Posted by Ben Curran on May 30, 2010 at 11:27:04:
Dear Dr Janson,
the revelation which you received as you were preparing the evening meal a few years ago gave you an experience of the presence and power of God which changed your life. I have also been priveledged to experience something like it. But the great majority of people on this planet have never had such an experience, and this includes great numbers within the Christian Church.
One of the more enduring debates that goes on in Christianity is whether we can expect signs and wonders in our life today on the same scale as those which manifested in the days of the Apostles and the Book of Acts. In recent decades people such as John Wimber, Jack Deere, Richard Foster and Jim Cymbala have argued strongly that we can and should expect more miracles in our lives as Christians.
But the boring truth is that most churches plod on like sleepwalkers mainly due to the fact that there are as few miracles in our churches today as there were in our fathers' day and their fathers' day before them.
Meanwhile the devil gets all the good lines. Or rather, science gets to perform all the impressive signs and wonders.
Because what is a hundred-ton Boeing heaving itself up into the air, other than a miracle? What are a million pieces of information appearing at the touch of a Google button, other than a miracle? The people of Jesus' day would have had no doubt that they were a miracle. And they certainly strike us as wonders as well.
My argument here is that science is today producing so many wonders, and the Church so few, that it is natural that the children of today regard Christianity's talk of miracles as the wafflings of a few greybeards. And it is no wonder that so many people, both inside the church and outside, are actually fence-sitters.
By fence-sitters I mean a wide spectrum of people who are not completely committed believers, or completely committed disbelievers, of the claims of the Bible. On the one end of the spectrum we have practising Christians who were raised in Christian families and who want to believe in the literal truth of the miracles described in the Bible but who have seen precious little during their lifetimes to really confirm their belief. On the other end of the spectrum we have passionately believing Marxists and Humanists who do not want to believe that the bible has any real truth in it, but who nevertheless are uncomfortably aware that there are 'weird stories' floating around of healings and suchlike being told by people who are not obviously insane.
Meanwhile we all live in a world where science delivers new hard proofs of its power every day. So what is a poor fence-sitter supposed to do? Of course he remains on the fence. I would too if God had not given me, in acts of sovereign grace and mercy, enough hard proof of his power to enable me to be sure that the Bible speaks the truth.
But perhaps this is about to change. Perhaps the suffering backsides of those uncomfortable perched fence-sitters are about to be given a rest.
In Biblical teaching on the end-time, two prophecies stand out for me:
1) That it will be a time of evangelization such as the world has never seen, a time of a 'great harvest of souls' for the Kingdom of God (Matt 13:30; 13:39)
2) That it will be a time of persecution and tribulation for the Church (Matt 24:21-22; Mk 13:19)
An idea recently struck me in the following form:
QUESTION: What SINGLE phenomenon could cause BOTH of the above prophecies to come true simultaneously?
ANSWER: A great outpouring of the power of the Holy Spirit in the form of signs and wonders. The shock of this unmistakeable demonstration of the power of God would blow all the fence-sitters off their perches. Some would fall on the side of repentance, and the others would fall on the side of rebellion
The bible does talk of extraordinary times at the end of the age. But to a large degree these events consist of normal phenomena happening more often - wars, earthquakes, economic collapse, drastic weather changes and the like. This sort of thing is not going to convince a hardened fence-sitter. What we would need is the sort of thing that Jesus spoke about when he said:
"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)
We need this promise to be fulfilled by the Holy Spirit empowering men
"lone like the Tishbite, like the Baptist, bold
cast in a rare and apostolic mould" *
to work wonders on a large scale. Healings in the street, the raising of people from the dead, the controlling of the weather in the full public eye, the miraculous feeding of thousands with the news media present - THAT is what we need to blow the fence-sitters off their perches! And if we get it - what a day that is going to be.
If we Christians know what is good for us and the world, that is what we will pray for.
.....................................* Lifted from John Wimber's 'Power Healing'.