Taken from a message given by Dan Stone in Alexandria, Virginia on May 16, 1981
Our relationship to Christ has many facets, not all of which we see at once. Initially we see our salvation in Christ, our freedom from condemnation, and the effects of sin, Later we begin to understand our freedom from sin itself. And with that firm assurance of our godliness, we finally move out of ourselves and into the lives of others. We become intercessors.
Paul's letter to the Romans describes this three=part growth pattern. Romans 1-5 emphasizes the blood of Christ as an atonement for our sins, Romans 6-8 shows how the body of Christ takes care of the person of sin; and Romans 9-15 deals with Christ's life in us as co-saviors for others.
Let's talk first about the blood and the body of Christ. When we take communion, we are meant to see beyond the elements, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread" (I Cor. 10:16). This is expanded on in Colossians 1:13-14: "[God] has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood which is forgiveness of sins."
In verse 20, "Having made peace through the blood of his cross, by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven; and you who were sometimes alienated and enemies in mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death: to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight."
On one side of the cross you see the blood of Christ providing justification for the sins of the world. On the other side of the same cross you see the body of Christ and us in Him, made holy, blameless and unreproachable because of our new position in Christ.
Let us create a scene to demonstrate the blood side of the work of Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. As part of a large audience, observers of a tremendous drama, we see the man Jesus being crucified. Someone walks up and lays around Jesus' neck the chain of adultery. Someone else walks up and lays around His neck the chain of fornication, another the chain of uncleanness. Others lay on Him lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, strife, seditions, envyings, murders, drunkenness, and so forth. As this picture of Jesus develops, we see draped on Him every expression of sin-and then we watch Him die.
The Holy Spirit steps forward and says to us, "Everything that you've done, I've laid on Him." An invitation is extended to all: "Will you receive this gift of mine? I've laid on Him all your sins which means they are not laid on you. If you will accept that transference as my love-gift to you, you're justified. You will be to Me as though you'd never committed them. "
All positively respond, "We accept that. As mere spectators all we can do is sit in the audience and hear someone tell us what all this means and accept it. In this analogy Christ pays the price for the sins of the world, and all we can do is receive the gift and, say "Thank you." Now if you are like I was for so many years, this was the only side of the cross you knew. But Paul turns the cross around and says, "Now wait a minute, don't go away too soon. We have another scene."
In this second scene, we are more than spectators-we are participants in Christ. To imagine this scene we must draw a big mental circle around the audience and see ourselves as one. We are all in Him. Paul, in describing the Lord's Supper says that we received the benefits of the blood, but we partake of the body of Christ (I Cor. 10:16-17). The body is all of us, so whatever is happening to the body is happening to us. We are not just observers of a drama on stage; we are the drama. It is as if Jesus loses His identity and becomes us.
The blood side of the cross expresses the glorious fact of our forgiveness, but the body side is a deeper truth. Paul shows us that we became Him, and He became us. We've put a lot of emphasis on Christ being in us, and rightly so. What Paul is teaching now is that we're in Him, so that we ourselves are on the cross.
The people standing watching Christ die are really on that cross themselves. What is happening is a death. We are not dealing with the human body which the Spirit lives in, but with what's happening to the Spirit when it leaves the body. When a body dies, the Spirit leaves and is no longer a part of the body.
The realm of God is the realm of spirit. God looks on the heart. That is why Jesus said to those people whose actions were supposed to be good and righteous, "You do what you see your father the Devil doing" (John 8:44). There are two fathers: God and Satan. We express one or the other.
Hebrews 2:14 says, "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, Jesus also Himself took part of the same, that through death, He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil." Satan has been destroyed as a person who can reign in our lives, captivate us, motivate us and keep us under control. When Christ died, we died-we participated in His death and lay in the grave three days, and were raised with Him on the third day.
Recently, I had lunch with a young couple and their two-year old. The child kept grabbing for the paper napkin on my lap. She finally got it and began to tear it up into little bits, but she couldn't put it back together again. Her mother went to the kitchen and tore off a paper towel. She handed it to me and said, "This is your new napkin." It wasn't a napkin. It was a towel. But she made it a napkin.
That's what God did. He made Jesus to be sin. Jesus wasn't sin, but God made Him to be sin. The girl's mother said, "This towel is now a napkin." God said, "This precious Son of Mine is now Mr. Sin." In other words, God made Jesus to be us.
Paul says, "He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again" (II Cor. 5:15). We never live for self again. If we only look at self, we will often appear to be living for self. Likewise, when we were lost and self-oriented, we sometimes appeared as if we weren't living for self. But the realm of appearance is not the place where the battle is fought-it is fought in the spirit realm. As a result of that battle, Paul says, "You were an expression of that person regardless of what the outcroppings were. But now you are an expression of another person, Christ." We need to get that point home, and we need to know who we are, before we start worrying about conduct.
For years we spent time dealing with our conduct, not knowing who we were, but this did not bring us to a consciousness that "Christ is my life." Instead it brought confusion about who we are related to. This confusion fostered the big lie of two natures. Reasoning from actions back to truth is dangerous, for we may or may not reach truth. But if we start from truth, which is spirit-reality-from "He and I are one"-the conduct is His. Starting from conduct, we are not sure who is in control, and it never brings any of us the awareness of union with Christ. The blessed love of God is to let us worry about conduct until it kills us. It produces the "Oh, wretched man that I am" in a man who was anything but wretched. That is its glory. Paul says, "If there is a glory in the ministry of condemnation, there is a greater glory in this ministry of grace." So let's praise God for misery in the believer.
Recently a woman told me that her marriage was on the rocks. Her husband had a girlfriend, etc. God was showing the wife a lot of things, and she didn't like any of them. She said, "You know, I think I'm going insane."
I said, "No, darling, you're not going insane. You're real close to God though, because you're almost at the end of self."
She had said about her husband, "He's my god," so I said, "Well then, you're not going to get him back, because God isn't going to share you with anybody. You're close to getting God, so keep on being miserable."
"Misery" is the name of the door that moves us from the self room to the spirit room. More people come into the union life through misery than through any other door. In fact, I don't know of anybody who hasn't come through some kind of personal misery. The point I made with this woman was that the very end of herself, which she was afraid was insanity, was really where she was going to meet God.
Paul says that we can cease to live for ourselves now. We may appear to be living for ourselves, but if you take the stand that we and He are one, no matter what the appearance looks like, then we are not living for self. Something may look in the first two chapters to be all self, but the final chapter's going to be for the praise and glory of God, because we can never live for self-and the fact is, we don't want to live for self !
The Dan form of Satan died in 1949 and a brand new creature emerged, a Dan form of Christ. Never before has there been a Dan like this. And the same happened to you. Put your own name there-a new creature in Christ. You began to operate from a new person, a new energy, a different approach, and a whole new excitement. You've got a new "wanter" in you. You don't want sin anymore. You may find yourself sinning occasionally, but you don't want to. What you want is God. I often tell believers, "I know your heart. Your heart's for God. Your thoughts and your emotions may not always be, but your heart's for God l" Go with your heart. When you go with God, you're safe, because all He's after through you is the privilege of loving someone else by means of you.
Paul says in Colossians, "It's through the blood side of the cross that we come to the forgiveness of sins." That's the knowing side of the cross. Turn the cross around and we'll see something that to the natural mind is unbelievable. We'll see all of the attributes of God have been poured into us.
We come to the awareness of our perfection in Christ through the operation of choice. God means His creatures to have choices and the consequences of those choices. He means us to have the consequences of whatever we attach ourselves to. If we attach ourselves to the flesh He means us to have the consequences of that attachment.
If we can serve God from the flesh, then why does He strip us down? If all the teaching about performance, doing, attaining, and striving from the flesh is right, then why did God strip Moses? If it is true that we can serve God from the flesh, why did He take Jacob across the brook Jabok and wrestle with him all night and leave him with an outer sign that he had been with God? If he could have served God from the flesh why did Joseph go through what he did? Why was Jesus Himself led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil? Even our Lord had to get fixed so His whole life was a Spirit life.
Let's take the case of Moses. There was nothing wrong with Moses' intention. He got the call-he knew what life was all about. Exodus 2 says: "It came to pass in those days when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked upon their burdens. And he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of the brethren, and he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no man, he killed the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand." What's interesting is the parallel account in Acts 7, long after Moses. The Holy Spirit told Stephen some things that Moses did not tell us.
The Holy Spirit told Stephen to say that this was to be the sign of Moses to the people that he was the deliverer of Israel, "by this sign you will know that I am this deliverer that you've been awaiting." And yet the next day Moses encountered two of his own brethren striving together, and they said, "Are you going to do to us what you did to that fellow yesterday?"
In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit doesn't hide anything about anybody's flesh. But in the New Testament, He sees the same people from the point of view of perfected faith. So in the Old Testament we see that Moses fled because he was afraid of Pharaoh. But when we read Hebrews, we see that wasn't the case at all. He forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, says Hebrews 11. But Exodus 2 says that he was afraid of the king.
Moses had plenty of dedication, but he needed to change his method. Or rather, he needed to quit his own methods and let God take over. That's when things began to happen. That's when the Lord said to Moses. "See, I've made you God to Pharaoh" (Ex. 7:1, literal). "When Pharaoh sees you, he's going to know he's dealing with Me. I'll make you God to Pharaoh."
That's what Moses wanted all along. Of course he had his share of weaknesses, and God needed every one of them. God gave him somebody to speak for him, gave him a staff to lean on, and then Moses learned what his forty years in the wilderness were for. In less than three months the Hebrews began to wander around in the same area, and Moses needed to know where all the water holes and oases were, as well as everything else that is necessary for desert life.
We have dedicated our lives many times. We have worn out altars by laying our bodies down on them. God says, "I know you're dedicated. I know your heart. I am your heart." The struggle is not over dedication but over methodology. God does us a favor to let us collapse. That is hard for us to comprehend. Why? The world doesn't appreciate failures.
Norman Grubb, writing in the book Rees Howells, Intercessor, saw the glory of the man, yet as far as England was concerned, Rees Howells was discredited in his last word of faith. In other words, if that final word of faith had been realized on the appearance level, everybody would have glorified Rees Howells. Real intercessors may well die in their last intercession.
Don't ever again take anything in your life as from Satan. Don't see him. It's God. Every negative experience that comes your way is a privilege if you turn it over and call it God. If you don't you'll get disturbance and discouragement. Turn it over, and you'll get a blessing.
At Passover, when the head of the family gathers his children around him, the emphasis is not on how Moses delivered them, but on how God delivered them. If Moses had taken them out when he was forty, they would have talked about how Moses delivered them. But when Moses got to the Jordan and wanted to cross over, God said, "You're not going over. I'll take them over. But you've laid down your life for them." This is not literal; it's figurative language. It's as if Moses laid down his life, with his heels on one side of the Jordan and his head on the other, and the Israelites walked across his body.
When we know who's doing it, we can lay down our lives for the joy set before us, and watch people walk over us. When we know who we are when the Prince knows he's the Prince then we lean be paupers in the situation. When we know we've already won, we can look like losers. But if we don't know we're the Prince, and we don't know we've won, it tears out our hearts. Thank God that He lets us have those miseries in our flesh.
There isn't any crash that's too embarrassing or too difficult or too horrible if we come through to knowing who we are. It is God's love to let our flesh collapse that He may establish us in spirit-knowing about who He is in us as us. And then we can move out and be a person. No more, "It isn't me, it's Jesus." Now we can go out, and call ourselves the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, because we are. We have been bought with a price. And we've been accepted in the Beloved.
The religion I preached for twelve or thirteen years told people what they ought to become. Everybody else told me I "gotta become," so that's what I taught others.
Do you know what that kind of religion is like? It's like a bunch of us who all bought new shoes which were too tight for us. We paid so much for them, we thought we had to smile. But all the time we were smiling, our feet were killing us.
A group of six or seven of us who know "Christ in us" as our hope of glory were together recently, and it was wonderful to have this dimension of truth in common. I find in my own life that I don't need to be with people who really know this mystery, whereas once it was very necessary for me; but I enjoy that kind of sharing and look forward to more of it.
You see, I'm tired of people telling me what I "ought" to do. I want to be with people who already know who they are, so that we can just rejoice in God and know that we are complete in Christ - that we are already holy, already unreprovable, already blameless. When we know this, we can have fellowship in the "I Am" and drop the "I gotta become."
During the years of my ministry when Christianity was a matter of trying to "become," I really did try to smile, because Jesus was supposed to be so good. But it was painful. I came to the place where I began to think that God wasn't a God of love. He was a tyrant. Do you know why I thought He was a tyrant? Because every time I got a little close to Him, He seemed to pull. back a little bit. I'd get near, and He'd draw back and say, "Now you've got to work a little harder to get this next step." And about the time I'd get there, He'd point to the next step and say, `"Now you gotta work a little harder if you want to get there." And I could never get to Him. I could never reach Him.
I'd scratch my head sometimes and say, "Well my goodness, we're worshiping a God of love, so why can't you ever get to Him?" I always longed to hear that "Well done, good and faithful servant"; but I never did hear it. While I sat in the pew at church I heard: "You're no good. You ought to confess your sins. You ought to try harder." Oh, I sure did want to hear that "Well done, good and faithful servant." But it looked as though the cheese was always just out of my grasp.
If there's a theme verse in my life, I guess it's Galatians 2:20. Recently my first experience with this verse came back to my mind. I remembered that when I got saved as a young man, this was one of the first verses to hit me. I was a pagan in those days. I had no biblical background - didn't know anything about the Bible. I walked into church one Sunday morning, not caring one thing about God, and walked out in love with Him.
The first thing I did was to buy a new Bible. My mother gave me a Bible when I was about eleven because I joined the church, but this was the first one I bought. Buying new Bibles became a habit in my years as a struggling Christian. Every time I had a new experience with God, I bought a new Bible. I've got about thirty of them! But when I got saved I thought I ought to have a new Bible because I had made a new start.
I was working for my father at that time and it was a boring job. He had what we called a "job printing shop." We did hand bills, letterheads, envelopes, and all kinds of jobs of that nature; and I was supposed to be learning the business. But all I did was stand in the back and watch a press go "clickety click, clickety click, clickety click." As long as it went "clickety click," I didn't have a thing to do but be bored. But if it threw a piece of paper out, or something else went wrong, Then I had to do five minutes work. But I'd start it up again and watch it go "clickety click." So I read the Bible, and I came across Galatians 2:20. This was just after I became a Christian. In those days I didn't know anything about the Spirit of God within a person being the Teacher. I may have read it, but I didn't know it. So the only thing I knew was to depend on outside sources, mainly people in whom I had confidence. Well, I really loved this man who had become my pastor, and he always had time for me. So I went to see him because I had read Paul's statement that "I don't live, but Christ lives in me." I didn't understand that, so I decided to ask my pastor about it. Whatever his answer was, it didn't quicken me.
The next time I came across the verse was when I had been called to preach. I was at one of the Baptist colleges, because in those days I was a Baptist. (I'm nothing now - just a Christian.) The one who had a real influence on me at that time was the Bible professor. Somehow or another Galatians 2:20 came up and I went to him. But again, his answer didn't quicken within me. Later I was at Louisville Baptist Theological Seminary, and while studying New Testament Galatians 2:20 once again struck me. I went to another person whom I loved and trusted, and I asked, "Is that real?" But still there was nothing quickening in his answer.
In 1973 I was outwardly and inwardly "bothered." I praise God for that time. That's the way He got my attention. I didn't have my life together either outwardly or inwardly, and He used that to reach me. It was during this period that I met a man who knew Galatians 2:20 as a living reality. What he had to say had a quickening effect. It became real to me. I saw it for the first time as a possibility, now Paul isn't talking about an ideal situation," I said to myself. "He isn't talking about something I'm going to get when I die.
There are so many things that popular teaching, such as I gave for all those years, pushes on into the future. People talk about, "Oh when I get to that place in the sky, I'll have peace!" What are you going to need it for? "When I get to that place in the sky, I'll have faith!" Again, what are you going to need it for? When You need it is now. I found that it was now I was in a desperate situation, didn't you? This is when we need faith, peace, and all of the other fruit of the Spirit.
As I listened to this man unfolding the mystery of "Christ in You, the hope of glory," it was so clear that it was real to him. "That's what the gospel is all about," he said. As a Baptist minister, all that had really grabbed me up to this point was the fact that Christ died for me, and I could trust Jesus for the forgiveness of my sins. That was all I could preach. I had to have three sermons a week, and this was my whole message. I don't mean that I couldn't construct a special sermon for Mother's Day, or a sermon on tithing, or on other topics; but regardless of what my subject was, I'd always get around to the only thing that had so far really grabbed me, which was the blood side of the cross. I really only knew the first five chapters of the book of Romans, and my message was capsulized in Romans 3:25 -justification as a gift of His grace, which is redemption.
Of course, this message left me in a quandary. I was still as self-centered now that I was a saved person as I was when I was a lost person. I was terribly sin-conscious. "Is that the right thing to do, or is this the right thing to do?" "Should I have said this, or should I have said that?" "Lord, forgive me for this, and forgive me for that." And I would repeat the process over and over again, trying to make the right decision, making the wrong one, and then asking forgiveness for my sins.
Every morning I would say something like: "Now, Lord, I want to be a good Christian today, and I don't want to miss a chance to witness if it comes along. I want my language to be clean, my thoughts to be pure, and to live a good life" Then when night came I'd say, "Lord, forgive me for not doing it." If I could get today into the past, I could get it forgiven because the blood had cleansed my sins. But this kept me on a treadmill, and the attention was always on me. How am I doing? Am I succeeding? Am I failing? Am I really imitating Christ? Is He really my Lord? Am I in His will?
Then I discovered that we don't really get on in the Lord until we can just forget ourselves. Because as long as we are preoccupied with ourselves we really see ourselves as a liability to God. As long as you still have the attention on yourself, imagining that there's still something that needs to be done for your soul, you see yourself as God's liability. "Oh, I can't really do that, because I haven't conquered this yet." "I can't do this because I don't have enough love." "I can't do this because I don't have enough faith." The attention isn't on God in all of this, it's on you! And I think we would all agree that this kind of living doesn't measure up to the biographies of the great believers of God in the Bible. It isn't until I got hold of the reality of Galatians 2:20 that I could take old Dan, put him on the shelf, and forget him. Only then could I begin to say, "I'm not God's liability - I'm God's asset."
I'm not bragging, but the truth is God has got to have Dan! Why? To reach Dan's world. You can't reach my world, and I can't reach your world. God has to have me to reach the world that I come in contact with. So I'm His asset. He has to have a vessel, and He needs the kind of vessel that sees himself as O.K.
I'm fifty-three, and I finally decided when I was fifty years old that if it had taken fifty years for God to get me this way I was going to quit trying to change myself. So I went to my shelves and threw all of those "how to" books away. Because if I don't end up like me, how is God going to reach my world?
If I end up acting like you, then I've lost contact with the world God wants me to reach. He wants my warts - the things that look like my failures -so that His strength can come through. He doesn't want me to try to copy you, and He doesn't want you to try to copy me. He wants you to be you, and He wants you to be satisfied with yourself. Because through you as His asset, His vessel, He is going to touch the world you are in contact with.
Now you don't have to be a missionary for God to do that. My wife Barbara and I thought that we might be called to be missionaries, because Baptists think that way. I was so glad when I passed thirty-five years of age, because I knew that you can't be called as a missionary then! But we are all ministers, in all our different walks of life, and that's the way God means it to be.
Why do I stress that we need to get the attention off ourselves? Because there is so much emphasis on the self in our churches. Crucifying the self, for instance. I don't try to crucify the self; I just try to enjoy the uniqueness of myself! I'm through with crucifying myself. Do you know why? Because I've already died. I died in Christ, didn't you? I've already been buried, haven't you? I've already been raised. And I get excited like Paul and say as he did in Ephesians 2:6 that I've already ascended! Haven't you? We're living the ascended life. So we are acceptable to God.
We are all like fruit trees. All fruit trees aren't apple trees. Some are orange trees, some grapefruit, even lemons and limes. Now I've noticed that everyone doesn't run up and grab an apple when fruit is served to a group. Some like oranges, and some like' grapefruit. But if all of the apple trees were trying to be like grapefruit trees, what would people do with all those apples? We are all meant to be just what we are. God isn't trying to change
The key is recognizing that God has actually put His nature into us. I think one of the difficulties people have in believing that Christ already lives in them as a present reality lies in the difficulty they had believing that Satan ever lived in them. Most of us at one time thought of Satan as "out there," so that he just had an influence on us. We really thought we were independent people, but that Satan could have an influence on us and God could also have an influence on us. But we never really knew that from the time of our birth - from the dawn of the human race, when our first parents took the wrong fruit -we were born with Satan in us. You don't find many people who believe that Mr. Sin, Mr. Phony God, Mr. False Way, Mr. Self indwelt them before their conversion. No, we weren't merely under the influence of evil: Jesus rightly said that we were of our father the devil and fulfilled his lusts from within (Jn. 8:44).
I didn't like to hear that at first, because there were some days of my misspent youth when I wasn't quite so bad. But then it dawned on me that whether I was good or bad, everything I did was from unbelief. Everything was based on self. Finally I saw the folly of the "good and evil" game. You can be just as good as you want to be, but if you're indwelt by the wrong god you are lost! The "good and evil" game still amounts to evil.
In I Corinthians 10:16-17 Paul says that we share in not only the blood of Christ, but also the body. We received the benefits of the blood as the necessary sacrifice for sins. But it is the participation in the body that takes care of Mr. Sin - Satan - within us. Paul witnesses to the effect of the body of Christ in his own life, in Galatians 2:20. He teaches it plainly in Romans 6. Paul saw in the death of Christ a spiritual truth that transcends time. He saw that though he wasn't there bodily, he was in Christ on the cross. Whatever Jesus experienced on that cross, he experienced it as Paul (indeed, II Corinthians 5 makes it for the whole human race). So he said in 11 Corinthians 5:21 that God made Jesus to be sin. He looked at Him and said, "He is really the sinful human race. I make Him the embodiment of all who are in sin." As a sinner, I was in that body; and what that body experienced, I experienced. So I have already died.
If you are not a Christian, then you are a spirit in prison. If you are a Christian, you are the spirit of a just man made perfect. Spirit is who we really are; it is where we live. Now if I died in Christ, I was also buried, because He was buried. Jesus' opponents went to Pontius Pilate and said, "He's dead, but we hear a rumor that they plan to steal His body and claim He was raised from the dead. Put a seal on that tomb if you will, and guard the tomb, because we're absolutely convinced that He's dead and we want to be sure He stays in there."
But just as surely as Jesus was dead, and I in Him, God raised Him from the dead the third day and I rose with Him. That's why Paul says to walk in newness of life. But this isn't Christ and me, or Christ with me. A lot of people get excited about what I preach about "Christ in you, the hope of glory," and they run up to me after a meeting and say, "I've heard that before - I know what you are talking about. I've read Andrew Murray," or something similar. No, no, no! We're not talking about Christ and me, and we're not talking about Christ with me.
We're talking about Christ having replaced Mr. Sin in us so that He now lives His holy, blameless, unreprovable, perfect life through us. This is a replaced life. It's not Christ and me, or Christ with me, but Christ is me. Not that Christ is Dan, you understand, because I'm just the vessel to contain Him. But He is evidencing His love life, His concerned life, His jealousy for the world - my world - through me. How? As me. What I'm interested in, He's interested in. Where I go to speak, He speaks. Where He takes me, He's there. What I'm doing, He's doing. And the only way He has of doing that in my world is as me.
This is what Paul saw. He said that he filled up the suffering of Christ in his body. He was an extension of Christ. It wasn't Paul living. It looked like Paul - people called him Paul. But it was Christ, the hidden One, living out His concerned life for the world as Paul.
When this dawned on me, I saw the reality of spirit. When God told me I had died, I stopped disagreeing with Him. When God said that He had buried me, I agreed with Him. And when He said that He raised me, I said, "Yep, You raised me." I saw that I was already walking in the heavenlies. I was already participating in the kingdom life.
You have been born again, haven't you? Well then, you can understand the kingdom. The kingdom is spirit, and the realm of the kingdom is within. Christ is the head of that kingdom, and we are the means by which that kingly person manifests Hi self. Paul described us as ambassadors for the King.
I see myself in so many biblical characters. Take the harlot at the well. She asked where to worship - in Samaria, or in Jerusalem. Which is the right outer place? Which is the right religion? What is the right thing to do? "Well, I'll tell you," Jesus said to her. "The day is coming when you won't worship here, and you won't worship down there. You'll worship in here. Because God is not in this place and He's not in that place. He is spirit." This account in John 4 really helped me to get the spotlight off the outer me.
I began to see that God is a world lover. If the God of the new covenant really dwells in me, He will love the world through me. But until that light breaks in on us through the Holy Spirit we still want Him to be a "me" lover. So we run to services looking for blessings. We still say, "Bless me, bless me." But when you see the truth of Christ as your life, the bless-me days are over. You are no longer a body-fusser, trying to save your outer skin. They'll say, "Heal Thyself, Physician," to you too. But your glory will be in seeing your life poured out, if necessary to the last drop. Poured out for others. Because that's the world-lover in you. He's not a "me" lover. He loves you because He's got you; He loved you through some other human instrument. But now He's got you, and as He lives in you, you forget about yourself.
From this point on you don't live from need, from shortage, trying to get a blessing. You have total sufficiency in you. There's no shortage in Him. You don't have any more spiritual needs. You've drunk the water and you've eaten the bread. If you have the living water and the living bread within you, you don't get hungry or thirsty anymore. You quit saying, "Lord, give me, give me, give me." It's unbelief! God is your sufficiency, and He lives in you to pour out His life through you for others. This is John 7:37-39. Out of your innermost being flow rivers of living water. To you? No. No wonder some of your prayers aren't answered! God is tired of body-fussers. He's interested in the world - your world, which only you can touch. Now you are broken bread and poured out wine, to be eaten and drunk by others.
When it dawns on you that you truly are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that He lives and walks in you, you begin to see all life from God's point of view. You are no longer hung up on good and evil as absolutes. You begin to see that the human situation, or what some call the "facts" of life, is nothing but God's necessary prerequisite for His Self-revelation. So you are always looking for God in every situation. As Jesus said, if your eye is single your whole body is full of light. You are full of light because you see only One person operating in all of life's situations. But as long as you are asking, "Is this good? Is this bad?" you are in darkness. To call it God if it looks good, and to say it isn't God if it looks bad, is darkness.
God has met me three times in my life with great truths, and I was in hell all three times! He had to get me into hell before He could show me something about Himself. It's the aggravating situations in life that get our attention. But they are not absolutes. They are merely God's calling-card.
I don't know of one single occasion when Jesus got up off His straw pallet in the morning, stretched, and said, "Oh, I feel so good today, I think I'll do a dozen miracles." But sometimes that's the way we act. We're going to get up today to do something for someone. He may not ask us to do it, but we're going out to do good deeds. Jesus never did that. He never went out to do a single good deed. The situation of need drew forth the action. If there had never been a need, there would never have been a miracle. There had to be a negative to draw forth the positive. There has to be evil so that we can see God's love for us.
We live in a world full of opposites. But we don't see it like that anymore. We see this world with a single eye. We see only the One person operating in it, the sovereign God. And all situations - particularly the stress ones, the negative ones, the horrible ones - are God's calling-card. "It looks like this," we say, "but wait a minute, because God is coming." And we become people of faith by saying that God is here. He is going to bring forth the supply.
That's what Jesus did, just brought forth the supply. And thank God He isn't here in bodily form today, because He'd have to go to a twenty-four-hour prayer meeting to be able to do it! No, He just said to the sick person, "Let him be well." Or when the crowd was hungry, "Let's sit them down. We're going to feed them." Someone came one day begging, "Oh, Master my servant is sick." Jesus' answer was simply that He'd be glad to come. No sweat. I think He'd be most uncomfortable in most of the prayer meetings we have. If He were the first to leave, I'd be right behind Him! Because He just knew that when the need came forth, the supply was there. It wasn't His supply. "Oh, Me, I can't do anything. I do what I see the Father do." And He was very casual: "Let there be." The same words used by the Word to create the universe.
John in his first letter, the second chapter, called this the "father" level in the Christian life. It's the ascended life. In this level we live as troops in the outer trenches. We are the people who can see what God is doing in the world, and we are privileged to be faith people.
Now I want to say a few words about faith, because I hear a whole lot about having to work up faith. I don't ever try to work up faith. Faith jumps out of me. When God wants me to see something He brings it to my attention. I don't go around trying to take somebody else's burden. Don't come and tell me that so-and-so is sick. If God wanted me to know, He'd tell me Himself. If He told you, it's a pretty good sign He wants you to do something about it. He shows me my mountains, and He'll show you your mountains. And you take a stand on what He shows you. You are not going to hope it's done. It is done. His life jumps out from you. You don't work up faith. It might take you some time to get hold of His thoughts so that you can speak His thoughts, into being, but you don't have to work up faith. God is the One who exists to meet that need, and He is going to explode out of you. "Rivers of living water!"
This means that you will say, "I just don't see that problem there. Yes, it's there - but I see God. God is healing that situation. He is bringing that thing together. He has a job there, and it's already done."
Several years ago when we were first beginning to learn this truth, our son was about twenty-two and he wasn't walking with the Lord. He had a lot of problems, so we just said, "Lord, get on with what You are going to do in His life." Do you know the next thing He did? He put him in jail. Now in the old days I would have said, "Lord, we didn't pray right, because if we had prayed right You would have him down here in the sawdust on his knees." We had told God to get on with His business, but now he was in jail!
Well, women are so wonderful because they get direct messages from God. Sometimes I think God has forgotten my address. I have to walk in blind faith! That night my wife was in bed and God said to her, "Don't call my sanctuary a jail" So we said that what was happening was perfect, and that our son was right where he had to be. We affirmed that God had already got him. Now, about five years have gone by.
But a few months ago my wife called him on the telephone because we had sold our house and bought another. The house needed painting. This time he stayed on the phone, and he asked questions about us. "I want to paint the house for you," he said. He's been down two times already - almost a 450-mile roundtrip - to paint the house. Before, he lived within three miles of us and didn't come but three times in the whole year. He doesn't yet know that God has got him, and there really are no religious overtones to his visiting. But we were excited for five years when we didn't have one single shred of evidence visible, and now God has given us this little touch of confirmation. We didn't have five years of hand-wringing; we had five years of praising God, watching Him do what He said He had already done.
We need to rediscover the authority of the word. "Thus saith the Lord!" "It is finished!" We tend to be action people, but the Scriptures point us to the authority of the word, and the action comes along at God's good pleasure. So many of us have said that God hasn't done anything until we see the action. But when we see spiritual reality, that puts us on top of situations, and it's an exciting life. So God in me rises up and says, "You say about your son, It is finished!" And that is reality, because spirit is reality, even if he dies never having come home.
We operate as He does in this world. We tell the mountains God has put in our life to be moved. We read in Mark 11:22-24 that faith in God means we do not doubt in our heart. Our emotions may give us a little trouble at times, as can appearances. But at our center is God, and when He in us says it is finished, it's done.
This is the life of the intercessor. There are times when God commissions us, as His agents. He puts a mountain before us - a need. Mordecai came to Esther and spoke the word of faith: "We're going to be saved." He asked Esther if she was going to be the intercessor in the situation. When she had God's thoughts, she said she would do it. So she went in and approached a king who hadn't called for her in thirty days. If she walked into his presence without his extending his scepter, she would lose her life, even though she was a queen. But God had commissioned her, and she became an intercessor for her people. It wasn't a religious situation; it was a real-life crisis.
Jesus said that unless a corn of wheat falls into the ground and dies, life cannot come forth. When God commissions you as an intercessor, there is a cost. But when you have counted the cost, you move into the joy of the Lord, the joy set before you in doing it. You see that He is wanting a change in a home, in a community, in a particular situation. Everything else now becomes secondary. Your family, your home, your lands - everything goes into this commission. You pour out your life in the death that has to occur, but you gain what God is after.
The second chapter of Hebrews tells us that Jesus gave His life that He might bring many sons to glory. God wants sons who know what life is all about and who know that the real joy of living is seeing His life being poured through them to reach the world - their world. And that becomes the consuming passion. "The zeal of Your house has eaten me up."
I enjoy my commission of traveling on the road to share this message. People wonder how I can travel as much as I do, but I can't do anything else. This is the joy of the Lord for me. And it's a complete life; there's nothing missing in it. I no longer pitch problems to God. I can give His all to those problems. "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Yes, glory now, just as they saw the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God intends for others to see the glory of Christ in us. Don't you look for it. It isn't yours to see. It's for someone else to see, and those God means to see it as they cross your path will see it. Those who are hurting are going to see Him - the sinners, the harlots, and the publicans. To the rest, He looked like Beelzebub. But to those who were desperate, the light of God was on His face. You know Christ is pouring His life through you, so take it by faith that it's so and others will see Him. And they'll be drawn to the One who is in you, thinking they have been drawn to you. But you know it isn't you, it's Him.
Don't change yourself, or they couldn't be drawn to you. Don't call yourself a liability, because you are God's beautiful asset. And don't be so concerned about sin-consciousness; instead be consumed with godliness. "Set your mind on the things above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God; for you are dead, and your life is hidden with God in Christ." Get on with the glory of life, because Paul said that He has not only justified you, He has glorified you.
I have emphasized how God made us new creations at our new birth. That is rock bottom truth. In a sense, though, you have the same humanity now that you had before. Your spirit is new, but you didn't receive a new personality the moment you received Christ. You are still mostly outgoing, or reserved, or spontaneous, or considered. Your humanity is basically the same before and after. But can you glory in it now? If they put a new engine in your car, even though it still has rust spots, can you glory in your car?
That's what God is saying to us. "If I am willing to put a new engine in your car and glory in your car, can you glory in your car? Will you glory with Me?" That's one of the hardest lessons we have to learn: to glory in our humanity. To be satisfied with ourselves as we are. Is there a harder lesson?
Every one of us has something about our humanity-our personality, or for some of us our body-that we wish God would change so that we'd look better for Him, at least from our perspective. We think, "God, if you'd just take that thing away, I'd look better for You." That "thing" may be with us until they plant us six feet under.
We come to a place where we say, "Lord, even though that thing is still in my humanity, I'm going to praise You for it." You know what I discovered? The minute I started praising God for my impatience, I didn't see it anymore. I don't mean it disappeared, but I didn't have a fixation on it. I wasn't anxious about it any longer. That's the way God moves on in us, when we accept ourselves as He does.
I'm not advocating sin, by any means. I am saying that when we shift our focus from ourselves-some neutral aspect of our personality that we don't like, or, yes, even some flesh pattern that keeps recurring-and instead focus on Christ in us, God does His work in us. We are transformed into His image as we behold Him, not as we behold ourselves (2 Corinthians 3: 1.
God takes those things that are fixations in us when we're flesh-oriented and turns them into blessings when we're spirit-oriented. What I despised became a blessing in somebody else's life. Those things become the years the locusts ate that God restores, the dung that God makes into a compost pile. He lets it sit there until it's done a work in us. Then we can take our humanity back and say, "It's perfect to God right now. If He wants to do any altering of it, He is at work in me to will and do of His good pleasure. If He wants to change it, He who began a good work in me will bring it to pass. He can finish what He started."
I'm not going to take my humanity back on my own terms. I don't want it back that way. It took me long enough to get rid of it-as the source of my life. When you see it's no longer the starting point of your life, but rather the means by which God's life is manifested, you can take it back. You can accept yourself as you are. You can accept yourself as God's asset.
Finally we are able to say, "Lord, through my family tree and all of the circumstances I've come through, You've made the outer person that I am. You live in that person, and you set that person in the world in a way that's going to attract some people to You. I'm not going to attract everybody. The ones You don't attract through me, You'll catch through someone else."
That's why we all fit together, isn't it? We fit together into a whole. Nobody can attract everybody. I used to try to attract everybody. But there are all kinds of fruit. There are oranges. There are apples. There are lemons. God uses all kinds. I say to people, "I am a lemon." God attracts some through my lemonness.
We don't have to be anybody else; we don't have to submit to anyone trying to make us like anybody else, either. We are free to be ourselves. God is pleased to manifest His beautiful variety of expression through each of us in our uniqueness.
From: Stone, Dan, The Rest of the Gospel: When the partial Gospel has worn you out. Dallas: One Press. 2000. pgs. 115-117
At Christmas time, Lauren Green on Fox News hosted Rick Warrens Christmas service called “Christmas with Rick Warren.” This is an opportunity most pastors would love to have- a large captive audience at Christmas time to give the saving message of the gospel to millions of people. But was the gospel presented?
The following are highlights of his sermon with an observation analysis and biblical assessment.
LURM
(I keep these short so that the list on my page is able to leave more visible )
If you have been blessed by having sons, or if you deal with boys in a school context, you have no doubt wondered: why is it that this gender gravitates to weaponry?
We live in a world where the identity of the two sexes is so marred that little distinction is made anymore. Indeed to even suggest that significant differences should exist is to be accused of being outdated in ones thinking. What then, is true and Biblical masculinity?
As much as it may distress us, our boys are future men. Raising boys takes a lot of courage and consistency and we need to look to the Scriptures to find our model for masculinity. Manhood is where boyhood should be aimed. William Mouser, in his book “Five aspects of Man” points to five clear distinctive features of the masculine constitution: Lords; Husbandmen; Saviours; Sages and Glory bearers. LORDS
Man was created to exercise dominion in the earth. The charge which God gave in this regard is frequently called the cultural mandate. Right from an early age, boys want to conquer and subdue, even if the terrain is only the backyard.
They are in training after all, and should be encouraged to become men who exercise dominion. They should be learning to be lords in the earth, and should be adventurous and visionary. This is difficult to do when they are only surrounded by videos and computers. If you have no backyard find a park, and let him conquer!!
HUSBANDMEN
Man was created not only to conquer, but also to make the conquered land flourish. If the dominion mandate were taken in isolation, men would end up basing a culture on piracy and freebooting. So, if you are going to subdue the land, you must settle down on it! A Great many lessons can be learned in the back garden. A rich farmer was once rebuked for having his sons work in the fields when they did not have to. His reply was that he was not just raising corn, but raising sons. Our boys need to learn to be patient, careful and hardworking.
SAVIOURS
Boys have a natural inclination to rescue and save. Our greatest example of a Saviour is of course Jesus Christ. The ancient serpent was the tempter who brought the occasion of sin before Adam and Eve. Men who follow Jesus Christ, the dragon slayer, must themselves become lesser dragon-slayers. And this is why it is absolutely essential for boys to play with wooden swords and plastic guns. Boys have a deep need to have something to defend, something to represent in battle. And to beat your swords into plows prematurely, before the war is over, will leave you plowing for those who kept their swords. The Christian faith is in no way pacifistic. The peace that will be ushered in by our great Prince will be a peace purchased with blood. As our Lord sacrificed Himself in this war, so must His followers learn to do. Our boys must therefore learn to be strong, sacrificial, courageous and good.
SAGE
A man who is great in wisdom, is a sage. We must therefore teach our boys the masculinity of study, of learning, of books, of intellectual discussion. We must not let them pit one aspect of masculinity against another. When this is allowed to happen, a boy who naturally loves sport can too readily dismiss poetry or reading as effeminate. We must gird up the loins of the mind. This is a discipline possibly unpleasant at the time, but nonetheless essential. Boys must therefore be taught to be teachable, studious and thoughtful.
GLORY-BEARERS
This aspect of masculinity is seen in the fact that men are the glory of God. (I Cor 11) The woman reflects the glory of God by reflecting the glory of man, whose glory she is. The head of every man is Christ, and the head of every woman is man (I Cor. 11:3). The Bible assigns one kind of glory to men, and another to women. This is not meant to be in competition to one another, but to complement one another. Because this is true, boys must be instructed on how to grow up into glory and how to fulfill their responsibility to be representative, responsible and holy.
In summary, we should have a pretty good idea of where we are headed with our boys. These future men need to learn how to be aggressive and adventurous, they are learning to be lords of the earth. We want them to be patient and hard working, they are learning husbandry. We want to instill in them a hatred for evil and to have a deep desire to fight it. They are learning what a weapon feels like in their hands. We should want boys to be eager to learn from the wise, as they become wise themselves. We should want them to stand before God, in the worship of God, with head uncovered. They are the image and glory of God.
Raising boys takes a lot of faith. This is good because the presence or absence of faith reveals whether or not we have a Biblical doctrine of our future. The faith exhibited by wise parents of boys is the faith of a farmer, or a sculptor, or anyone else engaged in the work of shaping unfolding possibilities. It is the faith of someone who looks at the present and sees what it will become through grace and good works. Let us immerse ourselves in Scripture and see then, how to raise our future men.
(This article is based on the book 'FUTURE MEN' by Douglas Wilson)
83% of Zimbabwe’s wildlife has been destroyed by Mugabe’s state sponsored chaos according to the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force. Inflation is over 4500%. Unemployment is over 85%. Power failures for days on end even in the capital, Harare, are common. Shops are empty. Starvation is rampant.
It takes much longer to build than to destroy. For example, it took the Americans seven years to build the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, but it only took an hour for Muslim terrorists to destroy that remarkable feat of engineering.
Similarly, while it took 90 years to build Rhodesia into one of the most efficient and productive agricultural economies in Africa, it has taken Robert Mugabe and his Marxist government less than 27 years to destroy it.
Civilisation needs the Rule of Law, a strong work ethic, an efficient infrastructure of roads, railways, means of communications, educational institutions, literacy, moral standards, respect for contracts, concern for neighbours, compassion for the weak, practical help for the poor, and lots of hard work.
But what does it take to destroy Civilisation? When I was growing up in Rhodesia, even as a schoolboy in junior school, I would regularly walk across Bulawayo, the second largest city in Rhodesia, without any sense of danger. Most children walked or cycled to school. We lived without keys and locks. There were no burglar bars on our windows or security gates at the entrances to our homes. Fences around our properties were low, not for security, but primarily to keep ones dogs, or tortoises, inside. We generally did not lock our doors, and many left the keys for their car in the ignition - even when parked downtown while shopping.
Many purchases were made on account, even petrol for the car. I don’t remember having to sign for anything at the local shop when sent by my parents. Verbal agreements were considered sufficient and binding.
Despite Rhodesia being at war, it was considered to be quite safe for me to walk several miles out of town to the Khamyi Ruins (approximately 14 km away) as a young teenager, alone. And it was delightful to see a variety of wildlife even close to the city. When we travelled across country, we would see giraffe, zebra, kudu, wildebeest and many other animals. And that wasn’t in the game parks - those were just on farms and crossing the main roads.
The safety, security, efficiency and stability of Rhodesia, even during that time of war, stands in sharp contrast to the chaos, crime, violence and complete breakdown of every level of society in Zimbabwe today.
It took US$3 to buy 1 Rhodesian dollar (today, despite removing three zeros from its currency, it takes over Z$600,000 to buy US$1).
How did they do it? How did ZANU succeed in destroying such an efficient civilisation in just 27 years?
“CONFUSE, DIVIDE AND CONQUER” If we can be confused, then we can be divided and conquered. Not only did many Rhodesians fail to understand the nature of their Communist enemy, but even more seriously many failed to understand the Gospel of Christ, the Biblical Worldview, and what it meant to be defending Christian Civilisation.
Antinomianism, the belief that God’s Law does not apply today, and the “just believe” minimalist gospel, are hopelessly inadequate in conveying the Biblical message.
“CORRUPT AND CONQUER” Antinomianism, secularism and immorality are deadly for any civilisation. Families are the basic building blocks of society, and the Christian faith is the foundation. Biblical ethics are the mortar that holds everything together.
Even though Rhodesia had strict censorship, which removed swearing, nudity and immoral scenes from films, and prevented pornography from being published in the country, there existed nonetheless, a worldliness and lack of spirituality that came to permeate the country.
GUILT MANIPULATION As Karl Marx declared, “The first battlefield is the rewriting of history.” Rhodesians were bombarded with guilt manipulation. The World Council of Churches, the United Nations, the Organisation of African Unity, and the world media repeatedly portrayed Rhodesians as “white supremacists”, “racists” and “colonial oppressors”.
Yet many foreign visitors to Rhodesia in the 60’s and 70’s observed that Black people in Rhodesia had far higher standards of living and of education than their neighbours in Zambia and Mozambique. They were also impressed with the excellent race relations and general goodwill amongst the various communities.
Contrary to some prevalent propaganda, there was no apartheid in Rhodesia. Far from having racial segregation, Rhodesian society was integrated on many levels. There were no separate cinemas, restaurants or municipal swimming pools.
85% of the Rhodesian Army was Black. And while the Whites were conscripted, all the Blacks in the Rhodesian Army were volunteers. Although the common propaganda was that the war in Rhodesia was a Black against White war, it was more accurate to call it Black and White together against Red. The Marxist Revolutionaries of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU and Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU were trained and financed by the Russians, Chinese and Cubans. There were Black and White on both sides, and most of the victims of Mugabe’s ZANU terrorists were Black civilians.
Many people are surprised to hear that there was no colour bar to the ballot. Rhodesia had a qualified franchise whereby those with the required educational or property ownership qualifications could register to vote.
While the Rhodesian authorities were encouraging greater participation in the electoral process for Black Rhodesians, the Marxist terrorists were murdering Black candidates and those who took part in the electoral process. So, far from the Whites preventing Black people from having the vote in Rhodesia, it was the Communist terrorists’ policy to intimidate Black people to stop them from participating in the democratic process in Rhodesia.
A key part of the guilt manipulation by those who sought to demonize the Whites of Rhodesia was to use the zoom lens of selective reporting, ignoring the wide-angle lens of the wider context. So some of the crackdowns of the security forces were reported on without explaining what they were reacting to.
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF terrorist record of murdering missionaries, bayoneting babies, burning to death congregations of Christians in their church buildings, ambushing Red Cross ambulances, exploding bombs in public streets, placing landmines on farm roads and the cold-blooded murder of thousands of unarmed civilians, received little media coverage. There were those who were apparently only interested in blaming and boycotting the Rhodesians, imposing economic sanctions, excluding their sportsmen from the Olympic Games, even the paraplegic Olympics! etc.
Nor was the wider context of the Cold War, the reality of the international communist threat, the vicious atrocities against White farmers by the Mau-Mau in Kenya, MPLA massacres of whites in Angola, or the raping of nuns and murdering of missionaries by the Simba Communists in the Congo reported on. But the fact is that this was the immediate context in which Rhodesia existed. Refugees fleeing these atrocities came to Rhodesia. It was only natural that Rhodesians would have taken precautions in order to prevent such atrocities taking place in their own country.
“THE SCARS OF COLONIALISM” Frequently the “scars of colonialism” are mentioned. However, it would only be fair to note that the most obvious scars of colonialism have included: roads, railways, bridges, schools, hospitals, churches, law courts, shops, written languages, medicines, the Gospel, the wheel and a host of other extremely helpful and important blessings.
The fact is that when the Rhodesian Pioneers first arrived in Matabeleland and Mashonaland, the Matabele were under the rule of Lobangula, a bloodthirsty tyrant who oppressed the entire Shona nation in bondage as his slaves. There was no rule of law. Summary executions were frequent, and some of the most indescribable tortures were practiced. It is a remarkable achievement that the Rhodesian Pioneers freed so many people from such tyranny and slavery, lifted them out of savagery, ended the inter-tribal wars and catapulted the people from the Iron Age into the Space Age.
It is when these facts of history are forgotten that one is vulnerable to the guilt manipulation of those who seek to rewrite history and silence all opposition by throwing out accusations of “Racism”,”Colonialism”, “Collaborator”, “Reactionary”, “Counter-Revolutionary” or some such pejorative.
NOT BEATEN - BETRAYED The Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Ian Douglas Smith, described the challenge: “We were never beaten by our enemies, we were betrayed by our friends.” It is a fact of history that the Rhodesian Army was never beaten in battle. They won every engagement. But it was their Western friends and allies alongside whom Rhodesian volunteers had fought in the First and Second World Wars and in the Malayan conflict, who were confused and guilt manipulated to the extent that they turned against a Pro-Western government which was seeking to stand firm against Communist aggression.
It was the corrupt and degenerate European governments, confused as to what was the truth, unwilling to recognise the reality of Communist terrorism, guilt manipulated about the presumed sins of the “White Colonialists” and cowered in submission by accusations of “racism,” who did for the Communists what they could not achieve for themselves on the battlefield. It was the British Foreign Office, the Commonwealth, the US State Department, the United Nations, The World Council of Churches, the Olympic Committee and the world media who worked together to confuse, divide, corrupt, guilt manipulate, boycott, sanction, isolate and betray Rhodesia.
CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES The international campaign against Rhodesia was quite unprecedented in history. And the catastrophic consequences continue to be with us to this day. Those who campaigned for the downfall of Rhodesia and the handover of that once peaceful and productive country to the violent Marxist revolutionary, Robert Mugabe, need to take a long hard look at the consequences of their campaign.
5,000 White owned commercial farms (which once fed the population of over 10 million and also provided the largest source of employment, foreign exchange and exports for the country) have been looted and destroyed by Mugabe’s racism and farm invasions.
Over 1.5 million people in Zimbabwe have had their homes destroyed by Mugabe’s army and police. Independent newspaper and radio stations have been attacked and blown up. Judges who have made rulings against ZANU-PF have been attacked by mobs, even assaulted in their chambers in court.
Pastors have been arrested for “subversive prayers”. Hundreds of churches have been bulldozed or burned. Wildlife sanctuaries have been devastated. Vast herds of elephants, rhino, buffalo and endangered animals, such as cheetah, have been slaughtered. Huge forests have been razed to the ground. Hundreds of thousands of human rights abuses have been recorded.
Over 5 million people have fled Zimbabwe. Even people who used to be supporters of Mugabe’s regime are now describing it as “a criminal enterprise” guilty of “ethnic cleansing”, “genocide” and “state sponsored terrorism”.
Zimbabwe provides a dramatic example of how to destroy a Christian Civilisation. It took 90 years to build one of the most efficient countries in Africa. It took dedicated missionary work, a strong work ethic, excellent agriculture, an effective infrastructure of roads and railways, the rule of law, widespread literacy, a high standard of education, wise development of natural resources, tourism, etc. INTERNATIONAL INTERFERENCE However, during the height of the Cold War, Rhodesia became a target of international Communist aggression. Terrorists, trained and armed by the Soviet Union and Red China, and funded by the World Council of Churches and the United Nations, supported by the Organisation of African Unity, aided by the Commonwealth and US State Department, united in campaigning for the downfall of Rhodesia and its handover to the Marxist Revolutionary, Robert Mugabe. To a large extent, the millions of lives ruined, and tens of thousands of Zimbabweans tortured and murdered since then are their collective responsibility.
The Daily Mail in London, which had vociferously opposed Rhodesia throughout the 1970s, recently published a remarkable article entitled: ”IAN SMITH WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL” (19/03/2007). Indeed, the tragedy of Zimbabwe has vindicated all Rhodesia did to try to prevent a communist takeover.
THREATS TO CIVILIZATION It is easier to destroy than to build. We each need to recognise the serious threats to Christian Civilisation: The threats of “confuse, divide and conquer”,”corrupt and conquer”, guilt manipulation, the rewriting of history, the lawlessness of antinomianism, the poison of secularism, the corruption of worldliness, the covetousness of materialism, the disastrous consequences of egalitarianism, the confusion of multiculturalism, the idolatry of the interfaith movement, and so many other seeds of destruction. Any of these ideologies work like termites in a wooden house. While the outward structure may look unaffected, the termites can be eating away at the insides, rotting away the very foundations of the structure - until it all collapses.
THE BATTLE FOR THE FAMILY The family is the basic building block of society, our Christian Faith is the foundation and Biblical ethics are the mortar. To rebuild Christian Civilisation, we must start with reforming our families. There is a battle for the mind, a war being waged against marriage and against the family. Our children are at risk. Education has become a battlefield. It is a war for the hearts and minds of the next generation.
LITERATURE AND LEADERSHIP This is why Frontline Fellowship has given highest priority to leadership training courses such as the Biblical Worldview Summit and literature, such as Biblical Principles for Africa to lay solid foundations for rebuilding Christian civilisation in Zimbabwe. Mugabe’s communist regime will fall and when it does Christians must be prepared to rebuild the devastated society - on Biblical principles.
DON’T SETTLE FOR LESS We dare not settle for less than God’s best. We have a salvation to celebrate, a reason to sing, a Faith to live by, courage to stand up against evil and to resist tyranny, the joy of sins forgiven, a reason to live, a message to share, a cause worth dying for.
Please pray for the Christians suffering in Zimbabwe and for our missionaries as we seek to serve them. If you can help us with emergency relief aid, food, medicines and ”boxes with love” to aid starving, destitute Christians in Zimbabwe, please contact Frontline Fellowship. We are also completing a book on the crisis: ”From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe”. If you want to help sponsor a film to expose the atrocities in Zimbabwe or help cover printing costs for the book and help market it, please write to: Frontline Fellowship.
We have a clear choice before us: either Communist chaos or Christian Civilisation.
It is humanism or Christianity.
“See, I have set before you today life and death, good and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are going to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish…I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore CHOOSE LIFE, that both you and your descendants may live…” Deuteronomy 30:15-19
Peter Hammond Frontline Fellowship Cape Town South Africa
He actually wanted them all put to death. He had some very contorted views and blamed them all for the death of Christ, amongst other things.
A lot of things get lost in time and a lot of things get changed over time.
It is the same way with Judas. He was perceived entirely different than what is the basic teaching today, when people started making it a crusade to smear him in what was a long time after.
The thought of pretrib rapture is only 100 years old. It was brought in by Cyrus Scofield of the Scofield bible translation. Today people like Scofield, but when he was alive, even after he recordedv that he was a christian, he went to jail for fraud and conning people. He left his wife and child to fend for themselves. Yet people do not know this today.
Things are not always as they seem. Many things today are out of scams, and false teachings.
this is a great short version of Mr Kelleys 288 indepth book. Its a condensed version:
Modern Tithing is Based on Many False Assumptions
One denomination’s statement on stewardship is typical of what many others teach about tithing. It says that "tithing is the minimum biblical standard and the beginning point which God has established that must not be replaced or compromised by any other standard." It adds that the tithe is from gross income which is due to the church before taxes.
The following points of this essay contrast the false teachings used to support tithing with what God’s Word actually says.
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) The woman reflects the glory of God by reflecting the glory of man, whose glory she is. The head of every man is Christ, and the head of every woman is man (I Cor. 11:3). The Bible assigns one kind of glory to men, and another to women. This is not meant to be in competition to one another, but to complement one another. Because this is true, boys must be instructed on how to grow up into glory and how to fulfill their responsibility to be representative, responsible and holy. 
