The church's one and only true foundation, is Jesus Christ her Lord

When Jesus met the woman at the well, He introduced some remarkable truths. Rather typically, our regal king used few words to convey volumes of meaning across many dimensions: He specifically addressed the needs of the woman, but that overflowed to the needs of her community. Beyond that He spoke to Jews and Samarians and ultimately also addressed the church that would follow in His footsteps.

Sometimes I ponder how gainsayers fuel their doubts, for even if I had nothing else I would still be compelled to believe Him: His words are just so profound. Through great economy of language, He managed to reach the poor, the rich, the simple and wise, the Jew and the Gentile.

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The path of the bride is converging with the groom as we enter the climax of the ages

I am told that Voltaire once referred to the Apostle Paul as an “ugly little Jew”. How he even drew his conclusions so many centuries after the great man lived and died, is a bit of a mystery. That said, appearances never defined great men. Rather Paul referred to the sweet fragrance of Christ in His life, the powerful essence that endows the faithful with a regal air. Paul added, that the same fragrance, whilst alluring to many, remained a deep offence to others.

Now Paul also alluded to one of the key factors for that sweet fragrance. In Ephesians 4 he makes the point that, despite many differences in administration there is still one Lord, one Faith, On Baptism, One God and Father over us all.

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He who has the Son has life, He who has not the Son, has nothing

New Testament writers had a wonderful way of using few words to speak great volumes. I am not sure they would have been too popular with today's book publishers or other media channels, because single paragraph books really don't spin the tills.

It has taken me half a lifetime to get a basic grasp of what Paul taught, because he refused to elaborate. He would sometimes reduce significant truth to a paragraph, but Jesus was even more elegant.

It was Jesus who simply stated, "if you will not eat my flesh or drink my blood, you will have no part of me". If I blogged anything like that you would cast a few bricks my way, banish me to Siberia and then delete my URL. Yet He offered no clarification, not even when a substantial part of His support base walked away.

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Giving the finger to God, a sign of the dark times we are now entering into

Some time ago I was in the Louvre museum, enjoying a Renaissance section of the museum, when my eye caught a very offensive gesture in a crucifixion scene. Off to one side, a bystander in the crowd had raised his hand to flex a rude hand signal to the dying Christ. I have tried searching for the painting in question, to no avail, but it is out there somewhere.

I think it was on the same trip where I saw a Muslim in Hyde Park, wipe his backside on the bible. The act may have been symbolic, but the gesture carried a full weight of meaning.

There was a time when such offences were frowned on by society in general. Nowadays, if anyone dared say a word out of place about Mohammed they would be in quick and serious trouble. Indeed, so sensitive has the world become to the Muslim cause, that US authorities have approved a mosque within sight of ground zero. I don't want to debate that, but I am concerned by the way that everyone is so desperate to appease Islam, whilst having no concern about blasphemous use of the name of Jesus in movies or the offensive portrayal of our Saviour in gay or lewd contexts. 

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Will this age of compromise lead us astray or will the Lord of the Harvest intervene?

Early this morning I read that Isaac Newton was a closet Arianist, which means that despite his public testimony, privately he questioned the Trinity and believed that Jesus was created, making Him less than God. Later a friend invited me to join a group which advocates a Trinitarian position, but I chose to write instead.

Arius was a dissident of the Nicene position, the council commissioned by Constantine the Great to canonize the bible and its doctrines. He preached his alternative theology around 250 to 336 AD and was significantly influenced by Lucius of Antioch. However, proliferation of Arianism helped to reinforce and cement the Nicene view of a Triune God.

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Houston I think we have a problem

When they went up there, the astronauts marvelled at the beauty of our planet. Its still a marvel.

But things are changing ... its getting hot down below. Not only is the climate getting warmer, but world events are actually on a dangerous precipice.

I feel many are insulating themselves from exceedingly dangerous times.

Okay, lets try another angle. Money really talks I know. So if I told you that Gold is about to go through the ceiling, property prices will fall significantly and fuel for your car will take up 20% of the household budget, would that help to goad you to some action: action like simplifying your lifestyle, getting out of debt and living within your means.

That may be about the best money advice you could hope to get in these heady days - because it really does not look good.

US property prices have sagged badly, a contagion that is reaching around the world. The oil price is just under $100 a barrel - and we cried when it hit $50 a barrel a few short years ago. The middle east is in dire straights, with a major war looming. The dollar is sliding. Floods in Mexico have been unprecedented. Global warming is a looming catastrophe.

I am not being alarmist - of course life must go on, but anticipating what is happening could help equip you and yours for survival in the coming winter.

I know when Jesus is returning

My youngest son came to me today to tell me he had a dream. The dream suggested that he knew when Jesus would return, that spring had come. As Danny is already showing prophetic inclinations that have been confirmed in a number of ways, I take things like this seriously.

He is right - we can know when Jesus is going to return.

Okay, lets be fair: I don't know the exact time or date, not even Jesus does - only the Father knows the times and seasons.

However, Jesus confirmed in the gospels, that just as we can read the signs of the weather and know when it is going to rain, so we can read the signs of the times and know that His return is near.

Paul simply said that His return was nearer than when we first believed. But that was 2,000 years ago. It is now very much nearer and the stage is now set for the climax of the ages, the fulfilment of prophecy.

The events in the middle east, covered separately under my "Prophetic News Commentary", point to a rapid development of a dangerous Islamic axis that would link the world's most powerful and populous nations with the middle east, including the US, Europe, Russia, India, China and the Arab world. That accounts for over 3billion people, implicating the majority of the world.

The alignment of Islamic nations from Afghanistan to Israel, including Pakistan, has been largely due to US foreign policy and George Bush's disastrous intervention in Iraq. The world always warned that, whilst the US would win the initial war, they would be left with an unsustainable long-term crisis - which is exactly what has happened.

However, the bible predicted all that is happening right now, including the maturing of the current Russian-Iranian alliance and the eventual intervention of China. The greatest motive for these intrusions relates to power. Oil may well be substituted in consumer markets, with solar or electric power. But you can only run complex military formations on oil - oil and the lack thereof has the ability to define the military prowess of nations and is fast becoming a non-negotiable demand commodity.

The only thing that the oil rich, mid-east nations (Iraq has 25% of world reserves) would trade for oil rights, is Israel - and Israel sits on the western fringe of the emerging Islamic axis.

These events all come at a time when US economic and military dominance is on the wane, with Russia, China, India and other nations growing in military capability. All players have nuclear stockpiles, so the stage is set for a major meltdown.

So, yes, I really believe that Jesus is coming soon.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com

An inconvient truth. That's what Jesus is ... inconvenient to the status quo, to business, to the world ...

Imagine advertising, circa 1000 years bc.

You are not a man unless you use Ismellyerpits unique cobra venom underarm spray. Keeps everything away, mosquitos, lions, slavemasters ... but women love it, because it's so manly.

Or

For the great achiever, the latest in chariots - comes complete with an ego rubbing board and shiny dashboard so you can see how you look before everyone else does.

Yet for far less we allow ourselves to be convinced by adverts suggesting we may be less than what God made us to be.

Yuck .... since when are we what we appear to be? Is it all about image and appearances? Are our lives defined by the company we keep or the car we drive? It is if you are an advertiser, desperately trying to get consumers separated from their hard earned livings. But otherwise it means very little.
God loves us and accepted us in spite of what He knows about us ... you that is.

This reminds me of an April Fool's yarn where people were advised by phone to leave town because their secrets were about to be revealed ... and a sizeable number duly left town.

The fact is, God does know us only too well and there are no secrets ... but He loves us anyway and He alone can free us from the mindless pursuit of approval that is rooted in the vanity of our souls.

We have a strange contradiction here, for the God of righteousness, who judges the hearts of all and established the law, is far more willing to accept us than the unlawless world is. Acceptance in this world is highly conditional and, to be honest, it does not make good business sense for you to start feeling too okay about yourself. Stock prices in medical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, military and general retail industries, would plummet.if people suddenly started feeling too comfortable with themselves.

As Shrek said, "Now fairy tale creatures, don't get too comfortable". Business is built on presuppositions about human vulnerability, vanity, inadequacy and covetousness. When Adam and Eve fell, their first instinct was to clothe themselves and to this day humans battle to find an adequate covering for their otherwise naked souls.

Yet Jesus hung nakedly on a cross whilst men cast lots for His outer garments. Religion is still dealing with the outer garments, the symbolism of Christ, yet the naked Saviour's real gesture to humankind lay in His willingness to exchange our nakedness for His own divine garments of approval, acceptance and righteousness. We can be clothed and accepted in Him, for He paid the price for our sin and rose from the dead to give us a new beginning in life, free of our wretched pasts. In reality He has paid for your rags already, so they technically are not yours unless you remain so attached to them that you would choose death over life and sickness over health and nakedness over wholeness.

No wonder Jesus is so unpopular - He is bad for business and the institution. They crucified Him 2000 years ago for the same reason ... His was a very inconvenient truth. Maybe Nobel Laureate Al Gore would concede to this point, that the naked truth of a suspended Saviour offers a more rational solution to a world that is fast burning up on its greed, vanity and materialism. Had we accepted the terms of the cross and the notion of a good life being good enough in itself without our material trappings, we might never have found ourselves plunging into global crises, wars may have been fewer and human misery would have been limited.

Jesus is like a roadsign at the crossroads of the busy freeways of life. His cruel death is a passing fancy to a preoccupied world, a social sideshow. Yet as a roadsign, He still points us back to our lost estate and the hope of peace, joy, wholeness, healing and eternal acceptance: unfortunately, His inconvenient message runs counter to the tide of life. We will ultimately tear ourselves apart, in spite of the obvious inconvenience of self-destruction. Yet those who turn back to Him, will find a peace that this world can never give and freedom from the chains that others call Liberty.

(c) Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com

Denial does not diminish God. God is advancing His eternal cause and divine purposes. The struggle is intensifying ....

When the children of Israel started to multiply in Egypt, Pharaoh tried to stop it all through the midwives, but when that failed, he slaughtered the firstborn sons of Israel. It was a calamitous time in Jewish history, but not for the last time. During the time of Esther, Haman sought to destroy the Jews again, as did Herod at the birth of Messiah.

Then less than seventy years ago, Hitler wiped out six million Jews, something that Iran's president Ahmadinejad has conveniently denied, despite the freshness and veracity of physical, photographic, written and verbal evidence.

Of course this is not specifically a Jewish phenomenon. In Roman times, Christians were also persecuted and that too became a recurring theme of history. But where the evidence of God could not be prevented, men reverted to denial as they did in denying the resurrection of Jesus.

The modern world denies the concept of intelligent design even when the greatest minds of history acknowledge it, because to accept it is to be responsible to its implications. Denial is a very powerful force. I once faced a very painful truth that had been concealed from me, but was revealed through church leaders.

As the truth hit me I absolutely refused to believe it. Denial was immensely powerful and I was a first hand witness of that power. I just was not ready to cope with the truth, so my system suppressed it to spare me. As the truth slowly settled in my consciousness, I reverted to anger, withdrawal and gradual acceptance, the classic psychological cycle of trauma.

Now Pharaoh of Egypt was intimidated by the rise of the Hebrews and he and his successors chose to deny the call of God over the Hebrew nation. They defied God, brutalized the people and did everything to suppress the birth of that nation, the way the bourgeoisies denied the inevitable rise of the masses in the french revolution or the apartheid government of South Africa resisted the inevitable emancipation of Africans.

Unfortunately for Pharaoh, denial and suppression worked in the favor of the Hebrews, for it cemented their culture, held them together and multiplied their numbers. Eventually the nation was ready for a showdown with the Egyptian throne and the final curtain fell on the climactic moment of God's retribution for the killing of Israel's firstborn - the firstborn of Egypt died and the stranglehold of Pharaoh was broken. He tried once more to reclaim his already lost cause and God then destroyed him and his army in the Red sea.

When Herod slaughtered the innocents, he was not pursuing a nation, as such. Rather he was on the prowl for a king. Where Pharaoh had killed anything that looked remotely like a future nation or nation maker, Herod destroyed everything that looked remotely like a king. Hitler just simplified it all by destroying everything that didn't look Aryan, for his illusions of grandeur were so fragile that anything of substance posed a threat to his own dreams of a super race. But God kept his people anyway and they emerged from centuries of oppression to assume a very significant place in the world, whether the world liked it or not.

Even now the world is doing all it can to deny Israel its ancestral right to a sliver of land they call home and although that could hardly threaten the global status quo, it unfortunately looks too much like a king - so it must be stopped.

Now all this is just as true for us. The church is reaching a climax, where she will emerge from the nations as the bride of Christ: a warrior bride and the regal consort of Messiah in the consummation of this age. At an individual level, there is an increasing attack on any believer who looks like a king or a nation maker. There is a rising resistance against God's divine purpose for His people. God's purposes will prevail and the gates of hell will not, but don't be surprised when you find yourself cast into deep struggles and contradictions. Satan is out to stop anything that could threaten his own illusion of a godless world.

(c) Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/

Time advances, never retreats. We live, we die, we laugh, we cry and learn too late how small we are, how little we know ...

Clocks are progressive … they only go forward … well maybe sometimes they stand still when they run down or have no power left in them … depending on whether they are wind up or electronic gadgets. Like odometers they can be reset, and thereby made to effectively go backwards .. but that is cheating … whether you are male or female.

Okay so lets get more specific … time is progressive … it only advances, never retreats.

The courtiers of King Canute of England believed he could command the waves of the sea to retreat, but though he sat in his throne on a beach, the waves ignored him and the tide came in anyway. Kings cannot command the waves, any more than we can. Though engineers, like Dutch dyke builders succeeded in restraining the tides, they never stopped them.

And, no one, not even those who have used cosmetics, vitamins and oxygen tents to extend their lives have succeeded … not even old Methuselah who lived for about 970 years.

Okay, so much for the science lesson … so what now. Well actually you just aged by 2 minutes that’s what … if my “timeous” message has not yet added value to your life … well then you also just wasted 2 minutes of your short life.

A wise man put pebbles in a jar, with a pebble for each year of his expected 3 score and 10 year life. And then on each birthday he removed one, accepting that he might have some left when he eventually died … which would be unfortunate … or he might be able to put some pebbles back for each year he overshot his expected sell-by date. Then he made goals to ensure that each moment was well spent.

A less wise man was told by the doctor that he was going to die in 10 …. The patient appealed. “10 what?” he cried “Years, months ….” : “9, 8, 7 …..”

Generally we never see the time go by and we often wish it away. When my youngest was too young to be in grade 1, he yearned to be in grade 1, so he could do homework just like his brother, whilst his brother had actually moved on to the stage of wishing he could just reach the age where he could be allowed to watch Lord of the Rings. Both could not wait for their next birthdays … just the way I did as I ticked off the time to that moment when I would become a teen or an adult and then not have to do homework anymore. But when I arrived I just needed to wait for a car, a wife or something else.

I remember waiting 9 months, then 9 hours, then 9 minutes and finally 9 seconds for the triumphal shout “it’s a boy”.But whilst I was willing time on … I lost so many precious moments where I should have paused, slowed down and drunk in every experience. Now, I am trying to hold back time … but that seems to make it go faster … when we were kids it was too slow, now its too fast.

Recently I met someone I had worked with years before. We reminisced and commented on ageing … and we compared our time in the organization. 15 years for her. “If only that were my age” was her closing remark. But I closed by saying “its only a problem that you were once 15, if you also one day regret the loss of this very moment which you can still spend” (sounds like a pick up line – it wasn’t it was a put down line).

When I was at school, a teacher, wanting to teach a lesson about paying attention, gave us a little test … it said at the top “read all the questions before answering” – so we answered all the questions before reading.

The second last question, had we read it first, said, “only answer the last question”. Life is like that … we fail to get the point and then get presented with the only critical requirement at the end of life, when we will hear the words “the journey is more important than the destination”.

So for me I do find myself pushing back the one thing I can still manage … the invasion of my life priorities. Everyone demands my time … my job, my community, my club, my church … and all have merit. But I redraw my boundaries often to ensure that I do not miss moments of laughter and pleasure with my wife and children. And I also jealously guard my private moments, when I seek to be alone with God restoring my priorities. These are important.

As for my money … well bills must be paid, but I never regret “investing” money in memories and time with those I love. I can’t take it with me, so rather than let the taxman have it, why not buy some eternal memories … that I can take with me.

Well, now I have added another five minutes to your age …. I only hope you spent these moments well.

I leave you with a challenge from Confucius and I hope you will use it well, to add meaning to the times you have left: "What surprises you most about mankind?" Confucius answered, "They lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health. By thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither for the present nor the future and they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they had never lived..... "

(c) Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/

Read the signs. They are put there for our benefit, not to be ignored ....

One day, whilst on holiday, we drove into a remote part of our country. There were miles and miles of dry scrubland, semi-desert plains and forbidding mountains that stood vigil over the ghostly stillness of the region.

As we approached a turnoff to the 200 mile road that led towards the sea, we crossed a series of hazard bumps that had been drilled into the road surface. The car made a whining noise as it crossed the bumps, alerting us to what lay ahead. The road signs confirmed that a stop street lay ahead, but because it was so unexpected and rare in this forsaken region, the local authorities had put up a series of warning signs about the “STOP AHEAD”. That, in addition to the bumps in the road, provided adequate warning of what was coming.

I was so bemused by all of the signs that I lowered my window to look. I even roused my family from their sleepiness, to “look at all the signs”. Unfortunately, I was so busy watching the signs and ogling out of my window that we went straight through the actual stop street. My family roared with laughter and I imagined what the whole crazy scene probably looked like to someone watching from the roadside, someone like a cop that is.

As I drove on, I realized that sometimes in life we are so busy looking at the signs, that we miss the message or the point. Those who suffer declining health will acknowledge the signs but do nothing to prevent the inevitable disasters that lie ahead. Others may see very clear signs of a coming storm in their marriages or the lives of their children and yet deny the warnings until it is too late. Jesus pointed to the same phenomenon, when people asked for a sign: “You have the law and the prophets, listen to them”, He said on one occasion. Regarding His second coming, He said, “As you read the weather to tell when there is going to be a storm, so you will see the signs of my returning”.

God is unbelievably patient with people and nations, bringing judgment to fruition by small degrees. The changes in the world around us may seem almost imperceptible, but there is still compelling evidence that things are going wrong. God has even raised up people to warn us, people like Al Gore who warned of environmental disaster, James Dobson who cited many warnings about coming disasters in society and the family, and writers like Tim La Hay who interpreted the prophetic signs of our times.

Yet, we seem to have anaesthetized our culture into believing it will be okay. Unfortunately, as things have worsened the authorities have applied increasing controls and restraints on society, by degrees, to manage mob sentimentality and to keep us distracted from the real issues. It has succeeded in keeping us in denial and it has provoked our insecurities to elect leaders who are effective in exploiting our fears for their own gain.

God is almost shouting now. The angels have blown their trumpets and the heralds have declared their dire warnings. Is it not time for us to sit up and take things seriously? We are living in very heady times, but the signs are not for the amusement of passing tourists, they are there to warn us and to spare us of future disaster.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com

We have peace in our times ...

Al Gore, the distinguished ex-vice-president of the US, as he likes to put it, was given the nobel peace prize for 2007, shared with the UN. It is a very noble prize, right up there with the highest accolades that we as humans can give to our fellows. It is also very well deserved, for this man has almost single-handedly alerted the world to the seriousness of global climate issues.

I accept that audiences who have seen "An Inconvenient Truth" differ in their responses to his views, but the world is more alert to the state of the planet and the risks facing humanity, thanks to his efforts.

As he points out, Churchill had a similar go at arousing the British people to the threat facing his own generation from the awakening giant of Germany. Churchill, not a modest man, said on the night he was asked to lead the country, something like "now we are getting somewhere" - at least his words had teeth, not like Neville Chamberlain's toothless idea of "peace in our times".

But aside from the perils facing our global climate and the threats of terrorism, a threat as comparable as a single mosquito is to household, there is another voice crying in the wilderness. If you follow middle-east news, Israeli PM Ehurt Olmert has been warning of a crisis of third world war proportions in the middle east. Other issues of biblical proportion are also making the news: the threat of avian flu, an increase in tropical storm frequency and intensity, instability in the earth's crust, the decline of the nuclear family, the proliferation of social unrest and crime, the US mortgage market meltdown, global economic crises ... the list goes on.

I wonder ... at what point will we actually admit we may have a problem. Have we become like Ostriches, buried in our own excrement. The world is in a mess, yet materialism has induced such comfortable denial and apathy, that we are only likely to see the crisis when its too late.

I have heard speeches and seen movies that keep you laughing until a punch-line slumps us straight in the middle of a serious reality, forcing us to stop smiling and start thinking seriously. Well right now people are living it up, having fun, living dangerously and wandering around with rather ignorant smiles .... ahem!, methinks a big punch-line will hit soon and everyone will suddenly find themselves in a very serious reality, but by then it will probably be too little, too late.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com