Following Jesus

Recovering Evangelism in 2022

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It is so easy to forget that we are called to make disciples. This is especially true when the pandemic has forced many of us into survival mode for much of the last two years.

The Lord has been really talking to me about this over the last month. A little over two years ago we had decided that this year would be a year to recover our focus on outreach, but people were burnt out and just tired from the stresses of the last two years.

I was despairing about how to encourage our cell leaders and I emailed Joel Comiskey to ask for his advice. Joel wisely reminded me that our call to evangelise is part of discipleship. We share the Good News in response to the call of Christ. This takes the pressure off, because we are only responsible for speaking and not for results. We sow, He grows.

To be effective in our call to make disciples, we need to be effective in all parts of the church

• As pastor, I need to re-engage in the community. I realised that I have unwittingly become cut off from unbelievers. I need to “Go” and make more friends.
• In the congregation, we will specifically devote the month of February to the topic of making disciples. Additionally the second Sunday of every month we will have a message with a definite salvation message, so that people will know that this will be a service they can bring people who are close to salvation.
• In cells, I have asked every cell leader to develop a 10 week plan  in which they work towards a prayer list for unsaved friends and family members and then plan an outreach event. Each cell should then be mobilised for 3 or 4 outreach activities in the year.
• Individuals will be encouraged to talk to their friends about how their faith helps in their daily life.

People who do not feel that they have the ministry gift of evangelism can be overwhelmed by the expectation to produce converts. The idea of fishing with nets as a team means that we are all working together, sharing our various gifts to bring the catch in.

As our congregation pivots towards outreach I am very excited about what God may do in us.

‘Biggest Seismic Shift’ in Christian Persecution: Watchdog Reveals Major Shakeup Involving Afghanistan, North Korea

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AP Photo/Rahmat Gul

Afghanistan is now the worst nation in the world for Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA, an organization that tracks global religious maltreatment.

The shocking development is undoubtedly the “biggest seismic shift” in decades, as North Korea, the reclusive and oppressive East Asian country, was bumped from the top spot it had occupied for 20 years.

“This year’s 2022 World Watch List, we think, is the biggest seismic shift in over 20 years because Afghanistan is now the No. 1 country on the World Watch List, supplanting North Korea,” Open Doors USA CEO David Curry told Faithwire.

The Dire Situation in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has long been embroiled in chaos, but the situation devolved further when the U.S. undertook a chaotic withdrawal last August — a retreat that carried with it serious consequences.

“Many people are aware of what’s happened since August in Afghanistan,” Curry said, citing the chaos and uncertainty. “It has emboldened Islamic extremists in other parts of the world. We believe it’s going to have a ripple effect.”

Christians in Afghanistan face intensifying persecution at the hands of the resurgent Taliban, with militants purportedly arresting and possibly seeking to kill believers. Christians and Christian women, in particular, are especially vulnerable and are seen as ideological enemies.

“They are going to be targeted,” Curry said.

North Korea’s Continued Christian Persecution

Though dethroned as the top stronghold of persecution, North Korea still occupies the second spot, and there’s no sign the chaos and targeted hatred perpetuated by leader Kim Jong-un and his restrictive government will dissipate.

“For 20 years, North Korea was number one. They have a post-communist … system that has been generational,” Curry said. “They have lifted now Kim Jung Un as the dictator. People are forced to worship him.”

He continued, “It’s clear that they don’t want any other faith except the worship of their leader and the communist system…they control all the means of life.”

Government control persists over necessities like food and medical care. This systematic control has led to mass starvation for the general populace. Christians are many times the last people to get food and are sometimes put in labor camps or relegated to remote areas because of their faith in Jesus.

Curry said the “2022 World Watch List” shows, from a large scale, the “strength of extremism around the world.”

“When you look at the top 10 countries, places like Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, you have even India [which is] number 10,” he said. “These are there on the ‘World Watch List’ because these countries have extremist groups, which are either running the government or are influencing the government and culture in these countries in such a way that it is not safe to practice your faith.”

Read the rest of the article at faithwire.com

John Alley: Three Promises for 2022

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I received the following in an email from John Alley on Saturday January 1st 2022. The promises speak about “rain”, and significantly, about 2 hours after this arrived inmy inbox, we had a very sharp short thunderstorm which was not expected. That first storm delivered about 7 mm of rain. It was centred on our church, and nowhere else in Narrabri experienced it. Altogether on that day we received 18 mm of rain.

In thinking about that yesterday morning (having left everything to the last moment), three verses with a common theme came to mind, which I will tell you of in a moment. 

But I asked Hazel, who is very dependable at getting trustworthy words, if she would ask the Lord if He had a word for us. I will here share her word first. 

However, these two ‘words,’ Hazel’s and mine, at first may seem incongruent – until you consider that Isaac planted in famine and harvested a hundredfold. I think they should be taken together, each instructing on how to walk with the Lord this year. 

Here are the Words Hazel heard:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5)

 – Leaning on your own understanding will not get you through next year.

 – We need to purposefully and actively seek the Lord (LISTEN) to succeed (or even survive?). 

 – This must be the way we live every day, not by just at times asking the Lord about particular circumstances. 

 – The Lord is faithful but we need to be putting our lives in His hands. 

 – Next year is pivotal to the future. I clearly feel that the scale of this is not just local (not just a word for the little bubble we each live in) but national.

What also came to me was that China wants our coal, and if they get half a chance they would do anything to get their hands on it. They would ramp up the mining and shipping of it and not care about questions of the environment. 

To this I (John) add a note on two scriptures:

First, Hazel quoted Prov 3:5 above, but take it with V6, which adds the statement that He will, for those who so walk, sort out the path ahead.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (ESV)

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart,

and do not lean on your own understanding.

6 In all your ways acknowledge him,

and he will make straight your paths.

Second, after reading Hazel’s note and spending an hour listening, the Lord immediately directed me to the following verses of Psalm 99 (v5 gives the position we would be smart to take). God does discipline nations as well as the church, and watches over the direction of the world. Christ is the ruler of the kings of the earth, and raises one and puts down another. Governments are the ministers of Christ, and the history of the world serves a gospel purpose. Great transformation of nations are, step by step, ahead of us – but there are, have been, and will be times of transition and upheaval. We are in such a time. Best to walk closely with the Lord, and listen, listen, listen.

Psalms 99:1-2 (NIV 1984)

1 The LORD reigns,

let the nations tremble;

he sits enthroned between the cherubim,

let the earth shake.

2 Great is the LORD in Zion;

he is exalted over all the nations.

Psalms 99:4-5 (ESV)

4 The King in his might loves justice.

You have established equity;

you have executed justice

and righteousness in Jacob.

5 Exalt the LORD our God;

worship at his footstool!

Holy is he!

Now, here are the promises which I feel are pertinent, in the format which I passed on to John Christian:

It would be very important, in your situation, to have your people believing that the Lord wants to provide, bless and prosper His people – even when living in hard times. In fact, the book of Genesis tells us that Isaac planted during a famine, but then received a 100-fold harvest. The world is going through troubled times, but even so, in such times the Lord can and does provide well for His people. We must pray, but in a trusting and believing way.

Consider all the following verses to contain the Word of God for you.  The three main statements of promise I have put in bold:

FIRST PROMISE

“The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands.”

Deuteronomy 28:12 (NIV 1984)

Rain is a symbol, for blessing, providence, an open heaven over our lives, for the giving of both Word and Spirit, and for prosperity. Another symbol is “your land:” for you, this is your church, your city, your nation. A further symbol is “the work of your hands:” For Israel, it was their farming; for all believers, their labour or serving in any matter, their job or their business; but for ministers and churches, the “work of their hands” is, of course, the ministry, the pastorate, and the gospel.

SECOND PROMISE

9 You visit the earth and water it;

you greatly enrich it;

the river of God is full of water;

you provide their grain,

for so you have prepared it.

10 You water its furrows abundantly,

settling its ridges,

softening it with showers,

and blessing its growth.

11 You crown the year with your bounty;

your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.

Psalms 65:9-11 (ESV)

THIRD PROMISE

3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

2 Peter 1:3-4 (ESV)

I

IT MAY LOOK LIKE THE END, BUT IT’S NEW BIRTH – Lana Vawser Ministries

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IT MAY LOOK LIKE THE END, BUT IT’S NEW BIRTH – Lana Vawser Ministries

Recently I heard the Lord speaking over many in the body of Christ and He spoke “It may look like the end, but it’s new birth”


I began to see people all across the body of Christ in a place of feeling like they had “lost themselves” in 2021 because of all the hardship and battles they had endured. They came to the beginning of 2022 and were feeling ‘lost’. Feeling like they were but a shadow of themselves and who they were and beginning to flourish into, in the years before.


The Lord began to show me that their hearts were crying out to Him in deep pain. There was a place of brokenness they were experiencing because of all they had endured, there were so many questions, there was trauma, pain, grief, and a feeling of emptiness. I saw these ones looking back on the past few years and feeling like they were not the same person anymore. Hopelessness, disappointment, pain, trauma had taken root and they were feeling like the very life had been stolen from them, and breath and passion they once carried had waned.


I saw these ones crying out to the Lord feeling like they had reached their end. I could hear their hearts crying out to the Lord in the secret place “Lord, I feel like a part of me has died”, “Lord, I feel like I have died inside”, “Lord, the pain is overwhelming, I am exhausted Lord” – I watched as these ones were on their faces crying out. Dreams had died, passions had died, many left feeling ‘locked down’ and unable to ‘dream again’.


His voice broke in over these ones:
“It may look like the end, but it’s new birth”


Suddenly I was surrounded in the spirit by a very deep sense of transformation. I was surrounded in the spirit by a very deep sense of His reviving fire. I was surrounded by a stronger sense of new life, stronger than I had ever felt before. The Lord began to speak:


“There is deep pain, there has been brokenness, things have died within but these things are NO MATCH for My fire. My revival fire. I am coming swiftly and suddenly upon you now to not only REVIVE you, but to RESUSCITATE you, REBOOT you and RESET you. There have been MANY things that you have endured in this season, there has been great pain, great loss, great trauma, but My power, My love, My fire upon you right now to REVIVE you and bring you forth STRONGER than ever, is greater than anything you have endured. I am faithful. I have been with you. I have carried you. I have caught every tear and the battle you have been through has not been for nothing. SO much is about to make sense as My fire is falling. You are stepping into a great reset and in the reset you will receive and walk in the greatest depth of intimacy, encounter and increase in Me, that you have walked in. There was a deep death that has taken place, but oh the FRUITFULNESS and Glory, My Glory that will rest upon you now in greater ways than you have ever seen. All of the areas where you have felt loss, I am speaking unto you today, that these areas you will see a reviving and a strengthening, a fortifying like you have never seen. This is your new birth. This is where YOU come forth as the YOU I have created you to be, like never before. Carrying new fire. Carrying you boldness. Carrying new and fresh awakening to who I am in you and who you are in Me. Carrying greater revelation of My heart and My ways. The enemy came thick and fast to knock you off and attempt to cause you to lose footing but I say unto you I am SECURING and FORTIFYING your footing in Me and in your FOUNDATIONS in Me like never before. You will be baptised in My fire afresh and come forth in such closeness with Me, unlike anything you’ve experienced. You will come forth carrying My fire and Glory with such weight, the supernatural will manifest in and through your life like you have never seen. Favour is going to increase in unprecedented ways. Overflow will burst forth”
His voice then got louder:


“You thought you had been taken out, you thought you had died within, but I am raising you up stronger than ever. This is a time of ferocious COMEBACK in your life and I am raising you up as one who is CARRYING THE NEW WINE. This may have looked like the end and a death to so much, but this is a time of NEW BIRTH and NEW COMMISSIONING. Watch and see what I am about to do. Consecrate yourself deeper to Me and know that I am about to do WONDERS IN you and THROUGH YOU (Joshua 3:5). You came to your end, now I’ve stepped in, to launch you into your greatest assignment and greatest days in Me. Many have mocked you, many have looked down upon you, there’s been jealousy and words spoken over you by men, but MY WORD and MY favour and vindication is about to explode in your life like you have never seen before and you will see WHY the enemy has been so terrified of you and why the battle has been so intense, because you are NOW being COMMISSIONED into days of greater fullness in walking in your assignment in the earth, seeing My Glory and My name lifted high and the works of the enemy destroyed. Souls, souls and more souls coming into the Kingdom. The power of My name manifesting in such power, to bring the greatest transformation you have ever seen. In your life and through your life. Here is My fire. It’s here! You’re about to burn with passion and first love fire in an unprecedented way. Your ears are receiving My fire right now to hear with a depth and accuracy like never before. Your eyes are receiving My fire right now to see in the Spirit in greater depth to see what I am doing and what I am saying and what is happening in the Spirit like Elisha’s servant. Your hands are receiving My fire now igniting the gift of healing in your life that I have spoken to you about for many years but you have not yet seen. You have only seen the assignment of the enemy over your own body to try to take you out. Receive your healing now! Receive My fire upon your hands now igniting that gift of healing in your life today in Jesus name. It’s time! It’s time! It’s time! This is a new birth for you. New adventures. New territories, new lands, with the greatest of fire and the greatest of fruit.”

Read the full article here

David Mathis: The Most Stubborn Day Of The Year

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David Mathis writes:

The Most Stubborn Day of the Year

Why the World Stops for Christmas

Article by 

David Mathis

 

Executive Editor, desiringGod.org

Closed for Christmas. No birth in history has changed the world like that quiet, unsuspecting night in Bethlehem. Two thousand years later, no day marks as many calendars, determines as many schedules, pauses as many businesses, and draws together as many friends and families.

No prophet’s or great teacher’s origin, no king’s or president’s birth, no other single event in the history of the world transcends tribes and nations, continents and hemispheres, epochs and ages, liberal college campuses and secular places of employment, as the birth of one Jesus of Nazareth. Even the annual calendar at Hogwarts is set in time with Christmas Day.

And this peculiar influence is no accident of history. When we pause to ponder the surprise that this “present evil age,” at least for now, nearly shuts down for Christmas, we see the wink and smile of God. Rightly has no birth story, the world over, been rehearsed even nearly as often as the day that God himself, in the person of his Son, was born among us as one of us, fully God and fully human, to save his people from their sin.

God and Man in One

 

Of course, to mark the birth of “God himself” is far more controversial than just “Jesus of Nazareth.” Historically, the birth of the latter is hard to deny with a level head. Yet, the heart of the Christian faith pulses with “Jesus of Nazareth” as “God himself.”

“On Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth of ‘the God-man’ — man like every other, and God like no other.”

On Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth of “the God-man” — man like every other, and God like no other. A long history of devout and deliberate thought and tense dialogue has taught us to call him, among countless other names, “the God-man.”

Read the full article here

Christmas Joy

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Have you seen the Coles Christmas ad? It is a brilliant insight into what we really want for Christmas – the joy of being together, eating together and above all laughing together.

The last two years of being told to keep apart, separated by 1.5 metres, masks and vaccination status, have given way now to the opportunity to be together, unless you have relatives in WA. Zoom meetings are OK for work, but they don’t work for family hugs.

Even though most Australians celebrate Christmas with great excitement, most of us overlook or don’t know the real origin of the festival. Here is a clue: it is there in the name. Strip away the Santas and the elves, the turkey and the prawns, and the reason we have Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ into the world about 2000 years ago.

In a little stable in Bethlehem, a small village in Israel, a young woman gave birth to a baby. The baby, Jesus, was born with a mission to being people back together with God.

If you think about the things that you do that hurt others or promote what you want without thought to the consequences, we all regularly fall short of how we should live. These acts of selfishness, called “sin” in the Bible, lead to us being cut off from God our creator.

Jesus came to pay the price for our sin, dying to bring us back to God.

The joy that we feel at Christmas family gatherings is a sign, a pointer to the greater joy of God when people come back to Him.

“God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Now there is something to celebrate at Christmas.

On behalf of all the pastors and ministers in the Narrabri Shire, I wish you a very joyful Christmas.

Canberra Declaration: Faith Is Good For Women

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WHAT HARVARD UNIVERSITY KNOWS THAT ‘THE HANDMAID’S TALE’ DOESN’T

Does religion oppress women, or liberate them to live with deep meaning and purpose? A new study undertaken by Harvard University suggests the latter.

Author Margaret Atwood’s novel (and now TV series) The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian story set in the near future, when a kooky religious cult takes over much of the US.

In the story, women are marginalised and relegated to second class citizens, and many become enslaved. These female slaves — ‘Handmaids’ as they’re known — have little bodily autonomy, reduced to breeding machines for their wealthy masters.

And you don’t need to watch many episodes before the underlying narrative of The Handmaid’s Tale hits you in the face: religion oppresses women. [1]  

It’s a narrative that resonates deeply with many secular feminists today. From restricted abortion rights to patriarchy, religious women are considered to be worse off than their more enlightened secular sisters.

As such, many secular feminists have taken to wearing the red and white of Handmaids at pro-choice rallies. As author Rebecca McLaughlin points out: ‘It’s a story told in red and white: Christianity is [seen to be] bad for women’s rights’. [2]

What Harvard Medical School Knows That ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Does Not

And yet, a recent study from Harvard University challenges this narrative. Its conclusion will surprise many secular readers:

‘Compared with women who had never attended religious services, women who attended once or more per week had a five-fold lower risk of suicide.’

(Not quite the narrative from The Handmaid’s Tale.)

And a study like this couldn’t have come at a better time.

Mental Health and Women’s Wellbeing

Mental health across the Western world — including for women — is in crisis. According to Lifeline, around two women die each day in Australia from suicide.[3] Those women are daughters, sisters, mothers, wives. It’s a devastating tragedy on every level, as those touched by a loved one’s suicide can attest.

Many of these women might have been saved if they had received the right support. And according to Harvard University, churchgoing is a very effective form of support.

What the Harvard Study Shows

The study, entitled Association Between Religious Service Attendance and Lower Suicide Rates Among US Women, was run by the Harvard School of Public Health. It was a longitudinal (long term) study of around 90,000 women — so it was comprehensive. According to the study:

‘We… examine[d] the association between service attendance and suicide… adjusting for demographic covariates, lifestyle factors and medical history, depressive symptoms, and social integration measures.’

And their results are mind-blowing:

‘Compared with women who had never attended religious services, women who attended once or more per week had a five-fold lower risk of suicide; results were robust across various exclusions, methods of analysis, and in sensitivity analysis.’

But as the study points out, the results aren’t merely because of the social benefits of regular churchgoing:

 

Read the full article at canberradeclaration.org.au

Creation.com:What’s a billion years between friends?

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by 

Published: 9 December 2021 (GMT+10)
commons.wikimedia.orgstar

The extinction of the dinosaurs is typically said to have been about 65 million years ago (mya),1 but 66 mya has also been suggested.2 During my dinosaur presentations I inform the audience, but I don’t amend my slides. After all, what’s a million years (in this case around 1.5 %)?!

In other public talks, I discuss the big bang timeline, starting ~13.8 billion years ago. This is more than one billion years off from the age of the universe taught in the mid-nineteen nineties, of some 15 billion years (actually 8%).3 But what’s a billion years?!

The Bible’s timeline is unchanging (e.g. 1 Peter 1:25), like its Author; ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8). The word of God reliably teaches a creation around 4,000 BC. Therefore, building your worldview on Scripture is a sure thing—your source does not keep changing. Not so with an evolutionary view, where new discoveries often seem to throw the prevailing (long age) view, for the timing of this or that aspect of history, under the proverbial bus. No need to worry though, for adherents can simply alter some previously believed interpretations in order to keep the narrative alive. Three recent examples of this are given below.

1. How can a star be older than the universe?

A spanner has been thrown in the works for those who believe the universe is 13.8 billion years old. Why? Apparently there are stars over 14 billion years old. You might wonder, “If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, how can a star be more than 14 billion years old?”4

 

Click here to read the rest of this article

The Light Of The World

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I have just undergone my third IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) treatment for dry eye syndrome.

Dry eye syndrome is generally caused by the meibomian glands failing to produce the oil that stops the tears from evaporating. Every time you blink, your tear ducts send a drop of water while the meibomian glands (located at the top and bottom of the eye) send a spray of oil.

The IPL treatment basically consists of a wand sending a single flash of intense light around the outside edges of the eyes, and then 15 minutes inside a mask that emits light that seems to my untrained eyes several times brighter than the sun on a dry day. It is a very relaxing experience.

After that the optometrist presses the glands to see what they are doing. Apparently my eyes produce high quality oil and lots of it.

Four treatments are supposed to give you up to 12 months relief, before a booster is needed.

IPL is also used as a cosmetic treatment for skin that has patchy pigment, unwanted hair removal and wrinkle smoothing. Not only can you see better, you look half the age!

This all reminded me of Jesus’ words “I am the light of the world.” (John 9:5). Light has all kinds of healing properties, as well as bringing clarity and insight. We cannot see in the dark, but when the lights are on, everything is revealed.

Who wouldn’t be attracted to the light? People who love the deeds of darkness more than the light, people who prefer sin rather than righteousness.

The one question that all people will be judged by is this: Do you love Jesus or do you prefer the dark?

Gary Demar: “Why Hasn’t The Lord Come Yet?”

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Gary DeMar answers the question: Why hasn’t the Lord come yet?”

“Why Hasn’t the Lord Come Yet?”

That’s the question being asked on the Christian Post website. Here’s the first paragraph:

Many believers are anxious for Jesus’ return and, in the natural, some feel God is postponing His return despite knowing that the scriptures, such as 2 Peter 3, teach that God is not slow, but is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, said Jeff Kinley and Todd Hampson of the “Prophecy Pros Podcast.” Kinley and Hampson emphasized that Jesus hasn’t yet returned because the Lord is giving “humanity a chance to repent before He returns.”

Why keep history going if it’s all about continued repentance? It seems to me that if this is the argument, why didn’t Jesus return to wrap up everything in the first century? That way, fewer people — by the billions — would never have to repent of anything since they never would have been born.

Like so much of Bible prophecy speculation, many who traverse the topic miss the timing factor built into most prophetic texts.

What is going on in 2 Peter 3? Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, describes what was taking place before their generation passed away (Matt. 24:34). There were scoffers who were ridiculing the prophecy made by Jesus as recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21.

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues as it was from the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:3–4).

Peter and those to whom he wrote were living in the last days, that is, the last days of the old covenant order that began with Adam and ended with the finished work of Jesus on the cross, His resurrection, and ascension. For a generation a warning went out to the Jews to repent. Those who denied that Jesus was the promised Messiah and placed their faith in the stone temple and its planned obsolescence sacrificial system would be caught in the threatened conflagration because they believed God would rescue them from the war machine of the Romans. The rescue came 40 years earlier, and those who believed did not die when the Roman armies march on the city of Jerusalem and dismantled the temple stone-by-stone.

Some believers were impatient and left the faith as James Jordan’s point out in his comments from his commentary on Matthew 23–25 to be published by American Vision:

Indeed, Peter says that these men would “follow their own lusts,” language similar to “eat and drink with drunkards” in Matthew 24:48. As the epistle of Jude, 2 Peter 2, and the later letters of Paul make clear, some of the Christian teachers and disciples also fell away and began to mock and live wantonly.

The temple was still standing. In fact, it was more glorious than ever with the rebuilding process started by King Herod I (the Great) in 19 BC and completed in AD 63, seven years before it was destroyed as Jesus predicted it would be (Matt. 23:38, 24:1–2). Jesus was its ultimate and lasting incarnation (John 2:13–22).

In 1 Peter 4:7, we read: “The end of all things is at hand.” Whatever “things” Peter had in mind, notice their end was “at hand,” that is, near for him and his readers (James 5:8). Jay Adams writes the following:

In six or seven years from the time of writing, the overthrow of Jerusalem, with all its tragic stories, as foretold in the book of Revelation and in the Olivet Discourse upon which that part is based, would take place. Titus and Vespasian would wipe out the old order once and for all. All those forces that led to the persecution and exile of these Christians in Asia Minor—the temple ceremonies (outdated by Christ’s death), Pharisaism (with its distortion of the O.T. law into a system of works-righteousness) and the political stance of Palestinian Jewry toward Rome—would be erased. The Roman armies would wipe Jewish opposition from the face of the land. Those who survived the holocaust of A.D. 70 would themselves be dispersed around the Mediterranean world. “So,” says Peter, “hold on; the end is near.” The full end of the O.T. order (already made defunct by the cross and the empty tomb) was about to occur.[1]

Peter defines the time parameters of the last days after the people witnessed a series of manifestations of the Holy Spirit and their effect on the disciples: “For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day; but this”— the events you saw with your own eyes and heard with your ears—“is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel: ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘That I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh’”[2] (Acts 2:15–17a).

The “last days” were a present reality for the New Testament church made up of Jews who embraced Jesus as the Messiah and believing Gentiles. The gifts of the Spirit were hard evidence that the last days had arrived.

Read the rest of the article here