My Life and Books (18) Powers that Be

After many years pondering the meaning of Romans 13:1, I discovered that Paul was actually affirming the system of excellent judges interpreting the law of God established in the Torah.

Every person should submit to the more excellent judges, because the ones that exist have been established by God (Rom 13:1).

When explaining which authorities are from God, Paul constructs a strange sentence that uses the verb “to be” twice. Translated literally, the verse means “the authorities that are, are from God.” This is odd. Paul was saying that “the authorities that are” or “the authorities that be” are from God. This strange expression, “the authorities that be” refers back to where the book of Deuteronomy says that refers to “the judges that are”.

You shall come unto the judge that shall be in those days: and you shalt inquire; and they shall show you the sentence of judgment (Deut 17:9).

A literal translation is “the judges that shall be in those days” or “the judges that are in those days”. Paul would have been familiar with these texts. When he started thinking about justice, the Holy Spirit brought this expression to his mind.

The Torah introduced a unique system of justice: God’s law applied by local judges. Paul is simply referring back to this verse and confirming that God’s will has not changed. He confirmed that the judges who have emerged in a free society are arranged by him.

More at Understanding Romans 13.

My Life and Books (17) Two Standards

An important discovery for me was that God has different standards for citizens of the Kingdom and the people of the world living close to a Kingdom Community.

• Citizens of a Kingdom Community have freely submitted to Jesus by listening to the Holy Spirit and obeying his word.

• Residents of a Kingdom Community live within the same neighbourhood, but they have not accepted the gospel or chosen to follow Jesus. They may want to receive the blessings that flow from participation in the Kingdom Community, but they are not full citizens because they have chosen not to surrender to Jesus.

Citizens will support the work of the Spirit by loving and sharing with the residents of their neighbourhood. They will provide justice, support and protection for anyone with a need, free of charge and control.

• Citizens of the Kingdom will be expected to live by the gospel standards, because they have received the Spirit. Their law is Jesus’ new commandment.

  Love one another, as I have loved you.

  Turn the other cheek.

  Give to those who ask for help.

  This type of behaviour should be normal for Christians, but it will not be expected from those who have not chosen to follow Jesus.

• Residents within a Kingdom Community who have not chosen to follow Jesus will be expected to live according to God’s Laws for Society.

  No stealing or theft.

  No assault or murder.

  If they want the benefits of living in a Kingdom Community, they will have to accept God’s law. (The same law will apply to citizens who have fallen away from their faith.) They will often benefit from Christian love, but they will not be expected to live by Christian standards.

The leaders of the community will say to the people living among them something like this.

We do not expect you to live according to the standards of Jesus, but you will recognise the need for good law. We are offering you the best set of laws possible. We will apply them if you are willing to accept them. That is all that you need to do to have a part in this community.

That is an offer that would be hard to refuse, as this standard will not be too hard for most people.

The laws for society in the Torah were designed to be rolled out to the world (but Israel failed to demonstrate their efficacious. These laws were God’s perfect standard for the people of the world and for the children of Israel before they received the fullness of the Spirit at Pentecost.

The Sermon on the Mount is God’s perfect standard for people who have chosen to follow Jesus and receive the fulness of the Holy Spirit. This standard is only for the church, not for the world.

• The Torah is God’s standard for justice.

• The Sermon on the Mount is God’s standard for love. It does not replace the laws for society but enables them to be fully fulfilled.

My Life and Books (16) Judicial Branch Only

I came to understand that in a free society, people will be free to choose a judge to decide their case . They will choose judges whose wisdom and skill are recognised by other people that they know. If people have the freedom to choose their judges, they will always go to people that they trust. In a community of trust, people can talk to someone who knows about the record of the judge. Wise judges will be trusted because they have a good reputation in their community.

Judges do not need to be appointed. They will emerge as wise people in their local communities. They will become judges when people start going to them for guidance in dealing with difficult situations. The title judge will be recognition of what they are already doing. Judges who make good decisions will get more cases to decide. Those who make bad decisions will get fewer cases. Those who make good decisions would become widely known in society.

As a person’s reputation for wise judging spreads, people will start referring to them as a judge. The title does not change a wise person into a judge. It is just a recognition of what they are already doing. The reality is that a judge will only be as successful as their last few cases. If they start making bad decisions, people will stop bringing them cases, and they will cease being a judge.

A judge has no permanent authority. Their authority is limited and temporary, because it is gained through voluntary submission. When people take a dispute to a judge, they delegate authority to the judge. This authority of a judge is limited to the situation that is submitted to them. The judge has no authority over any other aspect of their litigant’s lives. The judge’s authority is temporary. It ends when the case has been decided and any required restitution paid. When the case that has been submitted to the judge is complete, the authority that has been delegated is gone.

The people in a community will influence the choice of judge by supporting the implementation of a judge’s decision. If they undermine the decisions of a particular judge, by supporting a person who refuses to make restitution, people with disputes will avoid that judge.

The process is described in Raising Judges.

My Life and Books (15) No Executive

A big shock was realising that there is no Executive branch of government in the Torah. There was no one appointed to implement government programs. There was no bureaucracy to carry out political programs.

One reason why there is no Executive is that there is no compulsory taxation in the Torah. All giving to the community was voluntary. There was an expectation that people would be generous to the poor and needy, but there was no agency with the authority to enforce that.

This means that one of the three standard branches of government described in most political theologies, the Executive Branch, are missing from God’s system of government. The executive branch can only function with money. If there is no compulsory taxation, the executive branch loses its power.

An important step was realising that God does not want kings. He allowed Samuel to appoint a king for Israel, but he was very clear that they were copying the surrounding nations, not doing something that God commanded (1 Samuel 8). Samuel warned that the king would harm the nation and the people would suffer.

I discovered that Moses’ role, apart from being a prophet, was to be a temporary military leader. When the nation was attacked, and the people gathered to defend it, they would agree on a person to lead them. That was a temporary role. When the enemy was defeated, the military leader would go back to their home and become an ordinary person.

Kings are really permanent military leaders. They tend to become dangerous because they are tainted by war, but gain lots of power. No human king is good.

My Life and Books (14) Identifying Universal Laws

Another big surprise was discovering that the Torah has two universal laws. Discovering this key was a huge step forward. A problem with studying the Torah is that it is full of a lot of different stuff mixed up together: history, laws, sacrifices, tabernacle design, covenants, infection control, genealogies, and rules for the priesthood. We need a principle to identify the laws that judges are required to enforce in every society.

After looking for a long time without success, I found the key I have been looking for. That key is a phrase in the book of Exodus. Whereas most laws in Exodus are addressed to Israel, I noticed that a section of laws in the middle of the book seems to be addressed to a universal man. They all begin with the expression, “If a man” (kiy ish). These laws are not addressed to Israel, but to all people. This set of universal laws begins at Exodus 21:12 and ends at Exodus 22:17.

This section of law also stands out as being different, because it is expressed in the third person. Most of the other laws in Exodus are expressed in the second person, ie you shall not steal, you shall not murder. Moses used “you” because he was addressing Israel and announcing laws for his listeners and their descendants. The Ten Commandments are all written in the second person, as they were spoken to Israel. The laws beginning at Exodus 21:12 are written in the third person, ie if he does something, he shall receive this penalty.

The third person is used when referring to someone who is not part of the conversation. It points to a third person, who is not the speaker (I) and not the listener (you). Moses used the third person here because this section of laws is for all people and not just for those who participate in the covenant made on Mount Sinai. The third factor that distinguishes the section of laws between Exodus 21:12 and Exodus 22:17 is that the subject of the verb is always “a man” or “men”. There is no definite article, so the reference is not to a particular man, but to any man. These seem to be laws for all men or “everyman”.

The use of the third person and “man” or “men” as the subject of the command marks off a set of laws that apply to all people in all societies everywhere. These laws are not just for Israel. The penalties for failure to comply with these laws are specified in a timeless way. I refer to them as the Laws for Society, as God intends them to be applied by judges in every society and culture.

The Laws for Society cover two areas of life.

• personal injury.
• protection of property.

Biblical justice is limited to:

• Physical injury to a human person.
• Theft or damage to property.

These two types of offence are the only ones specified in the Judicial Laws of Moses. There is nothing else. This makes God’s Judicial Law very simple and easy for everyone to understand. It means that we do not need a Congress or Parliament to turn out hundreds of new laws every year. We do not need law books with hundreds of pages of detailed legislation. All we need is wise judges, who can decide in any situation whether a victim was harmed by assault or if their property was harmed or stolen.

My Life and Books (13) God’s Law is Enough

God created humans and all the world, so he knows and understands us perfectly. This puts him in the best place to design laws that work effectively.

For the LORD is our judge,
The LORD is our lawgiver,
The LORD is our king;
It is he who will save us (Isaiah 33:22).

God has infinite wisdom, so his laws will be perfect for us.

Paul understood that the law is a tool for dealing with people who disrupt the peace of society. This is a crucial verse.

We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers (1 Tim 1:7-9).

The law is used properly when it is used to restrain the evil that harms society. The law is not for the righteous. It is not for Christians. We must understand that the law is for thieves, murderers, adulterers and perjurers who would disrupt the peace and harmony of society. The righteousness of Jesus cannot deal with these people while they are hostile to him. Until they are transformed by the love of Jesus, laws restrain their evil and prevent them from harming other people.

God’s law provides a way of restraining the harm that is caused by people who are willing to harm others. His law is the best for every human society. What could be better for the functioning of society than a set of laws that are holy, just and good (Rom 7:12)? Any other laws will be suboptimal. They will be partly unjust and not always good. Why would any society want to have suboptimal laws? God’s law is the best because he is God.

God’s law is good. He is just and good, so his law is the best basis for a harmonious society. This was an amazing discovery. I was surprised to discover that God has provided the law that every society needs.

Purpose of Law
Going into the land, the people of Israel needed to know how to live together in close proximity with each other. They did not need guidance for living while they were slaves in Egypt because Pharaoh’s taskmasters controlled every aspect of life. The situation would be different once they had a land of their own, with no emperor to control them. Several things should be noted about the guidance that God gave them.

• An executive branch was not established in the Law. This means that there was no one to enforce the laws. Obedience to the law was fully voluntary.

• No legislative assembly was established in the Torah. God provided the laws that his people needed. His laws are better than human laws. He has given us his laws, so we do not need a legislative assembly to create human laws.

• Judges emerged from amongst the people. They were not appointed. They emerged as the people took their cases to the wise people in their midst. Those who did well were eventually recognised as judges.

• Crime - the main problems would be theft and violence. The law provided restitution and exclusion as tools for dealing with these crimes.

• Economic/social issues – God gave Guidance for Economic Life. These guidelines were voluntary. No one had authority to enforce them. They would be fulfilled as an outcome of love.

• Defence – military leaders were temporary, and participation in defence was voluntary.

My Life and Books (12) Branches of Government

From my study of political science, I had always known that in most modern systems have three branches of government.

1. Legislative Branch that makes laws.(Congress in the United States and Parliament in the UK).

2. Executive Branch that implements government policy (The President in the United States and Prime Minister and cabinet in the UK. It includes the bureaucracy managed and utilised by the president or prime minister to implement their policies of the government.

3. Judicial Branch that decides guilt and the meaning of the law (a system of judges and courts with a supreme court at the top in both the United States and the UK).

Most systems of government have some form of these three branches. In the days of kings and empires, the king or emperor would dominate the legislative and judicial branches. In the modern world, the executive has become the most powerful branch of government.

A big surprise when I studied the Torah was that two of the three branches of government were missing. This puzzle took some working through, as I had just assumed that God’s solution would need all three branches. Accepting that two branches were unnecessary was a big hurdle to get over, but eventually, it made sense.

No Legislative Branch
Therefore, an important insight is that no parliament or congress in the Torah. This dramatically changes political theology, although the reason is obvious once I thought about it. God does not want parliaments writing laws, even if the parliamentarians are believers trying to seek his will. Law is such an important issue that God decided to cut out the middleman. When Israel was becoming a nation in the new land, they needed a set of laws so they could live together in peace.

God revealed his Laws for Society directly to his people through Moses. He spoke to Moses on the mountain, and he wrote down God’s laws. God is perfectly wise, so the laws that he gives will be the best possible laws that could exist. Because we have his laws, we do not need any other laws. We do not need a parliament or congress to make up new laws.

The laws were applied by local judges who emerged within their communities. They were not appointed by someone from outside. Their wisdom was recognised in their community, so people would ask them to apply God’s law to their disagreement.

The judging processes were voluntary. Judges could not enforce their decisions. There was no process for that in the Torah. People would accept a judge’s decision because they accepted their wisdom. If they rejected the judge’s verdict, the judge could not make them comply with it.

My Life and Books (11) Torah

My next big challenge was that I needed to change my attitude to the Torah. I had read it at least once a year but was quite ambivalent about it because I assumed that Jesus had made it redundant. Once I realised that this is not the case, I needed to change my thinking.

One day, when I was reading Psalm 119, the penny dropped. I always assumed that it applied to the entire scripture, but I was shocked to realise it was a Psalm in honour of God’s law.

Oh, how I love your law!
I meditate on it all day long.
Your commands are always with me
and make me wiser than my enemies.
I have more insight than all my teachers,
for I meditate on your statutes.
I have more understanding than the elders,
for I obey your precepts.
I have kept my feet from every evil path
so that I might obey your word.
I have not departed from your laws,
for you yourself have taught me (Psalm 119:57-102).

These verses stunned me. I wanted to be wise in the political space. This Psalm explained that I would only get wisdom if I loved God’s law.

I resolved that I would love God’s law. I understand that love is not just a feeling, but a decision, so I decided I would love God’s law and look for the good in it. I put all the laws into a spreadsheet so that I could sort them by topic and theme to see how they fit together and when they applied.

I decided that I would seek the insights it contains. I believe that everything that had been put in the Torah by the Holy Spirit for a purpose. If I found something I did not like, I would ask the Holy Spirit to show me what he was saying when he put the passage in the Torah. Over time, I began to understand God’s law in a totally different way. Loving it became natural. More important, the Holy Spirit gave me some amazing new insights.

For me, renouncing political power had seemed like a backward step because I had assumed that political power would be essential for bringing in the Kingdom of God. At first, I was quite depressed about the situation. It seemed like the Kingdom of God was an impossible dream in this season as it would be impossible for God to bring in his kingdom without relying on political power and military force.

However, when I studied the Torah seriously, I discovered that God had already given Moses a system of government that does not rely on force and coercion. The system instituted through him had no executive power and no compulsory taxation. There was no capability provided for enforcing the decisions. There was no permanent military force that could support government power. The entire system was voluntary. It is radically different from every modern political system, so it took me some time to understand how it works.

My Life and Books (10) Missing Political Theology

One of the most important truths I discovered was that the New Testament does not contain a political theology. There are a few relevant verses, but they only hint at what God wants. Jesus made some political statements, but the gospels do not contain a well-developed political theory. The good news is that Jesus is the king is a political message, and the gospels explain that his kingdom will be totally different (no coercion), but they don’t describe how it will be structured. For someone who is interested in political theory and government, this is a problem.

People looking for a well-developed Christian political theory will not get much from the New Testament epistles. Romans 13 does not help much on its own, as it has been used to justify political dictators like Adolf Hitler. Going back to the Old Testament prophets does not give much more. The prophets critiqued kings and rulers, but they did lay out their ideal form of government.

Christians who are looking for a well-developed political theory and system of government will have to go back to the Torah to find it. It took me twenty years of study before the penny dropped, but one day, I woke up and realised that God had given his chosen people a system of laws and government when they entered the promised land. This was God’s system of government, so it must be the best that is possible. We don’t need to develop a modern system of government because God has already given us his ideal system of government.

This truth is a huge stumbling block for most Christians, who believe that the Torah is redundant. Their rejection of God’s solution has pushed them to accept mediocre and worldly political solutions.

My Life and Books (9) Spiritual Powers of Evil

A big step for me was understanding that the spiritual powers of evil have used politics to leverage their power on earth. Although they were defeated by the cross, they have maintained their authority on earth by using spiritual principalities and powers to control political power and empires on earth. Every town, city, nation and region on earth is controlled by a principality or power in the spiritual realms.

Their authority on earth is perpetuated by a hierarchy of authority.

• The principalities and powers in the spiritual realms control the political powers on earth, such as kings, emperors and other political leaders. The personalities may change over time, but the spiritual powers remain in control.

• These kings and political leaders have authority over large groups of people, so this gives them immense authority on earth.

• The people look to their political leaders to solve the problems that disturb their lives, so they mostly submit to them. They should be looking to the Kingdom of God for their salvation and to Jesus as their king.

• Political leaders and kings use military force and political coercion to control their people. This gives the principalities their power a point of entry to control them.

This hierarchy of authority allows the spiritual powers of evil to exercise authority on earth, despite their defeat by the cross. The principalities and powers have authority over all the spirits living in the nation or region they control. These follower spirits listen and obey their commands.

Christians frequently talk about principalities and powers, but they have not understood the implications of their power. Most kings and political leaders can easily be dominated by a government-spirit because they are vulnerable to pride and control. They make it easy for the spiritual powers of evil to control a nation.

Many Christians assume that other nations are controlled by principalities and powers (Iran and North Korea), but they have no understanding that a principality or power controls their own nation by manipulating political power. This is why political action always disappoints.

My Life and Books (8) Political Power

In the modern world, most authority is political. Human political institutions exercise immense authority. There are very few limits on their authority. The coming of the Kingdom of God means a huge authority shift, so it will bring enormous changes to systems of politics and government.

I worked for thirty years on the edge of the government system, close enough to see how politics works, but not close enough to be distracted by power. I learned a great deal from this experience. I always understood that political power has a significant influence on the functioning of society, but my book on this topic was the most difficult to write, because there were so many things that I needed to understand.

Government is a process for exercising authority over society. Politics is a tool for deciding who should have authority to control people. The basic questions of political theory are:

• How should humans govern themselves?

• Who should have authority in society?

• How should authority be exercised?

• What gives governments the authority to make people do things against their will?

Authority is at the heart of all these questions. Of course, the Kingdom of God provides a radically different answer to them.

A kingdom is a system for exercising authority and Jesus came proclaiming a new kingdom. The coming of the Kingdom of God requires a radical shift in authority, so it will have a dramatic impact on politics and government.

It took me a long time to work out what the impact would be. Over several decades, God showed me the answers to the problems of politics, but I was totally surprised by where he led me. I had a lot of hurdles to overcome, and some false thinking to let go. In the following posts, I will describe some of these surprises.

When I first started worrying about the problems of the world, I had faith in political power. When I became a follower of Jesus, I believed that God’s people could use political power to establish his Kingdom on earth. I studied economics, political science and theology to learn how political power could be used to advance God’s purposes in this nation.

At first, I assumed that it was fine to force people to do things provided that the things they are being forced to do are good. The problem with this approach is that people have different ideas about what is good, and power cuts both ways. If it is acceptable for Christians to force people to do things that they do not want to do, then we accept that other groups who gain political power can force us to do things that we don’t want to do.

Early on, I became worried about the conflict between human freedom and political power. I noticed that people who want to change the world choose politics as a vehicle for their aspirations, because politics has the power of coercion.

Whatever they want to achieve, whether it is elimination of poverty, making business easy, or improving education, they want to force other people to change, and they hope to make other people pay for it.

If these people chose any other vehicle to advance their cause, they could only make suggestions, and they would have to pay for the change themselves, or persuade others to pay for what they do. This always seems too hard, so politics is the preferred option for people who want to change the world.

Political power forces people to do things that they don’t want to do, which is a limitation of human freedom. I noticed that people say that they are going into politics to serve, but you cannot really say that you are serving people if you want to make them do things, or want to spend their money on things they do not want.

I tried to resolve this dilemma by relying on democracy to provide legitimacy. I decided that if Christians could gain a majority in a free election, they could legitimately use the power gained to force their values on the rest of society. I accepted that Christians would have to preach the gospel and win the hearts of the majority before they could gain sufficient political power to establish the Kingdom of God on earth.

The victory of the gospel has not happened, and it is just as well because that failure has proved the weakness in my argument. Christians are now a minority in many democracies. They don’t like it when other groups use the political power that they have gained to impose their standards on us. What is sauce for the goose is sauce of the gander. If we believe that it is acceptable for Christians to impose their standards on society if they win power in an election, then it is acceptable for other groups that gain power to do the same to us if their values are hostile to God.

It gradually became clear to me that the power of democracy is a two-edged sword. If it is legitimate for democracy to be used to advance the Kingdom of God, it can just as easily be used to oppose it and to harm followers of Jesus. I eventually came to the conclusion that if we are serious about the Kingdom of God and the gospel that sets people free, we have to give up seeking political power. That is a step that most Christians are reluctant to take, but it is absolutely essential if we are serious about bringing in the Kingdom in God’s way.

Once I understood the hazards of political power, I quickly noticed that Jesus refused to use political power to advance the Kingdom of God.

Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that (Luke 22:25-26).

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36).

Jesus refused to use political power to advance God’s work.

Once I realised that Jesus rejected political power, I came to understand that the spiritual powers of evil have used political power to increase their authority on earth. By attacking, manipulating and controlling political leaders, they gain far more power than they can get by possessing an individual person. Political spirits and government spirits have used political authority to leverage their power on earth, despite their terrible defeat on the cross. Those who try to use political power to do good unwittingly submit to the spiritual powers that control the political position they are seeking to use to accomplish good. Evil cannot be used to do good.

One of the biggest obstacles to the Kingdom of God is that most Christians still believe in political power. They disagree about how it should be used, but they believe that getting the right people into political power and changing laws in the right way is the key to advancing the Kingdom of God. This false belief has enabled the spiritual powers of evil to exercise power on earth way beyond their use-by-date, and the kingdom has not got any closer. If we are serious about the Kingdom of God, we must renounce political power.

My Life and Books (7) Prophetic Ministry

Back in the 1980s, I did a study of the prophetic ministry. I got hold of every book and article on the topic I could find. I copied hundreds of quotes onto paper (This was before I had a computer). When I found everything available, I coded all the quotes into themes with alpha codes. I then chopped up the bits of paper, and taped the quotes for each theme together, and a book called Prophetic Ministry sort of fell out. Of course, I wrote a lot of other stuff that I discovered as well.

I think that it is my least important book, but it is my best seller. I originally published my notes on the web. I only put them into book form when I got lots of requests from people wanting a hard copy. I had been reluctant to do that, because I did not have references for many of the quotes, as when I gathered them, they were only for myself.

I think the book is popular because it has some practical stuff, like why pastors and prophets do not get on, the difference between intercessors and prophets, what its like for prophet’s wives, etc. (Some people who sound a bit weird, also write and say they found it helpful, so I am not sure).

Many biblical teachers make prophets into itinerant ministries. My approach is to push the prophetic ministry, along with the other ascension gifts down into the local church. A church should be led by a team of elders, which will include a couple of shepherds, one evangelist, and one prophetic person. Having this balance is essential for a balanced mature body.

More at Prophetic Ministry.

My Life and Books (6) Kingdom Authority

When I was a young Christian, I studied the New Testament avidly. I very quickly noticed that Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God far more than he talked about the church. He preached the good news of the Kingdom of God. I realised that it was important to understand the nature of the Kingdom. It took me a long time to come to a full understanding.

Since I decided to follow Jesus fifty years ago, I have been zealous for the kingdom of God. I wrote a book called the Glorious Kingdom in the 1980s, but no one was interested in the Kingdom back then, (and it was badly written) so it flopped. “Prophetic” was the popular buzzword at that time, with prophetic conferences and books on prophetic leadership.

A decade later, “apostolic” had become the popular adjective. Books were being written about apostolic government, apostolic leadership and apostolic reformation. That fad seems to have passed and “kingdom” has now become the adjective that everyone is using to describe what God is doing.

Authority is the heart of every kingdom. If there is no authority, there is no kingdom. Therefore, to understand the Kingdom of God, we must understand how authority works, in heaven and on earth.

Everything in this universe is shaped by authority. In the beginning, God said, “Let it be” and it was. He had authority over everything. Two chapters later, God said, “Let us give authority to humans”. Why on earth did he do that? When Jesus was being tempted, the devil said, “I have authority over all the kingdoms of the world”. How did that happen?

When Jesus preached the gospel, the people recognised his authority. Who gave him authority? By the end of the gospel Jesus was saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”. How did that happen? The Book of Revelation says that Jesus has authority to open the scrolls that release God’s activity on earth. How does that work?

My book called Kingdom Authority describes the history of authority in both the spiritual and physical realms. It explains the big authority shifts that have had massive impacts on earth. Most theologies jump from the fall straight to the cross, without much need for the stuff in between. That is a mistake, as if we ignore the events described in the Old Testament, we will fail to understand everything God is doing, and the big authority shifts that have constrained him.

If we do not know about authority, we will not understand why evil has been so active on earth. God gave authority over the earth to humans. The forces of evil have been active on earth, because humans gave them authority, while God did not have the authority he needed to deal with evil. It took a special human do that, and until he came the powers of evil had a ball. Jesus preached the gospel of the Kingdom of God. This raises a couple of serious questions.

Jesus prayed that God’s authority would be done on earth and it is in heaven. How did the God who created the universe end up losing authority over the earth? What happened on earth and in heaven that meant his authority on earth has to be restored?

Why has God taken so long? Things went wrong on earth right at the beginning. Yet God let thousands of years go by before he sent Jesus to put things right. Why did he let evil go on for so long, before something about it?

To understand these questions, we must understand the working of authority and the big shifts in authority that have shaped history on earth. The big shifts in authority are described in Kingdom Authority. It also describes God’s plan for getting back the authority lost to the spiritual powers of evil and establishing his Kingdom on earth.

Human politics are an obstacle to the Kingdom of God because they use Imposed Authority, which empowers the powers of evil. Government-spirits have leveraged their feeble power by controlling political and military authorities. In contrast, God refuses to impose his authority on earth using force and coercion. He rejects all forms of political and military power. Instead, he calls people to serve him and freely submit to his will because they love Jesus.

More about Kingdom Authority.

My Life and Books (5) Healing

About a year after I chose to follow Jesus, I was feeling really frustrated. I felt like I had not made much progress in learning how to follow him. It felt like I had not changed enough.

I talked to the young woman who led the study and fellowship group we belonged to. She had been a Christian most of her life, but she did not give me answers. She wisely suggested that I read the book of Acts and see if I could find out what made a difference for the new believers in the church.

I quickly read right through the book of Acts looking for the thing that made a difference. The answer jumped out from every page. Things happened and people were changed because the Holy Spirit was active. I realised that I desperately needed the Holy Spirit in my life.

The next Friday night, I went to town and visited a Christian bookstore. I bought three books about the Holy Spirit. One of them was the “The Holy Spirit and You” by Dennis Bennett. He was better known for “Nine O’Clock in the Morning”, but I did not notice that one.

On Saturday morning, my wife went to work at 6.30 am. I did not get up, but stayed in bed and read the Holy Spirit and You. By midday, I had finished the book. At the end of the book, Dennis Bennett referred to a promise in Luke 11. I got my Bible and I read it carefully.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (Luke 11:9-13).

As I sat in my bed, it seemed obvious. I needed the Holy Spirit. The Father had promised that if I asked, he would give him to me.

So I asked.

And the Father delivered on his promise.

The Holy Spirit filled me with his presence. I began to speak in a language that I did not know (a spiritual language has been an important part of my life ever since.) It was like in the book of Acts, but in my bedroom. I gained the joy of having the Holy Spirit in my life, and began to push into what he wanted to do in my life.

When we moved to Dunedin, we belonged to a group called “Prayer and Praise”. The Holy Spirit was moving and we often prayed for people who were sick. Being a curious person, I got a notebook and listed every person we prayed for and what was wrong. The following week, I would check up and see how the person was.

After a couple of months I was surprised by the results. About a third of cases were uncertain. For example, a person had a cold and a week later, they were better, but it was not possible to definitely attribute that directly to the prayer, because they would have gotten better anyway. For another third, nothing happened. But the remaining third were clearly healed, and it seemed like it could only be the Holy Spirit who had done it. Over those few months, a dozen people were healed of sicknesses.

The problem is that once you have seen the Holy Spirit heal one person, you are ruined. You can no longer say that God does not heal people anymore. You cannot say that the Holy Spirit does not want to heal people, because you have seen it with your own eyes.

That experience set me off on a searching path over many years. I was puzzled why some people were healed and others were not. It was not because the Holy Spirit is not strong enough to do it. There had to be other reasons and I wanted to know what they were.

So I dug into the scriptures and looked for patterns. I investigated every healing in the Bible and studied every passage that dealt with healing. I discovered some real insights. I put everything I have learned in a little book called Healing. It does not contain all the answers, but the book does have some important insights.

In some ways, this is the most important book I have written, yet it is actually the least popular. I suspect that it because many Christians have given up on the gift of healing and just accepted sickness as a normal part of life. That is sad, because Jesus was beaten for our healing, so it would be a pity if his suffering were wasted.

Jesus told his disciples to heal the sick and preach the good news of the kingdom. That is what he did. We tend to preach the good news, but we do not bother about the other bit. But Jesus never said it was optional. The best proof of the reality and love of God, and his power to rescue, is someone being healed. In this secular age, the good news of Jesus will only be successful in the way we want it to be when it is accompanied by the gift of healing.

My prayer is that followers of Jesus will press into the Holy Spirit and discover more of the gift of healing that the Father promised.

More at Keys to Healing and Insights for Christian Healing.

My Life and Books (4) Times and Seasons

Reviewing numbers was a key role during my secular employment. I discovered that I have ability to spot patterns in numbers that other people often miss. Sometimes it would be a discrepancy. Other times, it would be a common pattern in data that seemed to be disconnected. This ability more than anything made me good at my work.

This ability translated over to my study of the scriptures. For the first twenty years after I chose to follow Jesus, I read the Old Testament through every year (two chapters and a Psalm a day gets it done). My mother had read from Egermeier's Bible Story Book when we were children, so I began with a good understanding of Biblical history. I read the New Testament as well.

During my reading, I discovered patterns that other people did not see. I saw important connections between the Old and the New Testaments. I began to understand that God was not working by trial and error, but had a plan to restore the world and his people, right from the moment when Adam and Eve messed things up by rejecting his wisdom. He is still working on that strategy.

Soon after I chose to follow Jesus, I read a book called The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay. Everybody was into this book at that time. It explained that we were in the end-times and that world is stuffed. Jesus would return soon to rescue his people. This escape message was popular at that time (more time has proved it wrong).

I initially accepted the message of the book, but wanted to check it out against the scriptures. I was stunned when I did this, because when I examined them carefully, his teaching was just not there. He had wrenched a few verses out of their context, and turned them into a gloomy prophecy for the future, whereas the scriptures are full of hope.

I wanted an understanding of history and God’s plan for the future that was consistent with the broad and deep hope of the scriptures. So I studied the book of Revelation in detail and began looking for patterns. I searched out all the images in Revelation that described the same event and put them together to see how the account of God’s plan unfolded.

I also looked for patterns across the Old and New Testaments, and began to see how they all fitted together. I discovered that God has a plan and purpose for the earth that is far more wonderful than the doom and gloom of Hal Lindsay’s book.

I discovered that the next big event is not a secret rapture in which God takes all the believers out of the world, along with his Holy Spirit. (Why would he do that if he cared about his creation.)

I discovered that God plans to establish the fullness of his Kingdom here on earth as the Holy Spirit works through his people.

I discovered that the next big events in human history are the Jewish people coming to faith in Jesus and the collapse of big government. These events will come during a time of distress. These events are pivotal, because they will remove the last obstacles to the Kingdom of God coming in fullness.

I preached a series of sermons that outlined what I had learned to the church at Waikaka Valley. Again, one of the elders suggested that I put it together in a book, so more people could learn what I had discovered. After a couple of false starts, I put this material together in a book called Times and Seasons. It explains God’s plans for history and how they will climax in the fullness of his Kingdom.

Times and Seasons describes how human governments seize more and more power to deal with the economic and social crises that their mistakes have created. They will collapse under the weight of their pride and hubris, which will provide an opportunity for God’s people who are prepared. During a season of distress, they will work with the Holy Spirit to proclaim the gospel and bring in the Kingdom of God.

My Life and Books (3) Grow Where You Are

After I resigned from parish ministry, I began 33 years of employment in a public sector organisation 1984. We had moved to Christchurch with three young children, so we badly needed a home and income. There were not many jobs going at that time, so I took the one I was offered, even though it did not seem to be right, assuming that something better would turn up.

I had resigned on a principle of faith, so I presume I was hoping for something more spiritual, or more important. It took me quite a long time to realise that God had put me in this place to bless me. Some of the things I have gained over the 33 years in employment include the following.

• My first manager was a really good writer, something that I always struggled with. She taught me to write clearly and precisely. She showed me that using the right words is essential for communicating a message. I did not realise at the time how important that would become.

• Four ten years, I was responsible for editing many of the organisation’s information releases. I learned how to produce really tight writing, with clear, readable, concise, accurate information.

• I was manager of large division for five years. I really struggled with this task, but I learned a lot about how good leaders operate and relate to the people following them.

• Just as I had to be a pastor of a church to discover what the church could be, I needed to be part of a large bureaucracy to understand how bureaucratic organisations can lose their way. Bureaucratic or political power can bring out the worst in people.

• For the last twelve years before retiting, my role was advisory. I had to learn how to have an influence in situations where I had very little authority. I discovered that people are not necessarily persuaded by the truth or strength of your arguments. Influence depends much more on the quality of your relationships and strength of their respect of you.

• I worked with some incredibly clever conceptual thinkers. I learned how to work through step-by-step from first principles to realistic practical solutions. I learned how to expose implausible assumptions and false logic.

• I interacted with a diverse range of people: people from many nations, a variety of religions, and every other difference that you can think of. I have learned to see the image of God in people who are very different from me.

• I made good friends, and got to know some people whom I can really trust.

• I had the opportunity to travel to about a dozen different countries and meet with some very interesting people.

• The income provided for the needs of my family while they were growing up. I once said that it was a good trough to have your snout in. The comments at my retirement suggest that the organisation got good value for the money.

• For the last fifteen years, I was able to work part-time, and still receive a good income. This freed me up to do the things that God has called me to do. I wrote and published four books. I have added hundreds of articles to the Kingdom Watcher website.

So it was a good place to be, although I did not always realise it.

My Life and Books (2) Being Church

After I had completed my theological studies, I was invited to be the minister of a Presbyterian church at Waikaka Valley in Southland, New Zealand. It was a rural parish near Gore. Most of the parishioners were farmers, so I felt comfortable with them and understood the seasons of their lives.

When I arrived in this parish, a verse of scripture really spoke to me.

See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain (Ex 25:40).

It is quoted in Heb 8:5. I probably found it there.

I knew that I needed to do everything according to God’s pattern. The problem was that I did not have a revelation of what that pattern should be. I had to work with what was already established, so I took on the traditional pastor role.

I enjoyed the preaching and teaching aspect of being a minister. People responded well to my messages, and appreciated what they learnt. However, I struggled with most of other aspects of ministry, especially providing pastoral care for grieving and hurting people. The only thing that saved me was that most farmers are resilient, so they rarely go to a minister for help.

I did not feel like a leader, but I was expected to be one. I felt like I was expected to be skilled in many tasks, but was only skilled in a few of them. I was expected to be a Jack of All Trades, but master of only one. This frustration forced me to go to the scriptures. I knew it was not just me that was wrong. I realised that there was something wrong with the ministry that I was trying to do, too. So I decided to study the New Testament and see if I could find out how ministry was supposed to work in the church. I guess I was looking for God’s pattern.

What I found was astonishing. I discovered a variety of ministries that God needed in his church. They needed to be committed to each other and serving the body. I discovered the key ministry is the elder.

I preached what I had discovered in a series of eight sermons. They were quite radical, so I did not know how they would be received. I needn’t have worried, because the farmers loved them. They thought they were very sensible. One of them said, “You really need to put these sermons together into a booklet, so other people can read them”. (Thanks Geoffrey Lietze.)

I took his advice and I put them together in a little booklet called “The Bride of Christ”. I got a couple of thousand printed, but they disappeared like hotcakes. There was no internet back then on which to promote them, so news about the booklet mostly spread by word of mouth.

People who read the booklet wrote that the Spirit witnessed with the message. Some said that God had been saying something similar to them. I am not sure that many put it into practice, though.

A few years later, I realised that some parts of the booklet, were not clear, and that people had not understood the message. So I decided to rewrite the messages to make the meaning clearer. God told me to take all the stuff that was negative about the church out so it did not distract from sharing a clear vision. I put in several diagrams to help make the message clearer. This new revised book is called Being Church Where We Live. It is the message of my eight sermons to farmers made clearer.

Being Church Where We Live is the most important thing I have written. It is the foundation on which everything else sits. The other writing that I have done about politics, economics, God’s plan for history, and the Kingdom of God, does not make sense if this book is not understood. They will not be practical, if they are not built on the foundation of Being Church.

Being Church Where We Live explains how a group of people who have chosen to follow Jesus can support each other in a neighbourhood church by giving and sharing. By living close together, they will establish a place where the authority of Jesus is acknowledged and the spiritual powers of evil are squeezed out.

Each neighbourhood church will be led by a team of elders with complementary and balanced giftings: one will be prophetic, at least one will be an evangelist, and several will have a shepherd gifting. They will be bound together by love and submitted to each other for spiritual protection. They will watch over those who have chosen to follow Jesus. Neighbourhood churches grow and multiply by sending apostles into a new neighbourhood to establish a new community. These communities of love are the essential foundation that makes possible everything described in subsequent books.

When my wife was typing out the sermons for the original booklet, she said, “How can you be a minster of the church when you believe this stuff?” Initially, I did not see the inconsistency, but eventually I was convicted to practice what I preached. So in 1984, I resigned from the ministry and we moved our family to Christchurch, leaving work and home behind. God was good and provided for us in amazing ways during that change of season. I was able to obtain a position working as an economist for a large professional organisation.

My Life and Books (1)

I grew up on a farm beside the Pareora River in South Canterbury, New Zealand. It was a marvellous life, so I left school early to become a farmer. After a couple of years working on the farm, I realise that I did not have the strength and stamina that farming needs. While working with sheep and driving the tractor, I had lots of time to ponder the poverty and suffering that are rampant throughout the world. The root causes of these problems are economic and political, so I enrolled at university to study economics and politics.

By the time, I had completed four years study, I realised that I was digging a dry well. These disciplines did not have the answers to the problems that worried me. The assumptions that economists have to make to ensure their models work are so unrealistic that their theories are irrelevant to the real world. It seemed that during the first three years of economics, they told you all the solutions, but in the fourth year, they explained why they would not work. (I noted that my fellow students who went into politics, often only did the three-year course, so they went out boldly assuming they had effective policies to implement).

While growing up, our family had gone to church every Sunday, but for me it was just a habit. When I reached university and studied philosophy, I gave up my religious habit and I decided that I was an atheist. However, I found it is hard to be an honest atheist, because life loses meaning and purpose. So I constructed a safe philosophical god that suited me.

While I was studying for a Masters degree in economics, I heard the gospel of Jesus clearly for the first time. Just when I became disillusioned with economics, I had a deep encounter with the living God. He said, “I am who I am. You are trusting in an empty box. If you want to follow me, you need to accept me as I am”. I surrendered to him and decided I would live by his Word and Spirit.

A few months later, I had an exam for a post-graduate course on comparative economics. The lecturer was a staunch Marxist. Full of my new-found faith, I wrote in my paper that Marx has no solution to human problems and that Jesus is the answer. I gave a similar response in an exam for a paper on macroeconomics.

Surprisingly, I passed the course with first-class honours. However, my professors must have decided to tackle the problem because at the beginning of the following year, one of them asked to meet with me. He disclosed that he was an atheist. He said that he could not understand it, but, but acknowledged that my faith seemed to be genuine.

He told me that it was not enough to say that Jesus is the answer. I needed to explain how he could be a solution to the problems that concerned me. He concluded with a telling question: “What would the economy and society look like if everyone was a Christian”. I had no answer to that question. I knew it would be different, but I could not explain how.

My lecturer suggested that I should enrol in a Ph.D programme and he would supervise me while I developed an answer to his question. I took his advice, but after a couple of months, I realised that I simply did not have enough knowledge to tackle the problem. There were very few books or journal articles to draw on. I realised that I did not know enough about God, or his solutions to economic problems. I needed to be better prepared before I could answer his question, so I pulled out and moved to Dunedin to study theology in preparation for ministry.

I went to seminary for three years and studied theology and New Testament Greek. Later, while employed as a parish minister, I read every book and article that I could find that is relevant to economics and the gospel. I always knew that I would come back one day and answer that important question.

During the following thirty years employed as an economist, I studied and thought deeply about both theology and economics. I also studied Hebrew for several years to get a better understanding of the Old Testament. I eventually got to the place where I could answer the tricky question, but it was a long journey.

Leviticus (20) No Penal Substitution

Penal substitution is missing from Levitical offerings and from the Day of Cleansing. The animals that are brought by the people are not punished for their sins. Their blood is used for appeasing the spiritual powers of evil and for cleansing objects that are unclean. Their meat is food for the priests. Their fat is burnt to produce a sweet aroma for Yahweh. The animals are offered as an act of worship, so having to cover the cost of losing a valuable animal is not a punishment, but an act of thanksgiving and worship.

Leviticus required that all animals offered should be without blemish (Lev 22:17-22). This means that an animal cannot be hurt or mutilated in any way before it dies. If it was punished, it would have blemishes and not be an acceptable offering. Leviticus never says that the animal is an object of God’s wrath. It never says that it is being punished. If it was abused or suffered unnecessarily, God would be offended.

The animals do not die as a substitute for the people who offer them. They placed their hand on the animal even when it was being given as Grain Offering or an Ascending Offering, which was not for sin, so it is not an indicator of substitution. The animals are not killed in the place of the people offering them because the unintentional sins they had committed did not require a death penalty.

The priest confessed the most serious transgression and depravities over the goat for Azazel. These were the worst sins, but the goat was sent into the wilderness. It was not punished. It was not killed, and its blood was not offered to God. The wilderness goat was not a substitute for the people who had sinned. It was a carrier. The people were forgiven their transgressions without paying any penalty.

This full series is at Leviticus.

Leviticus (19) Not to Appease God

A common belief among Christians is that the tabernacle sacrifices were necessary to allow God to be in relationship with his people. They assume that God is so holy that he cannot interact with sinful people in any way, so sacrifices were essential to appease his anger so he could come near the people he had chosen. Reading the Old Testament, it is clear that God has never had a problem interacting with sinful people. The initiative was always with God.

• God spoke to Adam and Eve in the garden after they fell and blessed them with garments.

• God called Abraham even though he continued to make serious mistakes.

• He called Jacob and watched over him, even though he was a liar and a cheater.

• He protected Joseph and spoke through him, even though he was proud.

• Even when he sent his people into exile from the promised land, it was because he cared about them and wanted to restore them, and in exile, he continued to speak to them and keep them safe.

• He prepared Moses and sent him to rescue the Israelites from slavery in Egypt before they offered sacrifices to him.

• God revealed himself to Paul while he was intent on killing followers of Jesus.

• He was active in my life while I was still hostile to him.

All these events took place without any human acknowledgment of sin or blood offerings for transgressions.

We are sometimes taught that God hates sin and can't have anything to do with sinful people, but that is only half true. He does hate sin, but it is because of the harm it allows the spiritual powers of evil to do to people. But it is not true that he cannot have any contact with sinful people. He did it all the time throughout the scriptures.

God rescued the children of Israel from Egypt and brought them to the promised land before any offerings had been made. He did not need sacrifices to allow him to intervene, even though the people continued to be obstructive and rebellious the entire way.

The tabernacle offerings were not needed to start or sustain a relationship with God. Rather, they were needed to keep the people and the tabernacle safe from the spiritual powers of evil who had dominated them as slaves in Egypt and wanted to get them back under control again. The offerings specified in Leviticus did that effectively.

The writer to the Hebrews refers to the offerings described in Leviticus throughout the letter. He describes how Jesus defeated the devil, but he never says that a blood offering was needed to appease God or to allow him to interact with his people. The idea that this is their purpose has to be read into the letter from elsewhere.