Discerning Seasons (1) - Authority on Earth

Most Christians believe that God is in control of the world. He decides what happens on earth. If something bad happens, God must have allowed it. When a disaster occurs, he gets the blame.

This view is not true. Not only does it create confusion, it portrays God as cruel and nasty.

Many other Christians believe that we are in what they call the “end times”. Things on earth will get worse and worse, without any rhyme or reason. Their only hope to escape before things slip too far down the gurgler. Not only is this view wrong (the end times are not mentioned in the scriptures), but it creates confusion about what God is doing and how we should respond.

When God created the earth and mankind, he took a huge risk, because he decided to give authority over earth to humans.

The highest heavens belong to the LORD,
but the earth he has given to mankind (Psalm 115:16).

He gave this authority without recourse, so he cannot snatch it back, if it is used unwisely. This has a serious consequence. Since humans have authority here, we decide what happens on earth. Whenever something bad happens, some person, or group of people has allowed it to happen.

This principle is essential for understanding prayer. Prayer is not persuading God to do what he does not want to do. Prayer is finding out what the Father wants to do and giving the Holy Spirit permission to do it. I have written about this in Prayer and Authority.

Understanding human authority is also important for understanding events on earth. In this series of posts, I will set out a framework for understanding how this works.

The full series is at Discerning Seasons.