We are about to turn to a new chapter of our lives, and it seems as time flows faster every year! I can see that many of you are nodding your heads. This time of the year is always a full of disappointment and excitement for me.
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I would like to share with you about two movements circulating explicitly and implicitly within the contemporary church settings: the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and the Word of Faith (WOF). You may have your own opinions about them already, because they are not new movements. Maybe you never heard about them, but you probably heard about this evangelist, Jesse Duplantis, who recently asked his congregation to purchase the fourth private jet. Don’t worry, it is only about “fifty-four million-dollars.” If you found his request troublesome and outrageous and even wondered how he could argue that his demand was biblically supported, you want to pay attention to the following writings, because the motifs and principles of his ministries are inter-connected to the movements of the NAR and WOF.
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“Then the Lord said to me, ‘Do not pray for the well-being of this people. Although they fast, I will not listen to their cry; though they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Instead, I will destroy them with the sword, famine and plague” (Jer. 14:10-11).
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“ow if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.16 And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” (1Cor. 12:15-21).
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“Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.16 And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” (1Cor. 12:15-21).
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“Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.16 And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” (1Corinthians 12:15-21).
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For the next few weeks, I would like to write about the way we should interpret the gifts, services, and works of the Holy Spirit in context of the unity of the fellowship of believers. As you are thinking about this, the elephant in the room is whether supporting the practice of the gifts of tongue and prophecy or not.
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Last time, I suggested a fellowship of prayer to enrich the koinonia of believers, and you might have thought, “Well…Isn’t prayer too simple an answer?” Yes, fellowship of prayer is a very basic thing that we already know, but one thing that we still lack to apply in our lives.
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“But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.’ 24 Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward…But they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their ancestors” (Jeremiah 7:23-24, 26).
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Why should suffering be an important matter for Christians? During the time when the gospel began to circulate around the world, most of Greeks had no conflict with the beliefs in the virgin birth of and incarnation of God in the flesh, because the Greek legends and mythologies also taught similar themes to their adherents. The Greek gods were portrayed as human beings and having intimate and even sexual relationship with human beings.
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Even though Peter was the leader of the disciples of Jesus and the first pope of the Catholic Church, and wrote two letters of the NT, he still did not receive the same respect as Paul did. This may be because he was an uneducated fisherman, had hot temper, cutting an ear of a man who tried to arrest Jesus, and denied Jesus three times. Maybe, it was because Jesus once rebuked the devil out of Peter. Nevertheless, Peter had intimate relationship with Jesus, spending three years with him, eating with him, seeing the actual miracles with his own eyes, and being taught and loved by his Master.
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