Bible Study With Jairus

Bible Study with Jairus - Romans 15

Bible Study with Jairus – Romans 15

As we read Romans 15, we especially prayed that God would speak timely words to us and lead us in our current lives.

Today is December 6, 2020 and the US election results have not yet been released. The coronavirus pandemic is still raging in the United States, and there are various negative news reports and comments spreading beyond the USA. Scores of people have been working at home for a long time, and there are still many uncertainties. We don't know when the pandemic will end; when we can go back to work; whether it is safe to get a COVID-19 vaccine; who will be the president of the United States; what the future of the United States will be; and how China-US relations will develop. These questions and many others invoke and weaken the hearts of many people, including the hearts of Christians. Many feel confused and are even living in fear. Christians are no exception.

Under such circumstances, what timely words can Romans 15 provide us to comfort our hearts?

Let me first point out that the context of the book of Romans is somewhat similar to our society today. The gospel of the Roman church was very prosperous and believers had strong faith. However, serious racial conflicts occurred in Rome. The conflict between Jews and Gentiles escalated to the point that that all Jews were forced to leave Rome during the reign of Claudius (Acts 18:2). These serious racial conflicts within their society inevitably penetrated the church leading to conflicts between Jewish and Gentile believers within the Roman church.

During the time the Jews were ordered to leave Rome, Priscilla and Aquila had arrived in Corinth from Rome where they met Paul. All three of them were tentmakers. I assume Paul gradually learned about the situation regarding the Roman church through his contact with these two which led him to become burdened with visiting the Roman church. Since the church in Rome had not been founded by Paul and he had never visited it before, we may wonder why Paul was so burdened for them. In my recording of the reading of the book of Romans, I mentioned many times that Paul may have learned about the situation of the Roman church–the conflicts between Gentile and Jewish believers–through Priscilla, Aquila, and others. Therefore, he was particularly burdened to visit them in Rome. He hoped that on his way to preaching the gospel in Spain, he would visit Rome (Romans 15:23-24).

Although Paul had such hopes, he was not sure whether he would make it to Rome since he was mostly determined to go to Jerusalem to bring the financial offering of the Gentile church to the Jewish believers. Paul’s purpose in doing this was to increase fellowship between the Jewish and Gentile believers. Since the Gentile believers had received spiritual blessings from the Jews and Christ and the gospel came from them, Paul also believed that Gentile believers should bring material blessings to the Jews, especially the poor among the saints at Jerusalem (Romans 15:25-27).

However, it was revealed through the prophecy of Agabus and others that if Paul arrived in Jerusalem he would be bound, and his life would be in danger. Therefore, Paul is unsure whether he will really have the opportunity to go to Rome, visit the church there, and go on to Spain through Rome. These were uncertainties for him. Under such circumstances, Paul wrote the book of Romans which is composed of sixteen chapters. Paul wrote to expose the truth of the gospel to the people of the Roman church. In the book of Romans, he specifically mentions that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Jews and Gentiles are both sinners, but all are justified by faith (Romans 3:24).

Romans is like an exhortation letter written to the Jews and Gentiles. It talks about the sins of the Jews and the Gentiles but that God first revealed himself to the Jews (Romans 3:2) and that the ancestry of Christ can be traced back to the Jewish patriarchs (Romans 9:5). In other words, God blesses the Gentiles through the Jews, and Paul uses this illustration to exhort the Gentiles to accept the Jews. On the other hand, Paul also exhorts the Jews to accept the Gentiles because God accepts them.

Romans 15 is the penultimate chapter of the book of Romans. One more chapter and the book is finished. Therefore, at the beginning of this chapter, Paul once again talks about "how Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs" (ESV, Romans 15:8); and how God accepted the Gentiles (Romans 15:9-12).

We can envision the conflict between the Jewish and Gentile believers in the Roman Church. Perhaps it is no less than the racial conflict in American society today. The serious racial conflicts between African Americans and Whites in American society are also reflected in the church. Although I personally don't think that the former president Donald Trump is racist, he is portrayed as such by some media outlets and, therefore, opposed by most African American churches and believers. I personally believe that Trump was a vessel chosen by God to bring America back to the foundations of a Christian nation. But because racial conflicts penetrate the church, many Christians clash over whether to support Trump or Biden.

Some Christians who support Trump say, “Isn’t it obvious that God has chosen Trump to bring the United States back to its foundation of a Christian nation? Biden and left-wing supporters condone abortion and homosexuality. Shouldn't every Christian oppose this? If you support Biden, wouldn't it be like murdering babies and accepting homosexuality? Do you still need to think about this? Shouldn't you support Trump who favors protecting lives and opposes abortion?” Since many people who oppose Trump believe that Trump is a racist, they claim he does not accept immigrants and even encourages white supremacists trends. They point out his sarcasm when talking about immigrants as leverage for their argument. I know a lot of African American pastors and believers that oppose Trump, some of whom are my seminary classmates and friends on Facebook. According to statistics, in the 2016 presidential election, only 8% of African American voters voted for Trump. Chinese immigrants have split into two factions. One group supports Trump are are called "Trumpists;" the other party is termed "Anti-Trumpists". The two factions often criticize each other on the internet.

Coupled with the raging pandemic, we Christians live in such an environment. Many people worry about their lives and do not know what the future holds. A lady in our meeting recently commented, “In this situation, how can we hear God's voice clearly and know what to do?” She admitted that she can’t hear God's voice clearly and is often confused.

It can be comforting to see that Romans 15 is showing us that even an apostle like Paul, a person living in the center of God's will, did not fully understand God's leading. The Bible tells us that we know in part, and we prophesy in part (ESV, 1 Corinthians 13:9). In other words, even if we are prophets and God has spoken to us, what we hear and the pictures we see are not comprehensive. There’s a lot that may still be unclear. Many prophecies were given that Trump would serve a second term of presidency and even that he will eventually win again. However, many things in the natural do not line up with this. Regardless, I firmly believe this will come to pass, but I know many Christians are still in doubt. We have the prophetic words, but we are not sure of their details.

Paul’s situation was similar. He insisted on going to Jerusalem, but Agabus and others told him through the Holy Spirit that he might be bound when he gets there. Still, Paul insisted on going, even if it meant  sacrificing his life. Since Paul was not clear about whether he would eventually go to the church in Rome, so he wrote the book of Romans. But when he was in Jerusalem, the Lord stood beside him during the night and encouraged him: "Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome." (ESV, Acts 23:11) This was something Paul didn't know before he went to Jerusalem. When he was imprisoned in Jerusalem, then the Lord appeared to encourage him. It’s through the confirmation of Lord's prophetic words that Paul became sure he would reach Rome. He still hoped to travel from Rome to Spain, but the Bible and historical records unfortunately do not record in detail whether he had eventually arrived in Spain. Perhaps, he was already martyred in Rome before he arrived there. Even after receiving confirmation from the Lord, Paul still did not know about every step of his life.

Therefore, people expecting us (Christians) to know everything today is impossible. We don’t know when the coronavirus will end. We don’t even know who the president of the United States will be. But this is not important. The important thing is that Paul lived completely by faith and hope in God during his process, and he also encourages believers today to live by faith and hope during theirs. This is the inspiration I received when I read Romans 15. I encourage you brothers and sisters joining our Bible Study, not to focus on the difficulties and perplexities of the environment around you, but to focus on God's laws and His loving nature. We should focus on His promises as well. Just as God opened a path for the Israelites through the Red Sea and saved the Israelites from the hand of the Philistines, He will also save us from today's Pharaohs and enemies. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He is eternal. He saved us in the past, He will also save us now. Since He loves us, He will save us to the end (Hebrews 7:25).

Paul had experienced a great deal of suffering in his life, but he was full of endurance and hope in his suffering. He said, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.” (ESV, Romans 5:3-5) In his suffering, Paul developed faith, joy, endurance, character and hope. Hope did not put him to shame, but rather elevated him to stand victoriously before God.

Today, we Christians experience suffering. We may not fully understand God’s will and His presence in our society. Therefore, during these times, God wants us to learn how to endure and have faith amidst crises. We need to know God's laws and His loving nature. We need to also know and trust that He will save us even to the end. If we are rooted in Him and if we rest in Him, we will be saved because God’s word tells us, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” (ESV, Isaiah 30:15) Paul also said in Romans 16:20 (ESV), “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." At this time, we Christians should live out our faith with endurance and be full of hope for God's promises and salvation. We should also be full of peace and should not be restless with the changes happening around us including uncertain rumors. Remember, our victory lies in resting in the Lord! The result of certain things according to God will be manifest, but the process is also important. It is a process of maturing our faith and endurance. We cannot overlook the process.

The verses I prayed and sang this week were Romans 15:5-6 and 15:13. These are Paul's exhortations in this chapter. Verses 5-6 (ESV) say, "May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Here, Paul identified God as the God of endurance and encouragement! When the Jewish and Gentile believers in the Roman church were in conflict, Paul encouraged everyone to endure and accept each other in love. He prayed that the God of endurance and encouragement would allow Jewish and Gentile believers to accept each other in Christ Jesus that they may live in harmony with one another. This is also good encouragement for the American Church today. Verse 13 of Romans 15 (ESV) says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." I spent time this week praying this verse. This verse again mentions that God is the God of hope. Because of our faith, we are filled with joy and peace. We will also abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Several of us who read this verse felt that this is what the Holy Spirit is really saying to us today. In the current, difficult atmosphere of the United States, we must learn to be rooted in the Lord, exercise our faith and endurance, and be full of joy and peace. Let us be filled with the Holy Spirit and be full of hope for God and the future.

I recall hearing a preacher state that when the great revival is approaching, God will allow turmoil to happen in society. The turmoil includes plagues, wars, and disasters. The purpose of these is to shake people’s hearts and shake everything that can be shaken, so as to produce an unshakable kingdom (Hebrews 12:28). At this time, churches and Christians are like medical teams prepared by God. They are called and trained by God to find the injured, bind up their wounds and preach the gospel to them. The best time to preach the gospel is during times of turmoil. Turbulent environments are environments set up by God to shocks unbelievers by allowing them to see that believers are living in peace, joy, endurance and hope amidst the turbulence. Although Christians are touched by it, they demonstrate a trust in God thus showing unbelievers that God does exist. These unbelievers will therefore trust and accept the Lord. Unfortunately, many Christians are as panicky and fearful as the people of the world, thus they cannot fulfill God's call and become a witness for Jesus Christ. Instead of rushing out to the battlefield to heal the wounded and rescue the dying, some people are hiding in the trenches because of fear. I recall jokingly hearing that the people who hide in the trenches because of fear of death often cannot escape the cannonball attack. The turbulent atmosphere raised up by God is not for the purpose of judging the church, but the world. The church brings salvation and is a lighthouse and a doctor when the world experiences turmoil. If we, Christians, are afraid and anxious, how can we be a lighthouse in the storm?

In one of my prophetic dreams, I saw an angel stretching out a huge stick from heaven to the ocean on earth. He began to stir it and after which, I saw the waves surging. Many people’s houses were destroyed and people were running for their lives. I found myself, however, miraculously swimming to a safe place. My interpretation is that the time of turmoil is just beginning. The purpose of turmoil is to shake people's hearts and bring in the great harvest of the gospel. Those who are living God’s will, who testify to the Lord and preach the gospel, will receive His miraculous protection. We must seize the opportunity to preach the gospel. We must especially live in peace, joy, endurance and hope so that the God of peace can crush Satan under our feet.

Peace is our greatest weapon during chaotic times. John Wesley once preached the gospel to American Indians. His results were not good and instead very frustrating. On his way back to England, the ship encountered a huge wave during its voyage. The passengers on the ship screamed in terror, and Wesley was also very frightened. He then saw a group of Moravian brothers gathered very quietly in the front singing hymns. Their faith in God moved Wesley deeply and it caused Wesley to recognize his lack of faith. This became a spiritual turning point in Wesley’s life. Later, Wesley became a devoted servant of God and brought great revival to England. This shows that Christians living in faith and peace in God are a very strong testimony.

I still have countless prophetic dreams. In some of these dreams, God has told me that this world will go through a lot of fierce turmoil and immense spiritual warfare. But God has a beautiful purpose. Countless people will enter the unshakable Kingdom of God because of this. We should not simply hope that the turmoil will pass. We should learn to endure, have faith, and be full of joy, peace, and hope during the turmoil.

Peter said, "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (ESV, 1 Peter 1:6-9) Paul also had the same experience as Peter. His life was full of trials and hardships, but he lived in joy, peace, endurance and hope. Paul continually urges believers to pray and live out this same experience.

This is the inspiration and the timely words of the Holy Spirit that we received when reading Romans 15 in our group time. I hope these words will encourage any Christians who are currently dealing with anxiety. Don't worry, God sits on the throne and reigns. He controls everything. We just need to turn our hearts to Him. If we sin, we should repent and. We may also pray that the world repent and be saved. God will surely guard us amidst our difficulties! Since He loves us, He will save us to the end. Because Jesus Christ, our high priest, lives forever!

We should become ministers of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit (ESV, Romans 15:16). This is God's will for us! May we receive endurance and encouragement from the God of endurance and encouragement! May we get hope from the God of hope!

Bible Study with Jairus - My Spiritual Biography

SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 

The Journey to Faith

I was born in the Hebei province of China. My hometown was a small village in the south Hebei province. It is adjacent to the Henan province and is located near a river. My family was poor but started to earn more money when my father began to work at the local township auditing department. My mother stayed in the village to grow crops and feed pigs. In spite of the hardships, my family’s financial situation was more stable than other families in the village.

As a child, I always wondered what our purpose was on earth. I would often think about this in my yard while looking up at the stars. Sometimes I sat on a small hill near my village wondering, “Where will I be in the future?”

My older sister enrolled in college in 1981 and was the only one in our county to be accepted into a college that year, which ended up being a huge event. Not only did the local teaching authority pay a lot of attention to this, but it also changed the mind of my grandpa and other family members in regards to the possibility of success. It was not common for a child from a rural village to enter college. Also, people in the village were prejudiced against females. So, my grandpa said that my brother and I must be accepted into college.

When it was my turn to go to college, I was accepted into a college in Beijing. However, I faced many hardships. Not only was I pressured financially, but I also had to face inequalities. There are always prejudices against people from rural or poor areas in China. I felt hurt inside and sometimes became very shy and withdrawn. After four years of college, I stayed and worked there for another four years. I wasn’t satisfied with that life, and I still felt empty and didn’t know what my purpose in life was.

Because of this, I decided to study abroad, which is a dream of many Chinese students. I got a joint offer from the London School of Economics in the UK and the University of Southern California. The tuition for the university in London was around 10,300 pounds, but I only had 10,000 pounds. By the third semester, I ran out of money. I did not have enough money to pay rent, tuition, and living expenses. I was also unable to find a job. I asked my family to help, and they gave me 1000 pounds. The university later offered help with my tuition, so that problem was solved.

At this point in time, I began to look for a part-time job. One day, I was lingering in a park near McDonald’s when I heard people singing hymns. This attracted me to their gathering in the park. They were a group of Christians. They also portrayed through a play how Jesus was crucified. I was so touched and could not help but cry.

One sister named Mary came to me and shared with me about God. I asked her if she had ever seen God. How can you say there is a God if you have never seen Him? She said she did not believe it either when she was a student at Oxford. But one day, when she went to a meeting with her father, she was touched when her father was sharing something about the invisible God with other Christians. She thought that was probably God because she did not have it. She sent me a Bible later and asked me to come to her church, but I never had a chance to visit because I had already started to work at McDonald’s part-time. I worked the night shift, starting from 8:00PM to 3:00AM or 4:00AM, which was very tiring. Sometimes I tried to get up in the morning to visit her church, but I did not have the strength to wake up.

I had already finished my first year of school in London at that time, and I was looking forward to coming to the United States to finish my second-year study, but I did not have the money. I worked out a way to get the school to send me the I-20 form[1] first, and then I got the F-1 student visa as well. But I still did not have the money. I was hoping to get a scholarship from the University of Southern California, but they replied very late and only gave me a tuition waiver for 8 credits. I had to finish 24 credits to graduate.

It was a painful struggle to decide if I should come to the US. I had a visa, but I did not have enough money. I really didn’t want to go back to China at that time for a few reasons, and I was not satisfied with my one year study in the UK. Most importantly, I felt I was seeking something, but hadn’t found it yet.

My life was full of anxiety. I cried out in my innermost being, saying, “Whoever gives me peace, I will believe in him.” Finally, I decided to come to the US with a one-way ticket and a couple of hundred dollars. When I was on the airplane, I didn’t even have a plan or know what I would do. On the first night in the US, I stayed in a classmate’s house. The second night, I had to move out, but I had no place to go. Next, I signed the housing contract with the school and moved into a dorm, but I could not sleep that night. The next morning, I went to the registrar’s office, but I couldn’t decide if I should register. I knew that if I registered, I would have to pay the fee. If I didn’t register, I would just go back to China immediately.

I felt torn between the two choices, so I wandered outside of the office from morning until late afternoon. It was a painful experience. Eventually, I decided to go back to China because I realized that I could not survive here. I had already fulfilled my dream by coming to America, so I started to look for some Chinese students who could tell me where to find a travel agency to buy a plane ticket.

Before I did this, I cried out to God again from the deepest part of me: “God, I am such a sinner; do you still remember me?” I remember exactly how I said it, and it was in English, not in Chinese. After that, I felt peace in my heart and decided to go back to China. I found a couple of Chinese students and asked them if they knew where to buy plane tickets, but they told me they had no idea.

Later, another student walked across the street, but I couldn’t tell if he was Chinese or Korean. He looked Korean, so I asked if he was Korean. He was actually Chinese and a brother from the Church in Los Angeles associated with the ministries of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. I asked him about the travel agency, and he asked me why I wanted to go back. I told him the reason, and he told me that I should not go back, and I should finish my studies here.

He brought me to the Brother House near campus, and I fellowshipped with a church elder and other members who lived in this home.  The Brother House was a home where several Christian men lived together. The brothers were willing to let me move into their house. The brothers even agreed to let me pay the rent later if I had no money. The brothers taught me how to pray, and we prayed together before we went to see the housing department and my department director. The housing department agreed to cancel my contract, and the department director agreed that all the 8 credits of scholarship were for the first semester. Originally, 4 credits were for the first semester, and 4 credits were for the second semester. As an international student, I was required to register at least 8 credits to become a full-time student. All of my problems seemed to be solved within a couple of days! I even found a part-time job on campus to help cover food and other needs.

I still didn’t have money for my second semester’s tuition, but the brothers taught me to pray unto God. They told me that the Lord would take care of my needs if I dedicated myself to the Lord. I also felt sinful when I first believed in the Lord, so I prayed desperately for Him to take care of my needs and forgive all my sins. It took about six months for me to feel the assurance of forgiveness, and with the help of our department director and fellow believers, I was able to pay the tuition later.

However, I continued to struggle with financial problems. Upon graduation, I couldn’t afford the monthly meal expenses because I no longer held a job on campus. During this time, I worked at a toy store for a little while. I ended up quitting this job because the boss was constantly cursing at employees. When I was in desperate need, I received a call from a Chinese magazine that had received my application and wanted to interview me. I went there by bus, and at one bus stop, the bus driver told me I was going in the wrong direction. I was actually going in the right direction, but I didn’t know. So I started to walk in the opposite direction to take another bus. While I was walking a little bit, a van stopped by me in the street corner and asked me where I was going. A Hispanic man gave me a ride to the company, and I arrived for my appointment at exactly 9:00AM. Later I thanked him and asked him why he helped me. I also called him brother when I thanked him. It turned out he really was a brother in Christ. He said that he was touched when he saw me walking and decided that he would drive me wherever I needed to go. He also told me that he would generally never stop for a stranger since he had three kids in the van in car seats. They were on their way to a daycare center.

I ended up getting the reporting job at the Chinese magazine. But when the boss asked me to have an interview in a certain place, I told her that I did not have a car yet. She cried out, “My God!” The other boss later asked me to get a car as soon as possible. Before that, I had to take the bus to work. At that time, a brother who moved out of the brother’s house left a 1984 Lincoln Town Car for me to use, but I did not have a driver’s license. I failed a couple of times but finally got it by the due date my boss gave me. Later on, I learned the owners of this magazine were also Christians.

During that month, I was planning to come to work by bus, but just a couple of days after I started work, all the MTA(Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority) bus drivers in Los Angeles went on strike for one month, so I was unable to take the bus. Luckily, one private bus was still running from my company to downtown LA, and a Korean brother dropped me off at the bus stop when he went to work. After I got off work, I took the bus downtown and waited for the brothers to take me home. This sometimes took a couple of hours, and I used this time to recite the verses from the book of John while I was waiting. I was so touched by the brotherly love at that time.

This difficult time had led me to receive the Lord and to dedicate myself to Him. In the journey of my belief, there were many miracles. After I started to work, my financial situation got better and better. The Lord’s hand was still guiding my life. I got the reporting job in November of 2003. That year, I overheard some believers talking about the first New Jersey Chinese Speaking Perfecting training in August of that year. This is an annual Chinese speaking conference within our denomination. They were talking about how the Lord’s Spirit was working powerfully there, and how a brother from The Church in Riverside was completely changed after participating in this training. I was determined to join this training in 2004, and I knew I would experience big changes by attending. I felt this plan was not from me, but it was the Spirit leading me.

In that meeting in August 2004 at the Church in Franklin, the Spirit was everywhere. The main topic in that training session was to dedicate your whole being to the Lord and to prepare for His second coming. Everyone was encouraged to dedicate himself or herself to the Lord. I refused to do so even though many brothers urged me to. The second to last time, two brothers urged me again to dedicate myself to the Lord, but I refused again. They looked at me with judgment in their eyes, but I didn’t take it personally. However, I felt the judgment from the Lord strongly. I felt like he was reminding me by saying, “How many times did you say that you would dedicate your life to me if I did certain things for you?” It only took me a second to recall all my prayers in which I had asked the Lord to take care of my needs and promised that I would dedicate my life to Him. I had forgotten these prayers a long time ago, but the Lord always remembers.

That night, I knelt and prayed to the Lord. “Lord, I still have a hard time believing the truth about your second coming. I would dedicate myself to you if you revealed this to me.” Later, when I fell to sleep, I felt two people were fighting for my heart. The Lord was stronger, and He took it. The next day I dedicated my life to the Lord. While one brother was talking about the New Jerusalem, I felt the heavens open in my spirit. The Lord spoke to me and said, “If the body of Christ, the New Jerusalem, is built up, I will come back.” This proved to me that only those who had dedicated their lives to the Lord could see this vision, just like many brothers had told me.

I was completely changed when I came back from the training. I changed a lot of bad habits and started to pursue the truth. I read the Bible and the book Life Study by Witness Lee every day. The local believers were so surprised that I had changed.

 

Overcoming the Past

My father was looked down upon by the villagers and his coworkers due to his character and inability to socialize with others. Many people considered him to be a socially awkward person. At one point, he started to work in a brick factory in a nearby village. He started as a laborer, then he became a keeper of the factory warehouse, and after that, he became an accountant. He worked long hours, and he was not able to be there for me emotionally while I was growing up. After this, my father was able to get a government job with the help of a family member who held a position in local government. But my father was still looked down upon by his coworkers even at his new job. His coworkers would point at me and say things like, “Even though his father was such a nerd, his sons are doing great.”  But these words hurt me greatly. As a result of this, I never learned how to socialize with others, so I was often considered socially awkward as well. It was not as noticeable before high school because we lived in a small town where people did not have as many differences. It became more of an issue later when I went to a big city like Beijing to study.

I developed low self-esteem because of my circumstances. Not only did I see my father’s failures in his life, but I inherited some of his weaknesses as well. So whenever would I fail at something, I would pity myself. I would think, “How can I amount to anything because I am the son of my father.” This was a lie, but I kept repeating it, and I believed it. This became a shadow in my life for many years. On the one hand, this made me work hard to try to not be like my father, but on the other hand, nothing made me more upset than when my wife said to me, “You are exactly like your dad.” I never wanted to be like him. I told myself I would study hard to acquire the skills to excel in life as I knew I was not strong enough physically to fight with others, and I didn’t know how to socialize. I felt like at least I needed to be good at something so people would respect me. I felt this drive to excel in my early life, so I wouldn’t end up like my father.

My father was not good at his new job or good at socializing with others. I felt if he had been good at either one, he would have been in a much better position. If I reflect back now, I believe my father was probably having some emotional issues. He didn’t talk much and only focused on his basic needs, like eating and sleeping a lot. Because of this, he didn’t take much responsibility as a husband or father.

As a result, my mother shouldered most of the responsibilities at home, even though my father was the main breadwinner as he had a stable job in the local government. People often made fun of him because they thought that he got his job from the help of others and not because of his own ability. I remember one instance in the village when the leaders were giving us a hard time in regard to allocating some land for us to build our house. I saw my mom arguing fiercely with them and accusing them of their wrongdoings. My father would never do this due to his weak character. After a few days, my mom ended up inviting these leaders to eat at our home. She was bribing them or trying to make peace with them. She finally resolved the issue, and we got the land we needed to build our house. My mom was a strong woman, and she also had a lot more friends than my father. She loved me very much, especially since I was her youngest son, and I learned a lot from her. I developed perseverance and flexibility.  Even though I encountered many difficult moments in my life down the road, I never gave up. I became even more resilient, and my will to succeed became even stronger after I experienced failures. My wife also saw this quality in me, and she joked, “You are just a little Xiao Qiang that will never die.”  Xiao Qiang is a nickname for a cockroach in Chinese. People use it in a sarcastic manner to describe someone with a strong and resilient character that you just can’t kill, even as you can never seem to eradicate cockroaches completely. During my childhood, I got bullied a lot by my peers due to my weak build and lack of male protection at home. But through this, I developed a strong will because I kept fighting even if I lost. I feel this character trait is the main reason that God is using or calling me to do His will.  The call that God has entrusted me with requires a lot of perseverance and discipline. It may be God who was training me through these circumstances in my early life.

In spite of this, I was still timid and afraid to step out because of my fears. In recent years the Lord miraculously delivered me from some of these strongholds. I don’t have time to go through all of my experiences with deliverance here, but I will share one example. I did end up forgiving my father and loving him after my conversion to Christianity.  This issue became especially clear to me during an inner healing session, where a minister told me that it was the enemy's plan to put an end to God’s calling on my life by attacking my father. I believe he was experiencing difficulty expressing his emotions because of this.

 

The Leading of the Holy Spirit in My Life

I took the college entrance exam three times before finally being accepted into a college in Beijing. When I was selecting a major and a college, I was planning on studying philosophy at a renowned university in Beijing. One day around noon, at the time I usually rest, I had a hard time sleeping. I remembered something others had told me during my high school years. A friend of mine told me I would be a good journalist because he thought I spoke eloquently. So I decided to choose journalism as a major in another college that focused on liberal arts instead. I realized years later that this was the leading of the Holy Spirit, even though at that time, I did not know Him. God had led me on a journey to study media and become familiar with these areas. I used to dream of becoming a TV host and having a successful career in this field. But after coming to the US, I started to spend most of my time learning about spiritual things, and my dream of being successful in media died down gradually. One day in 2016, I received a prophetic word from a woman, and she said God wanted me to return to media. It was God who gave me the desire initially. I also had a prophetic dream where I was taken to a heavenly meeting.  Many who were called to TV evangelism were gathered there. I was led to a large TV studio, and I saw a poster that relayed the reason I was chosen to be part of this ministry. The sign said, “eloquent in speaking,” just like my high school classmate had told me. I also had more than a dozen dreams in which either the Lord or various angels asked me to start making films. I figured the media or films would play an important role in the coming revival in China, which I personally feel I am called to be part of. I also had a dream in which a spiritual being or angel decreed to me in English that I would soon be on national TV. I also had many dreams where my cell phone would grow larger and larger and eventually turn into a big TV. Currently, my ministry work is mainly done by using my phone to record audio for social media sites.

Even though all these dreams may be true now, I had no knowledge of my future while I was in college. The liberal arts college had more students from affluent families than regular colleges, so I experienced culture shock when I started. I will share an experience to illustrate this. At the beginning of the first semester, I met some classmates chatting in a restaurant near the main cafeteria. I just went to say hello and later left. They didn’t know that I was leaving so they ordered a lot of food. I never thought of joining them because the cost of one meal could cost 1/4 of my monthly expenses for food. They were confused that I did not come back to join them, so they thought I was strange. Situations like this continued to occur and magnified my personal weaknesses, such as lack of social skills and other flaws. I started to develop some hostile relationships with others, which made my life miserable, and I became even more closed. In some situations, I had been taken advantage of, so I figured the reason my life was miserable was that I came from a rural area, and people were prejudiced against me. Another issue was that I was too simple and naive and not sophisticated enough to survive in this environment. During this time, an old Chinese history book called Thick Black Theory from 1911 was very popular. The book presents an idea that the more hardened your heart is, the more successful you will be in Chinese society. The original author may have intended to expose this negative culture, but some people used it for different purposes. Because I wasn’t in a good place, I had thoughts of taking advantage of others even though I knew it wasn’t like me. This left me with regrets later on and became a turning point for me to repent and receive salvation.

During my difficult time in college, I realized something. In my class, many students wanted to stay in Beijing after graduating. But only a few bright students or students who have family connections could find jobs in Beijing because China has a Hu Kou[2] system to limit the number of people staying in Beijing. I knew I had no chance of being one of them. I found out that being a graduate student almost guaranteed that I could stay in Beijing, so I decided to take the graduate entrance exam. I focused all my energy on preparing for this exam, and I was very confident that I would be successful. Amazingly I scored third among all the students who tried to enter the graduation program for my major, and they recruited a dozen every year. However, I failed the subject of politics by a few points. I had a really bad headache during the exam, so I did not score well even though I knew the material. I now believe this was God’s intervention, as I never had any issues with headaches. During my college years, I learned from some friends at Beijing University that people can take TOFEL or GRE exams to come to the US to study. I felt naturally drawn to this idea. But I was not sure if I really wanted to leave China. I told myself I would stay in China forever if I could get into Chinese graduate school successfully. If not, I would go to the US to attend graduate school. I was never good at planning or having a balanced approach to life. So after I failed to enter the graduate program, I did not have a job either, and I fell into despair. Only a couple of students from my class were able to get jobs in Beijing, and I did not want to go back to my hometown or go to other places to work. I wanted to stay in Beijing as did many people, and unexpectedly a new opportunity opened up. There was a student from another university in one of the departments in my college that could not work out some legal issues for recruitment after spending many months interning there. Everyone wanted him to stay, but he could not violate the legal bond with his sponsor in his own province. By this time, some of the students had already found jobs, so one teacher recommended me for this position. The department head immediately agreed to recruit me after a brief interview. It was considered a great privilege to be recruited by our own college, and students got full boarding with a citizenship status in Beijing and could become a university or state employee.  So many students wanted to get this position but, they could not. Eventually, this news got out, and it caused turmoil. Other faculty members who were supportive of other students got into fights with this director to try to replace me, and all kinds of rumors were circulated on campus. But the more they pushed, the more firmly this director wanted me to stay. I ended up getting a permanent job in Beijing, and I became a citizen of Beijing. I know there are still people who are mad at me because they didn’t get that job.

Even though I got the job, it didn’t satisfy me, and the thought of going out of the country to study still lingered in my mind. I could not take the graduate exam in China again, as the regulation requires that university employees must get approval from a supervisor to do so. My supervisors were not willing to do so. The only way to apply for graduate school was to apply internationally, and there were no regulations for that. Many students in universities in Beijing were very enthusiastic about studying abroad in the late 1990s. The thought could even be considered contagious, and I was influenced by it through my friends at Beijing University.  After I tried for several years, I finally got an offer from the London School of Economics and the University of Southern California in their joint Media and Globalization program.

At this point, my story connects with my testimony at the beginning of this assignment. It was in London that I started to encounter God. I would later meet some Christians who shared their faith with me and touched my life in a profound way. I did not sleep well at that point because I started to feel I was a sinner because of some things I did in college during my darkest moments. I had no peace, so I would often go out to a nearby soccer field to shout out in English what came to my mind. I heard this was a good way to practice English by speaking out loud whatever came to mind. So I went to shout out all my anxieties and pains and regrets to heaven. I thought I was the only one there, but later I believed it was the Holy Spirit that was there to convict me. Only later on did I learn that the glory of God can also be translated as the weight of God. I certainly felt the weight at that time, and I felt like the sky pressed down upon me  to such an extent that I could not breathe. It was an encounter with God, even though I only realized this years later.

 

 

 

Maturing in Faith

My life was full of miracles and difficult moments one after another. I cannot share all of them in this short biography, but I will share a few stories that impacted my spiritual life greatly.

My spiritual journey continued in 2004. I met my wife at the church I was attending in March 2006, and we got married in November 2006. We were on fire for God, and we planned to evangelize to all of our family. We brought a suitcase of Bibles when we returned to China that winter. When my mother-in-law[3] saw my wife return wearing the clothes that she left China in and with no money, but only a suitcase of Bibles, she was very upset and threw the Bibles down the staircase. With tears in our eyes, we went to my home town. A Christian sister received us, hugged my wife, and they both cried. When we returned to the US, my wife struggled with depression because her communication with her mother was cut off. She did not speak to her mom for almost a year, and we fell into despair again. We experienced many trials in our marriage. Sometimes my wife would say that she never had any arguments with her mother before our marriage. Therefore, if she had not married me, it would not have happened. I argued that I was also a victim, and she should not blame me. This tension kept building, and the Lord used this to break me. In August 2006, I moved from Los Angeles to a new job in New Jersey in order to be closer to my wife, who was a graduate student at the University of Maryland. But after marriage, I quit my job to join her in Maryland at the end of 2007. I lost my H-1B status and became her dependent on F-2 visa[4]. The church I was attending tried to help me obtain a religious visa, but it was denied.  The process of obtaining a religious visa was very strict when it came to qualifications. The church I was attending was not well off financially, and I lacked formal seminary training.  One day we were arguing again, and my wife said to me, “Look, you can’t make money, and you can’t help by applying for a green card either. Let’s not talk about those. Now you even don’t care for me.” I was completely broken. I felt utterly helpless. I was volunteering in my church at the time and planned to serve full time in the future. In March 2009, my wife told me I had to find a job before the end of April. I fell into despair again. It was very difficult for me to find a job in the DC metro area. I just prayed to God and said, “I know it seems impossible, but I will put my trust in you.” It was another prayer out of the deepest part of my inner being. However, a miracle happened again. Against all the odds, I got a full-time job on April 20 2019, working for a non-profit organization in the DC area. Even more amazingly, we got our green cards in a very short time through the sponsorship of my company. Later on, my wife and her mother were able to reconcile, and her mom came to stay with us when she visited. She was also baptized during one of these visits. Currently, she lives with us and helps us to take care of our daughter. She is a great help to us.

We soon experienced another trial in 2010. We recognized we were having trouble getting pregnant after 4 years of marriage. My wife is a physician, and she started to propose trying in vitro fertilization. In 2010 we did our first round of IVF, and we had high hopes of getting pregnant with twins. However, they did not survive beyond three days. My wife fell to depression again.  Both my mom and I were praying that we can have our child. But I prayed to Jesus and she prayed to her idol.

 

 

Who is the Real God? Jesus or Buddha?

My great-grandfather and grandfather are devout believers of Lü Zu, who is a figure in the Taoism religion. It is said in a local legend that one day, the Japanese were preparing to attack our village, but because of the heavy fog, the Japanese got lost. Thus, they were not able to enter our village. The villagers thought that it was a theophany of Lü Zu, and they built a special temple for him, but the temple was demolished during the Cultural Revolution. However, after the Cultural Revolution, the temple was restored. The people rebuilt the temple, and the incense was flourishing, showing the power of faith and even the superstition of the faith among the people. I had not seen my great grandfather, but I heard from my family that my great grandfather was a former enthusiast of the Lüzu Temple. When the temple was being rebuilt, my grandfather also donated wood, and I saw it with my own eyes. Ever since childhood, I saw in my grandfather’s house that he was worshipping Lü Zu.

My hometown also had a lot of Buddhist believers, and my mother had always worshipped Guanyin Bodhisattva. The location of our house was the base of a Bodhisattva temple that was previously demolished. Therefore, villagers said that our family is in the "West Temple."  Before my mother received her faith in Jesus Christ, one of her reasons for not believing in Christ was, "Our family is in the West Temple, how can we not believe this?" Although my mother was not on good terms with my grandfather for most of her life and she didn’t worship Lü Zu, she highly respected the sorcerer in the Lüzu Temple in our village. This sorcerer did not have a good education or an affluent family background. Suddenly one day, he just seemed to be possessed by a deity and became a sorcerer. Everyone often asked him questions and treated him similarly to how Christians treat prophets. This sorcerer was a frequent and respected guest at the Lüzu Temple. When I was young, he used to come to my house, and I disliked him very much because I didn't believe in anything at that time. Like my father, who was deeply influenced by communist education, I really hated this feudal superstition.

I became a Christian when I came to the United States. I have always evangelized my family, but the effect has been very limited. My mom always said, “We should go our own way. You believe in your Christ, I believe in my Bodhisattva.” I took my parents to Qingdao, China, one year, and my friend, a Christian brother, took us out to eat. He tried to evangelize my parents during the meal, but my father left in anger because of it.

My wife and I were married for ten years, but we had experienced 10 years of infertility. In addition to seeking medical help, I also prayed that God would heal us. My mother was also anxious, and she prayed to Bodhisattva, asked the sorcerer, and visited all kinds of idols around my hometown, asking them when we would have children. In 2010 our first IVF failed, which was devastating for my wife and I. During this time, my parents came to the United States for a short visit. After coming in contact with the gospel for a time, my mother intended to accept the gospel to please us. However, when she saw the situation we were in, she did not believe in the Lord, and when she left, she told me instead, "You two believe in Jesus, but you were not blessed. Without a child, you two will quarrel and will not agree. I will not believe in this Lord." After returning, she still worshipped Bodhisattva, and her heart had become more hardened. Because she read a little bit of the Bible in her short time in the United States, I took her to participate in the activities of our church in New Jersey. When she saw people being baptized, I encouraged her to accept the Lord. She seemed to have some hesitation, but on the side, my dad was trying his best to stop her from believing in the Lord. She decided she didn’t want to, and in the end, she was not baptized.

We seemed to have gone back to square one, but I still believed in our God, and my mother still worshipped her Bodhisattva. I then said to my mom, “You worship your Bodhisattva, I believe in my God. We are all praying for us to have children. Why don’t we play a game? Let’s see if your Bodhisattva or my God is reliable.” At that time, my faith was not sufficient because God hadn’t promised and talked with me about our miracle baby yet. I just relied on a Christian's basic belief in God.

Six years had gone by so quickly, and we had tried IVF five or six times, but each time it failed. Finally, the doctor at a big hospital in the United States gave us the diagnosis that we could never give birth naturally, and we fell into despair. I felt like I was forced to leave the evangelical church in 2015 to seek healing for infertility. I went to many different churches in the United States to ask for help, which included charismatic churches, and I sought prayer and healing. I had also participated in countless charismatic healing conferences but never saw any results. In January 2016, I found out by chance that there was a prophetic meeting in a small town in Oregon in the Midwestern United States. I signed up, and I flew from Maryland to attend this special meeting. A speaker named Dutch Sheets was preaching at the meeting, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit. He said, "You are here today to attend the special meeting. Don't think it is accidental. God is leading you. Beginning today, you will clearly hear God’s voice that you’ve never had before.” When I heard this, I was moved and greatly encouraged in my spirit. I strolled and walked into a Target store during the break and said to God, “Please speak to me clearly today.”

I inexplicably walked to a place inside the Target store, and I saw a Christian bookstore. I could see the inside through the glass window, and there was a bench outside the door. I happened to see the glass window of the bookstore while I was sitting on the bench. Not long after I sat down, my eyes caught sight of a 2016 calendar with the words “2016 Prepare Your Family”. I heard God say to me: "Prepare your family in 2016. You will have a child this year." I was shocked! I had never heard God clearly like this before. I was ecstatic! I immediately took a photo of this calendar and called my wife to tell her that God had spoken to me and that He told me that we would have a child this year. My wife told me to buy this calendar as a keepsake. After I bought it, I went back to the bench, and just as I sat down, I noticed that there was a picture of a Bible hanging on the wall of the Christian bookstore. It was the same picture I found when I was casually searching on the Internet when I first started the "Jairus Bible World Ministry." I use this picture every time I upload a recording. Then I heard God say to me, "Jairus Bible World Ministry came from me." The church I was attending didn’t encourage the members to have their own ministry, so I was not sure at the time if I was doing the right thing. But once again, God spoke to me clearly. Thus, I slowly overcame my fear of people and started my own ministry.

To my surprise, I clearly heard God's words, but I didn’t know when it would be accomplished. In spite of this, my confidence had increased. I returned to China for the Chinese New Year in February 2016, and I had widely publicized to my family that God would give me a child this year. My sister is a straightforward person, and she said dubiously, “Since younger brother said this in advance if it is true, it seems that the God that he believes is true.” However, my mother was still hard-hearted. At that time, I learned a few healing prayers from the charismatics. When I saw people, I prayed, healing prayers over them. My two cousins also struggled with infertility, so I prayed healing prayers over them, and I prayed to God to let them have children. My mother saw this, and she was very upset. She said, “You are not able to solve your own problem. Don't make a fool of yourself.” My mom still didn’t believe in God.

I went back to the United States, and a few months passed by, but nothing changed. Instead, Satan’s attack on our family was even fiercer, causing my wife and me to quarrel often. I was really in agony, and I prayed for something that may not conform to traditional theology. On May 12, 2016, I said to the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, the charismatic Christians are teaching that we should establish a more intimate relationship with You. I don’t know how many times I have prayed to Heavenly Father and Jesus. Can you ask Heavenly Father and Jesus for me when this miracle will be accomplished?” I slept, and I had a strange dream in the evening. In the dream, a woman pointed at a man’s back and said to me, “Didn't He tell you that you will have a child next month?” I answered her in the dream, “No, I know in my spirit that this will happen soon, but I didn’t know that it will be next month.”

God is not a human being. The way God speaks is mostly through the language of the spirit and often through pictures. The Bible often uses a woman to represent the Holy Spirit, such as the woman in Luke 15, who had swept the house and searched carefully for lost silver coins. Generally, Christians think that she represents the Holy Spirit. I think that the woman in my dream was the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and the person whose back I saw was Jesus Christ’s. I guess the Holy Spirit was telling me, “Didn’t Jesus Christ tell you that you will have a child next month?” I told my wife about my dream, but she didn’t believe it. Instead, Satan once again launched a fierce attack on us. Because of a small issue, my wife was very angry with me, and she barely spoke to me for two weeks. This pained me greatly until May 28, 2016, when my wife found herself miraculously pregnant, and she sent a text message to me: "You won the lottery." We had also reconciled. This incident brought a lot of healing to my wife and me. As David said, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (NIV, Psalm 30:5). The enemy had violently attacked the plans that God had for us, but in the end, God was victorious through us. Our miracle baby was born without any issues and perfectly healthy in early 2017.

When my wife was still in the first trimester, I had not told my mother yet. One day, I was giving out some cash tips in a group of friends and relatives in the WeChat group for a Chinese holiday. My mother was very sensitive and asked if something had happened, so I told her after and she was very happy. Sometime after the baby was born, I was on a video call with my mother, and I asked her about Jesus because I had not mentioned it for a long time since she had previously refused to believe in Him. She said obediently, “I’m willing to believe in Jesus Christ.” I said, “Why?” She replied, “Isn’t your fact placed before me?” My mother finally admitted that my God is the true God. This game ended with my victory.

In 2018, I went back to China to visit my family. I baptized my father and mother into the name of Jesus Christ.

 

Convergence

During this process of seeking healing for my wife, I was led by the Holy Spirit to come out of my evangelical church and begin to learn more about other denominations, including charismatic churches.  I learned about United Theological Seminary through Global Awakening. During this process, I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and started to speak in tongues. I also earnestly pursued the other gifts of the Holy Spirit, including prophecy and healing. During one of the difficult times of our barrenness, my wife sometimes pushed me into a corner by talking about divorce. I knew she did not mean it and that she was trying to see how far she could push me. She wanted to see if I would still love her if we didn’t have a baby. Unfortunately, we knew many Chinese families were broken because of this issue. One day when she was pushing me again, I literally heard Satan whisper to me, “just say yes.” I felt I could no longer bear this burden anymore, so I prayed to God, “if you don’t strengthen me right now, I will fall, and I can no longer serve you as I will lose my testimony before you.” Immediately I felt a bolt of electricity poured down from my head toward my entire body, and the grace of the Lord once again sustained me. During this difficult time, I was led into the wilderness to go through a series of trials and tests. The Lord sustained me from the beginning to the end.

Recently I met a Korean prophet who told me that the Holy Spirit had led me every step of my life. This resonated in my heart. One night I had a dream, and in this dream, I found an enormous bird with wings of various colors spread out all over the sky. In the corner of the sky, there was a baby bird learning to fly. But the baby birds starting falling, and the big bird swooped down to carry the baby bird on its back, and they sored in heaven. This dream occurred a couple of times, and then I heard God speak to me in the dream. “I will train you myself like the big bird is training the baby bird.” I felt this dream could be from God. My life so far felt like a thrilling ride of a roller coaster. Through the trials, miracles, and encounters, I was now convinced I was in the hand of God. I struggled for a long time, but I learned to rest in God even though many times, I didn’t see Him or understand what He was doing. But each time, I had greater faith than I did before. God is in control of everything, whether it is regarding our personal lives or world affairs.

One of the greatest struggles, in the beginning, was that I thought I was not smart enough to be used by God. I even felt that I was stupid because of so many failures in my life. I heard a story that greatly encouraged me by D. L. Moody.  He was feeling inferior because of his limited education, but one day he heard a word from an English preacher, the world is yet to see how God can use and will use a person who is absolutely consecrated to God to change the world. D. L. Moody was encouraged greatly and consecrated himself to God, and God used him greatly. I also gained a lot of strength from this word and consecrated myself to God. I know it was not my wisdom but the empowerment of the Holy Spirit who was working in me.

After I left my denomination in 2015, many brothers and sisters who loved and cared for me during my early Christians years shared their concerns. Some thought I was deceived by evil spirits or taken over by my own ambition or crazy charismatic teachings. About a month ago, I woke up one morning feeling very tired, so I laid down again to sleep a little more. As I fell back asleep, I had a dream that I was with a brother who was a friend of mine in the Brother’s House I used to live when I first came to the US. This brother was my roommate for four years, and now he was serving full time in my previous denomination. In this dream, I was explaining to him why I had another meeting in this Brother’s House, which was different from our own denomination. I told him it was because the Lord wanted me to connect with other Christians so my heart could be broadened. In the future, I would not only serve my own denomination, but I would also serve Christians in many other denominations. In other words, the Lord was training me to prepare for bigger ministries.

Later on, when I was driving to work, this brother texted me and told me he wanted to visit me that day. He had just traveled to a nearby state a couple of days ago. I told him about the dream I had that morning, and he was stunned. He visited our home that night, and we had lunch the next day. He did share his concerns with me and politely reminded me to stay healthy physically and mentally as well since I always had these weird dreams.

I had a very difficult time leaving my denomination as the teachings there stressed the unity of our church to a great extent. I was quite concerned that I may have broken the unity of the body of Christ when I left my church. Even though it was difficult, the church and the brothers and sisters there treated me well, and many felt like family to me. This process was very painful, and it felt like a baby being weaned from its mother. At this time, the Lord showed me a vision in my spirit of the Yangtze River in China. He then showed me a tributary in the upper stream and then showed me a tributary in the lower stream. He then told me that I was in oneness with the body of Christ as long as I follow the leading of His Spirit. It was Him who brought me to the upper stream, and now He was leading me to a different stream. The people in the upper stream where I began would join me later, but I would never go back to Tibetan Plateau even though my tributary started there. He encouraged me just to follow the flow, and I was greatly encouraged by these words from the Lord.

I took all of the healing and prophetic classes offered by Global Awakening after I connected with this ministry. Through these courses, I started to learn more about the teachings on the gifts of the Holy Spirit and started to develop my spiritual gifts. I was especially interested in the gifts of healing and prophecy.

In a meeting held by Global Awakening in 2015, I received another baptism of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit fell on me, I fell back a dozen steps and fell down on the chairs along with two other brothers who had been praying with me. After that experience, I started to have more encounters with the spiritual realm, mainly through prophetic dreams. In these dreams, I encountered Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Angels, sometimes evil spirits, and even diseased people (mostly Chinese people) many times. Beginning in 2015, I started to have prophetic dreams almost every night, and I faithfully wrote them down in my journal. Many of them were about the coming revivals in China and other parts of the world. I also had one encounter with Jesus when I was taken to heaven on the last day of 2017. He showed me from behind a glass window that people were coming up to heaven. He challenged me to deal with some issues in my life, so he could use me greatly. He also appeared to me in a dream where I was taken to a campus in China, and he laid his hand on my head. I fell down backward, and he left after I got up. I was also taken to Japan in a prophetic dream, and I saw Jesus taking something out of the nail hole from his leg to rub on the wounds in my hands. My hands were wounded due to my fishing activities there. He also appeared to me in another dream, and He told me that two rivers would emerge in the area of Maryland where I live, but He did not specifically mention what these two rivers were. But when we went to the ministry of Mahesh Chavda for healing prayers and prophetic ministry in 2015, one person who prayed for us saw two lines crossing over the sky and told me he heard the Lord saying “convergence.” I also saw a vision of tornado in 2013, and I felt it was a promise of God that revival will come like a tornado, and it will spread all over the place.

 

The Coming China Revival

When I reflect on this journey of receiving spiritual education, I can clearly see the leading of the Lord. I was saved in a church associated with Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, and this denomination focuses a lot on the inner life and spiritual discipline. After thirteen years in this denomination, I was led by the Lord to learn from other charismatic churches. Now I have the opportunity to be educated by UTS, and the people I have met here have also opened my eyes to new perspectives. I believe the training at UTS will further my understanding of God, the Bible, and the Church. I also trust that God will open more doors for me through my connection with UTS and Global Awakening. Like I told one of my peers during the intensive training at Dayton, I hope to be a bridge between the Chinese church and the churches in the West and the rest of the world. Together we can usher in the promised revivals in China and all over the world.

I will conclude this biography with another conversation I had with the Holy Spirit. Before I went to a prophetic conference in 2015, I was reading Chuck Pierce’s book, who was one of the speakers at the conference. In this book, he said Jesus visited him in the 1980s and told him China would be huge one day, and there will be a great revival in China, and this revival would spread all over the world. One day after I came back from the trip, I was pondering this when suddenly I heard the Holy Spirit ask me, “what is a great revival?” I immediately answered Him in my spirit, “I heard that one out of ten people in China is a Christian now, isn’t that a great revival already?” Then the Holy Spirit replied back, “how about two out of ten?” I calculated quickly in my spirit and realized that it would be another 100 million Chinese people. I was quite shocked. Then I heard a prophecy from Bob Jones that one billion souls would be harvested in the coming revival. It is hard to imagine that at least 100 million Chinese wouldn’t be included in this number. I felt my calling was to be a part of this great revival in China.

My main gift is teaching, and I learned from a very young age that I was skilled in public speaking even though I was shy in interpersonal communication. I further developed this gift because I had a desire to become a TV host. I also received a teaching anointing while I was with the church associated with Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. They encouraged everyone to teach the Bible, and I have been leading Bible studies for over 10 years, and it has helped improve the gift of teaching. It was confirmed by many prophetic words that the Lord gave me this skill to break down difficult subjects to allow other people to understand easily. I feel I am called to teach the Word of God to help God’s people understand the deeper meaning behind the Bible. However, before I do that, I need to be well trained myself. I have limited knowledge of theology, and I have learned a lot in my pre-doctoral program at UTS. I am hoping to learn more during my studies in this doctoral program. There is so much richness in the body of Christ, and I hope to learn as much as I can from others.

 

Written by Sean Song

Edited by Danielle Pagnanella

 

[1] The Form I-20 is also known as the Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant (F-1) Student Status-For Academic and Language Students.

[2] Hukou is a system of household registration used in mainland China. Wikipedia, Hukou is a system of household registration used in mainland China. Wikipedia, accessed on 12/13/2019

[3] My father-in-law had passed away a while back from a stroke.

 

[4] The F-2 dependent visa is a nonimmigrant visa which allows dependent spouses and children(unmarried, under 21 years old) of F-1 student visa holders to enter into the U.S. https://www.visapro.com/family-visas/f2-visa/faq2/ accessed on 12/13/2019/

Bible Study with Jairus - Why we use the Name Jairus

Jairus means “Jehovah who enlightens.” This is not a commonly used name and until 2016, it didn’t mean anything significant for me more than any other name. However, through a series of personal challenges, Jairus suddenly became very meaningful to me and thus Jairus Bible World Ministries came to bear this name.

I married my wife in 2006. For 10 years, we battled with infertility. We tried every method available to us including Chinese herbal medicine and in vitro fertilization (IVF). Our five IVF attempts failed, and even our last-ditch effort to secure a pregnancy with an egg donor ended quickly when our donor changed her mind at the last minute. You can imagine the darkness my wife and I experienced. Through a long journey of relentless prayer and fighting to believe a prophetic promise from the Lord, God spoke to me in a dream and told me that my wife would soon become pregnant. Miraculously, and to our surprise, my wife found herself pregnant with our miracle daughter on May 28th, 2016. Elim, our crowning glory, was born healthy months later and remains our precious miracle baby.

Though our hearts are now filled with great joy, this ten-year process was not without many dark moments of the soul. When I look back, I can see that God tried to speak to me and give me strength many times, but I had a difficult time hearing him. The years between 2014 and 2016 were a time of transition for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but God was transitioning me from an Evangelical church to a Charismatic congregation and entrusting a ministry to me! I would move from a season of testing in the wilderness to abundance. Yet, before I could, I had to face the reality of my situation.

The reality of our bareness was difficult. I felt like I had hit a wall when it came to receiving healing and also the baptism of the Holy Spirit (as evidenced by tongues and manifestations). These were two things I had been diligently seeking after I became aware that they were available to me. In fact, my desire for these two things is what drove me into Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. I had been a Christian for 13 years, but I had never attended a Charismatic church. In sharing the rest of this story, please be informed that I am not inferring that one denomination is better than nor superior to another. I have learned that each church who is serving Christ embraces certain biblical truths and no denomination has the whole picture. I remain deeply grateful to all of the churches I’ve attended in the past. They have helped me in numerous ways including both spiritually and even financially. Sharing my experience of being in two very different denominations is for the purpose of showing how God was taking me out of my comfort zone to allow me to learn about Him from a different perspective.

The church I was mainly involved with before my charismatic church experiences didn’t encourage individuals to have personal ministries. Instead, a congregant’s main responsibility was to continue building the ministry that the founders of the denomination had started. My background taught me that we should be committed to build the ministry of the age, which is a term we give to the ministry of our founders. This is different than the beliefs of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches who teach and encourage every Christian to have their own ministry. When I first heard this preached, it was a foreign concept to me.

In my determination to know the Lord more and receive a miracle, I committed to pray every day in 2014 until the Lord healed my wife and baptized me in the Holy Spirit. Each day during my lunch break I would sit in a park and pray for these things. I continued to do this until I was overcome with devastation from the failure of our last IVF treatment. The doctor diagnosed that there would be no way for us to naturally conceive. Our only hope was to use an egg donor. As a final option, we tried this as well, but it also rendered fruitless. Looking back, my wife and I believe it was God’s intention for us to conceive naturally. We believed in miracles at the time, but we weren’t completely certain that God was going to give us a child naturally which is why we tried every other option available to us.

Although devastated, my wife and I remained steadfast in our weekly Bible studies. We had been holding Bible studies every week in Chinese with a few other families. One week we came to chapter 5 in the Gospel of Mark. Written there is a story about a man named Jairus who went to Jesus to request his presence to heal his sick daughter. Jesus agreed to go with him and heal his daughter, but on the way to his home, Jesus was stopped by a woman with a bleeding problem. This woman spoke to herself as she made her way to Jesus, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well” (Mk. 5:28 NRSV). Of course, the woman did get healed, and Jesus praised her stating that it was her faith that made her well. Reading the story this time stood out to me in a different way than before.

I raised the question to our participants: “What do you think Jairus’s reaction would have been when Jesus delayed, and this woman was healed?” Would he have said, “Come on, Jesus, my issue is more important; I came to you first because my daughter is dying and now you stop for this unclean woman!? Have some respect, people; there is a line here!” I’m sure I may have felt this way if I were him. I was once at a healing meeting in New York and I witnessed what people are capable of when they are desperate. They all tried to rush in the door of the church to secure a spot inside because the limited space would not hold the couple thousand people in attendance.

Perhaps, though, Jairus may have acted like a saint, and he may have said, “That’s fine, no problem. Her need is more important than mine. Don’t worry, everything is in God’s hands. Even if my daughter dies, she will be in heaven with God.” Or, Jairus could have reacted passively, “Whatever happens, happens. There is nothing I can do anyway. It’s not my call.” The Bible does not describe Jairus’ reaction, but I learned from a great Chinese Bible teacher, Witness Lee, that what the Bible does not say is equally as important as what it does say. I can only imagine that Jairus’s reaction was filled with emotion and panic. At the end of the story, someone from home tells Jairus to no longer ask Jesus to come to his house. Verse 36b says, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But verse 37 records Jesus’ immediate reaction when he heard this: “But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”

What happened between the words spoken by Jairus’ friend in verse 36 and the words Jesus spoke in verse 37? Did Jesus see the agony in Jairus’s face? Or could he see that Jairus’ faith was weak? I think both may have been the case; otherwise, Jesus would not have spoken to him immediately. It’s just like Jesus to step in and speak life to someone in the midst of all the negative voices.

On this particular day of our Bible study, when I read this phrase, “Do not fear, only believe,” it was as if God had spoken it to me personally. These words penetrated my heart. It was like I was being led by the Holy Spirit into the inner emotions of Jairus. For a moment, the woman and Jairus were one. I don’t mean in a literal sense; they were still different people. But in a spiritual sense, these two characters were both a part of me. Some of the feelings Jairus may have experienced such as panic, disappointment or anger resembled some of my own. And yet, like the woman, I was approaching God by faith hoping for a miracle in my wife’s body. I was so impacted by this revelation that I started to use this phrase when I published the recordings of our Bible studies online. 

As our discussion continued, I raised another question. “Why did God allow the delay in the healing of Jairus’ daughter?” We know God is sovereign and nothing can happen except by the will of the Father. We also know that the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of the Bible and it is no coincidence that Mark put these passages together in one segment. I felt there must have been a purpose in the delay of the healing of his daughter.

My wife always talks about the author, Cao Xueqin, who wrote the novel Dream of the Red Chamber. It is a well-known 18th century classic Chinese novel. Many say that Cao Xueqin was writing about figures related to the Royal family, and it would have put him in danger if they knew he was referencing them. Because of this, he masterfully created several characters and put the different characteristics of one person into them. I find that the Holy Spirit is also a master when it comes to the inspiration behind the writing of the Bible.

I felt the Holy Spirit had revealed the answer to me. The purpose of the delay was obviously to heal the woman with the blood issue. But what does the issue of blood represent? It is the leaking out of life; it is a lack of faith. The leaking of our faith must be stopped first before we can be healed. Perhaps you have heard the saying that God wants to give us what we ask for, but first he will give us something we need. Before the healing of his daughter, Jairus needed to be healed from his lack of faith. This woman with the issue of the blood was a woman of faith and a blaring sign to Jairus of what he needed in order to receive his miracle. What Jairus lacked, this woman stood as an example of.

When I was praying in the park one day in the beginning of 2014, I had a conversation with God that went something like this. I said, “I will never stop bothering you, Lord. If you do not heal my wife and baptize me in your Holy Spirit, I will bug you every day until the end of my life. I will see you one day in heaven and even ask you to your face—WHY? Isaiah 28 says, ‘those who trust in the Lord will be never put to shame.’ If I were put to shame for this matter, the shame will be yours. If you don’t do these things according to your promise, then I can say you are a liar. But I know you are not a liar. I don’t understand what is going on here [in my life].”  All my emotions came pouring out. I was like that infamous woman with the issue of the blood. Sometimes I was adamant, perseverant, and full of faith. But other times I could be like Jairus full of agony and pain while holding the promise of Jesus to heal his daughter.

We all have access to the promises of God concerning healing (which is stated in many verses in the Bible). However, I was experiencing the delay of its coming. My question to you, reader, is this: Are you also experiencing a delay in any promises you have been believing for? Do you see yourself in these two characters? I have certainly seen myself in them.

I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me that day, “The delay has a purpose. Do not fear, only believe.” I felt really encouraged and all of us in the Bible study also felt the same. We ended our time with each person declaring “Do not fear, only believe.” I felt the Lord was using this difficult time to perfect my faith in Him. In due time my wife would be healed.

Now, getting back to what I mentioned earlier. The concept of having my own ministry was foreign to me. It was not on my radar. I even struggled with the fact that it may be against my former church’s teaching. I wondered if it would be seen as pride or self-promotion. Despite my reservations, I still felt I should go ahead and start this ministry. I thought to myself, “What’s a good middle ground I can take?” I decided to use “Jairus” rather than my own name since it had spoken to me so much.

In January 2016, at an Elijah List conference in Oregon, God spoke two things to me. First, he confirmed to me that Jairus Bible World Ministries is from him. Second, he assured me that my wife and I would have a baby that year which we did. God’s response to Jairus, the woman, to me and to all that believe for a promise is the same: “Do not fear; only believe.” I pray this post has been a blessing to you!

Bible Study with Jairus - My Testimony

Bible Study with Jairus - My Testimony

This post was originally written in 2004 in Chinese for a Chinese Gospel Magazine and was translated into English in 2010 and revised in 2018. After rereading the post I realize it was poorly written but I feel it still reflects my spiritual condition in 2004. In the future I plan to write another testimony telling the story of my salvation from a different perspective that reflects my spiritual growth throughout the years.

The hopeless condition of man is the beginning of knowing God

I was born in the Hebei province of China. My hometown is a small village in the south of Hebei province. It is adjacent to Henan province and is situated near a river. My family was poor but started to earn more money when my father began to work at the local township auditing department. My mom stayed in the village to grow crops and feed pigs. In spite of the hardships my family’s financial situation was more stable than other families in the village.

As a child, I always wondered why we live on earth. I would always think about this in my yard while looking at the stars. Sometimes I sat on a small hill near my village wondering, “Where will I be in the future?”

My older sister was enrolled in college in 1981 and was the only one to be accepted to college in our whole county that year. This was turned into a huge event. Not only did the local teaching authority pay a lot of attention to this, it also changed the mind of my grandpa and other family members. It is not common to have a child from a rural village enter into college. Also, people in the village were prejudiced against females. So, my grandpa said that my brother and I must be accepted into a college.

When it was my turn to go to college I was accepted into a college in Beijing. However, I faced many hardships. Not only was I pressured financially, but I also had to face inequalities. There are always prejudices against people from rural or poor areas in China. I felt hurt inside and sometimes became very passive. After four years of college, I stayed worked there for another 4 years. I wasn’t satisfied with that life and I still felt empty and didn’t know what my purpose in life was.

Because of this, I decided to study abroad, which is the dream of many Chinese students. I got a joint offer from the London School of Economics at UK and the University of Southern California. The tuition for the university in London was around 10,300 pounds, but I only had 10,000 pounds. By the third semester, I ran out of money. I did not have enough money to pay rent, tuition, and living expenses. I was also unable to find a job. I asked my family to help, and they gave me 1000 pounds. The university later offered help with my tuition, so that problem was solved.

At this point in time, I began to look for a full-time job. One day, I was lingering in a park near McDonald’s when I heard people singing hymns. This attracted me to their gathering in the park. They were a group of Christians. They also portrayed through a play how Jesus was crucified. I was so touched and could not help but cry.

One sister named Mary came to me and shared with me about God. I asked her if she had ever seen God. How can you say there is a God if you have never seen Him? She said she did not believe it either when she was a student at Oxford. But one day, when she went to a meeting with her father, she was touched when her father was sharing something about the invisible Christ with other Christians. She thought that was probably God because she did not have it. She sent me a Bible later and asked me to come to her Church, but I never had a chance to visit because I had already started to work at McDonald’s part-time. I worked the night shift, starting from 8 pm to 3 or 4 am. It was very tiring. Sometimes I tried to get up in the morning to visit her church, but I did not have the strength to wake up.

I had already finished my first year of school in London at that time and I was looking forward to coming to the US to finish my second-year study but I did not have the money. I worked out a way to get the school to send me the I-20 first, and then I got the F-1 visa as well. But I still did not have the money. I was hoping to get a scholarship from USC, but they replied very late and only gave me a tuition waiver for 8 credits. I had to finish 24 credits to graduate.

It was a painful struggle to decide if I should come to the US. I had the visa but I did not have enough money. I really didn’t want to go back to China at that time for a few reasons and I was not satisfied with my one year study in the UK. Most importantly, I felt I was seeking something, but hadn’t found it yet.

My life was full of anxiety. I cried out in my innermost being, saying, “Whoever gives me peace, I will believe in him.” Finally, I decided to come to the US with a one-way ticket and a couple hundred dollars. When I was on the airplane, I didn’t even have a plan or know what I would do.

The first night in the US, I stayed in a classmate’s house. The second night, I had to move out, but I had no place to go. I signed the housing contracts with the school and moved into the dorm, but I could not sleep all night. The next morning, I went to the registrar’s office but I couldn’t decide if I should register. I knew that if I registered, I would have to pay the fee. If I didn’t register, I would just go back to China immediately.

I just couldn’t decide. I wandered outside of the office from morning until late afternoon. It was a painful experience. Eventually, I decided to go back to China because I realized that I could not survive here. I had already fulfilled my dream by coming to America. I started to look for some Chinese students to ask where I could find a travel agency to buy a plane ticket.

Just before I did this, I cried out again in my deepest part to God: “God, I am such a sinner, do you still remember me?” I remember exactly how I said it, and it was in English, not in Chinese. After I did that, I felt peaceful in my heart and decided to go back to China. I found a couple of Chinese students and asked them if they knew where to buy plane tickets, but they told me they had no idea.

Later, another student came across the street; I was having a hard time telling if he was Chinese or Korean. He looked Korean, so I asked if he was Korean. He was actually Chinese and a brother from the Church in Los Angeles. I asked him about the same thing, and he asked me why I wanted to go back. I told him the reason. He told me that I should not go back and I should finish my study here.

He brought me to the brother’s house near campus and fellowshipped with the Church elder and brothers who lived in the brother’s house. The brothers were willing to let me move in the brother’s house. The brothers even agreed to let me pay the rent later if I had no money. The brother taught me how to pray, and we prayed together before we went to see the housing department and my department director. The housing department agreed to cancel my contract and the department director agreed that all the 8 credits of scholarship were for the first semester. Originally, 4 credits were for the first semester, and 4 credits were for the second semester. As an international student, I was required to register at least 8 credits to become a full-time student. All of my problems seemed to be solved in a couple of days! I even found a part-time job on campus to help cover food and other needs.

I still didn’t have money for my second semester’s tuition, but the brothers taught me to pray unto God. They told me that the Lord would take care of my needs if I dedicated myself to the Lord. I also felt sinful when I first believed in the Lord, so I prayed desperately for Him to take care of my needs and forgive all my sins. After half a year, I started to feel the assurance of forgiveness. And with the help of our department director and fellow believers, I was able to pay the tuition later.

However, I continued to struggle with financial problems. Upon graduation, I couldn’t afford the monthly meal expenses because I didn’t have the job on campus anymore. So I worked at a toy store for a short period of time. I quit my job later because the boss was constantly cursing at employees. When I was in desperate need, I received a call from a Chinese magazine that had received my application and wanted to interview me. I went there by bus, and in the final bus stop, the bus driver told me I was going in the wrong direction. I was actually going in the right direction, but I didn’t know. So I started to walk in the opposite direction to take another bus. While I was walking a little bit, a van stopped by me in the street corner and asked me where I was going. A Hispanic man gave me a ride to the company and I arrived for my appointment at exactly 9 am. Later I thanked him and asked him why he helped me. I also called him brother when I thanked him. It turned out he really was a brother. He said that he was touched when he saw me walking and decided that he would drive me wherever I needed to go. He also told me that he would generally never stop for a stranger since he had three kids in the van in car seats. They were on their way to a daycare center.

I ended up getting the reporter job at the Chinese magazine. But when the boss asked me to have an interview in a certain place, I told her that I did not have a car yet. She cried out “My God!” The other boss later asked me to get a car as soon as possible. Before that, I could take the bus to work. At that time, a brother who moved out of the brother’s house left an ‘84 Lincoln Town Car for me to use, but I did not have a driver’s license. I failed a couple of times but finally got it by the due date my boss gave me.

During that month, something else happened. I was planning to come to work by bus but just a couple of days after I started to work, all the MTA bus drivers at LA went on strike for one month so I was unable to take the bus. Luckily, one private bus was still running from my company to downtown LA and a Korean brother dropped me at the bus stop when he went to work. After I got off from work, I took the bus downtown and waited for the brothers to take me home. This sometimes took a couple of hours and I used this time to recite the verses from the book of John while I was waiting. I was so touched by the brotherly love at that time.

This difficult time had led me to receive the Lord and to dedicate myself to Him. In the journey of my belief, there were many miracles. After I started to work, my financial situation got better and better. The Lord’s hand was still guiding my life. I got the job in Nov. of 2003. In that year, I overheard some believers talking about the first New Jersey Chinese Speaking Perfecting training in August of that year. This is an annual Chinese speaking conference within our denomination. They were talking about how the Lord’s spirit was working powerfully there, and how a brother from The Church in Riverside was completely changed after participating in this training. I was determined to join this training in 2004, and I knew I would experience big changes in this meeting. This was not from me, it was the Spirit leading me.

In that meeting in August 2004 at the Church in Franklin, the Spirit was everywhere. The main topic in that training was to dedicate your whole being to the Lord and to prepare for His second coming. Everyone was encouraged to dedicate himself or herself to the Lord. I refused to do so even though many brothers urged me to do so. The second to last time, two brothers urged me again to dedicate myself to the Lord. I refused again. They looked at me with judgment in their eyes, but I didn’t take it personally. I felt the judgment from the Lord strongly. He seemed to remind me: How many times did you say that you would dedicate your life to me if I did certain things for you?” I recalled in a second all my prayers in which I asked the Lord to take care of my needs and that I would dedicate my life to Him. I had already forgotten them a long time ago, but the Lord always remembers.

That night, I knelt and prayed to the Lord. “Lord, I still have a hard time believing the truth about your second coming. I would dedicate myself to you if you reveal this to me.” Later when I fell to sleep I felt two people were fighting for my heart. The Lord was stronger, and He took it. The next day I dedicated my life to the Lord. And while one brother was talking about the New Jerusalem, I felt the heavens open in my spirit. The Lord spoke to me: If the body of Christ, the New Jerusalem, is built up, I will come back. This proved that only those who dedicated their lives to the Lord can see the vision. Just like many brothers have told me.

I was completely changed when I came back from the training. I got rid of a lot of bad habits and started to pursue the truth. I read the book Life Study by Witness Lee every day. The believers in my locality were so surprised that I had changed.

Bible Study with Jairus - China’s Great Awakening

At the 2016 Elijah List conference, God challenged me to consider a great revival that is to come to China. Before the conference, I read a book written by Chuck Pierce called God’s Unfolding Battle Plan. In this book, Chuck talks about a time when Jesus visited him in the 1980s and told him there would be a great revival in China. This revival would spread all over the world.

When I found out that Chuck was going to be one of the speakers at that year’s conference, I reread the book on my way there. I was not sure why this particular testimony of revival caught my attention again. I later came to understand that the Holy Spirit was awakening my spirit to something he wanted to share with me.

After the trip, I was walking a street in D.C. one day and I suddenly heard the Holy Spirit ask me, “What constitutes a great revival?” This question came to me after I received the prophetic activation of hearing God’s voice clearer, something we received at the conference. I was surprised by the clarity with which I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me; it had not been this way before the conference. I immediately answered him in my spirit, “I heard that one out of ten people in China is now a Christian; isn’t that a great revival already?” Then the Holy Spirit replied, “How about two out of ten?” I quickly did the calculation in my head and realized that would be another 100 million Chinese people. I was shocked.

Bob Jones once prophesied that one billion souls would be harvested in the soon-coming world revival. For me, it is not hard to imagine that at least 100 million Chinese would be included in this number. Now, to clarify, I don’t think the Holy Spirit meant that only two out of ten Chinese people will be saved. Instead, the Holy Spirit was challenging me to think outside of my box. I am encouraged thinking how China and the world would be if even four or five out of ten Chinese people were saved.

Since immigrating to the United States, thoughts of ministering in my home country of China were never on my mind. I have taught, preached, and ministered mainly to Chinese students and adults within my denomination in the USA. This encounter with the Lord, however, caused me to rethink my ministry. After I accepted that God desired for me to be a part of China’s coming revival, I started to have many prophetic dreams about it. After the Elijah List conference, I also started receiving similar prophetic words and even symbolic tokens from people such as keys.

Prophetic Dream on China’s Future Revival

On January 11, 2016, shortly after coming back from the conference, I had the following dream. There are four scenes. In the first scene, I found myself on a construction site in China and there was a keeper (a guard-like man) there with a roll register in his hand. I got the impression that he was an angel who managed the Book of Life. I went to check if a relative, who had gone missing in China, was on this list of names. After looking, he replied no. I felt so sorry for this relative. In the second scene, I experienced great chaos and upheaval. I was tossed upside down and I saw pending destruction as a steel stick from the construction site fell from a building. By the end of this scene, I saw a building only partly constructed.

In the third scene, my wife and I were in a high glass tower with windows, like you see in big cities. It seemed we were a having a Christian meeting there when suddenly we received a report that we were surrounded by persecutors. Arguments began to arise among the people in the building. Some insisted to go down and some said to go up. I insisted on heading upward, so up we went. In the fourth scene, my wife and I miraculously escaped into a residential building. I told my wife that no one would see us since we appeared just like the residents. As we walked downstairs, I felt peace and a lion-like animal the size of a cat appeared among us. I carried the animal and it seemed calm and meek until we hit a great wall that we could not pass through. Suddenly, the small lion-type animal arose with great strength to help us roll the wall over. Immediately, I saw several horses gallop speedily and powerfully, and a great pasture lay before my eyes. It was powerful and reminded me of something resembling a great breakthrough or revival. I am not sure if this was the last revival that will bring the Lord back, but it was very powerful to this extreme.

I believe the Lord was showing me several stages of the coming China revival through this dream. First, the construction site represents a work in progress. An incomplete or half-erected building symbolizes that a work has begun but is not complete. The angelic being keeping track of lives demonstrates God’s involvement and desire. It shows their salvation is important to God. My attempt to find a dead person can represent the spiritual state of many persons in China, and my sadness shows God’s feelings regarding this matter. Next, the sudden and great chaos and upheaval in the beginning and throughout is representative of the shaking that will take place there. Authorities and systems that have been allowed to stand for a time will fall, and only what is in line with God’s Kingdom will remain (a building left partly standing). The church will also go through immense suffering and during this test, some may fall.

The third scene is symbolic of a few things. God will give favor to those who are spreading the Gospel and discipling persons in China. This is representative of the high tower my wife and I were hosting a Bible study in. Although persecution will arise and has even already, God has given his people the wisdom to see it coming (the glass windows). Wisdom for escape and a battle plan will be granted to those led by the Spirit and commissioned by him. In the dream, wisdom is represented by my ability to discern among those panicking and unsure that our escape from the building will be by climbing upward instead of down. Climbing upward is also significant of looking heavenward to maintain our eyes fixed on the Lord and tuned into His plans. Persecution and shaking naturally entices us to look at our surrounding and environment; we are tempted to descend instead of ascending. To deal with the situation, faith must move Christians rather than fear. The only way to guarantee supernatural delivery is to continue upwards and the Lord will surely rescue such persons.

God will also grant cover when necessary. This is demonstrated by us blending in and appearing like the other residents. Finally, the lion-like animal represents the presence of the Spirit of Christ which will accompany those he calls His own. He will grant them peace amidst the turmoil, and they shall not be afraid. Carrying the lion-like animal is also symbolic of being equipped with the Spirit of Christ. This scene represents both the life of Christ in us and the help he offers. Christ is both meek and mighty, and if a wall stands in our way, Christ will arise with power and strength to make a path for our feet and roll the wall away just as the Spirit rolled Christ’s tomb away.

With Christ, Christians commissioned by him will demolish forces in our path to make it possible for breakthrough to be released (represented by the horses and pasture). As speedily and powerfully as the horses were, so will the awakening there be and pleasant at that (green pasture). This dream is not only representative of what revival may look like for the country of China, but it’s also a call to duty for the Christian leaders sent there—that we should take courage in our work and not fear. We have been equipped with the same Spirit that has raised Christ from the dead and that which will bring a great harvest to the dead souls of China.

Now, although this post is meant to bring knowledge to the body of Christ regarding God’s plans for China, it is also meant to be a personal prophetic message. First, maybe you have felt a strange connection with China and have not been able to identify your place in ministry. Consider that maybe God wants to invite you to be a part of this revival. Pray and ask the Lord what this post means for you. Second, I want to encourage those of you who are reading this and experiencing a difficult time. Perhaps you are even feeling like you’re hitting a wall in your personal life or ministry. Although this is often part of the process of maturing in Christ, I want to prophetically declare that there is a “suddenly” moment that is on its way to you. Do you believe? The lion is roaring over you and your situation. You can trust him for your breakthrough.

To Elijah List, this conference forever shifted my ability to hear and receive messages from the Lord, and it redirected my ministry path. Thank you for hosting the presence of God and making it possible for Christians to walk into their commissioning and ministry. It would seem more than ever that a revival is needed in China and you, Elijah List, are part of bringing God’s prophetic voice to the earth and equipping the saints.

Bible Study with Jairus – Leviticus 27

Bible Study with Jairus – Leviticus 27

 

Chapter 27 is the last chapter of the book of Leviticus.  It talks about Jehovah giving Moses the laws concerning people's vows and dedications.  The value that is set on each person when one makes a vow is not the same.  A male has a higher value than a female, older people and children have a lower value (verses 1-8).  If a man has already dedicated himself to the Lord, he must not exchange or substitute it.  Although the animal and house that he dedicated can be redeemed, a fifth must be added to its value (verses 9-15).  If a man who dedicates a field wishes to redeem it, he must add a fifth to its value.  If he does not redeem the field, it can never be redeemed (verses 16-25).  An animal's firstborn must not be dedicated; he may repurchase the unclean animal after adding a fifth of the value to it.  If he does not redeem it, it will be sold at its set value (verses 26-27).  But nothing that a man owns and devotes to the Lord may be redeemed (verse 28).  No person devoted to destruction may be ransomed (verse 29).  A tithe of everything from the land belongs to the Lord.  If a man redeems any of his tithe, he must add a fifth of the value to it (verses 30-31).

 

Leviticus 27:32-33 says,

 

³² Every tithe of the herd and flock—every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd's rod—will be holy to the Lord. ³³ No one may pick out the good from the bad or make any substitution. If anyone does make a substitution, both the animal and its substitute become holy and cannot be redeemed.'" (NIV)

 

The last verse says, "These are the commands the Lord gave Moses at Mount Sinai for the Israelites" (NIV, Leviticus 27:34)

 

One Christian who shared at the beginning of this meeting didn't understand what verses 32-33 meant.  Why couldn't they pick out the good from the bad or make any substitution?  And if anyone did make a substitution, the animal and substitute became holy and couldn't be redeemed?

 

Although we have briefly outlined what Leviticus 27 is talking about, when people read the Bible, they often get confused and don't understand what they are reading.  Is this your experience when you read the Bible?  I remember reading a survey about Christians reading the Bible.  The first reason why Christians don't read the Bible is not that they are lazy, but rather because they don't understand it.  Sometimes after reading the Bible, they don't know what it is saying or how it applies to their lives.

 

If you have finished reading this chapter of the Bible, what do you think it's talking about?  I often say that our understanding of the Bible can limit the growth of our spiritual life.  For example, how can a person who doesn't understand the Bible or doesn't usually read the Bible be changed by the Word of God?  The spiritual growth of new believers is subject to the limitation of their knowledge of the Word of God.  

On the other hand, a person can thoroughly read the Bible from cover to cover and only see it as words on a page rather than a living word.  They don't possess the spiritual experience of the Bible and have a limited understanding.

 

The Chinese are very wise in this area.  Although Chinese people don’t have a long history of studying the bible, they have a lot of experience understanding the world.  For example, the Chinese say that a person can only better understand the world and become a useful person if he/she "travels ten thousand miles and reads ten thousand books."  This is a very philosophical statement.

 

"Reading ten thousand books" is like the first example of when we read the Bible.  We need to read more about the Bible and various spiritual works.  We must also listen to other pastors' teachings to help us understand the Bible and glean as much spiritual knowledge as possible.

 

"Traveling ten thousand miles" is like a Christian who regards prayer as essential and who enjoys pursuing spiritual truths.  Through the Holy Spirit working in him and his circumstances, he learns how to deal with the flesh, control his mind, live in the spirit, and become deeply rooted in the Lord.

 

The two are inseparable and complement each other.  Of course, I advocate reading the Bible more and reading it every day.  I was saved in the Local Church movement and was taught to read three chapters in the Old Testament and one chapter in the New Testament every day.  We can read through the whole Bible this way in a year.  I still insist on doing this every day. Every morning, I read three chapters in the Old Testament and one chapter in the New Testament, and I find a verse that moves me.  I use this verse to practice pray-reading, which is meditation during lunch break.  It has been very beneficial to me.  In addition to attending the meetings in the Local Church, I diligently read the spiritual works of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.  When the Lord led me to Pentecostal and Prophetic churches to learn the truths of others, I eagerly read a lot of books about them.

 

On the other side, through the circumstances that the Lord had prepared for me, I have learned to accept God's dealings, and I have slowly experienced that the desires of my flesh have died or are dying.  I have gradually grown in my spiritual life, and the many spiritual experiences and dreams given to me by the Lord have deepened my understanding of the Bible.

 

Therefore, in our meeting this week, I explained Leviticus 27 from the perspective of my personal spiritual experience.  To a certain extent, it has helped our Bible study members studying this chapter to understand better what the chapter is talking about.

 

Leviticus includes many of the laws or covenants that Jehovah gave to Moses.  Leviticus is known as the book of the covenant.  It is the book of the covenant between God and man. What is the covenant between God and man?  Whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament, God compares Himself to a husband and the Israelites as His wife, or the Lord Jesus as the bridegroom, and the church is His bride. The covenant between God and man is a marriage contract.

 

We all know that when Americans get married, there is a ceremony. When the minister officiating the wedding asks the bride if she is willing to marry the groom, she will respond with the words, "I do."  This "I do" is the most crucial sentence and the climax or end of this wedding. If the bride says, "I do," basically this ceremony is a success.  If the bride says "I don't," like the movie "Runaway Bride" or the "The Graduate,” it would be terrible.

 

Similarly, as in the book of the covenant, Leviticus ends with the Israelites saying, "I do."  This is the specific regulation that the Lord established in this chapter after He blessed the Israelites and cursed them for their rebellion against Him in Leviticus 26.  These regulations mean that people are willing to dedicate themselves to God.

 

There are two great forces in the world.  The first is the power of God's destiny or election for your life.  He has a pre-written plan for your life.  Even if you are stubborn like Jacob or rebel like the prodigal son of Luke 15, God can save you. The second most incredible power is dedication.  If people are willing to dedicate themselves to God, they will then become a great channel of blessing in God's hands, which will bring blessings to countless people.  Such examples are innumerable in the Bible - Abraham, Samuel, Mary (the mother of the Lord Jesus), etc.  When they dedicated themselves, it changed the universe.

 

Abraham was called righteous when he offered his son Isaac to God.  Hannah dedicated Samuel to God, which transformed an era.  Mary, the Lord Jesus's mother, dedicated herself to God, bringing in the birth of the Savior of mankind.  Their dedication changed the world.

 

When the Lord Jesus was about to be crucified, Mary poured a bottle of perfume to anoint His feet.  When the disciples objected, the Lord Jesus told them that this woman's sacrificial anointing should also be preached wherever this gospel was preached throughout the world.  Jesus valued this woman's sacrifice and wanted her honored by making sure she was mentioned in the gospel message of his sacrifice for us.

 

Leviticus 27 is about the power of people's dedication.  This is closely related to Leviticus 26. Chapter 26 talks about how the Israelites rebelled against God and how they were punished. Chapter 27 revealed how the Israelites could overcome their sins and their own weaknesses, such as rebelling against God and idolatry.  The answer to this is to give God authority or dedicate our lives to God and let him work in us and help us.

 

Let me give you an example of what this means.  Genesis 12:7 records that Abraham built an altar after the Lord appeared to him.  Then in verse 8, it says that he built another altar on the east of Bethel, where he called on the name of the Lord.  In the Old Testament, we know that the altar represents one's dedication because the altar is used to put the sacrifices and offerings (animals) on it.  Calling on the name of the Lord is an act of spiritual dedication and worship.  Because the Lord Jesus said, "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth." (John 4:24, NIV).

 

After this, something terrible happened.  Abraham gradually went south, leaving the altar he had built for the Lord.  In the end, he experienced a famine.  Remember that the Bible doesn't say that "Abraham moved south after the famine occurred," but "the famine occurred after he moved south."  In other words, famine was a trial from God.  It was reminding Abraham to return to the altar.  But Abraham didn't obey and continued to travel south to Egypt.  In Egypt, He lied to Pharaoh about his wife Sarah, saying she was his sister, leading Pharaoh to almost have an immoral relationship with her.  Of course, after God intervened and struck Pharaoh, he saved Abraham and Sarah.  This matter is considered a weakness or a failure in Abraham's spiritual experience.  It is similar to the Israelites who rebelled against God in Leviticus 26, which we mentioned earlier.  Of course, God blessed Abraham this time.  In Genesis 13:3-4, it states that Abraham returned to Bethel after this incident, where he had previously built an altar for the Lord.  There Abraham had called again on the name of the Lord.

 

Compared to the first time when he built the altars, his understanding of the name of the Lord had deepened. Why? He had experienced his own failure, as well as the salvation and faithfulness of the Lord.  He experienced his own weakness, unbelief, and Jehovah's unchanging promise.

 

I experienced something similar to this when I was a child.  As kids, we often went swimming in the river.  There was an older boy who usually accompanied us.  One day, a younger child would have drowned but was rescued by the older boy.  The rescued child held the older boy’s hand and repeatedly shouted his name because he knew that he saved his life.  The older boy’s name was something to look up to and esteem, unlike before the incident.

 

Similarly, after Abraham experienced failure in Egypt, he returned to the place where he built the altar.  There he called on the name of the Lord again.  The meaning of the name of the Lord was different for him.  His understanding of the Lord's name became deeper because he had experienced the Lord's safeguard and care for him in Egypt.  Although he was not faithful, God was still faithful.

 

Why did the Lord help Abraham even though he failed?  The secret here is that the two previous altars Abraham built were his dedication to God.  When Abraham dedicated himself to God, although he experienced failure later, the power of dedication enabled him to overcome his own weakness and failure.  When we dedicate ourselves to God, the authority no longer belongs to us.  Instead, it belongs to God.  If I dedicate my life to Him and God still allows me to fail, then my failure isn't only mine, but also His.  God will surely guard us, allowing us to overcome the trials in our life.  Every time I think about this, it makes me happy, especially when facing trials.  I am confident that God will guard me because otherwise, my failure will shame not only me but also Him.

 

Abraham's dedication to God came before his failure, not after.  It was because of this that his dedication was of more value amid failure.  So why did Abraham dedicate himself?  It's because the Lord chose him, or possibly it was a response to the Lord's repeated appearances to him.  As I said before, God's destiny or election is the greatest power in the universe.  But our dedication also has a lot of power, and it is a response to God's destiny for us.

 

When Mary broke the alabaster jar and poured the perfume to anoint the Lord, the Lord accepted her dedication.  Similarly, in the Old Testament, God hated Esau.  But the reason for Him loving Jacob was because Esau did not make the right dedication when responding to God's election.  Esau only paid attention to his flesh.  But Jacob was longing for the inheritance rights as the firstborn; therefore, he could please God.  Abel's offering pleased God, but Cain's offering didn't.

 

God's election and dedication is a dynamic and dialectical relationship.  God elects the best, so don't ask whether his election or destiny for a person is right or wrong, good or bad.  Once God has elected a person, others can't evaluate the good or bad of His election.  The lady at the beginning was disturbed by this statement.  She mentioned that she did not understand what verses 32-33 meant.  Why is it that no one may pick out the good from the bad or make any substitution?  And if anyone does make a substitution, the animal and substitute must become holy and cannot be redeemed?  Also, why is it that God commanded every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd's rod be offered and be holy to Him?

 

Doesn't this seem this unreasonable?  Who will God choose in His election?  Only one person will be elected for every ten people.  What if His election is wrong?  She said with emotion, "This seems to be accidental and also inevitable because God hides the inevitability in chance." Yes. God, who knows the heart, arranges the boundaries of all things and people, so God can't be wrong.  She still didn't understand the reason why God would not let anyone pick out the good from the bad or make any substitution.  Later, under the wonderful leading of the Holy Spirit, we talked about her child and her experience of the Lord dealing with her ways of educating her child.

 

She said that her child has a talent for art but is mediocre in other subjects. Her child is not a straight A or a well-rounded student.  This mother has been a straight-A student ever since she was little.  Therefore, when she teaches her child, she gets frustrated because she finds that her child doesn't live up to her standards.  Through God's help, she eventually realized that her child was given to her by the Lord to help mature her.  In the end, she was very grateful.  She changed her approach to educating her child. She no longer asked her child to meet her standards.  Instead, she learned to dedicate her child to God and teach the child according to God's election and preparation.

 

What this mother experienced is not unusual.  Many parents of Chinese families will face this problem.  Our children may not have the same structural foundation as ours.  Therefore, we often try to mold and make our children according to our image, and the result may suppress the child's nature.

 

My situation is like this mother's child.  Since I was young, I was a daydreamer and not very good at math.  When I was in high school, I ranked first in literature, history, and other subjects. But I ranked last in mathematics.  Therefore my total score wasn't very good.  My sister happened to be my teacher in high school.  Because my overall score was not good, she was ashamed of me.  She often burst into tears and even wrote a 10+ page letter to persuade me to study hard.  I am only good at certain subjects.  My mother doesn't have a high level of education.  To a certain extent, my sister played a role in educating me.  I still remember the tears that she shed for me.

 

This mother needed to focus on the child's strengths knowing that God always sees the good and has a purpose and destiny unique to each individual.  The problem is that people can't accept it and end up having doubts. But when this woman tried to replace God's election by her own efforts by molding the child into someone she likes, she was bypassing what God wanted the child to be.  In the end, her way was impossible, and she realized that she needed to not only dedicate her child to the Lord but herself as well.  This, in turn, made God's election or destiny and her substitute holy.

 

I mentioned my experience because I also want to talk about this.  I was born in a rural area, and I failed a lot when I was growing up.  My educational foundation wasn't very good, plus, as I said earlier, I'm only good at certain subjects, which resulted in me having to take the college admission test three times to pass.  Plus, I experienced a lot of failures over the years.  When I was first saved, I was defeated and felt utterly worthless.  Later, in 2004, the Lord appeared to me.  He asked me to dedicate myself to Him.  After struggling, I dedicated my life to Him.  In a previous study, I mentioned that I was saved in 2002, and in 2004 the Holy Spirit inspired me to attend a special meeting where they encouraged everyone to dedicate themselves to the Lord. I didn't want to, but the Lord urged me through the Christians at that meeting.  I prayed and said in the evening, "If Jesus reveals the truth about His second coming to me, I will dedicate myself to Him."  At that time, I was still in doubt whether the Lord Jesus would really come again.  I dreamed that night that two people were fighting for my heart.  One man was stronger, and he won.  I think that was the Lord.  The next day, I dedicated myself to Him.

 

Later, I prayed and dedicated my marriage to Him.  In 2006, my wife and I met each other in the church and got married. But after marrying, we experienced a lot of tough times. We experienced a lot of struggles financially and emotionally.  These hardships once again knocked me down.  In 2008, I hit rock bottom.  I didn't have a job, and I lost my work permit.  Money was scarce, and I saw no future for myself.  This situation caused more arguments with my wife. She said, "Look, you can't earn money, you don't have a green card, and you don't care about me."  These hurtful accusations from my wife caused me to have a breakdown.

 

At that time, I was serving in the church.  We went to Plano, Texas to attend a special meeting. Because of my service and some other things, my wife and I argued again.  Her words made me feel like I was a loser.  I walked down the street in Plano until the early morning before returning to my host family.  I felt very depressed. The next day, the brother who was serving in the church said, "If God can get 50 people who will fully dedicate themselves to Him today, He can change the world through them."  He called those people who were willing to dedicate themselves to God to stand up.  I had nothing at the time, but I was willing to stand up and dedicate myself to God.  Unexpectedly, after this, the members of my church discovered that I had changed a lot.  A man in our congregation recognized that I had the gift of being able to express people's thoughts.  I often spoke out even before they started to share their thoughts.  I also had discovered that the Holy Spirit had baptized me at that meeting and helped me understand the Bible.

 

I gradually began to learn to lead a Bible study group.  On the one hand, my wife was surprised that God often spoke through me.  On the other hand, she also curiously asked: "Why you?"  In this way, I continued to grow up in the spirit of God's grace.  But I still couldn't overcome the shadow brought by my past failures.  I often felt that I couldn't complete God's call for my life because I felt inadequate.  I said to God many times, "I know that you have a call on me, but I really can't accept this call because I am not wise enough.  I have made so many mistakes, and I have a lot of character flaws."  And I often heard the voice of the enemy saying, "you don't deserve to be elevated by God." "You have a lot of shortcomings, and you're stupid."  If you serve God on a larger scale, not only will you not bring glory to God, you may also bring a lot of shame to Him."  Of course, I recognized that this was the voice of the enemy, but because what he said made sense, and he often reminded me of my weakness, it was disconcerting.  I had been struggling with this pain for years.  Until one day, I read the story of how D.L. Moody dedicated himself to God.

 

Due to low educational attainment, Moody became a shoemaker in his early life.  When he found out that he had a calling from God, he struggled between the conflict of his low level of education and the greatness of God's calling.  He was very insecure about his low education level and didn't know whether he should accept God's call.  One day, a preacher from the United Kingdom said, "The world is yet to see how God can use and will use a person who is absolutely consecrated to God to change the world."  This statement greatly encouraged Moody because there was no mention of a person without high educational attainment who could not be used by God.  I was also greatly encouraged and dedicated myself wholly to the Lord.  I entrusted my "lack of wisdom" to Him and trusted His leading.  I just followed His leading and dedicated myself to Him again.  These experiences are just like Abraham's repeated experience of building the altars, and each dedication was more profound than the last one.

 

The trials that I encountered didn't end.  In 2010 I found out that we couldn't have children.  We had been married for ten years before God showed up and miraculously healed us and blessed us with a baby girl in 2017.  During this trial, my wife and I experienced countless arguments and tears.  The circumstances forced me to further die to myself.  I was driven into a corner.  I remember once, I could hardly keep going.  I said to the Lord while I was walking, "If You don't give me strength now, I can't keep going.  I will fail and fall.  I might bring shame to your name."  As I finished praying, I experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit was like an electric current.  It baptized me from head to toe.  I immediately got the strength in God's grace.  I was then able to overcome my weakness and keep going.

 

Looking back at these experiences, although I can't go into detail, I found a pattern.  Once we dedicate ourselves to the Lord and give our authority to Him, He will surely keep us from falling. As it says in Psalm 91:11-12 (NIV), "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone."  Although this verse is widely known because Satan quoted it to put the Lord Jesus to the test, it applies not only to Jesus but also to "whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High" (Psalm 91:1, NIV).

 

In addition to the power of God's destiny or election, dedication is the greatest force in the world.  Psalm 110:3 says, "Your troops will be willing on your day of battle.  Arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning's womb." (NIV)

 

If we are willing to dedicate ourselves to God, God can do wonderful things and change the world through us.  Often, the church cannot change the world because it is full of people who haven't dedicated themselves to God.  If all Christians would dedicate themselves to God now, I believe that God will accomplish his will soon.

 

We might think that it's only necessary to dedicate ourselves to the Lord when we have reached a place of importance, like the man given five talents in the Bible.  That is wrong thinking.  We need to dedicate ourselves while we only have one talent, and it will grow to five. The Lord Jesus said, "For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them." (Matthew 25:29, NIV). The more you dedicate yourself to the Lord, the more God will expand the gifts and measure in you.  Of course, the Lord also said, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." (Luke 12:48, NIV).

 

At the beginning of Leviticus 27, everyone's value before God was different.  The value of a male between the ages of twenty and sixty was fifty shekels, and the value of a female of the same age bracket was thirty shekels.  For a person between the ages of five and twenty, the value of a male was twenty shekels, and the woman was ten shekels.  For a person between one month and five years, the value of a male was five shekels, and the value of a female was three shekels.  Infants less than one month of age were not counted.  The value of a male sixty years old or more was fifteen shekels, and the value of a female sixty years old or more was ten shekels.  This is a valuation.  It is a ballpark figure.  Just like the US property values. If your county calculates your house price and gives you a figure, and you disagree, you can file an appeal.  The same is true here.  If you feel that you're not worth the money or if you can't afford this valuation, you can argue with the priest and reassess your value according to the ability that you wish.

 

To give people a chance to visit, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States provides a "you name the price" in addition to the recommended fare.  I tried it once.  I paid the full price, and I paid one dollar for my friends from China, which they had gladly accepted.  The same is true of Jehovah's command to Moses.  God is willing to give everyone the opportunity to dedicate themselves to Him.  Although He gives everyone a suggested price, people still have the freedom to choose a price that they think is appropriate to them.  So with regards to dedicating to God, you have no reason to say that you are not qualified.  This is why Jesus was so angry about the person who buried his one talent.

 

As we said in the beginning, Leviticus 27:32 (NIV) says that no one may pick out the good from the bad or make any substitution on every tithe of the herd and flock that the Lord chooses.  If anyone does make a substitution, both the animal and its substitute become holy and cannot be redeemed.  This is a special case because it talks about the fact that God's election's authority cannot be denied.  Verse 26 also says that no one may dedicate the firstborn of an animal since the firstborn already belongs to the Lord.

 

But when it came to people's volunteer dedication, it involved a variety of factors.  For example, if you dedicated animals, house, and field, they could not be replaced, but they could be redeemed.  But the price of the redemption was the value set by the priest plus one-fifth of the value.  And unclean animals coudn’t be dedicated.  They must be redeemed, and a fifth must be added to its value.  If you didn’t redeem it, you’d have to sell it.  What does this mean?  This means that you need to pay the price when you dedicate yourself to the Lord.  What I said is true.  A person who totally dedicates themselves to the Lord understands the personal price that must be paid.  This is also true for a person called by God.  For example, why did Moses struggle so hard when God called him to dedicate his life to Him?  You need to pay a high price when you accept God's calling and when you dedicate to Him.  Sometimes, we don't understand what it will cost us.

 

Luke 9:57-58 (NIV) says: a man said to the Lord, "I will follow you wherever you go."  But Jesus said to him, "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."  This sentence was to remind this person that although he said that he would follow the Lord at any cost,  he would endure hardships and pay a high price.  Peter said boastfully to the Lord, "Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will." (Matthew 26:33, NIV).  But the Lord told Peter, "before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times." (Matthew 26:34, NIV).

 

In the next verses, Luke 9:59-60 (NIV), the Lord asked another man to follow him, but the man said, "I would first bury my father.”  The Lord Jesus said, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."  This person's heart towards the world was dead but was not completely cut off.  The Lord then helped him to overcome the world.  In Luke 9:61 (NIV), another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family."  Jesus replied, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:62, NIV)

 

Look at the three examples above.  In the first and third example, they took the initiative to dedicate.  The Lord tells them the value of their dedication and the price they'll pay. But the second example is that the Lord Jesus called the man to dedicate.  Although the man bargained, the Lord did not permit him to negotiate.  This shows that the Lord's authority is something that people cannot resist.  I remember Watchman Nee made the statement: "God only used soldiers recruited by conscription.  He does not use enlisted soldiers."  In other words, when God uses certain vessels to perform specific tasks, He made the choice.  It's not just people volunteering themselves.  Of course, if people are willing to dedicate themselves, then God will often remind them of the price they have to pay so that they won't regret it.  Because God is a great God, He never forces or manipulates people to dedicate themselves.  Instead, He asks them to think clearly about the price they'll pay.

 

 I heard a story that touched my heart and still moves me every time I hear it.  There was a Chinese Christian man who was arrested and sent to prison by the police.  He could face years in jail, so he was reluctant to go.  He looked back at his wife and young children as he walked. The wife was also a Christian.  She didn't cry but instead, she told him, "Just go.  No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."  She told him not to worry about her and their children and not worry about the price he had to pay.  No doubt, the price he had to pay was high.  But if he wasn't willing to dedicate himself to God, he would not only lose the blessings on earth but also lose the rewards in heaven.  This woman was strong spiritually.  She raised her children on her own with help from her church while her husband remained in jail for many years.  This is a true story told to me by a Chinese Christian that I know.  It's a story of dedication.  China will have a great spiritual revival in the future, but these people are all pathbreakers.  Undoubtedly, without their dedication and sacrifice, only a few people would be saved, and God's work in China wouldn't go forward.  I believe that they will indeed receive rewards in the Kingdom of God in the future.

 

Leviticus 27:28 (NIV) says that nothing a person owns and devotes to the LORD may be redeemed.  Once a person dedicates himself, whether a human being, animal, or family land, it cannot be sold or redeemed.  Everything devoted is most holy to the LORD.  But if you dedicated a field that was not eternally devoted, there are two options.  One was to dedicate your family's land.  This was okay because it wasn’t an eternal dedication.  The price was based on the years left until the next Year of Jubilee.  But if he does not redeem the field or has sold it to someone else, it could never be redeemed.  In the year of Jubilee, the buyer must sell the land. The land would not be given to him.  It's like the field devoted to the Lord; it would become His property and the property of the priests.  The second option was if a man dedicated to the Lord a field he bought, which was not part of his family land, the field would revert to the person from whom he purchased it in the year of Jubilee.  Don’t these two seem contradictory to the verse earlier? The earlier verse said if I sold the field to someone else, it could never be redeemed.  But in the latter verse, it said that the buyer would revert the field to the person from whom he bought it.

 

Actually, it is not contradictory.  There is a constant dedication process here.  When we are sinners, it is like selling the field (which represents our inheritance), and when it is Jubilee, the field must be returned to us.  Ephesians 4:8 says that the Lord Jesus' led captive those taken captive."  This means plucking us from the hands of the enemy and offering us as a sacrifice to God in the ascension of Christ.  The Lord Jesus came to preach our Jubilee.  We, who were bound by sin and didn't know God or the glorious inheritance that we were called into,  will be released by God in the year of Jubilee.  We were also offered as a sacrifice to God by Christ.  Paul mentioned this in 2 Corinthians 2:15 (NIV), "For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing."  This is  the first stage of the experience, meaning once we are saved, God will "rescue us from the dominion of darkness and bring us into the kingdom of the Son he loves" (Colossians 1:13).  Whether it is Christ, Paul, or other preachers who helped us receive salvation, we are their sacrifices or offerings to God.

 

But are we willing to dedicate ourselves to God as a sacrifice?  This is the further experience in Romans 12.  Paul even said in Romans 12:1 that we should offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. Since we are all saved and brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves, why should we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice?  This is a deeper dedication. But it's not necessarily an eternal dedication.

 

Exodus 21:1-6 (NIV) records that if you buy a Hebrew slave, he must serve you for six years, and he shall go free in the seventh year.  But if he marries his wife given by the master and gives birth to a child while he was a slave, and declares that he does not want to go free because he loved his master and his wife and children, the master will pierce his ear with an awl.  Then he will be his servant for life.  This is an eternal dedication.  God gives people the free will to redeem before a person eternally devotes himself.  To provide a simple example, the Mormon Church encourages young people to dedicate two years of their lives to their missionary program, which involves preaching the gospel in various places.  This involves a temporary dedication but is not for eternity.  I went to Dayton, Ohio, a few months ago to participate in intensive learning at a theological seminary.  I took an Uber, and the driver was from a Mormon family.  He told me that his brother had participated in the two-year missionary program, but he did not participate.  The church where I was saved also encourages this.  It encourages many young Christians to dedicate two years of their lives to training and serving the Lord.  After their two years, many return to their professions.  However, many are determined to serve the Lord for life. This is like the eternal dedication here.  Of course, we are using modern examples just to make an analogy.  This is not to say that only full-time preachers totally dedicate themselves to God, and other professions don't.  No matter what profession we are in, we can fully dedicate ourselves to God.

 

Previously we mentioned that if you didn’t redeem the field or sell it to someone else in the year of Jubilee, it could never be redeemed.  It's the same story in Exodus 21.  The redemption price represents paying a high price, which is the price for breaking the contract.  We established a new covenant with God.  The Lord Jesus paid his life as a ransom and redeemed us back to God, giving us a glorious inheritance in Him.  This covenant is extremely important.  Therefore, we must treat this covenant with caution.  The covenant of life between the Lord and us will never be broken, but the personal and ministerial covenant between Him and us is agreed upon by the Lord and us.  The Lord gives us the free will to choose, but once we decide to dedicate to God, we can be free if it is short-term when the agreement is over.  If the agreement is not over, and we break the contract, we need to pay the redemption price.  If, after our initial agreement, we declare that we love the Lord, do not want to be free, and are willing to serve Him forever, then we have made an eternal dedication.  Eternal dedication cannot be redeemed. Of course, if God sovereignly elects someone, such as Peter and John, others cannot say anything to them, either good or bad.  For example, you aren't permitted to say that Peter was only a fisherman, so he wasn't qualified to be the Lord's top disciple.  Peter asked the Lord what would happen to John. The Lord said to Peter, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me." (John 21:22, NIV).  Each individual has a unique path lead by the Lord that can't be interfered with by others.

 

I repeat, except for God's election, dedication is the greatest power in the universe.  The reason why the church has no power it is too caught up in the world.  It lacks dedication.  Many Christians aren't truly dedicated to the Lord because their lives are focused on their own desires and lifestyles.  If God's people would individually dedicate and commit their lives as living sacrifices, He could use us to change the world.  The picture of Leviticus 27 should be an inspiration for us to dedicate ourselves more to God.  May the Lord bless you and lead you to dedicate your life to Him.

 

 

Bible Study with Jairus - Leviticus 22

Bible Study with Jairus - Leviticus 22

Leviticus 22 says that priests must be holy when they are offering sacrifices to the Lord. Those who are not holy can’t offer sacrifices to the Lord, nor can they eat the sacred offerings dedicated to Him.  For example, verses 12-13 says, “If a priest’s daughter marries anyone other than a priest, she may not eat any of the sacred contributions.  But if a priest’s daughter becomes a widow or is divorced, yet has no children, and she returns to live in her father’s household as in her youth, she may eat her father’s food. No unauthorized person, however, may eat it.”  How can we interpret the meaning of these verses?

Our Bible studies are not a word for word explanation of the chapter we are reading because we can’t do this in just one or two hours.  The focus of each of our Bible studies is to follow the leading and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  Our fellowship is often closely related to our life and work from the past week.

As we have mentioned many times, our Bible study's goal is to have the Word of God speak to us and change us by giving us a fresh perspective and insight.  Knowledge without being moved by the Spirit means the study wasn’t as effective as it should be.  In other words, we may have understood the words being said, but we didn’t understand the Spirit behind the words. II Corinthians 3:6 tells us, “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.  In today’s study, we’ll share the inspirations that the Holy Spirit encouraged us with, and hopefully, it will help you also.

In this week’s meeting, a lady shared an experience that she had recently. She made a negative comment to a colleague.  On the one hand, as a Christian, she felt she shouldn’t have said it.  On the other hand, the Lord showed her that this comment exposed her real spiritual state, which wasn’t very good.  She felt awful about it and couldn’t find any inner peace during prayer.  She brought this situation to our study in hopes of getting help from others.

The members of the study encouraged her not to be too hard on herself and realize that Christians are human beings who say and do things in the flesh.  They encouraged her to confess to God, apologize to the offended person, and receive God’s grace.

The story looks like it has nothing to do with this chapter of the Bible, but it ties into this chapter deeply.  Through experience, we recognize that when members of our study have problems in life or at work, sharing their stories often leads the Holy Spirit to show us how these experiences tie into the chapter we are reading, which helps us to go deeper.  

What makes this woman sad is her lack of intimacy with the Lord.  She’s often with her atheist colleagues who influence the flesh rather than the Spirit.  She also feels bad about her Christian testimony.  On the other hand, she felt like she prayed, and God didn’t listen, so she didn’t have inner peace.

As a Christian who is seeking a deeper inner spiritual life, the feelings she was experiencing are normal.  Nominal Christians or unbelievers may feel like you are causing your own problems.  A principle in the spiritual realm is that the closer we are to the Lord, the more sensitive we are.  The Lord’s expectations are higher for those who are closer to Him.  For example, let’s look at the temple in the Old Testament.  Many ordinary Israelis could come to the outer courtyard to offer cattle and sheep sacrifices, but only the Levites could serve in the Holy Place.  Only people who were descendants of Zadok could serve priests in the Holy Place. The other Levites could not serve as priests (Ezekiel 44:13).  Taking it a step further, only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies once a year.

Leviticus chapter 22 is a case where the priest offers sacrifices to God and eats the sacred offerings knowing what to do to avoid defiling himself.  You can’t just casually go inside God’s sanctuary and offer sacrifices. You must be holy.  After being defiled, you need to be cleansed first before you can enter the sanctuary again to offer sacrifices.

This woman’s experience is closely related to what we mentioned earlier in chapter 22:12-13.  These two verses say: “If a priest’s daughter marries anyone other than a priest, she may not eat any of the sacred contributions.  But if a priest’s daughter becomes a widow or is divorced, yet has no children, and she returns to live in her father’s household as in her youth, she may eat her father’s food. No unauthorized person, however, may eat it.”

Deuteronomy 7:6 says, “The Lord your God has chosen the Israelites out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” (Deuteronomy 7:6, NIV).

They were called to bear witness to the Gentiles and attract the nations to God.  The law required that the Israelites not inter-marry with Gentiles.  This meant that they shouldn’t imitate the degenerated customs of the Gentiles.  But I don’t believe this was asking the Israelites to not associate with the Gentiles. Would that make sense?  It wouldn’t be possible for the Israelites to testify to the Gentiles without forming a relationship with them.

As Christians, we are spiritual Israelites.  We live in the world, just as fish live in the sea.  Although they live in saltwater, they are not salty. If a fish is salty, it is probably dead because it is infused with seawater.  Although Christians live in the world, we do not live according to the system of the world.  We are like the salt on the ground and the light in the city.  We’re the light that illuminates the whole world.  If we conform to the world’s way of living, we lose our ability to influence or salt our environment rendering us useless as a witness for Christ.  Or if we hide our light or Christian testimony, our influence for Christ will be lost.

In Leviticus 22:12-13, if a priest’s daughter married anyone other than a priest, it was like us being conformed to the world and losing our authority.  Romans, chapter 7 likens our carnal nature to the first husband and our new nature in Christ as the second husband.  Paul said that if a husband dies, his wife is no longer bound to that first husband, meaning that when we are born again, and our old nature is crucified with Christ, we are free from the law of sin and death.  Our new born again nature lives by the law of the Spirit in Christ.

Can you see the difference here?  When a priest’s daughter marries anyone other than a priest, she may not eat any of the sacred contributions, nor may the guest of a priest or his hired worker eat it. (Leviticus 22:10, NIV). But in verse 11, it says that “If a priest buys a slave with money, or if slaves are born in his household, they may eat his food.”

What is the difference?  The difference is whether God and the priest have a dominant position.  If the priest bought a slave or the slave was born in his household, they could eat the sacred offerings.  They represent the people who were reborn and purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ.  If you marry a gentile husband, the husband usually has the final say at home. The husband here represents your old man or the Gentiles who don’t believe in God. In this case, you can’t eat the sacred offerings. Why?  You are not strong enough to go against the world's influence and could be carried away by it.

The Israelites were not forbidden to make contact with the Gentiles.  Christians are also not forbidden to make contact with the unbelievers.  Instead, we need to have enough influence to impact them to lead them to God.  God will bless us for making the contacts.  For example, if your atheist friends drag you to the casino, you could be faced with the temptation to gamble, even to the point of bankruptcy.  In this situation, God may not be with you or won’t allow you to go.  If you insist on going, you are on your own.  But if you’re the type of person who is not tempted by gambling, and a good friend of yours is immersed in gambling, God may encourage you to go and help him break free from his addiction. 

The daughter of a priest was married to an outsider. As she fell away from God more and more, she even gave birth to a child and was cut off from eating the sacred offerings to God. We won’t talk about offering sacrifices here because she’s not even qualified to eat the sacred offerings. The qualifications for offering a sacrifice are now higher.  In the Old Testament, only the priests could offer sacrifices.  But in the New Testament, every saved Christian is a spiritual priest.  We can offer sacrifices to God. What is our sacrifice?  Christ is our sacrifice, and we offer sacrifices to God through confession and repentance as David did or through praise and thanksgiving as in Hebrews 13:15.

The Lord Jesus said that He is the bread from heaven, and we must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life.  He is our spiritual sacrifice. South African pastor Andrew Murray said that prayer is offering the Christ that is dwelling in us to Christ in heaven, or you can say that prayer is the Christ that is living in us praying to the Christ in heaven.  When we conform ourselves to the world, we are deprived of the right to enjoy the sacrifice.  So, how can we even talk about the sacrifices that we are going to offer to God?

I told the woman who’s story we shared earlier that it was very normal for her to feel weak when she prayed to the Lord and wasn’t able to please Him and have peace.  When a person lives according to the flesh's desires for some time, they lose strength, feel isolated, and cannot enjoy God's sacrifices. This weakness is due to a lack of intimacy with God, and it makes sense that they feel weak and powerless even after praying.  

Another pleasing sacrifice that we have is repentance.  When we repent, God accepts our sacrifices and restores our communication with Him.  Then, we can continue to eat God’s sacrifices and will slowly gain strength and have the ability in prayer to please Him.  So, I shared with this woman that if her prayer doesn’t feel acceptable to God, and she doesn’t have inner peace, it may be that repentance is needed.

We often make mistakes, but when the Spirit of God encourages us to repent, we often give excuses. This was the case with Saul in the Old Testament.  Samuel asked Saul to wait for him to come before offering sacrifices, but Samuel came late, and Saul had offered up a burnt offering because of his fear of the masses.  Samuel was furious and blamed Saul for not waiting for him. Saul argued that the masses would not wait. Samuel spoke a very famous line here. In 1 Samuel 15:22-23, he said, “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice,   and to heed is better than the fat of rams.  For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.  Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”

On the contrary, when David sinned, the prophet Nathan blamed him.  His first reaction was to say that he was wrong. He recognized that he offended God.  David repented and wrote the famous repentance poem, Psalm 51.  He didn’t argue or make excuses.

This woman shared that she was still asking why God didn’t stop her from saying those inappropriate words but instead let her get exposed.  On the one hand, she felt that she wouldn’t have been in that situation if she lived in the Spirit.  On the other hand, she also thinks that the Holy Spirit is keeping watch over her at all times, not allowing her to follow worldly ways, and intervening at the right moment.  Our experience can be like this.  Why, after the priest’s daughter married the outsider, did her husband die, and she was left barren?  This is not an exception.  Naomi’s husband and two sons died in the Gentile land of Moab.  She returned to Israel with her daughter-in-law Ruth and was able to eat the sacred offerings and inherit her husband’s property.  Ruth had a child named Obed by her husband, Boaz.  This child was even considered to be Naomi’s son as Ruth 4:14 says, “The women living there said, Naomi has a son!”  This is God’s discipline in our circumstances.  He wants us to have a share of His sacrifice so certain things are allowed in our lives.  He allows our Husband (which represents our old man or carnal nature) to die for a day so we will return to our father’s house (representing the House of God).  This way, we can continue to enjoy the sacrifice God has given us.

The story of Naomi seems to have little to do with the woman in our study’s situation, but it lines up perfectly by showing us that Christians need to be in the world but not of the world participating in the ungodly affairs going on around us.  We need to be in intimate fellowship with Christ enjoying and delighting in him as the sacrifice given to us by God.  Often when everything is going well in our lives, we haphazardly read the Bible, but hearts are closed and there is no deep revelation of the word.  When life gets difficult, we find that the truths of the Bible come alive and are empowering.

Another person in our meeting had a similar experience.  She had a big fight with her husband.  She felt that she couldn’t keep their marriage going anymore.  After their fight, she was moved by a chapter she read from the book of Job, and hope began to rise inside of her again.

The more we stay away from the Lord, the less we enjoy the sacrifice of God.  But when we are forced to return to our father’s house due to circumstances, we will find that God’s sacrifice is really sweet.

When we finished this topic, another woman asked a question about verses 26-28.

“Chapter 22:26-28 says: The Lord said to Moses, “When a calf, a lamb or a goat is born, it is to remain with its mother for seven days. From the eighth day on, it will be acceptable as a food offering presented to the Lord. Do not slaughter a cow or a sheep and its young on the same day.”

So why not kill the mother and its young on the same day?

One of the men who took the lead in this bible study said that he saw many discussions on the Internet but didn’t see an explanation that impacted him.

I shared an explanation that I felt was inspired by the Holy Spirit.  I think this verse says that when a person is still living in the flesh or the soul, they are very attached to the world's affairs and don’t need to pretend to be spiritual.

Why?  First of all, God hates hypocrites.  When Jesus was on earth, he hated the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. Jesus teaches us that yes is yes and no is no.  If you say more, it’s from the evil one.  In Acts 5, Ananias bought land and donated half of it, but he made a pretense of donating it all.  In the end, he offended the Holy Spirit. Peter said: Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold?  Why do you have to pretend and lie to the Holy Spirit?  Ananias immediately dropped to the floor dead, verifying God’s feelings on hypocrites.

Some of us are living according to the desires of the flesh.  We can liken it to the Israelites who were slaves in Egypt then drifted through the wilderness, unable to enter the Promised Land. God knows that saving a person from Egypt, and watching them journey through the wilderness before entering the Promised Land is a process. We need faith to win the battle, and God’s grace is provided for us throughout the different stages of our journey.

For example, when the Israelites were in Egypt, God appointed Joseph to look after them.  When the new king (who did not know Joseph) took over, God appointed Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and leave the wilderness.  After the first generation of the Israelites had fallen in the wilderness due to rebellion and disobedience, God raised Joshua and led them to experience victory and enter the Promised Land. God has different leading in every stage.

If you haven’t reached the next stage of spiritual maturity, God won’t always correct you immediately.  He isn’t pleased when we live in sin or act according to the flesh, but he hates hypocrisy.

I’ll give you another example that may help you understand better.  We know that chicks are hatched from eggs. Eggs have eggshells, egg whites, and egg yolks. A chicks’ life originates from egg yolk, but the eggshell protects the egg. It preserves the chick’s life in the egg.  Egg whites provide nutrition to the developing chick, allowing it to get nutrients to help it hatch.  When the chick matures, it naturally breaks out of the shell.  Eggshells and egg whites represent a mother’s nurture allowing the chick's life to grow and expand.  

Imagine if the eggshell was broken into pieces or if there was no egg white. How could the chick survive?

Paul explicitly mentions in the Bible that we needed to be held in custody under the law when we were young because we needed a guardian.

Galatians 3:23-25 says, “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith.  Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.“

You can argue that this only refers to the time before the coming of Jesus Christ, but I think the spiritual principle still applies today.

We can liken the guardian's role in the law here to the role of the “mother” in Leviticus 22:26-28.  We are all born from the flesh and have gone through a weaning process, but we can't kill our mother as we are undergoing this process.  In other words, before the new life in our Spirit is mature enough to offer sacrifices to God, we cannot kill our mother. The spiritual meaning here is that before we can live the victorious life in Christ, we still need the “mother” jurisdiction, such as the law and the rules.

There has been a big debate among Christians in recent years, especially for those who have been hurt by legalism.  In the Hyper-Grace Gospel teaching, the role of God’s grace has gone too far, and all laws and regulations seem to be abandoned.  I will not deny that these Christians have been hurt by legalism and dogmatism, but you can’t completely abandon the church's law and rules.  Even the Lord Jesus said that He came not to abolish the law, and not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the Law.  He came to fulfill the law.

For example, I am Chinese.  Before the Chinese accepted the Gospel, Confucius's teachings helped us maintain a clear conscience and morality.  It’s not right to say that all the teachings of Confucius are wrong and must be tossed out.  A Christian needs to be disciplined before he can get freedom in the law of the Spirit in Jesus Christ. He needs to be taught by his parents. He needs to persevere in reading the Bible every day. Unfortunately, many people hang on to legalism's negative effects, thinking they are pursuing freedom by abandoning submission to any authority.  But, in reality, they are entering the stage of rebellion against God. God does give leaders authority, not to rule over His children but to help discipline them to become mature in Him.  We need to be disciplined.

This is the current situation of our society and the church.  Many people are using the banner of Grace against legalism, but they are actually opposing God.  They oppose any rules and laws, saying that they are in pursuit of the freedom of the Holy Spirit. But instead, they are entering a lawless state.  This is one of the greatest difficulties in American churches.  The pastors are afraid to ask the congregation to do anything.  If they ask for more, they may be convicted of legalism. They are fearful of weak believers who easily stumble. Slowly, believers become weaker and more frivolous and undisciplined.

Let’s not have a pretense of spirituality when we are living in sin.  An honest evaluation of our lives is essential not only to us but to God. God is Holy and is not pleased with sin, but an attitude of repentance pleases Him.  An example of this is David’s sin.  Although his sin didn’t please God when he had a repentant heart and soft Spirit, it delighted God.  Saul made fewer mistakes than David, in my opinion, but his resistance to God and his Spirit of pride didn’t please God.

God also knows that we still love the world and the affairs of this world.  In this case, we must be honest and strive to grow more, expanding the life of God in us.  We should learn a lesson from Ananias, who donated half of his property but said he donated all.  If we kept something in reserve, we should be honest about it. If we don’t love God wholeheartedly, we shouldn’t pretend to be sold out to Him.

One of the most significant difficulties of the church today is spiritual pretense or false spirituality.  The churches are now full of this spiritual pretense.  They are clearly sinning but are pretending to be holy priests.  They are doing it for the sake of their own interests but say it’s for the Lord.  This is the most fundamental reason why the church has become weak today.  These situations are like what the previous verses have said: it is impossible to kill the mother and its young on the same day.  Because your life has not yet achieved the state of freedom in the law of the Spirit of Christ, you need the discipline of the Holy Spirit (although not the level of following the law in the Old Testament) to help you grow mature in life.

Can people be self-taught?  Paul blessed Timothy and said, don’t forget where you learned these from (2 Timothy 3:14).  All of us need to learn from other people.  The habit of disrespecting older people in American society and churches does not come from God but is influenced by the world’s rebellious culture.  We must respect the elders in the church and accept their training in spiritual life and spiritual discipline to achieve maturity in life. In a sense, these older men and women are the spiritual fathers and mothers we cannot kill.  If you kill them, and your life is not mature enough, both die the same day.

We can’t completely abandon the elders or abandon the law or rules.  But our goal is not to obey the law, rather, to be more mature in character and life through various disciplines.  In all things, God works for the good of those who love him. (NIV, Romans 8:28).  We shouldn’t treat all difficulties as an attack from evil spirits. We must bear our cross daily to follow the Lord.  These daily difficulties we may experience could be the mother to foster our spiritual life further.  If you disregard these disciplines, “kill” them, ignore them, or attribute them to evil attacks every time, you may miss the chance of being “nurtured” to spiritual maturity.

Our physical and soulish lives provide a shelter for our spiritual lives to grow in, just like how eggshells and egg whites helped the chicken grow.  Likewise, the pain of life living in this world and our souls' agonies are the eggshells and egg whites to supply growth in our spiritual lives.  The pain in our physical or soulish lives will eventually mature our spiritual lives.

In the OT, God mentioned that he would not drive out all the Israelites' enemies in one day, or the beasts in the land would increase dramatically. Rather, God left some enemies in the good land and waited for the Israelites to take them out gradually.  This matches the principle we are talking about here. 

When we are not mature in Spirit, we will often have constant struggles with sin or the world.  You should face them and solve these problems.  But you can’t cover issues up and pretend you don’t have them by just reading the Bible, going to church, or staying busy with Christian service or ministry.

That won’t solve the problem.  You can’t offer a good sacrifice to God since you are not mature yet. You haven’t completed your eight days yet and are not weaned before God.  That is the significance of why Samuel asked Saul to wait for him to offer sacrifices to God because Samuel knew Saul’s offering was not pleasing to God.  So Saul first needed to wait for the prophet who represents God to come.  A Prophet represents God’s message and acceptance. Sacrifices and what a priest does represent something we are offering to God.

We are not discouraging anyone from offering repentance to God as Jesus became our sacrifice. But we are talking about offering our service to the Lord.  Don’t hastily offer your sacrifices like Saul or burn the strange fire like the sons of Aaron.  Instead, we should take care of the issues in our lives first.

If you apply to an American Graduate school, you need to take an entrance test called GRE.  This computer-based test works to give you a set of questions that will change to more difficult questions when answered correctly.  The score you get will be higher as well since these questions are more complicated. But if you didn’t answer the questions correctly, the computer-based test will give you more questions in the same difficulty level. It seems like you are still answering the same amount of questions in the same time period, but your score will be lower since you never answered the more difficult levels correctly.

It’s like the test of obedience and faith for the Israelites in the wilderness.  When they failed again and again, they wandered in the wilderness for their whole lives.  The Bible tells us we are pots made of clay, and the Lord God is the potter.  And a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without the permission of our heavenly father.  That means we are put into a furnace to mold us, and all of the circumstances around us can be equated to the furnace molding us.

For example, if you feel a particular temptation of sin in your life, it doesn’t necessarily mean that evil spirits are attacking you.  It could be, but it also means that God is testing you to help you overcome this particular sin.  If you succeed, you may face different obstacles, but your victory over this sin will become your sacrifice or offering to God, and He will be pleased.  Suppose you don’t deal with sin properly, and you think spending more time in prayer, reading the Bible, going to a Bible study, or participating more in ministry will offer better sacrifice to the Lord.  In that case, you are just killing the mother and the baby at the same time.  God isn’t pleased with any of that.

I don’t mean that you shouldn’t read the Bible, go to Bible study, or participate in Christian ministries. I’m saying there is a better way to do that.  Obeying the Lord’s dealing in your circumstances is always a better service than mere spiritual endeavor because it builds character in the inner man.

No wonder many Christians haven’t achieved much spiritual growth after many years of struggle.  It is simply because they overlooked God’s dealing in the womb of the mother, whether this is a difficult husband/wife or a mean boss.  They often try to escape God’s plan and do things their way.  We must learn from Saul and his failure.  We also must learn from Cain and his failures.  Sometimes we need to wait for God’s timing, and we should not be hasty to make the sacrifice.  We also need to know that God is delightful and offer the right sacrifices; otherwise, we may miss the opportunities and displease God.

This is my explanation of what it means to not kill the mother and its young on the same day.  It means you shouldn’t hurry to offer the young, which represents your spiritual sacrifices to the Lord, while the Lord intends you to stay in the womb of the mother longer to make you more mature.

 

 

 

Bible Study with Jairus - Acts 28

Bible Study with Jairus – Acts 28

Acts 28 includes two stories.  The first story is about Paul staying on the island of Malta for three months and then leaving there after the winter to go to Rome.  On this island, he supernaturally prevailed against the attack of the viper.  He also healed the father of the chief official of the island and other sick people.   We don’t understand why Paul lived on this island for three months but didn’t record much of his ministry there.  For example, if we are talking about healing people on the island, Paul would be able to lay hands on them and heal them in just a few days.  Since Paul was a prisoner, he probably did not have the tools to weave tents as he always did in his profession.  While in Malta, did Paul preach the gospel and teach the natives about the Bible?  Since details aren’t given, we don’t’ know exactly what he did for those three months.

Three months is a long time.  If Paul’s daily life was recorded daily in a diary, it could have been as thick as the Bible.  The Bible was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  One written word is worth a thousand pieces of gold.  It is the Christian’s instruction manual for life.  Though details may be left out, we can be sure that those details were not significant for the future of the church.  Verse 11 tells us that they had wintered on the island for three months before setting sail on the Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux.  The details mentioned in this passage are significant, which is why they were included in the Bible. For example, Castor and Pollux are Greek gods, indicating that ships from Alexandria, Egypt (under the jurisdiction of Ancient Greece) were going to and from Malta.  The Greek crew members wintered in Malta for three months, yet the Bible doesn’t say anything about Paul preaching the gospel to them.  What did Paul do for those three months? 

In the second story, after Paul arrived in Rome, he preached Jesus as a gospel to the Jews, but a dispute arose among them.  Then Paul quoted Isaiah saying: “The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your ancestors when he said through Isaiah the prophet:” 'Go to this people and say, "You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving."  For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.  Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.' "Therefore I want you to know that God's salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!" (Acts 28:25-28, NIV)

Why did Paul say this?  You might remember that in Romans 9-11, Paul recorded his burden for the Jews to be saved, wishing that he would be cursed for the sake that the Jews would be saved (Romans 9:3).  And we have witnessed in the previous records of Acts that every time he went to the Jews to preach the gospel, although they did not accept it and chased Paul to persecute him, Paul did not give up.  But why is it that he gave up this time?

Remember that the Lord Jesus once said to Paul, "Quick! Leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me" (Acts 22:18, NIV).  In Acts 22:21 (NIV), Paul also recorded what Jesus said, "Then the Lord said to me, 'Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.'"  So we can see from these two verses that Jesus had told him long ago that the Jews in Jerusalem would not accept his testimony, and that He would be sending Paul to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.  But Paul's mind couldn’t keep up.  He was hindered from fully understanding Jesus' will for him Because of his love for the Jews, his own cultural and religious limitations, perspectives, and personality.

Previously, we've talked about whether Paul's trip to Jerusalem was God's plan or his own.  This is a controversial topic.  We reasoned that it could be from God because when he was imprisoned in Jerusalem, Jesus appeared to him and said, "Take courage!  As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome" (Acts 23:11, NIV).  In addition, some believe that Agabus' prophecy wasn't completely accurate.  He prophesied that Paul would be bound by the Jews in Jerusalem, but in reality Paul was bound by the Romans in Jerusalem.  This could be why some Charismatics who have the gift of prophecy say that Agabus' prophecy was not accurate.  The Bible does say that when Abagus prophesied, he said: “this is what the Holy Spirit says." Others tried to persuade Paul not to go, but he didn't listen.

The contradiction here is a theological issue debated by many people.  In our study, we looked at it from a different perspective and concluded that perhaps Paul shouldn't have gone to Jerusalem.  If he had understood Jesus' telling him to forego Jerusalem and go directly to Rome to preach the gospel, he might have avoided being shipwrecked and imprisoned.  However, Paul was human like us and had his own perspective about what he should do.  Human perspective can hinder or interfere with God's leading.  Witness Lee said that man's perspective is what hinders following God and spiritual growth the most.  We gleaned from this chapter that Paul finally understood God's leading and plan after going through the storm and subsequent shipwreck from Jerusalem to Rome.  He understood that the Jews wouldn't accept his testimony and shifted his ministry's focus from the Jews to the Gentiles.  We see this at the end of Acts 28 when it said, "For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him.  He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ –with all boldness and without hindrance!" (Acts 28:30-31, NIV).  These verses confirm that Paul completely refocused his attention on the Gentiles in Rome and God's move among the gentile nations and evangelizing Europe. 

As we finished Acts 28, it seemed that the chapter abruptly ended, and some of our bible study members asked why.  We eventually concluded that the ending of this chapter is spiritually significant.

We can compare a person's journey from accepting God's call to completing it with Paul's journey from Jerusalem to Rome.  God officially called Paul on the road to Damascus, yet he said that God had set him apart from his mother's womb.  In turn, we can say he was called from Jerusalem.  God wanted him to go to Rome and evangelize Europe, but the journey was difficult, and Paul didn't follow God's will initially.

Malta was a turning point for Paul.  He stayed there for three months, yet the Bible leaves out the details of that time period.  Rome isn't far away, but the winter weather restricts the ships from sailing.  Neither Paul nor the ship's captain and crew can leave.  God arranged these circumstances, and here is the spiritual significance that we see.  We believe that during that three months with nothing to do, Paul spent much of his time in prayer and reflected on his journey from Jerusalem to Rome.  He might have thought of God's instructions that he leave Jerusalem as soon as possible because his testimony to the Jews wouldn't be accepted.  Jesus was clear when he told Paul to go to the Gentiles to preach the gospel, but Paul's mind was focused elsewhere.  He insisted on going to Jerusalem, causing many uproars.  Perhaps during this reflection time and prayer, his attitude changed.  He may have questioned whether he fully understood God's leading and instead embarked on his own path.  Paul may have had some regret and felt discouraged, knowing that he wasn't fully cooperating with what God wanted.

Acts 28:13-15 (NIV) says that when Paul arrived in Puteoli, fellow believers greeted him.  Some traveled thirty-forty miles from Rome as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three taverns to meet him when they heard he was coming.  Paul thanked God and was encouraged when he saw them.  One lady in our study questioned this, saying, "Wasn’t Paul always strong and courageous?”  Why was he encouraged when these people met him?  I suggested that maybe this confirms that Paul might have had self-doubt and misgivings while reflecting in Malta.

Jesus said to his disciples while He was on earth, "Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans.  Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel." (NIV, Matthew 10:5-6).  Jesus' command to the twelve apostles was not the same command He gave to Paul.  In other words, it was the leading of God's previous move, not the leading of His new move.

Our own perspective often gets in the way of what God wants to do.  Bill Johnson, a Charismatic pastor in California, said, “Every new move of God is often persecuted by the people used by God in His previous move.”  What people knew and experienced in a previous move of God often keeps them from accepting something new or different in the next move of God.  Because things in the new move look different, people will react negatively, saying it’s not of God or even go so far as to say it’s from the enemy.  Personal opinions can hinder God’s spirit from moving.  We can see the cycle if we look to the past, from Martin Luther’s reformation, which was persecuted by the Catholic Church to the Anabaptists who were persecuted by the reformed. Lastly, even within the Pentecostal Movement, newer movements are persecuted by previous movements.  It was the same story without exception.  Paul was human with his own perceptions and shortcomings.  God often has to deal with people’s perceptions and natural inclinations.  The relationship between God and man is like two people trying to run together with their legs tied.  God is often running faster than we can keep up.  He has to wait for people to understand his leading or eventually let them deal with the consequences of their own choices.  This is what happened to Paul.  Jesus told Paul to leave Jerusalem and go to the Gentiles to preach the gospel, but he didn’t listen.  God had no choice but to remind him through the Holy Spirit’s prophecy.  Paul insisted on going, so God waited patiently.  Despite his stubbornness, Jesus appeared to him and encouraged him in prison.  2 Thessalonians 3:5 (NIV) is a verse that talks about the patience of Jesus Christ. “May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.”  It seems like Paul prayed this out of his own experience of Jesus’s patience with him.

Jesus Christ is not only like that to Paul.  He’s also like that to us.  I shared one of my experiences to help our Bible study members understand the inspiration I received.

I was saved in the Local Church Movement,  a conservative Christian group that values spiritual growth in life.  At that time, my only thought was to serve the members of our church.  I had no thoughts of serving in American churches or churches in other parts of the world.  I focused my life on serving Chinese scholars in the United States and teaching them the gospel within the Local Church Movement.  It never entered my mind that I would leave my church to fellowship with and learn about the Charismatic church and eventually pursue the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Everything changed mainly because my wife and I were dealing with ten years of infertility.  I prayed every day in 2014, asking God to heal us, but there was no answer.  In 2015 I began to seek help from other churches outside the Local Church Movement.  I really wanted help from our own church and attended a special meeting in California in the summer of 2015.  This was the last meeting of the Local Church Movement that I attended.  We didn’t get the help we needed for our infertility problem.  Even though my mindset was inseparable from the Local Church Movement's teachings, God silently led me out of our church to learn about healing and prophecy in the Pentecostal Movement.  I personally heard God tell me when we would have a child, and in the end, it happened!

Looking back on this, my experience is similar to Paul’s at Malta.  2015 was my spiritual Malta.  In one way, I hoped that the Local Church Movement could help us with our infertility problem, but they don’t teach about the gift of healing or prophecy, so they couldn’t help us.  The Holy Spirit began to lead me to the Charismatics teachings online and to attend their healing and prophetic conferences. I struggled inside with being a part of two completely different church movements.  In 2015, every day at the park, I was praying at noon, asking God what I should do to move forward spiritually.  Part of me felt like God wanted me to leave the Local Church Movement, but I loved my church and its people.  I was worried about hurting those who loved and cared about me.  In addition, because of how deeply they influenced me, I didn’t want to hurt the body of Christ in general by leaving.

Later, God showed me something that inspired me. In a vision, He showed me a tributary of the Yangtze River that originated in the Himalayas.  Then I saw a downstream tributary.  He told me that he put me on the first tributary and now has moved me to the second.  As long as I followed the Holy Spirit’s leading, I could live in unity in the body of Christ.  He also said that I would never go back to the Himalayas, but the river in the Himalayas will join me downstream.  This was very encouraging.  In another dream, Jesus appeared to me, telling me that the two rivers would converge, which confirmed this vision.

 It was only when I looked back at this period of history that I was able to see how God was leading me.  He led me to the Local Church Movement to learn how to pursue spiritual life and study the Bible.  It was also Him that led me to the Pentecostal Movement to learn the gifts and receive the baptism and power of the Holy Spirit.  These two rivers will converge and produce God’s new move – holiness and power will converge; the word of God and the Spirit of God will converge; the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit will converge.  God also told me that He wanted to take me out of the Local Church Movement because He wanted me to serve Chinese churches on a larger scale, participate in the great revival of China, and serve churches in the United States and other countries.  He challenged me to start my own ministry, another area that the Local Church Movement didn’t encourage.  In 2016 besides telling me that we would have a child that year, he confirmed that Jairus Bible world Ministry came from Him.  

All of this far outweighed what I was taught in the Local Church movement.  I would never have imagined that God would lead me in this way.  So, when I was struggling and hesitating in 2015, God was waiting patiently for me to catch up to him.  God led me to leave the Local Church Movement to study the Pentecostal Movement.  During this process, I had to break through my perceptions, and many of the concepts that the Local Church Movement taught me.  God recovered and encouraged many truths from his word through the Local Church Movement as well as the Pentecostal Movement.  I learned many rich truths and life lessons through the Local Church movement that would benefit every believer.  However, many see this movement and Witness Lee as heretical and have rejected their teaching altogether.  I’ve shared with fellow Pentecostal believers the truth and practice of “calling on the name of the Lord, pray-reading the Lord’s Word, praying, studying, reciting, and prophesying,” and most were curious and open.

Today, whether we are talking about believers in the Local Church Movement or those who condemn them, we shouldn’t allow personal perceptions to divide us.  The same would be true of those who have negative attitudes towards the Pentecostal Movement.  The walls of division must come down.  Much of the time, it isn’t that others don’t know the truth.  Instead, narrowmindedness prevents us from understanding each other.  What you see taught in other churches may not be heresy or evil spirits.  It could be that your own limitations and perceptions prevent you from accepting truths that others know and practice.

We are now entering an era of a great revival.  We urgently need believers of different churches to break their prejudices and enter the new era of God’s convergence.  Only in this way can God's will be better achieved.

That was the inspiration we received from reading Acts 28.  Paul eventually broke through his perceptions and plans through the arduous journey from Jerusalem to Rome. Finally, he entered into God’s plan for his life, preaching the gospel to the Gentiles.  Although it seems like the book of Acts came to an abrupt end, it was actually perfect.  God completed his plan of leading Paul from Jerusalem to Rome, taking him from where he was called to the end of his mission.  At this point, Paul fully understood God’s will and was on the path of evangelizing Europe.  This is why the Holy Spirit didn’t need to write more on this.  God’s leading through the circumstances Paul went through brought him to the right place at the right time so Paul could follow through with his mission.

Today, the Spirit of God continues to work on us as believers, helping us to break out of our own perceptions in our spiritual Malta.  Once our spirits and minds are open, we can enter into the plan that God prepared for us long before.  We are not waiting for God; He is patiently waiting for us.

 

Bible Study with Jairus - Acts 25

Bible Study with Jairus - Acts 25

Acts 25 is like a tug of war.  Paul was imprisoned in Caesarea, a place Northwest of Jerusalem.  The Jews insisted that Festus send Paul back to Jerusalem for trial, hoping to ambush and kill Paul on the way.  Festus tried to please the Jews and asked Paul if he was willing to return to Jerusalem for trial, but Paul insisted on appealing to Caesar.  So after Festus conferred with his council, he accepted Paul's request.

Looking at it from here, Festus, as the Roman Governor of Judea, was a person who didn't take sides, or we could say that he was a bit of a fence sitter.  He tried to please the Jews, saying he was using a conciliatory approach to rule the land of Jerusalem.  His treatment of King Agrippa's argument about Paul and the Jews allowed us to see that he didn't think their case was that important.  He told King Agrippa that the dispute between Paul and the Jews was merely a matter of disagreement about their own religion and the fact that Paul declared that Jesus died and was resurrected.  His heart was perplexed over this situation.  He asked Paul if he was willing to go to Jerusalem for trial, but Paul wasn't willing.  So he planned to keep Paul.  He said, "hold him until I can send him to Caesar" (Acts 25:21, NIV).

I didn't pay attention to this sentence before.  Festus had already planned to send Paul to Rome.  But after King Agrippa interrogated Paul, he sighed, saying if Paul hadn't appealed to Caesar, he could have been set free (Acts 26:32, NIV).  Acts 27:24 records an angel of God standing beside Paul and telling him he would stand before Caesar.  This may be why Paul stood trial before Caesar later, but the Bible doesn't record the specific details of Paul and Caesar's meeting.  Instead, it just recorded the experience of Paul, Festus, and King Agrippa meeting each other.  Caesar here is said to be Nero Caesar.  But this is only according to historical legends.  When Nero persecuted the church later, Paul was martyred.

With the Holy Spirit's help, we noticed that God predestined Paul's journey from Jerusalem to Rome to spread the gospel to Rome.  As Acts 28 records, after Paul came to Rome, he rented a house there for two years, "to proclaim the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance" (Acts 28:31, NIV).  This shows that the gospel Paul spread in Rome had laid a good foundation for evangelizing Europe.  Therefore, in the development of the kingdom of God and the spread of the gospel, it was crucial for Paul to arrive safely in Rome from Jerusalem.

Satan attempted to stop Paul from going to Rome.  He incited the Jews to kill Paul in Jerusalem.  But Paul's nephew heard their plan and reported it to commander Lysias, and Paul was arrested.  Then the Jews went to Governor Felix to complain, and Felix asked Paul to defend himself.  Paul gave testimony to Felix, saying that he "keeps his conscience clear before God and man" (Acts 24:16, NIV, and that he did not commit any wrongdoings.   Later, Felix, who was well acquainted with the Way, adjourned the proceedings.  "When Lysias the commander comes," he said, "I will decide your case."  He ordered commander Lysias to keep Paul under guard but to give him some freedom and permit his friends to take care of his needs" (Acts, 24:22-23, NIV).  

Later, Felix and his Jewish wife listened to Paul, who continued to talk about Jesus Christ.  "Paul talked about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come" (Acts 24:25, NIV).  Felix was scared and sent Paul away.  He was hoping that Paul would come to him later and give him some money.   But the Bible doesn't say whether Felix was saved or not.  At least from the story here, Paul's testimony to Governor Felix touched him a little, but Felix hadn't decided whether to accept Jesus Christ.  At the end of Chapter 24, it records that after two years, Festus took over Felix's Governor position.  He wanted to please the Jews, so he continued to imprison Paul.

Many people opposed Paul's trip to Jerusalem.  This included the prophet Agabus who prophesied that Paul would be bound in Jerusalem, but he did not prevent Paul from going.  People in the modern prophetic movement believe that Agabus' prediction was half accurate and half inaccurate because Agabus prophesied that Paul would be bound by the Jews in Jerusalem.  But in the end, Paul was bound by the Romans.  Paul teaches us in the Bible not to treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:20-22, NIV).  Paul has done this with Agabus' prophecy.  In the end, it turned out that Paul was right.  Because it was recorded in Acts 23:11 (NIV), "The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, "Take courage!  As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome."  This is the key sentence.  It proved that Paul's decision to go to Jerusalem was encouraged by the Lord and that he would also testify in Rome as well.

This explains why Paul had to appeal to Caesar.  God's word prophesied and told him that he would go to Rome to testify about the Lord.  The angel provided the direction he was to go in.  Going to Rome was the will of God.  But Satan tried his best to oppose the will of God by using the Jews in Jerusalem to attempt to kill Paul.  After God defeated Satan's schemes through Paul's nephew and commander Lysias, Satan tried to use the Jews again to accuse Paul before Felix.  But God used Paul to preach the gospel to Felix and his Jewish wife allowing Felix to hesitate and not agree with the Jew's request.

After Festus took over Felix's Governor's position, he wanted to please the Jews in the beginning, so he kept Paul in prison.  He also tried to persuade Paul to go to Jerusalem with him for trial.  If Paul went to Jerusalem, he would definitely die.  So Paul firmly refused and insisted on appealing to Caesar.  After Festus had conferred with his council, he decided to send Paul to Caesar.  The attitude of the council also affected Festus.  Later, King Agrippa came and put Paul on trial.  Paul gave Agrippa a good testimony.  He talked about his experience where Jesus Christ appeared to him.  Later, King Agrippa wavered from his position.  Although he did not fully accept Jesus Christ, he was sympathetic towards Paul.  In the end, he said that if Paul did not appeal to Caesar, Paul could have been set free.

Acts 27 describes Paul boarding a ship and encountering a storm on his way to Rome.  At first, Paul advised the centurion not to continue sailing, but they didn't listen.  Later the soldiers planned to kill the prisoners when the storm continued to rage.  But the centurion wanted to bring Paul safely through, so he kept the soldiers from doing it.  In Acts 28, Paul was bitten by a snake, but God kept Paul safe again.  Through God's signs and wonders, it opened the door to evangelism, and the gospel was preached to the Jews and others in Rome.

From our description of Paul's journey, we can see Satan's actions - he tried to kill Paul or prevent him from going to Rome.  God overcame Satan's schemes and brought Paul to Rome safely.

 The journey from Jerusalem to Rome was arduous for Paul.  Jerusalem can be said to be the place where Paul was called since he was born and raised there.  Although he met the Lord in Damascus, Paul also said that God had set him apart from his mother's womb.  Rome was the last place where Paul preached the gospel and was martyred (this is where Paul had completed his mission).  It could be a difficult journey from our calling to completing the mission God gives us.  Through your journey, you may encounter many obstacles like the Jews trying to kill Paul or a wavering dignitary like Felix, Festus, and King Agrippa.  God may send people to protect you and strengthen your faith, like Paul's nephew and the centurion.

Peter spoke hastily to those who received the temple tax by telling them that Jesus would pay taxes.   Jesus gently rebuked him but told him to throw a line into the water, and the first fish he caught would have a silver coin in its mouth to pay the tax for Jesus and Peter.  I like fishing, but at times I spend the whole day and catch nothing.  Even if Peter were a master fisherman, it wouldn't be easy to catch a fish with a coin in its mouth, but he caught one since the Lord declared it.  The Bible doesn't say how long it took him to catch this particular fish.

According to what Peter said in 2 Peter 1:19 (NIV): "We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts," Peter said, "No prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation of things.  For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:20-21, NIV)

Jesus gave Peter God's prophetic word when he told him to catch a fish with a coin in its mouth.   Imagine Peter, who had fished for many nights without a catch receiving this word from the Lord.  I'm sure it was difficult to accept, but knowing that all things are possible with God encouraged Peter and gave him confidence amid a depressing time.  Peter was able to speak these words confidently because of his experience.

Similarly, Paul faced so many obstacles and a lot of people trying to kill him.  But he still firmly believed that he could reach Rome safely and testify before Caesar.  What is the reason behind this? The reason lies in Acts 23:11 (NIV), which says, "The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, "Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.  "No matter how many challenges he would face, he knew that he would reach Rome safely because the Lord told him so. I've experienced God's promise in my life during my wife's ten years of infertility.  In January 2016, I heard the Lord say that I would have a child that year.   I returned to China in February and announced it to my family.   Over time I experienced many people's unbelief and opposition, but I firmly believed it would happen because God said it.  Before my wife's miraculous pregnancy in May, I experienced numerous attacks and ridicule from the enemy, but I persevered.  Why?  I stood on the word that the Lord gave me.  By sharing my experience, I hope that the Lord will use it to comfort and bring hope to those who are facing difficulties and trying to hold on to God's promises.   Hudson Taylor was an English missionary, who as a young boy, saw visions of countless Chinese people going to hell.   He accepted the call to preach the Gospel in China.  Unfortunately, he contracted a life-threatening disease while in medical school.  A doctor declared his case hopeless and told him to go home and prepare to die.  Hudson told the doctor that he would not die because God wanted him to preach the Gospel in China.  The doctor refused to believe him.  After miraculously surviving this disease, the first thing Hudson did was to testify to this doctor.  The doctor was surprised and prayed to receive Christ as his Lord and Savior.  Hudson encountered a severe storm after boarding a ship to China.  He firmly declared that nothing bad would happen because God wanted him to go to China.

On the evening of March 16, 2020, we prayed online with some members of our Bible Study group.  We mainly spent time praying for China and the spread of the novel coronavirus.  That night, I was taken up to heaven in the spirit, and I saw various spectacular scenes of China's future revival.  The activities of worshiping God in different parts of China could only be described by the phrase "in full swing."  In the end, I saw that the angels bound the opposing forces against God in China.  God has enlightened me many times about China's great revival through dreams.  I was in this vision and dreamed for two hours, from two to four in the morning.

This experience, along with many other dreams, is God's promised word to me in these difficult circumstances, especially in the coronavirus outbreak.  These words from God are like a light shining in a dark place.   I value them even though I've encountered unbelief and derogatory remarks.  I believe these difficult times will eventually pass.  After the cleansing work of God is completed, a great revival will be released.  I prepared myself for this, and I hope to encourage many Christians to see a bright future and not focus on the negativity around them.   

We are all like Paul.  Our life is a process of walking from our call "Jerusalem" to the mission and end of our life, "Rome."  Our mission is to come to Rome (which represents the world) to testify about the Lord.  On our way there, we will encounter danger and opposition like what Paul experienced.  But if we hold on to the words God has promised to us, we will be able to persevere to the end.

We must also pay attention to prophetic words, just like paying attention to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

I hope that many fellow believers will see a bright future in the fog caused by the coronavirus.

 

Bible Study with Jairus - Acts 20

Bible Study with Jairus – Acts 20

 

Matthew 10:8 (NIV) says, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy,drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”  This sentence is what the Lord Jesus told the twelve disciples when He sent them out to preach. It seems that "raise the dead" is somewhat of an obscure command. Even among the twelve disciples, there is not much recorded of them raising someone from the dead.  But there are a few examples, including Acts 9, where Peter raised Dorcas from the dead, and Acts 20, where Paul raised Eutychus from the dead, which we will read today.

 

Nine people in the Bible were raised from the dead.  This includes the prophet Elijah who raised the widow's son, Elisha, who revived the woman's son, and the man who revived by touching Elisha’s bones.  Jesus raised the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain and Lazarus. God raised Jesus from the dead, plus the examples of Peter and Paul above.

 

We will not discuss the other resurrections during this study. We will only discuss the resurrection of Eutychus. Why did God arrange for Eutychus to be raised from the dead?  After this story, Paul arrived in Jerusalem.  Was this because of God's leading, or because Paul made a mistake?

 

From what I’ve studied and the teaching I’ve received, Paul made a mistake here.  The prophet Agabus had prophesied in Acts 21:10-11 that Paul would be bound at Jerusalem.  Agabus took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it, and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way, the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’” (NIV) Then Luke 12:15 records the following:

 

¹² When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. ¹³ Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart?  I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. ” ¹⁴ When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.” ¹⁵ After this, we started on our way up to Jerusalem. (NIV)

 

I was saved in the Local Church movement and accepted their teachings for many years. I remember reading something about this subject.  Witness Lee thought Paul made a mistake here. When he was asked by others why Paul made such a mistake here, Witness Lee replied that only Jesus is the perfect saint.  What he meant is that everybody makes mistakes.  So this comment made a strong impression on me.  But ever since the Lord led me to learn about the prophetic gifts in the Pentecostal Movement, I felt more confused when I heard their different interpretations of this verse. Many people with prophetic gifts hold similar views.  They believe that Paul did not make any mistake here; he was just following the Lord’s leading.  Because Paul was doing it in the name of the Lord Jesus, not only was he bound, even if he died in Jerusalem, he was also ready. Also, Luke mentioned afterward, “May the Lord's purposes be accomplished.”

 

Acts 21:4 also says that “We sought out the disciples there and stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem.” (NIV)

 

But Paul said in Acts 20:22-24, “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.  I only know that in every city, the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.  However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” (NIV)

 

So at least from here, the biblical record is contradictory.  On the one hand, the Holy Spirit reminds him not to go to Jerusalem through people who have prophetic gifts.  On the other hand, Paul said that the Spirit compelled him to go to Jerusalem.  It’s just that the Holy Spirit told him that he would face difficulties.

 

The question is, does God want Paul to go or not?  This is a tricky situation, and there is a lot of debate about this.

 

The reason people thought Paul was wrong and shouldn’t have gone to Jerusalem stems from a prophetic word from the disciples in Acts 21:4 as well as Agabus’ prophesy in Acts 21:11. Agabus was thought to be a reliable prophet because he prophesied in Acts 11 that there would be a famine that happened during Claudius's reign.  I thought the same thing, but when I was learning the gift of prophecy, some teachers who were gifted prophetically taught on how to avoid giving wrong prophesies and talked about Agabus making a questionable prophesy and how we should learn from it.  I was surprised. It never occurred to me that a prophet in the Bible could make a wrong prophesy.

 

Let us not talk about whether Agabus is wrong or not.  Let’s first talk about whether the prophet's prophecy in the New Testament can be false or not. Paul said, “Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good.” (NIV, 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21).  Paul also said that "Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said." (NIV, 1 Corinthians 14:29). From these two verses, we can see that Paul's attitude towards people who prophesy was not to despise them but to test them all.  In other words, Paul didn’t just believe everything the prophets would say.  It seems from Paul's attitude, the prophet of the New Testament sometimes makes inaccurate prophecies.

 

Let’s look at the difference between the prophets in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Kris Vallotton is a prophet in Bill Johnson’s church (Bethel).  He often teaches prophetic gifts, and I have participated in his training classes.  One of his views left a deep impression on me. He said that in the Old Testament, the prophets are "visitational."  When the Holy Spirit is falling on people from outside, whether Elijah or Balaam, when the Holy Spirit was falling on them, it was considered to be God’s words without a doubt.  But in the New Testament, the prophets and the prophetic gifts are "habitational," that is, the Holy Spirit lives in the Spirit of the prophet, and he speaks through our Spirit.  As He speaks, it goes through our soul and mind and then uses our mouth to prophesy. So in this process, our soul, mind, and expression may filter these prophecies.  It is not that the Holy Spirit cannot fall on people from outside today like the Old Testament.  The Holy Spirit can do the same.  But since He lives in us and not in the Old Testament, He chooses to speak through us because He is willing to train us, and He would rather be subject to some of our limitations.  Hebrews 1:1-2 (NIV) also confirms that "God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son."  He spoke through the prophets in ancient times, but now He is speaking to us through His Son.  We know that the Lord is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17) and that the Lord and the Holy Spirit live in us.

 

One of the textbooks we used in our prophetic gift class is: "You May All Prophesy," written by Steve Thompson.  He and many prophets hold the view that prophecy is divided into three stages.  The first stage is to receive a revelation from God, or a sentence, a picture, or an animated vision. In this stage, you must confirm that it comes from God and not from the evil spirits.  The second stage is to interpret this vision.  What does God mean? Our spirits have to pray; our souls have to think. In the end, we hope to get an accurate understanding. The third stage is to apply this vision, which is how to use or apply to whom and what situation.  At each stage, mistakes are possible.

 

If you think that the prophets just say what God says and that he doesn’t need to think or digest, I would suggest that you need more study on prophetic gifts.  Taking an example from the Bible, Jeremiah was called by God to be a prophet.  Jeremiah said that he doesn’t know how to speak; he is too young; he doesn’t want to do it (Jeremiah 1:6). God said, “I will train you.”  Then he let Jeremiah see a picture and asked him, "What have you seen?" Jeremiah said, “I saw the branch of an almond tree.” Jeremiah 1:12 (NIV) says, “The Lord said to me, “You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled.”  What does this mean?  This is God’s explanation of the meaning of the vision of this almond branch to Jeremiah.  God not only used pictures to speak, but He also used puns in human language to communicate.  In Hebrew (language), the pronunciation of "almond branch" is similar to "watching over."  God uses puns to tell Jeremiah, “Don't worry, I will watch over you; I will take care of you; I will help you.”  The hidden meaning is “I will pay attention to my words and make it happen.”  Then God asked Jeremiah, “What do you see?” Jeremiah answered, “I saw a pot that is boiling, and it is tilting toward us from the north.” (Jeremiah 1:13, NIV).  At this time, God continued to explain to Jeremiah that what He means is that, “From the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land.” (Jeremiah 1:14, NIV).

 

Besides Jeremiah, Daniel also saw a lot of visions. But he did not know what they meant.  He needed the angel to explain.  The prophet of the Old Testament is like this, and so is the prophet of the New Testament.  In the book of Revelation, John saw many visions, and he didn’t know what they meant. He also needed the angel to explain.

 

Some people with prophetic gifts in today’s church agree that the prophesy telling Paul not to go to Jerusalem was a mistake.  They believe the prophesy came from the Holy Spirit but was misinterpreted.  How do we make sense of the fact that prophets can make mistakes?  If a Bible teacher misinterprets the Bible, that seems to be a forgivable offense, but if a prophet makes a mistake we call him a false prophet and are ready to “stone” him.  This shouldn’t be.

 

 Of course, this view is controversial.  Some scholars think that Agabus did not make a mistake here.

 

A British prophet, Graham Cooke, is also a recommended teacher in our prophetic class.  He gave an example of the mistake that prophets make when they are explaining the prophetic Word of God.  He said that prophets could get either information or revelation from God.  These two are different. The former may be a fact, but the latter may be God's heart.

 

One day God revealed a secret weakness of pornography in a fellow believer.  Graham and this person had some issues between them at the time.  Graham thought to himself, “Haha, I finally caught you.  He was ready to go straight over and tell him what the Lord showed him, but the Lord rebuked him immediately and said: “what kind of spirit do you have?”  The Lord wanted Graham to have an attitude of prayer for this man’s sin condition and not blame him.  He felt terrible and began to cry over his own attitude.  Then God told him to go to the man and tell him. Graham didn’t want to go.  The Lord told him he had to go, so he bit the bullet and went. When he got there, he couldn’t even speak; he could only cry.  The man was baffled as to why Graham was acting that way and asked him what was going on.  Graham had no choice but to tell him what the Lord showed him about the pornography as well as his own bad attitude. After listening and being in shock, he repented, and he and Graham reconciled.  This man was also saved out of the sin he was in.

 

What the Lord revealed to Graham about his friend’s pornography addiction was just a message or information.  It’s almost like a doctor meeting a patient with a diagnosis.  The diagnosis is only information about the person’s condition; it’s not God’s prescription for the patient.  God’s heart for Graham’s friend was for him to be delivered from that sin. Graham shared that in his experience as a prophet, often the first information that the Lord gives him is just information. He learned to take the information, prophetic dream, or vision to the Lord in prayer, asking for revelation.  During that time of prayer, he often understood God’s intention for the information. A common problem of prophetic people is that they are too eager to share what they get from the Lord, often revealing private sin or negative information about others, bringing pain and damage to churches and individuals.

 

I was inspired by learning about these people’s experiences and my own experience in learning about the prophetic gifts.  Perhaps the teaching that I initially believed in makes the possibility of Paul's mistake worth discussing, and maybe the prophets of these modern churches have reasons to criticize Agabus.

 

I think that the message that Agabus and the other disciples received was indeed correct.  That is, the Holy Spirit reminded Paul not to go to Jerusalem, and if he did go there, he would face imprisonment.  The message was correct, and Paul had also confirmed it.  But why did Paul say, "However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” (Acts 20:24, NIV). In other words, regardless of danger, Paul was determined to go to Jerusalem to accomplish the ministry he received from the Lord Jesus.

 

Moreover, when Paul was later arrested in Jerusalem and was sent to Rome, the following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage!  As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.” (Acts 23:11, NIV).  In other words, the Lord had not only praised Paul for testifying about Him in Jerusalem, He also wanted Paul to testify in Rome.  The Lord Jesus affirmed what Paul did.

 

If Paul had done something wrong, the Lord Jesus should have said to Paul when He appeared to him, "You stiff-necked person, why didn’t you obey My Holy Spirit?  Why did you go to Jerusalem? See, now you are caught.  The other ministry that I prepared for you in other places has been delayed. You are stubborn!"  The Lord didn’t say this. Instead, He praised Paul for testifying about Him when he was in Jerusalem.

 

Isn’t this a contradiction?  Through the mouth of the disciples, the Holy Spirit reminded Paul not to go to Jerusalem.  The prophet Agabus also said that Paul would be bound if he went to Jerusalem. But now the Lord Jesus has appeared and said, “Paul, you did an excellent job!”  Did the Holy Spirit quarrel with Jesus?  No.

 

My understanding is this.  There is a very dynamic and deep friendship between Paul and God. It’s like a woman who was very eager to get the snow lotus on the mountain cliff.  But the warrior, who loves her, must go through the threat of icy cold mountains and avalanches and the possibility of falling off the cliff to get this snow lotus.  So when the man said that he was willing to risk his life to get the snow lotus to prove his love, the woman who loves the warrior said, “You absolutely can’t go.  I don’t want the snow lotus either, even if you pick it.”  But the warrior still went to the mountains and picked the snow lotus despite all the danger.  Aside from being moved, this woman rebuked the man, saying, “Didn’t I say that you shouldn’t go there?”

 

The relationship between Paul and the Lord is intimate.  They are very close to each other.  The Lord was concerned about Paul's safety, so he told Paul through the Holy Spirit, “Don't go to Jerusalem.”  Paul reacted, “Do you consider my life as important?  The interests of the Lord are more important.  His most precious treasure, Jerusalem, is more important.”  If you are familiar with the Bible, you know that God sees Jerusalem as the apple of His eye. It is the most precious treasure of God.  Therefore, Paul was ready to risk everything, even his life, to take care of God’s feelings and His chosen people.  I think what Paul did touched Jesus so much that He stood beside Paul at night to boost him up, confirming that his testimony in Jerusalem was worth encouraging, and permitted him to do the same thing in Rome.

 

Therefore, this is God's intention toward Paul.  Paul lives in the heart of God.  His attitude towards prophets and prophetic words is stated in 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 (NIV), “Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all and hold on to what is good.”  Paul said this from his own experience. This has many implications for us Christians today. No doubt, many evangelical believers don’t accept the words of the prophets or that prophets still exist in churches today.  They reject and even accuse prophets of having evil spirits in them or declaring that they are false prophets.  At the same time, many believers in the Pentecostal Movement believe in the prophets' words too quickly, causing loss/damage or even getting hurt.  However, I feel that we shouldn’t just accept the prophets and treat the prophecies with contempt^, but we also need to test them.

 

After going through the analysis above, I conclude that Agabus and the disciples' prophecies are all messages received from the Lord.  But Paul lived in God's revelation and in His heart, which is why he had an unswerving determination in going to Jerusalem and Rome to bear solemn witness of the Lord.  This may be one of Paul's highest spiritual experiences.  So, Paul could calmly say calmly before he died, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith; From then on, there is in store for me the crown of righteousness.” (2 Timothy 4:7-8, NIV).  Paul also said, "But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it.  And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth.” (2 Timothy 4:17, NIV)

 

How does this revelation pertain to our ministry to the Lord today?  In this era of information flooding and the following the herd, if you are the church leader, no matter how big the challenge is to be a servant leader, how do you face the complicated and different opinions? Can you firmly live in the will of the Lord?

 

Let’s go back to the story of Eutychus who was raised from the dead at the start of this chapter. This story is not casually placed here.  The experience of Eutychus being raised from the dead happened before the disciples and Agabus warned Paul not to go to Jerusalem.  When Paul was preaching, Eutychus fell asleep and fell three stories down to his death.  Paul went down to check, and it records in Acts 20:10-12, “Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him.  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!”  Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate.  After talking until daylight, he left.  The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.”

 

If I was Paul, I might not have been in the mood to continue preaching.  Either I would have been excited that I just raised somebody from the dead or fearful that somebody almost died in my meeting.  My concern may have been about the maximum occupancy allowed in the building at that time.

 

If this happened in the United States today, I don’t know if Paul would still be so calm.  Almost in every elevator or hotel conference room, there is a clear indication about the maximum occupancy.  We took our daughter to a big American church. My daughter was playing with other children there.  The first form we filled out was a disclaimer, saying that the church could  not be held responsible for what may happen to our child, because they were afraid of being accused.  Think about it. A man had already fallen and died when Paul was preaching.  Even though Paul raised him from the dead, according to the United States' current laws, Paul could be accused of child neglect and even be sued for millions.  What if someone else falls? What if Eutychus had side effects from the fall?

 

But Paul handled the situation very calmly.  If Paul was not absolutely sure that he was living in God's will, how could he be so calm?  This is a confirmation that Paul knew that God was with him on his upcoming trip to Jerusalem.  The Bible only records the experience of Paul raising someone from the dead this time. Why?  I shared in the meeting that if you have the courage or the heart to risk everything for God, He will have your back, even to the point of raising people from the dead.

 

In seeking healing for our infertility, I often went to the park to pray.  I asked countless times, “where is the God of Abraham who raises people from the dead?  We are infertile, but you can raise the dead.  You can also create things out of nothing.  I believe in your existence and the Bible.  I believe that you can heal us. I also believe that everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened (Matthew 7:8, NIV).”  I also believe in what Romans 10:11 says: “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” Although others may have laughed at me as I seemed to be beating my head against a wall with all of this, God healed us and gave us a healthy baby girl.

 

We have friends who were also dealing with infertility.  They listened to our testimony and went to the same prophet who prayed for us.  After one time, there was no positive result, and they gave up.  I felt sorry for them because God is no respecter of persons.  We shouldn’t give up because of what the environment says, the doctor says, or even fellow believers.  The key is what God says to you.  During our time of infertility, we heard many things.  Some said it was God’s discipline and punishment, so just accept it. Some said it’s better not to have children so you can devote more time to serving the Lord. Some told us that God doesn’t heal people today. He performed signs and wonders back then to prove Jesus’ divinity and the authority of the Bible.  Now that this is established and the apostolic era has passed, there are no more signs and wonders.  All healing miracles are fake and come from evil spirits.  This is not the truth, and we will continue to believe what God says in His word.  In the end, He has done wonders.

 

Brothers and sisters, I hope that we as Christians can learn to live in God's heart and intimate communication and fellowship with God just like Paul.  Even if you are overwhelmed with information from the myriad of voices out there, allow God’s leading to create certainty within you.  Let’s learn to be like Paul, who can be both soft and strong in broken circumstances.

 

Sometimes we say that we are following God, but it’s really our stubbornness or flesh. Other times we have no clear answers and say we are willing to look at other people’s views.  When serving God, there are times when we shouldn’t be listening to others, but instead, we should be pressing in to hear God’s leading.  The important thing is to be humble and broken before God, making sure we don’t follow our own stubborn will.

 

Listening to one of Pastor Grace Chiang’s testimonies made a deep impression on me.  She said that because she was a female pastor, she often disagreed with some of the men's opinions when she started to build the church.  They may have had more worldly experience, so they felt that what she was proposing was unreliable, but she heard the Lord speaking to her.  So after some battles and a period of confrontation, these men found out that she was right.

 

Watchman Nee said that sometimes, some beleivers in the church do not take responsibility when the situation calls for it.  The damage they cause to the church is much more than the damage caused by those who instead overstep their authority.  In other words, being a good man, or evading responsibility in the name of humility, or fake humility will bring more damage to God's interests.  The church needs more people like Paul, people who will set their faces like flint, bravely face opposition and different voices, and even live out the will of God and His call to them regardless of danger.

 

We have now entered an era in which all political correctness must be broken.  Yes is yes, and no is no. Jesus says, “All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)  Our position must be clear.  All fear must be removed.  We have to stand on the mountain, and not under a bushel.  We need to be the light and salt and be a strong witness for God in this world.

 

We are not just making irresponsible comments.  Rather, no matter where we are, when we as Christians face coercion and imminent danger, we should be like Paul, who risked his life for the interests of God. God will indeed back you up.  Whether it is raising the dead, turning the bitter water into sweet, or creating things out of nothing, nothing is too difficult for God.

 

So, in my understanding, this is the main reason why God allowed Eutychus to rise from the dead before Paul entered Jerusalem.  This is both a testimony and an encouragement of God to Paul. It is also evidence that Paul lived in close communication and absolute faith in God.  I repeat, this may be one of Paul's highest spiritual experiences.