From Africa To Israel

God is going to change the expression and understanding of Christianity is one generation. It is my urgent conviction that we are in the beginning stages of Christianity’s uttermost salvation and greatest hour. Our present time frame however has initially emerged in hiddenness, and a watchful heart must intently turn aside and see for whom a generation is burning. We are in the “secret” days of equipping holy and violent messengers who will soon manifest a greater authority than John the Baptist to his generation.

In an eath of groaning, travail, and pang, God is birthing a globally unified prayer movement unlike anything humanity has ever witnessed. The great harvest of souls (or the greatest revival ever) will only come in the context of night and day prayer. It will never come by man’s ability to strategically reach the unreached in the far corners of the world, albeit mercy deeds are a needed ministry. Today’s prayer movement, therefore, presents itself as a missions movement with full-time laborers of the gospel, like Anna the Prophetess committed herself before Jesus’ first coming (Luke 2:36-38). Though irritatingly monastic, God is drawing thousands of ministers into the death of waiting, consecration, and perhaps an eventual sending. Where can God’s name become famous or glorified whenever our name and our own ideologies of problem solving are quickly asserted without first encountering our Authority Himself and then hearing His voice? Where can God be found in the works of our flesh? The witness of the gospel is more than a sermon, is more than a conversion, and is more than a self-sacrificed commissioning. The Great Commission of Jesus’ delegation to disciple the nations must not be undermined in its glory as systematically possible upon a few courageous or pumped-up souls. We must restore the impossibility to Jesus’ commandment, lest we further grow in tackling agendas in the name of His gospel.

I believe the greatest hindrance to the Church’s aggression in modern missions is humanism for the poor, namely to Africa. Thousands of believers are pouring millions of dollars into a non-apostolic “hope and future” for African children. This popularised relief is not the ministry of the gospel because it does not testify with any clarity the demonstration of the powers of the age to come. The majority of the finances for the work of missions in Africa ministers a temporal and sentimental relief to a situation which will never be overcome, gratifying the flesh of both the giver and the receiver. Do not those who dwell in the earth fight earthly battles? Do not the carnal minded retaliate their opposition with carnality? There is a grave error in our present thinking which must be brought to light, lest we be overtaken by darkness when the Son of Man lifts Himself up over the nations in Judgment. As the very great and terrible Day of the Lord hastily approaches, God is going to dynamically shift the emphasis of our inward compulsions from Africa to Israel.

Scripture has clearly declared our divine function before God and men as Gentiles; all of our obtaining salvation yesterday, today, and tomorrow hinges around the prophetic centerpiece of God’s conflict with the nation of Israel (Jn 4:22, Rom 9:1-5). We must therefore soberly engage with the burdensome issue within God’s heart before jumping at our every whim to “serve” the needy. I prophesy to the Church that the crisis of food shortage will be understood rightly as nothing in contrast to the revelation of the catastrophic rejection of Israel to her Messiah. By way of Bridal lovesickness, there is going to be release of an apostolic focus, a supernatural perception in the Holy Spirit to wholeheartedly pursue a vision for the fullness of Christ and His Return. Feeding the poor cannot bring Jesus back to the earth, but provoking a Jew out of spiritual complacency will usher in the manifold glory of God and transition natural history into the dawning of a new age (Rom 11:11-15).

For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always. Mark 14:7

How then do the Gentiles provoke a blinded, legalistic people who hate God to faith and repentance back unto God? This is our finest commission, and the context for provocation is set entirely outside of the means of human wisdom. Oddly enough, the answer is simply “We must through Christ let our light shine.” Being a bright light (or witness) doesn’t chiefly happen by doing outreach, because light is an impartation from the throne of God and abiding within His Presence. Therefore, the Desire of nations Jesus Christ must set the Gentiles aflame as priestly ministers in all the nations of the earth for the sake of His one chosen nation (Isa 56:7, 62:1,6-7, 11). Israel’s darkness then will be boldly confronted by a blazing lamp – a Gentile priesthood that is ignited through an order higher than Levi and graciously extends to the Jew first all of the promises of God unto fellowship. Like Melchizedek before Abraham, our prophetic testimony will have a sure, transcendent anointing to display God’s steadfast heart of mercy and restoration to His people Israel and their land (Mt 6:10, Acts 1:6-8).

Indeed the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the world: Say to the daughter of Zion, surely your salvation is with Him, and His work before Him Isaiah 62:11

Are we presuming to accomplish the Great Commission so readily? Are we busying ourselves with sentiment’s ever shifting course? Are we falling short of the fullness of glory and inheritance because of ignorance? Are we instructing the nations to assimilate into their rightful Gentile function?

May Africa rest on the backburner of our evangelical mandate, and may we be ever inspired to take hold of knowing how the Divine story consummates through Israel (Rev 10:9-11).

Bob Sorge’s 1-Talent Anna

And then there’s Anna (see Luke 2:36-38). I call her 1-talent Anna. Nothing in the biblical account would suggest that Anna had any outstanding giftings or abilities. She didn’t have any marketable skills, but she knew she could do one thing: she could be a wife and mother. But after seven years of marriage, God snuffed out the life of her husband. This catastrophe sent Anna reeling. “God, how could You remove the light of my eyes? How could You destroy every vision I ever had for my life? You have taken from me the one thing I could do.”

In the grief of that moment, Anna had a choice. She could become bitter against God, or she could press deeper into God than ever before. Choosing the latter, Anna began to seek God with her entire being. “God I don’t know why You’ve devastated my life. I can’t see Your goodness in my life, yet I declare that You are a good God, and I’m going to seek You until I see Your goodness. I declare You are a loving God, even though it sure doesn’t feel like You love me right now; but I know You are a loving God, and I’m going to seek You until I see Your love in my life.” And Anna began to press into the Spirit of God like never before.

And then one day she heard the voice. “Fasting and prayer? Night and day? Okay, Lord, if You say so.” She turned the furnace up sever times hotter and began to give herself to fasting and prayer, ministering to the Lord night and day.

The months turned into years, and then the voice came again. “MESSIAH?? Oh my Lord, Messiah!!” God had shown her that the Messiah was soon to be born and that by her intercessions Anna was fulfilling a critical role in preparing the way through prayer. With redoubled urgency she travailed in intercession for the Messiah. And then the day came when she held the answer to her prayers in her own arms! I don’t think I’m stretching the story when I suggest that Anna prayed in the Messiah.

Anna is the 1-talent woman who could have become a casualty through bitterness; but because she pressed into the face of God, the Lord turned her barrenness into fruitfulness, and now she is a spiritual mother to the entire household of faith. She thought God had buried her 1 talent, when in reality God was inviting her to a dimension that superceded it.

I believe there is an army that will arise on the earth in the last days that will confound the powers of darkness. They will ask, “Where did this army come from?” The answer will be, “This is the army of 1-talent saints who chose to dig up their talent, clean it off and deploy it for the sake of the Kingdom.” The last days’ battle will be won by a host of 1-talent warriors who will give their all for the sake of the King.

-BOB SORGE, from Envy