Israel’s Major Wars

All of Israel’s wars with its Arab neighbors were in self-defence.

Click to access Israel%20Wars.pdf

Blind man healed

Please see Comments

Bethel Church

See Kris Vallotton’s latest statement in Comments.

Insulating themselves from the nasty bits

Ironic that many in the “prophecy movement” can’t bear Bible prophecy.

Easier to manage the bits you don’t like

It’s very easy to label a statement in the Bible which you don’t like an “eschatology”. It’s easier to manage that way.

Self-emasculation

To compromise or hesitate to speak what the Bible actually says is to spiritually emasculate yourself.

Clash of agendas

“People make it difficult because they have other agendas”, a brother commented concerning the difficulty in restoring the church. That’s it. The NT pattern is only difficult if it clashes with your agenda.

How we know

Love really desires the best for the other. This is how we know we love.

Example

Example is the most underestimated influence in Christianity, either for better or worse.

Hyper-spirituality

Hyper-spirituality is the first step toward insanity for it is to project the reality you desire over actual reality, so that unreality replaces reality, and then you live in your own imagined reality, cut off from actual reality. They want a certain reality so badly that they imagine they are already living in it.

Preach to yourself

A good rule to follow when we teach or preach is to put ourselves in the audience and preach in a way which we would want to be preached to, and teach in a way which we would want to be taught, to be someone whom we, ourselves, could respect, receive and learn from. All that we expect in a preacher or teacher, that’s what we should be.

When we listen to teaching we should be listening to the Holy Spirit speaking in our hearts and minds. He should be revealing the truth of God’s Word to us.

Then, when we preach or teach others we should be aware of how we learn, and who it is who teaches us, for it is the same for those who hear us.

Love without truth is fake love

If people can understand that if you take the truth out of a relationship there is no love, then why can’t they understand that the same applies to relationship with God? Love without truth is fake love.

Circumstances

God arranges the circumstances of our day to day life in such a way that we learn to walk by faith in Him.

Reassuring fellowship

It’s not so much the fantastic testimonies which encourage me, but rather the more ordinary, down-to-earth ones which remind and reassure that there are many others in the same boat, facing the same challenges. Fellowship is when the fellows are in the same ship, on the same wave-length.

Our family

Our family, Dec. 28, 2014.

Explaining is crucial

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

~ Albert Einstein

We should be able to explain what we read in the Bible, if we understand what we are reading. It’s in the explaining that the truth is galvanized in us, we make sense of it, we apprehend it.

The NT pattern of church facilitates this, while traditional church inhibits it.

Read a thread recently where a woman was poo-pooing theology and claiming she was free from theology and only teaches Scripture, while being blind to the fact that she herself interprets and explains what she reads in the Bible, for that is what teaching is.

The paradigm of theology was unknown in the first century church (though it existed in the OT), rather, the paradigm was truth. The Scriptures were studied, but this did not become a specialized, distinct and separate ministry paradigm or discipline until later in the second century, in Alexandria.

…By this time you [all] ought to be teachers… (Heb. 5:12a)

It’s not right for Christians to be ...unskilled in the word of righteousness (Heb. 5:13).

True church produces this. Participatory meetings bring forth this maturity. As you participate you become skilled in the word of righteousness and able to teach others.

Joy will find you

Ironically, you’ll feel a lot better if you stop trying to feel good. When you don’t seek joy it ends up finding you, for those who love the Lord Jesus and trust Him. The deeper the trust, the less important how you feel becomes.

Trust

It’s very fruitful to ponder on what it means to trust God – on whether we are trusting Him completely and comprehensively. Trust is wonderful. It is a place of quietness in God above the noise of the world and the clamor of the religious world. It is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God. Jesus could sleep during the storm bcos of trust.

Meeting God

Prayer is meeting God, and that’s the greatest thing that could ever happen to you.

Spiritual Vacuum

A spiritual vacuum will naturally attract the wrong spirit to fill the void. Completeness in Christ is the only answer.