The Lord blessed us with wonderful a day in His house yesterday. Praise the Lord! He blessed us with a a time of worship and celebration. Praise the Lord that " better is one day in His House than thousand elsewhere".
Praise the Lord for days of September here in New York. They have been cool, clear, and crisp It is now the season for the apple harvest. The Lord has blessed this region with an abundant of apple harvest. Blessed be His Name. We are gearing up for the Fall season in the life of the church with various ministries. We are getting ready for Apple Festival in Endicott on the September 21. One of the big events for this Fall Season is our annual Prayer conference to be held in conjunction with the Binghamton House of Prayer from October 18-20, 2013. The keynote speaker for this exciting events will be Rev. Nigel Mumford. Those of you who live in the area please plan to join us, We are expecting the Lord bless His people with miracles, signs, and wonders. You are welcome to register online.
Our Lord made so many audacious promises and claims. One of those claims and promises is recorded in Mathew 16, "on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." In his book, "The Triumph of Christianity", Rodney Stark deals with how the "Jesus Movement" became the world's largest religion. The opening paragraph gives the flavor of the whole:
“He was a teacher and miracle worker who spent nearly all of his brief ministry in the tiny and obscure province of Galilee, often preaching to outdoor gatherings. A few listeners took up his invitation to follow him, and a dozen or so became his devoted followers, but when he was executed by the Romans his followers probably numbered no more than several hundred. How was it possible for this obscure Jewish sect to become the largest religion in the world?”
The rest of his book
attempts to answer that question. Stark writes as a historian, not as a
theologian or an evangelist. His question invites serious contemplation. How
do you get from a dozen devoted followers (minus the one who betrayed him) to
the world’s largest religion?
The final verses of Matthew
28 is where Jesus gives his disciples what we traditionally call the Great
Commission. As I read that passage, I notice something unusual in the preceding
verses.
Some of the
disciples had begun to doubt that Jesus had risen from the dead. This
atmosphere of doubt certainly did not seem like a good way to begin a worldwide
movement. “Then the eleven disciples went to
Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him,
they worshiped him; but some doubted” (vv. 16-17).
Jesus seemingly ignored the
fact that “Some doubted.” It is almost as if Jesus was saying, “Don’t worry
about anything. Don’t even worry about your doubts. Go and make disciples, and
in your going, your doubts will disappear.” I think that’s exactly what
happened. Nothing dispels doubt
like speaking up for Jesus. Get in the arena and your doubts will begin to
disappear.
”Then Jesus came to them
and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (v. 18). How would the
Christian message survive? It
would survive all the assaults against it because all power in heaven and on
earth has been given to Jesus Christ. We have
nothing to fear as we go into the world because the power of Jesus far surpasses
the power and authority of the rulers of this
world.
Think for a moment about
some of the richest or most powerful people of this world: Gates, Buffett, Putin, Obama,
Merkel. What is the measure of any of them when they are
compared to the Lord Jesus Christ? They are nothing at all!
So it is
that the Christian movement started with 11 men, some of whom doubted, and has
grown to over 2 billion people some 2000 years later. When Rodney Stark came to
the end of his thesis, The
Triumph of Christianity, he closed with this simple
summary:
“More than 40 percent of the people on earth today are Christians and their number is growing more rapidly than that of any other major faith.”
Historians and sociologists
will offer their own explanations, but we can be content to say that the Jesus'
words have indeed come to pass. It is a miracle of exponential proportions,
and we
get to be part of it.
“I have all
power.”
"I will go with you.”
"I will go with you.”
If this is true, we cannot
fail. When Jesus gets involved, amazing things happen.
His command and His promise are, "Go, and I will go with you.”
This is the whole plan, and it still works after 2000 years.
This is the whole plan, and it still works after 2000 years.
In Him,
Brown
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