Register now, space limited! Easter egg hunt, live bunnies, chicks! Get in on FUN!

Notice this ad for the granddaddy of American Christian evangelical mega-churches, Chicagoland's Willow Creek:

Come join us for the Willow Easter Celebration. Celebrate Easter with a Latin AND Indian Flair on March 26th at 7:30 pm. This American Easter tradition starts out with:·      A dramatized, multi-media presentation of the Easter story followed by            ·      Latin and Indian music, food and dance presentations! Can you really resist Chicago’s BEST tacos with all the trimmings and Indian food like vegetarian and non-vegetarian biryani or pilau rice? Then,  add
·      An Easter Egg Hunt with lots of eggs and prizes for every kid on a beautiful Saturday evening AND live Easter bunnies and chicks galore?  Nowhere but at … Willow Creek!
There will be plenty of space for all to enjoy the dramatized Easter Story.  But space is limited for the after-party. So register today to be sure you, your friends, and family get in on the fun!

*****
“Did you know that people like Bill Hybels at Willow Creek, and John Piper up in Minneapolis, people of great fame in our day, believe the nation Israel should be left to be destroyed and supplanted by a Palestinian state, and that we should not have a nation Israel in the earth?” informs Jordan.

“You go on the other side of the spectrum, and (popular preachers and theologians) say, ‘Well, they’re God’s people, and if you bless Abraham, you’ll be blessed; if you curse Abraham, you’ll be cursed. So, in order to keep America safe, we need to bless Israel.’

“Both of those things are totally unscriptural. They’ve nothing to do with the Bible. One is a whacked out view that thinks God is through with Israel, and all the promises He ever made to Israel about giving them the land, and giving it to them forever, have been spiritualized and somehow have already been fulfilled, and that all the curses belong to the nation Israel and all the blessings belong to us.

“Both of them just completely abandon a Bible base even though one of them believes there is a future for Israel, as Scripture teaches there is.

“I read that stuff, and I think, ‘What kind of confusion you get in that! No wonder the world out there thinks it’s time to take a couple of Alka-Seltzers and go to bed when people start talking about the Bible.'

“But the day in which we live is a day in which that’s going to change. No matter what the world thinks, you and I are 'the church of the living God.' The false system out there isn’t the criteria; the measure of our ministry isn’t what’s against us but who’s for us.

“The thing you have to understand is the course of a nation in the dispensation of grace is determined by the amount of sound doctrine resident in the populace; that’s going to determine the strength of the true church; not the institutional, civil religion, but the true church and our impact.

“We don’t have to be the majority, we never have been, but the spiritual impact of truth is so powerful. Paul says, ‘As unknown and yet well-known,’ and that’s the way we are, but when that is so diminished it comes to the place where there’s no ability to affect the culture.”

*****
“Simplicity is truth’s most becoming garb,” says Jordan. “It doesn’t have to get all complicated. Every time Paul talks about an inheritance, he never puts an ‘s’ on that word one time. As far as Paul’s concerned there’s only one inheritance. That one inheritance is distributed based upon the capacity; there’s what he calls ‘the reward of the inheritance.’

“There are various positions, stations, responsibilities in the inheritance but it’s still just the one inheritance.

“The issue of reigning with Christ is not the elitist, political reigning that you’re so familiar with; like what Jesus talks about in Mark 10 where you reign like the Gentiles, just having power and being in control and being boss.

“You look at our government today. Some of you older people can remember when we had what we’re called 'statesmen.' You don’t have any of those today.

“I get such a kick out of these guys when they talk about ‘gridlock.’ The president says, ‘I can’t get the Republicans to do anything,' and the Republicans say, ‘We can’t get anything done because of the Democrats.’ All they mean is the other guy won’t capitulate to do what I want. That’s all they’re talking about: ‘We want to reign.’

“So instead of seeing people lead your nation who are grateful for the privilege to serve, you have people who are grabbers of power and want the power to force people to do what they want done. Jesus said, ‘That’s not the way my kingdom works; that’s not the way ruling for God works.’

“You see, having God’s life is to have a life that always just instinctively lives for the benefit of others, never for itself. The Father finds all His pleasure in His Son. When you exalt the Son, who do you exalt? The Father.

*****
“In our situation we’ve been given the same kind of mandate that Adam had, only to do it in the heavenly realm.

“What He gave man on the earth is the example; the visible representation of what our function in the heavens is going to be. We’re going to be in a different dimension but the purpose, the activity, the mandate there is the same as the mandate here. We’re to go there and have dominion just as Adam was to have dominion here. We’re going to do it through the same kind of procedure—the discovering of wisdom, knowledge and understanding and the application of it.

“Colossians 1:9 says, ‘For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.’

“Look at chapter two verse two: That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ;
[3] In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

“You see, our job is do just like Adam. God had hidden all these treasures in creation and Adam was to go out and harness that. Our privilege is to find the wisdom, understanding, knowledge that’s hidden in Christ; to harness that and then to put it on display.

“That’s what that thing is in Ephesians 2:7: ‘That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.’

“That’s the exceeding riches where you take that peach and wind up with peach a la mode. What we’re doing is digging out all that hidden wisdom and riches God has put there in Christ and you just develop this entrepreneurial reigning of a servant. It’s sonship service.

*****
“It’s always fascinated me how the Book of Mark starts out. The only one of the synoptic gospels that starts out saying Jesus is the Son of God is the one that’s going to present Him as the servant.

“So what you’re going to see in Mark is the sonship service that the Messiah accomplishes. What is that? That’s simply the service that the Son, an adult in the family, understands the Father’s will and is out carrying on the Father’s business. Not doing His own will; doing the Father’s will.

“And everything He does (‘The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.’) He’s just extracting out of the wisdom, knowledge and understanding God has put there and developing the capacity to do that.

“His plan was for Adam to go out among the trees and discover that and then to extract it out of creation to develop technologies that give Him the opportunity to take creation and make it work.

“An entrepreneur is somebody who takes something and makes new things out of it that add value to what’s already there.” 

(new article tomorrow)