Discerning the present call of God
Prophets in the Old Testament had a dual role.
Firstly, they call the people back to obedience to the Law of Moses (Gal3v17) and faith in the Old Covenant promises given to Abraham (Gen 12v1-3).
Secondly, they announced the word of God to their generation, or individuals, and this often included divinely revealed knowledge of the future so that they could move the people into a greater revelation of God’s purposes, in particular, pointing towards the time when God would inaugurate a New Covenant era through the sufferings of the Messiah and the pouring out of the Spirit.
prophets continue to call the people back to the gospel
We are now living in that New Covenant era and prophets continue to call the people back to the gospel, back to faith in the promises of God contained in the New Covenant (e.g. Jer 31 v 31-34 /Hebrews 10v16 and Ez 11v19/36v26-27) and to call the people forward into the purposes of God.
This article aims to follow on in this vein.
…and to call the people forward into the purposes of God
In England, the battle to establish true Christianity free from State control and interference is described very well in E.H. Broadbent’s book The Pilgrim Church.
John Wesley and George Whitfield were such prophets, calling the people back to the gospel and forward in the purposes of God, and playing their role, along with many other preachers, in establishing many churches.
It is a gross simplification to look back at John Wesley and George Whitfield as the sole pioneers of a recovery of genuine Christianity in England, but something was stirring as a small group of students began to meet at Oxford University in 1729. Wesley and Whitfield rediscovered that salvation is by grace – a free gift – and through faith in what Christ has done on the cross rather than attempting to produce a Christlike life through good works and religious observance.
Preaching salvation by faith, and the need to be born again, caused an uproar and many churches closed their doors to Wesley and Whitfield and others preaching the same message…hence the thousands that came to hear them preach in the open air.
As their numbers grew, ‘evangelical Christianity’ found greater degrees of toleration in England through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many well-known denominations are now either completely ‘evangelical’ in their theology or have significant proportions of their members who sail under that banner: Methodists, Baptists, Brethren, Pentecostals, and many Presbyterian churches to name a few.
Prophets such as Wesley, Whitfield, Seymour, and the pioneers of the Charismatic Renewal churches in our day fulfilled their mission to call the people back to the New Covenant and call the people forward in the purposes of God.
Then, in 1906, William J Seymour, a one-eyed black preacher in Los Angeles started preaching that, subsequent to receiving the gift of salvation, there is a baptism in the Spirit and that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are part and parcel of the New Covenant and should be operating in the church today. Meetings in Azusa Street became almost a re-run of Acts 2 at Pentecost. As a result, Seymour and others were regularly banned from preaching in many evangelical churches and were forced to form their own denomination – called the Pentecostal church. From that starting point, the movement of the Holy Spirit began to spawn revivals such as the Welsh revival of 1904 and affect historic denominations through Fountain Trust Meetings in England in the 1960s.
As a result, what became known as ‘Charismatic Renewal’ was born with thousands of believers in hundreds of denominational churches experiencing the baptism of the Spirit and receiving gifts of the Spirit such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing, and words of knowledge. As a result, when those preaching the message of Charismatic Renewal were rejected, as many were, new churches were formed such as New Frontiers, Salt and Light, Kingdom Faith, Vineyard and so on. Some churches in the more historic denominations also welcomed the renewal and restoration of the gifts of the Spirit.
The above two major rediscoveries had always been contained in the New Covenant as prophesied by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel and embodied in Jesus. It was Jesus who preached that we must be born again by the Spirit of God and commanded the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Prophets such as Wesley, Whitfield, Seymour, and the pioneers of the Charismatic Renewal churches in our day fulfilled their mission to call the people back to the New Covenant and call the people forward in the purposes of God.
What about now? Where are we?
The following three short articles will look at:
1. The three feasts of Israel – Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles
2. Who died on the cross?
3. Rachel dying in childbirth
Firstly, Tabernacles.
Jews celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles by gathering under ‘booths’ to break bread and drink wine, to remember their journey through the wilderness living in tents (tabernacles). These days it will often be small family groups that meet under a roof made from the overlapping branches of four types of palm trees. There are gaps between the branches to let the light in…open to the heavens. The feast is prophetic – pointing to the New Testament era i.e. not only for the ‘sojourning’ aspect of our time here on Earth before Resurrection and glory – but of the reality of the New Covenant in the present age. There is a ‘here and now’ dimension that has not previously been seen or taught as integral to the new covenant in the same way that Passover and Pentecost have been rediscovered.
As with Passover and Pentecost, the first fulfilment of Tabernacles is located in Jesus. He was the Lamb of God (Passover) and the Spirit was upon Him (Pentecost). But in John’s gospel we read ‘the Word became flesh and tabernacled (Tabernacles)among us and we beheld His glory’ John 1 v 14.
The church, in Christ, is therefore to be an expression of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.
When the church gathers, the body of Christ, we teach that Christ as the Passover Lamb has dealt with our sins and set us free, and that Jesus will baptise us with the Spirit as at Pentecost, and the Spirit manifests His presence in gifts and ministries, but we also gather together under a roof that lets the light and the glory in; Tabernacles is fulfilled in the church. Denominational barriers boundaries and cannot stand in the glory and the light as the body of Christ comes together and lives and moves in His light and glory, just as Jesus lived.
Secondly, moving on from Romans 1-5 churches
Romans 1-5 is a wonderful series of logical arguments that describe the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross, i.e. Christ died in my place, He died for me, taking the punishment I deserved and so securing salvation by grace not by my works, through faith. Once I ‘see’ or believe that Christ took my sins on the cross, I can believe in God’s love for me and His forgiveness, reconciliation, justification, salvation that is all offered to all as a free gift to be received. We ‘repent’ of trying to live the Christian life under our own government and we receive the gifts of salvation, righteousness and eternal life and are restored to a relationship with God our Heavenly Father. This is, of course, wonderful ‘good news’ (the meaning of the word ‘gospel’) and many lives have been transformed simply by that revelation and encounter.
Romans 5 starts with ‘Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’ and ends with ‘so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’. There is only one reference to the Holy Spirit, He is introduced more fully in Romans 8.
And so, evangelical churches preach Romans 1-5 with faith and charismatic churches go further and incorporate the teaching in Romans 8 and elsewhere on the present ministry of the Holy Spirit as a consequence of receiving the baptism in the Spirit.
But in Romans 6 Paul poses a question to which many evangelical and charismatic believers would have to answer with a ‘No’.
‘Do you not know that as many of us as were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death…knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him…now if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him’
Similarly in Galatians 2 v 20
‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me; the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me’
Or Colossians 3 v 3
‘For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God…’
The clear teaching of the New Testament is that the death of Christ was not only substitutionary but inclusive…it included you and me.
Lastly, let us consider Rachel.
‘When they were very close to Ephrath, Rachel laboured in childbirth, and she had hard labour…the midwife told her ‘Do not be afraid; you will have this son’ and so it was that as her soul was departing (for she died) that she called his name Ben-Oni, but his father called him Benjamin’
Ben-oni means ‘son of my sorrow’ whereas Benjamin means ‘son of my right hand’.
Isaiah prophesied that the coming Messiah would be a ‘Man of sorrows acquainted with grief’ Is 53 v 3 but now ‘is exalted at the right hand of God’ Acts 2v33. These twin attributes of Benjamin, Christ-like suffering and glory, serve as a prophetic sign and description of Christ and therefore of His body, the church. But for Benjamin to be born into the world Rachel – who had previously cried out to Jacob, ‘Give me children or I die’ (Gen 30v1) - had to die in childbirth. As much as Benjamin can be thought of as a prophetic image of the church to come, the preceding Rachel generation has to die. It is her calling. Rachel suffered a physical death so that physical Benjamin could be born, for the ‘Benjamin-church’ to emerge we must be willing to ‘die to’ our present pattern when it is time to move on:
Jesus said ‘Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it produces much grain’ John 12 v 24
For Abram to become the father of many nations, for his descendants to become as the sand on the seashore or as the stars in the sky he had, first of all, to leave his father’s house. The call of God upon us is the same. Not to settle. We should be thankful and honouring to all those that pioneered before, nevertheless, we must press on from Passover and Pentecost to Tabernacles, where the ‘Word became flesh and tabernacled among us and we beheld His glory’, as in Christ, now in the church-in-union-with-Christ.
Our Rachel-like call is summed up in St Paul’s words to the Galatians: ‘My little children, for whom I labour in childbirth again until Christ is formed in you’.
Specific answers to questions on matters like church government are not within the scope of this article, except to say that just as our heads coordinate everything our bodies do, Jesus as the head of the body of Christ, isn’t disconnected from His body, but coordinates everything His body does. The Spirit of God is in labour in us bringing to birth what may be called a Benjamin-generation-church, one that knows sorrow and glory in a different way than Pentecostal and Charismatic churches have known, or their predecessors in Evangelical churches.
These churches will preach Passover - the forgiveness of sins and deliverance from slavery of sin - and Pentecost - the baptism and power of the Spirit. And Tabernacles. They will know what it is to meet and function in the light and glory of God fellowshipping in Christ’s sufferings and His glory. The leaders and those born again under their ministry will know that when Christ died, they died, they were crucified with Christ and are now raised in Him as new creations. ‘Christ is your life’ is a fact not the statement of a particularly enthusiastic Christian but the New Testament norm.
Prophets call the people back to covenant promises and obedience to the word when they stray. They also carry the present and future work of God stirring in their hearts, like a pregnant woman carrying a baby yet to be born.
In this article, I have tried to follow suit. I hear that call to press on to Tabernacles. To call the church back to her pioneering Abrahamic faith; to leave our father’s house and be led by God to a place He will show us. And to be willing to die in childbirth, like Rachel, to suffer in childbirth like the apostle Paul, or to go into the ground like the seed, in order for a Passover-Pentecostal-Tabernacles church to be born in which the twin attributes of Ben-omi and Benjamin, suffering and glory, are evident.