Category Archives: Apologetics

Jesus Did Not Say That We Will Live With Him In Heaven Forever

Apologetics, , , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT WE WILL LIVE WITH HIM IN HEAVEN FOREVER

As much as we like this idea, the assumption that we are going to be in heaven for eternity is just not true. God created the earth to be a perfect home for man. It was His intention from the beginning that the human race, perfected in holiness and righteousness as His sons and daughters, will live in union with God and rule over the earth in partnership with Him.

Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over all livestock and wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ (Gen. 1: 26)

Adam’s rebellion did not change God’s plan. It was a part of His plan since God was not taken by surprise. How else would He reveal His mercy and grace to the entire universe including the fallen angels, if He did not have a plan to redeem and rescue mankind from the consequences of sin?

The erroneous idea that Jesus will take His church to heaven and then destroy the earth and all its ungodly inhabitants, flies in the face of the entire drift of Scripture. Both the Old and the New Testaments bear witness to a God who does not destroy but renews and restores everything that was broken by the Fall. He did not destroy the entire human race and begin again when Adam fell. His plan of redemption through Jesus was already in place before the beginning of time.

All the inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast – all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. (Rev. 13: 8)

God has always preserved a remnant for Himself – people who are faithful to Him in the midst of apostasy and ungodliness. It was through the remnant of faithful Jews that Messiah came; Zechariah and Elizabeth bore John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah; Mary and Joseph – Mary chosen to be the mother of Jesus and Joseph, a godly man, together with Mary, chosen to raise Him in a godly home; His disciples who believed in Him were groomed to continue His mission on earth after He left.

Throughout the Scriptures God’s intention is clear. Using the picture of a geographical kingdom, God taught His people that they were to rule over their territory in righteousness under His protection and guidance as a witness to the surrounding nations that He alone is God and that His nature is love expressed in mercy and compassion to all. That they did not get it and fell into idolatry over and over again did not cancel out His plan.

Both Paul and John clearly understood that Jesus’ death accomplished much more than forgiveness of sins. Just as the disobedience of Adam had cosmic repercussions, so the death of Jesus, the last Adam, brought about the reversal of the devastating effects of Adam’s sin.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Rom. 8: 18-22)

John was privileged to have glimpses into the future when Satan will be vanquished forever and Jesus will be established as God’s rightful king over all creation. John witnessed the end result of redemption – a renewed heaven and earth which came together under the rule of God. In picture language he described heaven coming down to earth, symbolising the final union of heaven and earth with God taken His place among His redeemed and perfected people.

Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ (Rev. 21: 1-4)

What did John mean by the words ‘a new heaven and a new earth’? Did he mean that God will utterly destroy the earth and start all over again? This interpretation is not consistent with Scripture. Peter gives us a glimpse into the meaning of a ‘new heaven and a new earth.’

But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and the destruction of the ungodly. (2 Peter: 3: 5-7)

To be consistent, we must interpret the destruction of the earth by fire in the same way as the “destruction” of the earth by water. Destruction did not mean annihilation by water in Noah’s day, and therefore it cannot mean annihilation by fire when Jesus comes. “Destruction” in Scripture is often used in the sense of purging, i.e, the removal of everything corrupt and evil. Take John’s testimony about the Messiah, for example.

I baptise you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will clear His threshing floor, gathering His wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. (Matt. 3: 11-12)

What is God’s intention, then? Just as He created (i.e., reshaped and filled a formless and empty earth) the heavens and the earth by His word through the Word – Jesus – so He will purge His creation from evil by His word through the Word so that it will be His dwelling place with His people forever.

We shall continue this study tomorrow.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

Jesus Did Not Say That The Ungodly Would Be Left Behind

Apologetics, , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT THE UNGODLY WOULD BE LEFT BEHIND

Amazing how biblical expositors can twist the Bible to mean what they want it to mean, and even more amazing that thousands of people believe them without checking the facts!

Take the popular theory that Jesus will take believers to heaven when He comes and that the ungodly will be left behind. “Left Behind” is even the theme of a series of novels which have garnered millions of dollars in royalties but do not have a shred of truth in them. Many have even based a false hope on the idea that they or their loved ones will get a second chance to believe in Jesus when the church is “raptured” and the antichrist takes over the world. Where in the world does that idea come from and how can they justify it from the Scriptures?

Now let’s look at what Jesus did say.

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the Ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. (Matt. 24: 37-39)

“As it was . . . so it will be” is quite clearly a comparison. Just as it happened then, so it will happen now. That is clear, isn’t it? So what happened then? God told Noah to build an ark because it was going to rain. The people of the earth had become so corrupt that God decided to purge the earth of its evil and rescue only one family, Noah’s. It had never rained before because the earth was watered by a mist (see Gen. 2: 5-6).

While Noah and his sons constructed the ark, Noah warned the people of coming judgment.

. . . If He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others . . . (2 Peter 2: 5)

Whether his preaching was verbal or silent, Peter did not say but, what he and his sons were doing was enough to alert his neighbours that something big and catastrophic was about to happen. But they obviously refused to take him seriously because they carried on living the way they always did until the flood came.

What was God’s provision for the Noah family? He did not rapture them to heaven. He protected them from the flood in a well-constructed boat. Here again is what Peter had to say about the event.

. . . To those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water . . . (1 Peter 3: 20)

Peter compared what happened to Noah and his family when God rescued them from the flood by protecting them in the ark, to what happens to those who are baptised, implying that they have been identified with Jesus’ death and resurrection and have been initiated into God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The very water that took the lives of the ungodly in Noah’s day was the water that saved him because he was in the ark.

Jesus’ comparison falls flat if we insist that it was the ungodly who were “left behind”. Clearly Noah and his family survived the flood when everyone and everything that was not in the ark perished. God did not destroy the earth with the flood. He re-established it in another form. Everything was changed by the water which fell from above and burst out of the ground.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month – on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. (Gen. 7: 11-12)

At the end of the catastrophe, who emerged from the ark onto a transformed and purged earth? Who was left behind? Many thousands of corpses and one living family, Noah’s! God had accomplished His goal. He preserved a righteous man and his family to start all over again.

Where, then, does the idea come from that Jesus will whip the righteous from the earth and leave the ungodly behind to carry on as normal? Before you get hot under the collar and point me to the “rapture”, we have to examine the big picture. This is only point one. Jesus did not say that He would take the church out and leave the ungodly behind. He did say that, just as Noah was saved in the ark when God poured His judgement on the earth and its corrupt inhabitants, so those who are “in Him” will be protected when He brings judgment on the earth and its corrupt people once again.

As the writer to the Hebrews testified:

See to it that you do not refuse Him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused Him who warned them on earth, how much less will we if we turn away from Him who warns us from heaven.  At that time His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, ‘Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ The words ‘once more’ indicate the removing of what can be shaken – that is, created things – so that what cannot be shaken may remain. (Heb. 12: 25-27)

Tomorrow we’ll examine point two of what Jesus did not say and what He did say.  

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

Jesus Did Not Say That We Must Bind The Devil

Apologetics, , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT WE MUST BIND THE DEVIL

Oh what a mess we make when we assume that Jesus said what He did not say!

He was on a mission to teach His disciples a valuable lesson.  He took them to Caesarea Philippi – to us only a name on an ancient map. But what did it mean to Jesus and His disciples?

It was Israel’s “red light district”, a no-go place for respectable and orthodox Jews. It was both a city built in honour of Caesar which had in it a temple dedicated to the worship of Caesar, and a region where there was the site of pagan worship of the worst kind.

A huge rocky cliff had niches carved into the base in which the images of pagan gods were placed for worship, the most prominent being the goat-god Pan, and a pagan temple. There was a grotto at the base of the cliff from which a spring flowed, joining the snow melt from Mount Hermon to form the source of the Jordan River.

Pagan worshippers believed that evil spirits used the cave as their portal through which they retreated into the underworld in the winter and returned in the spring. Their worshippers would entice them out by having sexual intercourse with goats. This cave entrance was known as “the gate of hell”.

It was there, in sight of these depraved and disgusting goings-on that Jesus asked His disciples the question, “Who do you say that I am?” The disciples’ response was crucial. If they acknowledged Jesus only to a prophet or a great teacher, as did many others, they would have missed the significance of His identity, and would have had no clue about the purpose of His visit to the region.

Their mission as His disciples hung on their understanding of who He was. If they saw Him as no more than another rabbi, what He came to do would have evaporated like a vapour because He depended on them to continue His work when He left them, based on the conviction that He was indeed the Son of God.

Jesus was elated when Peter, as spokesman for the group, assured Him that they recognised Him to be the Messiah, the Son of God, even though Peter did not understand the full implication of his confession at that moment. It was on the strength of his confession, and in the environment of the worst of human depravity that Jesus commissioned them to bind His yoke on those who were destroying themselves by their ungodly lives because of the yoke of paganism that they had embraced.

. . . On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Matt. 16: 18-19)

We must interpret Jesus’ commission in the culture and religion of the Jews, not from our western imposition on the text. What did it mean to “bind and loose” in the context of Judaism in Jesus’ day?

In His extended explanation of the character and behaviour of kingdom citizens (called “the Sermon on the Mount”) Jesus made it clear that His purpose was not to set aside the Torah but to fulfil it by living it out according to God’s intention so that His disciples would understand and do as He did. The foundation of the Torah was the character of God, expressed in His mercy – the weightiest part of His character. It was His intention that, in all their dealings with one another as God’s covenant people, they would treat one another with mercy.

The ancient rabbis with sh’mikah, those who were acknowledged to have the authority to make pronouncements on God’s intention regarding the details of His instructions, i.e., the Torah, had missed the point and piled rules upon rules governing their behaviour until the people were burdened with impossible expectations on how to “keep” or live a Torah-compliant life.

Jesus declared that He had the authority to dispense with all the rigmarole of His predecessors and take His people back to God’s original intention – mercy and compassion because these were the weightiest or most important aspects of God’s nature (see Exodus 33: 18-34: 7).

It was this yoke – the mercy and compassion of the Father – that would set people free from all other yokes, including the yoke of both paganism and Pharisaism, that would change people from the inside. At the very spot where the disciples witnessed what pagan beliefs led to – “on this rock” – Jesus declared that He would build His church – the visible representative of His kingdom, and nothing, not even the false beliefs about demons and hades, would be able to resist.

At that very spot where the disciples were witnessing the behaviour of idol-worshippers, Jesus gave His commission and the authority to “bind” His yoke on people and “loose” them from all other yokes which ensnared and enslaved them. No amount of useless “binding” the devil or demons can do what Jesus does in the hearts of people when they embrace the truth of who He is and allow Him to rule in their hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The city of Ephesus was a case in point. When Paul and his companions went to Ephesus, it was a city in the grip of Diana-worship, the many-breasted goddess of fertility who was worshipped by people interacting sexually with her temple prostitutes. After Paul had preached the gospel in that city, many Diana-devotees embraced the truth, brought their demonic paraphernalia and burnt it in the middle of the city.

So powerful was the yoke of Jesus that Diana lost her influence and had to be “defended” by the silversmiths led by Demetrius because they had lost their business making and selling “Diana”-relics. Their protest caused a riot in the city which almost cost Paul his life.

There is no evidence in Luke’s record of “Jericho” marches or prayer walks; of discerning of spirits or “pulling down” altars or strongholds; of “binding” demons and “loosing” the Holy Spirit or whatever people “loose” by their “spiritual warfare”! It was repentance (changing their minds), following Jesus and obeying the truth that set them free from the power of Satan.

Jesus died to defeat the devil.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive in Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Col. 2: 13-15)

We have only one response – to stand on the truth of what He had done.

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armour of God so that, when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. (Eph. 6: 12-13)

God has not instructed us to wage war against the devil and his minions. Jesus did that and overcame him through the cross. We can add nothing to what He has done. He calls us to hold fast to the truth of the gospel and its effects in our lives (put on the whole armour of God), and to declare the good news of forgiveness and freedom in Christ to those who are ensnared by Satan’s yoke of lies in whatever form they are held captive.

Idolatry or even denominational yokes which have added to or removed anything from the yoke of Jesus, hold people in bondage. Only when we believe and embrace the truth of God’s mercy in Christ and the finished work of Jesus on the cross, can we be loosed from the yoke of bondage and set free to worship God in spirit and in truth without fear because perfect love drives out fear.

How much time is wasted in useless so-called “spiritual warfare” praying instead of preaching the gospel to those who have never heard because it is the power of the cross that is able to save and deliver men and women from the devil and his snares! True spiritual warfare is done by telling people the truth and allowing them the opportunity to respond in faith. It is the work of God to set them free.

For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1: 13-14)

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

Jesus Did Not Say That The Truth Will Set You Free

Apologetics, , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

“O yes He did!” you might vehemently protest, and I will just as vehemently protest that He did not, at least that is not what He meant.

Let’s read what He said, in context, of course.

To the Jews who believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ (John 8:31-32)

How many times have you heard someone quote Jesus’ words out of context: ‘The truth will set you free’?

The whole truth of what He said hangs on the issue of being His disciple. Unfortunately, even being a disciple of Jesus is misunderstood today. In Jesus’ day, a disciple was a person whom a rabbi (teacher and model) called to follow him. The rabbi had implicit confidence that, after spending time with him day and night, not only learning what he believed and taught, but also learning to imitate him in every possible way, those who followed him would become a replica of him. They, in turn would teach his yoke to others.

A disciple had to learn his rabbi’s yoke – his understanding of Yahweh’s original intention in the Torah – His instructions for living that would guide him on his journey towards his destination which was Zion, the place where He had established His name. Only a rabbi with sh’mikah, the authority recongnised by two witnesses, was permitted to have his own yoke and to teach his yoke to his disciples.

Jesus had sh’mikah, authority from the Father to which both the Father and John the Baptist bore witness at His baptism, to override every other yoke and “bind” His yoke on His followers. Unlike the yoke of rabbis like Hillel and Shammai, who placed heavy burdens on people which the Pharisees and religious leaders slavishly followed, Jesus’ yoke was easy and His burden light.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matt. 11: 28-30)

It was in this context of discipleship, not to the casual observer who had no commitment to follow Jesus as his model and mentor, that Jesus spoke these words. True freedom can only be experienced by those who understand Jesus’ yoke and put it into practice in their everyday lives. The core of His yoke lies in His disposition as the Son of God and His representative on earth. He said, ‘I am gentle and humble in heart.’ Slavishly trying to follow a set of rules can never bring the rest He promised.

What is this rest He promised? It is the rest of soul that has received forgiveness of sin through Jesus and has been reconciled to the Father by faith in Christ. He is no longer obligated to keeping a set of rules to gain favour with God. He has been reinstated into His family as His son or daughter; he has received God’s gift of righteousness through Jesus; he has been redeemed from the slave market of sin and transferred from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of God. He has a new nature and a new Master.

All this is God’s doing; it cannot be taken from him. He can rest in what God has done for him, and he is free to walk in God’s truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the freedom Jesus offers to those who throw in their lot with Him in loyalty, trust and obedience.

This is a far cry from what some people believe He said, if they even know the source of the statement! There can never be true freedom outside of Jesus and outside of being His disciple by holding to His teaching. It is not the truth that sets us free but the experiential knowledge of the truth when we believe and practise the teachings of Jesus in the disposition of the Master.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

Jesus Did Not Say That He Was Poor

Apologetics, , , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT HE WAS POOR

Now that we have completed our ramble through Mark’s gospel, where next?

Something has been troubling me for a while since I began to study the gospels nearly eight years ago. I have come to realise that, when we study the Bible from a Hebrew perspective, there are many things we take for granted as Greek-orientated western thinkers that are just not meant to be interpreted the way we do. Imagine opening a novel set in the American “wild west” and reading it as a story from eighteenth century England. It would make no sense at all.

But unfortunately, that’s the way we westerners read and interpret the Bible if we don’t take into consideration the language and culture of the people who wrote it. As a result, we have developed and passed on a traditional way of understanding passages in the Bible that were never intended to be read that way.

Take Jesus’ response to the man who requested to follow Him:

Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.’ (Luke 9: 38)

We have “invented“ an interpretation that demands that Jesus was poor, of course backed up by Paul’s statement in 2 Cor. 8:9:

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor so that you, through His poverty might become rich.

Of course there can be no comparison between the riches Jesus enjoyed with the Father and His financial state here on earth, but that does not mean that He was a pauper during His time on earth. He was a Jewish rabbi. He would have been given many offerings by the people who followed Him and benefitted from His teaching. He was supported by wealthy women. After all, His seamless robe was the garment of a wealthy man for which the soldiers gambled as He hung dying on the cross.

Hebrew people used similes and metaphors to illustrate what a thing did rather than what it looked like. Take for example God’s instruction to Moses when he asked to see His glory.

When my glory passes by, I will hide you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.

But wait a minute! God is spirit. Does He have a hand? No! Then what did He mean? We immediately interpret this to mean a literal hand. If that were true, then the many descriptions of God in the Bible would lead us to think that He is a grotesque-looking being! A Hebrew person would ask, “What does a hand do?” Their language was based on action and what they experienced with their senses. They would understand that God protected Moses from seeing His face.

That brings us to Jesus’ statement, Foxes have dens and birds have nests. For what purpose do these creatures have dens and nests? They do not live in them; they reproduce in them. What, then, did Jesus’ head have to do with reproduction?

One of Paul’s pictures of the church is a body. Jesus is the head of the church, the head of His body. But the church was only born on the day of Pentecost. Before that, He was a head without a body. But why did Jesus need a body?

He came to restore His estranged people to fellowship with the Father through His death and resurrection. It was His plan to reproduce Himself in the world through the church so that the unbelieving world would see what the Father is really like, not from the distorted picture of God presented by Jewish religion, but from His life and ministry and from His death and resurrection reproduced in His followers.

When this man came to request to be a part of the disciples, Jesus was not ready to take Him on. The time would come when he would be welcomed into the church as a believer, joined to Jesus as his head, and part of a reproducing body that Jesus would send into the world to “make disciples”. These disciples would in turn, follow Jesus and reproduce Him in the lives of others.

That’s how He intended to establish His kingdom on earth. It is a brilliant model, if only the church would do as He instructed instead of inventing its own model, which has, in the main, failed.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com