Month: December 2025

When is something finished

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Over a significant period of time I was involved along with many others in the area of what might be termed ‘strategic prayer’ (for want of a better term) and undergirding that was a focus on removing the effects of the past. The past cannot be changed, but when there are ongoing negative effects those can be addressed. The same way things operate at a personal level so they operate at a corporate level. We see how Scripture addresses both ‘cities’ and land as if they are personal.

A big part of seeking to respond to the past is that of identificational repentance, and it is wonderful when we see something go full circle with national apologies made where there has been national oppression – a recent example is that of Spain’s apology to Mexico.

There are many Old Testament examples of ‘we and our ancestors have sinned’ type of responses but for me the clearest NT example is that of the baptism of Jesus by John. It was a baptism for ‘the remission of sins’ and thus it is understandable that John did not agree to baptise Jesus until… He refuses for how can he baptise the ‘sinless one’? The response of Jesus is to talk about righteousness. That term is not simply right and wrong but a covenant term. Jesus is suggesting that righteousness had not been fulfilled thus begging the question of whose righteousness. God’s? Certainly not. But that of the covenant people. Jesus identifies with Israel and the confession of his mouth is not his sin but that of the people. From that point on he carried the sins all the way to the cross. (We could suggest that the sin / death proclamation from Eden is carried all the way to the cross.)

I appreciate that the last paragraph might be exploring new ground for some but it opens a whole new window on the cross.

Living in our world what do we do when we come across something along the lines of the various pagan temples that we visited yesterday. Kneel, pray and stand in identification? I have done that on many occasions, but yesterday other than proclaim there is one God, maker of heaven and earth who does not live in a temple made by hands we did not do any IR at any significant level. I wondered why (and also am aware that we are yet to go to Agrigento and the valley of temples – maybe that will be different).

Of course the idea that we will have answers and understand everything is a wonderful myth, but I think I grasped something yesterday. To finish something does not mean everything is necessarily done, but that nothing is left to prevent a move forward. That is key. The future (personal / corporate) can be locked up by the past and the important part is the unlocking of the past so that the future is not a repeat of what went before (and thus further locking it up).

Maybe what I have written is a bit of a fog and not too clear, but I think it is another level of understanding for the many people who continue to seek to remove the effects of the past. The conviction of God is key as to what to address.

I am currently slowly working on Israel (not the current state but the theology of Israel) and key to that is to distinguish ‘Israel’ from ‘Jew’ (hopefully in 3-4 months time I will write on that) so have been coming to the disciples question to Jesus as to whether he was at ‘this time (chronos) he was going to restore the kingdom to Israel’. He gives them a continual direction to move in (with 3 clear allusions to Isaianic texts), for (tying it to Paul) it will be in ‘this way’ that ‘all Israel (not all Jews!) will be saved’. Hang in there!!!

The death of Jesus unlocks the past so that the future can change (chronos – the literal time) as God aligns the future with what needs to happen (God sets the chronos and the kairos together – Acts 1:7).

The work of Jesus is finished – the past cannot hold back what is coming… and yet Paul says he wants to make up what is lacking in the afflictions of Jesus. There is work for us to do – not saving the world – but dealing with whatever has been afflicting the world so that there is no lock up but a release of the freedom of the cross.

I am aware that a whole lot more could be written to expand the above… but there it is for now.

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New Testament context?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

A ‘recovery’ of New Testament Christianity does it need a context in which to develop? The most influential flavour of Christian faith that impacted me was that of the ‘new church’ movement in the UK. I am very grateful for the decades I was immersed in that and the push for ‘church as in the NT’ might be something I would wish to reposition as ‘a recovery of the gospel of the NT’… or even ‘a recovery of the trajectory of the gospel of the NT’. For some time though I have wondered if we have to also embrace a NT context – i.e. something akin to the Roman-Graeco culture of that day.

Years ago I visited Pompeii then read passages from Revelation in the evening. Forget about ‘left behind’ and other such myths – we read what we had been walking through. Today Gayle and I went down the coast from Marsala and the last place we walked through was the archaeological site of Selinunte. A site of ancient (Greek) temples. Here is one of the many temples:

Impressive for sure! But imagine Paul’s world – coming to Athens and temples to each and every god, and even one to the ‘unknown god’! A challenging culture to proclaim that the ONE God, creator of heaven and earth does not live in temples made of stones and that this God has raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead! Amazing that people lined up to say – OK I am ready to follow.

And challenging to proclaim the gospel in that context. But this is what they did and with a long-term vision that everything connected to Imperialism would resultingly fall (the message of the book of Revelation as I read it).

So do we need a culture that more closely resembles that of the NT? Multi-faith so that in the ‘market place’ we make our presentation? Or maybe that culture is more present than we realise? What might be the temples in our city – temples that demand sacrifice of time, money and the future? Maybe if we could see them for what they are we might already find that we are in a NT context, then go on to discover what the presentation should be and then…

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Lion or Lamb?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Biblical Observations

Revelation – still stands head and shoulders above other literature as a critique of Imperial political power (not talking party politics but politics in the sense of dictating the life and culture of the polis). Mark of the beast etc… is a critique of economic unjust transactional trade (and a push away from buying and selling to giving and receiving as the economic culture)… All relevant then and deeply relevant now.

Revelation 4 and 5 are the pivotal chapters. Chapter 4 would have left John’s hearers somewhat in a daze for when Caesar came to town his throne was the centre and the elders (by Domitian, numbering 24) were around the throne. From there the future shape was determined, but John describes another throne, a heavenly one. But this is no simple vision of ‘just sing God is in control and all things will fall into place’, for he describes a major issue. He sees a book totally sealed that no-one can open so there is no alternative future but the one that Caesar (and the many would-be-Caesars that arise) determines. But there is hope – and the hope is rooted in Scripture:

Judah is a lion’s whelp;
from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He crouches down, he stretches out like a lion,
like a lioness—who dares rouse him up?
The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him,
and the obedience of the peoples is his (Gen. 49:9-10).

The (Jewish) hope that the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah and sort everything out, hence one of the elders declares:

Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.

The book can be opened, human destiny, the purposes of God for humanity will be outworked. John stops weeping and turns to see the Lion who has overcome. He sees a Lamb bearing all the marks of having been slain. He hears of a lion, but he sees a lamb. As happens in Revelation the sight gives deep meaning and insight to the hearing. And Jesus is the revelation of God.

I have had a look and I cannot find another reference to the ‘lion’ after that first one. References to the lamb – yes, but none to Jesus as the lion. And I read of the call to follow the lamb wherever he goes.

The unlocking of human destiny is through the slain Lamb and the followers. The Lamb unlocks the scroll, but those that John represents have to eat the scroll (described as a ‘little scroll’ (Rev. 10) so probably indicating that it is not the whole scroll’s content but that there is still work to be done).

The rulership (kingdom) of God is not top down, but working from within; engaging at a level that embraced that which was top down: sin and death, those twin powers.

Paul’s gospel was one of transformation of what was offered to Jesus (the kingdoms of this world)… Jesus, Paul and John in a book full of violent imagery all agree. There is a path for us to follow.

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Dreams and nights

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

I have been blogging for over 25 years and it began when someone in Germany said to me that I should ‘blog’. My response was – I am not interested in what others are pontificating over so am not about to add my pontificates to theirs. Then I began to read what others were writing and thought if I can keep it away from the pontifications and lean into ‘these are personal perspectives’ it might help me to process where I have been and where I think I am headed… and maybe be a help to someone else to journey with authenticity. I am far from convinced that there is one response that all followers of Jesus should make, after all Jesus in response to Peter’s moan was that how John would respond to God’s leading had nothing to do with him. Of course there are issues that we are to watch out for but outside of that the leading of God is very personal. So in reading my posts they are ‘personal perspectives’, and one of the challenges is that no-one is right on everything, our problem being that we have no idea where we are wrong! Here then follows something as much for my benefit as for anyone else, reflecting on our departure from Oliva just over 3 weeks ago and how we set ourselves for the coming week.

Another week… Days, weeks, months (lunar or calendar?) and maybe even years are wonderful dividers for us. Take a day at a time is one of the wisest approaches we can take – in that sense I only have today. A good friend who sadly passed away in 2001, Johnny Barr, was asked to pray for a woman who had been diagnosed with 4 months to live… He said to her I can’t possibly pray for you on the basis of that prognosis. She asked him – so how long do I have? His response was – today. Scripture consistently says ‘today’. If you choose to live today I can pray for you.

I don’t know if the week begins on Sunday (‘first day of the week’) or Monday but we tend to take each week from Monday, so here we are. Dreams and nights are important for us. Gayle has maybe 5-6 dreams per month that we need to take note of; I, maybe 5-6 per year that are ‘pay attention’ dreams. We have been directed to geographic places in dreams, but also note patterns. Since arriving in Marsala dreams have increased but not so many have ‘landed’ – an indication of activity but contention. Then add to that how disturbed sleep can be – and when it is somewhat disturbed indicates a level of opposition. Land loves to respond to care and prayer for release from bondage (Rom. 8), but there is a process involved for (whatever is meant by spiritual powers) are rooted in geography and so do not simply shift in an instant.

We are now hitting the stage of… time to move on. Not the voice of heaven! The stage of – so how serious are you? That is the voice of heaven.

Time to dig in.

We are encouraged that across Italy there is a move that is continuing to hold a protest position against the inhumane situation in Gaza and concerning economy that profits from war. We observed this in Spain earlier in the year and our hope has been that this would spread across Europe. What has that to do with the gospel? Well if narrowed down to ‘hands up and sinner’s prayer’ we might give one response… but if we look at the bigger picture of what I term ‘the Pauline gospel’ we might give another response and a shift on the bigger picture removes a measure of the blindness that ‘the Satan’ brings over people.

Colonisation is coming right into view. There is no value in over-judging the past. If we were to do that we would judge many of the ‘saints’ of Scripture – everything fits the era it was in. Garibaldi and the conquest of Sicily? At one level irrelevant but a sign of something fresh that can be released. Hence something here to continue to pray so that fuel comes to a humanitarian push across this continent that is line with the image of God is in humanity, thus declaring all war as ‘civil war’.

Musings for the day… and maybe fuel for us as we go to the marker point of the most westerly point on the island. From the West… the western hegemony is coming to an end (ends of that nature die slowly) but out of the ashes something has to come from the west. The angel who brought the book in the dream (that we have not been able to read – yet) was struggling to hold the book due to its weight and size, but it was held at three points – to in the arms extended to the extreme and the other on the stomach. I think symbolically the three marker points on this triangular island.

A missing element so often is patience – not something passive but deeply active – for it is through faith and patience that heaven comes. Another week.

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