Leadership and Vision

Sydney Finkelstein has an article in the Harvard Business Review called Secrets of the Superbosses. These are leaders who building exceptional organisations by spotting, training, and developing a future generation of leaders. The are able to delegate to these people, because they understand their vision.

Superbosses articulate uncompromising visions that they expect employees to internalize and follow. During the execution of work tasks, employees enjoy extraordinary authority over everything except the vision. The Superbosses generally stay clear, intervening only to ensure that decisions employees make support their visions and don’t conflict with them.

This is yet another reason why every manager should craft a compelling vision for their teams, no matter where they are in the corporate hierarchy.

Jesus that operated is the way. He spent time with the twelve and the seventy making sure that they understood his vision for the Kingdom of God and how it will come:

• go in pairs to a place and stay there
• heal the sick and cast out demons
• proclaim the good news of the kingdom
• stay in the house until the people who have decided go follow Jesus understand the vision and the method for sharing and can do it themselves.

Once they understood this vision, Jesus sent them out to do it in pairs, with no direct supervision. They experienced great success.

Paul grabbed this vision and ran with it, without Jesus needing to control him.

The modern church seems to have lost this vision, and replaced it with control and failure.

Culture of Lies

I am old enough to remember the Soviet Union when it was at the peak of its power. The memory that stands out most is the culture of lying leaders.

When President Khrushchev, or President Brezhnev said something, you could be certain that the opposite was true. If Khrushchev reported that the wheat crop had doubled, everyone understood that that the harvest had failed. If Brezhnev reported that Soviet troops had travelled to Hungary for rest and recreation, everyone understood that the tanks had rolled in to suppress the people.

This great edifice of lies eventually collapsed, and the Soviet Union is now gone.

Strangely, a similar political culture of lies seems to have emerged in the United States. I don’t know when it began, but I first noticed it during the Vietnam War. The Gulf of Tonkin incident used as a justification for escalation of war turned out to be a false flag. “We are not bombing Cambodia”, meant that it was bombed to crap. When a new president was imposed upon the poor South Vietnamese by the US, he would be described as a perfect man. Then he would turn out to be a thief and a murderer. The US was always announcing that another battle had been won, but the war was being lost.

This torturing of the truth continued through the death of JFK, through the shooting down of Iran Air flight 655, the sinking of USS Liberty, TWA flight 800 to 9/11. Now a culture of lies seems to control Washington. In foreign policy, if the Secretary of State says that something has happened, the opposite is probably true. Victory in Iraq means destruction of political order. “No boots on the ground” means 500 special forces in Syria. Training moderate forces means supplying weapons to Al Qaida. “Fighting against terrorism” means air support for ISIS in Syria. "Building democracy" in Libya means destroying the most prosperous nation in Africa.

This strange culture has now culminated in a presidential election where the people of the United States have to choose between two proven liars. And no one seems to care.

I am not expecting this to be exposed soon. The history of the Soviet Union shows that lies can keep a rotten system going for many decades. I suspect they can keep a powerful rotten system going for a long, long time.

Spirit of Islam

Islam is not a single spirit. It is a cluster of spirits working together for a common purpose. The relative strength of these spirits differ from place to place, and they sometimes fight against each other. That is why the situation in Asia is quite different to the Middle East.

The main spirits that work through Islam are:

• rejection
• fear of death
• religious spirit
• good works
• spiritual deadness
• violence
• fighting and war

Several of these spirits have a stronghold in the United States, too.

• religious spirit
• good works
• violence
• fighting and war

Wherever freemasonry has a hold, the following spirits are free to work.

The main spirits that work through freemasonry are:

• fear of death
• spiritual deadness
• violence
• religious spirit.
• good works

Because Freemasonry is strong in many parts of the United States, these spirits are strong in that country too. This means that all the spirits that work through Islam are also strong in the United States. That leaves the the nation spiritually vulnerable.

Healing Models

I have always been fascinated the healing miracles in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The way the Holy Spirit worked was really exciting. However, I was always really puzzled by James 5. I could not see how it fitted with the rest of teaching about healing in the New Testament. James message seemed so tame in comparison to Acts and the Gospels.

A few years ago, I discovered that there are two streams of theology about healing in the Bible and then suddenly everything fell into place. If we split the teaching of the scripture into these two streams, we get a clearer understanding of God’s healing. The two themes are:

1. Healing and Evangelism
The gift of healing is primarily for unbelievers as a demonstration of the love of God. A major theme of the New Testament describes how the gift of healing works in evangelism. Jesus brought good news to apostate Israel, so his ministry demonstrated this type of healing (for more see Healing and Evangelism).

2. Healing and Believers
The second healing theme explains how God’s people can walk in health. Healing is part of salvation, so it should be a normal part of every believer’s life. James is actually a key passage in the second stream (for more see Healing for Christians).

The healing of an unbeliever and the healing of a believer have a different basis in the work of Christ. One is based on mercy and the other is based on covenant. Since they have a different basis, they are appropriated in different ways. We need to understand this difference to receive the full salvation of God.

These themes are developed further in Healing: Insights for Christians Elders

Pet Prophets

When pastors see a prophet emerging in their church, they are tempted to bring the prophet under their control and use the prophet to support their ministry. The pastor will give the prophet a platform to speak and in return will expect the prophet to speak in support of his ministry and his plans for the church, and against those who oppose him.

I call this the temptation to become a “pet prophet” or platform prophet. Pet Prophets travel with the pastor as a prop and support to the pastor’s ministry. This is a very real temptation, but it is a prostitution of the prophetic calling. A true prophet must be free to speak only what God has given them to say, when and where God has commissioned them to speak.

When a pastor gives a young prophet opportunities that would make them into a recognised prophet, it leaves them dependent on him and under his authority. A true prophet must allow God to establish them in their ministry.

This can be a hard choice for the young prophet, if their pastor, often with good motives, asks them to speak and tells them what to say, even though God has not given them a word. Refusing to do that will be costly, because it will cost them a platform that would elevate your ministry in the church.

The true prophet will wait for God to provide opportunities to speak, when he wants them to speak. It may not be as often as a pet prophet gets to speak, but it will be more powerful, because God provided the platform, not the pastor. It will take longer, but it is much better than being a pet prophet.

Money and House Prices

The average price of a house in Auckland reached $1 million last week. The largest city in New Zealand is experiencing a property boom. The average price of a house in Auckland is double what it was back in 2008.

The property boom is partly driven by a couple factors.

• Immigration – New Zealanders returning from Australia and other places where economic prospects are not as good as here have increased the demand for housing.

• Scarcity of Land – Zoning laws have limited the availability of land for housing.

These have a small effect, but the main cause is the Monetary Policy operated by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

In the past, capital controls and fixed exchange rates allowed central banks to control the supply of money. However, in a modern economy, banks have the power to create money by making loans. They can now create as much money as they like.

The Reserve Bank has given up trying to control the money supply and has adopted a policy of inflation targeting by controlling the overnight cash rate at which banks can borrow from the Reserve Bank. The cash rate is currently set at 2.0 percent.

The measure for the inflation target is the Consumers Price Index, which only measures the prices of household consumption goods and services. Unfortunately, inflation can also affect capital goods and government consumption goods and services. These are not covered by the Consumers Price Index, so the inflation target can be met, while the price of capital goods is rocketing up. (In the United States, inflation has hit the government consumption goods produced by the Military Industrial Complex, costing the government billions of dollars).

In a small open economy like New Zealand, the power of the banks to create money is amplified by their ability to import money from overseas. As long as the central banks of the US, Japan and the EU keep their cash rates close to zero, banks will be able to make a good profit by borrowing at zero interest rate and lending the money in New Zealand for 4%.

The Reserve Bank of NZ’s cannot control the money supply, so we face an infinite supply of money at very low interest rates. This would normally flow into inflation of the prices of household goods and services, but imports of cheap goods from China mean that the CPI has not increased much. That does not mean that there has been no inflation. Instead, the rampant supply of money has flown into house prices in Auckland.

In a normal market, prices adjust to eliminate excess demand. Basic economics explains that during a period of excess demand, buyers will bid up prices. However, when the price of a good rises, producing and importing it becomes more profitable, which increases the supply of the good.

At the same time, the increase in price of the good means that some people who wanted to buy it, can no longer afford it, so they spend their money on something else that is cheaper.

A rising price generally increases supply and reduces demand. Combined together these effects of the rise in prices eliminate the excess demand. Sometimes, producers and importers will supply too much and the price will fall back a little.

In a housing market with unlimited money creation by banks and low interest rates, the market mechanism no longer functions. When house prices rise, no one is priced out of the market, because banks are willing to lend more, because the value of the asset used as security has increased too. Even if they have to take on greater debt, the purchaser does not worry, because they can count on an even bigger capital gain, as long as house prices keep rising.

The supply of houses changes slowly, because developing new suburbs and building new houses takes time.
Prices go up an up, and banks lend more and more, without the restraint of the normal market mechanism. While interest rates are low, the capital gain from rising prices more than compensates for the extra repayment burden.

Of course, this cannot go on forever. Eventually the whole thing gets out of kilter and the grossly inflated housing market will collapse. That is what happened in the United States in 2008.

Various things could cause the house price spiral to collapse here.

• A shock to the NZ economy that destroys confidence.

• A sharp increase in interest rates (unlikely while central banks around the world are clinging desperately to zero rates.

• An increase in unemployment that affects the ability of people to make house repayments.

• A shock from the international economy that causes a flight of capital back to the safety of the US and Europe.

Authority

Authority is the heart of a kingdom. Many men have claimed to be king, but if their authority was not recognised, they were fooling themselves. A king without authority is not really a king.

When a king expands his kingdom, his authority grows. If a kingdom shrinks, the king loses authority. Shifts in authority change the shape of a kingdom and the status of the king.

Authority Shifts change Kingdoms

Jesus came to establish the Kingdom of God. A new kingdom brings a big shift in authority.

In the beginning, all authority in heaven and on earth belonged to God. To understand life on earth, we need to know how authority was transferred to someone else. To be part of the Kingdom of God, we need to know how he plans to get authority back. The gospel of the coming of the Kingdom implies a big authority shift on earth (Kingdom Authority p.13).

Kingdom Authority describes the nature of authority and explain how it operates on earth.

Ascension Ministries

Much has been written and said about the restoration of the ascension ministries. Yet, most evangelists are still in para-church organisations and few churches have a functioning evangelist. Most prophets are still in the wilderness, while very few churches have an authentic prophetic ministry. Pastors are everywhere, but very few Christians are being effectively discipled (pastored). Most modern apostles look like traditional bishops, with more of the Spirit, and less of the regalia.

Being Church Where We Live explains that the ascension ministries are just roles undertaken by elders. By bring these giftings “down to earth”, they become relevant to all followers of Jesus, rather than being limited to a few superstars.

Abraham and Isaac

The incident where Abraham attempts to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God concerns many Christians. God seems to tell him to offer a human sacrifice. This is strange behaviour for a loving God.

In the end, an angel points at a lamb caught in a thorn bush that Abraham can sacrifice, but that is not much better, because it suggests that God was tricking Abraham all along.

Maybe God was testing Abraham to see if he would be willing to sacrifice the thing that was most precious to him, but that is odd, because Abraham had already left his family and home to follow God’s call. God had already promised to bless Abraham (Gen 12,15), so there was nothing God could do if he failed the test.

I think we need a must better understanding of this incident. Genesis begins by saying that “God tested Abraham”. The interesting question is who did the testing? The subject of the sentence is the Hebrew word “Elohim” This word is translated as God in all translations of Genesis 22.

Although Elohim is usually translated as God, it has a number of other meanings. It can also be translated as:

angels
idols
gods
spiritual powers.

When I did a search, I found more than a hundred verses where Elohim was not translated as God, but one of these other words. Here are a few examples.

But why did you steal my gods (Gen 31:31).

You have made him a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:5).

I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt (Ex 12:12)

They have followed other gods to serve them (Jer 11:10).

Rid yourselves of the foreign gods (1 Sam 7:3)

All of these are valid translations of the word Elohim and the context tells us how it should be translated. Genesis 22 makes more sense if Elohim is translated as “gods” in the sense of evil spiritual powers.

Now it came to pass after these things that one of the gods (spiritual powers) tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Gen 22:1-2).

Abraham had obeyed God’s call and travelled a long way to Canaan. However, he did not have the fullness of the Spirit, so he was not very good at discerning the voice of God. Speaking a false word was a good way to trip him up.

Since God was doing something special with Abraham, it was natural that the spiritual powers of evil would try to thwart him. They tried to trick Abraham into killing his son. Isaac was going to be the father of Israel, so what better way to disrupt God’s plans than to kill him.
An evil angel came to Abraham disguised as an angel of light and pretended to speak for God. He told Abraham to go and sacrifice his son to God. Abraham did not realise that he was being tricked, but thought that God had asked him to offer his son.

Abraham’s obedience to the terrible command demonstrates his character. He was so loyal; the spiritual powers of evil knew it was a waste of time tempting him to disobey God. They had probably tried that already and failed. Persuading him to obey God was a much better tactic.

Jesus warned us that that the “thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy”, whereas he is the source of abundant life (John 10:10). Abraham did not have the benefit of Jesus’s wisdom, so he did not recognise the voice of evil. He did not understand the character of God, as well as well do, but his faith in him was amazing. I presume that he believed that God could give him another son once Isaac died. God had given him a son when he was old, so he could do it again.

God did not let Abraham sin by killing his son. I think that he was testing the spiritual powers of evil. He wanted to see if they really would let Abraham kill his son. Could they be that hateful? When he realised that they were going to go all the way, he sent his angel to intervene.

The speaker in the second part of the chapter is described differently, suggesting it is a different person. “The angel of Yahweh called to Abraham from the heavens” and told him not to harm the child. The angel of Yahweh saved him from doing a terrible thing.

This is not just angel. The writer avoids any confusion by explaining it is an angel “of Yahweh” and “from the heavens.”

The contrast is telling. In the beginning of the chapter it is Elohim (the gods) speaking to Abraham. At the end of the chapter the angel of Yahweh speaks. The first is the voice of evil. The second is the voice comes from heaven, so it is the voice of truth and life. This confirms that it was the spiritual powers of evil who were trying to trick Abraham, and not God.

The incident reminds us that it can be hard to hear from God. Sometimes, the spiritual powers of evil will try to confuse us by pretending to be God. They tried to do it to Abraham. They still try to do it in the age of the Holy Spirit.

The good news is that God can protect us, even if we get it wrong, provided our attitude is right. Abraham was keen so obey God that he jumped to obey when the thought he heard God’s voice. He was deceived, because he was keen to obey, but God intervened by sending an angel to rescue him by speaking the truth.

When we hear God speak, we should obey willingly. If our desire is to obey him, he will protect us from false voices. He will rescue us, if we hear wrong. The main thing is to have a heart that desires to serve him.

The angel from Yahweh spoke God’s true word to Abraham. The angel graciously acknowledged Abraham’s obedience, even though he had got it wrong. God was really impressed with his loyalty. He repeated the promise of blessing given to Abraham earlier.

Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son— blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” (Gen 22:16-18).

Marriage and Violence (7)

After reading my series on Marriage and Violence, a reader asked me to comment on Deut 22:28-29.

This verse has to be taken in context of other similar scriptures. The case in Deut 22:28-29 is different from the verses that precede it where the girl is forcibly raped.

It describes a situation where a man “seizes” a girl and lies with her. He Hebrew word for seize “taphes” is not a strong word. It means to grab hold. The man has used minimal force.

The couple are discovered, so it seems that although she was seized, she did not resist strongly (as described in Deut 22:24), but goes along, perhaps out of fear.

Once they had sexual intimacy, the two becomes one, so in God’s eyes they are married. This is why the man is expected to marry the girl. The only way for the girl to avoid the marriage would be for her to divorce the man and annul the marriage.

The scripture provide the girl with strong protection. The man has to pay a penalty of 25 shekels to her father. If did not have that silver, he would have to bond himself to work for the girl’s father until he had earned.

The girl is able to divorce the man, but he is not able to divorce her. So the protection lies in her flavour.

Ex 22:10 still applies. The man would have to pay a dowry to the girl’s father in trust for her well-being. If the marriage does not work out, the girl could divorce him and keep the dowry for her financial support. She would be able to retain the penalty the man paid to her father.
God’s law puts protection in place for a girl in a situation where most cultures would have left her vulnerable.

US Election

The outcome of the US presidential election is clear. The political/media/military/security/financial establishment has already won power. Hillary and Trump are just puppets. If Hillary wins, she will be controlled by the political/media/military/security/financial establishment, because she owes them. If Trump wins, he will be tied up in knots by the political/media/military/security/financial establishment, because they are so strong. The political/media/military/security/financial establishment and the principalities and powers that control them have won.

Spring is Here

Daffodils, Daphne and Hyacinths

Accusations (5) End Twist

Under the biblical model of justice, the person who gives false testimony against another can be given the penalty that their testimony would have inflicted on the victim of their lies.

If a malicious witness rises against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing… the judges shall make careful inquiry, and indeed, if the witness is a false witness... then you shall do to him as he intended to have done to his brother (Deut 19:16-19).

At the end of the book of Job, God restored Job because he was innocent. Since the three friends had given false testimony against Job, they could have experienced what they had allowed the accuser to inflict on him. However, God asked Job to offer sacrifices for his three friends and pray for them.

My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly (Job 42:7-8).

God heard Job’s prayer and protected them from the consequences of their false testimony. They could have been inflicted with sickness and poverty, but were kept safe.

Some Christians will be sick, because they have given false testimony against a brother and sister, and they are receiving the consequences that the person they were accusing would have received, if their testimony had been accepted. This is another reason why we should be careful about our words. A false accusation can harm a brother or sister, but it can also fall back on us, if our testimony is confirmed as false.

If the Holy Spirit convicts us of speaking words that have harmed a brother of sister, we should ask the Lord for forgiveness. We should declare to the spiritual powers of evil that we are withdrawing our testimony and that we will not testify against the person they are trying to harm.

Accusations (4) Nullifying Accusations

When praying for people who are sick, we might need to deal with accusations that have been made against them. If someone is not healed, it might because the accuser is using accusations against them to justify the sickness. The power of the accusations will have to be broken, before the person can be healed.

The power of accusations are broken in different ways, depending on their nature.

1. We are human, so many accusations made against us will be true. That does not matter because Jesus dealt with our sin on the cross by shedding his blood. If the accusations are true, the person accused can agree with them and declare that they are already dealt with by the blood of Jesus. They are forgotten by God. Acknowledging an accusation and covering it with Jesus blood is sufficient to break its power.

2. Some accusations will be untrue. We can break their power by refusing to accept them and proclaiming God’s truth. For example, we can declare that we are pure and blameless, because we are washed in the blood of Jesus.

3. If the accusation takes the form of a negative prophecy, we can declare it to be null and void, because it did not come from God. We can crush its power by declaring God’s truth. The best way to do this is to declare the promises and prophecies that God has specifically given to the person.

When Job was sick, he made and appeal to God who declared that he was not at fault. God’s testimony overturned the testimony of his friends and Job’s health was restored.

Some of the sickness amongst Christians is the consequence of Satan’s accusations against them based on testimonies by their brothers and sisters in the Lord. When we pray for them, we must nullify these accusations by declaring that their sins that they have been accused of have been covered by the blood of Jesus.

We do not need to know the nature of an accusation to deal with it. It is probably best not to focus on the accusation, as it might distract us from our true calling. It is more important to focus on the words that God has spoken about us.

Anyone struggling to be healed should seek the Lord and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal if there are any accusations against them that are holding back their healing. These may need to be broken before healing can come.

Sometimes the accusation may have been made against the sick person’s father or husband. Job’s family were afflicted when Satan was able to make accusations against him.