The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified
unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness.
Jesus preached something called "the kingdom of God," or "the kingdom of heaven".
The world missed it then, and we continue to miss it now.
The Jews wanted to preach the kingdom of Israel
and the churches want to preach their various denominational and even their inter-denominational or ecumenical kingdoms.
In some ways it is unavoidable.
We are trapped inside visible bodies, working with other visible people.
But it does seem like every time God starts to do something
it gets swallowed up by the very tools that he started out by using...
because we became attached to the tools and not to the tool-maker.
I think we are coming to the end of that... but more about that later in this video.
For now, I want to look at what Paul was saying about the various ways that we become tricked
into promoting ourselves instead of Christ.
Wisdom.
That's what Paul said the Greeks were obsessed with.
He was writing to Christians living in Corinth, a city in Greece.
They were noted for their great philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, to name a few.
But I think Paul was covering a lot more than these philosophers.
People everywhere want to be known for being smart.
I, too, want people to think of me as a wise old man in the things that I say.
This desire to be respected for our intelligence is most notable in the scientific world
but it flows over into theological displays of many kinds.
Religion is replete with people arguing over who is right, in a hundred different doctrinal ways.
Even in our interpersonal relationships
most of us experience tensions daily when it comes to who is right...
who knows best... who has the better solution.
Everyone wants to be the teacher
and very few even dare to put their hand up to be identified as students in a jungle full of disciple-starved gurus.
"The Greeks seek after wisdom."
But then the Jews come along with their signs and wonders
arguing that it doesn't matter how smart a person is if they cannot make miracles happen.
Moses, with his parting of the Red Sea, and his tablets of stone
that the actual finger of God was supposed to have written for him.
Daniel in the Lion's Den. Noah and his Ark. David and his slingshot.
But especially Elijah, raising the dead, calling down fire from heaven
giving a poor widow a pot of oil that would never run empty... and much more.
In the world of signs and wonders, whoever does the biggest and best wonder wins.
That kind of thinking continues in so-called Christian circles to this day as well.
Even now there are literally millions of professing Christians
trying to prove their spiritual superiority by out-bluffing a deadly virus.
Almost literally throwing themselves off a cliff in the hope that God will send angels to catch them
lest they dash their feet against a stone.
Paul saw both sides: Wisdom and Wonders... and he looked right past them
to something that he called foolishness.
This foolishness, he said, is "Christ crucified".
What did that mean?
And why didn't he say something here about the theological significance of that crucifixion
as he had done on so many other occasions?
Why didn't he mention the resurrection...
that ultimate proof that Jesus really was who he claimed to be?
Why did he just say, "We preach 'Christ crucified... to the Jews a stumblingblock
and to the Greeks foolishness"?
For 2,000 years God has been waiting for the human race to work that one out.
On the surface it seems that even Paul missed it.
For he too talked about miracles.
And he taught what have become known as fundamental Christian doctrines.
He promoted himself as an apostle
and he wrote to people in churches that he seemed to think just naturally
represented the invisible kingdom of heaven that Jesus spoke of...
all because they were his converts.
Out of all that has grown division and confusion...
some of it so acrimonious that people killed one another over their religious differences.
In the process, what has happened to Christ crucified?
How often have we who claim to be his followers been the ones doing the crucifying... in his name?
Never do we see what others looking on cannot miss:
That we are really promoting our own opinions, our own organisations, and our own egos
while the kingdom of heaven goes begging.
The population of the world has been growing and growing, for 2,000 years since Jesus was crucified
and despite a lot of people taking his name, for most of the world, Jesus might just as well still be dead.
We have never seriously even considered taking up our cross
and following him to such an ignominious death.
All we ever talk about are resurrections and heaven and forgiveness and eternal life.
All the happy endings, without the one thing that makes all of that possible.
Oh, I know. Many will say that JESUS was that one thing. He did it all. So we don't have to do anything.
He rose from the dead to prove that he can leap-frog the rest of us right over all that uncomfortable stuff.
But at least in this one passage, I don't think it is what Paul is saying.
He makes no mention of forgiveness, no mention of the resurrection, no mention of eternal life...
just "Christ crucified".
And then he goes on to say that it is foolishness... and a stumbling-block in the world around us.
Jesus himself said, "Take up your cross and follow me."
But who wants to hear that?
We wear silver, gold, even diamond crosses as jewelry
with scant appreciation for the clanging contradiction of such a practice.
"Take up your cross!" he says.
And we shout back, "What foolishness!"
We insist that money... a good reputation... family... a career... a good education...
maybe even a church where signs and wonders are supposedly performed each week...
these are the things that the world needs.
But Jesus, if not Paul, says no.
What we need is to take up the cross of Christ.
Christ crucified... and us with him.
'Failure' (at least in the eyes of the world) in every way possible.
That is how the kingdom of heaven will finally be revealed.
And now I come to what I mentioned at the beginning of this video...
the point which we are now at, in human history.
I believe God is very close to that point
at which he is going to give 7 billion people a chance to experience his kingdom
in the most powerful revelation of his majesty in all of history.
This invisible kingdom of heaven is going to finally become visible.
But it will become visible through the sacrificial deaths of literally millions of people
as the devil himself is let loose to do his worst...
just as God allowed the devil to do to Job and his family in Bible times.
The world will see who, in the entire world, has the kind of faith that would die before recanting.
I don't know where they will come from, to be quite honest.
For many years, I had hopes that they would come from a lukewarm church
that suddenly springs to life at the last minute, and becomes a worldwide church full of martyrs.
I am now convinced that this is definitely NOT where the countless martyrs that are predicted in the Bible will come from.
There are probably no more devout atheists today
than what are in the visible churches of the world.
They have so hardened their hearts to the voice of God's Holy Spirit
that they would not recognise God's voice if he blasted it at them through a trumpet.
They have become used to pretending that they themselves are God.
Anything they want, they just say, "The Spirit led me to do such and such,"
or "God is telling me to do this for myself or for my family or for my church."
But I do believe that there will be great multitudes
coming from the East and from the West...
people who have never heard the gospel as Jesus preached it
because a fat, lazy church chose to tell them they didn't have to obey Jesus to get to heaven.
Now, I think there are about two billion people who identify themselves as Christians
and they are the ones who will do as they have always done when the Mark of the Beast comes out.
They'll line up first, praising God, because refusing to take the Mark would, of course
be trying to work their way to heaven.
And they will lead the billions of the world down the wide road to hell, as they have always done.
But the other five billion people... I believe that a small minority of them, millions, nevertheless...
are going to turn, and recognise the great wisdom of the crucified Christ.
They will gladly climb aboard the oxcarts on their way to the guillotines
prepared to die for their new-found faith.
The world, and that includes the lukewarm religious world, will not be worthy of such people.
They may be Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, or even Falun Gong practitioners
with their hopelessly flawed theology.
But they will be people who are prepared to die for the highest revelation of truth that they know.
And that highest revelation will ultimately be Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God
who died for them, and who asks them to die for him.
There will be no applause here on Earth. No miraculous escape. No fancy speeches.
Just total failure in the eyes of the world, but total victory in the arms of Jesus.
As I write this, I can understand a lot of people still being skeptical.
But over the next few years, this is going to become more real and more inescapable.
We are moving toward the final showdown between good and evil
and no megachurch in the world, no government in the world
no doctrine in the world is going to be able to stand against the forces of evil that are about to be unleashed.
There will be only one weapon that will be able to overcome the forces of evil.
The last book in the Bible talks of that.
It says, "They overcame him (the Evil One) by the blood of the Lamb
"and because they loved not their lives, even unto the death."
Amen! and Amen!