Author: missionspaul

“Sitting Shiva”

So the stone was very large (Mark 16:4), it would take many to have moved it, but an angel of the Lord came and did just that.

The angel then did something that perhaps can be easily missed in the excitement of the events … He sat down on top of the stone!

The importance is this: the ‘sitting shiva’.

You may never have come across that term unless you are a Jew.
During the mourning period known as ‘shiva’ mourners would sit on low stools as near to the ground as they could. Remember how Jobs friends could not recognise Job because of his suffering and for 7 days and nights they sat on the ground and in the dirt with him (Job 2:13)? Similarly the shiva would last one week following the loss of a loved one and the people would demonstrate their heartaches by bringing themselves as low as possible.

But the angel was sat high on top of the stone which was used to stop people coming to steal the body of Christ.
The angel was demonstrating to the women that this was not a funeral site, there was no mourning here, no need to sit shiva today!

No. For us today we are not sitting low to the ground. We are as Apostle Paul said, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” Ephesians‬ ‭2‬:‭6‬.

Your circumstance may be trying to bring you low, you may even have those feelings.
But the Bible says that’s not where you are sitting. You are raised high, seated high.
And that stone of circumstance which the enemy tried to use to silence you has now become your very own pulpit declaring that Christ is alive in you and you are alive in Him!

It just isn’t over!

Rev Nadim Nassar, a Syrian Anglican priest recently was quoted as saying “Christianity is vanishing in the Middle East.”
The evil of ISIS and their partners has been traumatically painful and we are all praying for their fall to be as quick as their rising. Will we witness in our lifetime the eradication of Christianity in the Biblical region of the world as Rev Nassar suggests?

In the UK it could appear that Christianity is also vanishing. Dr John Sentanu in his Easter Sunday sermon a few years ago told of how nearly a third of British children thought that Easter marked the birth of the Easter bunny and that over half didn’t know the Easter story.

Today is Easter Sunday and I know Jesus was dead but that He came back to life and is alive today. He was gone but then He came back.

With this in mind I also know that no matter what dies it can live again. If Christianity vanishes it can re-appear. If knowledge of the truth dissipates it can be regained.
I also know whatever you have:
Lost can be found
Has been stolen can be given back
Whatever has:
Gone wrong can be put right.
Been defeated can become successful.

You see, it is just not over till it’s over and we never get to say it is over!
There is still time in your life, there is still today.
Jesus is Alive!

Yesterday I ended a journey of 3 years and 3 months of writing a devotion from a chapter of the Bible every day.
I am not sure how many read these on a regular basis, but if you have, thank you.
I am considering making this devotional book available as an e-book. It will take some work to sort it and repackage the devotion, there will be some cost attached to that. So in order to think this through I am trying to gauge a response to see if there be any interest. For those reading this from Facebook I would appreciate you simply liking this blog if you would be interested in receiving the whole Bible devotional book electronically. Those reading it from Twitter or WordPress can you email me on paul.hudson@elimhq.net

I will continue to write a daily blog. It will contain a variety of devotions, interesting people I meet and missions stories, so please continue to read daily.

I will commence on Easter Sunday.

He is coming soon!
Revelation 22
No matter your interpretations, your opinions and beliefs, it is still all about Jesus.
The whole Bible is about Jesus coming, His death, resurrection and ascension, the power of the Church and the return of Jesus before the final end of the world as we know it.
Jesus has come to finish transgression, when he hung on the cross, his final cry was ‘It is finished’. His work on the cross finished the work of sin once and for all.
Jesus has come to put an end to sin. He came to die for our sins that through Him we might die to sin and be raised to a new life of righteousness.
Jesus came to atone for wickedness with His blood. So that as God looks down on you and me He only sees the atoning blood and not our sin.
Jesus came to bring everlasting righteousness. He came to establish us as righteous in the sight of God.
Jesus came to seal up vision and prophecy. His coming was the seal of approval on the vision and the prophets speaking of Him. Jesus is God’s last word. In Him all the promises of God receive their ‘yes’ of ‘Amen’. In Him alone is found the vision of God and His purpose.
Jesus came to anoint the most holy. He came to fulfil all that the holy of holies represented. He is the most Holy presence of God.
It is all about Jesus. It is quite simple.
He has come and He is coming again.
Behold I am coming soon. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. I am the Root and the Offspring of David and the bright Morning Star. Yes! I am coming soon!
And what do we do? What can we do?
We do what John did. On knowing this we fall down and worship Him.
That’s the Bible my friend.
And may His grace be with you. Amen.

He is going to make all things new! v5
Revelation 21
This has got to be the promise of all promises!
What is He going to make new?

1. Creation will be made new.
This world as we know it is dying. Last year the WWF produced a report entitled ‘Life on Earth is dying’.
It reported that the number of vertebrates – mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish – on earth has fallen by more than half since 1970. We know the world as we know it is changing and not for the benefit. Seasons are confused, pollution and disease has increased, this is certainly not paradise.
But there is a new earth coming. God will make what we know new.
2. Our spiritual brokenness will be made new.
And as John saw the prostitute, Babylon, as the world system, he now sees Jerusalem, a picture of the Church, prepared, perfected for Christ.
He makes all things new. Including the shame, the guilt and the sin of our lives, all of it will have gone forever.
3. Our bodies will be made new
No more death, or mourning or crying or pain …
This body that we know now will be changed. It dies and it grieves and it cries. If all of that is gone then what is left is perfect. Our minds perfect, our bodies perfect.
Some today have struggled all their life with disability, some have faced accidents and are never the same again and some spend the last few years of their life crippled by disease. The problem is temporary for God will make our bodies new.
4. Our relationship with Him will be new.
“The dwelling of God is with men …”
There are times when we feel so far from God, we get frustrated because we cannot see Him. But there comes a day when that is no more.
This earth new!
This life new,
This body new!
This God-relationship new!

John retells the Revelation as a pre-millennialist.
Which simply means Christ comes back before a thousand year reign of peace.
Revelation 20
This chapter shows the millennium.
However, this revelation sits in a canon of the rest of the New Testament which also speaks of Christ’s return and with us not taking what John sees as a time-line then it is impossible to say what order it will all happen. Is it a literal 1000 years? Was it literally 30 minutes (8:1)? 3 and a half days? 5 months? 1260 days? 42 months? John says so, but that doesn’t mean it is literal.
So what happens in the millennium?
The martyrs reign.
That’s you and me.
The martyrs are not an elite group. Yes John sees those who had been beheaded which is poignant for us today as for his generation.
But in his vision all faithful Christians have been killed, that’s what happened. It still does in parts of the world.
So we reign with Christ. We do so without the presence of evil.
What we don’t know is if there were unbelievers on earth in John’s vision. If so, do they become saved? If not, the purpose of the 1,000 years is a mystery.
Then Satan is released and again he attacks and again is defeated!

No matter how many times he attacks, he is always defeated!

Those whose name is not in the book of life will not live.
So did the unsaved dead come back to life to die again?

The lake of fire is not there for human beings though people do go there, it is rather there for Satan, death and hades, they are destroyed.

In Christ we are called to reign, it is what Adam and Eve lost for us. Though we struggle at times to hold on to that rulership of our life and often we are ruled by outside forces, yet, we know, that in the end all of this will pale into insignificance as we reign with Christ in the millennium!!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
For the Lord God Almighty reigns
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

For the Lord God Almighty reigns
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

The kingdom of this world
Is become the kingdom of our Lord,
And of His Christ, and of His Christ;
And He shall reign for ever and ever,
For ever and ever, forever and ever,

King of kings, and Lord of lords,
King of kings, and Lord of lords,
And Lord of lords,
And He shall reign,
And He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings, forever and ever,
And Lord of lords,
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

And He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings! and Lord of lords!
And He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings! and Lord of lords!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Revelation 19

Summed up in the word Hallelujah!

Why?

The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords has come. He is here!

Yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday when Jesus came riding into Jerusalem to the sound of Hallelujahs and Hosannas.

But that was nothing compared to what He will hear as He comes again to this earth.

Hallelujah!

Over and Out!
Revelation 18
Up till now it was the future. But now John is in that future and is seeing what was said about the world’s order come true, she has fallen.
Confirming her real crime not being the literal drunkenness and sexual immorality rather her luxurious extravagance, John hears of how her trade and economy has come crashing down.
And it will all happen in 1 hour, v17.
1929, the Wall Street crash when 30 billion dollars had been lost, twice the national debt, it was then the U.S. moved into their Great Depression. One observer in Wall Street wrote how “traders hollered and screamed, they clawed at one another’s collars. It was like a bunch of crazy men. Every once in a while, another tumble and you’d see some poor devil collapse and fall to the floor.”
It is a shadow of what is to come.
John is brought back into the present, v4, with a call from heaven to God’s people not to be caught up into such extravagant living and in v20 to Rejoice you saints, apostles and prophets.

So let us leave the pressure of this world to be an extravagant worshipper and let us be the ones who live (saints), who go (apostles) and who speak (prophets) for God, who calls us to rejoice with heaven that soon the old order will pass away.

Are you astonished?
Revelation 17
As we approach the final revelation of John we are introduced to two cities personified as a woman, Babylon, Rome, the great prostitute and Jerusalem, the Virgin. It is the world and the Church.
John is taken into a desert and is shown the truth of the woman. She is blasphemous. She is the epitome of selfish wealth and extravagance, of hedonism. She turns people from God. The ones she cannot turn, she kills, v6, their blood runs from her mouth. It is this violence that is the major focus that the angel wants John to see and one other thing … Her deception, v2.
Then something astonishing happens!
v6 John is astonished.
He is tempted to worship the woman! That’s the meaning of the word astonished!
He is on the verge of being deceived by the power, the riches and the lavishness of the world he lived in.
The angel quickly spots this and pulls him together questioning him “Why John?” “John, don’t be enamoured,” is basically what is going on here, v 6-7.
Don’t be astonished because:
This beast she rides ONCE WAS.
Your God WAS
This beast NOW IS NOT
Your God IS
This beast WILL COME
Your God IS TO COME
See the difference. If you haven’t:
This beast she rides will go to his DEATH
But your God WILL NOT!
John, you need wisdom in this world, v9. We all do.

The rest of the chapter of 7 heads, 7 hills, 7 kings, the 8th king, the 10 horns, 10 kings are all about this:
God is using the world, the governments of the world, the ideologies of the word, they are all part of His-story, He is behind it all.
Today, pray for wisdom to know your God, to be able to resist the Oulu of the deceptive world which says you want/need more.
Be careful what astonishes you! Let it be God only.

Keep your clothes on!
Revelation 16
Body sores, sea and river pollution, sun scorching people, darkness and pain, demonic attacks and a final shaking of the earth. Sounds terrifying. It is what John saw and it is what is to come.
The voices:-
1. A loud voice, “Go” v1. These last plagues are instigated by God. In a future Exodus, these plagues are not to free His people from slavery under Pharaoh but to cause people to sit up, look to Him and repent. This voice will speak again.
2. The Angels voice and the voice from the altar, “You are just”, v5,7. In case anyone thinks the earth will not deserve what it gets, the pronouncement is, God is just. Agreement comes from the altar, “Yes we agree!”. And if anyone wee to dare question, we hear His name God Almighty, there is no one above Him.
3. John’s voice, prophesying the outcome, v14. He identifies that behind the world’s wickedness is a demonic world. But the outcome is obvious because God Almighty is victorious.
4. The voice of Jesus, in similar terms as in chapter 2 and 3, v15, “I’m nearly here, keep your clothes on, don’t abandon God now, Armageddon is coming and Grace will be over.”
5. A loud voice from the throne, v17, “It is done.” The end comes at Armageddon. Probably an imaginary place and not a battle. God going into an end time battle is laughable. He doesn’t need to fight. He speaks and Babylon is fallen, the world as we know it is no more.
So what?
The world will get worse.
During the end time disasters there will still be time to repent, for a time.
God is just, fair and always wins.
Jesus says He is coming and when He does it will be quick and sudden. You will have no time to get ready, so if you undress from your faith, your love and passion for Jesus, you might not be ready. Sleep with your clothes on.