Tag Archive for: prophecy

What is so sacred about sex? – Part 2

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This continues from part 1…..

In part one of this article, we discussed the sexual mood of our present culture and whether or not as human beings, we are the owners of our own bodies and minds. We ended on the note that if it is the case that we have been made or created by someone else for his own purposes, then surely we would have a lot more obligations than we would have if we only belonged to ourselves. But we also noted that, this is a big “IF” because some people do not believe (or at least they live as if they don’t believe) that there is any Being higher than ourselves, to whom we must be responsible. Is it reasonable to believe that an actual Being exists who is responsible for our existence and to whom we might be accountable to, regarding our sexual lives? If there is the possibility for such a Being to exist, why would he be interested in what we do with our bodies sexually?

For starters, let us be brutally honest with ourselves: everything in this world – from ourselves to the flowers to the stars to sea to animals etc – points to the fact that some sort of careful designing has gone into the creation of our world and of ourselves, doesn’t it? We often take it for granted that this physical world of ours is structured the way it is. But mathematically speaking, the probability of this world happening by a mindless random or unordered process is incredibly small. According to Astrophysicist Hugh Ross’ conservative calculation, the chance of a planet like ours existing in the universe is about 1 in a trillion billion billion (i.e. 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in 10 raised to the power 30).

 Scientists are discovering that had even a single feature of our universe been just a little bit different, the stars, galaxies and human life would not exist. Let us briefly look at a few amazing scientific discoveries before we go on. The distance from the earth to the sun is just right. Why? Even a small change of around 2% and all life would cease. If the earth was too near the sun, water would evaporate. If it was too far from the sun, its coldness level would not support life. In fact, even the rotation speed of the earth is just right; if it was too slow, the temperature differences between day and night would be too extreme, and if it was too fast the wind speeds would be catastrophic. Furthermore, if the ratio of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces had differed by about one part in ten thousand billion billion billion billion (i.e. 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000), then stars such as the Sun, which are capable of supporting life, could not exist. Do you see any picture emerging?

The delicate balance of the elements in our universe, to use the illustration of the theoretical physicist Paul Davies, is like the accuracy level that a marksman needs in order to hit a coin twenty billion light years away on the other side of the observable universe. [A light year is the speed travelled by light in one year. And light, by the way, has the fastest travelling speed in our universe]. In fact it has been noted by some researchers that the earth is placed precisely in a part of the universe that is congenial to scientific studies in cosmology, galactic astronomy, stellar astrophysics and geophysics. That is, if our earth had been positioned in a part of the universe with too much starlight, we could not have been able to see into deep space. There are more than 3000 galaxies in the observable universe, each containing millions to trillions of stars – many being bigger than the earth.

Further, Oxford mathematician John Lennox in his book, ‘God’s undertaker: has Science buried God?’, notes that the distinguished mathematician and astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, admitted that his atheism was shaken profoundly when he discovered the degree of fine-tuning needed between the nuclear ground state energy levels in order for carbon to be formed either by a combination of three helium nuclei, or by a combination of nuclei of helium and beryllium. (And for the record, life cannot exist on earth without an abundant supply of carbon). Sir Hoyle’s discovery, according to Lennox, led him to remark that, “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology,” and that “there are no blind forces in nature worth talking about.” Interesting isn’t it? And let us not forget the issue of the human DNA – the molecule containing coded instructions for the cells in the body. A group of scientists have recently estimated that the adult body contains about 37.2 trillion cells, each containing DNA. Each person’s complete DNA is unique; the exception being identical twins. The instructions are in what is called Genetic language and they are detailed, complex and specific. These instructions include for example, which cells should grow and when, which cells should die and when, which cells should make hair and what colour it should be.  If all this sounds too technical, then let me make it simple: the scientific discoveries are pointing in the direction where it is highly unlikely that an intelligent Being did not plan and execute the creation of this whole skilfully crafted universe, including human beings like us.

What is my point with all this information? It is this: if conditions in this universe, and the nature of our human bodies, are the way they are – so delicately precision-tuned – and if human beings like us posses the kind of intelligence we posses, even to study them, then it is very reasonable to (and unreasonable not to) suppose that a more intelligent Being, (1) is out there, (2) is the cause of our beings and (3) is interested in our lives. Now if we relate this thought to Mr. Lewis’ thoughts about moral duties (discussed in part one of this article), we can say with a fair degree of confidence that the whole of mankind must have a Landlord. Our bodies, strictly speaking, are not ours. Our Landlord is this Intelligent Being who created this world and everything in it. Religious folks simply call him, God. Since this God is the cause of our intricately designed bodies and existence, it is not mind-boggling that any “Dos and Don’ts” on how we use our bodies should come from him.

 

A Curious Worldview

 In his speech to the members of the city council of Athens, Paul the apostle of Christ tried to give them a new view of God, saying, “God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands.” (Acts 17:24 GNB) In a city so used to building alters and shrines for every imaginable god, this news was however unimaginable. But to the people in the city of Corinth (a city well-known for its immorality), who became believers in Jesus Christ, Paul wrote them a letter in which he explained to them the sacredness of their bodies: “…the body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord, and the Lord provides for the body. God raised the Lord [i.e. Jesus] from death and will also raise us by his power. … Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.” (1 Cor. 6: 13,14, 19,20 GNB). Dr Ravi Zacharias, a Christian philosopher, appropriately explains that, “the Christian walks with God, not to God. We no longer go to the temple to worship. Rather we go with our temples to worship.” The body of a believer in Christ, rather than a church building, is the holy dwelling place of God and must be treated as “holy grounds.” Thus what this person wears, or touches, or says, or looks at or reads or listens to must uphold God’s holiness.

So much for the Christian “bodies”! What bearing does this worldview have on those who do not subscribe to it? The non-Christian is a prospective temple of God. God wants to live in this person. The Christian explanation for human existence in general is that God made us and not only that, but also that he made us all for himself (Col. 1:16) and he made us in such a way that only in union with him can our greatest good be had (John 10:10). Sin does not allow this to happen. But God became man in Jesus Christ, lived uprightly among us, identified with our human weaknesses, paid for our sins in his death and rose up and wants to live in us to empower us to live as we ought to. Like C. S. Lewis once observed, God invented us in a certain sense like how a man invents an engine. And when a car is made to run of gasoline, it would not run properly on anything else. In this same sense God made the “human machine,” as Lewis puts it, to run on himself.

The fuel we need in order to function the way he designed us is God himself and the food we need to keep our souls spiritually alive is God himself. We cannot expect to function properly on our own terms. Sexual fulfillment (a major hunger of our generation) with its proper joy, peace and security does not come through the pulling down of God’s boundaries. Without God at the centre of a sexual relationship, our much desired real and secure intimacy which we often believe can be found in sexual intercourse will prove elusive. Any person, Christian or not, who tries to outsmart God on this front will soon find that the last laugh is always God’s, not ours; restlessness, emptiness, meaninglessness, broken trust, guilt and shame will ultimately come resting at our door steps. There is definitely pleasure in sin but it is fleeting. Kenyan Christian Apologist, John Njoroge, insightfully says that, “Trying to meet our real needs without God is like trying to satisfy our thirst with salty water: the more we drink, the thirstier we become.  This is a sure path to various sorts of addictions.”

Even in our limited wisdom, we realize that playing our cherished game of football without any rules does not make it really enjoyable. So we have created rules, in all their imperfections. Even with the rules in place, some people hurt others and get hurt themselves; they offend and get offended during the course of the game. Can you imagine the unbridled chaos that would exist if there were no clear rules? In the same way, we are living in an increasing sexually chaotic culture today because we are desperately throwing off God’s moral restraints: husbands and wives are sleeping with people other than their spouses, young unmarried boys and girls are “training” themselves in the act of sex yet ironically the idea of marriage is appearing uncomfortable to them because of its widely acknowledged moral limitations. God has provided a framework within which sex can be properly enjoyed physically, emotionally and spiritually, and it is not outside marriage.

 In God’s scheme of things, according to Christian teachings, you do not need to be experienced in sex before marriage. This is because you have the whole of your married life to get to know your spouse’s body (God’s gift to you) as your bodies lock and your spirits mesh in sexual intercourse before God. With each encounter you get to know the body of your spouse even better to the glory of God. And here is the rich wisdom of the Christian faith (which may seem foolish on the face of it): Any person who genuinely relies on Jesus Christ before his marriage and also during his marriage will be given the grace and spiritual strength to stay the course of marriage should he find out that he has ended up with a sexually defective spouse. Tough to take in, I know, but I cannot make this truth any more appealing than it sounds right now in a time like ours. Marriage is not a selfish enterprise, where if you are not having a sexually exciting life everything else must come crushing down for everyone in it. Rather it is essentially a self-giving worship of God as you commit yourself exclusively to that one person, to love, to cherish and to seek the good of this person always.

 The Christian scriptures teach that all who trust in God will not be disappointed, ultimately. But break God’s precepts on sex (or on any other issue of life) and you can be sure that you will not only separate yourself from God and into a dark loneliness of the soul but you will also hurt yourself and others. Let us be clear: the idea that God is an unloving and unfeeling Judge up there who is simply watching down to see who has gone even slightly wrong so that he may swiftly punish him, is wrong. God wants to reconcile us back to himself. This is the Christian message to the world. God’s precepts in the Bible are intended to facilitate our happiness and not to stifle it. A parent sternly warns her child to steer clear of fire not because she wants to make the child miserable but because she wants to prevent the child from getting hurt or even dying. How can a child enjoy life when he is hurt or dead? If we separate ourselves spiritually from God (a spiritual death), through sin, how can we expect to receive God’s best? God knows the limits within which our best can be had. Stolen waters are not as sweet as we want to believe. Many people may look happy on the outside but on the inside they may be empty, restless, bitter and troubled because they have violated God in this area of sex.

Conclusion

We were made for God and if we spend ourselves in illegitimate pleasures, we will only come away broken and impoverished in our souls (and perhaps with physical scars too). No one enriches his soul by being sexually immoral. Rather we bankrupt ourselves spiritually; we feel the emptiness, restlessness of the soul, the guilt and shame of sin because we have divorced ourselves from God, who is our ultimate good. A more serious side to sexual immorality is that in the end, we must give account of our lives to the God. Some people realize this quicker than others but the important thing is that we are willing to take the necessary steps back to God through the path he has provided – faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. And to be clear, faith in Jesus Christ is not mere intellectual belief in Jesus as Lord but includes a willful commitment to live the whole of one’s life in reverence of him and his teachings. Christ offers forgiveness and rebirth even to the one who has wrecked himself or herself sexually yet is willing to repent. Are you a mess, sexually? Jesus gives hope and strength to those seeking to please God in their sexual lives.

Constructing the circle of faith

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Author: John A. Turkson

Looking back some five years ago, in Junior High School, Pre-technical Skills was one of my favourite subjects; specifically the Technical drawing aspect of it. I don’t know how they call it these days, considering the frequent alterations in our curricula over these past few years.  There was something special about following all those given instructions to construct various fascinating figures, the precision that came with practicing, the accuracy you needed to employ in your drawing to gain the highest mark, the habit you needed to form to present the neatest work possible, the instruments you needed, even the wide range of pencils required to perform specific tasks. Those were the days; when you’d go to school carrying your big drawing board as if you were that architect chosen by God to draw the plan of an entire new world!

 It sounds funny at first, but that is exactly who we are: architects chosen by God to draw for the world to see His grand blue-print of love! With the tip of the compass firmly planted in Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, we Christians are supposed to describe certain circles in the world with our lives. Christ must be the centre! Christ must necessarily be our focus and salvation, our goal! But all we see in the ‘goalpost’ today are ‘balls’ of gospels about wealth, work promotions, favours, concocted prophesies etc. when the purpose of the gospel message is to reach as many as we can with God’s gift of salvation. Christ is no more the centre and without the centre, a circle does not exist! As tiny as that point is, Jesus, His death and resurrection—the gospel—holds us together in one piece. When our lives are void of this key ingredient, we are lost in the haze of hopelessness and like a lead-less pencil, our lives are pointless. Jesus must be the focus!

 Johannes Kepler, upon analyzing the astronomical observations of one Tycho Brahe proposed three laws supposed to describe the nature of planetary motion. In the first law, he asserted that the orbit of a planet was elliptical with the Sun at one of the two foci. An ellipse is an almost-circle with two ‘centres’ called foci (singular: focus). At one of these foci, in our solar system, the Sun holds the planets in place. Christianity is a kind of solar system in which Jesus is the Sun. The strategic position of the Sun is imperative to our survival. As it stands now, the Earth is hanging in space because it is suspended by threads of gravitation from the Sun; likewise the other planets. It’s been said about Jesus, “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17, ESV). Jesus is our Sun, around whom we are supposed to revolve. Without him, we shall fall. Apart from him, we’d sink into darkness. But today, we hear about preachers instead of Jesus. The gospel which will lead to salvation has become relegated to the appendix session of our sermons when in the life of the early church, it was the main theme (Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, Paul’s famous Athenian sermon in Acts 17:16-31 and many more throughout the book of Acts). Apart from the Vine, the branches are as useful as firewood! If we are indeed bearing fruit apart from the Vine, I shudder to think we have decayed for some opportunistic multicellular fungus like mushroom to sprout on our ‘skin’! Have we not been deceived enough already? Look within and examine yourself: is Jesus at the centre?

 After the rains have fallen, the winged reproductive termites will want to congregate around a source of light. This forms part of their ‘nuptial’ flight ritual. In the process, they lose their wings. This mode of life is natural. The termite species will not survive without this process the same way we the branches cannot do without the Vine. Apart from the Vine, we lose our wings of faith. We lose our wings when we choose to hover around some drugging ‘miraculous’ light lit to trap our attention from the real Bull’s-eye, Jesus. Jesus promised us he’d send us a comforter, the Holy Spirit. Even as we believe Jesus has sent forth His Spirit to enable us bear fruit, the Holy Spirit will only flow through us through the Vine and not apart from Him. Jesus still remains a chief part of the equation! After all, the Holy Spirit was promised through Jesus to empower the Church (Acts 1:8)  to further the cause of reaching far and near with the gospel—that Jesus, died and resurrected and that it is only in believing in him that we are saved (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). The various gifts the Holy Spirit stirs in us are not to be used for amassing wealth, or procuring passports or visas, or promotions. The message must not be about how God wants us to be wealthy (really?), about prosperity, success etc but must be about Jesus in the right concentration—the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1-11). The dilution thereof makes the ‘solution’ fake (Galatians 1:6-10). The centre must be Jesus, otherwise the fruit is wrong and the bearer, false! (2 John1:9-11).

 Today, the Prophet, the Apostle, the Miracle worker and the Teacher are the celebrities. Where is Jesus? Today, we can only have faith when we have that ‘special’ wrist band on our wrist, that white handkerchief, or that bottle of ‘anointing’ oil, or that ‘Florida’ water. Where is the Author and Finisher of our faith? Today, it’s all about prophesies and miracles (I am in no way saying they are not real. God reveals to redeem. He also works awesome miracles) but have we forgotten about the fruit of the Spirit; about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; the very ingredients that make us Christians? Have you even examined that Prophet and seen the fruit in him? What did Paul really mean in 1 Corinthians 12:28-31? What is the most excellent way? In the subsequent chapter, we read about love. Does that celebrity Preacher come to mind as a lover of the needy, friend of the widow or a vendor of the recipe to prosperity? Or Jesus does— the pure definition of love? Is Jesus at the centre of the web of ‘spirituality’ you are entangled in?

 Jesus still stands in the centre of time—He virtually holds history together with wood drenched in His blood. Blood He shed for you and I to earn a place at the centre of our hearts. Where is Jesus in relation to your life—outside that circle, inside somewhere or at the centre?

 In constructing that circle of faith in your life, Jesus MUST be the centre. Without Him, “things fall apart and the centre cannot hold”!

Unmasking the Prosperity Gospel

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Author: Robert G. Coleman

About two and a half decades ago, the popular Christian message that one often heard in Ghana was about salvation, and this was traditionally presented as relating to sin, righteousness and eternal life. The call then was “Repent and accept Jesus and you will be saved.” Today, in many places, salvation is presented as an experience with Jesus Christ that will give us the tools and power to be successful in life, enable us rub shoulders with rich non-Christians and make us happy. In addition, the understanding of the word “faith” has also been changed. Faith used to be seen as a living trust in God so that even when things did not go well, we still trusted in the Lord. Today, faith is understood in many quarters as a power or force that is used to get anything we want. This modern interpretation of the gospel is what theologians call the Prosperity Gospel.

This gospel may be presented in different forms and even with different words, depending on who is preaching it, but the core of the message is that Jesus died so that the one who believes in him will become materially or financially wealthy and will never fall sick. Some of this gospel’s oft-used vocabularies include “sow a seed,” “abundance,” “breakthrough,” “anointing for success,” “inheritance,” “prophesy into your life,” “you are destined for greatness,” “claim it by faith,” “positive confession,” etc. Another unique thing about this gospel is that it thrives on changing or playing with the meaning of particular words. The meanings of scriptural verses are often twisted in order to present a semblance of biblical grounding for the prosperity gospel’s non-biblical message.

He Became Poor So That You Might Be Rich

Prosperity preachers usually tell their hearers that God wants them to be rich or to have material abundance. It is not uncommon to hear them use a verse like 2 Corinthians 8:9 which teaches that Jesus became poor so that those who believe in him might be rich. But did the author, Apostle Paul, actually mean that Jesus’ agenda for his followers was to make them rich materially or financially? Ironically, the reason why Paul even brought up this issue was because he was seeking for donations to help the believers in Judea, who were in need. Now think about it, if believers in Christ are automatically to be materially rich just because Jesus “became poor,” as it were, then why were the believers in Judea so in need that Paul had to get the assistance of the churches in Macedonia and Corinth (2 Cor. 8:1-4, 8-15). If it was case that the believers in Judea had failed to “claim their inheritance or birthright,” as the prosperity gospel language goes, all Paul needed to do was to tell them to either “claim it by faith” or “prophesy it into their lives,” but he did not do this because this was not the kind of Christianity he was preaching. It is also worth noting that the apostle made particular mention of the fact that the churches in Macedonia gave generously “even though they are very poor” (vs. 2 GNB) and he meant this in terms of material wealth (vs. 3).

In verse 9 however, when he uses the word “rich” he does not imply financial or material wealth. The context bears witness. He clearly states what he means by “rich” in verse 7 of the same passage: “You are so rich in all you have: in faith, speech, and knowledge, in your eagerness to help and in your love for us.” GNB. There is no mention, literal or implied, of material riches here. Indeed if by “rich” Paul had meant material or financial riches then his actions would be either a joke or an insult to the Judea believers, on whose behalf he was asking for donations, because they would already be materially rich by virtue of Christ having “become poor.” But the prosperity preachers have a different agenda: they want the believer in Christ to see riches as a birthright, something to be grasped, something the Christian is entitled to. But this only leads many believers to disillusionment, because when God has not promised something and you force yourself to believe that he has, disappointment is inevitable in the long run.

The Blessing Of Abraham

It is also common to hear prosperity preachers make reference to the blessing of Abraham in the book of Genesis, in the Old Testament. At the same time these preachers are inclined to use Galatians 3:29, in the New Testament, which says that “If you belong to Christ then you are the descendants of Abraham and will receive what God has promised” (GNB) to explain why they believe a Christian ought to be materially rich and fulfilled as Abraham was. A successful linking of this passage in Galatians to the Genesis narrative about Abraham’s blessings seems to provide a solid foundation for preaching material prosperity in the Church today. But there are some important things to note here.

What really is the blessing of Abraham? Abraham is called blessed in Galatians not because he received prosperity or material wealth or good health. Instead he is called blessed because he believed God and God accepted him, on the basis of his faith, as righteous (Gal. 3:6). It is this “righteous” status that the apostle Paul has in mind when he says that all who believe are blessed as Abraham was (Gal 3:9). Any person who believes in Jesus today is blessed because the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him. Galatians 3:13&14 explains: “But by becoming a curse for us Christ has redeemed us from the curse that the Law brings; for the scripture says, ‘Anyone who is hanged on a tree is under God’s curse. Christ did this in order that the blessing which God promised Abraham might be given to the Gentiles by means of Christ Jesus, so that through faith we might receive the Spirit promised by God.” GNB [Emphasis mine]

Paul’s meaning of “God’s promise to Abraham” is very clear. He does not have in his mind any idea about Abraham’s material blessing nor does he allow room for extending the meaning of this phrase beyond Abraham’s spiritual blessing of righteousness to include “everything” (Gen. 24:1) else in Abraham’s life, like the prosperity preachers like to do. The promise of blessing for the whole human race through Abraham, according to the Spirit-filled Apostle Paul is spiritual not worldly – it is the receipt of the Spirit promised by God. Interestingly, the author of Galatians, Apostle Paul, whose words prosperity preachers like to use to justify their material wealth preaching, actually wrote disapprovingly about people who try to interpret the Christian faith materialistically in 1 Timothy 6:5-12 saying:

“…They think that religion is a way to become rich. Well, religion does make us very rich, if we are satisfied with what we have. What did we bring into the world? Nothing! What can we take out of the world? Nothing! So then, if we have food and clothes that should be enough for us. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and are caught in the trap of many foolish and harmful desires, which pull them down to ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a source of all kinds of evil. Some have been so eager to have it that they have wandered away from the faith and have broken their hearts with many sorrows. But you, man of God, avoid all these things. Strive for righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Run your best in the race of faith, and win eternal life for yourself; for it was to this life that God called you when you firmly professed your faith before many witnesses.”(GNB) [Emphasis mine].

Paul lifts the attention of his readers from the material to what really matters – the fruits of the Holy Spirit: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

Sickness

Typical prosperity gospel does not allow room for a believer to get sick. It claims that a Christian, full of faith, full of the Holy Spirit and who has favour from the Lord simply cannot get sick; Jesus has redeemed the believer from every disease. Thus if you get sick it must be because of your sin or unfaithfulness. But as if to refute the prosperity gospel on this particular point, the Bible contains a record of several godly men (both those who can be described as physical seeds of Abraham and those who are spiritual seeds of Abraham) who suffered sickness yet the Scriptures put no blame on them: Elisha, a man with the “double portion anointing” died of a fatal disease (2 Kings 13:14); King Hezekiah, a man described as one who did what was pleasing to the Lord (2 Kings 18:3), actually got sick and almost died (2 Kings 20:1); Timothy, Apostle Paul’s son in the faith, had frequent stomach problems (1 Tim 5:23); Trophimus, one of the early Christians, was left in Miletus by Paul because he was ill (2 Tim 4:20); Epaphroditus, Paul’s fellow worker in the faith, fell ill and almost died (Philippians 2:25-30); the great Apostle Paul himself got ill physically (Gal 4:13). If the Prosperity preachers’ teaching is true then we must question whether the apostle Paul (whose letters we consider as part of Scripture) and his colleagues in the early church, who got sick, were truly the seeds of Abraham or even Christians at all.

Conclusion

In a developing country like Ghana, where many people struggle financially and with health issues, and where a lot of young people are upwardly mobile, the Prosperity Gospel sounds appealing and inspiring. But it would be in our interest to heed the warnings of Scripture and also the warning of Jim Bakker, the former American prosperity preacher, whose ministry was hit by financial scandals in the 1980s and was subsequently imprisoned. From prison, he repentantly wrote in a letter saying: “It’s time the call from the pulpit be changed from ‘Who wants a life of pleasure and good things, new homes, cars, material possessions etc?’ to ‘Who will come forward to accept Jesus Christ and the fellowship of his suffering?’ … I believe the heart of God is grieved when we cannot delay self-gratification for earthly things in exchange for life in eternity with Him.” Having deceived masses of people, Jim Bakker finally saw the light. I hope the prosperity preachers of our day and their sympathizers will also come to the same realization before it is too late. C. H. Spurgeon once insightfully noted that, “The old covenant was a covenant of prosperity. The new covenant is a covenant of adversity whereby we are being weaned from this present world and made meet for the world to come.”

While Biblical Christianity does not teach believers to actively seek poverty or sickness, it does warn against seeking worldly riches (2 Tim. 6:9&10) and worldly fulfilment (Matt. 16:26) and also entreats Christians to pray for the sick and care for the poor, both within the Church and outside of it. In the Christian life, whatever the believer does, he is to work at it with all his heart as though he were working for God and not for human beings (Col. 3:23). Hard work is encouraged. In the end, however, whether a believer becomes rich or poor or in-between, sick or healthy, the important thing is to have a living trust in Jesus. Faith, in the Christian sense, is a confidence in Jesus Christ and in his power so that even when his power does not take away the unpleasantness you face in this world, your confidence in him remains because of who Jesus is. He is a loving God who can be trusted to always do what is good for those who belong to him.

Prophetic Confusion

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Elijah fed by the Ravens

Any observant Ghanaian, Christian or not will notice a fad which seems to have caught Ghanaian Christianity – an infatuation with the “prophetic”. Today, we have “prophetic encounters”, “prophetic conferences” and all the what not. The favourite title of the modern man of God is now “Prophet”. It seems that everything that a lot of churches do today is prophetic. But has anybody actually stopped to ask themselves what the Bible says about prophets and their vocation, and what qualifies whatever they are doing to be prophetic?

Prophets in the Old Testament

The Jewish Bible (the Tanakh), from which we gain our Old Testament has 3 divisions – the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy), the Neviim (the Prophets) and the Ketuvim (the writings aka Job, Psalms, Songs of Songs etc). When Jesus said in Mt 5:17 that “Do not think that I come to destroy the Law or the Prophets”, he was referring to these 2 sections – the Torah and the Neviim.

The Neviim was further divided into the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah,Ezekiel and the other prophets) for one very clear reason – the former were those whose work was before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and exile, and the latter was those who were active during and after the Babylonian exile. One could say then that this division was pre-exilic and post-exilic.

Pre-exilic Prophets

In the books of the Former Prophets, we find prophets like Nathan, Samuel, Elijah and Elisha and their work. Anyone who pays serious attention to their work will find one thing clear throughout – they were concerned for the people’s relationship with God, ensuring that they will not depart from God’s commands. And when the people did, they made every effort to draw their attention to this. The one thing that the people of Israel prided themselves in was God’s special relationship with his chosen nation Israel, and a true prophet was therefore considered to be one whose ministry drew or kept the people’s mind on God and his will for the nation as encapsulated in the Torah.

And it was expected that if the leader of the nation at any point in time is doing what pleases God, he will lead the nation as a whole to do the right then and therefore God will continue to bless the nation and not take his favour away from it. This is why there seems to be a very close relationship (and not necessarily a happy one) between most pre-exilic prophets and the kings of Israel – between Nathan/Samuel and David, Elijah and Ahab, Elisha and Jehu etc. There are instances where their ministry involves helping individuals who may have one need or the other (including Elijah and the widow of Zarepath in 1 Ki 17:7-16), but their main task is to be the watchman of the people of Israel, and that was evidently clear in their ministries. Elijah and the incident of the priests of Baal is a clear example.

Post-Exilic Prophets

The prophets who lived close to the conquering of Judah by the Nebuchadnezzar carried on the same function as their forbearers – warning the nation of Israel of the coming destruction due to their hard heartedness and disobedience of God, which was bound to make God abandon them to their own fate. For example, God tells Jeremiah to go to the temple built by Solomon, and tell them not to think because they have the temple, it means they can do all they want. Of course, they didn’t listen (Jer 7). Interestingly by then false prophets had also come in their midst, who were doing what most false prophets do.

“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.‘Peace, peace,’ they say,when there is no peace” (Jer 6:13-15).

After the destruction did come, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and the rest later on spoke words of comfort from God that he will return to them and save them (mostly echoing what Moses said in Exodus 30). But this return always was predicated by they themselves returning to serve God more faithfully. Throughout all this, we see a clear focus of their ministry on God’s plan for Israel, and by extension for the world through Israel. And just like the previous focus of God’s will being achieved through good kings, they prophecy again of a Messiah through whom God’s return will be truly felt not only by the chosen nation, but by the Gentiles as well. This Messiah will conquer the enemy, rebuild and cleanse the temple so that God will return to it in glory like he did before in 2 instances i.e. when the Tabernacle was first built and when Solomon dedicate his temple. Lastly God will then bring resurrection and judgment to the world including Jews, and reward those who had been faithful to God.

Prophets in the New Testament

Its 500 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, the beginning 70 years of which been spent in servitude to the kings of Babylon. Since the return from exile, a new temple had been built and yet God’s “Shekinah” hadn’t descended on it like before. Though they lived in their own country, Greece and after them Rome were now their bosses, and there was no sign of the resurrection event or of God’s judgment. Messianic expectations were very high, as people waited for God to do the rest of things the prophets had spoken of.

We see the first mention of a prophet in Lk 2, where an eighty-fourish year old woman called Anna is named as a prophet having received baby Jesus at the temple (v 36-38). Previously a certain righteous and devout Simeon who had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (v 25-33) is also given a chance to see the baby, and they all thank God for the same thing – the redemption of the people of Israel has finally come in the person of baby Jesus.

We see in the Gospels the life of John the Baptist, who is considered a prophet by the people, not because he was saying “peace peace”, but was rather preaching quite unpleasant things about what the future held for them – “John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?’”(Lk 3:7). And quite similar to the rocky relationship between the previous prophets and the leaders of the nation Israel, we find Herod arrests him because of the things John says about him and ultimately John the baptist is executed.

Jesus’s life as a prophet was no more comfortable to the establishment than his cousin John. Jesus went about healing, teaching, feeding and many more. But the point that many readers of the Gospels fail to see about Jesus prophetic ministry is how close Jesus’s ministry was to the other prophets who came before him. The reason why Jesus performed miracles, fed thousands and healed many was to point them to one thing – the kingdom of God and its fulfillment which would come through Jesus himself. In this way, he was not different at all from the other prophets – pointing to God’s will for the world through his nation Israel, but focusing that hope on himself.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, we see his disciples taking up the task of being a witness to the announcement of God’s kingdom and of the reign of Jesus, saying that by defeating death, Jesus is King of the world. Again, we see opposition to this announcement, from their hometown Judea all the way to Rome. This opposition is not just from the ordinary Joe walking about, but from the leaders themselves. See the obvious pattern of what prophetic life and ministry leads to? Not praise, but condemnation.

We see an example of someone called a prophet in the New Testament in the person of Agabus (Ac 21:10-14). Agabus predicts Paul’s arrest if he goes to Jerusalem, which happens as expected. What most people fail to realize about this event is that this will seriously affect Paul’s ability to continue carrying out his God given mission of announcing the kingdom of God to the Gentiles. This is not Paul going on a normal business trip to probably buy some raw materials to expand his tentmaking business (as he was a tentmaker by vocation), this was a trip related to his work for the kingdom of God, and he responds that he was“ ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (v 13).

So What’s Gone Wrong

There are multiple other angles to explore on the subject of prophetic vocation and work, but I’ll pause here and come to what prevails today. And I can’t help but be appalled by what is going on today amongst Christians in Ghana. We are busy jumping from one “prophetic nonesense” to the next. We gather people who will tell us “peace, peace” when in fact our house is seriously burning. We prefer those who will twist the word of God to give us a jolt of personal motivation to pursue our selfish goals, whiles we totally ignore the corporate and cosmic dimensions of the kingdom of God. We live in a nation with supposedly 70% christian population, but with corruption up to our jaws. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing by the second, and yet we are busy collecting more money to enrich the clergy and pursue more magnificent infrastructure projects which the poor amongst us will never have access to. We have become a people driven only by individualistic pursuits, looking in the bible for phrases and verses that will give us a boost in the pursuit of personal success. We are the beginning and end of our world, and the political structures pay less and less attention to us because we’ve lost all moral authority to challenge the establishment. Our messages is no longer met with the hostility that prophetic ministries truly elucidate. Sin is no longer something shameful to us, but something we glory in and give nice names. We no longer desire truth that will push us to open our eyes to Jesus’s mission to the world and how we may participate in it, and rather only gather to hear sweet things from our preachers.

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Tim 4:3)

If prophecy is not making us uncomfortable in our comfort zones; if it’s not encouraging us to be strong whiles we pursue Jesus and his will for the world through his new Israel – his church; if prophecy is not showing us as a people together what to do in preparing for God’s future, but is only here to speak to our personal desires for self-fulfillment; if prophecy is not leading us to be a changed people, who place the other’s needs above ours; if prophecy is not leading us to show in our own selves, to take up in our own bodies and as churches the announcement that Jesus is indeed running the world – that the poor are friends with the rich, the friendless find friends, the rejected find a new faithful family all through the active work (not just talk) of Christians, please don’t call it prophecy. Any other name will suffice.

The Two Kingdoms

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I’m sure to most Christians, this title will evoke thoughts of the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of darkness. Well, you have every right to. However, my thoughts today are not focused on a comparison of those two, much us they do exist in the Christian conversation. Today, my focus is on the kingdom coming and the kingdom come, because in as much as we do mention the coming kingdom in our discourse, there seems very little mention of the kingdom come, and it’s effects on our lives, attitudes and actions.

The Gospels do make use of the phrase “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Heaven” very often (in fact over 50 times), but have we ever stopped to ask what exactly it is, and what it meant to those in Jesus Christ’s day? Today you hardly hear a message from the pulpit about this kingdom, yet the Gospels are full of Jesus saying “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. Secondly, Jesus does inform us that his kingdom is not only a far away reality, but one in which we now live in as a result of his coming onto the earth – “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you”.Luke 17:20-21 (KJV). I prefer “among you” rather, but then I digress.

One of the clear statements about the kingdom come (not the future “kingdom coming”) is recorded in Luke 4:16. After Jesus has been presented with a scroll of Isaiah the prophet in a Nazarene synagogue, he proceeds to read from what we now know as Isaiah 61.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19 NIV).

He then proceeds to say that this prophecy is fulfilled in him. Isaiah 61 has always been considered a Messianic prophecy, speaking of what the Messiah will do when he establishes his kingdom. Therefore once Jesus read that and says that “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”, he was without doubt stating the claim that he was the Messiah, though he didn’t say it directly. And if that was so, then the kingdom of the Messiah prophesied by the prophets was not just a future realization, but a real thing now. No wonder the people were amazed – because the hope of their fathers is about to be fulfilled in their age.

And trust me, the people were truly waiting for a Messiah, for most of them were quite despondent. They had just returned some centuries back from exile, and weren’t being ruled again by the house of David any more, but by all kinds of other leaders – from the Hasmonean dynasty (from the Judas Maccabeus lineage) to the Herodian one (King Herod, Herod Agrippa etc), both of which were at least Jewish; to being directly ruled by Roman appointees like Pontius Pilate. Their High Priest was no longer from the family of Zadok in the tribe of Levi as was always the case historically, but now could be any person who could pay the highest bribe to the current political leader.

And their Roman rulers were exacting quite a heavy toll on them. Apart from having to pay their normal temple tax i.e. tithe (which in those days was more than the 10% we have come to accept today, but rather closer to 23%), they were now also supposed to pay tax to the Romans (hence tax collectors like Zaccheus and Levi). And the religious fundamentalists, referred to as the Zealots, who felt that it was unlawful for God’s people to be ruled by Gentiles, and for them to be paying taxes to them and the like, were continuously formenting trouble by violently attacking Roman installations and symbols of Roman rule, as well as anyone of the leaders of the Jews who they felt were predisposed to Roman manipulation. Barrabas who was exchanged for Jesus Christ is a typical example.

This and a whole lot more meant that a lot of people were looking forward to someone who could come and break the chains of bondage that Rome had put on them, and set them free. They were looking for a political solution, and really looked to the old days of the David and Solomon etc. as the golden days. In this light then, indeed they could not have understood Jesus in any other way.

And yet the most striking part about Jesus claiming of Isaiah 61 is his stopping short of the rest of the v 2, specifically “and the day of vengeance of our God”. To most people, without an exacting of “the vengeance of our God”, there was no way the current political situation of slavery to Rome will change. But Jesus didn’t go in that direction, for he came this time to achieve something, and that must be achieved in this dispensation. He never said the day of vengeance of God will not come, but rather that he had come not to exact judgement, but to extend mercy. This is exactly what the beginning of Isaiah 61 dealt with, but since they were more interested in a political solution involving the removal of Roman rule, the Jews rejected him and crucified him.

But I will not dwell on their rejection, neither will I dwell on the kingdom that is to come in which the vengeance will be exacted, but I will dwell on the Kingdom Come, the Kingdom Now. For it is entirely possible (as is evident throughout history to date in all nations) for a people to live in sovereignty, but still be plagued with the effects of sin. The question then is what is the nature of the Kingdom Now? Who is a part of the Kingdom Now and what effect should it have on it’s participants?

One of the cardinal requirements of the OT which unfortunately most Israelites were reluctant to apply for very obvious reasons was the Jubilee. Every 7 years, Israelites were to leave the land fallow for it to regenerate. After 7 cycles of such 7 years i.e. 49 years, the 50th year should be declared a year of liberty, a Jubilee (Lev 25). No farming was to be done, every Jew sold into slavery was to be freed and all land sold to another person as a result of poverty and need was to be returned. This was to afford the people a chance to start again, and in that vain was truly called a year of liberty. See Unger’s Bible Dictionary on Jubilee:

“It would seem that there must have been a perfect remission of all debts in the year of Jubilee from the fact that all persons who were in bondage for debt, as well as all landed property of debtors, were freely returned. Thus the Jubilee year become one of freedom and grace for all suffering, bringing not only redemption to the captive and deliverance from want to the poor, but also release to the congregation of the Lord form the sore labour of the earth, and representing the time of refreshing (Ac 3:19) which the Lord provides for his people. For in this year every kind of oppression was to cease and every member of the covenant people find his Redeemer in the Lord, who brings him back to his possession and family.” (Festivals, Jubilee, pp 352, Unger’s Bible Dictionary)

It is evident from the above that the prophet Isaiah had the restoration of the Jubilee in mind in the 61st chapter of his prophecies, and Jesus wouldn’t have disappointed in re-quoting him. Evidence of the fact that Jesus had the same thing in mind is expounded in the Lord’s prayer, which when properly interpreted, should read:

“Remit us our debts, as we ourselves have also remitted them to our debtors”(Matt 6:12)

and not the “spiritualized” version that we were taught in Sunday school referring to “sins” instead.

“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”

Note that all of these requirements of the Jubilee were not to be implemented by God, but by the people themselves. God wasn’t going to work a miracle to set the enslaved Israelite free or get back the poor man’s land for him. The requirement was enshrined in the law that they obey. Therefore the poor, the captive and the heartbroken would receive their release based on the willingness of their fellow brethren to adhere to this set down law.

It is noted by OT and NT historians alike that this was one of the most difficult practices for the people of Israel, especially for the well-to-do. In fact, many people just ignored it, and some tried to create loop holes in the law to escape canceling debts owed or releasing land back to their owners. We could go into how they achieved these except that time and space will not allow us to. But the point is moot that such observance was very minimal as the years went by. No wonder then that people (including the prophet Isaiah himself) expected that in that Messianic kingdom, this Messiah will enforce the observance of these laws, bringing freedom to the poor, captive and destitute.

I posit and believe you will agree with me the notion that the Kingdom Now is experienced in the body of Christ – his church. The question that lies before us then is that if we do claim to be living in the Kingdom Come, whiles we wait for the Kingdom Coming, how far have we gone in our practice of the Kingdom Come’s requirements?

For it is within the church that the poor are able to live out the good news – where they are counted worthy of participation in the riches of the kingdom which the king has placed at the disposal of the rich amongst them. It is within the church that the broken hearted receive strength endued from the Son to know that they are also loved and cherished no matter where they have been and what they’ve done before coming to him. And I’m not talking about the individual feeling that Jesus loves them alone, but also that they are in a community of people who love them as much as Christ does. It is within the church that captives and prisoners are integrated into a community of brethren who open their doors and their lives to them, instead of treating them like castaways. It is within the church that the healing power of Jesus Christ is experienced, when all hope is lost. It is within the church that the class barriers and elitism is broken, not built up and entrenched.

And then to my favourite part of Christ’s radical declaration: It is in the church that the year of the Lord’s favour can be truly experienced. I know what some of my friends think with any whiff of reference to “the Lord’s favour”, but it is very evident here that the year of the Lord’s favour is not about the individualistic name-it-claim-it that we are used to. In fact, it is quite socially radical than our own myopic personal circumstances lead us to dwell upon.

Maybe it’s time we begin to think of how Jesus intends we fulfil his kingdom that is amongst us. Maybe it’s time we put our money where our mouths are and create systems that liberate, not enslave men and women who belong to Christ. Just like the Jubilee, God is not going to do a miracle to have his kingdom established amongst us. We have to accept the guidance of his word and Spirit, as it leads us into self-sacrifice and servanthood for the advancement of each other in fulfilling the purpose that Christ himself has already said – “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”. It requires a change in our attitudes, priorities, desires and wishes. So, any pundits for the Kingdom Come?