Harrals' Herald

Finally!

2011-07-31T19:55:00.000+02:00

We haven't mentioned here all the good news in our lives lately, but we probably should!

Our house is sold! Praise God for that. It sold after only two weeks on the market, and last Thursday the contract was signed with the new owners. They are a young Christian couple with a young daughter named Zoe, and it seems that they will do a very good job being a light in the neighborhood.

Our launch date to Benin is set: August 30, 2011. The tickets are purchased, for less than we had thought we would have to pay, and the packing has begun in earnest.

Our plan is to spend a few weeks in Cotonou, the capital of Benin, to get to know the church leaders there, and then to attend Phase 2 Training and an African Missionary Retreat in Lome, Togo, about 4 hours from Cotonou by car.

After Phase 2 Training we plan to move to Natitingou, the city where Suzy Baldwin and Ulrike Baur have been working with the Otammari project for a dozen years or so.

We are grateful, overwhelmed, relieved, and stressed as we look forward to this new phase of our lives. We know the Lord has been working to get us to Benin at the right time, and we look forward to seeing what He has in store for us there.

Thank you for your prayers, and please keep praying for us. We need you to.

House for Sale

2011-07-01T22:00:00.001+02:00

Here is a link to the ad for our house.

http://www.finn.no/finn/realestate/homes/object?finnkode=29247202

Various Worldview Models

2011-07-01T21:58:00.000+02:00

The Perfect Worldview Model, Part 2

Throughout our training with AFM, there has been a heavy emphasis on understanding what worldview is. Various books and teachers have shared several models and illustrations with us, each model having a slightly different angle on the subject. Understanding worldview is central in the work of effective church planting, therefore we have been presented with several models. Here I would like to give a short overview of the various models we have been exposed to. Later several of them will be further expanded.

Before mentioning the various models and illustrations, however, I want to try to give a simple definition of what worldview is.

Worldview is our view of the world in which we live. It is our underlying paradigm, the window through which we view our environs. Worldview is formed by life experiences. It begins to be formed from birth, and is our way of interpreting reality. Worldview is that which tells us what is real. Worldview tells us how to interpret the input that we receive through our senses. All people have a worldview, although few are aware of it. Our worldview determines how we act in any given situation. Worldview can be changed, but it is a long and difficult process to do so, since worldview is formed from day one of our lives.

The Iceberg Model. This is the simplest model, and can hardly even be considered a worldview model, since it does not really address the subject of worldview at all. The concept is that just as most of an iceberg is hidden below the surface of the water, most of the elements that compose a culture are hidden below the visible surface. Actions, behavior, clothes, products, and tools of a culture are visible, while behind them are beliefs, desires, values, and ideals, which are not easily seen. The visible aspects of a culture are easy to see and identify, while the invisible elements of a culture are not obvious at first to an outsider, and cannot be discerned without careful and deep study of a culture.

This model is useful for helping us to understand that visible elements of a culture are a small part of a culture, and to help us realize that the bulk of a culture lies below the surface, hidden to outside eyes.

The Onion Model. This model is a series of concentric circles that represent various aspects of a culture. The outer layer represents the behavior, tools, products, and institutions of a culture. The next one or two layers towards the center represent the beliefs, desires, values, attitudes, and ideals of a culture. They are hidden, but are known to the members of the culture. The center of the onion represents the worldview of a culture. It is assumed, unconscious, and not easily discerned, either by the members of the culture, or by outsiders.

This model is truly a worldview model. It shows how worldview lies at the center of a culture, supporting all the elements that make up a culture, but well-hidden from sight. This model is a good way of understanding worldview as a concept, but is not very useful in helping to understanding what a particular worldview is, or in discovering a worldview of others, or of ourselves. It is good for a classroom, but not very useful in the field.

The Tree Model. This is simply another way of looking at the Onion Model. The leaves of a tree represent the visible elements of a culture, like behavior, tools, institutions, etc. The trunk represents the beliefs, desires, values, etc., which is known but not as obvious as the leaves. The root of the tree represents the worldview itself, the source of all the rest of the tree, but hidden from sight and hard to expose.

Just as with the Onion Model, this model is good for helping us understand how the various parts of a worldview are interrelated, but not for helping us actually analyze a worldview and culture.

The Three Levels of Memory. This is more of a fact of how the brain works than a worldview model. The first level of memory is Learned Memory. The things we have been taught or have read are on this level, and are most-easily forgotten. The second level is Patterned Memory. These are memories based on what we have seen modeled by others, or on things we have personally done repeatedly. These memories sit very deep and long, and the brain is physically changed at this level of memory, as neural pathways are formed between brain cells. Habits are on this level. The deepest level of memory is Episodic Memory, which is central to forming our understanding of reality, or in other words, our worldview. Episodes, especially those involving powerful emotions of joy, fear, or pain, actually change the chemistry of the brain, and affect how we view life for the rest of our lives.

The Excluded Middle Model, or The 2x3 Table Model. This model is depicted by a table of two columns and three rows. The left column represents things that are organic or personal, and the right column things that are mechanistic or impersonal. The top row represents supernatural individuals or forces that are otherworldly. The middle row represents supernatural individuals or forces that are of this world, and the bottom row represents natural individuals and forces.

This model proved to be far more successful to help me to begin to understand my own worldview. I personally find this model to be very useful in explaining how we view reality, and have seen that others have also had their eyes opened by understanding this model. I will later give much more time to explaining this model, which I think shows us the holes in our cultural description of reality, and helps us to see what needs to be filled in order for us to reach a holistic Christian understanding of life.

In Western culture, life is interpreted in terms of the bottom row of the table. Science and philosophy seeks to interpret all of life in natural, observable, and understandable terms. As Christians, we add the top layer to our belief system, but often we do not live lives of interaction with supernatural forces. Our culture has sought to remove the supernatural, and unless we have powerful experiences that counteract the cultural upbringing we have been formed in, the middle part of the chart will remain blank for us. We will give verbal assent to believing in the supernatural, but our lives do not demonstrate that we have any real contact with more than natural power.

The Soccer Game Model. This is another model that is more about culture than worldview, but was very useful for me to give me a deeper understanding of what life is focused on, and what God wants our lives to be focused on. Dale Goodson is the source of this model. If life was a soccer game, who would the players be? Who would be the enemy? What would the ball be? How do we score a goal, and how do we prevent the enemy from scoring a goal?

If the early church, as depicted in the Book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament, was a soccer game, what was the ball? Who was the team owner, and who was the enemy? Who were the players, and how did they score a goal?

Comparing the list of players and soccer game elements from our culture to those of the early Christian Church, what is different? In what ways is our focus today different from what it was for the apostles and church 2000 years ago, and in what ways is the church mixing things that should not be mixed?

The Dale Goodson Model. Dale might object to having this model called after him. I will have to ask him about that. I don’t know what else to call this model, however, so will leave it like this for now. Dale, one of the main trainers at AFM, is an expert on worldview. He has developed a model for understanding what worldview is composed of, and how to study and define the worldview of a culture.

This model is comprehensive and detailed. It is graphically displayed as a house built on a foundation. The house is a particular culture. The foundation is the worldview of that culture. The foundation itself is based on a broader foundation, which is life experience. Life experience is in turn based on other background information.

Worldview is split up into several elements, including Players, Core Values, Tools, System, Theme, and a Worldview Goal. These are all inter-related and connected to each other, and are dimly understood by me! Dale is probably the foremost expert in the Adventist church on the subject of worldview, and his classes took us deeper into these subjects than I will be able to do in these posts. I will try to pick out the elements that I have begun to understand, and to illustrate them with some of Dale’s stories, and some of my own, as well as Bible stories.

This model is the most practical of all the models we have been taught. By understanding this model and the elements that it is composed of, we can learn how to break down a worldview into various elements, and to then grasp how people think and why they think that way. We can then work to actively form their worldview into something that will help them interpret reality in a more holistic way. By understanding the worldview of ourselves and of the people we are seeking to serve, we can better understand God and help them to do the same.

Our goal as church-planters is not just to understand worldview. Our goal is to help people to be reconciled to God. That means that our goal is to help people develop spiritual maturity, correctly interpreting reality, correctly applying the Bible principles to their lives, and continually growing into the likeness of Jesus. In this process, we want to avoid syncretism, which is becoming Christians but continuing to relate with God out of a non-Christian worldview. By understanding where people are coming from, by understanding their worldview, we can best help them to be reconciled to God, to actively engage in the Great Controversy, while avoiding syncretism. The Dale Goodson Model is designed to help us do exactly that.

The You Model. Whether you know it or not, you are a worldview model. As you live your life, however you happen to live it, you are modeling your understanding of reality. For those who are watching you, you are a model of your own worldview. The closer your worldview is to the Biblical worldview, the more effective you will be in helping others to understand God’s will for them and for the world.

The God Model. God has a worldview. God has an understanding of reality. As a Bible-believing Seventh-day Adventist Christian, I call this worldview the true worldview. I call it the Way we all should live, the Truth about life, and actually Life itself. Jesus said that about Himself, in John 14:6. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

Jesus is God’s Worldview Model. Jesus came to earth, the Word of God made flesh, God’s thought made audible, to help us to understand how to interpret reality. He came to model the true interpretation of reality, because we learn best when we see something modeled. He came to give us powerful life experiences, to help us to re-write our dysfunctional worldview, so that our understanding of reality around us would be complete.

Jesus modeled the way God views reality for us. He is the perfect worldview model. His life is the perfect revelation of what is real, and how to interact with what is real. As we behold the life of Jesus, our worldview is changed. As we read and meditate on the life of Jesus, as given in the Bible, we are changed. As we interact with the living Jesus in our lives today, we are transformed. All other theoretical models pale in comparison to the worldview-altering Person who created us and can re-create us. Only as we have first been transformed by Jesus can we become effective worldview models for others.

Jesus Rewrites Worldview

2011-06-10T21:01:00.000+02:00

The Worldview Model, Part 1

“As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?’” John 9:1, 2.

“So, Lord,... Master,... we are wanting to get something straight here. We are realizing that You are teaching us a new way to interpret reality, and we want to get our facts and our theology straight. As You know, there is a battle going on about such subjects as this one. This man has been here for a long time, and a while back we heard some liberals and conservatives, or I mean, some Sadducees and Pharisees, discussing this issue. We want to know the truth, straight from You. Honestly, Lord, sometimes You seem like a liberal, sometimes like a conservative, so it seems like we are just going to have to ask You this kind of question about each individual case. So, tell, us, why is this guy blind? Somebody obviously sinned for him to be blind, and since he was born blind, we are wondering who the guilty person is. We want to have our theology straight, Lord, so that we can have the right answer to give if we ever get involved in a debate like the one we saw.”

The disciples of course were incapable of seeing the deeper basis of their question. It would take them months or years before they would understand that they were unconsciously assuming that this man was being punished for sin, and that God was the one punishing him. They were wanting to figure out a very superficial issue, while their underlying worldview on matters of sickness and sin and punishment was unaltered, and would have remained unaltered if Jesus had answered their question with one of the options that they presented Him.

“Jesus answered, ‘It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.’” John 9:3.

Guys, disciples, listen to Me. You need to learn to understand reality in a completely fresh and new way. I will not answer this question based on the options you have given Me, because you need to see that there are other reasons for this man’s condition. In the future, I do want you to be able to correctly interpret situations like this one, but I am not interested in you reducing a human life to a theological debate. This is a chance for the glory of God to be revealed. That is what I want you to see from now on.

Then, in the moment when the hearts of the disciples were open to learning, Jesus demonstrated what He had just said. He let them witness a powerful experience that could not fail to get them emotionally involved in what was happening, so that in the future, blind, lame, sick people would bring up powerful images in their minds, and they would do as He had done.

“When He had said this, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes, and said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which is translated, Sent). So he went away and washed, and came back seeing.” John 9:6, 7.

Jesus was not trying to help his disciples know how to live life by choosing among the best options that they saw available. He spent His life working to lead them to full conversion, to the point that they could interpret life according to His truth. He told them they must become as little children, learning to interpret reality all over again. Jesus was not seeking to help people know how to live life as they know it in the best way, He came to give us true LIFE, a whole new way to live, different from anything we have known before.

We often struggle in our Christian lives because we are trying to live by the teachings of Jesus, without understand that His teachings are not good rules to apply to life, but are rather His way of re-writing our worldview, so that our entire understanding of life will be transformed. He lived a human life on earth, in full view of the society He lived in, and filled His teaching with stories, so that we could have the best possible opportunity to see life through new eyes, to have an entirely renewed approach to reality.

As missionaries, we spend a lot of time studying about worldview. A correct understanding of the worldview of the people we are working with is the key to being able to present the gospel to them effectively. We study about worldview on a theoretical level, and as AFM missionaries at least, our first years in the mission field will be filled with seeking to understand the culture and worldview of the people we are serving, before we ever begin to actively do any evangelism.

The study of worldview and culture has been a great source of eye-opening experiences for me in the last months, and in an attempt to share what I have learned, and to deepen the impression of the lessons I have learned, I write this series. I hope you enjoy it, and that you are challenged to think in ways you have not thought before. I hope that these blogs may be a tool that God uses to draw you closer to His will for your life, and that you are inspired to study more deeply into these subjects. I will present very little if any original material, but I will try to season the theory with personal stories. The material I intend to share is primarily a rehash of high points from AFM Summer Training, and in writing this material, I am heavily plagiarizing the material that was presented by Erich Baumgartner, Dale Goodson, and John Kent, as well as material in books I have read. The books include Anthropological Insights for Missionaries, by Paul Hiebert, and Worldwide Perspectives (now Pathways to Global Understanding) by Meg Crossman.

May your worldview be exposed, challenged, and expanded as you read, is my prayer!

Spirit of God

2011-05-28T15:14:00.000+02:00

by George Croly

Spirit of God! descend upon my heart;
Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art,
And make me love Thee as I ought to love.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies;
No sudden rending of the veil of clay;
No angel visitant, no op’ning skies;
But take the dimness of my soul away.

Hast Thou not bid us love Thee, God and King?
All, all Thine own, soul, heart, and strength, and mind;
I see Thy cross, there teach my heart to cling:
O let me seek Thee, and O let me find!

Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear;
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

Teach me to love Thee as Thine angels love,
One holy passion filling all my frame;
The baptism of the heav’n-descended dove,
My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.

This is worth watching

2011-03-23T14:49:00.000+01:00

Simple, effective water-saving washing system

Skiing and Missions

2011-03-13T17:00:00.000+01:00

Recently, Oslo hosted the 2011 Ski World Championship games, at least most of the games involving cross-country skiing. I probably watched the games more than I should have, since it seemed justified when they were happening so close to us, and so I will try to justify the time spent doing that by writing some thoughts from what I saw.

Reuben liked the ski-jumping best. That probably makes sense for a two-year-old. There is much more of a thrill, and the thrill is repeated often with short intervals between the part where the skier flies through the air above the snow-covered slope.

I preferred to watch the longer events, though, the 4 times 10km men's relay, and the 30km and 50km races. For me, those events are more exciting than jumping, since the suspense builds for so long, and the dynamics of the race change as the competitors begin to wear out, or as they near the finish line.

Being a missionary by trade now, my thoughts naturally gravitated to wondering what parallels I could find between skiing and missions. There are probably many that could be listed, but I will focus on one point. I believe that short-term mission trips are like the ski-jumping event, while planting a church among an unreached people group is like a 50km race, or even a 90km race, like the one held in Sweden each year.

Ski-jumping requires a lot of expensive equipment, without which the event would be impossible. What would be interesting about seeing a ski-jumper who had no jump to launch himself off of? Short-term mission trips require much equipment, in the form of pre-evangelism work done by the local church. If Holmenkollen didn't exist in Oslo, ski-jumpers would have to go elsewhere to participate in their sport. If the church did not already exist in an area, short-term mission trips would be impossible, or at least highly ineffective. With nobody on-site to prepare the site, the crowds, and to do follow-up work, the short-term mission trip would be a flop, regardless of how well the foreigner preached.

Ski-jumping is a huge thrill, with lots of excitement and much to cheer about, but it is soon over. Short-term mission trips are like that, too. They are exciting, they draw large crowds of participants and of listeners to the meetings (in many cases, not in all, of course), but they are soon over. The ski-jumping world record is currently held by Johan Remen Evensen, who jumped 246.5 meters in Vikersund, not far from our home. A few weeks later, his performance at Holmenkollen was mediocre and he didn't even place in the top 5 jumpers. To me, that says that ski-jumping is dependent on many small and variable factors that the jumper has little control over, like wind, jump conditions, and what not. Short-term mission trips return very differing results from place to place, and even the best preachers have their times of minimal success, based on factors largely outside of their influence.

The long-distance events are a very different kind of sport. Skiing 50 kilometers is possible basically anywhere there is snow. For the World Championships, there are of course prepared tracks in which a lot of time and effort has been expended, but strictly speaking, cross-country skiers need nothing more than skis and snow to travel 50km. They don't need expensive equipment that has been installed and tested ahead of time to ensure their success. As a sport, there is a lot of money put into cross-country skiing events, but the bulk of the money is spent on the skiers themselves, not on the track they will be using. In the same way, church-planting missionaries can do their work where there is no previous church. In fact, just as a ski jump would be a poor element to have in a cross-country ski track, the presence of an existing church in a location or among a certain people group makes church-planting redundant and more difficult in many ways.

Church planting is expensive, but the largest part of the investment is made in the training and support of the missionaries themselves, not in the single events they are a part of. Some preparation of the area in which a church-planter will be working can be useful, but it is not strictly necessary. An unentered people group has a tremendous appeal to a church-planter, as untouched snow must have to a cross-country skier.

So, which form of missions is better? That is like asking whether ski-jumping or cross-country skiing is better. In many ways it boils down to preference and need. Short-term mission trips have their place, but unless a church is planted in an area, there can be no effective short-term mission trips. How many short-term mission trips are taken to places on the globe in which the church does not already exist? How many short-term mission trips are taken to the Middle East, for instance, compared to those taken to Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Philippines?

Short-term mission trips serve a purpose, often largely that of exposing the foreign participants in a new and strange culture, and helping them to see that there truly are places in the world where people are streaming into the church, in contrast to the lukewarm response to the gospel that a lukewarm church is experiencing in their home countries. I am an individual who got a taste of missions on two short-term mission trips with Maranatha, to Central America, which developed into a desire to devote my entire life to missions. I am thankful for the experiences I had on those trips, but I have a feeling that I am a fairly rare case. Perhaps I am wrong, but the numbers of people taking short-term mission trips are largely unreflected in people devoting their lives to long-term mission service. Hopefully this is beginning to change.

The problem in short-term mission trips can be that they tend to inoculate the majority of their participants from dedicating many years of their lives to church-planting mission service. Just like Reuben gets very bored watching cross-country skiing, we can think short-term mission trips are all that missions consist of. "I know what missions is about. I went on a one-month trip to Tanzania. I loved it, and look forward to traveling to the Marshall Islands next year! After that, I want to visit the Philippines." We have a sense that we are fulfilling the Great Commission when in fact we are largely just supporting the church where it is already strong.

Short-term mission trips can also give a false picture that there are already Christians all over the world, since by nature they will not be arranged to places where the church does not already exist. There is certainly a need for evangelism where the church is already established, and there are billions of people within reach of the gospel who need to hear the message that foreign preachers can share, but their condition is vastly different than those who live within cultures in which the Bible does not exist in their language. The entire world has not been reached with the gospel, and there are still around 2 billion people on this planet who have zero access to the gospel in their language or culture. If somebody has or even will conduct short-term mission trips to such areas, I would predict that they would not do so twice. The results of a short-term mission trip would be dismal at best, in an area where the church can not prepare for and follow up the short-term event.

I like the thrill of ski-jumping. I also like the thrill of short-term mission trips. Yet, I prefer cross-country skiing, and I have also chosen to devote my life to long-term church-planting. I pray often that thousands of others will do the same thing. There are still around 12,000 people groups in the world with no Seventh-day Adventists among them. Short-term mission trips are not going to fix this problem.

"Lord of the harvest, send forth laborers into Your harvest. Send both those who can work for a short time, and send those who can give their lives to the work until the job is done."

Our Lives, His Time

2011-03-13T10:48:00.000+01:00

“Oh, are you back from Africa already?”

“No, we haven’t left yet!”

This is a question we have often received from people here in Norway when they see us visiting their church, and sometimes even at our own church when we have been away for a few weeks. We have often said that we would be leaving for Benin at such and such a time, but those dates have passed by more times that we can count now. We have had our plans, but apparently the Lord has had other plans.

It is an exciting life that we are living! Hardly a day goes by without some interesting and significant lesson being taught to us, and we have seen God’s hand in so many ways. It seems that God is making it clear that we are on His heart and in His plans, but that we need to learn to surrender our own plans and wait upon Him. We have so often been sure we know what the future would bring, and when we would be in Benin, but now we are learning to trust that we will be there in God’s perfect timing.

Now the significant financial hurdles have been passed, thanks to those of you who have joined our support team both as one-time donors and as monthly supporters. We are currently waiting for the presidential election in Benin to be done, since it can be difficult to travel on election days, and the dates have been changed on several occasions.

Two Mites

2011-03-09T18:54:00.000+01:00

"When I get a job, I would like to support your project.”

“Well, thank you!” I replied to my student friend. “We appreciate that.”

Sadly, many people feel that if they can’t give $100 per month, they might as well not give anything. One lady told me, “I can’t give you $100 per month, so I will just give this one-time gift.” Really, we appreciate everyone who gives. Some of our donors give $5 or $10 per month, and we think that is fantastic. A large number of people giving small amounts per month spreads our support over a wide base, making it stable and sustainable.

Of course, we also very much appreciate those who are able to give $50, $100 or $200 per month. It’s just that we are sad to think that many people feel that small monthly commitments are insignificant. Five dollars may seem like a little amount here in the West, but in the mission field, it can go very far.

“Hmm. Five dollars a month is not much. That is like four Euros or something. I could afford that even if I don’t have a job. I spend that much on candy or soda anyway. Maybe I can start giving right away.” A light had switched on in my friend’s mind. Perhaps the truth of the widow’s two mites was winning yet another convert!

http://www.afmonline.org/frontiers/article.php?id=5166

The Demoniac On Our Stage

2011-02-21T20:44:00.002+01:00

Preaching evangelistic meetings in Africa can be a very interesting experience. One time, a man came running up to the stage, yelling and screaming incoherently. Reuben Kingamkono, my translator, and I stood on the stage, looking at him. At first I thought he wanted to attack us, but he couldn’t touch us. It was almost as if he was stopped by some invisible hand. I remember thinking that I was not afraid, but I didn’t know what to do. It seemed clear to me that the man was demon-possessed and was probably trying to reach out for help. Reuben stood there saying, “Toka, pepo! Toka, pepo! (Leave, demon! Leave, demon!)”

The deacons who were helping out with the practical issues at the meetings came and took the man away. They took him back behind the stage and began to pray in earnest over him. As Reuben and I resumed the sermon, the poor guy was surrounded by dedicated Christians who covered him in prayer. After a time of prayer, he calmed down and began to speak clearly again.

As I have often thought back on that moment in time, I have wondered what, if anything, I could have done differently. I was not scared in the face of another human who was apparently under the control of a wicked supernatural power. Yet, I did not know what to do. I knew that I was under protection and would not be hurt, but I did not know how to exercise that faith to help the poor sufferer in front of me.

Episodes that like one make me appreciate Jesus and His ministry much more. He never wavered in His interaction with malevolent forces. He never gave place to the devil or left a helpless sufferer in his or her misery. He rebuked the devil and his demons, and they were forced to obey His word.

I am now about the same age as Jesus was when He died. As I look at His life, I see so clearly how different I am from Him. As I think of what my little three-year stint of mission service accomplished compared to His three-and-a-half year time of ministry, I am humbled and awed at the power of The Man. He lived a life like no other. He lives today so we can live in us, as well. Oh, for a faith that not only lets me know I am secure in His protection, but which also acts for the benefit of others! Oh, to be a partaker of the divine nature! And, if I do not have the knowledge of how to help the next demon-possessed person I meet, I hope that I again am around those who do!

The Conclusion of the Matter

2011-02-21T13:41:00.000+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 12.

I still long for Jesus to come back to this earth, as I did over a decade ago back at Mission College that day the truth of His return first awakened my dull senses. I am sure that you desire the same thing. If you have read through this series of essays, you may now see a bit more of the reason why He delays. Jesus Himself longs to return more than anybody on earth has ever desired Him to return, but in infinite patience, He waits until His church is ready to receive Him. He will continue to wait as long as necessary, until the church reflects His glorious character, and the gospel has gone to every people group on the planet.

Jesus, in His infinite wisdom, has given us a message that will prepare us to carry the gospel to the world, and that will make us ready to welcome Him in the clouds. He inspired John to write the book of Revelation in such a way as to draw our attention to this message. Over 150 years ago, that message began to bring an awakening to the church, but the individuals comprising the body of believers did not thoroughly cooperate with the message to the Laodicean church. Today the message remains, latently potent with all of the power of the gospel itself. It waits for us to read it and heed it. Jesus waits for us to read it and invite Him into our hearts on a scale that has never before occurred.

One quote from Ellen White lingers in my mind as I consider this subject. “What is justification by faith? It is the work of God in laying the glory of man in the dust, and doing for man that which it is not in his power to do for himself.” Testimonies to Ministers, page 456. If God lays our glory in the dust, our power is shattered. If He does for us that which it is not in our power to do for ourselves, Christ is in us, the hope of glory, and the mystery of God is being finished. The Laodicean message is central to the gospel, and is custom made for the special issues and temptations that confront the church of Christ in these last days.

I have personally found that experiencing the power of the Laodicean message is simple, and is possible. It is not easy, and I have found that the excitement has worn off and revealed that I needed much more contrition and repentance than I had experienced. I would commend to you as well the Laodicean message.

Reader, if you desire to have power in your life as never before, if you desire to have Jesus dwell in your heart and to hasten His glorious return, the Laodicean message is for you.

There are many ways to study one passage of Scripture and experience its power. Personally, I took the word-by-word approach to studying Revelation 3:14-22, and found my communion with God to be growing daily. I went through the Laodicean message one word at a time, seeking to understand the meaning of that word, and to see how it fit into the rest of the message. I looked up other places in the Bible that word was used, and even wrote and amplified version of the verses, based on what I found in other passages of Scripture. The process took me several weeks, but it was worth every minute! It should have probably taken me several months, for the full effect of the message to be realized in my life.

God has given us this special passage of Scripture for our good. He has called us to an intimate communion with Him. He offers us, the members of this wretched and pitiable church, promises that He has not offered to anybody else in history. Only the overcomers in Laodicea are promised to be able to sit in the throne with Jesus, as He sits in the throne with His Father. Only Laodicea is offered the opportunity to dine with Jesus.

Heeding the message to Laodicea can be very simple. You, reader, can read those words over and over again, and pray that God will teach you through them. You can read until you are bored, and then read some more until you are anything but bored! You can, through the message to Laodicea, open your heart to Jesus, and enjoy the fulness of salvation He came to give. My friend, I commend to you the Word of God. I commend to you the Laodicean message. May God bless you.

Shattering the Power of the Holy People

2011-02-20T21:58:00.000+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 11.

To wrap up this study, I would like to take a look at a parallel prophecy to the pause on the brink of eternity, as described in Revelation. Then I will try to give some very practical advice for how you can personally experience the power of the Laodicean message and hasten the coming of the day of God.

In many ways the books of Daniel and Revelation are similar. One of my favorite writers has even gone so far as to say that, “The books of Daniel and the Revelation are one. One is a prophecy, the other a revelation; one a book sealed, the other a book opened.” Ellen G. White, Manuscript 59, 1900. I don’t pretend to know what that really means, but I do know that understanding Daniel is a tremendous help in being able to decipher Revelation, and that there are many similarities between the prophecies in the two books. Daniel 10-12 contains many similarities to Revelation 10, and to better understand what is involved in the mystery of God being finished, looking back to Daniel is an enlightening aid.

There are other, more subtle similarities between these two passages of Scripture, but this list is sufficient to show that Daniel and John saw very similar visions, which complement each other and help us understand more about what each did see. Daniel saw the announcement of a time prophecy (“a time, times, and half a time”), while John saw what would happen after that prophecy was fulfilled, when “there would be no more delay.”

The interesting part of the similarities, at least the part I find most interesting, is the reference to the “shattering of the power of the holy people,” in close parallel to the mystery of God being fulfilled. Somehow, in order for the mystery of God to be fulfilled, the power of God’s people must be shattered. What can that mean? It seems oxymoronic at best to think that God will be able to finish anything when the power of His people has been shattered.

Perhaps this is one of those instances when God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways. (Isaiah 55:8). God seems to be able to work in us best when we see our nothingness, and realize that without Him we can do nothing. Paul realized this in his time, and wrote, “ when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:10. When God shatters our power, when He shows us how helpless we are to perform any righteous act without His power, He can then use us, and can finish the mystery of God.

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.” Isaiah 57:15.

According to the Strong’s Concordance, the word translated as “contrite” in this verse means “crushed (lit. powder),” and is also translated as “destruction” in Psalm 90:3. God dwells with those who have a contrite and lowly spirit. He crushes, pulverizes, and destroys that He may re-form us into an abode He can inhabit. When the power of the holy people is shattered, the mystery of God will be finished. The mystery of God is Christ in us, and in the Laodicean message, Jesus offers to come into us. He has first crushed and shattered our self-dependency and self-deception, and He stands knocking at the door of our hearts, wanting to come in and abide with us. Can you see how all of these beautiful truths of the gospel come together in the Laodicean message? Can you see how God wants to use it to shatter the power of His holy people, that He might remake them and dwell in them?

“There are a large number of professing Christians who do not really follow Jesus. They do not bear the cross by proper self-denial and self-sacrifice. Although making a great profession of being earnest Christians, they weave into the fabric of their character so may of the threads of their own imperfections that the beautiful pattern is spoiled. Of them Christ says: ‘You boast of being rich and increased with supposed spiritual attainments. In reality you are neither cold nor hot, but are filled with vain conceit. Unless converted, you cannot be saved; for you would mar heaven with your unsanctified wisdom. I cannot endorse your spirit and your work. You do not act according to the divine Example. You are following a pattern merely of your own invention. Because you are lukewarm, I must spew you out of My mouth.’

“Let us thank the Lord that while this class is so numerous, there is still time for repentance. Jesus says, ‘I, your Redeemer, known your works. I am familiar with the motives that prompt you to declare boastingly in regard to your spiritual condition, “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.” Thou “knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”’” Ellen G. White, Manuscript 138, 1902.

Wretched and Pitiable

2011-02-17T21:02:00.001+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 10

The Greek words translated as “wretched” and “pitiable” in Revelation 3:17 are each used only one other time in the New Testament. When I see things like this in the Bible, I almost get goose-bumps! Although “poor,” “blind,” and “naked” are used often in many contexts, these two words are used only one other time each, so that we can know exactly what Jesus is telling us. He wants to leave us with no doubt about what His message means. The two conditions that do not have a remedy that we can buy from Jesus in verse 18 are the most-serious of the bunch!

“Wretched” is used first in Romans 7:24. Paul wrote, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Debates have raged over Romans 7, and I would rather not start up a new round of those old arguments. Without going too deeply into the theology of Romans 7, it seems plain to me that in verse 24, Paul is calling himself wretched because he is needing deliverance from a body of death. He is a man in need of deliverance. So is Laodicea! When Jesus used that exact word, He knew that Paul had used it in this way in Romans, and He would draw our attention back to that book. He wants us to know that we are in need of deliverance - deliverance that only He Himself can provide. We, with Paul can say, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 7:25.

The word translated as “pitiable” in the ESV is used one other time in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 15:19, and translated as “to be pitied.” Paul is again the author, and He wrote, “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” The Bible is not some book of fables simply put together by some individuals a few thousand years ago. It is the inspired, living Word of God, and it is profitable for our salvation. Jesus tells us, when He says that we are “pitiable,” that we have hope in Christ in this life only. First Corinthians 15 is about the resurrection, and Paul is saying that if there is no resurrection, then we are pitiable. If Christianity contains no promise of an after-life, we are to be pitied. If we have no hope beyond the visible, temporal life we know down here, we might as well give up on Christianity, because who would choose such a pitiful condition if they gained nothing by it, if Jesus was not real and offering us a life with Him in eternity? Jesus, in Revelation 3, says with the plainest possible language, that Laodicea has no hope of a resurrection in their current condition. They are lost and are going to burn in hell unless a dramatic change takes place. The Laodicean message is a faithful prescription from a loving doctor, who does not hesitate to tell us the truth, even if it hurts.

A friend of mine was once suffering from a painful, debilitating disease. He visited doctors multiple times, until his savings were exhausted and hope was nearly gone. He told me that the worst thing a person could possibly hear from a doctor is, “I don’t know what is wrong with you.” Jesus, in this potent message, tells us, “I know thy works.” He is diagnosing our condition, and giving us the remedy that we so desperately need.

Gold, white clothing, and eye-salve take care of the conditions that I personally believe are less serious, but what is the remedy for being wretched and pitiable?

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20. Jesus is the remedy that Laodicea needs! Jesus, the living, loving Savior, is the solution for our problems! Who could possibly be wretched and pitiable when Jesus is living in them, dining with them? There is no salvation in any other, and unless we have Jesus in our hearts, we will remain in our lost condition of pitiful wretchedness. Jesus, in His incredible love, offers to come into the very midst of Laodicea, those He has seen nothing commendable in. He has said so much about what is wrong with Laodicea, but to them He offers the most intimate of all promises to the seven churches. “I will come in to him.”

If you have been reading all of the posts in this series up to now, you may remember the “Mystery of God.” In one of the clearest verses describing what the mystery of God is, Paul wrote, “...God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The mystery of God, according to this verse, is “Christ in you.” Jesus said later, “I will come in to him.” If we heed the counsel that Jesus gives us in the Laodicean message, He will be in us, dwelling in our hearts through the agency of His Holy Spirit, and in us, the mystery of God will be realized. The mystery of God will be finished when Jesus dwells in the hearts of His people, and that will happen when His people understand and apply the Laodicean message in their own lives.

The Laodicean message is the key to the Second Coming of Jesus! We are pausing on the brink of eternity still today because Jesus is waiting for the Laodicean message to do its work. The character of Christ will be perfectly reproduced in His people, and those people will carry the everlasting gospel to “every nation and tribe and language and people,” when the Laodicean message is treated with the seriousness that is deserves.

The Laodicean Message Applied to the SDA Church

2011-02-09T21:28:00.003+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 9.

I am indebted to Dave Fieldler’s wonderful book, Hindsight, for much of the information in this section.

In October, 1856, James White published an editorial in the Review and Herald in which he showed points that made it clear that the Laodicean message applied to the Seventh-day Adventist church, not just to other denominations, as SDAs had been inclined to believe. At first many people rejected that message, but within a few months, many pastors and lay people responded positively, saying that they could see that the message really did apply to them, and not to others. It seemed that a revival was beginning to take place in the church, but it too soon died away. In late 1857, Ellen White published a testimony to the church which presented an inspired account of what had taken place just over a year before, and what could have happened if the revival had continued.

“I was shown that the testimony to the Laodiceans applies to God’s people at the present time, and the reason it has not accomplished a greater work is because of the hardness of their hearts. But God has given the message time to do its work. The heart must be purified from the sins which have so long shut out Jesus. This fearful message will do its work. When it was first presented, it led to close examination of heart. Sins were confessed, and the people of God were stirred everywhere. Nearly all believed that this message would end in the loud cry of the third angel. But as they failed to see the powerful work accomplished in a short time, many lost the effect of the message. I saw that this message would not accomplish its work in a few short months. It is designed to arouse the people of God, to discover to them their backslidings, and to lead to zealous repentance, that they may be favored with the presence of Jesus, and be fitted for the loud cry of the third angel. As this message affected the heart, it led to deep humility before God. Angels were sent in every direction to prepare unbelieving hearts for the truth. The cause of God began to rise, and His people were acquainted with their position. If the counsel of the True Witness had been fully heeded, God would have wrought for His people in greater power. Yet the efforts made since the message has been given, have been blessed of God, and many souls have been brought from error and darkness to rejoice in the truth.

“God will prove His people. Jesus bears patiently with them, and does not spew them out of His mouth in a moment. Said the angel: ‘God is weighing His people.’ If the message had been of as short duration as many of us supposed, there would have been no time for them to develop character. Many moved from feeling, not from principle and faith, and this solemn, fearful message stirred them. It wrought upon their feelings, and excited their fears, but did not accomplish the work which God designed that it should. God reads the heart. Lest His people should be deceived in regard to themselves, He gives them time for the excitement to wear off, and then proves them to see if they will obey the counsel of the True Witness.” Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1, pages 186, 187

If I am reading that quote correctly, there is a latent potential in the Laodicean message that has yet to be realized. “This fearful message will do its work.” There is a power that God has chosen to make available through that message that has not yet been unleashed in its fulness. God has “designed” that the Laodicean message will be an integral part of the events on earth in the last days, and we can know that it will happen as He has planned.

When I was teaching classes on the book of Revelation in Africa, I began to understand the fabulous importance of the message to the last of the seven churches. In my eagerness to help others see and experience the power of the message to Laodicea, I offered the students money if they would memorize Revelation 3:14-22! With that kind of incentive, many students made sure they got their dollar, but I wonder how effective such a method really is. “God reads the heart. Lest His people should be deceived in regard to themselves, He gives them time for the excitement to wear off, and then proves them to see if they will obey the counsel of the True Witness.” Excitement or a desire for money can get us to do much, but time will reveal to us and to those around us whether the Laodicean message has done a true and lasting work in our hearts.

Much could be said about the Laodicean message, and much has been said in many venues already. Understanding and applying the message to the church of Laodicea is a primarily personal matter that takes time. I recommend to you to read and memorize those few verses for yourself, that you may actively participate in this special message.

Jesus says that the church in Laodicea is “lukewarm,” and specifies that they are: “Wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” English Standard Version. Those five words are not exactly flattering, to say the least, but at least Jesus lets us know the truth, and does all He can to help us out of our self-deceived, lukewarm condition. After describing Laodicea’s condition, He counsels them to buy of Him remedies for three of the five problems He has listed. “Gold” would change the state of somebody who is “poor.” “Eye-salve” would remedy the problem of the “blind,” and “white raiment” would cover the shame of the “naked.” So, what about the “wretched” and “pitiable” attributes? I believe that in the understanding of those points, the bulk of the power in the Laodicean message lies. I personally feel that it was in understanding this part of the message that the SDA church began to experience true revival over 150 years ago.

Jesus Standing at the Door

2011-02-02T21:43:00.001+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 8

Now we have taken a look at the mystery of God being finished, and how that relates to the proclamation of the gospel, “[prophesying] again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings,” Revelation 10:11, KJV, and the sealing of the 144,000, and how that relates to carrying the gospel to “every nation, ... all tribes and peoples and languages.” Now we will take a look at the final piece of the key to understanding this pause on the brink of eternity.

The two series of seven trumpets and seven seals contain an obvious interlude, or pause, between the sixth and seventh of the series. In each case, the telling of the sequence is interrupted while a chapter or more of Scripture is inserted, making it fairly obvious that John wants to tell us about something that needs to take place before the seventh seal can be opened or the seventh trumpet blown.

The sequence of the seven churches runs parallel to the seven seals and seven trumpets, covering the same time, from Jesus here to Jesus here again, from the first coming to the second coming. Unlike the two parallel series, the seven churches do not contain an interlude in Scripture, however. It seems that a parenthesis is missing here. If the churches represent a period of time concurrent to the seven seals and seven trumpets, why isn’t there a similar pause on the brink of eternity in them?

Perhaps there isn’t such a pause, for the very reason that God wants us to take a look at the messages to the churches themselves, to see if they contain some clue. There is no apparent time gap in the text of Revelation 3 between the message to the sixth church, Philadelphia, and the message to the seventh church, Laodicea, but there is a dramatic gap in the tone of the two messages themselves.

The message to Philadelphia is full of commendation and encouragement to keep going as they are doing, while the message to Laodicea is the least-flattering of all the messages to the seven churches. Philadelphia is told, “I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it,” while Jesus finds Himself outside of the door in the message to Laodicea: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him....” Revelation 3:8, 21. Interestingly, the two unrebuked churches, Smyrna, and Philadelphia, are lacking in riches and strength, respectively, which is also true of Laodicea, but Laodicea is ignorant of the fact! “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked....” Verse 17.

While Jesus tells Laodicea, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten,” He doesn’t rebuke Philadelphia, but He instead tells them, “I have loved thee.” Verses 19, 9. Do you see the huge gap in the condition of Laodicea, as compared to the church period immediately proceeding it, represented by Philadelphia? In both the letter to Smyrna and the letter to Philadelphia, Jesus speaks of a group “which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.” Revelation 2:9 (see also 3:9.) When the church is poor, and weak, yet faithful and unrebuked, hypocrisy in others becomes most apparent. When the church is rich only in faith and strong only in the grace of God, it becomes clear what true Christianity looks like, and false believers are unmasked for the pretenders that they are. When weak people are strong to hold on to the Word of God and poor people carry themselves like they are heirs to all the riches of the universe, those whose religion is superficial and legalistic are exposed, and they begin to persecute the true children of God.

Laodicea, on the other hand, seems to be rich and in need of nothing, but God sees things otherwise. To Him, Laodicea deserves no commendation, but is instead nauseatingly lukewarm, in danger of losing their place in heaven. Jesus threatens them of the inevitable consequence of their condition: “I will spit you out of my mouth.” Revelation 3:16. The Gospel of John, written by the same author as Revelation, has a very different tone in the 16th verse of the third chapter. There, in the most well-known verse of the Bible, we are told that salvation is offered to all who believe in Jesus, but here, the same speaker tells His church that they are going to lose all connection with him.

The message to the church in Laodicea is a painful message, a graphic description of the condition of the church of God in the end of time. As much as we might like these words to apply to somebody else, they best fit the conditions found within the Seventh-day Adventist church. Our prophet told us as much on many occasions. “The message to the Laodicean church is applicable to our condition. How plainly is pictured the position of those who think they have all the truth, who take pride in their knowledge of the Word of God, while its sanctifying power has not been felt in their lives. The fervor of the love of God is wanting in their hearts, but it is this very fervor of love that makes God’s people the light of the world.” Ellen G. White, Review and Herald, July 23, 1889.

Your Crippled Teacher

2011-01-31T14:06:00.001+01:00

Imagine you are in a mid-sized city in East Africa. The three paved roads that intersect the highway running through town turn into dust tracks after a few kilometers. The noises and activity of a bustling city seem to never end, and you are one of the few foreigners there.

You are holding an evangelistic meeting series in the city, which is being attended by about a thousand people. Other churches have promised to outpreach you, but they soon run out of things to say, and those attending the dancing sessions begin to come to your meeting instead. The contending preachers end their efforts within a week of beginning, but you wonder how you are going to say all you want to say in three short weeks! The Lord is blessing, and people are beginning to tell you that they want to be baptized and join your church.

You hear about a lady who wants a visit in her home, so you and a friend agree on a time. You have not met the woman yourself, but those helping in the meetings have told you about her, given you her name, and told you where she lives. You travel as far as you can in an over-crowded minibus, then crawl out where the broken, bumpy asphalt road intersects with the rutted dirt path to the section of town where the lady lives. There are no real street names or house numbers, but you ask those you pass where the neighborhood is, and they point you further up the mountain.

You continue your climb up the mountain, past the dwindling number of houses. A man on an orange Honda 90cc motorcycle bounces down the hill past you, waving and greeting you as he passes in a cloud of swirling dust. The road cannot be called a road anymore, and you doubt that anybody who lives up here could afford to own a car. Finally a lady sitting outside of her house points to the house where the lady lives, and you near the end of your dusty journey.

As you approach the little two-room hut covered with rusty roofing sheets, you see the woman sitting on a three-legged stool, enjoying the warm sunshine. You are a bit surprised that she does not rise to greet you, but just then you notice her bicycle and understand. Her “bicycle” is more of a “tri-cycle,” crudely welded together from various bicycle parts and other pieces of iron. Instead of pedals as you are used to on the three-wheeled cycles around town, you see that this is a hand-pedaled cycle, specially designed for people who cannot use their legs. The lady you have come to visit is lame, paralyzed in both of her legs. Her hand-shake tells you firmly that you would not want to try and arm-wrestle this woman! You are still out of breath from the climb up the hill to her house, but she obviously has hand-cranked her way up this hill many times.

The lady wants to talk about serious matters, so she invites you to enter her home. You stoop through the low door and wait for her to follow. As the smoke stings your eyes and the chickens dart around pecking for food on the floor, you start to wonder how this lady is going to move into the house. Will she drag herself along the ground, as you have seen other cripples do? Soon you see that she has a cleaner method of transporting herself. As she sits on one stool, she places another three-legged stool beside her. She lifts herself over to the empty stool, then moves the stool she has just left between her and the house, and repeats the process. She moves quite efficiently, and soon she joins you in the hut.

While you stand and watch her progress, you find yourself wondering why you are here. Of course God’s love is for everybody, but we need strong people in the church! What can this lady add to the body of Christ? What will she contribute, when she is so needy herself? Soon the real conversation starts, so you try to focus on what the lady is saying, and not on your own thoughts.

“I have been attending the meetings you have been holding. I appreciate what you have been saying, and I want to join this church.”

“Well, that is good to hear,” you say, although you still wonder if it is really so good to hear. “So, you would like to be baptized?”

“Yes, I would,” she replies. You begin to talk to her about the various things she has been learning, and find out that she has been studying with church members for several months, but has now finally made the decision. Yet, for some reason, she hesitates.

“Pastor, I am a bit worried. I can’t swim, and I am afraid of water. How can I be baptized?”

For the first time, you realize why this lady has asked you to visit her. Her heart is calling her to follow Jesus in baptism, but her fear is strong. You begin to wonder how she could practically be baptized, since she can obviously not carry her own weight, but you don’t need to wonder long.

“Oh, that will be ok,” your friend speaks out. “We are used to this. We will have other people in the water with the pastor, and they will hold you and make sure that you go under and come right back up again. Don’t worry, we have done this before, and you will be fine.”

Good thing somebody with more experience was with you today! Soon you take your leave of the lady who has now confirmed her decision, and make your way back down to the noisy, bustling city.

On the day of baptism, 160 people line up on the banks of a small river to be baptized. Several thousand others are also there to watch. It is a day of happy singing and hearty “Amen!”s as each person goes into the watery grave and comes up to new life. After a time of watching the others, the paralyzed lady has her opportunity to go into the water. Nervously, she takes the hands of two strong helpers, who lead her into the water to the pastor. Two men hold her firmly, and the pastor places his hands on her and pronounces the blessings. “Because you have decided to follow Jesus, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Gently the lady is lowered into the water. You can see the terror on her face, but as she comes up again, borne by the strong men holding her, she is no longer afraid. Peace fills her heart, and she tearfully expresses her joy that she has made this decision. She is carried out of the river, where she is greeted by the deaconesses who help her dry off and change her clothes.

Tears fill your eyes as you think of the new life this lady is going to experience. You marvel at her display of faith. Not only has she committed her life to God in her heart, but in a very real sense she has trusted her life into the hands of others. You feel that her faith is far greater than anything you have personally ever known, and you are filled with joy unspeakable.

And as you stand there, thinking of what you have seen today, you realize you are living life to its fullest. You say to yourself, “I am alive! I was created to be here today. I was born to be a missionary in Africa!”

You thank God for the "weak" ones who can teach you so much! And you thank Him that He allowed you to be a part of this beautiful moment.

The Premature Honeymoon

2011-01-26T18:48:00.001+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 7

Imagine if Jesus were to get impatient up in Heaven, and decide that He has waited long enough to return. He decides to hop over a few details in His prophecies and promises, and His passionate love for His people drives Him to abbreviate the history of the world. He quickly finishes up His ministry in the Most Holy Place of the Heavenly Sanctuary, and marshals the armies of heaven for the great rescue they have been waiting for for millennia. The Holy Spirit is withdrawn from the earth, and the final events take place in rapid succession. Those who are ready are sealed with the seal of God, and those who are not are marked by the beast. The great time of trouble commences, and Jesus soon returns in the clouds to gather His jewels to Himself.

“This is our God, the one we have waited for,” sing the waiting faithful, and they are caught up with the newly-risen dead in Christ to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall they ever be with the Lord. Oh, bliss, oh, wonderful, glorious, heavenly joy. One second of heaven would be worth more than all the sufferings of this earthly life, and now all eternity stretches out before the bride of Christ, the redeemed from the earth. The wedding for which the Bridegroom has waited so long can now take place, and just imagine what the honeymoon will be like!

Well, yeah, imagine what the honeymoon will be like. Sex will no longer be a part of human existence, but the personal knowing of Jesus in person will far surpass any joy that sex can bring anyway. So, the honeymoon begins, with the joys and revelations that surpass anything the most-faithful couple have ever enjoyed. Or, ... well, ... maybe not exactly. As Jesus rejoices over His bride, He begins to inspect her more closely, and what does He find? She’s not all there! She’s missing some very vital and important parts of her body! She looked ok from a distance, but so much of what would have made her beautiful is lacking, and can never be replaced!

“Oh, no!” Jesus cries out! “She wasn’t ready to get married! She wasn’t whole yet! What have I done? It’s over, it’s too late to change anything. There are over 12,000 nations, tribes, peoples, and languages that didn’t have the opportunity to be part of the body, My body! Oh, no, now they are lost forever, beyond the reach of any hope, and my bride is crippled, maimed, blemished for all eternity! She’s missing toes, fingers, teeth, one eyeball, half her heart, and an ear!”

“Count the patience of our Lord as salvation.” “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” 2 Peter 3:15, 9. “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.” James 5:7.

As of today, there are still over 6,600 individual people groups, representing over 2.75 billion people, that are unreached, meaning that they do not have a significant Christian presence among them. When we look at Adventists, the number is over 12,000 people groups with no SDA church established among them. How could Jesus come back until members from those groups have been reached, warned, and gathered into His body, the church? Jesus is a gentleman, a Lover who is passionately in love with one Beloved. He will have nobody else, and even if decades and centuries pass, He will wait until she is ready for marriage. Today she is not ready, so He waits. And waits. And still waits. How long will He wait? Hopefully not much longer, but according to His word we know that He will wait long enough for the prophecies to come true that there will be individuals “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” standing in the innumerable multitude before the Throne of God in heaven.

Jesus doesn’t want to get married to an incomplete bride, and if you think about it, I am sure you would agree that you wouldn’t want to get married to an all-powerful being who doesn’t keep His word. Could the saved really trust Jesus to keep other promises in His Word if He jumped the gun and came back to earth before every people group is represented in the church? What other promises might He overlook down the road? If He didn’t care enough about those nations, tribes, languages, and peoples, how much does He really care about those of us who make it?

I have heard it said that when a person has sex with their lover outside of marriage, even if they are engaged, they are giving their future spouse permission to have sex outside of marriage. If a person is not self-controlled enough to wait to get married, can they be trusted even after they are married? If Jesus jumps the gun now, so to speak, ending history before His bride is ready, can His bride ever really trust Him? The regret and remorse experienced by impatient lovers here on earth is surely next to nothing compared to the eternal remorse of hastening the second coming.

So, Jesus waits. He is a gentleman, and He will keep His Word. He will keep His Word to return, but before that can happen, His Word about who will be in heaven must be kept as well. I don’t know about you, but I would like to be married to somebody like that, and I would want to do everything possible to be ready for the wedding and the eternal honeymoon following. Do you want to receive the seal of God in your forehead? Then consider that that process will be inextricably intwined with the carrying of the gospel to the unreached people groups of this world. Those who are sealed will be involved to one degree or another in proclaiming the gospel.

The Seal of God and the Great Multitude Before the Throne of God

2011-01-25T18:24:00.001+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 6

Moving backwards from the seven trumpets, we come again to the seven seals, and the interlude between the sixth and seventh seals. In chapter seven of Revelation, the issue at stake is not called the mystery of God being finished, but is referred to as sealing the servants of God with the seal of God in their foreheads. Very little is told us in that passage about what the seal of God is, but by looking at other passages of Scripture, we know that the sealing of God’s people will be manifested in their keeping of the commandments of God. All the commandments, including those neglected by most other Christians, and by the way, including those neglected by many Seventh-day Adventists. This obedience will not be a merely outward obedience, but will include the keeping of the commandments from the heart, since the tenth commandment, forbidding covetousness, is also part of the moral law of God. We would have to have the living Jesus living in us to be able to ever truly keep the commandments of God. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20.

Interestingly enough, the seal of God is only a small part of the interlude of Revelation 7. After listing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel that represent the group known as the 144,000, the first thing John writes is, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, and from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothes in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Revelation 7:9, 10. See that? The preparation of the people of God and the gathering in of souls from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,” go hand-in-hand. When God’s people are prepared, the message goes out. The personal preparation and mission work go together. We should be careful to remember that active zeal in missionary activity in and of itself is not effective for spreading the gospel, because if it is done in our own power, it is doing more damage than good.

“It is the privilege of every Christian not only to look for but to hasten the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, (2 Peter 3:12, margin). Were all who profess His name bearing fruit to His glory, how quickly the whole world would be sown with the seed of the gospel. Quickly the last great harvest would be ripened, and Christ would come to gather the precious grain.” Christ’s Object Lessons, page 69

“You may manifest great zeal in missionary effort, and yet because it is corrupted with selfishness, and tastes strongly of self, it is nought in the sight of God; for it is a tainted, corrupted offering. Unless the door of the heart is open to Jesus, unless He occupies the soul temple, unless the heart is imbued with His divine attributes, human actions when weighed in the heavenly balances, will be pronounced ‘Wanting.’ The love of Christ would make you rich; but many do not realize the value of His love. Many do not realize that the spirit which they cherish is destitute of the meekness and lowliness of Christ, destitute of the love that would constitute them channels of light.” Ellen G. White, Manuscript 33, 1894

Personal religion and effective soul-winning are inseparable. If we are not living Christians, with the living Jesus dwelling in our hearts through faith via the Holy Spirit, we will not be hastening the coming of the day of God, even if we are the most active missionaries in the world. The seal of God and the multitude around the throne are both part of what must take place before Jesus returns to get His children. His servants must be sealed in their foreheads, and the gospel must go out with such intensity, power, and reach that representatives from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” can become part of that great multitude that will sing “Salvation” in heaven.

Adventists have always been focused on reaching the unreached to a greater or less degree. We have seldom been leaders in entering new territory with the gospel, but we are currently represented in nearly every country on the globe. Geographically speaking, we have covered the planet with the SDA church. It seems, however, that we have largely failed to realize that political countries alone are not the only divisions of people on this earth. In the Revelation, John seems to have tried to make this abundantly clear by repeatedly referring to the world in terms of “peoples and nations and languages and kings;” “the peoples and tribes and languages and nations;” “peoples and multitudes and nations and languages;” “every nation, ... tribes and peoples and languages;” and “those who dwell on the earth, ... every nation and tribe and language and people.” Revelation 10:11; 11:9; 17:15; 7:9; 14:6.

In connection with the opening of the seven seals, Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, is told: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” Revelation 5:9.

The Rumor

2011-01-25T10:22:00.000+01:00

The Mystery of God

2011-01-21T08:52:00.000+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 5

“The mystery of God.” Doesn’t that sound, well, rather mysterious? Is it one of those things that is not revealed to us, that we should just leave in God’s hands? Does this mean that we can never really know what Jesus is waiting for? Well, perhaps in one sense, that is true, but the New Testament gives us enough explanation of this subject that we can unravel this mystery to a great degree.

Paul wrote several places about the mystery of God, the mystery of Christ, the mystery of godliness, the mystery of the gospel, the mystery of the faith, and the mystery of God’s will. See Romans 16:25, 26: Ephesians 1:9; 3:3-9; 6:19; Colossians 1:26, 27; 2:2; 4:3; 1 Timothy 3:9, 16. These all are apparently essentially the same thing, that which John called “the mystery of God.” From reading these verses, we find out that before Paul’s day, the mystery was kept secret, but was revealed in his time. Paul wrote about “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.” Colossians 1:26. In the clearest possible language, he wrote a few verses later, “God’s mystery, which is Christ.” Colossians 2:2. Jesus Christ was and is the ultimate revelation of God’s heart, God’s plan of salvation, God’s mystery. “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: he was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.” 1 Timothy 3:16. What is the mystery of God? It is Jesus, first and foremost. He has revealed to the world and to the universe the thoughts of God that have been unknown to other intelligent beings throughout all eternity.

However, Revelation 10:7 says that the mystery of God would be “finished,” or “fulfilled.” Does Jesus have more to do in the plan of salvation? Didn’t He declare, “It is finished,” long before John wrote the book of Revelation? What else did He need to do? This question brings us back to a central teaching in the Adventist church about the investigative judgment going on in heaven before Jesus returns to earth. We believe that Jesus did all He needed to do on earth while He was here, but there is a work that He is working to complete in heaven even as you are reading this now! But, we don’t need to get too complicated in this matter in order to understand what the mystery of God has to do with us personally and with the mission of the church.

Jesus told His disciples while He was still on this earth, “...whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” John 14:12. The only sense in which His disciples can be said to have done greater works than Jesus did is in the sense of greater geographic coverage in their work. They didn’t do purer or holier works than Jesus did, nor did they save more people by their lives or death, but they did end up traveling to places that Jesus did not personally visit, and they carried the gospel further than He had been able to do in His ministry in Palestine. But, they did so because Jesus went “to the Father.” Jesus was able to be closer to His disciples when He was in heaven than when He was on earth, because through the Holy Spirit, He was able to be in His disciples. He was not with them, but He was in them, closer than when He walked by their sides on the paths around Israel. And this miracle is what is involved in the mystery of God being finished.

“...this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Colossians 1:27. The mystery of God is Jesus Christ, and the mystery of God will be finished when Christ is in His people.

“Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of Himself in His church. When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own.

Christ is waiting for His character to be reproduced in His people, and when it is, He will come back. No wonder the same writer also wrote, “Character building is the most important work ever entrusted to human beings; and never before was its diligent study so important as now.” Education, page 225. The development of a Christ-like character is a subject running throughout the Bible, closely tied in to the character of God Himself, and the call for us to glorify Him.

So, when the church reflects the character of Christ fully, He will return to the earth on the biggest rescue mission of all time! This is the event that God is waiting for, the event that will transpire before Jesus returns. God is not waiting for a specific date to arrive, but He is waiting for a specific event to occur among the church here on earth.

Let me be a little bit open and vulnerable with you for a while here. In teaching from the book of Revelation for several years, my classes on Revelation 10 ended here. When I had made it clear that the mystery of God being fulfilled consisted of Christ’s character being reproduced in His people, I figured that my job was done, the lesson was passed on. I was so blind, missing perhaps the most-obvious conclusion that this study should have led me to!

Shame on me! Shame on me for thinking that having the character of Christ consists of eating the right foods, avoiding the wrong foods and drinks, avoiding improper forms of entertainment, dressing modestly, following the eight laws of health, and a whole bunch of other rules and regulations! I honestly have believed that when the church gets its act together, and everybody moves out into the country, becomes vegans and stops wearing jewelry, Jesus would come back! Shame on me, and shame on the people who supported me in my misunderstanding! May God forgive me for leaving such a legalistic, imbalanced impression on my students.

What is the basic character of Jesus? It is love, of course. And how was that love manifested? We can say much about how Jesus demonstrated the love of God, but undergirding His entire life, we see that Jesus was intensely interested in bringing salvation to those who did not have it. The spirit of Christ is a missionary spirit. Jesus left the comfortable, luxurious surroundings that were most-conducive to His spiritual health and growth, and entered the mission field! Jesus is the ultimate missionary! Jesus left heaven to come to a sin-filled, disease-infested mission field, to take the ultimate risk of failure and rejection, in order to bring the good news of the gospel to those who needed it. How could an individual possibly have the character of Jesus without having the character of a missionary? How have we come so far that so many of us have seemed to come to the conclusion that having the character of Christ can happen while we are living separated from contact with people as much as possible? We might not all be able to travel overseas or to another culture, but we can have and demonstrate the missionary spirit wherever we are, and if Christ’s church as a whole has Christ living in them, “the hope of glory”, there will be many more overseas missionaries than we see today. Jesus was a cross-cultural missionary, crossing cultural barriers far greater and far more difficult than any modern missionary could be called to cross on this planet.

Shame on us! Shame on so many of us in the Seventh-day Adventist church who have believed that character development consists in primarily personal matters of what we eat, how we dress, and whether we have a television or not. Shame on us for reducing the kingdom of God to “meat and drink,” for having a religion consisting of “touch not; taste not; handle not.” See Romans 14:17 and Colossians 2:21. What we eat, drink, and whatever we do, is to be done to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), but let us not forget that giving glory to God is a public matter, a matter especially involved in evangelism. See Isaiah 60:1-3; Revelation 14:6, 7; Isaiah 40:5. Eating right, dressing modestly and healthfully, which Bible translation to use, and having a television or not are secondary or tertiary issues that should be submitted to the great goal of our lives, which as members of the church of Jesus Christ, should be spreading the knowledge of our Saviour as far as possible. If I eat well and stay healthy, then, with that health that God gives me, I can learn from Jesus how to be loving like He is, and I can go to other places, visit other peoples, and share the beautiful gospel with them. But, my Seventh-day Adventist friend, let me tell you that a born-again Christian can be an effective missionary even if they have never heard that such a thing as a health message or dress reform exists. Private, personal religion must be in place for the character of Christ to be reproduced in me or in any other, but private religion in those who are already Christians is not sufficient to bring about the end of this world as long as over 12,000 different people groups have never heard of the message of the three angels which is so central to the teaching of the Seventh-day Adventist church.

Multiple times, Paul ties in the preaching of the gospel to other people groups (Gentiles) to the mystery of God. Notice these texts: “...the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith.” Romans 16:25, 26. “When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” Ephesians 3:4-6.

And if Paul’s statements are not clear enough, John himself, in Revelation 10 itself, refers to the proclamation of the gospel in a cross-cultural context when he records the angel telling him, “you must prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.” Revelation 10:11.

Ok, now we’ve explored the subject of the mystery of God to some degree. This was only one part of the key. There are two more pieces remaining. We need to understand them better in order to get a full picture of what Revelation has to say about why Jesus waits.

Synced!

2011-01-19T21:21:00.000+01:00

"Synced!"

“Did you spot it? He’s synced.” “No, but I caught myself being synced today.” “Ok, ten points for each of us!”

We could make it into a sort of a game, but it is really a matter too serious to be a game!

It’s not synchronized, but syncretized. Syncretism is the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought, according to the dictionary on my computer.

Syncretism in a religious context happens when somebody joins a new religion, like Christianity, but continues to live in many ways in the way they lived before becoming a Christian. Like a church elder keeping his charms from when he was a witch doctor. Or a church board disfellowshipping a deacon because he mixed up the order of service one Sabbath. (That really happened, according to one of our teachers from AFM.)

Avoiding syncretism is one of our largest concerns as AFM missionaries. It might be possible to fill a church with people who call themselves Seventh-day Adventist Christians, but who in reality are living like animists in nearly every way. They interact with God as they used to interact with nature spirits, and they turn to the devil and his agents when they encounter a crisis. They might treat God as some all-powerful fairy godfather who can be manipulated, but who cannot be known or loved.

Consider this: The Bible is relevant for every culture, and gives counsel and instruction that can be useful for a person from any culture in the world to find their way to Jesus. On the other hand, my understanding of the Bible is incomplete. My application of the Bible principles I understand may be even more incomplete. I may not do all that I know I could or should do.

Now, I, a Christian from America, travel to Africa. I go with the Bible in my hands, and I try my best to present the Bible as it reads to the people I come to serve. Inevitably, I will present a biased and incomplete picture of the Bible message, no matter how hard I may try to do otherwise. In other words, I will inevitably to some degree pass on my religion and not only the pure religion from the Bible itself. I am a corrupt channel, and even a perfect message flowing through me will be tainted by me in some ways. It is unavoidable.

My religion may seem sufficient for me when I am living in a culture similar to what I have grown up in. However, the people in the culture I will be serving will have different needs and problems than I have had in my life. They will need answers from the Bible that I will not even realize the Bible contains. The Bible is a book for all cultures, but my religion is not, even if it is based on the Bible.

In order to avoid syncretism, we will need to do our best to help people in our host culture to study the Bible for themselves, through their own eyes, to find in it the answers they are looking for. Through the Bible, the Holy Spirit will seek to show them how to meet the problems and issues they face in a Jesus-like way, instead of reverting to old, familiar ways of dealing with crises.

Syncretism is no game, but finding ways to eliminate it will be a great thrill. It will give us the greatest challenge of our lives! As we work with others, we will pray that the Lord will show us our own syncretistic tendencies and help us to interact with life in a truly biblical way. Mission work is a challenging blast!

Chicken Manure and True Generosity

2011-01-18T12:19:00.000+01:00

Our donor letter from December.

“I would like to have more chickens so I can help the widows more.” I’d had a feeling that was coming! We had been well fed by one of the church leaders in a village I was visiting with some friends. (This was not in Benin, by the way.) We had visited the local church, and had been invited to this man’s house for Sabbath lunch.

As we ate, our host began to tell us about his work with the widows in the area. He told us he wanted us to help him buy more chickens. He already had several hundred chickens, but he wanted more so he could help out more than he was currently able to do. This seemed like a worthy cause to us, though we felt we had been slightly misled by the lunch invitation, so we wanted to find out more. As the man’s somewhat-more-than-pleasantly plump wife continued to serve us delicious food, we probed more into the subject.

“Please explain a little more to us,” we said. “How is it that you help the widows with the chickens?”

“Oh, I give them the chicken manure to use as fertilizer in their fields. They struggle to support their families, so free fertilizer is very useful for them.”

“Interesting. That sounds like a good idea.” As we were shown around the various rooms filled with squawking poultry, we could smell that it must certainly be nice to have a place to dispose of all that filth! And to think that he uses it for such a worthy cause! We were getting more and more impressed all the time.

However, after a little while of gazing at all those chickens, it occurred to us that nobody keeps chickens just for their manure! “So, what do you do with the eggs all these hens lay?”

“Oh, we sell them. We have to live, of course, and we have several children to send through school. These chickens are a great help for that. But if we had more, we would have even more manure to give to the widows,” he reminded us, bringing us back to the point he wanted us to focus on.

As we left the well-furnished home that day, we decided our money would go to some other cause with less “waste!” I don’t doubt the brother’s sincerity or that he really did share his excess chicken manure with the widows of the village, but we felt that if we really wanted to help the widows, there were surely ways by which our money could go further.

I am not sharing this story in order to criticize my chicken-farming friend but rather to make a point about an attitude I have begun to see more plainly in myself lately. Two books have recently made a deep impression on me. Missions and Money, by Jonathan J. Bonk, is a book that will affect the rest of my life. Often painfully, it exposes the problems involved with missionary affluence in the presence of the poor they are serving. To Give or Not to Give, by John Rowell, picks up where Bonk left off and continues the painful journey of exposing missionary double standards and selfishness. God has used these two books to expose the selfishness in my own heart and has torn away the reasons I had stacked against sharing of our abundance with our brothers and sisters in poorer settings. We do not want to be missionaries in order to enjoy a standard of living we would otherwise not be able to attain.

We don’t want to try to say we will keep the manure and give away the eggs, so to speak, but we are learning to share of the abundance we have been blessed with. All of God’s children, and especially those in His church, are sitting at the table of our Father. Before some of us, there is an abundance of food, while others have little. As long as we remember this, it is not hard for us to “pass the plate” to those who need what we have within our reach. There is enough at the Father’s table for all to eat and be satisfied. We are praying that true generosity will always find a central place in our hearts and our lives as missionaries and Christians.

On the home front, we have some happy news to share. Although the miracle has happened countless times before, we cannot help but be amazed at the new life God has blessed our home with. On December 8, little Kaia Renée entered the world. She was apparently anxious to get out and find out what life was like, since Maggi was in labor for a very short time, and the birth was thankfully quite easy. Life for Kaia now consists mainly of eating, sleeping and filling diapers, but we have some precious hours with her each day when she is very awake and alert, listening to her brother fill our home with laughter and music. Reuben is a proud big brother! He is very gentle with her and gives her many hugs each day.

I attended a Wilderness First Responder advanced First-aid course in Sweden in the beginning of November. I learned how to take care of many common medical issues in remote locations. It is the kind of information I hope I never need to put to use, but I am glad to have it “in case of emergency.”

Our launching goal is now complete, thanks to God and to those who have given! We now have less than $700 per month in support to raise, so we should soon be able to book our tickets to Benin! These are exciting days as we make sure we have all the papers and last-minute details taken care of.

Beyond our chicken-farmer friend, we want to thank our donors for giving us an example of true generosity. We are amazed over and over to think that so many people have given so much to this project, and we know they have given of their best, not of their waste. We pray we will be able to show that same generosity to those we will be working with in Benin, to receive in order to give, not vice-versa.

May God richly bless you this holiday season and throughout 2011. Thank you again for being part of God’s plan for our lives and for being a channel for His generosity. We appreciate you and wish you a Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year!

The Seven Trumpets

2011-01-18T09:04:00.000+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 4

The seven trumpets, described in Revelation 8, 9, and 11, seem to portray various political events in the world that can serve as warnings to the church. In my opinion, C. Mervyn Maxwell’s explanation of the first four trumpets is more biblical and consistent than Uriah Smith’s. Smith, in his book Daniel and the Revelation, has the trumpets representing non-chronological events associated with the fall of Western Rome, while Maxwell, in God Cares Volume 2, shows how the trumpets represent significant events that took place during each of the time periods represented by the seven churches and seven seals. My understanding is that the first trumpet represents the fall of Jerusalem, the second trumpet represents the fall of Western Rome, while the third trumpet represents the rise of the Papacy as a political power, and the fourth trumpet represents the Dark Ages. The last three trumpets are special, called trumpets of “Woe”, and represent respectively the Arab forces, the Ottoman empire (not Otammari, but almost!), and the Second Coming. There are many fascinating prophecies contained in the seven trumpets, and I would recommend their study to anybody interested in the book of Revelation, prophecy, history, or the Bible in general!

So, what does all of this have to do with answering the question of why Jesus hasn’t come back to earth yet, which we started this study series with? Well, actually, a lot! The seven churches, seven seals, and seven trumpets all cover time from Christ’s first Advent to His Second Advent, and I believe that each of them contains a piece of a key that will unlock our understanding on this issue, a piece of a picture that can show us what needs to happen before Jesus can return to get His church.

The series of seven seals and seven trumpets both contain a very prominent break or interruption in the story-line. It seems that either John was getting very distracted in his writing, or he needed to explain something important that needed to take place before the final seal could be opened or the final trumpet blown.

Since John was clearly anything but distracted in writing Revelation, the last book of the Bible is written just as it is for a very specific purpose. The breaks in the depicting of the seven seals and trumpets contain what I call the pause on the brink of eternity, the interlude that must occur before Jesus will return. The seven churches don’t contain a break like that, but we will come back to that later on.

I like to save the best part of a Bible study for last, so let’s do that here by taking the three key-pieces in reverse order, starting with the mystery of God, then going to the seal of God, and finishing with the Laodicean message.

The interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets is filled with prophetic descriptions of two important historic events: the Advent movement of 1833 to 1844, and the French Revolution. Again, abbreviating the matter so dramatically is making a long and interesting story extremely short. For more detail, please read the books I have listed above.

In the middle of a description of events surrounding the Millerite movement of the 1830’s and 1840’s, John sees an angel come down from heaven and make a statement that has made this one of my absolute favorite passages of the Bible. When I get started on this subject, I get so excited! I was first shown this prophecy in the summer of 2002, and every time I have re-studied it since then, I just get more and more on fire!

Standing on the sea and on the land, this angel declares that there will be no more time, or no more delay, according to various translations. See Revelation 10:6. Literal time continues in the narrative, and it seems that probationary time does as well, so the time spoken of, or the delay that would no longer be, must refer to the end of specific prophetic time. The statement must mean that the people of God will never again have a prophetic message based on definite time, after the longest time prophecies of the Bible reached their ends in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. Any message claiming to tell us the timing of the return of Jesus is un-Biblical and misleading, and will be wrong, as so many such messages have already been. Jesus is not waiting for a specific date to return, thus there will be “no more delay.” Remember Y2K and all the hype, even by Adventist preachers around that time? To be honest, I wanted Jesus to return at that time, I wanted to go to heaven so badly, but He didn’t come, and when I got to understand Revelation 10, I understood that no such message can be trusted.

So, if Jesus isn’t waiting for a specific time prophecy or date to come before He can return, what is He waiting for? Back to the original question in this study, Why hasn’t Jesus come back to get His church yet? If He wasn’t waiting for the year 2000, or 2008, or 2010 (or 2012), what is He waiting for? Does Revelation 10 give us an answer? Yes, it does! Praise God! This is why I love this chapter so much, why I have considered writing a book on this subject.

Perhaps we should quote from the chapter itself, so you can see the answer for yourself. Here it is, from Revelation 10:5 through 7. “And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, that there should be no more delay, but that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God would be fulfilled, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.” Did you see it? Isn’t it wonderful? Right there in the Bible is the answer as to why Jesus hasn’t come back yet. Isn’t that fantastic? What is going to happen before Jesus returns? “The mystery of God would be fulfilled,” or “finished” as other translations say. Isn’t that great?

Or, are you sitting there shaking your head as most of my students usually do? “What in the world does that mean? What is the mystery of God, and what does it mean that it will be fulfilled?” Oh, yeah, we should probably look to see what the Bible has to say in other places about what the mystery of God is, and see if that helps us to understand Revelation 10 better.

Starting to Look at Revelation

2011-01-17T21:41:00.000+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 3

So, if natural disasters, diseases, and crime are not enough in themselves to let us know clearly when Jesus is almost here, what is Jesus really waiting for? If these events are destined to increase in frequency and intensity in the future, in fulfillment of the words of Jesus, is it possible for us to determine when the end of time is truly near? What is Jesus waiting for, and why has He not come yet?

This question has been on my heart for years, and when I used to teach classes on the book of Revelation, finding an answer to that question was the focus of my lessons. I believe that the last book of the Bible gives some of the clearest answers to that question in all of Scripture, and my heart thrills as God continues to reveal more and more to my mind as I ask why we are still on this planet and not in heaven. This is a big subject, and I certainly don’t claim to understand it in all of its manifold ramifications, but I would like to share with you at least part of the aspect of the answer that I have begun to understand.

Why are we still here on earth, and how will the end come? I believe that Revelation gives clear answers to those questions, and gives us hope and clear direction both as individuals and as a church. I am no theologian, but I do know that I have come to my understanding through the study of Revelation in connection with other books, and that I am not alone in the bulk of my thinking on this matter. I may present the matter differently than others would, but I tread well-worn paths in my lessons on Revelation.

In the first half of the book of Revelation, three series of seven elements are presented: seven churches, seven seals, and seven trumpets. The historical Adventist understanding of these three series of seven is that they are concurrent time-lines, if you will, of events in the world from the time of Christ and up to the Second Coming, and I believe that understanding is correct. The messages to the churches represent conditions in the church of Christ from the time He was here on earth, up to the end, with the church that should be waiting for Him to return, but which in reality looks like it ends up being too consumed with its own attainments and possessions. The seven seals largely represent the effect that the church has on the world during that same period, and the seven trumpets depict events in the world that the church may be affected by, and should take warning from.

The church, as represented by the letters to the seven churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, goes through many differing stages, often needing reproval and correction, but never forsaken by Christ. Ephesus has lost its first love, but not its Lover. Smyrna is poor and persecuted, but unrebuked. Pergamos is becoming infiltrated with non-biblical doctrine, but is still commended and given promises for the overcomer. Thyatira stands for the church of the Middle Ages, doing much good, but needing reproof in this longest of the letters. Yet, they are not forsaken, and the overcomers are promised power over the nations, which the church received during the Reformation. Sardis is largely a hypocritical church, claiming to be alive while actually dead, but not everybody in Sardis has soiled their robes. Philadelphia is the second unrebuked church, in which their weakness doesn’t keep them from holding fast to the truth. Then we come to the letter to Laodicea, which is the most reproaching of all of the letters, with nothing to commend in Laodicea, but with beautiful promises to those in the church who let Jesus into their hearts. Perhaps we can say that the best thing about the letter to Laodicea is that the letter exists at all, that Jesus has not forsaken this pathetic, self-deceived church.

Reading Revelation, one sees that after the letters to the seven churches, the focus of the narrative shifts to things transpiring in heaven, specifically in the throne-room of heaven, and especially surrounding a certain book which is sealed with seven seals. Those seals are removed from the book in chapters six and eight, with chapter seven containing an interlude in the opening of the seals, to tell about a different seal, the seal of God, which is placed in the foreheads of the 144,000. While the book with the seven seals is in heaven, the opening of the seals reveals events that happen on earth, events that will take place before the book in the hand of God can be opened.

The first four seals reveal horses that show the progression of the church from a white, conquering power that turned the world upside down, to a red, persecuted church that took peace from the earth by the preaching of the gospel, then a black, compromising church selling the graces of salvation, to the pale horse of death, representing the church that brought death to others. From being willing to die for its faith, the church ended up killing for the faith, and was best depicted by words such as Death and Hell. From bringing life to the world, the church had become so corrupted that it brought death instead. With the confusion resulting from such a regression of the once-pure church of Christ, the fifth seal makes perfect sense. Souls are seen under the altar, crying out for vengeance. These martyrs are given white robes, when the Reformation uncovers the truth about who the true “heretics” really were during the Dark Ages of the pale horse, and the world sees that the martyrs were righteous. The sixth seal portrays celestial and terrestrial events leading up to the Second Coming, when the church’s effect on the world is one of being the center of a rescue mission that ends up unraveling the very sky. When the seventh seal is opened, there is silence in heaven, an event that must surely be connected with the Second Coming itself.

I know that I am here going through these beautiful prophecies very quickly. I do that because I don’t want to make this too long, and because if you are interested in more details, and have not already studied these prophecies for yourself, you can find several books covering these matters in greater detail in your nearest Adventist Book Center.

I Was There

2011-01-16T14:56:00.002+01:00

“Were you at Kibao village one time?”

“Let me think. Kibao. When? Six or seven years ago?”

“Yes, it was several years ago. I think you came and held some meetings with some other white people. Was that you?”

“Yes, it probably was. We were there one weekend. It is amazing that you remember me.”

“Oh, I remember you. I was not an Adventist at that time. I was wondering about whether or not I should be baptized and join the church. Some of the things that you said in your sermon helped me make the decision, and you gave me a book that day that helped to seal my decision forever.”

I stared in wonder at the man who was talking with me. He remembered me so well, and he told me that I had made a big difference in his life at a time he was in a valley of decision. I couldn’t remember him at all, but I was sure he was telling me the truth.

His story is one of several I could tell. People came to me years later and told me I had made a difference in their lives. I had said something in a sermon, or given them a book which had helped them during a hard time. All the praise for this goes to God, who had led me to Tanzania in the first place, and had given me something to say, and money to buy Bibles and books to give away. God chose to use me, not because I was a super Christian or some sinless saint, but because I was available. We are not all-important or indispensable, but God choses to use us if we are willing to go where He calls.

Tanzania is a different place today than it would have been if I had not been there. Not in any big way, not in a way that is easy to measure, but in some small, significant ways for those who are today closer to Jesus because of contact with me. I don’t think this is pride, just a fact. I am positive that there will be people in heaven eternally because I chose to go to Tanzania, people who would not be there if I had not gone.

The difference was made, not because I was there, but because I was THERE. Somebody else could have been there and been a blessing as well.

There are thousands of places in the world that need to have a Christian present. There are millions of lives that could be changed for eternity if a Christian will come to them and seek to help them in some way. “Lord of the harvest, send forth laborers into Your harvest.”

Do We Need More Earthquakes?

2011-01-13T21:36:00.000+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 2.

Could it be that we are misunderstanding the signs of the times and being lulled into inactivity instead of being stirred to action?

After experiencing the transforming power of God in my life, my great desire in life was to tell others about the joy I had discovered, and to share that Jesus was coming back soon. The school I was working for found an opportunity for me to work as a Bible worker in another state, and I packed my few belongings into the back of my dad’s pickup truck, and headed off to revive the church in that state. At least in my eager zeal I thought so.

Bible working was not as easy as I had expected, and it seemed like the hardest part was trying to get church members excited for the same fascinating truths that burned in my heart. I was young and on fire, and the church was largely filled with older members, so their excitement was subdued and expressed in different ways than mine was, to put it mildly. I was the young, ignorant fanatic who took things to extremes, and I needed to be put in my place, according to a few of the members, apparently.

I so clearly remember one Sabbath, when the subject of the Sabbath School lesson touched on when Jesus would return, and as I was teaching the lesson, I was in a good position to be taught a lesson that one member of Sabbath School thought I needed. An older man read from Matthew 24 words I knew so well, “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places, and then shall the end come.” Oh, how easily I fell into the trap, and as I burst out with my hearty, “Amen!”, smirking glances were passed between a few of those present. Then the reader who had intentionally misquoted Matthew 24:8 loudly and clearly announced to the whole Sabbath School class present that I did not know what I was doing, that I was a fanatical and ignorant young upstart with crazy ideas and a mistaken understanding of end-time events. Well, maybe he didn’t say all of that exactly, but I read as much in his voice as he said, smirking, “no, Jesus didn’t say that. He said, ‘All these are the beginning of sorrows.’”

My pride was hurt, but the lesson was not lost on me, even though it seemed to be given in a rude and humiliating way. I wanted the classic signs of the times to be proof that Jesus was soon to return to this earth, but the text did not make it as clear as I had wanted. Jesus did talk about natural disasters and diseases increasing in the end of time, but He did not tell His disciples that these signs of the end are any safe measuring device for us to be able to know when the end is truly imminent. Earthquakes, famines, pestilences, wars and rumors of wars, are not what Jesus is waiting for before He returns. He has said that these events will increase and increase, as birth pangs of a woman in labor, but they will not bring about the end of the world. Only one sign is determinative of the return of Jesus. There is only one thing that Jesus told us will happen, and then the end will come. Until that one event takes place, earthquakes, pestilences, wars, and all the rest of the signs that this planet is falling apart will continue to increase in frequency and intensity, for the Word of our Lord is sure, and cannot fail. Paul wrote, “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” 2 Timothy 3:13, KJV. This statement also is true, and will continue to be true, even if time were to last another 500 years, as hard as it might be for our imagination to grasp how things can get worse than they are already today.

Have you considered what a picture we paint of our loving God when we make it sound like the wickedness and natural disasters of the world is a sign that Jesus is coming back soon? We are essentially saying that, 100 years ago the world was not bad enough, when we compare our time with the world a century ago, and are thereby saying that God needed to have more evil in the world before the end could come. Listen, 100 years ago, things were plenty bad enough for Jesus to return, but the gospel had not been taken to the world, because of the lack of faith and obedience on the part of the church. When we preach about the signs of the times in an imbalanced way, we are actually stating that apparently things need to get even worse before God will end it all. More people need to suffer, more lives need to be ravaged and destroyed by wicked men and natural disasters, then at some point, when it is finally bad enough, and He is finally satisfied, Jesus will return to put an end to it all. What kind of a God do we serve, anyway? Do we serve a God who is in the business of perpetuating the gruesome suffering of millions of His creatures on this planet? Does all of society need to come to utter degradation and decadence before God decides that enough is enough? Isn’t the fact that one small child has been brutally tortured, raped, or murdered evidence enough to God and to the universe, and to us as well, of how ugly sin really is? Isn’t the history of any war from the last 2000 years sufficiently full of grotesque filth and wickedness and injustice to tell us that the way this world works is perverse, and God’s way is far better? Does society need to crumble to pieces to the point that we can not be safe any time, any place on the planet, in order for God to put an end to it all? Really, just think about it: isn’t planet earth in bad enough condition today for our Lord to come back?

The world absolutely is falling apart, and at a rapid rate, and Jesus predicted that this would happen. We can know that His Word is true, and that we truly are living in the end of time. My point is not to diminish that fact. My point is rather to state that the condition of the world and the decay happening all around us can open up a special opportunity to us to be part of finishing up the work that must be done before Jesus returns. The condition of the world has an effect on those in the world, and it should have an effect on the church, as well. Men and women all around the world are looking at what is happening to the planet, and are concerned. Actually, to say they are concerned is a huge understatement. Some people are scared to death about what is happening in nature. Scientists and politicians are proclaiming the end of the world in more graphic detail than many Christians are willing to do! The thought-leaders of the planet are trying to do what they can to avert the tragedy that they see on the imminent horizon; and movies, books, and theories abound about how the world will end and how mankind can prevent the end from coming. The people of the world need exactly the message that we can give them, the message of the truth of how the world will end, and how we can be prepared for that event. Minds are open, and we, as Bible-believing Christians, have the message that can avert tragedy for each person who will take the steps to be ready for the dissolution of all things. Men’s and women’s hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after the things coming upon the world, and born-again Christians can plainly declare that there is a way to find peace in the midst of reigning madness and chaos! The world needs our message! The world needs the everlasting gospel as never before! And the world is now being uniquely prepared to listen to that gospel which gives the most-logical explanation possible for what is really happening all around us.

The condition of the world is not designed to have an effect only upon the people of the world, however. It should and can have a dramatic effect on the church of Christ, as well. As we see financial towers collapsing around us, as we see the planet itself crumbling like a rotten cookie, we should wake up! This is no time for us to be enjoying a good life, getting spiritually prepared for the future, while neglecting to help others get prepared for that future. We might think that since the world is falling apart so rapidly, the scientists and politicians are correct in their worse-case scenarios, and we will see Jesus so soon that we don’t have time to finish the work God has chosen to involve us in, but this is exactly what the devil wants us to believe. We know that there are still people in the world, whole societies and language groups, in fact, with no Adventists among them, but surely since the world is falling apart so quickly, we don’t have time to learn a new language, learn to live and function in a different culture, and then go through the time-consuming process of taking months or even years to present the gospel to people in that culture, and then to disciple the converts. Or so we could think.

Instead of looking at the predictions of Jesus which are being fulfilled all around us and concluding that time is too short to allow us to go and preach the gospel to every creature under heaven, God would have us come to a different conclusion. Even though “Christian” financial counselors tell us how we could have millions of dollars saved up for retirement by properly investing in mutual funds and tax-sheltered savings accounts, the collapse of the world economy shows us how fragile the whole financial world really is. Perhaps we could be millionaires by investing our money in the right places, but we cannot be sure. The stable economy that we take for granted could crumble in a matter of weeks, leaving us penniless and bankrupt, while greedy people take advantage of our loss, mocking our choice to lay up our treasure on earth.

While the incessant reports of fresh disasters and exposures of the wickedness of the human hearts could harden us and make our love grow cold, God allows these things to happen so that His sleeping church will wake out of her slumber. Our attachment for the treasures of the world is to be dissolved as we see nature apparently turning against us, and we should realize that this planet is no place worth living anymore. This world is falling apart, there is no safety nor security here, and it’s time for the church to begin to “love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” It is time for us to invest in another form of mutual fund: building the community of the body of Christ.

Christian, wake up and see what is happening around us! Jesus has given us a work to do, a work that we will find to be the most worthy and satisfying occupation we could ever engage in, if we will lay hold of His strength, making peace with Him, and then seeking to reconcile others to Him. This world has nothing lasting to offer us, and God is letting that become abundantly clear so that His church will arise and shine upon those who have never seen the light.

An e-mail to Tanzania

2011-01-13T12:42:00.000+01:00

Here is an e-mail I sent to a Tanzanian friend last year. I wrote to her about my dream of seeing African mission societies launched and run by Africans who send Africans into the mission field.

Dear sister,

I was in Tanzania in November and December for four weeks with a group of students from the European Bible School. It was a challenging time, but while we were there, my dream grew much clearer and stronger. The church in Tanzania is strong and powerful. I believe that the time has come for Tanzanians to cross borders of culture and even borders of nations, to share the good news that burns in their hearts. Soon all of the language groups in Tanzania will be represented in the Seventh-day Adventist church, but there are still so many dark areas in the countries around.

Have you ever looked at the website: www.joshuaproject.net ? There are listed all of the people groups of the world, with statistics over the unreached people groups, groups with no significant Christian church among them. That web-site is just about Christians in general, not Seventh-day Adventists, so the numbers don't apply directly to us. But, according to Joshua Project, there are still over 6,600 unreached people groups in this world! I have heard that there are over 12,000 people groups with no Seventh-day Adventists among them. That is nearly half of the population of the entire world! Now, the SDA church doesn't keep track of the ethnic background of its members, so that number is just an estimate, but it is probably pretty close to the truth. Jesus said, "and this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, as a witness to all the nations, and then shall the end come." He didn't mean nations like we think of nations today; political entities with clearly defined borders, governments, etc. Like Kenya, Tanzania, DRC, Norway, Sweden, Benin, USA, etc. He used the word "ethnos," which we get our word "ethnic" from. He meant tribes, people groups, clans, language groups, etc. And He promised that all of those groups will be presented with the gospel, and then the end will come. Earthquakes, diseases, famines, etc., will just increase and increase as long as time will last, because they are not sure signs of the end of the world. The gospel going out to all people groups is the sure sign, and when it happens, Jesus will return to get His waiting church!

If there are about 12,000 people groups left, it seems like a huge task, but actually, knowing what the real work left for us consists of is a huge part of helping us to be prepared to do that work, and we can focus on the work where it is most-important, not simply continuing to maintain the mission machinery that already exists, wondering why Jesus isn't here yet.

Sister, you probably know all about this already, for all I know. You said that you have a similar dream to mine, so you have probably already studied these things, but they burn in my heart, and I can hardly help myself from writing about them! We have a work left to do, the very work that Jesus gave to us, and because we have not done this work, Jesus has not yet returned. We get so involved in lifestyle issues, what we wear, what we eat, what we watch and listen to (at least in America and Europe), while the largest lifestyle issue of all is neglected: are we using our lives to reach the unreached? Is our style of life like that of Jesus, leaving a comfortable, spiritually conducive atmosphere, to go to difficult, distant places if necessary, to spread the gospel to those who do not have it?

Jesus promised us that not only will the gospel go to every ethnos, but there will be representatives from each people group on earth in heaven! I was just writing about this a few days ago, and was amazed to see how many references there are to this in Revelation. "And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." "After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands." Revelation 5:9; 7:9. Jesus waits to come back, because He promised so clearly in Revelation that there will be representatives from every single language, people, tribe, and clan in heaven, and that is not yet true! Jesus waits so that we will do the work that He has given us to do, which is a blessing to us, and I am just amazed as I think of how long He has waited.

It almost seems to me that the church in the "West," in America and Europe, has waited too long, and the opportunity is passing on to others. Now more and more mission work is being started and performed by people from Asia, South America, and the Pacific Islands, from areas that were themselves "mission fields" 100 years ago. But, what is being done in Africa? Surely much more than I know about, but it seems that Africa, the most-Christian continent, is not leading out in mission work as it could be. Africans have been stolen and sold as slaves for hundreds of years, but Jesus told us that the last will be first, and the one who has been servant or slave of all is to be the leader. I believe Africa will soon awake to the task ahead, and will lead the world in sending out cross-cultural missionaries. There are still many places in Africa itself that need missionary labor, and Africans would be able to cross borders and cultural barriers much more easily than others could. Many tribes and people groups extend across national borders, and travel from country to country is cheaper and faster for Africans than for non-Africans, usually.

I have been reading various materials in preparation for our mission service, and I have learned so much. But pretty much all that I have read so far is written by people from America about how Americans can be missionaries. The material is not bad, but we need material from Africans, about how Africans can be missionaries in an African way, not in a white-man's way! It is so sad to see intelligent Africans who receive their education abroad, and who lose so much of that thing that makes them distinctly African. They try to blend African and European thinking, and lose something precious in the process. Don't get me wrong, I think that education is a wonderful thing, and if the best education can be attained outside of Africa, then that is fine, but what I long to see is truly powerful, practical, African material being produced to motivate Africans to reach out to Africa and beyond.

I have learned that there are three big degrees of evangelism, called E-1, E-2, and E-3. E-1 evangelism is reaching out to those in one's own culture that are not saved. E-2 is reaching across cultural boundaries to those who are culturally similar in many ways, but also different in significant ways. E-3 evangelism is the hardest, most-demanding form, the most-expensive form, at least when white people do it. It is crossing boundaries of culture that are very wide, learning one or two or more new languages in order to speak with the people about the gospel. This is traditional missionary work, what Maggi and I are preparing to do in Benin. The interesting thing is that while E-3 evangelism must take place, a bridge must be built into unreached cultures, E-3 evangelism is not the most-effective nor most-powerful. It must be done, but when it has been successful, when converts are made in the unreached culture, they become E-1 evangelists, reaching out to their own culture, and their witness is far more powerful than that of the missionary, because they understand their own culture from the inside. E-2 evangelism is also more powerful than E-3, because the missionary understands much more of the new culture than an E-3 missionary does.

While we are going to be doing E-3 evangelism in Benin among the Bétammaribé, our hope is to help Otammari individuals become evangelists to their own people. But, think of how much better it would be, and how much faster the work would go, if Tanzanians, Kenyans, or Zambians, would go to West Africa to work as church-planting missionaries! Even in the Congo there is much work to be done, to spread our message of peace and forgiveness to the people there. Basically, with perhaps the exception of North Africa, all of Africa is an E-2 mission field for Tanzanian SDAs! Each African country is different in many ways, but in essence, Africa is Africa, at least from my perception, and there are cultural realities that cross nearly all national and tribal borders.

Imagine if Africans would take the initiative to start up an African mission society, which would focus on sending missionaries to unreached tribes! Imagine if that society would send out researchers, to find out which areas needed help the most, then train, equip, and send African missionaries to those areas, to raise up the light of truth in the dark areas of the world. Then imagine if that mission agency would eventually begin to send out missionaries to North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and even Europe and America! Africans are amazing people, and you have skills that could help this become a reality. Africans know how to live quite simply and inexpensively, and to travel light and far. You eat simple, inexpensive foods, and you know how to grow your own food. Tanzanians especially are very enterprising, knowing how to start businesses to support themselves, with very little capital. Most of us Americans and Europeans require far too much stuff and baggage and insurance to think that we can survive, but Africans know how to live with the bare necessities. While I was in Tanzania this last year, Kibidula moved three of its missionaries to the village where we held a small evangelistic campaign. Three people, with all of their belongings, fit into a daladala that had several other passengers, as well! That would never be possible with wazungu, let me tell you! With us, it is more like three daladalas per person!

I believe that this can happen, and I believe that it will happen. I am not the first nor only person with this idea, and I believe that God will work in mighty ways in the near future. I just hope to be a part of it, and to be in a place where I can see it taking place. A self-supporting Tanzanian missionary could travel far into other countries of Africa, and set up work in unentered areas. Tanzanians generally know how to farm, so the missionary (or hopefully missionary team) could start farming, could learn the local language in a few months, and within a year or two, could have a group of people ready for baptism in most areas. Some areas are harder and require more time, but with proper training, with the understanding of how to best plant a strong church, and with lots and lots of prayer and Bible-study, within a few years most areas would see a church planted. Then that missionary could train up local people to be evangelists to their own people, and could set a translating and publishing work in action, if necessary, and could then move on to another area. With dozens of such missionaries being strategically sent out every year, many unreached groups could be reached and discipled in a short time, and Jesus would return! Oh, what a blessed hope we have, and what a wonderful God we have, who allows us to participate in this wonderful work. This is my idea, and perhaps God has other ideas, but the Great Commission is in the Bible that Africans read, as well, and with lots of prayer and the compelling of the Holy Spirit, God can and will do amazing things through Tanzanians and other Africans.

There seems to be a mentality among some I have met in Tanzania that they should not start up anything new unless there is an mzungu involved. Not everybody has this thinking, of course, thankfully, but some do. Why should you wait until white people get involved? White people are expensive, and often cause more problems than they solve! European and American ways are not what Africa needs. African Adventists need to know that God gives them the freedom and the power to step out and take charge in His work of spreading the gospel. The gospel does not belong to white people any more than to Africans, and it is time that you exert your powers as children of God and heirs of the kingdom of heaven! We can work together, and we can all learn from each other, but oh how I long to see when Africans are taking more initiative in missionary endeavor! God will lead each of His children, and we do Him a great disservice when we look to others for guidance that only He should give.

The organization we work for, Adventist Frontier Missions, is doing a good work. They are focusing on reaching the unreached, spreading the word about the needs that still exist in the world, and mobilizing people into mission service. They are pioneers among Adventism in many ways, and I am grateful that God has allowed us to be part of this organization. We have learned a lot, and AFM has taken good care of us so far. However, I see our work with AFM as a step towards something more, or at least our work among the Bétammaribé, as not the end of our work in Africa, but rather as the beginning. What we learn there will help us to be able to teach others how to do what we have done, and the ones I want to teach are Africans, in Benin, throughout West Africa, and perhaps beyond.

AFM is a great organization, but they have only one African family working for them. Well, two, if you count the Petersons, a white couple from South Africa. Michee and Elmira Badé are from the Ivory Coast, and are working in Benin, among the Dendi people. Michee is a pastor with a Masters from Andrews, I believe, but instead of working for the church, he has committed to planting the church among the Dendi Muslims. What a commitment, and what a power his witness has, from what we have read of his stories. But, where are the other Africans? Well, I have been told that AFM receives many applications from Africa, from people who want to be sent out as AFM missionaries, but they don't have the capacity to take them. What Africa needs is some sort of an Africa-AFM, which can receive these applications from Africa, and can properly screen, train, and send these people to other places in the continent! AAFM, or something similar! This should not be an organization controlled from America, however. The leadership and staff could be primarily, or completely African, teaching in African ways, using material written by Africans with experience, and being a demonstration of what God can do through those who surrender their entire lives to Him for His service. I suppose such an organization would look very different from what AFM looks like today, but there's nothing wrong with different! Africans don't need to copy wazungu ways of doing things! African is beautiful, very beautiful, and God wants Africans in heaven in all of their beauty and variety.

One more thing is on my heart as I write this to you. You are a single woman, and of course I have no way whatsoever of knowing God's will for your life, but many other single women have done great things for the Lord by His Spirit. In fact, Wycliffe Bible Translators, an organization that focuses on translating the Bible into languages that do not have the Bible yet, has found that the more difficult and dangerous the work is, the more likely women are to volunteer to do it! They have found that the women they send out in teams are more likely to complete their projects than men are. Single women have done much mission work throughout history, but we hear more about the men, for some reason. Women can go to places that men cannot get to, especially in Islamic cultures, and women tend to plant the church more-solidly than some men do. I was told at Kibidula that the female lay missionaries that they have are often more successful than the men, so this applies in Tanzania, as well. A woman is viewed as less of a threat, and can quietly and humbly begin to plant seeds of truth that a man would not be allowed to plant. Only God knows what your future holds, and only you are allowed to discover that, but I felt impressed to share this.

You told me to e-mail you, but you probably didn't expect so much as this, did you? I hope that I have not overwhelmed you with what I have written here.

Have a blessed day, sister! Take courage, your work is not in vain in the Lord!

It’s Real, Christien!

2011-01-12T13:25:00.000+01:00

The Pause on the Brink of Eternity, part 1.

I've been wanting to write a book for several years. From years of teaching classes on the book of Revelation, I felt I had sufficient material to be able to fill a book with all of the cool stuff I had found there. But, when I wrote it all out, I got to only 12 pages, so that would be a pretty pitiful book! Maybe it will make a good blog instead. This is the first section of that paper. The other sections will follow as I have a chance to go through and update them. Enjoy!

Jesus is coming back! What a wonderful truth! No other thought has ever given me such joy and hope and purpose in life, and I can hardly imagine life without this assurance. It wasn’t always so wonderful to me, but one day it became my consuming passion, and has been ever since.

I had grown up as an “Adventist,” or so I thought. I attended church most Sabbaths in my life, when nothing else was important enough to keep me away. I remember staying home one Sabbath so that I could see a phone number on TV that would pop up for a short period at a certain time. I called the number, and was able to reserve tickets to a Pearl Jam rock concert. That’s how deep my commitment to church and the Sabbath was, but I figured it was plenty, and my conscience hardly bothered me about doing things like that.

Then, when I was 20, over a period of a few weeks, my life changed permanently. Under the influence of Godly and dedicated teachers at the Mission College of Evangelism, surrounded by people who wanted to live their lives according to the Bible, I experienced what I can only think of as a conversion. One night in the quiet of my room, I surrendered my life gladly to Jesus’ control, and wept with joy as I knew that my prayer was accepted. I had lived a God-less life, not taking the Lord into account in my planning and living, but through the working of the Holy Spirit on my heart, my life started afresh. The Bible became my favorite book, and I spent hours every day studying it or books that tried to explain it, and I was amazed that I had lived so close to such beautiful truth for my whole life, but had neglected to see it as something attractive at all. I started sharing what I was learning with others, and as they asked questions I didn’t have answers for, I was driven to deeper and more earnest study of the Scriptures.

Thus is was that one day I realized, as if for the first time, that Jesus truly is coming back to this earth again! I was preparing an evangelistic sermon on the subject of the second coming, and the Bible evidence hit me with such power that I was shocked, terrified, and thrilled all at the same time! Jesus was coming back, and for the first time in my life, it was a gripping reality, and it was good news! I was so excited I couldn’t contain myself! Life was full of meaning and purpose like never before, and my heart sang with the uncontainable joy I had just found.

“Hey, Chris, do you know what?” I asked one of my co-students that morning.

“No, what’s wrong with you?”

“Jesus is coming back! Jesus is coming back! Isn’t that wonderful?” I practically shouted at him, even though I was holding him by the shoulders. “It’s really real, and we can be ready for it!”

Christien, my attacked friend, hadn’t been raised as an Adventist, but had recently become one, so I guess he had already recognized the reality of the return of Christ, and he didn’t share my excitement that morning. “Of course He’s coming back, didn’t you know that already?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s so real. I didn’t know it was so real. This morning I was reading in Revelation, and it says, “Behold, He is coming with clouds. It just struck me that it is so real! I had heard about it before, but now I know it is true!”

This happened back in 1997, over a decade ago. At that time, there was a lot of talk about the year 2000 and the possible return of Jesus that year. We discussed the issue back and forth, and with my new-found life in Jesus, and my newly-discovered conviction that the Second Coming was an imminent fact, I wanted Him to come back in 2000, or even before. Heaven seemed so close at times in those precious days of study and prayer, and the longing of my heart was to see Him whom my soul loved.

Over 13 years have passed since that time. Now I’m married, and so is Christien. We are both doing the work that lies closest to us, seeking to allow God to mold our lives according to the Bible pattern, and sharing the gospel with others, but we are still here on earth. In my heart, the emotional excitement has faded, but my favorite subjects in the Bible are still the Second Coming and those events surrounding it. Probably no other truth in Scripture has gripped me so hard as this one blessed hope, and I yearn to see Jesus coming in the clouds of heaven to rescue His people.

Yet, Jesus has not come back yet. Why? Is He not as excited about coming back as His church is to have Him come back? Or is the problem on the side of the church itself? I believe I have discovered some interesting and relevant information from the Bible that can shed light on this subject. In this series of posts, I will present what I have found. I would welcome any comments or input you may have on this subject.

"Karibu Tanzania!"

2011-01-10T16:43:00.000+01:00

“What?”

“Karibu Tanzania. ... Welcome to Tanzania.” The immigration officer in the airport pointed to the sign above his head, where both languages were used.

“Oh, ok. Thank you,” I replied. “Man, this language is going to be tough,” I thought to myself!

That was my first introduction to Swahili, except for Lion King, I guess. (“Pumba” does not mean wart-hog, by the way!) Learning the language was not as tough as I had thought, though. Less than one year later, I was giving short ad lib talks in front of a church, in Kiswahili. Near the end of three years, I was able to preach 24 meetings in 21 days, purely in Swahili.

So, in Tanzania I found out that I have a propensity for learning languages. I am not at all the fastest language-learner I have met, but I realize that language learning comes easier to me than to many others. As a child I was always fascinated by people who could speak more than one language, but living in America, I had very little exposure to anything other than American English. Had I stayed there, I may never have known that I was one of those blessed people for whom language learning comes relatively easily.

I am convinced that many people are born missionaries without even knowing it. I am convinced that God has specially prepared thousands of people to be part of the final movement of taking the gospel to the unreached people groups of the world, and they are ignorant of the talents that they possess. Because too few calls are made for them to participate in active long-term mission service, they never know what they could accomplish if they would leave home with the gospel for people who have no other opportunity to hear it.

Maybe language-learning is not your talent, or maybe it is. There are many different skills needed in missionary teams around the world. If the Lord is calling you, it is because He wants to use you in a way that He will reveal as you move into that calling.

A short-term mission trip will not suffice. Many people participate in short-term mission service, but the nature of those events is almost designed to insulate the participants from confronting the reality of the culture they are visiting. Going as a Student Missionary is better, but even then I believe that for most people, the time is too short. Until you have been in a culture long enough to learn a significant amount of the language, you don’t really know what is going on there, or how the people think. I would recommend at least three years of service. The first year you begin to learn the language, the second year you become proficient, and the third year you can really produce.

There are many service opportunities available, and you can find one that fits you. I personally believe that AFM is one of the best mission organizations available. Their training is second to none. They have short-term service opportunities that would give you a perfect opportunity to find out if mission service is where you should spend your life. And you can be a great blessing while you are finding that out, too!

If language learning is not something that comes easily for you, don’t fear! AFM training is full of practical and useful tips for learning language. Whatever language. Who knows? Maybe in the near future you, too, will find out that you were born and bred to be a missionary!

Slybo

2011-01-10T06:20:00.002+01:00

The time had come to talk to the man. I had seen him around the town multiple times during the evangelistic meetings I was helping to arrange. It was hard to miss him, sitting there on his wheel-chair, with his friend who was constantly walking beside him.

“My name is Slybo,” he told me.

“Slybo, what happened to your legs? How did you lose them?” He was one of many crippled people in Tanzania, but he seemed so happy and friendly. He was very easy to talk to, at least.

“Oh, I didn’t lose them. I still have them. Look!” He pulled up the big shirt he was wearing, and sure enough, there were his legs! If they could be called legs. Twisted, distorted things that didn’t resemble what I knew of as legs.

“Slybo, what happened to you? Were you born this way?”

“No, I was able to walk until I was about 10 years old. Then my legs started hurting and bending and soon I couldn’t walk anymore. The doctors called it polio. My parents didn’t have enough money to buy the medicine, so I became a cripple.”

“Slybo, I am sorry. Can I read you something? The Bible says that you can have new legs again.” Then I opened up my Swahili Bible and read to him from Isaiah 35.

“Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who have an anxious heart,
Be strong; fear not!
Behold, your God
will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
He will come and save you.
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.
For waters break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;”

Isaiah 35:3-6

“Slybo, wouldn’t you like to be there in heaven, to be given new legs?”

“Yes,” he replied with happy eyes. “And I want that book!”

Africa, my home

2011-01-10T06:08:00.000+01:00

“Lord, I think I could live her for a long time,” I prayed silently. “I think I like it here.”

I sat outside the internet café and watched the people walk by. I had been in Africa for less than 24 hours, but I felt at home like I had never felt at home before. As I watched the amazing variety of faces walking past me there in Dar es Salaam, I felt like I fit in in a way I had previously thought was impossible.

Maybe it was the instability in my life growing up. “There’s no place like home,” means something different to me than to other people. Where is home? What is home? There’s no place that is like home to me. At least, that was true then. For various reasons, my family had moved around incredibly often. I once counted that in the ten years of school I attended, I attended 13 different schools. Sounds like an unlucky number to me! Five high-schools. My first full year in one school was in seventh grade. I have no idea how many different houses or places I have lived. After my parents divorced, life became even less stable. We were shuttled back and forth between our parents like ping-pong balls, or pawns in a game we didn’t really want to be a part of. Two of us would be with dad, two with mom, then after a few months it would change again. I think my parents wanted what was best for us, it was just not possible for them to provide stability.

When I graduated from high-school I was done with the school game. Got a job, then another. Then the Martins offered to sponsor me to attend Mission College. I had started to get tired of work after two years, so free education sounded like a decent deal. I attended, and there a new life began. One night I encountered a supernatural Being who was good and kind and loving, and everything I ever wanted. I found forgiveness and freedom, and my heart began to heal. I began to see that I belonged to Somebody who accepted me and wanted to spend eternity to me. I wanted nothing more than to tell others about what I had discovered!

Two years and two months later, I was in Africa. Mom told me she figured I would end up in Africa someday. As a child I loved stories about Africa, and the stories of the civil rights movement in America made a tremendous impression on me. As I sat and watched the real Africa walk by, I felt like something inside of me was being completed. As the varied faces of Africans, Indians, Arabs, Chinese, mingled with an occasional Caucasian, passed before me, I found a new family. I felt I was born to be a missionary in Africa! The next three years would only confirm that for me more and more. There were times of intense loneliness and discouragement. There were times of miserable failure and sickness, but through it all, it seemed I was where I was meant to be.

Could it be that in some cases, the very things that make it difficult for us to know where home is are the very things that prepare us for service in another culture? Could it be that some of us are longing for a place of service that is far from the country we have grown up in? I have come to believe that the instability of my life growing up, the lack of roots and long-lasting friendships, is one of the very things that the Lord allowed for me to be able to appreciate Africa and fit in there. Perhaps I am not the only one who was born to be a cross-cultural missionary!

The Backslider

2011-01-09T22:30:00.000+01:00

This man was a backslider. I had been told about him, and the church leaders visited with him a couple of times during our series of meetings in his village. (This was the same village where Marta and the old man with the Bible were, which I have written about before.) He had left his wife and married another woman, and the whole town was talking about it. The church was carrying a load of shame on his behalf, because he had been one of the leaders of the church, and the other members were now being mocked because of what he had done.

One day Mzee Sanga, the patriarch of Kibidula, asked me if I would visit the backslider together with him. I wondered what good I could do, but I agreed to go. We came to his new house, which he had built for his new wife, and found him home. He reluctantly invited us in, and we began to talk. It was easy to see that he had begun to grow tired of these meetings with the church leaders, who were apparently spending more time talking than listening.

I was praying silently, wondering what in the world I could share or say, and it seemed like the best thing to do would be to just ask him to tell us why he had chosen to leave his wife. As he started sharing, my heart began aching for him. He shared about the verbal abuse he had been receiving from his wife for years. Mzee Sanga confirmed that his wife had a bad habit of gossiping about him. The man shared how she made him into the laughing-stock of the village. Wherever he would go, he would hear women laughing about him and telling each other what his wife had said about him, private secrets that nobody should have known. He had finally had enough, and had chosen to leave her and find another woman.

What could I say? I knew all too well the pain of a broken home and the damage that can be done when husband and wife begin to fight, but how could I help this man? It was time for more prayer.

After the brother had shared his frustrations and pain, the room was filled with silence for a time. Then, with a gentleness that can only have come from a source greater than my own heart, I began to speak.

“I understand your pain. I hurt just hearing what you are saying. What your wife has done is wrong, and I do not want to try and cover that up. She has hurt you and humiliated you, and I can understand why you have done what you have done.”

Who was I to be sharing marriage counsel, unmarried as I was? But I continued. With tears in my eyes.

“Your wife has hurt you and slandered you around this whole village. I cannot tell you what to do, or force you to get back together with her. Nobody can do that. You are free, and you have the freedom to choose what you are going to do. I would just like to tell you something.

"In the same way that your wife has destroyed your reputation in this village, you have destroyed the reputation of the Lord. The village talks about you and laughs at you, but now the village is also laughing about the church and the Lord of the church. You have been hurt, but now you are hurting others by what you have done. Please consider this, and pray about what you must do. The Lord is merciful. He will forgive you. He can heal your pain and restore your reputation to you. He could even restore your marriage, and make it better than it has ever been. Please hear me, and know that I am saying this for your best.”

As I spoke, I was amazed to feel the tears in my own eyes. I hurt for that man, and I hurt for what he was doing to himself and others. I loved him, and wanted him to find healing. I thought I saw a change come into his face as I talked, but I could not be sure.

We left his house, with little hope that the situation would get better, but for once in my life, I left a serious conversation with no regrets that I should have said something differently. I felt sure that the Holy Spirit had guided my words, because I had never said those things before, nor felt such tenderness towards another person.

Looking back on my three years in Tanzania, there are many high points, when it seemed like God was working through me and touching others. There were plenty of times when it seemed like the enemy was the one working through me, too, of course, when I lost my temper and lashed out at those who were around me, but I won’t dwell on those too much. My meeting with the backslider turned out to be one of the high points.

When the meetings were finished and the baptism was held, this man was re-baptized. He had returned to his wife, and had emptied his savings to make sure that his second wife would be well cared for back with her parents. Amazingly, his wife was also re-baptized. She had seen the evil in what she had done, and had repented of the way she had treated her husband.

A few weeks later, I met the man again. I had a book that I wanted to give to him. Mlima wa Baraka was the name of that book. It is a book about the Sermon on the Mount of Blessing. He read it with his wife, and he later told me that it had transformed their marriage. Apparently the Spirit that had worked in me that day in his house was still working there!

Of Grinding Mills and Worldviews

2011-01-09T10:56:00.000+01:00

This is the newsletter we sent out in August, for those of you who didn't receive it by post or e-mail.

As you walk down the dust-choked road of a West-African city, a pounding sound catches your ears. Amid the happy shouting of children, barking of dogs, and tooting of cars, the pounding becomes louder and louder. Soon you realize that the steady rhythm is coming from inside a mud-brick house next to the road.

“What is that sound, Eric?”, you ask the student missionary guiding you. “It’s the diesel motor powering a grinding mill,” he replies.

As you approach the house with the mill inside, three children appear in the window, shouting at you. The din of the diesel engine drowns out their voices, but their body language alerts you to the fact that they want you to take their picture. You gladly oblige them. Then you smile, wave good-bye to the laughing children, and walk on.

When the sound of the mill is sufficiently far behind the two of you, you resume your conversation. “Why was the hand of the boy covered in white powder?” you ask.

“Because he spends all day shuttling the flour from the hopper into the grinding wheel.” Eric has been here long enough to know so much about the culture that you feel like an ignorant child in comparison.

“Why do they do it like that? Isn’t it unhygienic, and doesn’t it take a long time to grind grain that way? Why don’t they use some other system?” Thoughts of meeting felt needs and introducing a better kind of grinding mill fill your mind. “In Tanzania, a hammer mill can grind 20 liters of grain in three minutes.”

“That would take over an hour on these mills,” Eric says.

You begin to think of how you could gain credibility and respect by introducing the labor- and time-saving hammer mill. Surely this must be part of God’s will for your work here!

“Before you start changing things here, take a little bit of time to think about this,” Eric cautions. “Why do the people use the type of mill that they use? Do they have a reason to do so? Have they possibly chosen this kind of mill over others? What benefit do they gain from this form of mill? Does it produce a flour that they prefer to other forms of grinding? Does it provide jobs for people that would otherwise have no work? What would the boy with the white hand be doing if he wasn’t working in the mill?

“In addition,” he continues, “even if a hammer mill could produce equal or better flour in a tenth of the time, would that really be a useful tool to introduce into a culture in which saving time is not a high priority? Would bringing in a faster mill introduce a harmful element of competition into the community? Could it even permanently disturb social structures that hold this society together? Even if all of these concerns could be addressed, is importing grinding mills the best use of your time and money as a missionary?”

“You have come into a new society. You come with your world-view and concepts of time and efficiency. How will you know if your ideas for improvement will actually be a true benefit to the people, until you have spent the time to figure out why they do things the way they do? The smiles on those children in that pounding racket tell you that they have a higher level of happiness than many people in your own country. Be careful, lest in your eagerness to help them, you take those smiles away.”

-----------------------------

This situation happened to me last October. It is an attempt to involve you in the thinking processes that we are going through here at AFM’s Summer Training. Our understandings of how to be missionaries in an effective way are being seriously challenged. We are seeking to re-think our plans for the task ahead of us, and we can testify that this is not always so easy.

“You have to earn the right to be heard,” is something our teachers often tell us. We need to learn to listen before we speak, to learn before we teach, and to understand before we are understood.

People often ask us when we plan to leave for Benin. Our schedule at this time is molded by the happy event we are anticipating in December, when Reuben will become a big brother! The little one is due on the 11th, and we plan to stay in Norway for the birth. Then we hope to launch to Benin in January, 2011. This depends on the rest of our support coming in of course. We are now within $1000 per month in monthly support, and within $10000 of our launching goal. If you feel moved to be part of our support team, please let us know.

This fall we plan to focus on learning as much French as possible, as we raise awareness and support of the Otammari project. Jason also plans to attend a Wilderness First Responder course in Sweden, where he will learn to respond to medical emergencies in remote locations. We also expect to be traveling around Norway and Europe, preaching and sharing about the Otammari project.

We pray that God will continue to bless you and to show Himself strong in your lives! Please keep us in your prayers as well.

Omar, his dreams, and what I learned from him

2011-01-08T19:51:00.001+01:00

What could we have done differently? In the three years I lived in Tanzania, plenty of things went wrong in spite of all that did go amazing well. One of the episodes that I often think about involved a small man with a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and a story that I can never forget.

Omar gasped at what I was doing! He couldn’t understand that a preacher who was holding meetings with thousands of people attending would be gathering up the dirty dishes! “Pastor, are you waiting on tables? I have never seen a pastor do that before.” He was shaken, and I have often wondered if it was wise of me to take the servant’s role in that particular instance.

      the crowd on the last day of the meetings. The people with books had attended each meeting.

           our colorful and simple stage
     Reuben was the best translator I have ever worked with. And a very close friend.

Joseph Timotheo was his Christian name. He was born into a Muslim family, and when he became a Christian he changed his name from Omar, in order to signify his new identity. I have always thought of him as Omar, though. He had been attending our evangelistic meetings from the beginning. It was the first time I was preaching a full evangelistic series. In Tanzania, that meant 21 consecutive days, with two or three meetings each Saturday, for a total of about 25 meetings. Very stressful, to say the least, but I was enjoying it. It felt in many ways like I was made to be a preacher in Africa! I have seldom felt a stronger sense of being in the place I was designed to be.

Omar came up to me about half way through the meetings, and requested a private meeting with me and Reuben Kingamkono, my translator. Since I was preaching in English, he didn’t know that I could speak Swahili, and I was more than thankful to have Reuben along, since my Swahili was still on a simple conversational level. He joined us for lunch one afternoon, a few hours before the meeting for the day was supposed to begin.

“I had a dream about you, Pastor,” he told me. “I think that God wants me to join the Seventh-day Adventist church. Before I tell you the dream, let me tell you about my past life.

As he told his story, I often wondered when reality was turning into exaggeration. I really had no reason to doubt his story, except that so much of what he was telling was so far out of my experience that I struggled to see it as credible. I honestly don’t know whether it is all true, but I will try to re-tell his story as well as I remember it. This happened nearly ten years ago, so I have forgotten many of the details of his incredible story. Some of the things he shared were so grotesque that writing them seems to be out of place, also.

“I grew up on the coast of Tanzania, near Tanga,” he began. “My family were strict Muslims, and so was I. I worshipped each Friday in the mosque, learned Arabic, and was preparing to be an Islamic teacher. Like most of the Muslims in that area, I was also deeply involved in witchcraft. I was part of the local group of sorcerers. We were involved in some of the worst kinds of activities you can imagine. I hope you have never been involved in the kind of things I have done, Pastor!

“We used to have gatherings at which we would be transformed. We would leave our bodies, and would go around as spirits to steal money from the businesses in town. We could get through the locked doors and steal the money out of the hiding places, because we were not limited by walls and doors. We were not able to steal from Christians who were faithful in paying tithe, though. We learned to not even try, and went where we knew money would be easier to get.”

“Sometimes I would ride on the back of a huge python with wings, and attend witches’ conventions in other countries. We would feast on all kinds of gross foods, and would participate in filthy orgies.”

Omar then proceeded to tell stories of many other things he had done by supernatural help, things so disgusting I dare not write them! Suffice it to say that he told of having very real and personal contact with demons of various kinds which led him in degrading himself horribly.

“It was no problem participating in these activities while being a Muslim. The Muslim leaders were also part of the group of sorcerers.

“I hated Christians and did everything I could to harass and destroy them... Until I had the vision.

“One night I was awakened from sleep by a bright light in my room. A shining being was standing at the foot of my bed. In his hand he was holding three books. One was the Q’uran, one was the Hadith, another book of Islamic writings, and one was the Bible. The being pointed to a fire that was burning there in my room, a fire that was not normally there. Into that fire, he threw the Q’uran. It was immediately consumed. Then he threw in the Hadith, and it was also immediately destroyed. Then he threw the Bible into the fire. I expected to see it burned up, but instead it grew larger and extinguished the flames. It seemed as if it was alive! It then opened up, and in shining brass letters I could see written, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.’

“The angel then took me up and I could look down on the whole world. It was no problem to see the whole world; it was like looking at my own hand, it was so small and easy to see. I could see different people walking around. Some of them looked like Jesus Himself. I asked the angel who they were, and he told me they were God’s people, Christians who were covered by the life of Jesus. Then I saw other people who were walking around with their throats cut. The angel told me they were false Christian teachers. That must have been people like me,” Omar exclaimed.

Omar explained to us that he was a pastor for a charismatic church, but he was convinced that God was leading him from the church he was in to join the Seventh-day Adventist church.

“So, after your dream, you became a Christian?” I asked.

“Not immediately afterwards. I first went to my imam and told him what I had seen. I told him that Issa is the Son of God, and that He was born of a virgin, and we can only be saved through Him. At first he tried to gently persuade me that I was wrong, but soon he became violent and told me that if I became a Christian, he would kill me. My family turned against me as well, and I had to flee. I fled into the forest, where I was confronted with demons who showed up in various forms and tried to scare me and turn me back to sorcery, but I prayed and Jesus protected me. I got away from them, and lived with some Christians in the area for a while, but the Muslims found out where I was, and tried to kill me. The demons were also tormenting me for leaving sorcery, and so I left and came here to Mbeya, far from the coast.

“At first I started to visit the mosques and tell them what had happened to me and try to get them to become Christians too, but they chased me away. I got in contact with some Christians here in the area, and they took me in. They sent me to a three-month pastor-training school. Then I went up the valley and started a church, which I am still pastoring. Last week I started attending your meetings, and everything has changed. Now I see that I have been wrong in what I have believed and taught, and I know that God is leading me into His true church.”

We were stunned and overwhelmed by all we had heard already from this man who was clearly seeking truth and being convicted by the Holy Spirit. We sought to tell Omar that the same God who had led him from Islam was now leading him into a fuller understanding of truth, because he had a seeker’s heart and wanted to know the truth. Omar had more to tell us, though!

“I had a dream a few days ago, and now I know what God wants me to do. In my dream, I was walking along a path. As I was walking, I heard a voice speaking. I looked to the right, and I saw a hill with a small path going up it. At the top, you were standing. You had the open Bible in your hand, and you were talking about the truths from God’s Word. You stopped speaking and looked directly at me. You said, ‘Omar, come up here. Come and follow Jesus.’

“I wasn’t sure if I should follow your advice, since you were teaching new things that I had not heard before, things that my church does not teach. How would I know what to do? Then you told me to look down the path where I was heading. I could see that the path was going to a huge furnace of fire, and that the others who were walking on the path were being burned up in the fire. I knew what I must do.

“I began to walk up the hill towards you. You were speaking to me in Swahili, not in English like in the meetings. You called me ‘Omar,’ not ‘Joseph Timotheo.’ I wanted to go to where you were. I wanted to follow Jesus, and I know that He was calling me. As I was walking up the hill, I felt somebody pulling me back. I turned around to see who it was, and I could see that it was the pastor who is my boss. He was pulling me back, telling me not to go to you. He wouldn’t let me go, and I didn’t know what to do. I turned back towards you and asked you what I should do. You told me, ‘Omar, look at his pants.’ I looked at his pants, and they were covered with feces! The filth was spreading all over him, and I broke free from his grasp and escaped. I came up and stood beside you and you taught me more. That dream gave me courage to come and talk to you.”

Reuben and I were stunned and awed. Clearly God was working in this man’s heart. It was around this time, when Omar had finished telling his story, that I got up and cleared away the plates we three had been eating from. As I took them to the kitchen to be washed, Omar’s reaction made me wonder if I was doing the right thing. It seems strange, but I think that when Omar saw me “lower” myself to clear away plates he was shocked too much, too soon. In his church, pastors were treated nearly like gods, and they would never lower themselves to menial labor. Perhaps seeing me do that planted a seed of doubt in his mind, which we could have helped to prevent by taking more time to slowly introduce him to the way things are done in our church. It would take time before I began to wonder this, though.

   the baptism

At the end of the three weeks of meetings, 164 people were baptized. Omar Joseph Timotheo was one of them, and after the baptism special mention was made of him and his decision to leave his job as a pastor. Most of the other people had been studying with members of the local church for several months prior to the meetings, but Omar was baptized after just three weeks of meetings. That is another thing that we may have done wrong. Perhaps we should have waited a little longer. It is always hard to know, and so easy to question ourselves afterwards.

      Omar's baptism.

    Omar and me standing with two of the church leaders, Pastors Mtenzi and Kajula.

Omar dictated a letter and had it sent back to his church. The head elder of the church read it before the congregation, telling them of their pastor’s decision to leave his church and join the SDA church. He gave an appeal to the congregation, asking those who wanted to follow their pastor into the new truths he had learned to stand on one side, and those who did not to stand on the other side. About half of the congregation stood on the side showing that they wanted to follow in the footsteps of their pastor, and the members of the local SDA church began to study the Bible with those people.

Omar met with severe opposition from the leaders of his church. Just like he had seen in his dream, his boss opposed him fiercely, telling him he was going to hell and was joining a cult, but Omar knew what God was calling him to do, and he chose to leave his job rather than leave the truth he had learned. His wife also opposed his decision, and even though we met with her several times and she seemed willing enough to support her husband when we talked with her, when they were alone she told him she would divorce him if he got baptized. The opposition he received and the loss of position and income were very difficult for Omar, and I have often wondered what we could have done more to help him. Omar became an Adventist, but he soon returned to his former church. The last we heard of him he was “dancing on the stage in front of his former congregation”, according to the lay missionary who told us. I am sure there is nothing Biblically wrong with “dancing to the Lord,” but from what we had heard from Omar’s reports of what worship was like in his church, that was pretty much all they ever did. Sad.

Omar didn’t back-slide at once, though. We knew he was in danger and faced severe opposition, so we decided to bring him to the Kibidula Training Center, where I was a teacher, so he could get more grounded in his new faith. There we soon discovered that Omar was illiterate. He said he could read Arabic from his time studying in the Muslim school, but he was not able to read Swahili. We wondered how a person could become a pastor without being able to read, but we found out that he had a great ability to memorize Scriptures, and he would just open the Bible and quote from memory while looking like he was reading. Unfortunately, in our setting, the verses we were using were different from the verses he knew, and he struggled to follow our teaching.

      Omar is standing to the left of me in this picture. This was at a lay missionary weekend while Omar was at Kibidula.

Omar was a hard-worker, however. I remember him working in the fields, out-plowing the rest of us with his hoe. He always showed great respect for me as the main teacher in the school, and the one who had led him to the truth he now loved. He would harvest a weed that was growing profusely around the farm, and cook it up for him and myself. I had acquired a taste for bitter herbs, and when he heard that, he told me I would love that weed. He was right! He would bring it to the kitchen and cook it himself, and the two of us would enjoy it. Nobody else liked it enough that we needed to worry about sharing!

In spite of his difficulties with reading, he did his best, but after a few weeks I think the stress was taking a toll on him. Omar was probably going through culture shock, looking back on this. So much was so different for him, and so much had changed in his life in a very short time. From being an idolized leader of a growing congregation, he was now working on a farm. His marriage was strained, his former job was gone, and the future was very uncertain. We could not promise him wealth or job, although we did hope that he would be able to take a position at Kibidula or in a local church after finishing with school. I think that Omar became disillusioned and lost courage, and had trouble communicating what he was going through to us. He no longer received the same degree of respect from those around him, and he was now just a struggling student at a school where everybody else had been Adventist for much longer than him.

Some issues came up at home with his children, and Omar left Kibidula. We heard from him a few times, and it seemed that he would come back. One day one of the other missionaries at Kibidula saw Omar waving at him, leaning out from the window of a passing bus. After that, we just heard a few scattered reports now and then, and found out that Omar had returned to his former job.

I don’t judge him. In my thinking of Omar and the brief time that I knew him, the criticism I have is directed at myself, not at him. Omar didn’t fit in to our world, and we are the ones who should have taken more initiative. He was different, understanding Jesus and the Bible in a way unfamiliar to us, and I think the responsibility was upon us to seek to understand him, to spend enough time with him that we could communicate in a way he could understand. Joseph Timotheo, the Muslim witch turned Christian pastor, was illiterate, and we who could read had a responsibility to lead him softly and gently, to help him to understand the parts of the Bible that he had never had a chance to study for himself, and which he could not read on his own. We, who could speak his language, had a responsibility to do our best to communicate well with our brother, to find out what he was really going through, and to seek to understand his heart and his struggles.

Looking back, I am sure that things could have turned out differently. I believe that we could have done better in representing a fuller truth of Jesus to Omar than we did. The Lord had clearly been leading him through dreams, communicating in the way that Omar understood, but we dropped the ball when the Lord brought Omar to us. I wonder where he is today, and am sure that God is blessing him. Although it is true that we are responsible to follow the truth that we know, I am sure that God is wise enough to see the full situation of a person’s life, and for all I know, Omar is still enjoying a growing walk with the Lord. I just hope that if that walk ever again leads him through the doors of a Seventh-day Adventist church, that the church members there will be better at receiving him and meeting his needs than we were.

As we are learning to go into a deep culture study of the people we are working with, I hope that in the future we will be able to better work with people like Omar. By understanding more of where a person is coming from and what their particular needs and issue are, I hope that next time the Lord brings such a person across our paths, we will be better stewards of the responsibility we are given. As Seventh-day Adventists, our religion is very based on books and the ability to read them, but the truth of God should be able to be transmitted to and understood by illiterate individuals and whole cultures. Our God does not live in temples made with hands, nor in books printed on paper, and His truth can be communicated orally as well as on paper. May God help us learn how to do that!

One gift.

2011-01-05T22:03:00.000+01:00

We received this message a while back. We were touched, and hope that her gift might inspire others to do the same. Not necessarily to our project, but to some part of the Lord's work.

Hey!

Hope you guys are doing just fine!

My friend told me you are going to Benin, Africa. I have some money I'd like so send you because I trust you will use it well. It's not a lot, only $400, but it's money I earned working in the hospital for 2 Sabbaths. Being a nurse or doctor is not easy while trying not to work on Friday nights or Saturdays.....I try not to as far as possible, but sick people need help 24/7... Please send your account number and I'll transfer the money to you.

God bless!

Mzee and His Bible

2011-01-04T13:48:00.000+01:00

It was hard not to miss the old man sitting in the crowd. Somehow he had an aura of dignity about him that made him stick out. The gray hairs adorning his crown added to the sense that this was a man who deserved respect. He deserved to be called by the respectful title for an elderly man in Swahili.

“Mzee, thank you for coming to our meetings,” I told him the first evening of our evangelistic series.

“Thank you. I live right across the road. Your students visited me and invited me, and you had a very interesting talk. I will be back.”

Through my students, who were doing the bulk of the in-home visitation for our meetings in the village, I learned more about the gentleman who was gracing the meetings with his presence. Contrary to what I would have believed, the old man was a notorious drinker. He was known for being one who could out-drink about anybody else in town, and spent most of his time at the local taverns. He had two wives and several children, and was an avowed pagan. His presence at the meetings each night told me that this was changing, however.

That was the first and only time that I preached an entire evangelistic series in Swahili. I usually had a translator when I was preaching, but no translator was available, and my Tanzanian friends assured me that my command of their language was sufficient for me to preach 24 meetings in 21 days in Swahili. It was stressful, to say the least. I often fumbled around in my words and got things very messed up at times. I prayed continuously that God would allow those attending to hear His voice more than mine. Apparently He heard my prayers, and at the end of the meetings, we baptized 12 people, tripling the size of the small church in that village!

A few days into the meetings, I asked some friends to bring me a large-print Swahili Bible. The stress of preaching in a language that wasn’t my mother tongue night after night was wearing on me, and I was often stumbling over the texts I was reading during the meetings. The platform was lit by one small light bulb, and I thought a large-print Bible would help to solve the problem. The first evening I preached with that Bible, I could hardly stop commenting on how nice it was to be able to read so easily again! The crowd laughed as over and over again I remarked, “Wow, this Bible is great! You should get one of these!”

At the end of that meeting, “Mzee” came up to the platform to talk with me. He got straight to the point. “Preacher, please let me use that Bible to read from. I have a hard time seeing, and I cannot read from a normal Bible.”

“Mzee,” I replied, “I just got this Bible today, and I really need it for preaching. If I give it to you now, I will be struggling to read the texts again tomorrow.”

“Well, you don’t need it during the day, do you? You have another Bible for that, right? Let me use it during the day, and I will return it to you before the meeting starts tomorrow evening.”

How could I resist such a request? Of course I let him borrow the big Bible, and each evening after that as I was setting up the equipment on the stage, he would walk up and return the Bible to me. Rumors started reaching me that Mzee was spending hours every day reading the Bible, and had totally stopped visiting the taverns, even though his friends were mocking him for that. In the meetings, I could see that his interest was steadily increasing, and he was one of the first to come forward for the altar calls. He asked to be baptized, and we happily started preparing him for that.

At our final meeting, we presented those who had been baptized with their own Bible each. Mzee received his Bible, too, of course. He was already familiar with the large print Bible, and I would not be needing it anymore. I have never enjoyed giving away a Bible more than then! When I presented it to him, I asked him how much he had been reading during the last two weeks that he had been borrowing the Bible. As he started listing off the books he had read during that time, we realized he had read about half of the New Testament already, and he had no intention to stop there! He loved the Word of God, and it was obvious that that Word was changing him. He carried himself in a more dignified manner than ever, and his habits had obviously changed.

Five or six years later, I again visited that village one Sabbath. I wondered where Mzee was, and the church elder told me that he had left the faith. He had been a pillar of the church for years, but a few months prior to our visit, he had left the church, and begun to attack the church members and their beliefs. “What happened? He was such a strong Christian, it seemed.”

I was informed that Mzee had had a skin infection on his head that he was not able to get rid of. Finally he went to the witch-doctor for help, and soon afterward he was out of the church and out of the Lord, as well. He had left the church he had loved for several years, and was now openly opposing Ellen White’s teachings and the Bible as well. I believe that he really had loved God and His Word, that he had truly experienced a change of heart. But, when crisis came, he didn’t know how to deal with his sickness in a biblical way, and he returned to the sources of help he had known before. I did have a short visit with him that Sabbath. He was clearly still suffering from an ugly infection on his scalp. He had not found help for his malady, but he had lost the precious experience he had once had.

AFM’s training is specifically geared to dealing with issues like that one. We have been trained to get to understand a culture and know why people in a given context do things they way they do them. We have been trained to study deeply into a culture before we begin to evangelize, so that when the people we are seeking to reach become Christians, they will have a religion that teaches them how to deal with crises and sickness in a Christian way. Instead of reverting to old habits, people can learn how to deal with minor and major problems in a way that glorifies God.

Working as missionaries for AFM seems to be a slow way to win people to Jesus. We may never again experience that we baptize 12 people after just 21 days of teaching. We will spend years studying language and culture, and it will seem that surely we could be moving much more quickly. At the end of our culture-study time, however, we expect to know how to help people deal with their problems in a biblical way, to live a life that is as full of the presence of God as it previously has been plagued with the presence of demons. When we find respectable old men and women, or eager younger people, we hope to be able to not only lead them to Jesus, but to help them know how to handle life in a way that leads them closer to the Lord, not away from Him. We hope that the next “Mzee” that we find will fall in love with Jesus and His Word, and will remain in love until Jesus returns to take him home.

Marta

2010-12-31T16:35:00.000+01:00

“Pastor, I want to be baptized.”

I didn't think that was a good idea!

“Marta, Jesus knows the desires of your heart. He knows that you want to be baptized. He accepts that, and you don’t have to be baptized. The thief on the cross beside Jesus would have been baptized if he could have, but he didn’t have the opportunity. Jesus understood, and promised him a place in heaven. Jesus reads your heart, too, Marta, and He will take you to heaven, even if you don’t get baptized.”

“Pastor,” Marta said to me with unusual power, “my faith is pushing me. Please baptize me.”

Marta had never attended our meetings, but she had heard every word I had said. Her house was close to the field where we were holding the evangelistic series, and she could easily hear my preaching over the loudspeakers. The students who were doing door-to-door visitation for the meetings had told me about her, and asked me to visit her when I could.

As soon as I walked into the dark and smoky mud hut where Marta was living with her sister, I knew that she would not be recovering from this disease. Marta was one of the millions in Africa who is infected with the AIDS virus. She lay on the floor, separated from the hard clay by a thin layer of grass straw and a thin sheet. She was covered with a blanket, but she looked cold and miserable. At one time, as the coughing from her secondary illness racked her body, her involuntary thrashing pulled off her tattered blanket, and under it I saw a body like I had only seen in National Geographic articles about famine-stricken people. At one point I saw her medical journal, in which some doctor had nearly-illegibly scribbled the letters H-I-V on the final page with writing. After that, no medical personnel cared to help her, and she was left to her own. She was a wasted and withered woman who teetered on the brink of the grave. She couldn’t move without assistance, and sometimes I thought she might die while I was watching.

But she didn’t die while I was there. She didn’t die during the meetings, and after I had spoken about baptism, she sent for me. She wanted to be baptized, and nothing could dissuade her. I told her that the decision was not mine, since I was not really a pastor. I would ask the real pastor about it when he came for the baptism.

As the pastor and I visited with Marta, he repeated what I had already told her. He gently explained to this sick and dying woman that Jesus could see her heart, and in her case, baptism was not a requirement for salvation. He talked about the thief on the cross, and told Marta that she was in a similar situation and would be accepted into heaven without being baptized. But again, she could not be convinced.

“Pastor, my heart is made up. I am ready. Please baptize me.”

With that, she started to pull back her blanket. I feared seeing her emaciated body once again, and started to turn away when I saw that Marta was clothed in a beautiful red dress! How could we refuse water, that she should be baptized?

We carried Marta to the car, and while the others walked to the river, we gently bumped along the dirt path. We had to walk quite a ways past the furthest place we could get with the car to reach the river. Beside where we stopped the car was a scum-covered pond. It was decided to baptize Marta there! I wanted to object, but knew that carrying her another kilometer to the river and then back again might be harder on her than the standing water would be, so I stayed silent.

As a deacon went ahead to clear away the green, bubbly scum from the deepest part of the water hole, another deacon carried Marta into the water, with the pastor beside. Two men held Marta and the pastor put his hands on her head as he pronounced the blessing over her.

“Marta, because you have decided to follow Jesus with your whole heart, and because nothing could stop you from being baptized, I baptize you in the name....”

The deacons lowered her under the water. We all knew that without their help to come up again, Marta would die in that water, unable to come to the surface on her own.

“Amen!,” yelled the onlooking group on the shore as she broke the surface in her dripping red dress.

We left Marta with a couple of friends beside the car while the rest of us went to the river. There 11 more precious people signified their commitment to follow Jesus by entering into a watery grave.

We drove Marta back to her home, gave her a Bible after the final meeting, and fully expected to hear that she would be gone within a few days. I was convinced that being in the cold, filthy water would hasten her death. Well, I’ve been wrong before and since, that, too!

The next Sabbath, Marta walked to church on her own! The distance was not long, but for a woman in her condition, it was a tremendous miracle! The Lord granted her strength for a whole month, during which time she met each Sabbath with her new family in the humble little church that had been built during the evangelistic series.

After that final month of greater strength and vitality, Marta’s condition rapidly deteriorated past what it had been before. I visited her a few times in her last weeks of life. I was sad to see her dying, but glad to know that she had found true life in Jesus, which nobody could take away from her.

We buried Marta in a small casket. I preached to those who gathered around the grave, pleading with them to make the same choice Marta had made. She will rise again, to inherit a new body, healthy and incorruptible.

Sometimes I wonder why we have chosen to be missionaries. Why go to a foreign country, surrounded by darkness of every kind, battling sickness and poverty and ignorance, able to do so little in the face of overwhelming circumstances? Then I remember Marta, and I stop wondering. There are more like her, and by the grace of God, we will be channels through whom He can reach some of them.

2010-12-17T13:08:00.000+01:00

12,000 people groups - one church at a time

2010-12-17T12:31:00.000+01:00

We have lately been reading some powerful books on missions that have challenged our materialistic, consumerist tendencies. These books have helped us to see that as missionaries we are seeking to incarnate the living, giving God amidst those who do not know Him. Therefore, our attitude among the people we are working with should be one of giving, not of receiving, one of generosity, not of greed. Our attitude towards Christmas is different this year than it has been in the past, and we find it liberating to be more free of the desire to accumulate than we can remember being before.

“How long will you be in Africa?” This is a question we often hear. When we tell the one questioning us that our work in Africa is based on fulfilling the mission of planting a growing church among the Otammari people, and that AFM estimates that it will take 6 to 12 years, people are often astonished. “So long? Wow, you are really committed.”

Well, we don’t think we are so very committed, nor that 6 to 12 years is really so much time. We are going to work for the Otammari people, among whom the SDA church has already been planted to some degree. If our work stops there, then when it comes to taking the gospel to every people group on the planet, we have not really hastened the day of God at all. (See 2 Peter 3). There are still other groups around the Otammari that have no access to the gospel in their language or among their people group. In our minds, our work with the Otammari will be the opening door to help us learn how to reach other people groups, and to learn how to train local people to be missionaries to other people groups. We do not know what the future will hold, of course, but our hearts yearn for the unreached people groups of Africa to hear the everlasting gospel, and we are choosing to devote the rest of our lives to that task. We are choosing to give of ourselves and of our family to this great endeavor. We have prayed earnestly over our children, that they may be vessels used by God to reach the unreached.

There are still at least 12,000 ethnic groups in the world with no Seventh-day Adventist church among them. That is still around half of the world’s population with no access to somebody who can explain the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14 to them in their own language. From the point of view of somebody who wants to be alive when Jesus returns, this is unacceptable! Because the Bible makes it clear, in Matthew 24:14 and Revelation 7:9, among other places, that there will be representatives from every people group in heaven, we still have a work left to do. Not we, as in Jason and Maggi, but we as in everybody who calls themselves by the name of Christ on this earth.

As we think of the work we will be doing among the Otammari people, of the friendships we will be forming, of the souls that we will hopefully lead to their Saviour, we also think of the bigger work left to be done. We wonder how it is that God is going to finish up the work He has promised to finish. We know He will use His church in some way, but we wonder how that will be. Thinking about 12,000 ethnic groups, or around three billion people, is more than any of us really manage to do. Perhaps only God can really think in such terms. For us, it is much easier to focus on one thing at a time. Instead of wondering how the whole world is going to be reached with the gospel, and getting overwhelmed as we see the immensity of the task, perhaps we should narrow our vision. What would happen if one local church, your local church perhaps, would focus on just one unreached people group? What if you and your church would study that people group, researching it in every possible way, until you became experts on that people group? What if you would then pray earnestly for God to show you somebody in your midst that He is choosing to go as cross-cultural missionaries to reach that group? Reaching 12,000 people groups is daunting, to say the least, but this would be doable, wouldn’t it? One church; one people group; one missionary team. That is not such a big task, really, is it?

This is the way I start to think as I wonder how God will go about finishing up His great work of salvation in the world. These are the kind of thoughts that Christmas-time stirs in my heart this year. I want to go home! I want to go to heaven. For us, our journey to Benin is just one step on the path in that direction.

A tribute to the Norwegian health system

2008-10-04T21:44:00.004+02:00

In Norway, we pay what seem like ridiculously high taxes. By the time we´ve paid income tax, around 35%, Value Added Tax, 14% on food, and 25% on everything else, road tax, fuel tax, property tax, and whatever else we might be taxed for, it seems like there isn´t so much left to what we earned each month. But, we really do have it well in spite of so many taxes, with quite a high standard of living, and thanks to Jesus in our hearts, a high quality of life, too!

But, when Reuben was born, I realized that maybe the taxes we pay are not so very bad afterall. Or, at least, in some ways, we get something back from the taxes, when it comes to the medical field.

Maggi is now on maternity leave, and she will receive full wages, the same she was earning at her teaching job, for eight full months. That amounts to quite a bit of money by the time all is said and done.

In addition, we walked out of the hospital in Hønefoss with not one single bill left to be paid. In fact, except for an unnecessary payment for using the silly internet terminal by the hospital bed, and the food I ate, we don´t have to pay a single thing for the birth and the five days we spent in the hospital! I was even able to spend the night every night except one, and that didn´t cost a thing!

So, money-wise, having a baby in Norway was the way to go, for sure.

But, much more than that, in my opinion, is the service we received in the hospital. All of the nurses, mid-wives and doctors were very kind and helpful. They came whenever we needed them, which was often, and they were so patient and helpful in telling us how to do what needed to be done and showing us the best way. Maggi struggled with the nursing in the beginning, and they were so gentle in showing her how to get it done, and helping her with the pumping and feeding.

Most of all, I believe that the way they took care of Reuben was top-rate and highly commendable.

My mom has told me that when I was born, I was immediately whisked off to another room for a couple of hours, and was then only returned for feeding. The old nurses in that hospital even took the liberty to smear mommy with alcohol wipes, so that nursing would be extra pleasant! Needless to say, I didn´t like nursing, I guess! The nurses would wait until I was done eating, or refusing to eat, and then haul me away to the "other, safer" room, where I would be changed and powdered and comforted. Dad was apparently an unwelcome bearer of germs, and wasn´t allowed much contact with me or mom. So, by the time we went home from the hospital, my mom had never changed a diaper in her life, and if not for the fact that my dad had learned how to change diapers somewhere along the way, I might still be wearing that first dirty diaper to this day!

In contrast to that, Reuben was essentially caught by the mid-wives on duty, had the worst of the blood patted off, and then put right onto his mommy, where he very soon stopped crying.
Daddy got to cut his umbilical cord, and after Mommy was sewn up, we were all left alone for a couple of hours, just together as a little family. We started getting to know each other at once, and I suppose that deep bonds have already formed between us that probably never formed between me and my parents.

When Reuben was finally taken away to be weighed and cleaned for the first time, it was after we were calmed down from the birth and had been well-informed on what was going to happen. I was allowed to follow him, and take pictures, and even got to help in changing his very first diaper!

When Mom and child were finally wheeled into the room where we would spend the night, a meal was waiting for the exhausted little mother who hadn´t eaten in like 36 hours, and we had a little special time together when Reuben folded his hands for his first prayer.

Over the next days, we received top service from all of the staff at Ringerike Hospital, and we are grateful to them all for doing what they could to make our first days as new parents, and Reuben´s first days as a new baby, the best possible. We dirtied several blankets, towels, and a couple dozen diapers, but that was all part of the service provided! His blood was tested, his bilirubin was checked for signs of jaundice, and he was given a thorough check-up by the doctor on the day of leaving, and through it all we were treated like royalty.

So, we might have lots to complain about in Norway, about the price of fuel, and the painfully high taxes, but we do get a lot back, and we thank God for that!

Reuben Hosea

2008-10-04T21:26:00.007+02:00

It recently was brought to my attention that there are actually people who check this blog, and they are wanting to see pictures of our new son, Reuben Hosea.

My deepest apologies to those who have been missing this important piece of information. The last post was put out months ago, and now we definitely have something bigger and better to tell about!

Here´s mommy before she´s really a mommy!

Hey, my opinion on this matter is that you´re not doing it right! This room is waaaay too cold for a newborn baby!

Dear Jesus, this is my first prayer, and I just want to thank You for a good birth for me, and for such a wonderful mommy, and for daddy, too....

Back at home, with a mommy that loves her little boy!

And daddy is in love, too!

We´ve been to Sweden!

2008-05-15T21:17:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody!

We went over to Sweden on Friday afternoon, and returned Monday
evening. It was beautiful, and we would recommend it to anybody who
loves beauty! The pictures should tell the rest of the story.

Basic background

2008-04-25T14:41:00.002+02:00

Have you ever read the books Patriarchs and Prophets and Prophets and Kings, by Ellen White? If not, I highly recommend them! They give such a balanced, understandable view of the Old Testament. I think everybody should read those books.

Another book by the same author that I have found extremely useful in my life has been the book Education. I believe I´m called as a teacher more than anything else. At least, that seems to be where I have the most talent and success working for the Lord. So, a book like Education fits right into my goals and intentions in life, and I have found that book so useful. Challenging, convicting, but useful.

Those three books converge on at least one specific topic relevant to my life today, and that point is the schools of the prophets. Education, pages 45-50, P&P pages 592-602, and P&K pages 224, 225, and 260. Ellen White also writes about the Old Testament schools of the prophets in other writings, with other interesting information.

The schools of the prophets were set up in the days of the judges, by Samuel, to train young men up to be godly members and leaders of society. The schools were staffed by teachers with a reputation for being pious, godly men, who were personally acquainted with God and His ways.

The schools taught religion as a primary education, but they also focused heavily on practical training. In fact, some of the teachers even supported themselves by working with their hands. I haven´t found the quote again, but I remember reading one place that the teachers all had training in a trade that they could fall back on when the religious teaching didn´t pay the bills.

So, I´ve been called to be a teacher, and have worked as a Bible teacher in various capacities for ten years. But I was very weak on the practical side of my training. But when I read that quote, I was convicted that it would be best for me to follow a similar course as those OT teachers did. I´m an incurable idealist, and always want to do things the right way.

So, here I am, learning landscaping, believing that that is a tent-making-like skill that will be useful in many places in the world, while still giving me the freedom to be a Bible-teacher and evangelist as a primary focus. I´m learning about plants, machines, working with and laying different types of stone, working with many various kinds of people, and how to be a Christian in the work-place. Good, practical lessons.

The plan is to have other blogs giving more information on landscaping and other practical things i am seeking to learn in this time.

Thanks for reading! God bless you!

Plans change...

2008-04-22T20:03:00.004+02:00

Ok, I saw that Joar has a link to my blog on his, so I´d better give a little explanation.

I just bought a new (old) camera, and a macbook, and since I´m kinda the thinking, creative type, thought a blog would be the best way to make my presence known in cyberspace. But my life is so full of other things, and blogging hasn´t taken high priority yet.

But, it´s at least way better than wasting all of my time on Facebook! That´s my opinion, at least!

Now the blog is intended to be a place to air thoughts about preparing to do mission work. I mean, we´re also trying to do mission work where we´re at, in Norway, while we are here, but the drawing in my heart back to Africa increases daily, and I´ve kinda set it as my life-goal for the next few years to do all that I can to prepare for return to full-time, active mission service.

But, plans change. I make lots of plans, have lots of ideas, and expect that maybe 5% of them will materialize, if God blesses. But, the ideas may be good seed for thought for others, so as time permits, I´m hoping to post blogs on the different aspects of preparation for mission work, and the specific training I am going through, and intend to go through. And, of course, to lay out some issues that pop up in life under way.

(Note to self: Schools of the prophets, Photography, WFR, welding, landscaping, traveling through Africa)

A year ago we were planning to head back to America for a couple of years to live in a motor-home and spend time with my dad, while raising funds for returning to Africa. Now we´ve bought a house in Norway while we are both working full-time jobs and preparing for a baby to come in August! Wow, like I said, plans change!

And the plans I´m daily thinking of and adding to are laid at the foot of the cross, and are most-definitely going to undergo dramatic changes before they become reality, if ever.

So, this blog started out to be a review of my new hobby of photography. Now it seems it will be a review of life, kind of an open journal of Jason and Maggi and co.

Thanks for reading, and God bless you! Have a great day!

jason

Trip to Oslo Sunday, May 16th

2008-03-18T20:26:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday the Christiansen families, (Barb, Keith, Ceri, Andrew,
Lindsay, and Naomi Lynn), the Harral family (jason and Maggi) and Joar
enjoyed a day in Oslo. Here are some pictures of that.

New Hobby

2008-03-09T13:00:00.003+01:00

For a few years I have been contemplating purchasing a decent camera and computer to match, and learning to take pictures before returning to Africa.

I talked with Alden Ho, a professional photographer whose advice I appreciate so much, and he suggested from day one that I go with good quality lenses in the beginning, and not put so much money into the body at first, since a good lens on a lousy camera takes better photos than a lousy lens on a good camera, or something like that. So, I took his advice seriously, and a week ago Maggi and I got our first (used) digital SLR camera with some nice glass attached.

For the record, we also purchased a black macBook at the same time, with which I took the picture of the camera with the 35-350 f3.5-5.6 L Canon lens attached. The camera is an EOS 10d, and I've put over 2000 actuations on it in the last week! I'm enjoying this!

So, here are a few of the initial photos I have taken. I'm learning, and looking forward to spring, when the nature around us will stop being so gray.

It takes so long to upload photos onto this blog! And it so often goes wrong. I think I´ll have a talk with Andrew about how to use Automator to do this more easily...

God bless you, and have a great week! Jesus is coming soon!