It's Time
I love the early fall of the year. The trees are becoming beautiful, but not yet bare. It is cooler, but the cold of winter has not come. Each fall, usually in October, my wife and I take a weekend to travel to the Chattanooga Tennessee area, where we went to college, met, and lived for a few months after our marriage, 28 years ago. This little weekend is a tradition that we have been keeping for nearly 15 years. Of course, my personal thing is to hit all the bookstores in the area that I know of! Last weekend was our annual pilgrimage.
I found a great book called "Thirty Years That Changed The World" by Michael Green, scholar from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. The book is a study of the book of Acts and rather than being a commentary, it is a study of how the early church, from Pentecost till the burning of Rome (which Green puts as 33-64 AD), saw the new faith, which we call Christianity in our day, reached almost the whole known world. The book examines early church methods and church life and other factors that might help to account for how the work of God expanded so rapidly in those early days.
That book about "30 years" at the beginning of the Christian movement, made me think about the fact that some models show how that the great commission can be finished in approximately 30 years if multiple church planting movements explode worldwide. I wrote a blog on this subject in 2008 (it can be found in the blog archive). In other words, if today's believers will obey God completely, we can live through another "Book of Acts" time and the work can be done...literally in our lifetimes.
Green mentions some of the cultural advantages that were in place in the 1st Century of the Christan era. Things such as Roman roads, the Greek language's near universality for communication, and even cultural and religious philosophical trends had prepared the world for missionaries of the new faith. Thus transportation, communication, and religious cultures were prepared for the spread of something new.
From that time to this there has never been a time more ripe for finishing the great commission by bringing the gospel the every people group in the whole world. Transportation allows us to be on the other side of the world in 1 day. Communication allows us to talk to our families in this nation while we are in a 3rd world jungle....on our cell phone. And even the new age/religious extreme/terror conscious world in which we live, opens the doors to the concepts that must be shared to make the gospel known.
Paul wrote in Galatians 4:4-5, "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who where under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons."
If Paul were writing of our day might he say, "In the fullness of the last time, God anointed His church to obey the last command of His Son, and they made disciples of every nation and then the end came!"
I want to make this point. Everything that is needed to finish the task has been given to us. We have a finished redemption accomplished by the Lord Jesus. We have a completed Bible, God's whole word, all we will ever need to know to get the job done. We have the presence and power of the indwelling, infilling Holy Spirit to give us all the power needed. We have almost instant travel and communication with almost the whole world. We have a needy, hungry world looking for spiritual reality in myriads of religious ways, all of which are like drinking sand to a thirsty man....desperately needing the water of life. There is nothing lacking but our decision to act.
When the Jews were in danger of destruction in Persia, Mordecai made the danger known to his niece, Esther, who had become the Queen. For her to intervene from her position of seeming safety was to risk everything, even her own life. But with wisdom from God, Mordecai sent her this message.
"Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:13b-14).
Such a TIME as this. The same can be said to us. We are the generation that is alive today. We are the followers of Christ who are assigned to this time. We are the ones who have this power and anointing and the Scriptures and our transportation and communication and "flat world" cultures. To paraphrase Mordecai, if we don't seize the moment and do the job, we may lose what we have ourselves, but God's word will be fulfilled by others. Yet what if we have come to God's Kingdom for such a time as this.
What are we going to do with the influence, positions, relationships, and circumstances of our lives. These are the little "kingdoms" that we as individuals have come to.
What are we going to do with the next 30 years of our lives. (If you don't think you have 30 years left, the question is what will you do with the next 30 days or however much time you have left). We are here now! We are in the Kingdom now!
I believe that it will be done. I believe we will see it. God is moving worldwide in and through His people and the greatest harvest of souls in history is underway. But it is not finished, not even nearly, and if we as God's people will choose to seek God, become full of the Holy Spirit, make the Bible the number 1 authority in our lives and intentionally begin to make disciples, the rest of our lives, however long, will make more impact than all that has gone before!
It's time.
I found a great book called "Thirty Years That Changed The World" by Michael Green, scholar from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. The book is a study of the book of Acts and rather than being a commentary, it is a study of how the early church, from Pentecost till the burning of Rome (which Green puts as 33-64 AD), saw the new faith, which we call Christianity in our day, reached almost the whole known world. The book examines early church methods and church life and other factors that might help to account for how the work of God expanded so rapidly in those early days.
That book about "30 years" at the beginning of the Christian movement, made me think about the fact that some models show how that the great commission can be finished in approximately 30 years if multiple church planting movements explode worldwide. I wrote a blog on this subject in 2008 (it can be found in the blog archive). In other words, if today's believers will obey God completely, we can live through another "Book of Acts" time and the work can be done...literally in our lifetimes.
Green mentions some of the cultural advantages that were in place in the 1st Century of the Christan era. Things such as Roman roads, the Greek language's near universality for communication, and even cultural and religious philosophical trends had prepared the world for missionaries of the new faith. Thus transportation, communication, and religious cultures were prepared for the spread of something new.
From that time to this there has never been a time more ripe for finishing the great commission by bringing the gospel the every people group in the whole world. Transportation allows us to be on the other side of the world in 1 day. Communication allows us to talk to our families in this nation while we are in a 3rd world jungle....on our cell phone. And even the new age/religious extreme/terror conscious world in which we live, opens the doors to the concepts that must be shared to make the gospel known.
Paul wrote in Galatians 4:4-5, "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who where under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons."
If Paul were writing of our day might he say, "In the fullness of the last time, God anointed His church to obey the last command of His Son, and they made disciples of every nation and then the end came!"
I want to make this point. Everything that is needed to finish the task has been given to us. We have a finished redemption accomplished by the Lord Jesus. We have a completed Bible, God's whole word, all we will ever need to know to get the job done. We have the presence and power of the indwelling, infilling Holy Spirit to give us all the power needed. We have almost instant travel and communication with almost the whole world. We have a needy, hungry world looking for spiritual reality in myriads of religious ways, all of which are like drinking sand to a thirsty man....desperately needing the water of life. There is nothing lacking but our decision to act.
When the Jews were in danger of destruction in Persia, Mordecai made the danger known to his niece, Esther, who had become the Queen. For her to intervene from her position of seeming safety was to risk everything, even her own life. But with wisdom from God, Mordecai sent her this message.
"Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:13b-14).
Such a TIME as this. The same can be said to us. We are the generation that is alive today. We are the followers of Christ who are assigned to this time. We are the ones who have this power and anointing and the Scriptures and our transportation and communication and "flat world" cultures. To paraphrase Mordecai, if we don't seize the moment and do the job, we may lose what we have ourselves, but God's word will be fulfilled by others. Yet what if we have come to God's Kingdom for such a time as this.
What are we going to do with the influence, positions, relationships, and circumstances of our lives. These are the little "kingdoms" that we as individuals have come to.
What are we going to do with the next 30 years of our lives. (If you don't think you have 30 years left, the question is what will you do with the next 30 days or however much time you have left). We are here now! We are in the Kingdom now!
I believe that it will be done. I believe we will see it. God is moving worldwide in and through His people and the greatest harvest of souls in history is underway. But it is not finished, not even nearly, and if we as God's people will choose to seek God, become full of the Holy Spirit, make the Bible the number 1 authority in our lives and intentionally begin to make disciples, the rest of our lives, however long, will make more impact than all that has gone before!
It's time.
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