A NEW PENTECOST

A NEW PENTECOST 2

 Pentecost ushered in God’s Kingdom, filling the earth.  But we continually need fresh refillings of our cup of life.  Note Acts 4:31-33.  A NEW Pentecost would be a new refurbishing of the Kingdom/church.  This would be a return to the church of the Acts of the Apostles.  It was with the power of God that the disciples reached all the world with the gospel of Christ.  Perhaps the church in recent years has had “amnesia” about The Holy Spirit.

[Campbell spoke of Jehovah the Father, Jehovah the Son, Jehovah the Holy Spirit (in The Christian System) – emphasizing the Oneness of God yet the revelation of His divine diversity.]

 “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  1 Cor 13:13

 “For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.”  Gal 5:5-6

WHY  DO  YOU  HOPE

Stand up and praise the Lord your God!

Praise Him forever and ever!
Let everyone praise His glorious name,
although no human praise
can ever be great enough.

The long history of the church is filled

with the wonders of God The Holy Spirit.
Who would dare to say that the love
and resourcefulness
of God were exhausted?

I believe in the surprises

of God The Holy Spirit.
The ways of His Providence
are by nature surprising.

We are not prisoners of "fate,"

nor of the gloomy predictions
of sociologists
and those who peer into the future.

We must therefore be ready

to expect
the unexpected
from God!

It is time for a Christian Revolution               

    From time to time God-The-Holy-Spirit shakes our world and produces revival, renewal, and spiritual awakening.  People repent and seek to be right with God.  Lives are cleaned up and morality thrives.  Righteousness becomes a virtue.  The fruit of The Spirit becomes real in the community of the faithful.  HE - The Spirit - proves to the world that they are wrong about sin, and about what is right, and about God's judgment.  (“Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” John 16:7-11). 

We believe He produces in the Christian such things as Christian love (Romans 5:1-5), holy joy (“For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance, as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake. And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit,” 1 Thess 1:5-6; “And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 13:52), and fruitful Christian life (“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Gal 5:22-23

    The church is faced with a sense of pessimism and defeat.   Even Christians spread gloom, even though this is the contradiction of everything they would be expected to believe.  But a real Christian is a man/woman of hope.  Apostle Peter went so far as to say that a disciple of Christ should always have an answer ready for people who inquire about hope (But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;”  1 Peter 3:15).  Hope is an essential part of our very being.  But just now in some circles hope has drawn criticism from those who see it as just a “tranquilizer” to divert our attention from our problems

    Christianity means hope!  We must take hold of hope and restore it to its rightful place in our thinking.  Hope is real, from God, and relies on God.  Hope makes a mockery of our weighty statistics, our probability charts, our forecasts of the future.   “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, says the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8). 

    Hope is the servant of God, the “Master of the impossible” who draws straight with crooked lines (compare Isaiah 45:2-3).  Hope is the “daughter” of the God who cannot be pigeonholed and who knows how to turn obstacles into servants to do His will.

    Some are distressed that they cannot recognize the church of their childhood (as they think they remember it).  Be of courage!  God the Holy Spirit is at work deep within the heart of His church.  He is the living hope for the future.  He is breathing into the church a fresh youthfulness.  He wishes to draw us close to Himself.

    We read the Book of Acts, which might be called “The Acts of The Holy Spirit.”  We relive in our minds the time when the disciples were in the upper room, 120 of them,  the apostles and the Seventy, along with several women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and His brothers, who had not been believers before (Acts 1:14).  We pray: “Renew Your wonders, O Lord, in this our day give us a new Pentecost.”

    By the power of the Gospel, He - The Spirit - makes the church grow (“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.” 1 Cor 3:6-7)

    “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”  2 Cor 3:5-6

  “And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.”  John 16:8-11).  We must look to The Spirit beyond men and their limitations.  We must open a few windows in the upper room and allow the first breeze of springtime to come in to us.  Paul warned that while some have the form, they deny the power (2 Timothy 3:5).  And Christianity is about power.  “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  2 Tim 1:7

    The Holy Spirit has ways and means of renewing the church.  The Spirit, suddenly and without warning, releases a gulfstream of graces through the action of some believer (saint), who towers over the others.  Churches of Christ honor Campbell, father & son, Stone, Scott, Smith, and others who led the “restoration movement” to recover [refurbish] the Ancient Order of things.  Many whose names we do not know have also played a vital role as witnesses to the presence of The Holy Spirit within the church in moments of crisis and opportunity.

    Faith teaches us that suffering is the seed of life.  It is perfectly normal, then, that the sufferings of the church today should give rise to great hope.  No day was so filled with hope, as we look back, as the Friday before the Crucifixion.  When Jesus was lifted up on the cross, He won the victory over death, hell, and the grave.  And so as someone wrote: “It is a happy time for the church when she is sustained by nothing other than God.”  Another wrote: “The hour of suffering is the hour of God.  The situation is hopeless: this, then, is the hour for hoping. . . When we have reasons for hoping then we rely on those reasons. . . We should rely not on reasons, but on a promise - a promise given by God. . . We must admit that we are lost, surrender ourselves as lost, and praise the Lord who saves us.”  Desperation – yet CONFIDENCE IN THE LORD!

    Each new crisis teaches us that we are living at a turning point in the history of the church.  God The Holy Spirit is continually revealing, to a degree unknown before, a mystery of death and resurrection.  Now, and always, it is the time to listen to “what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (Revelation 2:29).  He is telling us, it seems, to carry out the very necessary reform and renewal of the church.  The church will always be needing spiritual awakening.  As someone said: “The church must grow from the inside out.”  Paul the Apostle wrote: "Therefore He says: Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light."  Eph. 5:14.  see Acts 26:18; 2Cor. 4:6; Heb. 6:4; 10:32.

   

TRANSFIGURATION

The Transfiguration of Christ

“Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. And Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus.” Mark 9:2-4 (NKJV)

The Transfiguration of Christ is the high point of His public ministry. His Baptism is its starting point, and His Ascension its end. Moreover, this glorious event has been related in detail by Matthew (17:1-6), Mark (9:1-8), and Luke (9:28-36), while Peter (2 Peter 1:16-18) and John (1:14), two of the privileged witnesses, hint at it.

About a week after His sojourn in Cæsarea Philippi, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them to a high mountain apart, where He was transfigured before their ravished eyes. Matthew and Mark explain the true meaning of the word by adding "his face did shine as the sun: and his garments became white as snow," or "as light," according to the Greek text.

This dazzling brightness which shone from His whole Body was produced by an interior shining of His Divinity. False Judaism had rejected the Messiah, and now true Judaism, represented by Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, recognized and worshipped Him, while for the second time God the Father proclaimed Him His only-begotten and well-loved Son. By this glorious manifestation the Divine Master, who had just foretold His Passion to the Apostles (Matthew 16:21), and who spoke with Moses and Elijah of the trials which awaited Him at Jerusalem (Luke 9:30-31), strengthened Jesus for His death, and the faith of his three friends and prepared them for the terrible struggle of which they were to be witnesses in Gethsemane, by giving them a foretaste of the glory and heavenly delights to which we attain by suffering.

"Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying:
"You are worthy to take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, And have made us kings and priests to our God; And we shall reign on the earth." Rev 5:8-10

O God, You revealed to chosen witnesses Your dearly loved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the confusion of this world, may by faith see King Jesus in His beauty; Father, Son, Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. [from an old prayer]

Now it came to pass, about eight days after these sayings, that He took Peter, John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray. As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. . . . And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!" Luke 9:28-35

Peter, James, and John, seem to be the inner circle of those closest to Jesus. These three men were eyewitnesses of the Divine Glory of this One who was the Son of Man. This confirmed the Messiahship of Christ which Peter had declared. Mark tells us: .As they looked on, a change came over Jesus, and His clothes became shining white -- whiter than anyone in the world could wash them.. This is symbolic of the supernatural, and of the Divinity of Jesus the Christ. (We also have a share in this as well, see 1 John 3:1-2. “For we shall see Him as He is.” 2 Peter 1:4 “Partakers of the divine nature.”)

"Finally, the Holy Trinity is manifest here, for Christ is transfigured (Matt. 17:2), the Father speaks from heaven testifying to Jesus' divine Sonship (Matt. 17:5), and the Spirit is present in the form of the dazzling light surrounding Christ's Person, overshadowing the whole mountain." Walerstedt

"For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 2 Peter 1:16-17

Compare: “But He kept silent and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked Him, saying to Him, "Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" Jesus said, "I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven." Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, "What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy! What do you think?" And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death.” Mark 14:61-64

Blessed are You, mighty God of light,
for Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus stood Transfigured on the mountain,
and none comprehends His majesty,
Whose splendor stuns all waking souls.
Your light transcends the brightness of a thousand suns!
For Jesus is the Chosen One,
Your beloved Son called by name,
the living hope of every nation.
Lamb of God, You take away the sin of the world.
Lamb of God, take away my sin.
Grant me life eternal!
For these and all Your mercies, I praise You:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Blessed be God for ever!
[from an old prayer]

PS: “Antichrist” is anyone who does not confess that the Son of God became Man [flesh & blood] while remaining God. 1 John 4:1-4.