The Future will be Different

 We are in a kind of no man's land, a waiting time.

We are waiting, but we don't know what lies ahead. The future will be different from the past, but we don't know what will come and when it will come. We have promises from God. We may expect revival, but what will revival look like in the unknown future?

The revivals of the past often appeared unexpectedly. We read history, but we know the world of yesterday is never coming back.

We are like Abraham in the Bible who set out on a pilgrimage not knowing where God would lead him. Abraham went from his homeland to a completely different destination. We stay where we are, but the world is changing around us.

Abraham and Sarah had to trust God for their unknown future, just like we do today. 

Abraham really had to trust God because he was 75 years old when God promised to give him a son. He had to wait about 25 more years until Isaac was born.

He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. Rom 4:19 NRSV

We often get tired of waiting and with many trials. I am sure that Abraham and Sarah were sometimes tired and discouraged.

But God wants to encourage us. He gives us his word and his loving promises.

He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
 
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;

but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Isa 40:29–31 NRSV

We are in an unprecedented global crisis. In such times can expect God's miraculous intervention. Millions are sick and yet millions are cowed in the shadow of death. So many are dying.

The Second World War was also a terrible crisis. Millions died and but millions were sick, injured and traumatised.

Shortly after the war, God was at work with great mercy. Great revivals appeared in different countries. Evangelists appeared in America and thousands of seriously ill people experienced miraculous healings.

In Solingen in Germany, a German evangelist emerged who exercised amazing healing gifts. 

Hermann Zaiss was a very gifted German evangelist at the end of the war. Already in 1945 thousands and thousands from all regions of Germany and also from other countries came to his meetings. Many seriously ill people were miraculously healed, but these were not the greatest miracles.  

There was a young soldier in the British occupation force. He burned with a terrible hatred against the German people. His commander was a Canadian officer who regarded this young man with Christian compassion because his uncontrollable bitterness was poisoning his own soul.

This young man was not a monster. As a Jewish child from Germany, he had found refuge in England, but his entire family was murdered by the Nazis.

The Canadian officer brought the traumatised young soldier to the meeting to hear the German evangelist.

Also in the audience was another badly injured man. He was a hard-core Nazi from the Waffen-SS, a devoted disciple of the Führer.

In the last days of the war, he was hit by the explosion of an artillery shell. When he awoke from a coma, he saw a black American nurse smiling at him with Christian Mercy. He no longer understood the world. One of his legs had been torn apart and he was permanently crippled.

The bewildered SS officer and the bitter young Jew listened to the sermon, saw the healings and felt the presence of God with His love and mercy. Then their hearts became warm and soft. They converted to Jesus and testified of their experience.

Then the most amazing miracle of all occurred. They became firm friends.

In dark times we can expect amazing miracles.

Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
God's love never changes. God is love. 1 Cor 13:7 NLT

Complete Gender Equality before God

 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” Ro 8:15 NRSV

If as an adult man or woman you are obliged to always fulfil the expectations of your parents, your spouse or your pastor, you are enslaved, because you are not free to follow the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit.

In the Roman Empire, sons and daughters were by no means equal. The son was the heir of the father. The wife always had to obey her father or husband.

In Romans 8, Paul says all believers are adopted as children and heirs of God. In Roman law, an adopted son became the heir of the adopting father, equal in status with a natural born son.

Only sons were heirs, not daughters

In Romans and Galatians, Paul taught that as Christians we are all have the status of adopted sons and heirs, not only men but also women. It means that she is equal with the brothers in the faith. 

This is not only an indication of the value of her soul, but also a clear teaching that she is equal in everything, because in Roman law, sonship was primarily a legal status.

and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. Ro 8:17 NRSV

Being an heir does not only mean being loved and valued, but also having the legal standing of an heir, which means complete gender equality in every sense of the word.

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,

so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 

Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
 
Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. Ga 4:4–7 NASB95

Doctrines of gender based Christian hierarchy are mainly based on dubiously interpreted proof texts, verses taken out of context.