Consider your heritage

If I had been the one choosing, I would have lived my entire lifespan in far less interesting times. However, since I am not God and He is (and the world is better off for it!), He saw fit to plop me down in what began as a more quiet time in history. During my life, however, as I toddled through the 50’s, played outside without supervision throughout the 60’s, drank, drugged, and then met Jesus in the 70’s, established a career in the 80’s, bought a home in the 90’s, wept—along with the rest of America—on 9/11/01, and watched wrinkles develop within the past decade of this new century, the history I’ve experienced has raced from placidly boring to hyper-multi-dimensional to what it is now—bordering on violating every boundary.

The Body of Christ is finding herself in an unusual time in history. I believe we are seated on the culmination of history and the return of Jesus Christ; but if not, we are certainly living in interesting times, nonetheless.

And I believe two things. Each of them gives me great hope.

1.)    Acts 17:26-27 lets us in on an important secret about our lives. “…He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.”

God Himself determined the time and nation of your birth. He chose this year and the particular age you are now to intersect; He chose you for this time. Are you uncomfortable about what’s going on in the world today? It was God’s decision to put you here now; could it be that He did so because He knew that by His grace you would be able to rise above the chaos and fulfill all His purposes? I know that He did not place you here to destroy you. Neither did He bring you forth at this time for you to live timidly, hoping to be bland enough to escape the disapproval of a godless culture. Could it be that God has a specific purpose for you to fulfill in this hour? According to the Bible, the answer to that question is YES.

2.)    Bible scholars have referenced a “scarlet thread” in the Old Testament—prophecies, types, and shadows—which point to the Messiah to come. In a similar way, throughout the centuries since Jesus walked the earth, God has woven a strong cord of testimony to His faithfulness, power, and kind intervention. Here’s a chronological sampling:

• God spoke to His people in the first century and established Himself as their God and Father through signs, wonders, and bold preaching of the gospel. The Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Epistles, and the Book of Revelation were written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit and then entrusted to posterity.

 

• The spark of the gospel remained aglow through humble souls and martyrs who knew their Lord, illuminating the dim light of the dark ages.

 

• God met with His people and enlarged their tents during the Reformation when once again men started to understand that the just shall live by faith.

 

• Men and women, both in America and the British Isles, were gripped with fear over the state of their eternal souls and cried out to a Savior who alone could set them free during the First and Second Great Awakenings of the 1730’s and 40’s and 1800’s.

 

• God watched over His people, sending His mighty Holy Spirit during the great revivals flaming out of Wales and Topeka and Azusa Street, setting men and women ablaze with Pentecostal signs and zeal at the beginning of the twentieth century.

 

• The Healing Revivals of the teens and twenties and again in the forties and fifties of the twentieth century filled men and women with faith that with God all things are possible.

 

• God reminded the Vietnam-era psychedelic scene of sixties and seventies that He was not dead but still alive and on the throne during the Jesus Movement. This not so distant time in our past captured the hearts and minds of disenfranchised, counter-culture youth to the love and forgiveness of Christ. Many now in leadership in the body of Christ were swept up as young men and women in those confusing days to be set free by the power of God from sin, addictions, and despair.

 

• Occurring simultaneously with the Jesus Movement was the Charismatic Renewal. This sovereign move of God started in the 60’s when a group of students from Duquesne University went on a retreat to study the book of Acts and to investigate the claims of Pentecost as described in two books, The Cross and the Switchblade and They Speak with Other Tongues. Many of these folks were baptized in the Holy Spirit, and from there, Charismatic hunger and zeal spread rapidly into both Catholic and mainline Protestant church memberships as well as into the ranks of the unchurched.

 

• Since the seventies, God has poured rich teaching ministries into the earth, training His people to walk by faith, not by sight, and to live as new creations and more than conquerors, using the full armor of God to resist in the evil day, and having done everything to stand, to keep standing.

 

• Churches that preach the uncompromised Word have grown in size and strength in their communities, equipping the body of Christ to walk in love and good works which God has ordained beforehand that they should walk in them.

It is precisely our rich Christian heritage that inspires me to believe that surely God has prepared the Church for such a time as this—even now—even at this time in history. He has equipped us—through the testimonies of our heritage, through His Word, and by His wonderful Holy Spirit—to face with bold integrity and resolute faith anything this world might throw our way.

My contention is this: Just as the scarlet thread woven through the pages of the Old Testament pointed to fulfillment and salvation in Christ, so too does the strong cord of testimony to God’s faithfulness, power, and kind intervention throughout Church history point to the summation—possibly during our very time—of all things in Christ. And if God poured out His wonders during those past dark times, I can’t help but believe that to expect anything less than the supernatural outpouring and intervention of God during our own time—however dark—would be a slap in the face of the Author and Finisher of our faith.

Dorothy

Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass. 1 Thessalonians 5:24