Ern Baxter interrupted our Christianity in the 70s with some anointing. Pretty well single handedly...(well it seemed like it)...he hoiked us out of our little parochial visions of getting Mrs Smith saved down the road, to the concept of the Reign of God. We hear Kingdom of God, and as Ortiz says,as most don't have kings we've been inured to it as a phrase. So Ern lifted our eyes to see this ain't a tinpot little gospel we preach. We preach the Reign of God. We preach discipling nations. Go into the Land means inheriting the Earth. Now in the 80s and 90s people rushed off and did some Ishmaels, and to a certain extent that's what the modern Christian Right is. Here's some things that Ern was trying to get over that none of us really heard.
The Kingdom is not of this world.
It is a Kingdom of Love.
Though it is a kingdom of love...IT IS A REIGN. It's a difficult human concept marrying both.
It is extended by Speaking Words of faith.
It is not extended by coercion or any human power.
The reign of God is just that...He is KING NOW of my heart,my mind,my feelings,my body. And the reign extends from person to person by and in the power of the Holy Spirit. These are not churchy words,nebulous words...they ARE POWERS, but primarily they are not leftbrain words, not words on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. "Not by might , nor by power but by my Spirit says the Lord."
The Kingdom comes down from above. Like the appearance of the rainclouds no bigger than a man's hand for Elijah as he prayed, so the Kingdom comes, until it resembles a mighty stormcloud.
The Reign of God is an international nation of Kings and priests.
Your royalty is established by the Kingdom's own King rooting Himself inside you, first as a seed. then as a whole mighty Tree. Your royalty is not dependant on a human line, a human will, or a human desire...but the very Person of Jesus Christ.
Just as Jesus learned the new priesthood in the days of His flesh, He passes the same knowledge to us by the Spirit. The Old Testament version was the cardboard replica, which many churches attempt to carry on today. The real version is carried in groans too deep to utter by the Spirit who helps us in our weakness.
The REIGN OF GOD is NOW. This means two things. It is the phrase the disciples were first commissioned to utter and signs always follow.
But it is your PORTAL WITH NOW. Fallen humans live in the past or the future but very rarely make the good of NOW. God is the I AM. He actually IS the only LIFE in the universe. Even the devil's realm is just a self for self version, a derived version, a corrupted version of His own outpouring self for others type of Life.
In preaching the reign of God we are NOT imposing some alien construct onto everybody's overworked lives....like Andre Rabe and Francois DuToit we are preaching FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE SELVES by first LOSING the fake stuff. The stuff you both feel compelled to do out of fear of others, or compelled to do because of your own selfish desires....none of that is the real you, and none of that is the Reign of God.
We preach the Cross which detonated that whole order of things. Yes Jesus Christ forgave you, but He was doing something much more incredible on the Cross. The One who IS LIFE took death upon Him, in all its possible forms, internal hookups,sicknesses,thought constructs,every possible trace of the spiritual identity of our inherited Adamic identity, and when He died and said it is finished...He meant it. Everything outside of the Reign of God...totally annhilated. All legal claims and curses attached to all our families past present and future, were nailed with Him on that Cross.
We now PROVE it by believing it,confessing it,believing ON IT....even in the face of the exact opposite....and you watch how God sovereignly manifests that Reign for you,in you, by you...not by efforts, but by the Life of His very Son.
The Kingdoms of the Earth are built by fear,terror ,force and coercion, and in relatively short time they can corral a new Kingdom in place, like so much herded cattle.
The REIGN OF GOD appears slower....but even that is only apparent, because like seed itself, which is slow, it is also EXPONENTIAL. Fake growth is like a mule. Barren. Can't go anywhere. The REIGN OF GOD is brimful of inner activity, bursting with change....real changes....which like good fertile seed givesbirth to ever more fertile seed.
The reason Christianity has seemed such a poor option is because huge great percentages of it have nothing whatever to do with God's reign and Life. His genuine Life...like the first day of the church...explodes from 120 to 3000 in the very first day.
In the average church all over the world you're lucky to get anything happening at all. But that's another subject....you see RELIGION is NOT LIFE. And Jesus came to bring the active REIGN OF GOD....not RELIGION.
No comments:
Post a Comment