Thursday, October 10, 2024

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.

Tuesday, October 08, 2024

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.

Saturday, October 05, 2024

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.

Thursday, October 03, 2024

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.

Wednesday, October 02, 2024

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.