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Looking Back to Look Ahead

Looking Back to Look Ahead

It has been said that those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.

We at Corporate Prayer Resources have found that history and its cousin archaeology are invaluable resources for the Church to draw on. That is why we have made the book Babylon: A Spiritual Journey Through Time and The Nations available.

Over the past two centuries our knowledge of ancient history has expanded greatly. We can now verify some Biblical events with hard evidence, such as the fallen walls of Jericho. Evidence gathered from outside the Holy Land confirms the historicity of many Bible texts, such as Assyrian failure to take Jerusalem. Science has now found that all humans have a common mother (Eve), that there was a catastrophic decrease in the human population (Noah’s Flood), and that at one time humans spoke a single language (Tower of Babel). Thus, history teaches us that we can trust in the accuracy of the Bible.

History and the Bible teach us much about God’s dealings with humans. God judged the Egyptians by humiliating their gods, and He struck Assyria at its greatest point of pride, its army. The remains of sacrificed children found in Canaan have shed light on why God decreed the total destruction of the Canaanites. But we also find that God is merciful, as when he gave evil King Ahab a second chance after he repented. God’s ultimate act of mercy, sending us the Christ, echoes down through history as the Kingdom of God expanded throughout the Roman Empire and then throughout the earth.

Our knowledge of the past helps us to focus our prayers by revealing the spiritual roots of the forces acting against the expansion of the Kingdom. Some years back a group of intercessors went to Ephesus to confront the pagan “Queen of Heaven”, failing in their mission because Ephesus is now controlled by the Islamic spirit, not the pagan spirit. Others have mistaken the Freemasons for a pagan institution when in fact they are dominated by the secular spirit. On the other hand, we have seen breakthroughs on prayer journeys where we have understood the history of spiritual bondage in the nations.

Finally, understanding the past is a key to understanding Bible prophecy. For example, Daniel’s prophecy of the “70 7’s” can be traced with historical data to confirm the start of Jesus’ ministry in 26 AD. Many of the prophecies in the book of Revelation can be matched with historical events to help us understand the times we live in. One of those prophecies, The Woman Riding the Beast in Revelation chapter 17, is a picture of the history of the world from Babylon to the Antichrist, and forms the outline of our Babylon book.

So the past is indeed a key to the future, as it confirms the Scriptures, teaches us God’s ways, shows us how to pray for the nations, and illuminates prophecy.

Let us pray that the Lord will help us use the past to help guide our footsteps in the year to come.
And may you have a blessed New Year.

,
Publisher

The Lesson of May Day

 

            Some years ago we counseled with a young man who considered suicide because of a $5,000 debt. That’s when we learned that its not the amount of debt that matters, it’s the burden of the debt on the soul.

 

            Now we hear that hard economic times are being blamed for a 31% increase in suicide from 1999 to 2010. Since the beginning of the 2008 recession more people have died in the suicide epidemic than were killed in auto accidents. The hardest hit group is no longer teens or the elderly, but adults ages 35 to 64, for whom suicide are now the fourth most common cause of death. And middle aged men suffer most of all, with suicides out numbering women by 4 to 1. 

 

            It should not be too surprising that men are the primary victims of the suicide epidemic. Men feel the responsibility of providing for their families, and feel condemnation when they cannot. Their self esteem is often derived from their work, with devastating results when the job is lost. Men learn not to communicate their emotional needs and many are too proud to ask for help. In a prolonged economic slump, hopelessness takes hold and some begin to feel that the world would be better off without them.

 

            Our experience has been that people can escape from debt and prolonged financial bondage, but the real problem here is spiritual, not financial. The antidote to failure and condemnation is to realize that the whole Christian religion is built on forgiveness for our past mistakes and moving forward without guilt. Self esteem comes from the value placed on us by God, whose children we are, and can be realized not just through work but also through Church, family, and friends. Men may not sit in a circle and sing Kum-Ba-Ya, but they can learn to humble themselves and let others help them. And they can realize that they are still needed by their friends, families, and Churches.

 

            Reaching out to men in trouble is hard to do because they hide their feelings and often behave badly. The first thing you can do is to involve them in some activity to keep them busy and slowly rebuild self esteem. Share your own failures openly and never insult them by being patronizing. Let them know that their life is valuable by asking for their advice and help. Share your faith if you can, pointing to a better future. And make ‘em laugh.

 

            Our young friend rediscovered his hope in life with a little encouragement and little help. Hope was the key to the rest of his life.

 

            So, keep hope alive and stay alive. There is so much to live for.

Publisher

Martin Luther’s Bad Idea

             On March 10, 1528 Martin Luther published a book which changed the course of history. And not for the better.

            His book, “The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars,” proposed that the State should establish a social welfare system to replace the Church in caring for the poor. Up until that time the Church had made care of the poor a centerpiece of its ministry. Giving to the poor was seen as a sign of Christian virtue and a sign of spiritual vitality in the Church.

            Luther’s proposal was based on the idea of the State Religion, which had been a fixture of Christian life since the days of the Roman Empire (see our Blog of 2/27/13 “The Sword and the Spirit”) . In his view the Religious State should meet personal needs while the State-Sponsored Church should restrict itself to spiritual activities. This idea took hold throughout Protestant Northern Europe as the State began taxing citizens to pay for relief for the poor. It was the beginning of the modern Welfare state.

            Luther failed to take into account the possibility that the Religious State would quit being religious, pushing the Church out of community life. Beginning with the French Revolution, the State began to see itself as the source of Welfare not just for the poor, but for the whole society. With Godliness marginalized in secular States, the State itself became a substitute for God in the socialist, national socialist, and communist philosophies. Leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao gained power by promising to use the godlike power of the State to bring prosperity to the masses. What came instead was poverty and death.

            The ghost of Luther’s bad idea still haunts the world today. The Welfare States of Greece, Italy, and Spain are facing financial collapse, and their European neighbors are not far behind. In countries like Venezuela ruthless leaders destroy their national economies to buy power from the masses. Even the rich United States is marching toward a crisis as its Welfare State become unsustainable. No one knows what will happen with these nations become unable to keep their Welfare promises.                  

            What Luther and the modern Welfare States have forgotten is that God will not share His Glory with usurpers. Like the a gods of Egypt humbled in the Exodus, God has shown that the socialist, communist, and Welfare states are not the gods of provision they claim to be. It is not a question of if, but when, failure will occur. The real question remaining is what the Church will do about it.

            We must pray that the Church will rise up to the crisis and the opportunity coming from the collapse of the Welfare State. The crisis will come as people’s needs are no longer met by Government, and social order breaks down. The opportunity comes if the Church follows God’s admonition to care for the poor, revitalizes Church institutions for the poor, and creates a Godly order in the midst of chaos.    

            Let us pray that the people will once again look to God as their source as they one did before Luther’s bad idea led us astray.

Publisher

The Sword and the Spirit

                                    

 On this date in 380 AD Roman Emperor Theodosius made Christianity into the official state religion. It was one of the most catastrophic events in Church history.

Up until the time Constantine legalized the church in 313 AD, the great strength of the Church was the fact that the Kingdom of God resided within the believers. Under Constantine the Church became respectable and began to attract the ambitious and worldly who would make a show of outward piety without an inward transformation. After 380 AD, the Church was swamped with unconverted pagans and the outward rituals replaced the inner power for most Church members. And the Church adopted pagan holidays and rituals to make the pagans feel more at home.

The first to clothe themselves in the new mantle of the State religion were the emperors themselves. The major church Bishops at Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem also caught the power bug. Within less than a century the Jewish Bishop of Jerusalem was gone, the Antioch church was forced out to become the Nestorian Church, and the Egyptian Christians were forced out to become the Coptic Church. The Bishop of Rome was forced to trade Church recognition for military protection in Western Europe in order to remain independent of the eastern Roman emperor and the Bishops of Constantinople. In 1054 AD the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox finally split and went their separate ways.

The marriage between Church and State meant that religious questions would be solved with the sword instead of the Spirit. Early victims of the sword included the Arian Christian Visigoths and the Coptic Christians. Instead of sending missionaries, the State Church sent armies to forcibly convert the heathen and the heretics. When the European Church split between Protestants and Catholics the rulers forced their own views to be followed in their realms and millions of Christians were martyred. Sadly, only in recent history has the concept of religious freedom been accepted in Christian nation.

As we escape the long dark night of State religion it is good to remember Paul’s advice in the 14th chapter of Romans to tolerate the faith of our Christian brothers and Peter’s advice from his first letter to treat non-Christians with gentleness and respect. Finally, our Popes, Archbishops, Bishops, Pastors, and Elders have cast aside their swords and are (mostly) trying to follow Christ’s command to love their brothers. The Spirit has triumphed over the sword.

So as we look forward to, for example, the upcoming Papal election, all Christians, whether Catholic or not, can celebrate a new page turning for the whole Church. Not because the Pope carries the sword, but because he carries the Spirit instead.