations that the original audience and readers in other cultures see quite naturally. This observation is not original with us. Admitting that the presuppositions we carry to the Bible influence the way we read it is commonplace in both academic and popular conversations about biblical interpretation.6 Unfortunately, books on biblical interpretation often do not offer readers an opportunity to identify and address our cultural blinders. This can leave us with a nagging sense that we may be reading a passage incorrectly and an attending hopelessness that we don’t know why or how to correct the problem. We hope that Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes will offer a positive corrective by suggesting that there is a discernible pattern by which Western readers read—and even misread—Scripture. Becoming aware of our cultural assumptions and how they influence our reading of Scripture are important first steps beyond the paralysis of self-doubt and toward a faithful reading and application of the Bible.

In the pages that follow, we talk about nine differences between Western and non-Western cultures that we should be aware of when we interpret the Bible. We use the image of an iceberg as our controlling metaphor. In part one, we discuss cultural issues that are glaring and obvious, plainly visible above the surface and therefore least likely to cause serious misunderstanding. In part two, we discuss cultural issues that are less obvious. They reside below the surface but are visible once you know to look for them. Because they are less visible, they are more shocking and more likely to cause misunderstanding. Finally, in part three, we address cultural issues that are not obvious at all. They lurk deep below the surface, often subtly hidden behind or beneath other values and assumptions. These are the most difficult to detect and, therefore, the most dangerous for interpretation.

E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 11–16.

The Drama of Scripture - Bartholomew & Goheen

The Drama of Scripture

Preface to First Edition

 "God did not turn his back on a world bent on destruction; he turned his face toward it in love. He set out on the long road of redemption to restore the lost as his people and the world as his kingdom. The Bible narrates the story of God's journey on that long road of redemption. It is a unified and progressively unfolding drama of God's action in for the salvation of the whole world. The Bible is not a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises guiding principles, and commands; instead, it is fundamentally coherent Every part of the Bible-each event, book, character, command, prophecy, and poem-must be understood in the context of the one storyline. Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little -theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented way, we ignore its divine author's intention to shape our lives through its story. All human communities live out of some story that provides a context for understanding the meaning of history and gives shape and direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thoughts and actions, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture but the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence, the unity of Scripture is no minor matter: a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshipers! If our lives are to be shaped by the story of Scripture, we need to understand two things well: the biblical story is a compelling unity on which we may depend, and each of us has a place within that story. This book is the telling of that story. We invite readers to make it their story, to find their place in it, and to indwell it as the true story of our world.

Jim Svedja on Music, God and Life

when ultimately the whole thing is this baffling mystery that I understand less now than I did forty years ago. Forty years ago  I understood everything and understood exactly how it worked and who everyone was and now it's just this wonderful confusion. I know what notes working alongside other notes do and what they are supposed to do and who did it better than somebody else. 

But the core thing "you" is just so mysterious just can't talk about it. It's an irrational art. It's not rational, at all. At the heart of it, it's a mystery. 

I mean it's like God. It's not something fully knowable, because we are not there yet. 

This wonderful french lunatic composer Erik Satie who said, 'people kept telling me when I was young you'll understand, know that I am old I understand nothing, and it's wonderful!'

Jim Svejda @KUSC Between the notes

become iconoclastic - The Comfort Trap - Tim Bascom

The Comfort Trap

We may need to become iconoclastic if we are to be set free spiritually. Aling Nena was afraid that she wouldn't be protected or safe without her Virgin Mary[statue]. Those of us from the First World are afraid that we won't be safe without other icons: a salary to cover all needs, insurance for every imaginable problem, credit cards to cover unexpected costs, a home in a safe neighborhood, enough cars to avoid inconvenience, all the comforts that money can provide.

We pay heavily for such security, and not just in money. For “what good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Mt 16:26).

Christ once said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mt 19:24).

He knew that living inside the cocoon of prosperity, people are cut off from reality. Outside it, they are able to see and feel again. Their spirits awaken. 

I HAVE NOT WATCHED THE MONEY TRAP,

I THINK I WILL. 

By Faith - the Gettys

 

By faith, we see the hand of God

In the light of creation's grand design
In the lives of those who prove His faithfulness
Who walk by faith and not by sight

By faith, our fathers roamed the earth
With the power of His promise in their hearts
Of a holy city built by God's own hand
A place where peace and justice reign

We will stand as children of the promise
We will fix our eyes on Him our soul's reward
Till the race is finished and the work is done
We'll walk by faith and not by sight

By faith, the prophets saw a day
When the longed-for Messiah would appear
With the power to break the chains of sin and death
And rise triumphant from the grave

By faith, the church was called to go
In the power of the Spirit to the lost
To deliver captives and to preach good news
In every corner of the earth

We will stand...

By faith, this mountain shall be moved
And the power of the gospel shall prevail
For we know in Christ all things are possible
For all who call upon His name

We will stand...

The Evangelist is Faithful in a Hostile World - Sami Dagher

Sami Dagher

The Evangelist is Faithful in a Hostile World

Key Reference: Revelation 2:8‑11

I am so happy to be in Amsterdam. I have wonderful memories of this

place. In 1971, I was invited to a conference like this. At that time, I

was working in the hotel business. After one week of hearing Dr. Billy

Graham preaching and presenting the needs of the world ‑ especially in

Europe and the Middle East ‑ I was touched by the Lord, and I

accepted the challenge to serve Him. In 1973 I resigned from the hotel

business and started church planting. We were three people at that time ‑ me, my wife, and one

other person. By the grace of God, we have six churches now in Lebanon: four in the Arabic

language for the Lebanese; one for the Sri Lankan people in my country; and one for the Sudanese

residing there. We also have a Bible school to train people in Lebanon so that we can send them

all over the Arab world with the message of Jesus Christ.

So far we have sent a missionary to Africa's Ivory Coast, as well as short‑term

missionaries to Iraq. Now we have an Iraqi man who is continuing ministry in that

country.

All of that comes as the result of obeying what the Lord had said to me in Amsterdam almost

twenty‑nine years ago. My prayer is that you have been listening carefully to the voice of the Spirit

during your time here, and that you will obey what the Lord has said to you.

The subject I have been assigned to speak on is "The Evangelist is Faithful in a Hostile World."

You have heard many preachers this week, and today you are going to hear another preacher. In

my heart I have but one wish for you this morning: I wish that the Lord Jesus Himself would be

able to stand here today in the flesh and teach us about this subject. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Wouldn't you like to hear a message from the mouth of the Lord Jesus?

Beloved ones, this wish would be very heard to fulfill, because when the Lord will come again, He

will not come as a preacher or as a teacher, but He will come in great glory to judge the living and

the dead. But let me assure you, even if He were to come as a preacher, He would not change

one Word of what He has said before. For it is written, "I am the LORD, I do not change" (Malachi

3:6). Because He is God and He changes not, His word will never change.

The passage that we have just read is a message from the Lord Jesus after resurrection to the

angel of the church of Smyrna. In His message, He encourages the angel, and He gives him some

directions and orders. He says to him: "Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life"

(Rev. 2:10b).

Dear brothers and sisters, we evangelists are stewards of the mysteries of God. And a steward is

entrusted to be faithful in all situations of life, without exceptions. There is no excuse for

unfaithfulness. This morning I have a few thoughts I want you to know:

I. Hostility is expected whenever we take a stand for Jesus.

In John 17:14, Jesus prayed to the Father, saying, "I have given them Your word; and the world

has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world."

Paul says, "All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution" (2 Timothy 3:12).

According to the teaching of our Lord and the teaching of the Holy Spirit, there is no escape from

persecution, because we are hated by the world. All of us face different persecution ‑ mental and

physical. And we have to be prepared to face it. Jesus tells us, "A servant is not greater than his

master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you" (John 15:20).

Many times, we as believers are ashamed to speak out for Christ. We are ashamed to carry our

Bibles because of the pressure and persecution of the world. Why? Because we have not been

prepared for this kind of pressure or this kind of persecution. Our problem is this: when we present

the gospel of Christ to other people, we usually only portray a picture of peace, stability,

happiness, and joy. As a result, new believers are often shocked when they face problems,

suffering, pressure, and persecution.

Of course we do have peace, joy, and happiness in Christ. But we must explain what that means

to the people we are trying to reach. What kind of peace are we talking about, what kind of joy are

we talking about?

We should know and make clear to our listeners that the peace and joy that we have in Christ is

not a guarantee for us against hardships, sufferings, and persecutions. Again Jesus says, "These

things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation;

but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).

So in Him we have peace. In Him we have victory. But in the world, we shall have tribulations.

Jesus made it very clear that the world would hate us: "I have given them Your Word; and the

world has hated themY" (John 17:14a). We are hated by the world not because we are bad, but

because we have the word of God.

We are not only hated by the world, but we are also strangers of the world. Referring again to that

same verse: "I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of

the world, just as I am not of the world" (John 17:14).

If we were from this world, the world would have loved us, because it loves its own. But we are not

of the world: our goals are different and our nature is different. We are partners of the divine nature.

Dear brothers and sisters, we are strangers in this world.

What does a stranger expect in a foreign land? We all know that a stranger in a foreign land

expects to face trials, problems, and suffering. All of the prophets and saints who have gone before

us have all confessed to being strangers and pilgrims on the earth. They had a trial of cruel

mockers, they were stoned, and they were slain by the sword. It is written that the world did not

deserve them; but they stood faithful to the word of God to the end ‑ in spite of suffering and

persecution (Hebrews 11:38).

So, the first thing we should know is that hostility is to be expected whenever we take a stand for

Jesus. This brings me to my second pointY

II. The upright life of the evangelist gives him respect in a hostile world.

Dear brethren, listen carefully. If we want to escape some of the suffering in a hostile world, we

should live an upright life. Living an upright life gives us respect and reverence in a world that is

hostile to the gospel.

Paul says in Romans 13:3, "Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil." He goes on to say

that if you don't want to be afraid of their power, do that which is good, and you will receive their

praise.

We have been serving in an Arab country for nearly ten years. The people of that country believe

that they have suffered a lot at the hand of the Christians. They look to the Western world as a

"Christian" country. They accuse the West of killing their children and destroying their homes and

their future.

In the beginning, we faced a lot of difficulties. They watched our every step. After a long time, they

discovered that our only goal was to show them the love of Christ. We did not have any hidden

agenda, and we were not looking for profit or material gain. They came to trust us, and they gave

us permission to give tens of thousands of New Testaments in the streets of their cities. To our

surprise, by special order from their president, the Jesus film was shown on national TV, and

some 20 million people watched it.

The reason for the difficulties behind proclaiming the gospel in the Middle East is not only the

fanaticism of other religions, but also the life and the behavior of those who profess to be

Christians. Instead of being a blessing and a light to others, they are stumbling stones.

I encourage you to walk worthy of our calling. As God's word says, "As you therefore have

received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him" (Colossians 2:6).

Daniel lived in a country whose system was hostile to his religion and his faith. He was watched

day and night by his enemies, yet they could not find a fault to be used against him. He was

honest, and he was loved by the king despite his different religion and faith. In the end, his

enemies trapped him, and he was put in the lion's den. But he stood faithful to the end. What was

the result? God moved on the scene and saved Daniel. And the king gave a decree saying, "No

other God should be worshipped but the God of Daniel." I challenge you to be as Daniel and to

stand alone.

In front of our eyes, we have a man who has lived for Christ. His upright life has given him respect,

dignity, and reverence of all people. Dr. Billy Graham's life is an example to every one of us. He is

not ashamed of the gospel of Christ in a modern world. He believes that the gospel is the power of

God unto salvation, and he practices his belief in a hostile world. He is faithful to God's calling,

even though he faces hostility.

Hostility does not necessarily come from rulers and government. Hostility might even come from

friends, neighbors, or family members. The Lord said, "Be faithful until death and I will give you the

crown of life" (Rev. 2:10b). By being faithful and living an upright life, Dr. Graham kept the dignity

and integrity of the gospel of Christ. As a result, he has gained respect and reverence even from

his enemies. He has prayed for kings and presidents, and he has prayed for the whole world.

Dear brethren, it is true that we are strangers and pilgrims in this world. It is true that we are hated

by the world. But our duty and our responsibility is to be the light of this world and to pray for

those who oppose us so that they might come to the knowledge of Jesus our Lord and so find

peace.

In the Old Testament, there is a command from God to His own people. In Jeremiah 29:7 we read:

"And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to

the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace."

Paul in the New Testament gives us a similar command in 1 Timothy 2:2: "[Pray] for kings and all

who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence." If

we as believers live this kind of life, we will make a difference in the world.

You might say, "We have prayed. We have lived a godly life and we have shown them the love of

Christ, but they still persecute us. They are still opposed to us. What can we do?" That leads me

to my third pointY

III. You should know that faithfulness for the Lord and His gospel is a divine request in

spite of hostility.

Jesus said to the angel of the church of Smyrna: "Do not fear any of those things which you are

about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested,

and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life"

(Rev. 2:10).

Dear believers, a day will come when people will kill us and actually think that they are doing a

service to the Lord. Be faithful unto death, be faithful to Christ, and be faithful to the Word of God.

Jesus is saying, "Fear not. They are going to put you in prison and they are going to persecute

you. Be faithful."

God's problem with the inhabitants of the earth is their lack of faithfulness. He said in Hosea 4:1:

"Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel, for the Lord brings a charge against the

inhabitants of the land: 'There is no truth [faithfulness] or mercy or knowledge of God in the land.' "

God has a court case with the inhabitants of the earth. To be able to have a court case, you need

charges. What are the charges against the inhabitants of the earth?

No faithfulness on the earth

No mercy or love on the earth

No knowledge of God on the earth

There are three charges, but the first is unfaithfulness. God forbid that it be said of us that we are

not faithful. Jesus says to be faithful until death, and He will give you the crown of life. When we

hear about the believers who lived under communism and how they were faithful until death, we are

proud of them and we have a great respect for them. May the Spirit of the living Christ help us to

be faithful to death, as well.

You might ask, "Is there a way that will help us to keep up our courage in a hostile world?" Yes,

there is, which brings me to my fourth pointY

IV. The only way that will help us to keep our courage is to remember that JESUS HAS

ALL AUTHORITY AND POWER.

Jesus says in Matthew 28:18: "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth."

Dear brothers and sisters, we are serving the Lord of glory, the almighty God. We have to

remember that Jesus has all power and authority in heaven and on earth. Not one hair will drop

from our heads without Him knowing about it.

Remember that He is the One who wrote by His hand on the wall of the king and terminated

his kingdom.

Remember that He is the One who sent His angel and shut the mouths of the lions so that

they would not hurt Daniel.

Remember that He is the One who walked in the furnace fire with the three Hebrew

children.

Remember that He is the One who gave the order to the water of the river of Jordan to stand

like a wall.

Remember that He is the One who stood at Lazarus' tomb saying, "Lazarus, come forth."

Remember that He is the One who ordered the storm and the sea to be silent.

Remember that He is the One who rose from the dead.

Dear brethren, isn't He worthy to be trusted? Isn't He worthy that we should even die for His sake?

How can we be afraid when we remember these things? How can we be afraid when we look at the

empty tomb?

Be faithful until death. Death is not an enemy anymore for the believer. Death is the way that will

take us to our eternal home. Death is the channel through which we will see Jesus. As it is

written, "While we are at home in [this] body, we are absent from the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:6).

One day I was going to a Bible study, and I went through a town controlled by the Druzes' militia.

Two men riding on a motorbike approached me. The one in the back pointed a gun toward me and

waved me to stop. So I stopped. He then came down from his motorbike, sat next to me with his

gun pointed to my side, and said, "Drive!"

When we got off of the main road, I was really afraid. They took me to a building far away from the

town, and within minutes I found myself in a locked room. They took everything from me except

my New Testament.

I prayed and then I opened my New Testament to read, but I was shaking like a leaf. I couldn't

read, so I prayed again. I thought that God would help me, but to my surprise, my fear just grew.

Then I kneeled down and really poured my heart before the Lord. At that moment, this verse came

to mind: "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." I kept repeating this verse in

my mind.

Suddenly I was separated from the love of my wife, my children, my church ‑ and even from life

itself. I stopped shaking and I was only thinking, "I want to see Jesus!" At that time, the door

opened and they took me for questioning. I was like a lion.

To cut a long story short, while they were questioning me, a gentleman came to the room. The

men all stood for him and saluted him. He gave an order that I be sent back to the room. After a

half hour had passed, a young man came back with all my papers and said, "You can go." He was

trying to take me out through the back door, but I told him that I wanted to go through the front to

see the same people who had questioned me and to thank them for letting me go. So I left from

the same door I had entered. I went back to those people and thanked them. Then I promised to

come back to drink a coffee with them the next week. The second week I returned with a Bible and

a letter explaining the way of salvation to them.

Be faithful until death and I will give you the crown of life.

Paul, facing imminent persecution, understood the importance of his life ministry, but he also

realized what an incredible blessing it would be to be with Christ. He writes, "But if I live on in the

flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard

pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better"

(Philippians 1:23).

Dear brothers and sisters, do not be afraid of physical death. Jesus says, "Do not fear those who

kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body

in hell" (Matthew 10:28).

With that being said, let me give you one final principle that will help each of us to remain strong in

a hostile worldY

V. The evangelist needs wisdom from heaven above.

The evangelist needs wisdom to know when to speak and when to be silent. It is written in

Ecclesiastes 3:1: "To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven." Then

further down in verse seven we read, "A time to keep silence and a time to speak."

We have to know when to speak and we have to know when to be silent. If we speak when it is

time to be silent, it is dangerous; and if we are silent when it is time to speak, it is also

dangerous.

We need wisdom from heaven above. James 1:5 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of

God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him."

Pray for wisdom, and do not delete from your account the work of the Holy Spirit or forget the great

promises of God. Do not forget this precious promise from Jesus: "Whatever you ask the Father in

My name He will give you" (John 16:23b).

Our problem today is that we have lost the greatest weapon against Satan and against all of our

enemies. I say it with sorrow in my heart ‑ in these days we have lost the power of prayer. We

have neglected this great weapon, which was given to us by God. All the prophets of the Old

Testament and the saints of the New Testament triumphed over the world by prayer.

Elijah was a man like us, and he prayed that it would not rain for three years and six months ‑ and

it did not rain. Later he prayed for rain, and God sent rain.

Joshua prayed for the sun to stop until they finished the battle against their enemies, and God

answered his prayer. And to be able to answer his prayer, God had to change the solar system! It

is written in Joshua 10:14: "And there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord

heeded the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel."

Beloved, let us go back from this conference determining to gain back this power which has been

lost, and to pray without ceasing. Pray and believe that our Lord is able. Pray and ask the Lord to

fight for us as He fought for Israel in the times of old.

Let us go back from this conference remembering that we are strangers and pilgrims on

this earth.

Let us go back remembering that we are hated by the world, but loved and sent forth by the

Lord.

Let us go back remembering that our behavior and our upright life will give us respect,

dignity, and reverence.

Let us go back remembering that Jesus has ALL authority in heaven AND on earth.

Let us go back remembering that we can obtain wisdom from heaven above when we ask

for it.

Let us go back remembering that we possess the greatest power on earth ‑ the power of

prayer. And let us remember that the power of the Holy Spirit is ours when we honor Christ.

May the Lord richly bless you.

Amen.

This Amsterdam 2000 speech text is under copyright. The author has rights protected by

international law. This text is not for reprint or republication. The message actually delivered at

Amsterdam 2000 may have differed significantly from this text.