A Tribute by the Revd Dr Clifford Hill

Lance Lambert has had an outstanding ministry of huge significance for relationships between Jews and Christians. His father was a member of an aristocratic family in Italy but as a Jew, he feared for his family when Mussolini joined forces with Hitler. He sent his wife and two children to England, where she changed her name in case Hitler won the war and persecution reached these shores. As a Messianic believer, Lance was in a unique position in Jerusalem where he was accepted as a wise counsellor by many in leadership in Israel. He kept a kosher household so that his orthodox friends would always feel comfortable in his home.

Lance Lambert has had an outstanding ministry of huge significance for relationships between Jews and Christians."

I've known Lance since the days of his ministry at Halford House in the Richmond area of London back in the 1970s in the early days of the Charismatic Movement, when he was already an established leader. His ministry at Halford House was always biblical and even in those days showed his interest in the Hebraic roots of the Christian faith - which was long before he made Aliyah to Israel. He also had a considerable interest in the prophetic ministry which grew out of his love for the prophets of ancient Israel and their role in the history of the nation.

Journey to Faith

After he settled in Jerusalem, my wife and I often spent time with him in his home on our visits to Israel. He talked about his family and how his father was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. They never heard from him again. His mother rarely spoke about their Jewish family background. Then one day, there was a tent mission near their home and Lance's sister went with some friends and responded to the call for salvation. She came home full of it and Lance's mother reacted strongly, forbidding her to go again. Lance was so intrigued by his mother's reaction that he went to the mission the following day and he also responded to the gospel which was the beginning of his Christian life. It was only after this that he learned about his Jewish past and it wasn't really until he was pastoring the church in Richmond that he began to take it a particular interest in his family history.

Lance's ministry was always biblical, and even in its early days showed his interest in the Hebraic roots of the Christian faith."

His home in West Jerusalem (near the Windmill) was full of antiques and I remember over the stairs there was a wall hanging that he said was of great historical interest and was of the same era as the Turin Shroud. Having a conversation with Lance in his home was usually in competition with two very noisy parrots but it was always worthwhile to listen to his scholarship and to benefit from his great knowledge of Israel and the contemporary Middle East.

A Word about Syria

He lived in the area where most of the ruling class of Israeli politicians and businessmen lived, so he knew most members of the Cabinet and he was always well-informed on contemporary issues. On one occasion my wife and I were enjoying a Shabbat meal at his table and I told him that I'd had a strong word of warning which I believed to be from the Lord that there was an imminent attack coming from Syria within a few days. It was Friday 13 April 1984, which was just prior to Passover. It was not long after the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut and most Western forces were being withdrawn from Lebanon, leaving Syria the dominant force in the Middle East.

Lance thought it highly unlikely, as there was no special alert and Israeli military intelligence was usually very efficient. We returned to England the following day and we listened to every news bulletin over the next day or two but there was no incident, so we concluded that I must have been mistaken in the word that I thought I had heard. But a month later Lance came to London and telephoned asking me to meet him. He sounded excited and I arranged to go to Richmond the next day. This is the remarkable story he told me.

Early on the Saturday morning, Lance called to see one of his neighbours who was the Minister of Defence in the Government, who dismissed the suggestion of an impending attack from Syria but promised to check with the military. Two hours later he came to Lance's house and began asking numerous questions about me; who I worked for and questions about my background. The Minister was convinced that I must have high-level contacts in Syria as satellite information revealed the massing of military forces in southern Syria moving towards the Golan Heights with an imminent invasion possible. Within hours Israel was on full military alert so Lance began calling Messianic leaders inviting them to meet in his home on Sunday afternoon. They concluded that if God had revealed this to them they should do something about it.

Saved in the Storm

They began a time of fervent intercession for the protection of Israel. By 6 o'clock that Sunday evening a storm swept across the land and struck Jerusalem with hurricane-force winds and torrential rain. Storms in Israel at that time of year are very unusual and this was a storm of great intensity. Lance said the noise was so great that they had to shout to hear each other praying and he expected a tree in the yard to come crashing through the window at any moment. The storm continued right through Monday 16 April and through to Tuesday 17, covering the whole of Israel, southern Lebanon, southern Syria and parts of Jordan.

On Wednesday 18 Lance met the Minister, who quietly said "Lance, the storm saved us". He reported that intelligence indicated that there was to have been a missile attack followed by a full-scale assault by tanks and troops, but the ground was so soft that heavy armoured vehicles would not have been able to make progress. Once the surprise element was lost the planned assault had been cancelled. He also told Lance that Israeli intelligence had been checking his friend in London but that so far they had been unable to identify my source of information! Lance thought that was hugely funny and he said that he hoped they would soon find out.

Lance was wise, generous and loving. He will be greatly missed for the hugely influential ministry that he exercised."

This incident firmly established my friendship with Lance. I learned a lot from him: he was wise, generous and loving and he will be greatly missed for the hugely influential ministry that he exercised. After that incident in 1984, Lance gladly agreed to be one of the leaders of the prophetic gatherings at Mt Carmel and in Jerusalem, some two years later in 1986. He played an important part in both these meetings. At Carmel he received an important prophecy which is still quoted today (click here for a full transcript). It spoke of the shaking of the nations which he believed began with the First World War and was about to escalate in line with the prophecy of Haggai 2 and Hebrews 12 and the warnings that Jesus gave concerning the end times.

As a Messianic Jew, Lance was in a unique position as a bridge between Christians and Jews in Israel. He was a man with a mission, raised by God at a special time in history. He was surely a forerunner of what St Paul in Ephesians describes as "the one new man" – fully accepted by both Jew and Gentile – a very precious brother.

Long may his influence continue!

Helen Belton looks at the history and significance of Pentecost, or Shavuot, the biblical 'Feast of Weeks'.

Shavuot in the Hebrew Bible

Easter and Passover coincided this year and so this Sunday (24 May) begins the Jewish festival of Shavuot, known to Christians as Pentecost, referring to the fiftieth day after Passover.

There were three feasts at which the Lord required the men of Israel to go up to Jerusalem to present themselves before him, known as the pilgrim feasts: Passover (Pesach in Hebrew transliteration), Pentecost (Shavuot meaning 'Weeks' in Hebrew) and Tabernacles (or 'Booths', Succot in Hebrew) (Ex 23:14-16). Jesus, the disciples and the early Church celebrated these feasts.

Shavuot or the 'Feast of Weeks' is so called because of its connection in time to Passover. The Israelites were instructed as follows in Deuteronomy 16:9-10:

You shall count seven weeks for yourself; you shall begin to count seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. Then celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you. And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name.

So, from Passover you count off seven weeks (or 49 days) until the fiftieth day, Pentecost (from the Greek for 'fiftieth'). The counting period between the two feasts is known as the counting of the Omer. 'Omer' is Hebrew for 'sheaf': agriculturally, Pentecost marks the end of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest. So, you are counting the sheaf to see when it is ripe for harvest.

The Anglican Church has kept the relationship between the two festivals: the Easter season continues for 50 days until Pentecost. At Easter we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus and at Pentecost we celebrate the giving of his Spirit. Many Christians are not aware that Pentecost was an ancient festival long before its mention in Acts. Acts 1:5 says that there were "staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven". What were they doing there? Celebrating Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks.

Shavuot in the time of Jesus

Like all the pilgrim feasts, Shavuot was a harvest festival. At the Temple in Jerusalem, the first fruits of the harvest, known as the Seven Species, were offered. These are: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates, listed in Deuteronomy 8:8 as the fruits in which the land of Israel was rich.

Farmers would tie a reed around the first ripening fruits from each of these species in their fields. At the time of harvest, the fruits identified by the reed would be cut and placed in baskets woven of gold and silver.

The baskets would then be loaded on oxen whose horns were gilded and laced with garlands of flowers, to be led in a grand procession to Jerusalem. As they travelled, the people sang praises to God and rejoiced in his goodness. Priests would meet the pilgrims on the edge of the city and lead them up to the Temple Mount with music, psalms of praise and dance.

At the Temple, the priest would take the sheaves, the firstfruits of the harvest, and wave some in every direction. By doing so, the whole crowd would be acknowledging God's faithful provision and sovereignty over all the earth.

The priests also waved two loaves baked with yeast before the Lord, as prescribed in Leviticus 23:17-21. This was unusual because normally yeast was not to be present in a sacrifice to the Lord, since yeast represents sin in scripture.

How Shavuot is celebrated today

Today the celebration of Shavuot has changed drastically. With no Temple, there can be no waving of the Omer, offering of neither the first fruits nor the waving of the two loaves.

People decorate their homes and synagogues with flowers and greenery because this was originally a harvest festival. The Torah or Law is celebrated because Shavuot was the time of the giving of the Law through Moses at Mount Sinai. Because of this key historical significance of Shavuot, it is also traditional for Jewish men to stay up all night studying the Torah and for Jewish children, age five, to begin their first formal studies of the Torah.

The book of Ruth is read because the story occurred around the time of the harvest and also because Ruth is seen as a great example of someone who voluntarily took upon herself the yoke of the Law. Shavuot is also the anniversary of the death of King David, who was the great-grandson of Ruth and Boaz.

Viewed through New Testament eyes, we can see that Ruth's story also shows the determination of a Gentile to seek God and to be attached to his people. Boaz typifies the loving-kindness of our Redeemer, his compassion and admiration for Ruth's faith and commitment to his people causing him to accept his role as kinsman-redeemer and enter into covenant relationship with her in marriage. In the same way the Lord entered into covenant with Israel, like a marriage covenant, with the Ten Commandments (known as 'the 10 Words' in Hebrew) as the wedding certificate (Heb. ketubah).

The book of Ruth is often read at Shavuot. Through New Testament eyes, Ruth shows the determination of a Gentile to seek God and to be attached to his people."

Traditionally, foods made from milk products are eaten at Shavuot such as cheesecake, blintzes (cheese crepes), kreplach (triangle dumplings), and holiday loaves representing the two loaves waved and eaten in the Temple. It is thought dairy products are eaten because the Promised Land was a land of "milk and honey", and as Song of Songs 4:11 says: "Like honey and milk [the Torah, by interpretation] lies under your tongue."

There is also a theory that because the Jews only received the Torah at Mount Sinai (the reason Shavuot is celebrated), they didn't have the laws of how to slaughter and prepare meat prior to this. When they received the Torah and the commandments about ritual slaughter and the separation law of "do not cook a kid in its mother's milk" (Ex 34:26) leading to the complete separation of meat and milk products in traditional Jewish cuisine, they didn't have time to prepare meat dishes, so they ate dairy instead.¹

In the morning service in synagogues on Pentecost, Exodus 19 and 20 are read (the giving of the 10 Commandments). The congregation stands because you are to hear the word of the Lord in awe, as though standing at the base of Mount Sinai and personally receiving these words from God. Ezekiel 1 and 2 are also read, which describe visions of God surrounded by wind and cloud, flashes of lightning and brilliant light, just as in Exodus 19:6 it says there was "thunder and lightning with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast."

Shavuot and the land of Israel

Five days after the Six Day War ended in 1967, over 200,000 Jews flocked to Jerusalem. One eyewitness said:

It was biblical, like a pilgrimage. On that Shavuot, people felt that Mashiach [Messiah] was in the air. I've never known such an electric atmosphere before or since. Wherever, we were stopped, we began to dance. Holding aloft Torah scrolls we swayed and danced and sang at the tops of our voices. So many of the Psalms and songs are about Jerusalem and Zion and the words reached into us a new life. As the sky lightened, we reached the Zion gate. Still singing and dancing, we poured into the narrow alleyways beyond.²

With the reunification of the city of Jerusalem in 1967, a custom to 're-enact' the festival pilgrimage began. Every year, hundreds of people stream on foot from throughout Jerusalem to arrive at the Kotel (Western Wall) early Shavuot morning in order to pray at a sunrise service.³

Every year in Jerusalem since the end of the Six Day War in 1967, hundreds of people re-enact the festival pilgrimage."

Since then, more Jewish people have become believers in Jesus as Messiah than at any previous time in history. Before 1967, there were no Messianic congregations in Israel and now there are over 150.⁴

The link between Passover and Shavuot/Pentecost: redemption and revelation

Passover and Shavuot were connected because of the two harvests and the counting of the Omer- the 50 days. But they are also connected in a deeper way.

God brought redemption at the first Passover: in the exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people were freed from being slaves to Pharaoh. Then, 50 days later at Shavuot, they accepted the Torah (God's Law given through Moses) and became a nation bound to the Lord. If they were fully obedient and kept this covenant "then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex 19:5-6).

The Torah kept God's people even if they did not keep the Torah in all its fullness. So a new covenant was needed for them and to bring in the nations of the world. Messiah Jesus came and died at Passover (the Messiah is our Passover Lamb, says Paul, in 1 Cor 5:7). 50 days later, at Shavuot or Pentecost, he sent his Spirit to create a renewed holy nation, "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light" (1 Pet 2:9).

However, redemption is not the end of the story. God redeems for a purpose: in order to reveal. Shavuot is about revelation: first of the word (the Torah) and then of the Spirit. Exactly 50 days after the first Passover, God gave the Torah to Israel and so Israel was born as a nation, as a called-out, chosen people, priests to the world.

Shavuot is not just about redemption, it's about revelation: revelation of the word and of the Spirit."

About 1500 years later, at that same festival of Shavuot in Jerusalem, 50 days after Jesus gave his life at Passover, God poured out his Spirit to seal the covenant with his renewed bride, the body of believers in Messiah (which was 100% Jewish at that point).

In Acts 1 we read that the disciples were together in one place, an upper room. We assume that the disciples were still in the upper room when the Holy Spirit came (Acts 2:1) but they would have been at the Temple, because that is where Pentecost was celebrated. "All together in one place" suggests somewhere large enough to accommodate all the disciples, not just the 12.

Also, Acts 2:41 says that 3,000 were added to the believers that day, so it would have had to be an enormous upper room! Peter addressed the crowd of pilgrims who had come for the Feast at the place it was celebrated, their national and spiritual centre, the Temple in Jerusalem. Those 3,000 were immediately baptised and the only place where that was possible was at the Temple.

The Lord promised in Haggai 2:9 regarding the Second Temple that:

'The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,' says the LORD Almighty. 'And in this place I will grant peace,' declares the LORD Almighty.

This promise was fulfilled as the Prince of Peace stood in the Temple at the Feast of Tabernacles and declared that those who would turn to him would experience streams of living water flowing through them (John 7).⁵ Jesus was speaking of his Spirit, and on the fiftieth day after his death at Passover- at Pentecost -his Spirit was poured out like water over his disciples in the presence of all Israel gathered for the feast of Shavuot,coming to rest on each as tongues of fire. The onlookers were invited to join with the disciples, and those who did became the Body of believers in Messiah: the early Church.

From death to life: repentance and faith

Just as the Spirit of Messiah revived and cleansed their spirits, so their bodies were washed as a sign by baptism or, as it is known in Jewish tradition, the mikveh or ritual bath. At the Second Temple site, archaeologists have uncovered many ritual baths (pl. mikvot). These mikvot were used for ceremonial cleansing before entering the Temple, but also for immersion as a sign of repentance.

At Sinai, 3,000 died because they turned from the Lord to idolatry with the golden calf (Ex 32:28). In Jerusalem, 3,000 were brought to spiritual life as they returned to the Lord in repentance and faith in the Messiah (Acts 2:41).

At Sinai, 3,000 died because they turned away from the Lord. In Jerusalem, 3,000 were brought to spiritual life as they turned back to God in repentance and faith in Jesus as Messiah"

Mount Sinai was covered in smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire (Ex 19:18) and 70 elders of Israel saw the Lord and prophesied, but at Mount Zion in Jerusalem the Holy Spirit descended like tongues of fire on all the believers and they all prophesied – men, women, young and old as Joel 2:28 foretold: "I will pour out my Spirit on all people". The miracle of Pentecost was not just the ability to speak another language supernaturally, but that all the believers prophesied.

Even more significant is the wider fulfilment of prophecy to Israel. At Pentecost the Lord demonstrated that he had not finished with Israel. He proved his covenant faithfulness by making his new Jeremiah 31 covenant with the people he had restored from exile:

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls (Joel 2:32).

We think that Pentecost is about the birth of the Church, but it is about the rebirth of Israel.

At the time of the first Pentecost, the only believers in Jesus were Jews. In due course, foreigners would join with Israel: not all Israel believed and so "branches were broken off" from the olive tree of faith so that wild, pagan branches from among the nations (or Gentiles) could be grafted in (Rom 11:17-19).

The aim of giving the Torah and giving the Spirit was the same: to enable a holy God to indwell a sinful, but chosen people.

The aim of giving the Torah and giving the Spirit was the same: to enable a holy God to indwell a sinful, but chosen people."

God with us - and in us

"Let the people build me a sanctuary", the Lord said to Moses in Exodus 25:8, but he does not say 'so that I may dwell in it', but 'so that I may dwell in them'.

We may think that we search for God, but God is searching for us in order to indwell us.

At Mount Zion, the new covenant of Jeremiah 31 was fulfilled. Previously, God's law was written on tablets of stone, but now it is written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit. At Sinai the covenant of circumcision was given, a mark in the flesh as a sign of covenant. At Mount Zion, the sign of the covenant was "circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Rom 2:29).

After Pentecost, even Gentiles, we who were far off, were brought in to God's kingdom: as Peter said:

God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. (Acts 15:8-9)

So even the Gentiles could become temples of the Spirit of the living God (1 Cor 6:19). We are "living stones", a collective temple of God's Spirit, as Peter puts it, who "are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood" (1 Pet 2:9).

Christians often talk about 'going up' to heaven, but the story of the Bible is about God coming down"

Christians often talk about going up to heaven when we die. But the story of the Bible is about God coming down: in creation, at Sinai, in Jesus, at Pentecost and eventually in the new heaven, the new earth and the new Jerusalem, when God will live with us (Rev 21:3).

Israel reborn

So, at Pentecost Israel was reborn: a renewed called-out people (Heb. kahal, Gk. Ekklesia, Eng. church). It was an all-Jewish body of believers at this stage. Those Jewish believers visiting from the nations, from the Jewish diaspora, became the first emissaries of the gospel, fulfilling prophecy: the word of the Lord did indeed go forth from Mount Zion and from Jerusalem, as Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 prophesied.

'Diaspora' is a Greek word that literally means "through scattered". Those same seeds that had been harvested for the Lord at Pentecost were re-scattered among the nations as they returned to their homes, forming part of a new spiritual diaspora. Exiles from the future kingdom of God, their true home, they were seeds scattered through the nations to bring the gospel to the known world.

Peter wrote to these Jewish believers as follows: "To God's elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces" (1 Pet 1). They were seeds fallen to the ground, with some dying for the gospel, and Peter wrote to encourage them as they were undergoing Roman persecution for their faith.

The harvest extended to the Gentiles so that, as Ephesians 2 says, non-Jews are no longer foreigners and aliens but fellow citizens with God's people, joined to the commonwealth of Israel. The loaves made with yeast that the priest waved on the day of Pentecost symbolise the harvest of sinful man from among both the Jews and the Gentiles.

Jesus became the firstfruits from among the dead (1 Cor 15:20) when he rose from the dead at Passover, fulfilling a part of that festival called the 'Feast of First Fruits'. At Pentecost he is joined by Jewish and Gentile believers, symbolised by the two loaves. So, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, both Jew and Gentile, is united as "one new man" as Ephesians 2:15 says.

A Ruth Church

Like Ruth, whose story is read at Shavuot, the Gentile woman who followed her Jewish mother-in-law Naomi back to the Promised Land and through kindness and obedience followed a greater destiny than she could have imagined, Gentile believers in Jesus also say, "Your God will be my God."

Where are the Ruths in the Gentile church who will make Israel "envious" (Rom 11:11) through kindness and attractive obedience to God's word? They are still few in number. We must reject the stay-at-a-distance criticism and hostility which has been typical of the Church's dealings with the Jewish people historically and is often still the case today, although now it is directed at re-gathered Israel, the nation.

Will we become the Ruth Church that we were destined to be, loving and supporting Naomi, our frailer, older relative, Israel?"

Will we become the Ruth Church that we were destined to be, loving and supporting Naomi, our frailer, older relative, Israel? Will we draw near to the Lord and to his people, as the Lord desired at Sinai and at Jerusalem in the giving of his Law and Spirit, so he can indwell us and unite us as "one new humanity" of Jew and Gentile (Eph 2:15)? Or will we stay at a distance (Ex 15:21) as Israel did at Sinai, so that only Moses heard the voice of the Lord?

Acknowledgement: with thanks to the late Dr Dwight A. Pryor of the Center for Judaic-Christian Studies (teaching available via www.jcstudies.com and www.cfi.org.uk) for his insights on this subject.

References

1 Gordon-Bennett, C. Why do Jews eat dairy on Shavuot?

2 Voices of Jerusalem-Crowd of Tears, Hadassah Magazine 77, No.9, May 1996: 23.

3 Domnitch, L, 2000. The Jewish Holidays: A Journey Through History. Jason Aronson.

4 Directory of Messianic Organizations in Israel.

5 This resonates with the water libation ceremony that took place at the Feast of Tabernacles, which also connects to Shavuot- but that is a subject for a further study.

'Simply Good News: Why the Gospel is News and What Makes it Good', by NT Wright (SPCK, 2015, 144 pages, available from SPCK for £9.99)

This is an excellent title for an excellent book. Tom Wright's lucid explanation of the Good News of the gospel of Jesus Christ is well worth reading. Although there are depths of research and background behind the chapters, and quotations from eminent writers of the past, it is his own personal stories and memories as well as the illustrations he gives which enliven the writing.

The author explains why the gospel is 'news' and what makes it good. As such it should have an impact that will significantly change lives. Here is "something that has happened, because of which everything will now be different." (p3). He argues against the way that in some churches the gospel has become merely advice on how to be saved and go to heaven. In reality the Gospel is part of a longer story and larger context. It did not simply appear out of the blue. And only by knowing this back story can we understand why this announcement is very much good news.

The Gospel is not simply a ticket to heaven- it's part of a much longer, larger story. This story teaches us why it is very much Good News!"

The book takes us through the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul and the way that, as he preached the Good News to them, people believed and "power and wisdom" became real for them; Jesus became alive and present with them. As he worked through the scriptures he demonstrated how they all pointed to "King Jesus", and his power was different – it was love. There are excellent chapters on the death and resurrection of Jesus with clear explanations for anyone with unanswered questions.

Some chapters deal with the attitudes of well-known teachers, scientists, writers and leaders over the last few centuries and the effect they have had on people because of the new ideas they have put forward. Despite all of this, the real and lasting truth remains because "He is the God of the Good News".

There are powerful and thought-provoking chapters on heaven and the new earth, the love and justice of God (and what he's really like), plus a very encouraging last chapter with helpful hints on "Praying the Good News".

This is a book to be recommended for understanding, learning and growing in the Christian faith."

Clifford Hill reflects on the General Election result and the power of the prayers of the elect...

Christians of all traditions united to pray for the nation in the run-up to the General Election. There was great fear that the country was going to be plunged into chaos. The polls all predicted no clear winner; so it looked as though there was going to be some kind of coalition, or government by a minority-administration securing its legislation on a vote by vote basis: doing deals with minority groups in the Commons and living with daily uncertainty.

Chaos Expected

That daily uncertainty would have affected the whole nation, especially in the economy. Foreign investors would have had no confidence in Britain's ability to meet its normal business agreements and no doubt the pound would have suffered on the currency market. There would have been great instability on the Stock Exchange which would have had a strongly negative effect upon the nation's economy. There was additional fear of a Labour/SNP partnership in government with unknown consequences that might have torn the Union apart.

Urgent Prayer

Prayer meetings were held in churches, halls, and home-groups right across the land as Christians responded to the sense of urgency concerning the state of the nation. There was widespread recognition that the nation thoroughly deserved the judgement of God and that the kind of chaos which was envisaged was justified.

Christians around the nation responded with repentance and prayer, knowing that God holds the church responsible for the spiritual state of the nation."

Christians also recognised that the disunity and weak witness of the church was largely responsible for the moral and spiritual state of the nation. So there was a lot of repentance among the prayers. Christians know that God holds the church responsible for the spiritual health of the nation and the lack of unity undermines the presentation of a clear message.

Destroying Foundations

There is a verse in Psalm 11 which says "When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" But the Hebrew literally says, "What have the righteous done?" This significantly alters the meaning of the question and it indicates the way God holds those who know his word responsible for the state of the nation. When secular/humanist forces are destroying the foundations of the nation, God says to those who know him and are listening to him, "What have you done whilst all this destruction has been going on?"

Whilst the nation's foundations are being destroyed, God says to those who know him: 'what have you done whilst all this has been going on?'"

We have to ask ourselves what we in the church were doing when our Parliament made major decisions that affected the life of the nation. Was there a strong and powerful voice representing the word of God when the decision was made to invade Iraq, or to bomb Libya, or to 'redefine marriage' which weakened family life, part of the nation's very foundation?

Each of these decisions has had enormous consequences, both for Britain and on the world scene. Our invasion of Iraq has had tragic consequences that have led to the formation of the Islamic State and the slaughter of thousands of Christians, Yehadis and Sunni Muslims. The bombing of Libya has left that nation without a stable government, which has led to thousands of migrants from around Africa and the Middle East dying in attempts to reach Europe from the shores of Libya, where people traffickers operate with unregulated freedom.

Prayers Answered

The foundations of our nation and many others have been shaken by the decisions of politicians throughout the past century of human conflict and bloodshed. But the prayers of a multitude of Christians across the land for a stable Government have certainly been answered. The question now is; what will a Conservative Government do with the five years entrusted to them and will the Scots be content with the strong voice in Westminster they have achieved? These are big questions upon which the future of the nation depends.

What of the Future?

Will the new Government not only care about the economy – steering the nation towards greater prosperity – but also care for the poor and the powerless? Will their tax reforms favour the rich: and will they use their Parliamentary majority to bring in boundary reforms that ensure their own powerbase in future elections, ignoring the gross injustice of a voting system that left nearly four million UKIP voters with only one Member of Parliament?

The prayers of a multitude of Christians across the land for a stable government have been answered. But now more than ever, prayer – and bold declaration of the truth – needs to continue!"

Christians who prayed for God's mercy upon the nation should not only continue praying for the Government but should be making their voice (and the word of God) heard in the places of political power in the land.

Clifford Denton completes his study of the relationship between law and grace.

Recap: Law and Grace Part 1

In this series we are tracing what some have called "the parting of the ways between the Church and the Synagogue". Our concern is with the identity and origin of the Christian Church, because there are serious consequences of its separation from the roots of our faith- for both Christians and Jews.

One consequence is the way in which we read our Bibles. Separation from our roots brings a conceptual break in the continuity of the Scriptures. We have paused in our historical survey in order to illustrate this important point. In the first part of this study we explored what the word law might mean, as found in the New Testament. We differentiated between the Torah (teaching of God), and its interpretation into Halakhah. We reasoned that there is a difference between interpretations that bring legal bondage to those which encourage a walk with God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

We must not allow ourselves to be robbed of the freedom that is given for living out a biblical lifestyle under the grace and leading of the Holy Spirit. However, it is not the Torah that is at fault – it is the way Torah is interpreted."

Rebuilding relationship between Jews and Christians

Reconciliation with the Jewish community is something of great importance in our day and should be a consequence of the Christian Church being properly rooted in all aspects of life and faith. Those who value the Torah are not necessarily walking a wrong path and need not necessarily be bound up in legalism. To be free to explore afresh our common heritage should build bridges of reconciliation, since to not care for the Torah has been a symptom of not caring about our relationship with the Jews.

Dr Marvin Wilson has spent many years in the pursuit of reconciling Christians and Jews. In his book Our Father Abraham, Dr Wilson poses some strong questions about accusations of Judaising levelled at Christians, who are exploring the roots of their faith with freedom whilst remaining sure of their salvation:

To those in the modern Church concerned about the dangers of Judaising after nineteen hundred years of de-Judaising, we would pose these questions: Is it Judaising to seek to reconstruct certain aspects of the first-century Jewish context of the New Testament and early Church? Is it Judaising to investigate the life and teaching of Jesus through Jewish eyes? Is it Judaising to find personal fulfillment by adopting personal perspectives on God and one's neighbour that emerges from the teaching of the Hebrew prophets?

Is it Judaising to resonate positively to a Jewish pattern of worship, music, and celebration of special events in life? Is it Judaising to find in modern Israel – within its people and the historic land itself – that for which you deeply care, a veritable laboratory filled with spiritual and historical meaning? To each of the above questions we would answer an emphatic no!¹

On the one hand, we must beware of the warnings gleaned through the Scriptures, concerning denial of salvation through faith, in favour of ritual observance of 'the law'. We must avoid an artificial self-righteousness resulting from a wrong view of the teaching (Torah) of God.

We must avoid the legalism of ritual observance of 'the law'. However, we must also avoid going too far the other way: rejecting the beneficial teachings of Scripture and our opportunity to freely discover the Jewish heritage of Christianity"

On the other hand, we must also recognize when a bondage of a different kind is being imposed: namely, when the accusation of Judaising is incorrectly levied, restricting us from freely practising the beneficial teachings of Scripture, as discovered from the Jewish roots of Christianity. We cannot avoid facing this challenge when we seek to restore the Christian faith to its relationship with Israel and the Jews.

The Torah is good

The whole of Israel's life, before the writing of the New Testament, and the context from which the Gospel was sent, was founded upon the teaching of God. The task over all history was to accurately interpret the teaching of God into everyday life. The Hebrew word for this teaching is Torah - teaching for a right direction in life.

The Torah is God's teaching for a right direction in life. In the New Covenant, it becomes a living walk in the Spirit, received in the heart.

The word Torah does not appear in translations of the New Testament. This was not because God's teaching was done away with: it is because of the poor translation into the word law. Indeed, Jesus made that important point very clearly during His great teaching of the Sermon on the Mount:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law [Torah] or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law [Torah] until everything is accomplished.

Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law [Torah], you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:17-20)

Read carefully and with the mindset of the continuity of Scripture, we understand that the Sermon on the Mount was spoken to the disciples of Jesus in the early stages of the New Covenant. The New Covenant brought the interpretation of Torah as the walk in the Spirit, where Torah was received in the heart rather than on tablets of stone. Jesus' teaching kindled new light in the understanding and purpose of Scripture. In his great sermon Jesus was referring to the Torah, the teaching of God, which He had come to interpret correctly and not replace.

This explains why Paul can warn his readers about misapplication of the Torah of in the letter to the Galatians, and also say that the Torah is good in Romans (Romans 7:12). Our salvation does not depend on ritual obedience to the Torah of God. Those who teach the opposite have denied the sins of the flesh that need a remedy beyond what the will of fallen man can itself accomplish. Jesus came to be our sacrifice for sin in fulfillment of the sacrificial requirements of God in his Torah so that we would be free from the impossible burden of trying to earn our own salvation.

Far from Jesus changing the teaching of God, Torah includes what Jesus has done for us through his sacrifice, to atone for those of God's requirements that we cannot reach for ourselves. He has atoned for our sins - those things we do that cause us to fall short of the perfection of Torah.

Our salvation does not depend on ritual obedience to the Torah of God. But the life to which God's teaching points is still our goal- by the help of the Holy Spirit, and by faith."

Being aware of our shortcomings, however, does not mean that we should neglect the teaching of God and the right application in our lives. The life to which God's teaching points us is still our goal by the help of the Holy Spirit, and by faith in Jesus' covering of our sins. Torah, rightly interpreted, still shows us what is good, and the Sermon on the Mount shows us that God's teaching has depth of meaning that can be missed by superficial study.

We must weigh carefully our English understanding of the word law, what is meant by the New Testament word nomos (the Greek word for law), and the Hebrew understanding of Torah and halakhah. In right balance, we see that the New and Old Testaments are compatible in conveying the full range of God's teaching. All of God's teaching, rightly interpreted, is good.

So now let us turn to the meaning of grace, attempting to further achieve a balanced understanding.

Grace

By the word 'grace', we understand God's unmerited favour. God put Adam and Eve (and, as a consequence, all their descendants) outside of the Garden of Eden. He left us with the weakness of our flesh and the temptation to sin. Yet, he did not abandon us. Over the few thousand years since then he has shown us that he is outworking a plan for redeeming a community from this earth for all eternity. His plan is worked out through the principle of covenant, revealed progressively through the Patriarchs and fulfilled through Jesus the Messiah.

It is a useful exercise to go back, conceptually, to the time of Adam and look forward, as if through a telescope. From such a viewpoint, in the distance is the coming of Jesus and his sacrificial death on the Cross, his resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit to empower his disciples to preach the good news to all nations. The view encompasses the covenant principles given through Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jeremiah. All of this was through God's unmerited favour, his grace. This grace includes the aspects of Torah given to Moses in the wilderness years.

It is a mistake to think that grace began with the writing of the New Testament. The entire plan of God is through grace, and it is one coherent plan from start to finish."

Confusion has often arisen because of a misreading of John 1:17:

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Even if we insert the word Torah for law, taking this verse in isolation, we are still left with the same possibility of thinking that what Moses was given was replaced when Jesus came to earth. Yet, John 1:17 is preceded, in the same passage, by John 1:1-3:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Jesus, the Son of God, was with the Father before Creation. All things came through him, including all of God's spoken and written word, and what Moses was shown. Moses was not the originator of God's grace: this was the higher call of God in Jesus, both pre-incarnate and incarnate. Moses, born of the flesh, was an agent of central aspects of God's Torah but he was less than Jesus. Yet it was grace that brought forth the Torah- as with all of God's goodness.

In his Gospel, John was comparing the ministry of Moses and Jesus more than comparing grace and law.² The main point that we are making here is that we must not bring a false contrast between grace and law when both are from God and linked together.

Ultimately, through all the strands of history and all the experiences of mankind in seeking to restore fellowship with the One True God, through grace God has been outworking a plan that all who can be saved will be saved. He has revealed to us what is good and made provision in Jesus for the shortcomings that the flesh cannot achieve by its own will.

Restoring balance

There have been nearly 2000 years of gradual separation of the Christian Church from its relationship with Israel and the Jews. Now we have a somewhat different task before us than was faced in the Council of Jerusalem of Acts 15. We need to look back at the root meaning of some of the terms used in the New Testament, such as grace and law, in the context of the continuous covenant plan of God from the Fall in Genesis to the Restoration envisioned in the Book of Revelation. We need to reconnect the Church into the seamless flow of covenant history through this restored balance.

The New Covenant brought a new and permanent sacrifice for sin. Trust in God through faith in Jesus' sacrifice brings forgiveness of sins that are by grace alone. Forgiveness of sins leads to desire for sanctification – a clean heart and a pleasing walk with God. The Holy Spirit interprets Torah at heart level. Study of all Scripture is to be understood in this context.

The challenge in all things is to give no place to the flesh and encourage one another on this walk, in the balance of all of God's teaching, into the life of faith through the grace of God.

We must not even seek to "work up faith" as some do in the areas of healing and deliverance, turning faith into works. Our goal is to encourage one another on a personal walk with God through prayer and study of the Bible, trusting the Holy Spirit to be our tutor on this walk together.

For Study and Prayer

This study is not a complete overview of this sensitive subject; rather, it should be a prompt for further study. Despite all we have written, the subject is yet deeper and wider, with many implications to consider. You may have realised that this topic requires something of a mindset reorientation, and this can take some time.

• Consider how recognition of the continuity of all Scripture influences the way we study key topics from the Bible.
• Can you discover other topics that begin in the early chapters of the Bible and develop right through from Genesis to Revelation?
• Do you agree that a separation of the Christian Church from its historical foundations has affected the way we study the Bible?

Next time: Jesus the Jewish Messiah

These studies are developed from the course Christianity's Relationship with Israel and the Jews, first prepared for Tishrei Bible School.

References

1 p26, Eerdmans, 1989.

2 There was also a possibility that John's use of the term 'Moses' stood symbolically for the interpretation of the teachers of Torah, of his day. This is how the teaching of Moses was passed on. It was interpreted by the teachers of the day as much as studied from the written word. Thus, 'Moses' can mean the current teaching and interpretation of the Books of Moses. Thereby there is an element of contrast between what had become the practices of Torah in Jesus' day and the grace through which he brought true emphasis to God's teaching.

In this second installment on the ministry of prophecy, Edmund Heddle looks at how prophets are called and equipped by God.

Neither in the Old Testament times nor in the New Testament Church did the prophets appoint themselves. Only a false prophet would dare to take that office upon himself (Jer 23:21).

Prophets did not inherit the calling from their fathers, nor did they receive it by human appointment. It was by God himself that they were chosen and called. The initiative in making a prophet rested with God alone and all true prophets received a specific and personal call from him.

The Prophetic Call

The prophetic call might come to men and women at different points in their lifetime and in a variety of personal situations.

No prophet is self-appointed: all are called and equipped by God alone."

• Moses, already an ageing man, received his call as he turned aside to contemplate a bush that blazed with flames and yet did not burn away (Ex 3:1-4, 17).
• The young Isaiah saw a vision of the thrice-holy God that humbled him to confess his sinful speaking. After cleansing his lips God challenged him to undertake the work of being a prophet, Isaiah gave a glad answer in the classic response: "Here am I; send me!" (Isa 6:1-9).
• For Hosea it was through the sad experience of his own unhappy domestic life that he came to realise that God was calling him to prophesy. God called him first to experience in his home circumstances the continued unfaithfulness of his wife before he was ready to proclaim the continuing love and the unwearying patience of God towards his unfaithful people (Hos 1:2, 11:8-9, 14:4).
• Jeremiah was still only a youth when God's call came, to which he responded with protestations that he was far too young for such responsibility. God replied by telling him that he had in fact been called even before his birth! God, however, reassured him by promising that he would be given the very words that he wanted him to speak (Jer 1:4-9).
• Many years before, another young man, Samuel, had heard the voice of God one night calling him to be a prophet. Like Jeremiah he also had been given a message he did not want to pass on (1 Sam 3:1-21).
• Amos, working as a herdsman in his native Judaea heard God calling him to leave those pasture lands and go to Israel to challenge the sophisticated priests and rulers in the religious centre at Bethel (Amos 7:12-15).
• Scripture does not tell us when and where Micah was called to prophesy but he tells how the anointing Spirit had come upon him, enabling him to speak God's word to both Israel and Judah (Mic 3:8).
• Ezekiel shared being in exile with God's people in Babylon, sitting where they sat and becoming overwhelmed by what he saw until in the fourth month of the fifth year of their captivity he was called to the prophetic ministry (Eze 2:3-7, 3:14-15).
• There were a number of prophets who were reluctant to pass on the message they had received, but only Jonah tried to escape from the prophetic call by running away. Only after alarming experiences did the persistence and mercy of God give his disobedient servant a second chance (Jonah 1:1, 3:1).

Not all the prophets of the Bible give details of their call, but we can be certain that none of them were self-appointed. They were speaking because they had to; they were speaking what they spoke because, having heard what God had to say, they were obliged to pass it on (Jer 20:9).

Today throughout the world there are still men and women who must speak out, because they too have heard what the Lord God has to say."

The Task of the Prophet

The nature of the work which the prophets were called to perform may be seen by a study of the Hebrew words which were used to describe them and their prophesying. In 1 Samuel 9:9 there is an editorial note to the effect that "he who is now called a prophet was formerly called a seer". Such a verse as this and 1 Chronicles 29:29 appear to use these words with a discrimination that is not sustained throughout the rest of the Old Testament. However, there is a distinction between their meaning.

Ro'eh (translated 'seer') is an active participle of the verb 'to see' and chozeh (also translated 'seer') is a similar part of the verb 'to gaze at'. Both words indicate that a prophet was someone who saw things to which other men were blind. The ability to see was not to be attributed to their own insight, neither had it been discovered by an occult means similar to heathen divination; it was the result of illumination by the Spirit of God. Samuel was a 'seer' to whom people turned when they wanted to know of God's will or sought direction in national, local or personal affairs (1 Sam 7:3-4, 9:3-11).

In contrast to these two words translated 'seer', which together occur a total of not more than thirty times in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the word 'nabhi' (translated 'prophet') occurs over 300 times. The derivation of this word has occasioned considerable debate, but it is widely believed it can be traced to an Akkadian root 'nabu' meaning 'to call'. The choice in understanding lies between the prophet as being one who is called by God; or the prophet as being the one who calls, either to men for God or to God for men, ie by intercession.

The prophet is a person who is called to see what God is showing and to pass on its significance to his fellow men."

It seems better to understand 'nabhi' not in the passive sense of the one who is called i.e. the recipient of the vocation; but in the active sense of an announcer or messenger ie the one who is charged with carrying out the vocation. The prophet is a person who is called to see what God is showing and to pass on its significance to his fellow men. Today the world situation as never before underlines our desperate need of seers who can see with God's eyes and prophets who can speak forth his authoritative word.

Description of a Prophet

There are a number of significant phrases in the Old Testament which tell us yet more about the prophet and his calling. The prophet is called:

1. A man of God (1 Sam 9:6), implying that as a man of righteous character he was more closely in touch with God than other men. From the time of Moses down to the time of the monarchy the phrase was in use (1 Kings 13:1, 2 Kings 4:9).
2. The servant of the LORD. This is another description going back to the time of Moses (Josh 1:2) and it became the standard way of referring to all later prophets, especially when they were referred to collectively (2 Kings 17:13 and 23, Ezra 9:11, Jer 7:25). A prophet's primary task is to serve God and to do all that is expected of him, however strange God's orders might be (Isa 20:3).
3. The messenger of the LORD. This phrase found in the post-exile prophets shows that the particular service which the prophets rendered was that of passing on messages from God (Hag 1:13, Mal 3:1). 'Malachi' means 'my messenger'.
4. The man of the Spirit (Hos 9:7). This description draws attention to the fact that the source of the prophet's inspiration and power is nothing less than the Spirit of God himself (2 Chron 15:1-2, and 24:20, Neh 9:30, Mic 3:8).
5. My anointed one (Ps 105:15). It is clear that this phrase from Psalm 105 refers to the patriarchs and attributes their ability for hearing God's voice to the anointing of God's Spirit upon them. In Isaiah 61:1 the prophet claims that he had been anointed by the Spirit of God; an experience which years later Jesus declared had been fulfilled in his own experience (Luke 4:17-19).
6. A watchman. This word draws attention to the awesome responsibility the prophet has of first keeping his eye on what is happening and then not failing to issue the appropriate warning to the people (Hos 9:8, Eze 3:17 and 33:1-9).
7. A trumpet-blower. Closely associated with the duties of the watchman is that of blowing the trumpet (Jer 6:17). The prophet's word must be loud and clear so that there can be no mistaking the urgency of his message (Isa 58:1, Jer 4:5, Hos 8:1, Joel 2:1 and 15, Amos 3:6).

Reluctance

We have seen that it is God who chooses and calls individuals to serve as prophets. The first reaction may be one of unworthiness, unfitness or even total unwillingness. But with that call comes the deepening conviction that it is their eyes through which God's view of the human situation is to be perceived; it is their heart that is to sense and share his feelings about that situation and it is their lips that must patiently and courageously pass on what he has to say about it.

When God calls, first reactions are often feelings of unworthiness, unfitness or total unwillingness. But with his call comes deepening conviction..."

They may feel unfitted, as herdsman Amos did when he confronted the sophisticated ecclesiastics of Bethel. They may, like Jonah, try to run as far as possible in the opposite direction. They may even get to the lengths of accusing God of taking advantage of them (Jer 20:7-8).

Prophetic Imperative

But the 'goodly fellowship of the prophets' shares one common obligation; they must pass on what God has revealed (Amos 3:8b). This message may not be what the majority of people want to hear with their unending pursuit of peace and the 'smooth things' that false prophets promise (Isa 30:10). It may not even be the kind of message that the prophet himself likes passing on. In that case the prophet must put aside his own ideas, feelings and prejudices. As a watchman he must watch carefully; as a seer see clearly; as a trumpeter alert people effectively to their danger; so that as a true prophet he may faithfully pass on God's word.

Prophetic messages may not be what people want to hear, or what prophets like passing on. But those who God calls, he also anoints and equips to be faithful by his Holy Spirit."

No prophets could ever meet such demands from their own resources. It is essential to the carrying out of their calling that the anointing of the Spirit has come down upon them (Zech 4:6). All we have discovered about the prophets of the Old Testament applies equally to those whom God is calling to the ministry of prophecy today.

First published in Prophecy Today, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1985.

Political change cannot provide solutions for society's deepest need: in the wake of the General Election it is time for Christians to unite to transform our nation...

The result of the 2015 General Election has meant relief for some and grief for others, but surprise for nearly all. One prediction came true: the SNP landslide. Will Scotland seek a further referendum on independence? Nicola Sturgeon says no, but if she does not gain what she wants at Westminster, will she change her mind? Will English and Scottish politicians spend the next five years butting heads? Will the Union collapse?

Division is rife

Division is rife in our nation: politically between Scotland and England, economically between north and south and the haves and have-nots, and socially between black and white, male and female.

Greed and selfishness breed unhealthy competition and division. Those who cannot compete go under and growing numbers find themselves in a poverty trap. We blame the government for our social ills, but no government can solve them all. Only the gospel can change the selfishness in human hearts that causes division and suffering. Only the compassion of the Saviour can reach the depths of broken lives and only a revival can transform society.

The Wesleyan revival of the 18th century transformed areas of society that no politician could reach. Yet our national church did not champion their preaching but closed its pulpits to them, so that the Wesley brothers and their friend George Whitefield began to preach out of doors to the poor. Opposition to the revival continued in the Anglican Church and so Methodism as a separate denomination was born. Sadly, part of the legacy of the revival was division in the Church. The opportunity for a revival uniting people across class and political divides as one Body of believers was lost.

If we are to see revival in our nation, we must seek unity so that we do not limit the work of the Holy Spirit by our divisions."

A divided nation needs a united Church

Let true believers of every denomination unite under the manifesto of Jesus from Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

Cardinal Vincent Nicholls, leader of the Catholic Church in Britain, has pointed out that when Christians are persecuted, their persecutors do not ask what denomination they belong to or what, for example, is their theology of the Holy Spirit. They just see the people of the Cross. In the same way, the beggars Mother Teresa helped were unlikely to have questioned her orthodoxy: they simply saw her devotion to Christ.

The needs of our society cry out for Christians of all denominations to work together, sharing skills and resources, rather than insisting on promoting the work of our own churches and organisations, which leads to duplication of effort and inefficient use of assets.

That does not mean compromising core beliefs but discerning who are our real gospel partners: we must jealously guard the faith handed down to us by the apostles, and prioritise the saving work of the gospel at the centre of all mission and social action, otherwise we lose our distinctiveness (Matt 5:13).

Seeking unity does not mean compromising on core beliefs. It means discerning real partners in Christ and prioritising the saving work of the gospel."

How do we discern who our gospel partners are?

Christian unity must be based on our position "in Christ" (Gal 3:28), proceeding from his saving work and the ongoing work of his Spirit conforming us to his image (Rom 8:29).

The hallmark of true believers of every denomination is spiritual new birth (John 3:3), through which we become part of the Body of Christ:

there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph 4:4-6)

Ephesians 4 also speaks of our "unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God", which grows as we are equipped and edified by the five-fold ministry (v11-13). This implies that our unity is built on the Word of God. May we work towards local leaders meeting together for study and prayer so that unity for ministry in our neighbourhoods is strong in both word and Spirit?

Bound together in love

Jesus did not say that our distinctiveness lies in identical doctrinal positions on all points, but in the love we have for one another (John 13:35). It is time for us to unite in love, to "put on love, which binds all virtues together in perfect unity" (Col 3:14) and to "make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace" (Eph 4:3).

So let this "one body" work in unity across denominational boundaries to "bind up the broken-hearted" and "release the captives" (Isa 61). May we agree to disagree about our differences on matters of secondary importance and lift Jesus higher in our nation through servant-hearted gospel witness and social intervention?

Prophecy Today UK would love to hear about local initiatives involving believers from different churches and denominations working together. Please get in touch via our Contact page.

Who were the prophets and do they still exist today? Edmund Heddle unpacks some key aspects of this vital ministry and gifting...

To the man in the street a prophet is someone who predicts the future, and to prophesy is to foretell some happening; a view which is shared in many cases by the man in the pew. It is true that the prophets of the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments, do foretell what is to happen, but this predictive element forms only part of their message. They are primarily forthtellers!

Exodus 4:10-16 records an instructive incident that reveals the nature of the prophet's ministry. God had told Moses to go to Pharaoh to demand the release of the children of Israel from the slavery in which they were held. Moses, however, excuses himself (even after the encouragement of miraculous signs) on the ground of his lack of eloquence. God is displeased at Moses' refusal, but suggests that his brother Aaron, a good speaker, should take his place. According to Exodus 7:1, Aaron became Moses' 'prophet' and Moses is told:

You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth...He shall speak for you...He shall be a mouth for you. (Ex 4:15-16).

From this passage it is seen that a prophet is to be a mouth for God, a spokesman, whose task is to listen to what God is saying and to pass on that message.

How do prophets hear from God?

If a prophet is God's mouthpiece, how is he to hear what God wants him to pass on? The essential preparation is shown clearly in Numbers 11:16-17 and 24-30. Moses had reached a point where the burden of dealing with the people of God was more than he could cope with on his own. So God tells him to assemble seventy elders at the tent of meeting with the object of providing him with assistance.

Then God said, "I will take some of the Spirit which is upon you and put it on them." When this was done and the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. This was also true for two of their number who had not accompanied the others to the tent of meeting, but who were found prophesying in the camp. Prophesying is only possible when the Spirit of God has come upon God's man.

Prophesying is only possible when the Spirit of God has come upon God's servant."

Moses' servant, Joshua, thought his master would be upset that the two who had gone to the tent of meeting were prophesying and he presumed to ask Moses to silence them! Moses' magnanimous reply indicated that he had no desire to limit the number of prophets; instead he said, "I wish that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them!"

Who gets to prophesy?

This desire of Moses for the universalising of prophecy was years later taken up by the prophet Joel as he foretold the day when as a result of the outpouring of God's Spirit, the whole people of God would become a prophetic people.

And afterwards, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. You sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants [literally 'slaves'] I will pour out my Spirit in those days. (Joel 2:28-29)

These words of Joel were quoted by Peter as he sought to explain the happenings of the Day of Pentecost, just a few weeks after Jesus had returned to heaven. With the descent of the Spirit a new age had dawned, for this universalising of the prophetic potentiality constituted the greatest difference between Old and New Testament prophecy.

No longer was prophecy limited to certain individuals among God's people; instead both men and women, old and young and those without worldly status were alike able to prophesy. The New Testament makes it clear that not all of the Lord's people would have the ministry of a prophet (1 Cor 12:29) but all were able, and were encouraged, to prophesy. (1 Cor 14:1, 5).

The greatest difference between Old and New Testament prophecy is that since Pentecost, the gift of prophecy has been made available for all believers."

How does prophesying actually happen?

As well as showing the absolute necessity of the Spirit coming upon a man if he is to prophesy, the Old Testament has much more to teach about the process of prophesying.

The prophets of old were men who stood in the Lord's council, shared his secrets, were sent with his message and declared it with their words, actions and lives."

• The prophets of the Old Testament were men who stood in the Lord's council. (Jer 23:18, 22) They were granted the privilege of an audience with the Lord God himself. They were men in touch with the Throne and the whole quality of their revelations was dependent upon this fundamental relationship.
• The prophets were men who shared the Lord's secrets (Amos 3:7). Amos uses here a word that describes people in a close deliberation and what is shared at such times. He clearly believed that the Almighty shared with his prophets what he was going to do: a fact which is evident from a word from God concerning Abraham and the impending judgment of Sodom, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" (Gen 18:17)
• The prophets were men sent with the Lord's message (Amos 7:14-15). Amos said, "I was neither a prophet nor a prophet's son...but the Lord said to me 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel'." So this shepherd from Judah was sent to prophesy to the Northern Kingdom. God not only gives his word to his prophets, he also directs them as to who is to be their audience.
• The prophets were men who spoke the Lord's message in the Lord's words (Deut 18:18; Jer 1:9). When the young Jeremiah complained that he was not old or mature enough for the prophetic calling, God promised to give him the very words he was to speak. He was given an 'instructed tongue' (Isa 50:4).
• The prophets were men who showed the Lord's message by visual aids (Isa 20:2-3; Jer 13:1-11; 19:1-15). In order to illustrate and enforce their message, prophets were told to perform unusual actions, like burying a new waistbelt or smashing a pottery vessel before a crowd. Others got their message over by the use of vivid parables or word pictures. Micah stripped naked (Mic 1:8) in order to show the shame and degradation that would come upon the city unless the people repented.
• The prophets were men whose lives constituted part of their message. Hosea finds himself married to a prostitute; Ezekiel is forbidden to mourn when his wife suddenly died and Jeremiah is forbidden to marry at all. In this way the prophets were enabled to feel in their own experience the sufferings of the God, whose prophetic message they were responsible to communicate.

How did prophetic ministries begin?

As well as describing the process of prophesying, the Old Testament gives some insight into how the prophets received their word from God.

A study of the opening verses of the sixteen prophetic books of the Old Testament will divide up the prophets into those who saw the message in vision and those to whom the spoken word of the Lord came.

As it stands, this last statement can be misleading as the word translated 'came' is part of the verb 'to be' and might be better translated 'the word of the Lord became a living reality to' the prophet. It would appear that the first group had a direct encounter with what they were to say, whereas the second group experienced the message coming into focus in their minds as they considered a situation under the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

What about today?

In ways like these, men called by God, on whom the Spirit had fallen, became a 'mouth for God' in their generation. Today, as never before, there are homes, communities and nations that desperately need to hear what God in his love is yearning to say to them. Nothing, therefore, could be more important than the recovery of the ministry of prophecy today.

First published in Prophecy Today, March/April 1985, Vol. 1 No. 1.

Clifford Denton's latest study on the Hebraic roots of Christianity turns to the tricky subject of the balance between 'law' and 'grace'.

The rift between Jews and Christians

The broken relationship between Jews and Christians has had immense consequences. Misunderstanding has often fuelled the flames of hate and aggravated the harm that has been done to God's people. There have also been consequences for the way we read the Bible, particularly since Hebraic thinking has been replaced by a Greek mindset. This has detracted from the continuity between the two Testaments and has unbalanced perspectives through the centuries.

Among the Bible themes disjointed by the ascension of Greek thinking is the relationship between law and grace, now often separated in the thinking of many Christians. The common error nowadays (despite the way some Scriptures seem to read otherwise) is to consider 'law' as completely done away with in favour of 'grace', because of the sacrifice of Jesus."

However, if we read the New Testament with a thorough grasp of its continuity with the whole of Scripture, and put it in proper historical context, the subtle relationship between law and grace takes on a clearer perspective. It was through God's grace that all His teaching (the Torah) was given to us. All the law that was revealed through Moses came through the grace of God. There is much to consider on this topic, but that is a good starting point.

Is this Judaising?

This call to flee Greek thinking and return to the Hebraic roots of the Christian faith must not be construed as 'Judaising'. 'Judaising' is the word often used to accuse those who seem to be too caught up with all things Jewish (in contemporary usage, it often carries with it a hint of anti-Semitism). Those accused seem to be overly fascinated with external forms of Jewishness that come more from tradition than from conventional Christian interpretations of the Scriptures. They are also often thought of as having a faulty understanding of law and grace.

There is a difference between Judaising - becoming overly fascinated with external forms of Jewishness - and developing a right respect of God's laws."

Paul gave plentiful warning against Judaising activity to the Galatians (eg chapter 2). However, there is a difference between Judaising and developing a right respect of God's laws. Let us now consider the situation in the First Century when the Gospel message began to move out into the Gentile world.

From Moses to Jesus

The teaching of God (Torah), considered to be founded on the first five books of the Bible, has needed practical interpretation ever since the time of Moses. Torah remains a set of written principles until interpreted into action.

An important principle was established when Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, helped Moses understand how to teach the people the way to obey the principles of Torah:

You shall teach them the statutes and the laws and show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do. Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God......let them judge the people at all times. Then it will be that every great matter they shall bring to you, but every small matter they themselves shall judge. (Ex 18:20-22)

From that time onwards, the burden of teaching was shared by the elders of Israel, comparably to the way Scripture is taught today through the ministry of teaching in the Church.

The purpose of the teaching was so that every member of the Children of Israel - every family, clan and tribe, and the entire Nation - would know how to walk out the principles of Torah. The Hebrew for 'walking out' is halakha - a practical application of Torah according to the wisdom of God (walking is also the metaphor applied to the life of faith for the Christian - see Romans 8, where Paul explores the walk in the Spirit).

By the time of Jesus, the elders whom Moses had appointed in his day had been transformed into the members of the religious authority called the Sanhedrin. In addition, schools of Rabbis had formed with different shades of interpretation of Torah. However, whilst these different Rabbinic schools were zealous to interpret Torah accurately, their walking out of God's law had become more religious duty than personal relationship with him.

Every human being is prone to legalism, feeling more comfortable with rules than relationship."

This is the main point in understanding what the term 'law' meant in Paul's day and, indeed, what it means in Judaism today. The flesh of all human beings is prone to legalism, feeling more comfortable with rules than relationship. This can be so for Christians as well as Jews, and was the reason for Paul's warnings in the New Testament. At the time when Paul taught about law and grace, law was not so much Torah (the Old Testament teaching of God in its written form) as it was the interpretation of Torah into principles of living (indeed, 'halakha' in our own day is still the term used in Judaism for legal interpretations of Torah).

It is therefore reasonable for us to suppose that when Paul talked about law, he was referring to the teaching of the Rabbis, whose method of interpreting Torah imposed binding rules on their disciples rather than encouraging a personal walk with the God of Israel. This close relationship had been understood by their own Prophet Micah, when he wrote:

He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (Mic 6:8)

Torah and Halakhah correctly interpreted

Torah, the teaching of God brought through Moses, is subject to interpretation and application. It becomes the legalism against which we are warned when wrongly interpreted as obligations of the flesh, and sometimes even into rules made by men (Col 2:22).

God's law becomes legalism when it is wrongly interpreted as obligations of the flesh, rather than a living walk with him."

By contrast, the New Covenant was the means by which Almighty God sent his Spirit to us to write the Torah on our hearts (Jer 31:33) and mobilise our walk with him (halakha) in a new and living way. Understanding the subtlety of this helps us to rebalance our view of Paul's teaching and to reconsider the balance of law and grace in the whole of Scripture.

Law as a Protector

If the Law of God is considered to be replaced by the grace of God, this not only impacts individual understandings but so the stability of entire societies.

God's law works to protect and guide human beings who are not able to live by the inner workings of the Holy Spirit. Nations such as Britain, which have been impacted by the Gospel message over many centuries, have long been stabilized through biblical laws on their statute books. In Britain we can go back at least as far as King Alfred to trace the influence of biblical principles of law.

Consider this quotation from Sir Francis Palgrave's 'History of the Anglo Saxons'¹ (emphases added):

The third and chief principle which actuated Alfred, was his endeavour to impart the spirit of the law of God to the temporal legislation of his kingdom. Alfred's statutes are prefaced by the Decalogue, to which is added a selection from the Mosaic precepts, and the canons of the first Apostolic council. "Do these", he continues, "and if these commands be obeyed, no other doom-book will be required." We commonly say that Christianity is a part of the law of the land. Alfred had a clearer perception of the station which religion should possess in a Christian commonwealth. He would have wished to render Christianity the law itself. The necessity for any human law exists solely in proportion to our neglect of the Divine law; and if we were enabled to write the law on our hearts, nothing whatever would be left for human legislation to perform.

Do you see what the author had detected in a balanced understanding of law to be applied to a nation? It is instructive to note that Palgrave (1788 -1861) was born into a Jewish family and converted to Christianity, which adds special emphasis to this insight into the history of the British Nation, especially in the context of our study of law and grace.

For Study and Prayer

Consider the biblical principles of Torah and halakha in relation to what a Christian should understand by the word law.

Next time: We will continue to consider the balance of law and grace.

These studies are developed from the course Christianity's Relationship with Israel and the Jews, first prepared for Tishrei Bible School.

References

1 p114, The Collected Historical Works of Sir Francis Palgrave, Vol 5: The History of the Anglo-Saxons, 1921 [2013]. R. H. I Palgrave (Ed), Cambridge, CUP.

Mission group Frontiers reports on God's miraculous work in Islamic communities world-wide. Frontiers concentrates on reaching unreached parts of the Muslim world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This article is taken from the latest issue of their magazine 'Connected' and includes an interview with David Garrison, author of 'A Wind in the House of Islam'...

"The Lord says: 'It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.'" (Isa 49:6)

Muslim men praying

So many of us in the West view Jesus as our own personal Saviour and Friend, our Lord and God, but we forget that he is so much more! Even if we long for our friends and family to know the grace and redemption that we have experienced in Christ, we can still have far too narrow a view of what God's plans are for us and for the nations.

This verse above and the testimonies below help us realise once again that we serve the God of all the earth, the Creator of all things, and the Saviour of all mankind. If the news about the Islamic State, Boko Haram, Al Shabab et al frightens and depresses you, we hope that this article will bring you an incredible sense of hope.

See, I am doing a new thing! (Isa 43:9)

When Frontiers was founded in the early 1980s many of our field workers were inspired by books like I Dared To Call Him Father and The Torn Veil, wherein one brave Muslim shares the story of how they came to faith in Jesus. Many of us then grew in faith as we saw several new believers gather together to follow Jesus in the countries where we were working.

In the last few years, however, our faith has risen to new heights because of the many places in the Muslim world where the number of churches is growing exponentially. We no longer merely talk about new believers or new churches; we now talk about whole movements to Christ (David Garrison's definition is 1,000 baptisms or 100 churches started in one people group). We no longer simply pray for the ones and twos; we now pray with expectation for hundreds to believe. These are exciting times: far from the eyes and the interest of the world's popular media, God is on the move in the Muslim world in extraordinary ways.

Something is happening - something historic, something unprecedented." ~ David Garrison

An Unprecedented Move of God

David Garrison travelled over a quarter of a million miles, meeting and interviewing about a thousand Muslim background followers of Jesus. He wanted to find out their stories and, in particular, what God had used to bring them to faith.

From his painstaking and thorough research, and with extensive input from leading missiologists, he wrote a book entitled A Wind in the House of Islam (reviewed here). Here are David's answers to some key questions.

The nine 'rooms' of IslamWhat is The House of Islam?

David: The House of Islam, 'Dar al-Islam' in Arabic, is the name Muslims give to an invisible religious area that stretches from West Africa to the Indonesian archipelago, encompassing 49 nations and 1.6 billion Muslims. This area can be categorised into nine rooms: West Africa, North Africa, East Africa, the Arab World, the Persian World, Turkestan, Western South Asia, Eastern South Asia and Indo-Malaysia. Movements to Christ have occurred in each of these nine rooms.

What is happening in the Muslim world today?

David: From one end of the Muslim world to the other, Muslims are having dreams and visions and seeing specific answers to their prayers. Many talked to me about how they tested God and said, "If this is real, I'm going to pray and, if you're really there Lord, I want you to hear this." And Jesus began to reveal himself. They came to realise that to follow Christ was to follow a living Lord, and that realisation was the real turning point.

I believe, through the research I have done, that somewhere between two and seven million Muslims have come to follow Jesus just in the last two decades, which is staggering! God is at work in the Muslim world, frankly, in ways that we have never seen before.

There are now more Muslims turning to Christ than at any point in history."

69 movements have happened in the last 14 years, from West Africa to Indonesia and everywhere in between. One of the most striking examples is what's happening in Iran today. We're seeing that, following the Islamic Revolution, many people have become disillusioned with Islam. They are turning to all sorts of things; not necessarily to Jesus, but certainly tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the last few decades, have come to faith in Jesus Christ.

Why are so many Muslims turning to Christ?

David: There are several contributing factors: God is giving Muslim-background believers increasing boldness to talk about their new faith with their friends and family. There are many more cross-cultural workers these days willing to go as families to these difficult places to share the gospel with Muslims. Prayer is making a substantial difference. The 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim world during the month of Ramadan has now been going for 22 years, during which time more than 80% of all these movements have occurred. The Word of God is being translated into the heart language of many Muslim peoples and being produced in video and audio format.

Why did you write the book?

David: Firstly, I wanted to document these movements with historical accuracy. Secondly, I wanted to encourage Christians who are fearful of or feel threatened by Muslims to consider God's perspective. This is their 'day of salvation' and God wants to use us to love Muslims, to minister to them and to take the gospel to them. I wanted to show the ways that God is at work in the Muslim world, because clearly something is happening that we haven't seen before. The body of Christ worldwide can learn from the testimonies of the courageous men and women that I met. Finally, I hope this book will be an inspiration to Muslims who are considering another way, that they might find truth, forgiveness and a living relationship with God.

Testimony from the Horn of Africa

Man reading the Injil (New Testament)

One day someone gave me an Injil (New Testament) and it was in the Arabic language! I was astonished because I had been told that the New Testament had been corrupted, but this was in Arabic and God would never allow Arabic to be corrupted, as that's His language. So I took it home and began reading it that night.

When I went to sleep I had a dream. I saw a minaret that had a broken speaker at the top which someone was working on. Then suddenly the entire minaret shook. I looked at the base of the minaret and saw a man with an axe trying to destroy it. I woke up feeling very shocked because when I saw the face of the person chopping the minaret, it was me. I had the same dream four times that night.

The next day I went to the man who gave me the Injil and asked him what the dream meant. He smiled and told me, "You are going to win many sheikhs for Christ!" I went and told my parents immediately of my decision to follow Christ. I lost my job (I had been the leader of an Islamic centre, responsible for training 300 Imams) and my father tried to kill me. Despite this, I was able to see 400 sheikhs come to Christ, 300 of whom have been baptised so far.

Celebrating God's mercy

I hope you are encouraged and excited by what God is doing! If you want to read more Scripture in the light of these issues, we suggest that you revisit the book of Jonah, whilst considering that he was called to go to a very challenging place, as many Frontiers workers are. The book of Habbakuk speaks powerfully into a time when God's people were crying out for answers concerning the violence all around them.

And don't forget the book of Acts, where we see Saul, the terrorist, meet Jesus and be transformed into a wonderful Jesus follower and apostle! Let's pray for more Sauls/Pauls in our day!

LORD, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, LORD. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy. (Hab 3:2)

For more about Frontiers, check out their website: www.frontiers.org.uk or find them on Twitter and Facebook (frontiersuk).

STOP PRESS! DAVID GARRISON is coming to a church near you! Look up the dates and venues for David's forthcoming UK tour in June here: www.hopeformuslims.org