End Time events synchronized

End Time events synchronized
Emphasizing the book of Revelation.
8th draft, experimenting at a prophetic level.
Compiled by Lars Widerberg

Points of integration. Sequences synchronized.

Our central concern: The bringing forth of the final point – Rev 10:6, ”Time is up.”
This fully based on our faith in the Messianic sacrifice and on the promise of a recovered Zion in the return of the Redeemer, as is defined in “the eternal covenant”.
Jer 31:31-33, Eze 36:24-28, Hebr 8:10, Rom 11:26-27

Ours is the focus of three major sequences, signifying the apocalyptic scenario, called the Seals, the Horns and the Vials of wrath. These sequences find their ending in a sealing of the Saints of the Lord, in the ingathering of these Saints, this very same sequences opening up for “the Day of the Lord”, for “the Wrath of the Lord” and the return of the Ruler, the Messiah to be seated on the eternal throne in Zion – Luke 21:22, Rev 6:17.

The eschatological calculations have their beginnings in the issue of the recovering of Zion, and these prophetically stated measurements end in the vindication of Zion – and with the glorious Name, the name of the Messiah, which is eternally connected to Zion according to the new covenant of the old prophets. Jes 2:2-4, Jer 31:33, Eze 36:24-28, Hebr 8:8-13

Three major sequences are here gathered and brought into an approximate correspondence which is regulated by major prophetic features and markers. We are, as mere men, aiming at what is possible: a preliminary implementation, with Zion as the first and foremost point of integration.

Regarding the prophet’s seeing:
Does the prophet see all things?
Is the prophet led to put all things on record?
Does he order what he has seen in sequences, which can be measured and ordered according to man’s categories?
Are we brought to the measurements of Isaiah, regarded by the people as “precept on precept; line on line; here a little, there a little”. Isa 28:10, 13.

Our markers begin in Matthew 24, the Olivet discourse:
The matter of deception pushes the prophetic collective to a sober and careful handling of prophecy: Matt 24:3, 2 Thess 2:3

Matt 24:8   A beginning of travail and sorrows, a beginning of birth pains.
2 Thess 2:1-4   A general apostasy, “the Church” moving away from the preaching of, and the application in practical circumstances of the Cross of the Messiah,
A special apostacy: A Jewish apostasy in the establishing of a covenant with, a special pact with the peacemaking Antichrist, for the sake of the building of a temple. Jes 28:15.

Matt24:14   Royal News proclaimed, a heralding of the Sovereign Lordship of Jesus as it is to be seen in Zion.
A calling forth of the work of the ministry, a calling forth of reconciliation and service, a calling forth of truth and humility – these two issues intertwined in a declaring of the dichotomy between the holy and the profane. Eze 44:23.

The book of Revelation:
1st Seal:   A peacemaking prince goes forth to conquer, Rev 6:1-2.
The peacemaking prince, not yet fully developed into the Antichrist, confirms a covenant introducing peace in the Middle East and the special side issue of a building of a temple according to Jewish measures, Dan 9:27, Isa 28:15.
Daily sacrifices begin, Dan 8:13-14.

2nd Seal:   World at war, Rev 6:3-4. A Sword to shatter Peace, possibly the first indication of “an Islamic interpretation” of the apocalyptic scenario. “The sword” – the popular expression of imperial rights and power in an Islamic perspective.
3rd Seal:   Famine and starvation, Rev 6:5-6. The desert perspective produces practical results.
4th Seal:   One quarter of the inhabitants of the world brought to death, Rev 6:7-8.
Functionality is brought to this sequence as being a summary of the prospected imperial ambition of the rising Antichrist.

Rev 6:9, 11   Fifth Seal. A company of committed, gathered for prayer – praying for the ones marked for martyrdom during the latter part of the prophetic seventieth week – the tribulation, the Great. Also, dearly praying for the movement and the integration of events towards the very end. To be allowed to pray for “thunder and lightning”. And… “for the restoration of all things”.
Rev 14:13   “Blessed are they that die in the Lord hereafter.” A prophetic marker of the mildest kind against the apocalyptic theory of 1830. Much material may be brought to the table in a refuting and debunking of this theory, that will bring more sorrow than gladness as the many stand betrayed and unprepared for the hardship to be expected during “Jacob’s trouble”.

Mid-week – AC turned Beast, Rev 13:1.
We pay strictest adherence to the instruction of the Lord, Matt 24:15, in a turning to prophet Daniel in the counting of the prophetic weeks of years, sixty nine years + one; of which the last one, the seventieth, is divided into two equal parts, the latter part being the “great tribulation”, or as with Daniel and Jeremiah: “Jacob’s trouble”. Dan 12:1, Jer 30:7

The enemy will be cast down from the heavenly realms at the midpoint of the last seven years, for the formation of the Antichrist, in that the restrainer is overcome – the one who has hindered the Kingdom to come, in the recovering of Zion in its full expression.
Rev 12:7-10

The dragonpower conveyed in its foulest expressions, 13:1-9. “Prophetic” blasphemy for 42 months – engaged and driven by “three disgusting spirits like frogs”. Rev 16:13. This foul frog-power must be spoken against, in every form which it dares to appear among us. It contains “the antichrist spirit, already at work among us”. 1 Joh 4:3

War on Saints. Rev 12:11
An assisting prophet, a wonder-maker, will be sent forth. Rev 13:11-18. Take note of the work of the “frog-power” already at work in our church settings, looking for and open to new expressions, seeking the latest formulas regarding “how to do church”.

The Abomination of Desolation. This is predicted to be the great marker. One of its kind, to be regarded as the worst of the worst, a marker indeed presenting and setting forth times and tempo. – Matt 24:15. Dan 8:13, 9:27, 11:31, 12:11.
Matt 24:15, Mark 13:14. Also, Zech 12:2-3 and Joel 3:2   The Antichrist will summon the “surrounding nations” at the walls and gates of Jerusalem and bring the main forces of these nations to attack Zion in an effort to annihilate that which belong to Zion.

Rev 11:1-2   Jerusalem is prophetically set to experience a “threading under foot for 42 months” – Matt 24:21. Amos calls these days a period of “Sifting”. (Am 9:9) The many nations will be seen engaged in a most intriguing work in an unequalled “great tribulation” – the latter 3.5 years of the last prophetic week.

The vile prince and his contempt for the covenant is a very interesting part of this prophetic intrigue of the latter days, a part which should engage prophetic men in an effort to produce something which would be of a different and of an opposite kind – an attentive adherence to that which belongs to the eternal Davidic covenant. Dan 11, Jer 31:31-33

Rev 12:7   The great dragon finally cast down, the restraining of the Kingdom realities is to come to an end in the measurements of war to be handled by Michael.
Rev 12:12   Short time, Great tribulation – final sifting.
The sifting of the Jewish contingent includes the richest crying out for the Redeemer to come to Zion as well as a sealing – Zech 12:10. The Jewish contingent to be nourished in the wilderness for 3.5 years – where is the Church in relation to both sifting and to the nourishing?
Rev 12:10, 17   A covenant-keeping remnant, a faithful representing of the testimony of Jesus Christ and the recovering of Zion.

Rev 6:12   Sixth Seal – A major sign, announcing the Wrath of the Lord and His Coming.
Matt 24:30-31, Dan 12:1, Rev 12:1, 10.
Rev 14:8   Babylon fallen before it is fallen.
Please, do declare it to be fallen. A rightful declaring, amongst the great falling away – Rev 18:4-6.
Rev 11:7   The 42 months of the two witnesses, 1260 days – lastly to be overcome by Beast, but resurrected as a woeful sign.
2nd Woe past – Rev 11:12-14.

First to seventh horn – during the last 3.5 years.
Signifies compression and intensification.
The besieged Jerusalem – troops gathered in the valley of Jehoshaphat, Joel 3:2, 3:12.
1st Horn   Hail and Fire, Rev 8:7 – in response to prayer.
2nd Horn   A mountain cast into the sea, ships destroyed – trade affected, Rev 8:8-9.
3rd Horn   A burning star to fall on rivers – Wormwood, Rev 8:10-11.

Vials: Wrath defined in the form of plagues.
1st Vial   Grievous sores, Rev 16:2.
4th Horn   Celestial entities smitten, Rev 8:12.
2nd Vial   Sea turned into blood, Rev 16:3.
3rd Vial   Rivers turned into blood, Rev 16:4-7.
4th Vial   The sun overheated, Rev 16:8-9.
No repentance to be seen anywhere.

5th Horn   Locusts, Rev 9:1-2.
These creatures will only touch those who are not sealed – a remnant is still to be seen remaining in the Earth, 9:4.
Woe no. 1 past – 9:12.
(John sees the “Woe” in relation to a certain sequence – not to the whole apocalyptic sequence, therefore an apparent contradiction is here included as to main timing. The second woe is placed at the end of the preaching period of the two witnesses – that is close to the end of the great tribulation.)

5th Vial   Darkens the seat of the Beast, Rev 16:10-11.
No repentance.
Days shortened, Matt 24:22. Signifies compression and intensification, but also the soon coming relief and redemption.
6th Horn   Signifies Euphrates Army, Rev 9:13-21.
This army still believe they are on the winning side, able to conquer the Jewish national entity.
Rev 9:20   No repentance to be found.

6th Vial   Euphrates dried up, Rev 16:12-16.
Rev 10:6   Time has come to an end.
Rev 10:7   The Mystery of God is finished.
The Kingdom is thoroughly established as is expressed in a “casting down”, Rev 12:7 – a recovering of the Kingdom to be fully realized on Earth as the Day of Vengeance comes to a firm development at the blowing of the seventh and last horn, 1 Cor 15:51-52, 1 Thess 4:16-17, Rev 11:15. (The “two last horns”-theory will come to its final refutation in the light of factual reality.)

The Day of vengeance, Isa 34:8, Rev 6:17.
6th Seal   Sun and Moon darkened, Rev 6:12-17, Matt 24:29, Mark 13:24-25.
Rev 16:15, The Lord, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, arrives and is seen to return as the Redeemer – the Redeemer coming to Zion, Rom 11:26-29.

“The cup of His indignation”, presented to all men who are deserving this gruesome item, Rev 14:10-11.
The winepress of the wrath of God, Rev 14:19.
The battle at Armageddon, Rev 16:16, 19:19.
7th Vial   Thundering and hail, Rev 16:17-21. “It is done” – v. 17.

In response to prayer, the Harlot, the Great City and the Mystery Babylon, is seen to be destroyed – Rev 16:19, Rev 17.
The overwhelming OneHour-event. The OneHour-judgment of the OneHour kings, 17:12-14.
Ten horns, ten petty kingdoms, set in opposition to the Harlot, 17:16.

Rev 17:18, The City, the market forces reigning over the governing structures of the nations.
Rev 18:3, Abundance of delicacies, so she appears, but vials of plagues is reserved for her.
Rev 18:7-8, Means self-aggrandizement, measures of judgment.
The One-hour punishment rehearsed and re-enforced – Rev 18:10, 17, 19.
Rev 18:20, Apostles and Prophets, rejoice – God hath avenged you on her.
Rev 18:24, Nations to have been deceived by sorcery.

Rev 6:17   The Great Day of the Lamb and His wrath.
Horns and vials end. “Time is up”, at the threshold of the days of the Messiah.

Rev 7   Jews sealed just before the “Hurting of the Earth”.

7th Seal   Parousia, the Day of the Lord, Rev 8:1-6. In response to Prayer.
Parousia – the glorious return of the King to recover Zion, Matt 24:3
The sign – Matt24:27, 29-30
Ingathering, Matt 24:31, Rev 7, 14:14-20, 2 Tess 2:1 – Greek: “Episunagoge”.
Rev 15:2   “They that had gained victory over the beast.”
The resurrection, Dan 12:1, 1 Thess 4:16
Rev 17:14   Forces of the Lord, The Elect, chosen and faithful.
Rev 14:7   The Hour of Judgment.

Rev 7:13-17   A great multitude, which came out of the “Megas Thlipsis” – “the Tribulation, the Great”.

Rev 7:17   The Lamb who is the Shepherd, to have been foreshadowed in Eze 34.

Rev 8:3-6   Prayer initiates the blowing of the seven horns – horns to begin under the 5th Seal.
Rev 6:9   “Under the Altar” – the most beautiful picture of the Solemn Assembly gathered for prayer.
Rev 15:3   The prophet seeing those “who had come off victorious from the Beast”. (ASV)

Vials to be poured, in response to the prayers of the saints, Rev 15:1, 15:7.
Rev 15:1   The last seven plagues; “in them is filled up the wrath of God”.

Rev 6:12, 17   The singular “blackout” and the final and very extraordinary expression of God’s Wrath – the Day of the Lord.

11:13   The great earthquake under the 6th seal – see also Rev 6:12 and Zech 14:5.

Mount of Olives, Zech 14:1-4.
7th Horn   Thunderings and hail.
Rev 6:10, 7:10, 10:7, 11:15-19, 12:10 – all and everything in response to prayer.
Rev 11:18   A Rewarding of the Prophets and the Saints.
Rev 19:11-16   The Ruler, the Redeemer, coming to Zion.
The Antichrist, the person, as well as his mystery of iniquity, annihilated, 2 Thess 2:8.
The great dividing, the great polarization which signifies the most dreaded antithesis of the thinkers and the philosophers of these last days – Matt 24:40-42.

Rev 11:18 – “Destroying them who destroy the earth.”
Hail and thundering – in response to prayer.
Rev 20:3   The enemy locked up for the longest of years.
Rev 19:7   The Marriage of the Lamb.
Rev 20:4   A solid ruling and reigning out from Zion. Micah 4:1-3.
Rev 15:4   All nations shall come and worship, because Thy judgments are made manifest.
Rev 20:5-6   The first resurrection.
Rev 20:8   Repeated folly – Gog, begins the eternal rule…

Rev 11:15-18   “Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.’”

Rev 10:7   “All the words of the prophets regarding wrath and restoration are being fulfilled.”

“All the words of the prophets”. Are the prophets able to invoke, refer to and correlate all things seen and heard in the realms beyond the ordinary in combinations and definitions which is easily understood and adhered to in this our orbit of trivialities? Are the prophets assigned for and led to a detailed picturing as well as for an ordering of events in categories which are to be recognized by men who are bound to petty timeframes?

One virtue alone regulates the opening up of and the understanding of that which is truly prophetic, one virtue alone: the virtuous waiting for the giving, for the hearing and for the sending, a virtuous waiting for Heaven to act and to do, to overrule and to recreate.

 

A word to direct the minds and hearts of men of caliber…
I covet the presence of those men who have better eyes than I have, and who have calibrated their hearing according to heavenly measures to come in and make adjustments in this attempt to synchronize the “forth-sayings” of the prophets of old, this for us all to be able to present markers and paths to thread in an effort to console and comfort those who are hit and hurt by the events and the pressure belonging to “the tribulation, the Great”.

Lars Widerberg
apostolicity@gmail.com

Last Sifting, 01

JACOB’S TROUBLE – THE LAST SIFTING OF ISRAEL
The role of the Church in the drama at the threshold of the Messiah.
By Lars Widerberg

 

Chapter 01
The Kingdom of God and the issue of being chosen

“A lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world.” 1 Pet 1:20

“He hath chosen us in him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy…” Eph 1:4

For us there is a “before the foundation of the world”. To hand it over to fantasizing would bring disaster. God’s personal will provides a revealing which fills every available measure. Before the beginning of the world there was a choosing, a choosing to create. Included in the drama of creating, one finds the choosing of men and a nation for priestly purposes. One finds a covenant setting, and more men with broken hearts and unsteady voices speaking up against the breaking of the covenant given to the chosen nation by their God.

Thus saith the LORD, who giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who divideth the sea when its waves roar; If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD.” Jer 31:35-57

Before us and ahead of us, we find a “for ever”. It is set in motion and is operative in many realms of reality. It is a heavenly measure, an eternal measure, a measure which holds absolutes. The English vocabulary offers a compact word for this particular kind of measure – “irrevocability”. It is God as He is – a Rock – the Rock of salvation, never changing. The realm which is offered by Heaven is one which will not and cannot change; it exists as an ever present continuum. This realm manifests in a practical manner according to a profound formula: “speaking the truth in love, growing up into Him in all things, who is the head, even Christ”. Items belonging to the eternal realm belonging to the Covenants of the Lord are to be made identifiable, they are to be apprehended and they are to be reckoned as irrevocable markers at the threshold of the Messiah – when the days are made short and time itself reefs and takes in its sails.
Eph 4:15

Eternal measures – expressed in a Davidic framework
“The Rock of Israel spoke to me, ‘He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.’ Although my house is not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure.” 2 Sam 23:3-5

The Redeemer, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, presents Himself in a Davidic framework, and He does this also when the redemptive efforts of Heaven is about to come to a conclusion. “These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth…”. “The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose its seven seals.” “I am the root and the offspring of David.” The Gospel of God finds its factual references within a Davidic framework – its good news is to the larger part the announcing of the restoring of the fallen tabernacle of David, based on a new and different covenant which guarantees credible reconciliation at all levels.
Rev 3:7, 5:5, 22:16, Acts 15:16-17

The Redeemer allows, through the Apostle John’s writings, the Church at Philadelphia to become aware of a certain key – a key which when used, doors open to stay open – the key of David. This key is partly an interpretive key which when inserted into the large body of texts and segments of writings brings forth a pattern – a pattern of royal intention with its very focus in Zion, in that strange city which has its existence in two places: in Heaven as well as on Earth. Its existence in Heaven – a walled city with twelve gates, with no impurity, but rather filled with the beauty of holiness and the irrevocable promise of its coming to Earth, which stirs certain emotional reactions – some of them far beyond rationality. Nations rage and the rulers take counsel together against its existence as well as against its values.
Rev 3:7, Ps 2

The everlasting covenant which David, the sweet singer of Israel, found secured for him and his descendants, rests fully in God and in His choosing. Vengeance, a concept which is foreign to the Sunday Church of these last days, stays thoroughly tied to the revulsion and revolt produced among mighty men in their petty kingdoms. The second Psalm allows us to see something in God’s face which defines and substantiates the fate of the haughty mind and its rebellion – a smile. The Son, the coming Redeemer, has already taken His seat in the heavenly realm. He is waiting for the set time to engage with full force, awaiting for “the day of the LORD’S vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion”. For this salvation, including the aspect of vengeance, prophetic men have inquired and searched diligently and so does the maturing Church of the last days. To the Church, defined by “micros dunamis” and by a strict faithfulness to the Word of God, a name will be given – “the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem”.
2 Sam 23:3-5, Isa 34:8, 1 Pet 1:10, Rev 3:12

A better covenant
The letter to the Jews, the letter to the Hebrews, pointed them (and it points us) directly to Zion, to the fullness of the Davidic reality and to the heavenly reality, which is prepared for both the Jew and the Gentile by the sacrificial effort made by the Son in His death and resurrection.

“Ye are come to mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”
Hebr 12:22

“Now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.” Hebr 8:6-10

The text which is quoted from the letter to the Jews settles at the very central position in all our searching for structure, in regards to the prophetic exposition of the various items and issues related to Christian eschatology, and in regards to the looking into the finalization of the very mystery of God in the last days. The extracting of meaning and timing is pivotal and mandatory. Its content speaks of a “to the Jew first” for the sake of priestly ministry among the Gentiles. Its place in this letter to the Hebrews underlines its vital spiritual function as the promised “New Covenant” announced by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It is to be, in every sense, regarded as “better”. Twelve verses in this letter holds a vivid comparing between what the Jews were coming from and what they had been brought to in Christ – in Zion. The “New Covenant”, the Jeremiah covenant, is to be regarded and to be enjoyed as something so much better than anything previously encountered. Do we need to add the fact that there is never to come anything which is able to take us any further? Exploring and apprehending the fullness of Christ, and of Zion, belongs to eternity. The kingdom of God, Zion, belongs to that which will last through eternity.
Rom 1:16, Exo 19:6, Jer 31:31-33, Eze 36:24-28, Hebr 7:22, 8:6, 9:10, 10:34

Eschatology, prophetic perspective
The prophetic perspective as well as the prophetic inquiry involves a repeated returning to that which is Davidic in nature. Prophetic men find themselves engaged in royal issues, indeed they are engaged in that which pertain to the returning of the Redeemer. Their main area of inquiry lies revealed in the intriguing apostolic statement: “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob”. Theirs is a struggle – is the Zion spoken of by the Apostle to be regarded as the heavenly Jerusalem, or may it be regarded as the corporate fellowship of the Saints as constituted by the “fullness of Gentiles”, a fullness expressed according to the following: “we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The “provoking of the Jew to jealousy” in this corporate expression of truth and mercy is to be constituted as a convincing testimony concerning the realities of redemption, it is set to speak radically both to men and before the powers in the heavenlies.
Rom 11:26, 11:25, Eph 4:13, Rom 11:11-14, Eph 3:10

“I saw in the night, and behold, a man riding on a red horse! He was standing among the myrtle trees in the glen…” Zech 1:8

“The angel who talked with me said to me, ‘Cry out, Thus says the LORD of hosts: I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion’.” Zech1:14

Perspectives are radically changed in the presence of Heaven. Man’s perception is radically altered in the presence of heavenly realities. Not many are made able to see as a Zechariah, not many are willing to watch through the night like the prophetic men of old. Most of our commenting on world affairs and on the many heated issues which cause armed conflicts, on the fact that millions and millions starve and on the complex issue of global warming – all our comments and calculating along with our efforts to compromise and compensate, yet not one of these efforts hold any value as to true change. The night, its thickest darkness holds all of us in the tightest of grips with no one to see with a true seeing.

The beginning of prophetic inquiry has its inception in the choosing of men, in the heavenly choosing of a man to stand in the gap, to “stand in the breach before me for the land”. What men of this caliber see at the outset of their watching is seldom anything but darkness. Habakkuk complained: “Why do you make me see iniquity”. Isaiah was brought to a devastating realization at the very outset of his prophetic work: “Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider”. The very first word of Zechariah had to be one of repentance – a word to bring the nation from darkness to light, from under judgment to a being covered by mercy.
Eze 22:30, Hab 1:3, Isa 1:3, Zech 1:3, 6

Zechariah saw horses among the myrtle-trees, and accompanying him was the angel of interpretation to draw forth meaning and to provide explanations. At the outset of the encounter, the fact that the band of horsemen stayed their ride among myrtle-trees and not among cedars or maple-trees brings light amidst darkness. The myrtle, from the Hebrew root “hadas”, deployed in the name Hadassah, brings to the Jew both the concept of right standing, righteousness secured, and of mercy of the warmest colour. The angel of interpretation signals, by the use of kind-hearted simplification, the perennial activity of the heavenly host – the salvific defense of that which belongs to Heaven.

“The angel that communed with me said to me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.” Zech 1:14
In this next sequence of the encounter, meant for a heavenly seeing amidst gross darkness, there are words of further explanation, even of a commission. The prophet is made acutely aware of God’s own jealousy, a well defined sense of right and wrong, an explicit expression of that which is counted among eternal values – the jealousy for Zion. The words are: “I am very greatly displeased with the heathen” and further: “I have returned to Jerusalem with mercies. My house shall be built in it” and then the promise: “The LORD shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem”.
Zech 1:14. Jer 31:3

The comforting of Zion and the choosing of Jerusalem reoccurs as a prophetic scenario, as is words regarding the necessity of repentance, as men of spiritual caliber are called into a walk with the angel of interpretation on paths leading through the darkness into vales of myrtle-trees. Ours is a duty to conduct inquiries into the prophetic word of the Lord for the sake of recovering insight into the prophetic scenario which belongs to the last days, and to prepare for distinct trumpet calls unto repentance as well as for rich words of comfort – to the Jew first, and then to the Goyim.

The New Covenant, the point of integration
“He shall sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.”
Isa 52:15

“To whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?” Isa 53:1

The formation of a solid apocalyptic outlook requires proper identification regarding timing and stipulated order. Fulfillment of prophecy must be precisely what it is – fulfillment. No freedom is ever granted in the prophetic realm to re-order events, as film-makers do to produce an exciting story. Prophecy provides insight into God’s timing of that which ought to happen to serve His requirements pertaining to vengeance as well as to restoration. The New Covenant, the Jeremiah-covenant, speaks of something that has never occurred – the radical and the total change of hearts of a whole ethnic group. The re-construction of the nation of Israel on the basis of the corporate re-birth of all and every Jew living at a particular point in time, settles the matter of fulfillment. No other event will have the force to fulfill a criteria of this dignity. The initiative lies within the active presence of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Grace and Supplication, as we shall see.

“I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling to all the people around, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people” Zech 12:2-3

The words regarding Jerusalem and the nations seem to find fulfillment unto dispersion and devastation every now and then. But do any of these “fulfillments” cover the full meaning intended? When are the nations to be “sprinkled”? When are they to be brought to that final, in every sense final, insight into the redemptive purposes of God? To use but one single segment from the prophet Ezekiel to underline the necessity of reading the prophetic texts of God literally for the sake of re-covering proper timing: “Then the heathen that are left around you shall know that I the LORD build the ruined places, and plant that which was desolate”. Where are we to place such a word in the apocalyptic perspective? Have the surrounding nations ever recognized Israel’s Redeemer in this way? At what point in time can we expect them to do so? Is such recognition under way? Is such recognition, and the many events tied in with the process unto fulfillment, truly Good News, a preaching of Good tidings, a bringing of hope amidst severest trouble and sifting? Have the nations ever been sprinkled in the fashion intended by this particular prophetic word?
Eze 36:36, Isa 52:15, Isa 53:1

The Jeremiah-covenant – certainly a point of integration
“Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? It is precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little.” Isa 28:10-11

“They shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them.” Jer 31:34

Do we carry and harbour an appreciation of what “the angel of interpretation” is able to do for us? Are we truly willing to be led by the Holy Spirit into an understanding of the days when “the mystery of God should be finished”. The fragmentation of the prophetic word, “here a little, there a little”, points to the necessity of a close fellowship with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Grace and Supplication. It reveals the unwillingness among the people of God in general for the fairly rough but utterly rewarding labour which is necessary for the understanding of the ways of the Lord. The fragmentation reveals the deep seated unwillingness for the pondering and considering of heavenly protocol unto repentance and for lives lived under the hand of the Holy Spirit. Zechariah commented and described the heavenly presence as “the angel that communed with me”. Ours is the privilege of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit for the sake of a holy life lived and for the understanding of the prophetic protocol of the Lord.
Rev 10:7, Isa 18:10, Zech 12:10, Zech 1:14

Within the framework of the Jeremiah-covenant, the New Covenant, the eternal covenant which secures Davidicness and redemption for the Jew as well as for the Gentile, we are able to gather uniformity of meaning. Heaven’s use, God’s use of words formulates protocol. The Father’s use of words is constant and coherent. When speaking of a day of vengeance, he defines a particular point in time. If any duplicity or if any secondary fulfillments of a concept these are not without markers of identification. For the man who learns to live under the hand of God’s Spirit, it is no wearisome task to sort out the “When”, the “Where” and the “How”. Truth and humility will guide. The man who, in his inquiry, submits to that which belongs to the realm of the spectacular and bizarre, falls prey to his own vanity.

The New Covenant, the Covenant reveled to men like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, speaks terse words in the face of humanism, a not so modern commodity among men. It speaks the necessity of a new heart, a radically different view of man and his capacities, and of the intervening of Heaven into the affairs of rulers and wise men. The new covenant speaks of the religious man and his ritualistic efforts to present righteousness, including rituals and worship, to gain approval and endorsement in Heaven. Instead it speaks of a different approach secured in Christ Jesus, the Messiah. It speaks drastically regarding a possible annulling of the former choosing of Israel’s God of the small piece of geography as a sacred piece of land as the ultimate place of revealing of the purposes and protocol of Heaven. It speaks directly against any kind of replacing the Israel of God. It speaks directly against the formation of a gathering of men before the Lord as a newer and better nation under the name of Israel –a new Israel. This, the Jeremiah-covenant, formulates the commonwealth of Israel, a sacred and spiritual union of men of the new heart – of Jew and Gentile, a company of committed led by the Spirit of Grace and supplication. It is by all means a covenant of heavenly integration.
Jer 31:32, Eph 2:12, Zech 12:10

Lars Widerberg
Apostolicity@gmail.com

Last Sifting, intro

JACOB’S TROUBLE – THE LAST SIFTING OF ISRAEL
The role of the Church in the drama at the threshold of the Messiah.
By Lars Widerberg

Introduction

For you, dear reader, an introduction to a book, particularly to this book, has to make way and to set before you a door opened. If the author is granted grace to engage your perception from the very outset and beginning of a demanding text, the interaction may become profitable – profitable for the purposes of the Lord. It is He, our Redeemer, and Lord, who holds a door open for both writer and reader. One of the seven churches, to whom the Apostle John wrote on behalf of the Lord, received peculiar encouragement – a door held open for service, a door held open because of and based on reoccurring reduction. By immediate facts settled by the words of the apostle, we are made aware of the absence of impressiveness and power in this particularly blessed gathering of Saints – John uses two words form the Greek language, “micros” and “dunamis”, to describe the state of affairs, an outright commendable state of affairs. May we therefore, like the Church of Philadelphia, keep to His Word at every given moment of our toil in relation to writing as well as reading – and then go on in the same manner in a seeking of the Lord for our corporate role in this great matter of Israel and the Church. There is a door, held open, for profitable service in the last days.
Rev 3:8

The prophetic burden of the last days – a seeing according to heavenly purposes
Prophetic men are identified by their acute desire for discernment and wisdom – for a knowing and understanding according to heavenly standards. Theirs is an identifying of the covenant of the Lord, also in its eschatological aspect – which means, they seek to understand what the people of the covenant are to face and encounter in the days of the return of the Redeemer. Theirs is a radical apprehending and understanding of the prophetic scenario, which is to bring a finalization of the redemptive purposes as foretold by the prophets of old. Jeremiah was, amidst his many tears – indeed, because of his many tears, brought to a seeing and announcing of a new and radically different covenant into which the Jewish nation in its totality, as the chosen nation, is to be driven and drawn.
Jer 31:31-33

Our very dear prophet, Jeremiah, introduces and re-opens two major issues, which are to be recognized even as far back as with Moses, then with David, with Isaiah, as well as with several, if not all, the other prophets of the Old Testament. Any given situation responds, according to corporate prophetic understanding, with great trouble when the chosen nation chooses to approach the given reality in contradiction and opposition to the instructions of the Heavenly covenant which are, by mouth and pen, set forth among them. Jeremiah re-opens the issue of breaking the covenant by stating the fact of a coming of horrifying days in the future to be labeled “Jacob’s trouble”, as a statement of judgment against every item and issue emanating from this very root of covenant-breaking. Isaiah embarks on a similar route by being allowed to define these days as one single day of final vengeance. For our benefit, for you and me, Jeremiah adds: “In the latter days ye shall consider it”.
Jer 30:7, Isa 34:8, Jer 30:24

The second major issue opened by the prophet Jeremiah is the grand and glorious speaking about the new covenant to come. “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.” The whole nation, the chosen people of Israel, are to be made able to walk according to the heart of the Lord, the very heart of the Lord Jesus Christ, their Messiah – and the nations will follow, as Isaiah has it in his words about Zion to be set forth as the place of learning, the learning of heavenly protocol. Ezekiel adds to this end time scenario in his describing of the changing of inner guards, the displacing of old hearts and the installing of that which belongs to true spirituality. Each part of this Heavenly work belongs to the future – even to our very near future: “In the latter days ye shall consider it”.
Jer 31:31-33, Isa 2:2-4, Eze 36:26-27, Jer 30:24

The unwrapping of a prophetic package
“This people have I formed for myself; they shall show forth my praise.” Isa 43:21

During the uncovering of His sovereign choice, the people of His choosing will come across certain issues of obedience together with a wide variety of blessings and benefits – none of them goes without the other. The work set before both the Jew as well as the Gentile belongs to the Heavenly realm, to be set forth and sanctioned by heavenly recourses alone. Its framework is defined by words and sentences like “Davidicness”, “the Kingdom of God”, “the Davidic covenant” and “the eternal covenant” – the “new covenant” announced by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Sovereignty and lordship are words of kindness and beauty within this framework – therefore the nations rage.
Zech 4:6, Ps 2

The beauty of Heavenly sovereignty, the kindness which is the essence of the Lordship of Christ draws forth peculiar dynamics – among Jews it generates jealousy, among the Gentiles, the Goyim, it generates rage and utter rebellion. For something to be “everlasting” under the nose of the Gentile, provokes him to the taking up of the darkest forms of jealousy and of an explicit hatred directed in the meanest formulas against the people of God’s choosing. The possibility of the beauty of holiness as a force in the human realm will be vulgarly addressed, oppressed by destructive forces and suppressed in vile pogroms, harassed and finally being brought to the brink of eradication – with the people representing it – in processes of mass-destruction.
Rom 11:11, Isa 43:21

There is one final sifting to come – only the darkest of forces will enjoy it, the people of the covenant will have its peculiar role in its midst. Our investigation takes on the sorting out of that which is founded on heavenly concepts and that which are but deceptive views. Our hearts are opened to the burden of the last days, a burden which is to be found in the very heart of the God, the Father. “The people have I formed for myself; they shall show forth my praise.” This people of the days of finality, is meant to show forth a thorough knowing of the heart of the Lord and proper insight into His dealings with the chosen people as well as with the hateful Goyim in the last days.
Isa 43:21

Insights into this “mystery”, insight into the mystery of the re-gathering of Israel and its positioning among the nations as a priestly function will cause the inquirer great suffering. It opens for the inquiring saint a journey into the heart of God, during which the daring saint will become acquainted with the greater burden of the Lord, even the very cross in the heart of God. The equipping for the burden, the equipping for the journey in service before the Lord, the equipping for the serving of the Jew during greatest turmoil and trouble, during “Jacob’s trouble” has become our aim.
Rom 11:25-26

The End Time scenario
To make it plain upon tables: Pretention will always oppose spiritual authenticity. Many of us take great delight in reading the Psalms of David and his prophetic band of singers. Do we recognize the fact that the royal “I” in these Psalms personifies the weak and needy of the nation, the nation of Israel? The otherness of this man – a man after the heart of God, the “davidicness” presented in the Psalms is no other than a royal heart reaching out for heavenly intervention for the nation in times of trouble. It matches God’s own heart, in His intention for Zion. Davidicness, heavenliness is forever bound up with God’s thought for Zion – expressed also as an apostolic thought: “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob”. Our reaching out for the Redeemer to come, for the King to return for the finalization of redemptive purposes, ought to be of the same nature as David’s, as we are intended to live and exist as a royal priesthood.
Acts 2:30, Ps 2, Rom 11:26, 1 Sam 13:14, Ps 14:7, Ps 20:2, Rev 1:6

To make it plain upon tables: Pretention will always oppose spiritual authenticity. The Church, the gathering of Saints before the Lord, are brought together for the travail for Zion. Theirs is a rejoicing in the righteousness represented by Zion. The Church is to be recognized as the gathering of Saints only when it behaves as a gathering of Saints – and Saints are made able to take part in the “On-High calling”, the toilsome task set before the Son. The redemptive work was His, and His alone – make no mistake. But, He is praying at all times for the redemptive work to reach its fullness among men – and, especially, with the old nation, who heard the announcement of the New Covenant first among nations. Spiritual authenticity comes with the burden of the Lord. Spiritual authenticity anchors among the Saints when they begin to seek to understand and to take part in the purposes of Zion.
Hab 2:2, Ps 97:8, Hebr 3:1, 7:25

To make it plain upon tables: Ours is an effort to unwrap and open the issue of the “Day of vengeance”, the matter of Zion’s travail and the sifting of Jacob – and to be doing so from the inside. The matter of Zion, the role of the chosen people in the purposes of God in His creation, holds the interpretive key to the end time scenario, to things which in an extra-ordinary sense are relevant to the fellowship of the Saints. The opening of the “mystery of the Gospel” from the inside, involves a reading and considering of texts which will bring solid correction as to certain fatal views in that which we call “Church”.
Eph 6:19

The first text – Jer 31:31-33, is the announcement of the coming of a New Covenant, a covenant which envisages a redeeming work, not based on man’s effort, but on what God offers by radical mercy, first to the Jew and then to the Goyim. The second is Zech 12:10, in which the Lord gives the Holy Spirit a specific role for the last days – becoming in a special manner the Spirit of grace and supplication to be poured out for the revealing of the “Pierced One” among all Jews for their returning to the Lord. In this vital drama, the longer text by the Apostle’s pen becomes fundamental as to content and consequence – Rom 9-11, his shorter note on the coming of an apostasy and the “son of perdition” settles the case for the Saints as to their work in prayer and service before the Lord unto the Jew – the Saints will learn to cooperate with the Spirit of grace and supplication during His staying among the Jews amidst their last sifting.
2 Thess 2:1-8

“Make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.” Hab 2:2
The prophetic word, especially the prophetic texts regarding the last days are divided into two major realms of operations. One is meant to engage the reader and inquirer in a struggle for the formation of an understanding of the purposes of the Lord. A dear master of the prophetic information given, calls this part of the operation “apocalyptic evangelism” – a knowing of things to come for the sake of giving precise orientation amidst turmoil, an informing for the sake of choosing that which belongs to the Lord, the choosing to repent and to receive grace amidst gravest oppression.
Dan 12:3-4

The other realm of operation is, with greatest significance, linked to the work of the Spirit of grace and supplication. It is summarized by “priestliness” – friendship and cover offered to the Jew. It is a hidden work – a work in prayer chambers and in houses of prayer, it is a solemn work under the hand of the Holy Spirit. Along this priestly path of intercession and identification, a prophetic measure of hope may be obtained and then presented to the ones who have no hope, who defines themselves as having no hope at all. The words of Isaiah reach its foremost application in this priestly setting: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry to her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned”.
Zech 12:10, Eze 37:12-14, Isa 40.1-2

“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence. And give him no rest, till he shall establish, and till he shall make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.” Isa 62:6-7

The first conclusion to be drawn from this word from the pen of Isaiah, is that Jerusalem has yet to be brought to this peculiar point of praise and integration among the many nations in the earth. Rather, this city comes closer and closer to the fulfilling of the words of Zechariah: “In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people. All that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be assembled against it”. The watching and weeping must come to its fullness as service amidst the process of making Jerusalem a stumbling block – a burdensome stone – then, turned into the very marker before all nations, speaking to them about the greatness of God in His dealings with Israel and revealing before them insights – insights hidden in the small Hebraic word “yada” repeated with emphasis with the prophets, the deepest, the most radical as well as practical insight regarding the purposes and presence of the Lord. Israel shall know, and the nations shall know – all men shall know in the deepest sense of meaning…
Zech 12:3, Eze 26:36-38

To make it plain upon tables: Our findings regarding the travail of Zion and the vengeance of the Lord to come, will also speak words into a most embarrassing parody on the travail of Zion. The many efforts made by the kingdom of Charismania, a label characterizing certain parts of the modern Church – this petty man-made kingdom which pretends spirituality – the efforts made by this little kingdom to overcome the very dark forces of anti-Semitism and Islam in the days close to Jacob’s trouble is but a parody, even a travesty, compared to that which the Lord is after. The text set before the reader is no less than a trumpet call to “the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, acceptable and perfect will of God”. The prophetic texts themselves set forth a standard to which we all have yet to attain to and become apprehended by.
Rom 12:2

The House of the Lord is Davidic in its nature. The Kingdom which the Lord Jesus presented as a spiritually functional reality is Davidic in its nature. The Kingdom, to be ruled from Zion in the coming days is indeed Davidic in its nature. The apparatus based on the New Covenant – the covenant announced by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, which we have come to call “the Church” ought to be Davidic in its nature. These definitions of what God is after are, all of them, pointing to the priestliness, which lies at the heart of the matter of grace – and of supplication. Priestliness, even better – the cross of Christ breaks in among men as the ultimate self-disclosure of God. The revealing of the cross, ever-present in the heart of the Lord, may break the hardest of hearts. It is meant to break the Jew – the time will come. It is meant to break gentiles – the time has come for such a breaking. The very breaking of the Goyim unto a life lived before God, in Christ, will provoke the Jew to jealousy. The mercy planted – no light sentimentality, God’s mercy planted, God’s own mercy planted among Gentiles will ultimately call for response among His old nation.
Rom 6:11

The great catastrophe will come, that which the old prophets calls “Jacob’s trouble” is about to take place, the vengeance of the Lord will come. The great cataclysm at the threshold of the Messiah is not far from its final realization. The days of the restoring of the Tabernacle of David, the reigning of the King and Redeemer according to the protocol of Heaven is indeed about to come. These are events which will take place – they will all take place in their special relation to the covenant scenario which is both hidden and revealed by the old prophets, by the apostles’ writings as well as by the solid statements of the Lord in his talks on the very subject.
Jer 30:7, 2 Thess 2:7-8

Ours is an utter eagerness to be involved, properly involved, in the welcoming of the King, when He returns for His Davidic rule in Zion. We are eagerly anticipating the Coming of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ – and I invite you, my dear reader, to toilsome thinking, to much prayer, and to the grace and mercy already stored for you to be presented as substantial testimony to both Jew and Gentile as we all move close to the coming of the One who alone is able to rule according to heavenly patterns, to rule davidically in Zion.

Lars Widerberg

Apostolicity@gmail.com

Boko Haram guns down Christians

Boko Haram guns down Christians
By Lyndsey Koh
22 September, 2016

Earlier this week, Boko Haram launched a spattering of attacks within hours of each other in northeast Nigeria. In one assault, they gunned down eight Christians as they were leaving church. Boko Haram members also ambushed a Nigerian military convoy, and beheaded a village chief and his son.

All this comes in the wake of failed negotiations between Boko Haram and the Nigerian government to swap kidnapped women and girls for imprisoned insurgency members.
It’s been seven years of Boko Haram militants terrorizing northern Nigeria. But the crisis they’ve instigated is not grabbing headlines like their Euro-Middle Eastern ISIS counterparts or attacks on the West.

Greg Kelley with World Mission says, “They’re causing all kinds of terror and it’s incredibly difficult. In fact, there are so many communities in northern Nigeria that Christians have 100 percent evacuated just because they are literally targeted and murdered on site as they’re identified.”
This crisis isn’t just Nigeria’s problem. It’s affecting countries around them — and really, no matter how far the effect goes, Christians need to fight against and pray for injustices.

“The reality is that Boko Haram, although they’re concentrated in Nigeria, their influence has spilled over into Niger and Cameroon, specifically where you have hundreds of thousands of refugees. The numbers we have are that there’s an additional 400,000 refugees in just those two countries as a result of Boko Haram.”
Because of the hostilities, northern Nigeria can be a very volatile area for ministry. And Kelley says it’s exactly where World Mission has been called.

“Literally, as Christians are fleeing, the people we work with are leaning into and going into those very places and sharing the Gospel with these terrorists, essentially,” explains Kelley.
“Nigeria is a dichotomy in missions, because [in] the southern part around Lagos you’ll find all kinds of Christian activity and churches and meetings…. But there’s a line that literally runs right through the center of the country. North of that is majority Muslim, south of that is majority Christian. So all of our work is targeted in the northern part where Muslims live and worship, and that’s where Boko Haram is very active.”

Over 2.6 million people have been torn from their homes because of Boko Haram. Most are in camps now, and they need hope.
“There are these IDP or Internally Displaced People camps scattered throughout northern Nigeria where Muslims have essentially been congregated because of Boko Haram, and it really makes them very accessible [for ministry]. So our strategy is going into these IDP camps in northern Nigeria where there are more than a million people just in Nigeria alone living.”

According to the United Nations, northern Nigeria is seeing famine-like conditions created by these attacks. Many of the refugees used to be farmers, and have now lost their livelihood.
“We’re being told there are 20,000 children right now just on the verge of death due to malnutrition in these camps in Nigeria. And we bring in food and sanitary items, and our partners are building relationships with them and just loving them without strings attached.”

Kelley continues, “And then of course they share The Treasure, which is World Mission’s solar-powered audio Bible in the native tongue, which is Hausa, and people are gathering around, Muslims gathering around in small groups listening to the Word of God in these refugee camps.”
But why audio Bibles, rather than the written Scriptures? Kelley says not only is the community in northern Nigeria highly oral and relational, but also, so many schools in the area have been destroyed and literacy has gone down.

“Even prior to [Boko Haram], there was a highly illiterate area. But once you bring the chaos in of people running indiscriminately from place to place, it takes out all of the infrastructure which includes medical [and] it includes schooling. So people literally don’t have access to schooling right now in so many places in northern Nigeria, so the illiteracy levels we’re seeing, they’re getting even worse now,” explains Kelley.

“So audio Bibles are critical because the people can’t read and they do things in oral cultures together anyway. So it sort of hits the sweet spot of them listening and engaging with the Word of God.”

He encourages, “We need people to pray. We need to pray that as Boko Haram has caused chaos, that the Lord uses it in some way for us to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with people who have never heard before.”
Kelley leaves us with this thought: “It does create an opportunity for the Church, even though it’s not on the radar, it’s not being promoted aggressively in the news like some of these other things. It’s a huge crisis in our time, in 2016, that the Church needs to respond to.”

Nigeria: 5,000 killed

Nigeria: 5,000 killed by Boko Haram
 
More than 5,000 Catholics have been killed by Boko Haram in a single Nigerian diocese, a new report has revealed.
 
According to the ‘Situation Report on the activities of Boko Haram in the Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri’, up to 85 per cent of the diocese, in the north-east of Nigeria, is currently controlled by Boko Haram.
The Islamist group began its insurgency in 2009, and has been largely active in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, all of which fall within the Maiduguri constituency.
 
The report states that at least 100,000 Catholics in the area have been displaced, and more than 350 churches have been attacked. Some 7,000 women in the diocese are now widowed, and nearly 10,000 children orphaned by the violence, which has spread to neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
 
Obtained by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the report also reveals that over half of the diocese’s 40 parish centres and chaplaincy centres have been abandoned by the faithful, and several are now occupied by Boko Haram militants. Four of five convents have also been closed.
 
“People are very scared and those who are able to return home find there is nothing left,” Father Gideon Obasogie, director of social communications in the diocese, told ACN.
 
However, the Catholic priest said his faith was being strengthened in the midst of adversity. “The good Lord has always been on our side. He has seen us through thick and thin. Our faith has been purified through persecution.”
 
National security became the central talking point of Nigeria’s presidential election in March, after the date was postponed by six weeks while the government tried to curb Boko Haram’s insurgency. President-elect Muhammadu Buhari is due to take office later this month and has promised to tackle the ongoing problem.
 
Boko Haram would “soon know the strength of our collective will,” Buhari vowed in a televised speech.
 
“In tackling the insurgency, we have a tough and urgent job to do. Boko Haram will soon know the strength of our collective will. We should spare no effort until we defeat terrorism.”
 
On Monday, July 25, Buhari met Chadian President Idriss Deby to discuss a combined effort to restore stability to the region.
 
“If we want to continue the fight we’ll have to make sure that our two armies work together. This is the only way that we can get results,” Deby said.
 
“We discussed issues of common interest which we will pursue together and to have a joint action to handle the issue of Boko Haram and will overcome it and by the grace of God, peace and security will prevail in the sub-region.”

Central Asia in need

Central Asia faces myriad of needs

BY Beth Stolicker

5 July, 2016

Central Asia has been known for its religious intolerance. However, this intolerance doesn’t mean God can’t move mountains or train up leaders right where they are.

Eric Mock, with Slavic Gospel Assosiation, recently traveled to Central Asia to help train church leaders in the region with the Bible.

A Brief History

Central Asia is weird egg. It’s a land filled will Muslims and religious intolerance towards all religions. But, in the 1930s under the Stalin regime, Christian believers were exiled to Muslin dominate Central Asia in efforts to end the Christian movement in Russia.

The expectations of this sending were that the Christians, and their churches, would cease to be able to function.

Yet, the opposite happened.

“Stalin himself became one of the greatest sending institutions that they ever had during Soviet times. [Why?] Because, wherever he sent believers is where churches were planted,” Mock explains.

In fact, during the early 1990s, some ethnic groups heard the Gospel for the very first time. Since then, the Gospel has been opening up in these Muslim dominate lands.

But now, Mock says there seems to be a crossfire in Central Asia between cultures, traditions, and the need for the Gospel. Which is exactly why SGA is in the region training churches.

“So the training that we conducted was equipping the church solely with the word of God, and showing them where the word of God can be brought to bear in these different storms of life,” Mock explains.

For example, women are valued a great deal less than men in many Central Asian cultures. Actually, this region teaches men it’s okay to beat their wives into submission, leaving many homes broken from domestic violence.

“We see time and time again, when we visit these countries, women with black and blue eyes. We see homeless women who are waiting for men in another country to send money. We’ve seen men come home, with a new wife, and the woman and the kids thrown out on the street.” Mock recalls.

If a woman comes to faith before the rest of her family, she is often ostracized and thrown out with no way to take care of herself. All because she decided to follow Christ and leave Islam.

Because there are so many suffering people in this region, it makes it easier for people to either compromise or doubt their faith in God.

“As you know, through your life, there are different things that are temptations to draw you away from God. And in the middle of despair and hopelessness, there’s no greater pull away from God than despair and unbelief,” Mock explains.

For this reason, SGA is working with believers in Central Asia who need encouragement. The need to know how their faith plays out in the rest of their lives and gives peace even in the middle of violent storms.

In a lot of these Central Asian countries, the storms don’t really ever pass. Peace doesn’t come in the sense that chaos calms down. Rather, if there is peace, it’s in the heart and from God.

SGA’s Work

SGA (Slavic Gospel Association) is trying to equip the Central Asian churches to help people make sense of the storms in their lives and to know the peace given in Christ. But also, to learn what the Bible says and how to deal with different situations. However, through all of this helps, churches are learning how to train up disciples of all peoples, and fulfill the Great Commission.

“So the training that we conducted was equipping the church solely with the word of God, and showing them where the word of God can be brought to bear in these different storms of life, these different difficulties,” Mock says.

Christians are often times abused in the Central Asia. Mock has met many pastors who, when they send their children to school, their kids are often times beaten by older boys. Why? Because in this region, being a Christian and proclaiming Christ as Lord and king is blasphemy. It’s a crime that can even sometimes be punished by death.

For this reason, a lot of the work churches do to fulfill the Great Commission and evangelize is really through building relationships, holding summer camps, and being fearless enough to proclaim who Jesus Christ really is.

“We’re seeing people in these communities that would’ve been defiant to God, transformed by His grace. And we’re reminded, even in these communities, we have to trust in a sovereign God who is moving in the hearts of men…Yet, we are not called to be the ones who bring the growth, but we are called to plant the seeds and to water.”

Prayer

Pray for these Central Asian churches without ceasing, they need God’s strength to continue their ministries. Pray for the ongoing summer camps, for lives to be changed and for everyone to be kept safe.

Pray for these churches to expand and grow through God’s word, and pray for God to be glorified in Central Asia and that people would know He is the one true God.

Apostolicity 12

Apostolicity
The heralding of the crucified God
Chapter 12
Brokenness opens for life

Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains what it was – a single grain; but that if it dies, it yields a rich harvest. John 12:24

In this single statement from the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ, we find the protocol of Heaven condensed and explained. In it the protocol and the aim of redemption are summarized, – a breaking and then life produced, proceeding and shown forth in the many and according to the same order. In this terse statement the heavenly protocol unto proper deliverance is defined. No breaking away from any force, natural or spiritual, unless there is a giving up like the kernel of wheat which follows its ordained route of a breaking and dying unto resurrection. Life itself follows the protocol – a breaking for the sake of a new birth for the sake of facing another breaking. As the process goes on unhindered, life, heavenly life, is multiplied. And there is a strange promise attached – the single small corn will not be left alone as it yields to this protocol. The absence of yielding equals an absence of community, an absence of yielding to protocol means loneliness, utter loneliness and isolation.

In the house of God, in the House of Prayer, this rule and protocol appears expressed in slightly different terms. “Thus saith the LORD to the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; Even to them will I give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.”

The Lord speaks regarding the House, and the fellowship in the House, to those who have yielded to the Law of the kernel of wheat, to those who have yielded to the process of breaking. The eunuch is a man who has given up the right to produce unto his own. He is a man who considers himself drained of the possibilities for fruitfulness. He has undergone both breakings and cuttings for the sake of solid service to the king and the royal household. The king is able to trust him with that which meant for perfect fruitfulness. In the same manner, God puts his trust in those who yield to apostolic measures, who bow to the principle which states “from Him, through Him and to Him”. The law of the kernel of wheat states the utter impossibility for man to produce according to heavenly measure. It shows forth the necessity of heavenly life and living to be produced according to heavenly protocol – and in it lies the waiting, the silence and the expectancy of the grain for a breaking unto perfection.

His house is built for them who willingly dare to enter His rest, who dare to embrace the protocol of the Sabbath – which is a perfect statement of His will to redeem, to sanctify and to let life flow from broken vessels. The Law of the corn of wheat speaks emphatically regarding His will to save and of the work necessary to be done in Him and by His hand. Waiting breaks the modern man. The silence needed for true worship breaks the young mind. The waiting itself is worship, a worship superior to any other way of expressing awe and perplexity in the presence of the crucified God. The waiting holds the potential needed, ground plowed and harrowed for kernels of perfection to be sowed unto righteousness and glory. Ours is a worship obsessed with processes of utility – our sowing must by necessity yield fruit unto us, our sowing into men’s ministry is promised to render the sower rich crops. But, a waiting on God in truth and humility is meant for God and its fruit is packaged under an exclusive label: “Unto Him. . .”

Earthen vessels, or earthly…
“We have this treasure – the light of the Father – in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God, and not from us.” 2 Cor 4:6-7
“When I am weak, then am I strong.” 2 Cor 12:10

The apostolic emphasis is once again brought to the forefront in defining sentences compacted and packaged in a way which the casual reader renders as being of little value. His reading is one expecting instant gratification, it is a reading for the sake of expediency. Our efforts as to reading the 1189 chapters of the Bible must be brought in under the protocol of Heaven – its character must take on the very approach as of an apostolic waiting and expectancy for the interpretation of Heaven itself, given and sustained by the Holy Spirit. The waiting for an apostolic exegesis, of the apprehending and application of texts in a heavenly perspective, is a dire necessity in these days of the coming of the Messiah. Our unwillingness to read, to read in the mood of a digger of a well in times of drought, ought to bring perplexity and a thorough breaking.

Earthen vessels, easily broken – the heavenly protocol. Earthen vessels, easily broken – tools of heralding. The apostolic heralding of the crucified God sounds and goes out in its most distinctive, in its most distinguished form amidst breaking. Brokenness – a state of perfected as well as prophetic relating to heavenly realities. Life pours out where a vessel is broken – it is poured out, to be given to God. As it is given to Him who is the Giver of life, it will not be lost. Live handed back to the Giver of life will be brought forth into His light for the sake of bearing fruit. Life lost, painful as it is, heralds life gained and secured for the bearing of much fruit.

“Whoever desires to save his life shall lose it, and whoever desires to lose his life for My sake shall find it.” Matt10:39, 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luk 9:24, 17:33, Joh, 12:25

The Lord allows these words to be repeated for the emphasizing of its importance. He repeats words regarding the crucified life and the carrying of one’s cross in the same manner, for the same reason. He repeats words regarding the overcoming of the wisdom of the world settled as the driving mode in the churches for the very same reason – Rev 2-3. But, the modern gospel flatly contradicts the heralding of the necessity of the cross. Its foremost expression consists in a hyperactive carnality which tries to visualize and affirm spiritual reality.

The main message of the modern Church consists in the declaring of God’s benevolence, in his gracious providence and support of man’s undertakings. His grace and kindness is said to invite man to draw from Heaven resources of every category for the securing of each and every exploit and enterprise. Prayer and faith techniques may be employed to safeguard the outcome of the widest variety of undertakings. Blessings may be obtained by the calling forth of manifestations of adequate promises, even violently secured by various means of invocation and the conjuring up of one’s personal preferences. Further techniques are employed for the transferring of spiritual experiences and the transforming of man’s inner status. But, the ruling and reigning, which the many try to employ by force, will be obtained only by conforming to the Crucified One. The overcoming, which so many try to express by decree, is to be obtained and maintained only by a relating in humility to the Crucified One. Earthen vessels have become earthly, the vessels of the Lord have been defiled by that which is no other than carnality – never to be reformed or transformed.

The radical contradicting of the cross of Christ within the community which is meant for testimony cannot be counter-measured by any other means than a severe breaking unto a constituting of a vessel which then lives a brokenness and humility according to the one represented in the Throne in Heaven. The radical contradicting of the cross of the Christ has to be drawn forth into the light of fatherhood, and by the obedience expressed by the Son to be firmly settled with foundational men, with apostolic men. The apostolic preaching of the crucified God heralds the providing of a new heart, its message is the heralding of the radical change of focus taking place with the installing of the laws of Zion, the Law of the Spirit of Life in minds and hearts who has been willing for the initial breaking hereunto. In the breaking moral stamina is formed according to eternal values – a formation never to be found elsewhere. And, the dear reader has to allow his mind to break over these statements, to dig in and to draw out, to consider for comprehension and apprehending.

“Lord, what will You have me to do?” Acts 9:6
True apostolicity begins with this kind of inquiry. Wisdom begins with this kind of question. The work of the Lord has its beginning with this question. And, it is the very mark of the reality of breaking. A person who is unwilling for the carrying of the cross, the religious man, aspires for exploits for the Lord, but never in the Lord. He enjoys the doing and the being seen doing. His works are never free from the earth-touch and his works are not valid before the Lord as testimony. The earth-touch hinders the ministry of life; like the shell of the kernel of wheat must be broken so the earth-touch has to be reduced and taken away by the cross of Christ.

The Lord gave, and gives, to the Church apostles and prophets “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry”. The work to be done by this kind of foundational men consists in these late days of the coming of the Messiah in a recovering in conformity with the detailed revelation of God’s thought in Christ, a bringing of the redeemed, of saints “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”. These men, men of caliber and maturity, are sent to secure a solid and sound expression of Gods thought, a securing of eternal values among the saints for the sake of truth and humility displayed in godly living and serving. Their “What do you want me to do?” brings them in close relation to the heart of the Father to learn Christ for the sake of return of a remnant Church amidst ongoing apostasy. Theirs is an eschatological perspective, an understanding of the times gathered in sobriety and prayer. Theirs is a repeated breaking over the condition as to spirituality and maturity in the churches, and a crying out for the gathering unto solemnity and corporate repentance.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. The Spirit breathes where He desires, and you hear His voice, but you do not know from where He comes, and where He goes; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit. John 3:6, 8

These are words of the marvelous hope, an irrevocable promise made by the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. These words are immediately a reflection of the coming calamity, of the cross, – not so much as the event at Calvary but as the lesson of despair to be learned in brokenness regarding mans own capacity as to righteousness and holy living. There is no way for the religiously inclined man to imitate or emulate Christ and His life. The Holy Spirit gives life, He is the giver of life, He is the sacrificial Spirit to lead in the processes of the cross unto dying and to resurrection. He operates according to heavenly procedure, the authenticity of His breakings are certainly substantial. His raising of a person unto heavenly life is equally authentic, gloriously authentic. In the realm of the Spirit pretention finds no room – as it belongs to carnal categories, it will break and die where the Spirit is. And, where pretention and conceit is allowed to operate, the Spirit draws back into hiding. The two realms never overlap or interact, that which is given from above cannot be manipulated or taken by force. Only that which holds a relation to true sending truly knows the difference between the two realms. Only the foundational man dares to speak up against pretence – and he will.

Apostolicity, a matter of being reduced
“This grace is given to me (who am less than the least of all saints) to preach the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ among the nations.” Eph 3:8
Paul, the apostle, had found himself an answer to his question – “Lord, what will You have me to do?” His was a position in lowliness, travelling from place to place, at times under severest hardship, heralding the mystery of the crucified God. He continued in brokenness to the very end – “all the Christians in Roman Asia have deserted me”. He was led to produce a catalogue displaying the ingenuity in the attacks of the enemy “And besides other things, which I pass over, there is that which presses on me daily – my anxiety for all the Churches.” He regarded himself as being the least among the apostles – even the least among saints, and he did so in genuine humility. Lowliness and breakings – the mystery of apostolicity. What manner of men are we? What will the Lord have us to do?? The heralding of the crucified God is not a matter of elaborate messages produced in a nice library, its dynamics comes solely from breakings and the life flowing as a result.

Church defined: Enough brokenness in one place for Life to be given room to minister

The apostolic heralding of the crucified God leads the Church into a subjective learning of Christ. The apostle writes to the Church in Ephesus pointing out the remarkable difference between man without Christ and the saint in Christ: “For they, being past feeling, have given themselves up to lust, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ.” The learning Christ is meant for breaking, it is meant for a permanent loosing of one’s life for the sake of goodness and godliness. The learning Christ is indeed a subjective one, life inwrought in the inner being, the law of life written in man’s heart. Life, that which is given from above, is radically other than the doing and the being seen doing which follows the accepting of Christ and the professing of faith in Christ in most of our evangelistic campaigns. Our aim in our evangelism and in general church life is set far too low to comply unto apostolic standards. Ours are religious productions rather than an apostolic and prophetic heralding which implies forceful instruction leading towards radical repentance and thorough breakings of the earth touch.

Breakings bring meekness
“Fear not, daughter of Sion. Behold, thy king cometh to thee; and he rideth upon a colt, the foal of an ass.” John 12:15
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Matt 11:29

The master, so the disciple – meek and lowly. The crucified God, so the saint – meek and lowly. The Redeemer returning in power together with the heavenly host – marks in His hands, the nation who crucified him will be stunned and overwhelmed in the recognition of the humility and the meekness of the crucified One. Meekness and humility gathered in brokenness disarms. Heaven is strangely militant, its weapons are not of this world. The force of Heaven at its optimized focus lies with the beauty of holiness, with truth and humility intertwined, with the brokenness expressed ultimately in the Son crucified. To turn it slightly – without the cross, no resurrection, saints without brokenness are saints without resurrection. Saints without brokenness and resurrection are saints pretending, saints without spiritual reality.

The Holy Spirit invites us for pilgrimage, for the formation of Christ within. His is an invitation to learn Christ. His is an invitation to be filled according to heavenly measure. The invitation accepted opens for the Spirit of Holiness, and His mode is one of sacrifice. So He is, because His work is to bring Christ in fullness to the heart of each and every saint. So He is because His work is a work if intimacy in the drawing of the heart of each and every saint to Christ.

The Holy Spirit invites us for pilgrimage. His concept for journeying in this strange land, which is our modern multi-culture loaded with attractions and lures of all sorts, is one of strictest non-adaptability. Under his hand there is a blessing to be found in the revelation of the non-compatibility which is ours in Christ – the non-compatibility settled in the cross which speaks against the whims and wishes set to be satisfied at the tables arranged by the priests and miracle-makers of a Hollywood or a Bollywood or of any kind of “broad way establishment”.

The paths of the pilgrims are all narrow ones, never to pass testing grounds for novelties. That which is settles from eternity will hold proper measure both through time and throughout eternity – and the apostle knows the truth as a never-changing concept. The apostolic gift to the raging societies lies with his jealousy for eternal values, as defined and set forth in Christ. The apostolic gift to every kind of setting is the spiritual stamina to lift forth heavenly values – his approach in this task does not allow for any blending with the manipulative techniques of modern showmanship. The stewardship of the mystery of Christ is indeed meant for the serving of the Gentiles – the communicating of the mystery must therefore be of a heavenly kind, strictly severed from gentile attitudes and manners. Only brokenness severs from the earth touch. Only brokenness opens for life. Only that which has come under the hand of the Lord in obedience to heavenly measures opens for life.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for it is they who will be recognized as sons of God.” Matt 5:9
Brokenness disarms, it brings gentleness. Brokenness disarms, it contains the peace-making qualities which Jesus spoke about and called for in his Sermon on the Mount. In our boisterous efforts to bring the Kingdom Now, lies a fatal failure to recognize the King and to adjust to His rule. “Blessed are the meek, for they as heirs shall obtain possession of the earth.” This will become a substantial reality when the Redeemer returns. It is a spiritually substantial reality in our days in the heralding of the presence of a cross unto brokenness. Wherever saints are walking in corporate meekness under the hand of the Lord, the gentleness of theirs holds capacity as a radical means for peace efforts, healing and restoring.

The word of the Lord, the heralding of the crucified God is indeed a weapon unto peace-making. The heralding implies a non-compliance with that which does not belong to Christ. It holds, at the same time, an un-reserved yielding to anyone and anything which belongs to Christ. It takes greater courage to use this kind of weapon than any other kind of armory. Only a true cause will be won by its involvement. Its very nature and its sending into this world re-introduces the perennial conflict between the powers of this present darkness with its vanity and the wisdom stored as eternal values – values to be engaged by any saint, weak and broken, for the sake of a testimony emphasizing the grandeur hidden amidst the meekness which belongs to Christ – and which is gladly administrated among saints by the Holy Spirit.

Reading: John 12:24, Isa 56:4-8, Eze 20:12, Eze 36:26, Eph 4:20-24, Hebr 8:10, Eph 4:12, 2 Cor 11:24-28, Eph 4:19-20, Matt 5:5

IRAN: House Churches Multipying

IRAN: House Churches Multipying Despite Persecution

Christianity is spreading swiftly inside Iran despite a government crackdown against house churches. Some Christians argue the actions of the Islamic Republic’s have actually created an opposite effect.

A London-based organization that trains Iranian Christians reports hundreds of thousands of new Christians – former Muslims – are worshipping secretly in a rapidly accelerating house church movement inside the Islamic Republic.
According to The Christian Post, a source affiliated with the Pars Theological Centre said the rapid church growth will eventually change Iranian society.

“This is not a political movement at all, but it will have political implications because it is touching the core foundations of society. This is battling prostitution and drug addiction. If you want to live in a country that doesn’t fund terrorists, you have to develop the values of the grassroots,” the source said.
“It is not anti-Iranian, it’s an Iranian movement. It’s a great, great number of Muslims turning to Christ.”

As a young girl in Iran, Fatima began to question her Muslim faith and began to search for God in other places. One night, she had a dream that she walking with Jesus in a rose garden. Click here to watch what happened next.

So, how many Iranians have embraced Christianity? According to Open Doors USA, as many as 450,000 Iranians are now practicing Christianity inside the country. Other groups have placed the figure as high as 1 million.

Shortly after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005, the Iranian government launched a massive crackdown against house churches.
And despite the ascendancy of so-called moderates, including Hassan Rouhani as president, the crackdown has continued unabated.

Just last month, an appelate court issued a verdict against four house church Christians in Ahwaz, Iran for holding “illegal meetings” and “attempting to spread Christianity and convert Muslims.”

Secret police had arrested Pastor Amin Khaki, Daniel Barounzadeh, Mohammed Bahrami and Rahman Bahmani during a picnic in southern Iran. According to Present Truth Ministries, the plain clothes police drew their guns on the Christians and even beat some of them.

Rahman Bahmani told interrogators he converted to Christianity four years ago and “I changed a lot. I wasn’t a good man before and when my wife saw the changes in me, she converted to Christianity as well, and when I was asked how I was healed I would say, Jesus healed me.”

Bahmani and the three men were sentenced to one year in prison, and the court banned them from attending, or holding church services for two years.

Only government approved churches are allowed in Iran, and Christian services cannot be conducted in the Farsi language.

But the biggest risk is for Iranians who leave Islam for the Christian faith. They are considered apostates–and under Islamic law, they must be punished by death.

So far, Bahmani and the others have not been charged as apostates. Present Truth Ministries asks that Christians pray for these brothers who remain faithful to Christ.  And “Pray that their testimony would go forth for the glory of God.”

Mali: Al-Qaeda holds missionary a second time

Al-Qaeda holds Swiss missionary kidnapped in Mali for second time

Al-Qaeda in Africa has claimed the kidnapping of the Swiss missionary Beatrice Stockly who was abducted in Mali in January.

According to Illia Djadi of World Watch Monitor, this was revealed in a chilling eight-minute video, in which Stockly appears dressed in a black hijab, a masked speaker with a British accent claims responsibility on behalf of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

“Beatrice Stockly is a Swiss nun who declared war against Islam in her attempt to Christianize Muslims,” the speaker said.

The conditions of her release include setting free AQIM fighters jailed in Mali and one of their leaders detained at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Switzerland has demanded her unconditional release.

AQIM, which is based in the Sahara Desert between Mali, Niger and Algeria, was involved in the January attack in Ouagadougou, the capital of neighboring Burkina Faso, that left 29 dead including a US missionary and six Canadians visiting the country on behalf of a church.

Last week AQIM released Jocelyn Elliott, an Australian Christian woman kidnapped with her husband in northern Burkina Faso on the same day as the attack in the capital. The Islamist group said in an audio recording that it released Mrs. Elliott so as “not to make women involved in the war.”

World Watch Monitor said that Stockly was taken from her home in Timbuktu by armed gunmen on January 7, 2016. It was the second time she had been kidnapped by Islamists. The most important condition of her release, the speaker in the video said, was that she did not return to any Muslim land preaching Christianity. The Swiss government had warned her not to return to Mali after her release in 2012.

Below is WWM’s January 11, 2016, report on the kidnap of Beatrice Stockly.

Original report:

A Swiss missionary abducted for 10 days in 2012 has been kidnapped again in Mali’s northern city of Timbuktu, sources tell World Watch Monitor.

Beatrice Stockly was taken from her residence before dawn on Jan. 8, 2016, by armed men, who arrived in four pickup trucks, according to the sources, whose names are being kept confidential for their safety.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. Militant Islamist groups are active in the region, where two attacks within the past seven weeks, one of them at a Christian radio station just before Christmas, have left 25 people dead.

A local church leader, who claimed to have previously worked with Stockly, told World Watch Monitor the missionary settled in Timbuktu in 2000, working for a Swiss church, before starting work alone, unaffiliated with any church.

He said Stockly is in her forties and leads an austere life, selling flowers and handing out Christian material. She was described as sociable, particularly among women and children.

Her home is in Abaradjou, a popular district of Timbuktu frequented by armed jihadist groups. She was taken from that same residence in April 2012, when northern Mali was occupied by armed Islamist groups. She was released 10 days later, following mediation led by neighboring Burkina Faso.

During the 2012 occupation, Christians, a minority in Mali, have paid a heavy price. For most of the year, armed Islamist groups ruled the region, banning the practice of other religions and desecrating and looting churches and other places of worship.

Thousands, including many Christians, fled and found refuge in the south, or in neighboring countries such as Niger and Burkina Faso. Others fled to Bamako, the capital, and other safer towns in the south.

Unlike other Christians, Stockly remained in the city. At her mother and brother’s urging, she returned to Switzerland after her 2012 kidnap, but soon returned, saying, “It’s Timbuktu or nothing.”

Growing insecurity

The WWW story went on to say that the Mali government and the predominantly Tuareg rebel groups signed a peace agreement in June 2015, with limited impact. Jihadist groups have regained ground and intensified attacks, targeting Mali security forces and UN peacekeepers. Their scope has spread to southern regions previously spared by their incursions.

On Dec. 17, 2015, three men were killed when an unidentified gunman opened fire outside Radio Tahanint (Radio Mercy in the local dialect), which is closely linked with a Baptist Church in Timbuktu. Hamar Oumar Dicko and Samuel Dicko worked for the station; Abdal Malick Ag Alher was a visiting friend.

Dr. Mohamed-Ibrahim Yattara, President of the Baptist Church in Mali, told World Watch Monitor at the time that Christians were “shocked to see what happened.”

“We are trying to find out what happened, but for now we don’t have any explanation,” he said.

“It’s a Christian radio station that was broadcasting messages of peace lately. One of the young men who was shot last night, he had just finished broadcasting and his last words were about peace.”

“Insecurity is everywhere in Mali,” Yattara said. “The situation is very frail, but we didn’t see a particular threat to the community.”

About one month earlier, terrorists killed 22 people at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako. The government imposed a state of emergency that expired on Dec. 22, 2015, then extended it to March 31, 2016.

“It is thought that the abduction of Stockly is the first of a foreigner since the kidnapping and killing of two French journalists, Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, in the northeastern town of Kidal in November 2013,” concluded the World Watch Monitor story.

An Apocalyptic Manifesto

An Apocalyptic Manifesto
Prepared by Lars Widerberg

Being directed by severe demands to the scenario belonging to the days at the threshold of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, we have to make certain parts which are available as markers, make them “plain upon tables” – in order that the reader may consider, pray and begin to “run with it”. Hab 2:2
In one sense, this text assumes the role as being a manifesto, a setting forth of the Gospel of the coming Kingdom. At the same time it is set in place as a composite marker and, therefore, it operates as a timetable.

“In the latter days ye shall consider it.” Jer 30:24
“Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Dan 12:4
“The words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.” Dan 12:9

At the heart of the many items and issues which constitutes biblical eschatology, the things pertaining to the end of the world as we know it, we find two expressions from the prophets of Israel – “the Controversy of the Lord” and “the Time of Jacob’s trouble”. These two are intricately bound together in the use of a third sentence, “the Day of the Lord” – to be found in both the Old and the New “Testament” in expressions covering Heaven’s severest dealings with Israel and with the many nations surrounding God’s elected and chosen nation.
Isa 34:8, Jer 30:7

The “controversy” ends with the short period referred to as “Jacob’s trouble” – the latter part of prophet Daniel’s seven year sequence – which allows a setting for the systematic vileness of the Antichrist. Gentiles having been brought to the Lord, “that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared for glory”, are meant to act as dynamic and vital parts in the eschatological context in which the Gospel is to be preached to every Nation – for an intrinsic knowledge of the Holy.
Dan 9:27, 11:21, Matt 24:21-22, Rom 9:23-24, Matt 24:14, Prov 9:10
Zech 12:1-3, 14:1-9, Joel 3:1-21

Beginnings: The New Covenant
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband to them, saith the LORD. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Jer 31:31-33

The necessity of a preparing for a New Covenant between Israel’s God and the national entity, announced mainly by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, is present in one or two major issues. First, the unwillingness ever present with nation to stay true to the older covenant – even combined with an inability to do so. The foundational requirement for covenantal faithfulness – a new heart – is covered in the New Covenant, which also settles eternal continuity as well as a perpetual providing of qualities and character which corresponds in fullness with heavenly measures. This may be labeled as internal reason and expression of the controversy of Zion.
Eze 36:23-26, Hebr 8:8-13

The external expression of the controversy has its root in the envy and the enmity perpetually present with the tribes and nations who, in the early days broke off and away from the covenant reality. Clansmen like Ishmael, Esau, Ammon and Moab, established for their progeny a state of continuous refusal of Heaven’s choosing, to be expressed in perennial adversity, in repeated assaults and atrocities directed against the Jewish entity. The covenant reality – God, the One who decides and who chooses, becomes a stumbling stone in His own universe and that which is elected and set aside for His purposes become a burdensome stone for all peoples. This external expression of the controversy will eventually come to a final point of resolution in the annihilation of the mystery of iniquity and its main proponent, the Antichrist, by the restoring of the “tabernacle of David” in the returning of the Redeemer to His Zion, to rule according to equity and in righteousness, in mercy and in the beauty of holiness.
Gen 16:12, Gen 28, Joel 3:2, Zech 12:1-3, 2 Thess 2:8, Acts 3:20-21, 15:15-18, Isa 2:3, 59:20

Vengeance, wrath and vindication
“The day of the LORD’S vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion.” Isa 34:8
A day will soon wake up to find God going to work to do away with our picture of Him being a “One-attribute-god”. The very modern Church declares that God is Love – twisting it a few degrees saying “Love is God”, thereby declaring all things permissible. A day will soon settle the format of the stage in which the Holy One of Israel will vindicate and sanctify His name before the nations – “when I shall be sanctified in you – Israel – before their eyes”. He has appointed a day in which He will deal severely with the Nations “who have appointed my land into their possession”.
Eze 36:22-23, 36:5

The prophets of old speak repeatedly of the Day of the Lord as the Day of vengeance, wrath and vindication. He, the Holy One of Israel, intends to draw the nations into a place called the valley of Jehoshaphat, “and He will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and have divided my land”. The methods and mechanisms of allegorical interpretation and of replacement theology are of no use in the face of dire vengeance reality. Preterism – which holds most prophetic revelation to be fulfilled, and amillenialism – which declares the kingdom of God to be a reality within the structure of the institutional churches, these two lines of interpretation are indeed misplacing the radical reality and the hope of the coming of the Lord – the Redeemer returning to Zion.
Joel 3:2, Isa 61:2. Luk 21:24, Isa 34:8, Rom 11:26

The complex markers of His return
“Tell us, when will these things be? And, what will be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” Matt 24:3

Jealousy for the restoring of the Davidic Kingdom and an eager anticipation of the Redeemer to return to Zion marks the inquisitive disciple and student of the prophetic Word of God. The Lord directs every saint to prophet Daniel as being the foremost instructor on the issue of the markers of the coming of the Lord. The issue in view, which triggered the questions regarding the Parousia – the returning of the King in perfect royal glory, was the rebuilding of the temple. The very same issue offers a point of integration in the drama during the apocalyptic week. A “vile prince” – also to be revealed as the man of sin, the beast of the book of Revelation – will come forward to prepare a peace deal and cut a covenant with a provisionally restored Jewish entity in the land in a successful effort to bring peace to the Middle East, and to invite the Jews to build a temple in Jerusalem.
Matt 24:15, Dan 9:26-27, Dan 11:21, 2 Thess 2:8, Rev 13:3-4

Some three and a half years later, counted from the days of the signing of the peace deal, this vile prince will indeed turn vile, providing to the brim the fulfillment of the words given to Daniel and repeated by his Master and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. His evil intent will find its ultimate expression in the “abomination of desolation” to be set forth in the newly constructed temple, in the rage against the Covenant and against its people – the Jews, and also with a directing of military force against Jerusalem. At this point the severest sifting of the Jewish people will occur, a sifting foretold by Amos, the shepherd.
Matt 24:15, Dan 11:28-32, Joel 3:2, Am 9:11

Ezekiel settles perspective and describes an emptying to the uttermost of resources and prowess of the provisionally gathered nation of Israel. The picture includes an emptying and a desolation in which there is no room for survival: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off”. During these days of severity and sifting, the Holy Spirit will begin to move among God’s Israel, the Jewish entity as the Spirit of “Grace and of Supplication”, “and they shall look unto me whom they have pierced”. Mark you, this occurs during the worst days ever to be found in history – and the Holy Spirit is still present on Earth. In this we find a factor which in its immediacy sharply contradicts certain popular escape theories.
Eze 37:11, Zech 12:10

Composite markers preceding the Coming of the Lord
One of the early churches in the Roman Empire were about to be severely deceived as to the time of the Coming of the Lord. Paul, the Apostle, wrote to the Thessalonian Church, wrote to them to establish prophetic order – concerning the lying spirit in operation among them as well as concerning the issues and markers to carefully watch and wait for and to cover in perfect truth. He told them, and thereby also planting the same truth with all churches, told every disciple to be alert and on the watch for an apostasy and the explicit revealing of “the man of sin” to occur before “the Day of the Lord”.
2 Thess 2:3

The apostasy is, as always, to be defined as a doing away with the altar and its very real covering of the Saints in their walk in holiness, the doing away with the cross and the twisting of the faith into a means of gain rather than of godliness. The apostasy will also be defined strictly on Jewish ground as the cutting of a covenant with the vile prince, the Antichrist, for peace in the Middle East and for the building of a temple in Jerusalem and the re-instating of ritualistic sacrifices for the pleasing of an angry God. The corporate testimony, the apocalyptic testimony, among the people of God may come as a corrective word in both these realms.
1 Tim 6:5, Tit 2:11-12, Isa 28:15, Dan 9:27, Dan 11:31

The second major marker to be expected before the Coming of the Redeemer, is the revealing of the “vile prince” (Daniel), the “son of perdition” (2 Thess 2), the beast (Rev), the Antichrist. His character and works are anything but royal and Davidic. His state of mind will, in each setting and in every sense, be set against the Covenant, the Davidic covenant securing the throne in Zion, the Jeremiah Covenant constituting eternal Jewish presence in the land of Israel and the Covenant presented by Ezekiel which guarantees a New Heart which provides spiritual ground for the perpetuity of the realities of Zion. These are but one unified eternal provision of Heaven for the sake of annihilating iniquity and for a restoring unto holiness, constituted in the Lord, Jesus Christ, by His sacrificial death and in His resurrection. This covenant constitutes an irrevocable statement against the Antichrist and his mystery of iniquity as well as a perfected covering unto holiness for the Jew first, and for the Gentile.
Hebr 8:8:12, 10:14-18, Rom 1:16, 2:10, Rom 2:28-29

The “semeion sos parousia”, “the sign of Thy Coming” is defined as “the Day of the Lord” and as “the Day of vengeance”. The Greek words directly describing the Coming in the Messianic writings, the New Testament, are intrinsically royal and superbly glorious in nature. Paul uses two of them in direct relation to the final overcoming of the vile prince: “epiphaneia” and “parousia” –“the overwhelming light and brightness displayed at His royal entrance”. A third one, “apokalupsis”, maintains the visibility of the event. There are no hidden parts in the revealing of and in the final impact of the establishing of the royal and heavenly presence in Zion. The Day of vengeance comes as a thief upon the Gentile forces as they are fully occupied by their demolishing of Jerusalem during the latter part of the apocalyptic week – just before the seventh vial of the Revelation. The visibility of the royal sign – the “semeion sos parousia – will produce an impact on the kings and rulers of that day unto an understanding of the imminent wrath. No other signs in the sky are allowed to be interpreted and implemented by this measuring rod.
Matt 24:3, Luk 21:22, Isa 34:8, 61:2, Rev 16:17, Rev 6:17
2 Thess 2:8, Rev 16:15-17, 1 Thess 5:2, 4, 2 Pet 3:10-11

The royal sign and the final horn
This, the Royal sign constitutes the Day of the Lord and His vengeance in the sight of the Gentiles. Their trampling of the Holy City, will come to an overwhelmingly drastic end as the vile prince is to be blown off of the scene – ”whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth”. The very same Day is constituted by one last trumpet blast from one single and last horn, a trumpet which has been expected and waited for by saints alive as well as many saints sleeping. This very last trumpet announces “that there should be time no longer”, that “the mystery of God should be finished” and that “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he will reign for ever and ever”.
Rev 11:2, Luk 21:24, Thess 2:8, Rev 10:6-7, Rev 11-15

This last horn is the same horn spoken of by prophet Isaiah: “It shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown…” This horn announces the final ingathering of the Jewish entity. It announces the resurrection of the saints from their graves. It is directly knit to the punishing of “the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity”. The day of the wrath of the Lord is positioned at the far end of the Apocalyptic week, at the end of the great tribulation and it includes the resurrection of the saints. Paul is referring to the same horn in his writings to the Corinthian Church: “At the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed”. To the Thessalonian Church, he speaks similarly: “With the trumpet of God the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds”.
Isa 27:13, 27:12, 26:19, 21, 1 Cor 15:52-54, 1 Thess 4:16-17

Summary: The last horn announces the resurrection of the dead as well as a gathering of the saints, still living, unto the Lord. It sets in motion the ingathering of the sifted Jews, and the wrath to be released on Gentile nations at the very end of the Great tribulation under the Antichrist. It also heralds the rule of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, to be established in Zion – calling the nations to adherence for the learning of righteousness. These events are bound together and synchronized in one single sequence at the end of the Tribulation, the Great. The prophetic word holds them all together in unity, a unity which no man may try to split into parts divided by time, or twisting the order by the use of modern theories which offers escape routes out and away from hardship, testimony and service.

Land under attack, war on saints
“The days are at hand, and the fulfilment of every vision.” Eze 12:23
“There should be time no longer.” Rev 10:6

The vile prince and his assault on the Jewish entity and on Jerusalem, is described in the visionary texts of the prophets by various designations and in predictive fragments to be gathered and carefully placed in unified order. Prophets Micah and Isaiah display the picture of “the Assyrian”, the great city Babylon appears repeatedly as a designation in this realm, the “surrounding nations” are mentioned as a corporate enemy guilty of “dividing my land”. Gog – the mighty warlord, is said to gather many nations from the Middle East and northern Africa for a devastating assault in the latter days. And, finally, all these pictures converge in the description of “the Beast” who despises the Covenant and the people of the Covenant, only to be overcome at Armageddon when the Day of the Lord dawns.
Micah 5:5, Rev 17:5, Eze 38-39, Rev 13:1-2, Dan 11, Rev 16:16

These forces, thus drafted and drawn together for the final battle, are today gathered and mustered under a unifying banner, which signals adherence to an isolated desert prophet and to messages from a desert entity continually in contest for world dominance. This desert entity purports to be “god” – and he shuns and rejects fatherhood. His repeated statement in this realm runs as follows: “Far is it removed from his transcendent majesty that he should have a son”. This statement represents the essence of an antichristian rejection of the Son of God and his constituting of an eternal covenant – to the Jew first.

“Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled.” Luk 21:24

“The court which is without the temple… is given to the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.” Rev 11:2

Zion, the holy city of the Lord, has been contended for and sought for as a jewel among precious stones. It has been found to be “a cup of trembling and a burdensome stone” for all peoples. A season has been set apart for a final treading under foot – days to be shortened, by mercy, for the sake of the survival of an elected remnant. Prophetic measures provide three and a half years of gruesome sifting until the times of the Gentiles come to an end. The Day of the Lord comes as a thief to the many unwilling for heavenly education, but it dawns in the rulers’ courts as the brightest of realizations and as an irrevocable factor. The Redeemer comes to Zion and to its people, the Jews, in that “the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets”.
Matt 24:22, Hab 3:2, Am 9:11, Rev 11:15

Prophet Daniel received the following words for the future: “There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time. At that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book”. This very sequence also holds a reference to the resurrection of the dead – a marker of a magnitude which rules out any alternative interpretation as to when the saints will be gathered unto the Lord. The restoring of Israel and the resurrection of the dead is by this sequence – and many similar –synchronized in one single event. With the dividing and inverting of the markers of the Coming of the Lord, one finds the most flagrant corrupting of the prophetic scenario of the days at the threshold of the Messiah. The final gathering of the Jewish entity, as well as the Gentiles who have been brought into the Covenant by the new birth, is to be regarded as one undivided event to be expected at the return of the Redeemer in royal glory to Zion.
Dan 12:1-2, Isa 59:20, Rom 11:26-29

The Day of vengeance is indeed a day of utter glory – a day of gloom for the unrepentant and a day of rejoicing for saints and prophets. In the book of Revelation the horrible emptying and gloom and the destruction of the destroyers of the Earth are described in a couple of intensely graphic sequences. The very marker which creates order and relevance among these elements of doom is the fact that they all end in displaying the finality of the wrath of the God, and also in the announcing of a radically new and intrinsically different era to have arrived. The seven seals opened, the horns blasting and the vials poured out according to prayer, reaches finalization in the presence of the wrath of God. Reading the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ as one unbroken event creates conundrums and perplexity beyond necessity. Allowing its internal point of integration to supply order, one still find issues which may elude explanation – but God is thereby vindicated in every sense.
Rev 11:18

Provisional ingathering, sifting and saintly service
By sentimentalizing the miracle of 1948, far too many Christians are led to believe that every prophecy regarding God’s restoring of Israel are already and finally fulfilled. But, a thoughtful scrutiny of the content of the prophecies points to something which cannot be found within the Jewish national life of today, and which also constitutes the very reason for “one final sifting”. The missing factor is revealed and defined as “God present”…

“It shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced.”
Zech 12:9-10

The corporate repentance foretold by prophet Zechariah is yet to be found in the future. It will gather substantiation on New Covenant ground, the covenant specified and announced by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. God is about to begin to contend for the fulfilling of the prophetic word by the bringing of the Jewish nation ”into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face”. He will bring them all to an emptying of power and prowess, to a state of affairs in which they will begin a crying out in utter brokenness: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off”.
Eze 20:35, 37:11

Ezekiel presents the reader of his texts with a Hebrew word, requiring almost no space but which is voluminous as to content – “Yada”, to know, “to come to a direct and verifiable insight of an intrinsic kind”. The following items direct the inquisitive mind in proper direction: “I will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live. I will place you in your own land and ye shall know that I, Jehovah, have spoken it and performed it”. “I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for ever”. Please, also take note of another word in these texts – the very word which indicates the presence of the Lord – the sanctuary. The masterpiece of 1948 does not hold any content which in any way measures up  to what is described by prophet Ezekiel. The forthcoming of this shift towards the otherness of Zion requires a radical sifting, a new heart and the very presence of the Lord and His sanctuary.
Eze 27:13-14, 26-28

Amidst the perplexity produced by being presented by the controversy of Zion, the glorious Church learns to wrestle with the burden and travail of Zion. At the opening of one of the seals in Heaven – the fifth – John “saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’” Combining this picture with one in chapter twelve, which includes the last phase in the evil assault against the Jewish entity – during “a thousand two hundred and sixty days”, the ministry of mercy presented by vessels of mercy is revealed in its fullness and effectiveness.
Rev 6:9-10, 12:6, Hab 3:2, Rom 9:23

The Spirit of Grace and Supplication, present during the “Trouble of Jacob”, will be assisted by a people who are trained for testimony and for self-sacrifice. Prophecy speaks regarding this remnant in drastic terms: “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives to the death”. These are the servants of the Jewish entity, as “she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time”. The provision and the nourishing brought forth during the days of the great travail finds its constituting element in words from the scroll of Isaiah: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry to her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received from the LORD’S hand double for all her sins.”
Rev 12:11, Isa 40:1-2

Substance and solidity comes with the knowledge of and the explaining of the reason for the trouble and travail. The apocalyptic testimony waits for vessels of mercy to be brought before the world. Substance and credibility will come to the Jew in his predicament during these last days at the threshold of the Messiah through the revealing of “the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”. Substantiated comfort will reach the Jew and also the Gentile through a Church who dares to face days of severest trouble. “When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads: for your redemption draweth nigh.” “None of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.” “The people that know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.” “They that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”
Col 1:27. Luk 21:28, Dan 12:10, 11:32, 12:3