Bible Study with Jairus - Leviticus 26

Bible Study with Jairus- Leviticus 26

 

We often talk about personal topics or current events before our Bible Study begins. Often, by the time we finish reading the scripture for that particular day, we find that it answers questions or confusion about the previous topics discussed.  The purpose of reading the Bible is not to simply read it, but to solve the problems we face every day and to seek God's guidance in our daily lives.  I often say that after attending a Bible study if the Bible didn’t speak to you and you don’t leave changed by the Word of God, you didn’t receive the guidance or revelation that you should have.  Basically the Bible study was a failure because “The Word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (NIV, Hebrews 4:12). The Holy Spirit can illuminate the Word of God as we read the Bible.  He can also point the way and illuminate the path ahead of us.

 

The Bible tells us that “Your Word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” (NIV, Psalm 119:105). It also says that “The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.” (NIV, Psalm 119:130). Therefore, whether we are reading the Bible by ourselves or we are the ones leading the Bible Study to help others understand it, we must always remember one principle, which is to pray to God. God will surely give us light, illuminate our hearts, and lead us on straight paths.

 

We are a group of Chinese Christians living in the United States. We are very concerned about the China-US trade war. Because of our special status and position, we are eagerly hoping that both China and the United States will have a bright future together. On the one hand, of course, we hope that China will have bright prospects because we are from China and our loved ones are still there. On the other hand, we also hope that the United States has a bright prospect for the future, because we and our children live in the United States.

 

As Christians living in the United States, it’s normal for us to be very worried about the current status of the country. We understand that there is a gradual decline of Christianity in the United States, the lack of attendance in churches, and people not having much enthusiastic faith.  The statement that God is judging or will judge America causes people to be very upset.

 

There is a general view that is not only very popular in Chinese Christian circles, but also popular in the American Christian world. It is the American decline theory. Although many people say that the competition between China and the United States is not a win or lose game, rather it can coexist, there are still many people who will unconsciously use the end of the rise and fall of the traditional great powers to set up a competition between China and United States. I have also been influenced by this view.   I pay attention to the different perspectives of the words of the prophets to the United States, and also my encounters with God, so slowly my thoughts have changed. My current thinking is not necessarily mature, but I think it might be worth sharing.

 

I said that some of the beliefs of the Chinese people on the American decline theory and the beliefs of the Western people on China’s collapse theory are wrong. They are misunderstandings that are brought about by the lack of understanding of the other country. We won’t talk about China here. We will mainly talk about the different views on the "American decline theory."

 

First of all, I don’t believe that God is satisfied with the current situation in the United States, but does this mean that He has given up on this country? Not necessarily. Why? When you look at the historical cycle of the book of Judges, you can see that God's people fell, and He allowed the Israelites to be oppressed by the Gentiles. When they called on God for help, God caused the Judges to rise again to save them. The historical cycle of the Judges may have lasted for many hundreds of years, but American history has only been for a little over two hundred years. I personally think that the United States is at a low ebb. It is currently placed in the hands of the Gentiles who are oppressing them like it was portrayed in the book of Judges.  .  After the September 11 incident, the United States has had other terrorist attacks but the main challenge that churches and Christian businesses in the US face is the far left view in society that has removed God from schools and persecuted businesses that don’t agree or comply with the homosexual agenda.   Perhaps God allowed all of this to lead American Christians to repent.I also believe there is some merit of those who teach that God will discipline the United States, perhaps allowing disaster to come.  We must remember that judgment   is not the goal.

The judgment is for redemption. The judgment is only a means, the redemption is the aim.

In another meeting, a non-Christian friend from China asked me, “Why is it that the United States has been infiltrated by Christianity for so many years, and yet there is still so much moral decline and social corruption?” I answered him with the revelation we got in Genesis 49. The twelve sons of Jacob of Israel are like layers of twelve waves.  Each wave overcomes the next one. God only promised to bring in the Messiah through the descendants of Abraham. He didn’t necessarily say that it wouldn’t come from the descendants of Reuben, Simeon, and Levi. But Reuben defiled his father's bed, and Simeon and Levi killed countless people. Consequently, the genealogy of Christ couldn’t be carried out through them. Although Judah also had the opportunity he also sinned, and finally his daughter-in-law Tamar was able to turn it around and bring in the lineage of Christ. From this process, we can see that the enemy has tried every means to block God's plan, so it was indeed delayed, but in the end God still won. Similarly, the United States has the same path before God. God has a destiny for this country.  Just like Israel, United States will be the light of the world and a role model for the nations. There will be failures in the process, but God will reach out and save the United States. In the end, God has the victory.

 

Third, the United States is indeed a special country. When it was founded, there was a group of Christians who were pure in heart and who loved the Lord. Their spiritual standards were relatively high. Not only that, they also continued the Christian tradition of European Christianization. According to statistics, the number of self-proclaimed Christians in the United States accounts for about 70% of the population. Although we know that this is a bit exaggerated, compared to China, it’s extremely large A Chinese proverb says “the skinny dead camel is still bigger than the horse”. China's Christian population is only about 10% of the total population. This base is still much smaller than the United States. Moreover, the degree of Christianization of the whole society in China can’t be compared with that of the United States. There is a trend of thought that since there is a decline of American Christianity, God will increase the number of believers in China and use China in a powerful way. I think this is correct because God is indeed raising Christians in China and He will greatly use Chinese churches. But does this mean that God has given up on the United States? This is not necessarily the case. I think God will use both China and the United States. The main need that China is facing now is still evangelization. If China and the United States are to be personified, China is like a child who needs to learn to know Christ. The United States is like a Christian teenager who grew up in a church and who needs to be saved from rebellion and learn how to truly experience God.

 

Fourth, each nation has their own beauty in the eyes of God. They also have their own missions in the hands of God. God created every snowflake differently, and the same is true for the nations. It is not simply a process of rising and falling. Rather, each country has a unique calling before God. For example, as mentioned in Isaiah 19, Israel is the inheritance of God, Egypt is the people of God, and Assyria is the work of God. “All things God works for the good of those who love him.” (NIV, Romans 8:28). God will not give up on the United States, nor will he give up on any of the other countries.

 

Fifth, there have been several great revivals in American history. Before each great revival, the spiritual state of the society was very low, the church was weak, and the people were committing crimes. But after the spiritual revival came, many of these situations changed. In other words, the reason why American society has a lot of progress and advancement is directly related to several spiritual revivals in American history. These great revivals brought more people to salvation. They have also brought spiritual revival, and improved people's morality. Therefore, in the face of darkness, we can use it as a canvas and background to write and create a spiritual revival. We can also become pessimistic and gloomy because of it, thinking that doomsday will come, and create an ostrich mentality and an escaping attitude. This isn’t right. Where there is darkness, there is always light. Darkness never overcomes the light.

 

Sixth, some false teachings of the modern church have made people think that doomsday and judgment will come soon. They believe the state of the world is hopeless and the church has fallen into the situation of Laodicea. Their view is that the Lord will come again, take the overcomer away, and send natural disasters for people to be punished. This view is problematic. If most people in the world don't want the Lord to be king, why did He return? I think the reason that the Lord returned is most probably because His chosen people on earth have won the battles and many countries have chosen to pursue Christ. This is why, the Lord has returned to reign on earth. To those few people who are not willing to repent, the Lord will discipline them. Now the Lord is already secretly a king on earth, and if the majority of people don’t welcome Him, why would He return to earth as king? If people don't welcome you, why come back? If I was Jesus I wouldn’t come back. So I believe the open return and reign of the Lord Jesus is due to the fact the majority of people want Him to come back. In other words, the former is teaching "escape theory" and the latter is teaching "winning theory” or “victorious Eschatology.”  Is the final ending of the church a failure or a victory? The church of God belongs to the Lord. If the church fails, it’s God's failure. If the church wins, it’s God's victory. I believe that the church as a whole will win in the end and the church in the United States will also win. God may discipline the United States in the middle of this process, but remember what I said earlier, judgment is not the aim. It is only a means. Redemption is the aim.

 

Seventh, the words that I personally received from the Lord have also made me think that the United States is still a promising place to live. In 2013 we weren’t happy living in Maryland.  My wife had a job opportunity open up in Pennsylvania so we were considering moving there.  One day, we drove to New York to see a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner. At that time, we didn't have our miracle baby. While we were driving home I was discussing this with my wife and a Christian sister, when I suddenly saw a prophetic vision. There was a stream of water whirling and spinning like a tornado and it rose into the sky. The spiritual inspiration at the time was that the flow of the Holy Spirit would flow from our place to the whole earth. I treated it as God’s leading and didn’t move out of Maryland. A few years later, the Lord appeared to me in a prophetic dream. In this dream, I stood on a high place; the Lord was at a higher level, and there were two rivers behind Him. Then the Lord said to me: "The two rivers will converge together." I foolishly said, "I will be building a canal in the upper reaches. That way, the rivers will be able to flow together” (Because I thought this would be the most cost effective).   But the Lord said, "No. The two rivers are going to meet in this place, but they are not ready yet”.  It seemed to me like the town of Columbia Maryland. Immediately, I was stepping on a hybrid wheel from the heights and I went down. As I went down, I saw the traffic jams on the muddy ground. But then, I wore a pulley-like shoelace again and brought my wife to re-enter the other side of the height, but the Lord had disappeared already.

 

Columbia is a small town in Maryland. The charismatic church that I attended at that time was in Columbia. We lived in a small town nearby. Later, I also received a lot of words from multiple prophets, saying that God would be with us, leading many people to come to our bases in the United States and then to the rest of the world for training and fulfilment. None of this has been accomplished yet. It is just the promise of the Lord. But these promises have led me to believe that God will greatly use the United States. And this is just the promise of the Lord to me. How many of the Lord’s promises to others are out there? What has the Lord prepared for the coming revivals in America? I don’t share my experience because I want to boast. I just want to show that God always has something planned which you may not be aware of. I personally heard many other testimonies from other Christian ministers that the Lord will raise up revivals in the US so it can accompany what I shared earlier.

 

Through the above analysis, I feel that the United States still has a bright spiritual future, but this doesn’t mean that the process will be smooth. In the context of our reading, and then looking at Leviticus 26, we see a principle of God's dealing with people and nations.

 

In Leviticus 26:1-2, God teaches the Israelites not to make idols for themselves and they must observe the Sabbath.

 

Leviticus 26:3-13 mentioned how God would bless the Israelites if they followed the law. This is similar to the situation in the United States. Since the United States exalted Christ and became the station of spreading the gospel to the nations, it was greatly used by God. Also, American Christians respected the Lord. Therefore, the Lord has greatly blessed the United States and it has become the most powerful country in the world in a very short period of time.

 

Leviticus 26:14-39 talks about how God would punish the Israelites if they didn’t follow the law. From the history of the Israelites, the Israelites rebelled against God and were severely punished by Him. So, will God discipline the United States or not? Perhaps He will. I remember that after the September 11th incident, someone asked the daughter of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, “Why God didn’t prevent this disaster from happening in the United States?” She said that, “It’s not that God didn’t prevent this disaster, rather we have driven God out of our classrooms, schools and families.” I am paraphrasing it and my quote may not be exactly correct. There are many prophecies saying that God will judge the United States and even allow foreigners to invade the United States. For example, Sadhu, a prophet of India, said that he saw a prophetic vision that Russia would invade the United States. Such kinds of prophecies are a lot on the Internet. But we don't know if this will happen or not. The American prophets Bob Jones and Rick Joyner also prophesied that the United States will have a second civil war.  They also prophesied that God’s people will win after this civil war, but if this prophecy is really true, then going through the civil war again will be a very difficult test for the United States.

 

Leviticus 26:40-46 says that if the Israelites confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, and if their uncircumcised hearts will be humbled, God will remember His covenant with Jacob, Isaac and Abraham and the land of Israel. Even if the Israelites abandon the land, God will still give peace to it. But God will not destroy them, because He is the Lord their God, and He made a covenant with their ancestors. God is very merciful. As Jeremiah said, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (NIV, Lamentations, 3:22-23). From here, the principle of how God treats His people is emphasized. Not only is it applicable to the Israelites, but it is also applicable to the United States today, or to any country. If you look at the history of Europe, Christianity once infiltrated every aspect of the society. But now you can see that Christianity has declined sharply in many countries in Europe. But this does not mean that God has completely renounced Europe. “With the Lord, a thousand years are like a day.” (NIV 2 Peter 3:8). We must look at the long river of history. Although some people will fall and God may punish, he will still save His people.

 

So the key here is that we must repent, be able to recognize our sins, and humble ourselves for our own sins and our ancestors' sins. But we know that it’s very difficult to make people humble themselves. That’s why God often allows certain things in our lives to compel us to be humble. God does discipline us in the environment, but as the author of Hebrews said, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” (NIV, Hebrews 12:11)

 

Many prophecies say that China will have a great spiritual revival. This great revival will spread to all parts of the world. Chinese Christians will preach the gospel into the big European and American Christian states.  This prophesy makes me feel that there is hope for the United States. In 2016, while my wife was unable to bear a child, I came to Oregon to attend a prophetic meeting and to seek healing. At that special meeting, the Lord said two things to me. The first was "Plan your family in 2016". At that time, I was confident that we would have children. In the end, we got our miracle baby in 2017. The second was, "Jairus Bible World Ministry came out of Me.   I really wasn’t comfortable leaving my church at that time to start my own ministry, but God encouraged me to do so. Before I went to this special meeting, I’d read a book written by the American prophet Chuck Pierce. He mentioned the Lord had visited him and told him that China would have a great revival in the future, and this great revival would spread to the whole world. One day after I came back from that conference, I was walking down the street and I was thinking about this. I suddenly heard the Holy Spirit asked me: "What is a great revival?" I immediately replied in the spirit: "I heard that one tenth of the Chinese people are Christians, isn’t this a great revival already?" At that time, my service was limited to Chinese students and scholars in the United States. I never thought of serving brothers and sisters in China. The Holy Spirit immediately asked me: "How about two out of ten?" That was when I began to practice listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit. I clearly heard the voice of Holy Spirit so I was shocked. Later, a Korean prophet prophesied over me saying, “God led you to the United States for training. Not only will He let you go to China to serve the Chinese church in the future, at the same time since God has improved your English skills, He will also let you serve the American church in the future”.

 

God has personally led me into various trainings. He is currently leading me to study the Doctor of Theology at the United Theological Seminary in the United States. God gave me many promises and prophetic dreams regarding the revivals to come in many nations. The spiritual resurgence is like the overflowing of rivers. Although these have not yet been achieved, they have given me confidence in the spiritual future of the United States. God will save the United States and He will continue to use the United States greatly. If we ever have the chance, we will share more about God's plan for China. But since this article is focused on America, I want to say continue to pray for America and the coming revival.  Though the United States may appear to be lukewarm or even apostate a hidden fire within a deep volcano may be waiting to erupt.

 

Looking at the current situation in China and the US, it’s hard to believe that they will have bright spiritual futures as each country has its own difficult situations.  It’s easy to see the dark side at night but it is not easy to see the light at night. We need to understand that the light is soon approaching especially when we are in the darkest hour of the night. Remember darkness never overcomes the light. (John 1:5)