A Failure to Imagine (Part 3)

See the series here

• Part 1 noted the church may be losing ground, spiritually, with substantial portions of The Lord’s 3rd age harvest already loss, and more may be at risk of loss.
• Part 2 noted that each age has stages and requires strategic adjustment.
• Therefore, the pertinent question is: how should believers think differently in the late-stage of this current age?

Imagine with me: 

 

You have just been given a remarkable, coveted reward for something extremely positive that you personally initiated, with great potential to expand beyond your and others’ wildest imaginations. But before hunkering down for the intense work and glory of the next stage, you decide to take a well-deserved, greatly extended VACATION! You selected a new destination, and have allowed yourself 6+ months to prepare. How would you prepare?

How much time, energy and other resources would you spend on:

 

•  Reviewing the nitty-gritty details of your accomplishment—the initial vision, strategic outline, team evolution, numerous failures and near successes, frustrations, and impulses to ‘throw in the towel’, etc.; versus

•  Planning every conceivable aspect of your well-deserved vacation?

 

In light of that, which of the following strategic approaches do you perceive the worldwide church might be emphasizing now, versus should be emphasizing as we believers, and the world, navigate the ‘late stage’ of this current, 3rd age?

 

A.  Continuing with the status quo:

1. Looking backwards to the cross, tomb and resurrection of Christ?

2. Studying the experiences and persecutions of the early church?

3. Promoting evolving Christian values in the face of their apparent powerlessness in this modern age?

4. Continuing to emphasize stale, unproductive, denominational doctrines learned in ‘ceminary-type’ institutions?

5. Policing a ‘do this, don’t do that, believe this, don’t believe that, vote like this, don’t vote like that’, etc., types of Christianity?

 

B.  Versus adopting a radical, forward-looking, strategic approach that:

1. Proactively imagines various aspects of our pending departure in Heaven’s next resurrection and rapture event at the end of this 3rd age, possibly when He opens the 6th seal on His scroll?

2. Proactively prepares potentially useful resources for 4th age believers, including former 3rd age believers who will have been left behind, and who will quickly return to extreme Christian faith in a time of great persecution?

3. Cultivates and catalyzes deeper, broader Holy Spirit-inspired insights about the places of our eternal destination—our nations on the massive, new, eternal Earth, and its capital city—the massive, new, eternal Jerusalem?

4. Ponders and explores plausible aspects of the post-apocalyptic, Millennial Reign age, as we try to imagine our personal and corporate assignments, as Earth’s immortal rulers, facilitating The Lord’s reign as its Global King?

5. S-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s our imaginations about the incredible, personal rewards The Lord promised to give us, based on our best personal and corporate performances during our ‘salvation internship’ in this life? 

Ponder this insight about rewards: There is absolutely no way we can realistically imagine the nature, extent and number of rewards with which The Lord will bless His most faithful saints. We only know His rewards will be different from His GIFT of eternal life for our successful internship. So why my 5th  point above about rewards?? 

 

Think the flip side--the inverse of The Lord’s judgments!

 

Since Adam and Eve, we have learned a LOT about various types and intensities of judgments The Lord has unleashed across our world, in response to our mounting sinfulness. And we are well versed about how Father God spiritually piled upon Jesus, the FULL LOAD of every human sin that will have ever been committed—past, present and future. 

 

What if… the degree and depth of The Lord’s HATE of sin, as demonstrated by His various judgments, mirrors…

 

The degree and depth of His LOVE for righteousness, and

His willingness to demonstrate His love with totally

un-imaginable rewards, based on our faithfulness in this life??

 

Stretch your imagination around this question:

 

For starters,

what kinds of rewards might mirror

 the judgments of the global flood, the apocalypse,

and other significant, but far lesser judgments in history???

Selah…

 

Friends, like me, do you strongly intuit our ‘business as usual’, institutionalized approaches to church Christianity need major overhauling—dumping stale, institutionalized, politicized, polarized, racialized, culturalized, modernized, and heavily monetized approaches that have driven so many of us away from churches, and from fake versions it purports to represent?!

 

Is the Church trying to maintain

a 3rd-age, middle-stage strategy, 

in a 3rd-age, final-stage reality.

 

When church signifies institutions, each with differing doctrines, customs and restrictions, more than it signifies people and their comprehension of what lies ahead for us, that’s when values shift, eventually diminish, and people drop out. Recall how The Lord threatened to vomit lukewarm believers out of the early Laodicean church. Imagine what He might be thinking about the increasingly ineffective, institutionalized, impotent, worldwide church TODAY?! I imagine He might be looking forward to His pending fresh troops. See: Fresh Troops, Incoming (Poem).

 

I encourage you to spend some quality time in meditation and prayer, asking The Holy Spirit to develop within you, The Mind of Christ which you have been given to enable you to:

 

     •  S-t-r-e-t-c-h your imaginations to assess your current salvation internship performance, and reveal areas in which you may have been ‘weighed in His scales, and found wanting’; and

     •  Perceive how you might help to IGNITE and GROW somebody’s faith and determination to ‘run the Christian race in a manner worthy of The Lord’s high calling.’

 

My passion is to help us to… 

perceive and prepare us for our pending promotion to immortality,

and what that might mean in our pre-departure present.

 

At the ends of the 1st and 2nd ages, The Lord intervened to SHIFT what the righteous on Earth should be thinking and doing differently—from majoring on the minors—past strategies they embraced during the middle stage of those ages; to majoring on the miners—teaching folks how to receive and develop by faith, and THEN mine the inexhaustible Mind of Christ—what He might be thinking, seeing and planning for us and the world, NEXT.

 

Might He be doing something similar TODAY?

IsraRan? (Part 2)

 See the series here

Let’s continue to consider whether the eastern border of the predicted greatly expanded Israel during The Millennial Reign age—the 5th age of our history, might include a substantial portion of Iran. (See: Human History Ages (Series)) Part 1 notes two opinions among Bible scholars on this matter. One view limits the borders to an invisible line up to/stopping at the Euphrates River. Another view incorporates the entire Euphrates River basin, much further east of the river, which includes a substantial portion of south-western Iran.

Nations’ Insurance, Impudence, Imprudence Trap

The Iran war may illustrate this pattern!

 

Like individuals and companies, nations seek and establish various insurance mechanisms against potential losses and dangers. Thus, they organize militaries, building alliances, and devise elaborate governance strategies and tactics intended to guarantee their national security against external and internal attacks on their critical sectors. Such actions are common, and appear prudent to governments. Yet history repeatedly shows darker, flexible patterns, both within and between nations:

  • Nation’s insurance schemes may breed impudence that eventually produces imprudence.
  • Their Impudence may trigger insurance schemes that culminate in imprudent arrangements.

  • Their imprudence may provoke impudence (both internally and externally), that triggers demands for various types of insurance. ¹

The Biblical Pattern

A Failure to Imagine (Part 2)

See the series here

My reference to ‘majoring on the minors’ in Part 1 in no way intends to minimize the critical importance of evangelization. Rather, it is a call to imagine the transitions or stages within the ages of human history, and to strategically adjust and adapt our efforts accordingly. History proves global evangelization may well have been Heaven’s key strategic rationale for allowing the U.S. to rise to global power so rapidly and completely! But that task was only achieved well into this current 3rd age of human history, in the decades after the U.K. had 'passed the global hegemon baton' to the U.S. For more on this, see: Like Parent, Like Child (Series).

What might this suggest about how each age of human history might unfold? And what happens if we fail to imagine how those ages unfold?

IsraRan? (Part 1)

See the series here

Don’t worry. My title is merely a portmanteau to draw attention to what might be a generally unknown, yet-fulfilled hint in The Book of Genesis. First, some background. 

 

Got problems at home?! Start a war elsewhere!! That’s a familiar response of governments and militaries that likely dates back to ancient, post-global flood times, and it is certainly happening TODAY! I wonder whether that may have been a factor in the first ‘international’ war recorded in The Bible, when armies from the far east, led by Elam (the western part of current Iran) traveled an exceptionally long distance to raid tribes across the land of Canaan. In the heat of battle, they captured Lot, Abram’s nephew. In response, Abram led a group of 318 trained servants to ambush those armies. They recaptured both Lot and ALL of the booty they had looted! ¹

 

VOILA! I regard that as the first recorded interactions between a future Israel (in Abram’s loins), and a future Iran (which much later absorbed ancient Elam). Since then, their relations have been like a roller coaster, and today, they’re at their lowest point on that wild ride!! But possibly not for long!! Hang tight…

A Failure to Imagine (Part 1)

See the series here

Unlike any other of The Lord’s creations, I believe humans are tremendously blessed with an unlimited ability to imagine — in 3-dimensional pictures and videos! Sadly, it is a travesty that the overwhelming majority of us abuse this incredible gift, by imagining creative ways to sin against the very Person who blessed us with it.

 

As if to point our imaginations in an acceptable direction, He uniquely captured and preserved a long series of historical events in His Book, The Bible. Collectively, those events paint a clear, panoramic perspective of what He deems as highly acceptable and utterly detestable human behavior. Moreover, He uses those historical events and panoramic perspectives as a vast springboard from which to project His uniquely knowable view of future events — events He personally guarantees WILL transpire over the remaining ages of human history! Imagine that~

The Last Army-like Church-Types (Part 2)

 

See the series here.

Part 1 lists what I perceive are Heaven's 'army-like' church types—groups it would create, commission and command to sustain righteousness, first in Heaven, then on Earth, and finally, eternally in Heaven. Here is the list of these groups as I perceive them:

 

1. An innumerable company of holy angels

2. Adam—and through him, humanity in general

3. Seth and his 1st-age righteous descendants ¹

4. Israel, as a set-apart ‘holy’ nation

5. The current, post-cross, 3rd-age church

6. The tribulation, 4th-age church

7. The post-Millennial-Reign, 6th-age church

 

The first 5 are historical. The last 2 are prophetical. The Bible, history and current day news reveal the relatively poor performances of the first 5 groups. ² 

 

Let's consider the how and why of the performances of the 6th church-type.

Personal VENGEANCE!

'Vengeance is MINE. I will repay', says The Lord.
(Deuteronomy 32: 35, Romans 12:19, Hebrews 10:30)

See the series here

It might feel good to take personal vengeance in response to a perceived wrong against us, that is until ...those against whom we take vengeance, perceive our vengeance as a wrong against them, and they become determined to take their vengeance upon us! And the downward spiral continues! 

The BIGGEST problem with vengeance is our personal perceptions of wrong actions taken against us, leave no room for an objective judgment. We personally become the victim, prosecutor, judge, jury and enforcer of our judgment against our perceived perpetuators!

Heaven Humbles Hegemons

Since the creation and rapid growth of sovereign city sates and nations during the 2nd age of human history, Heaven has been regularly humbling them, especially hegemons—the biggest, ‘badest’ and MOST PROUD ONES that ‘out-grew their britches!’, so to speak. ¹

 

To recognize this doesn’t require any faith in The Bible, though it accurately records and promises a continuation of its ‘humbling practice’. It only takes a basic understanding of history, especially of hegemon history, plus humility to discern and learn from what is palpably apparent. Sadly, those are traits that most of us lack, and that governments shun because of their myopic focus on short-term objectives, plain ole greed and corruption.

How NEVER to Die!

Got your attention?!

 

There are incalculable benefits from not reading and studying The Bible as merely a collection of 66 books and 1,189 chapters! Perceiving it like a lengthy itinerary for a very long journey, broadens my mind to the multi-millennial arc of its story line, chock full of valuable insights. Reading and studying it with a narrow chapter/verse mentality, guarantees we will miss its unwritten inferences and nuances that communicates far more than just what’s written in print. For that reason, The Lord, Who inspired and preserved it over the ages of our history, makes the Spirit of His Mind—the Mind of Christ, available to his bona fide saints. His mysteries remain unavailable to, and unperceived by all others. 

 

A key set of inferences and nuances relate to death, namely:

 

There are 2, uniquely different types of death, 

and 2 ways some humans will avoid both types of death!

Imagine that!