Prophetic Perspectives – Page 8

Through the door

A reflection on 21-12

Posted on 21st December, 202121st December, 2021
by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

I am sure you all recognised the formula above the title… Something to do with the fraction of incident light reflected or transmitted. Glad I got that across. Dec. 21 (21/12 for us Europeans) is always an interesting date, shortest day in the northern hemisphere, date in 2005 when a group of friends ended in St Peter’s Sq. Rome at the end of a momentous walk from the UK, and for me a reminder each year. There was an event that I was sure would take place on Dec. 12 and would be a sign of the rise of a new apostolic wave. The event did not take place!!! OUCH! When that happens it is always disappointing, but somehow I was convinced I wasn’t wrong though all the evidence pointed that way. Long story… short version… I woke a couple of days later with the conviction that what I expected would take place on the mirror image of 12 (on the 21st) and would take place between 10.30 and 12.00 (Central European Time). Great when it took place right in that time gap. It marked in 2005 the beginning for me a realisation that what was to be expected would look almost like the reverse, but in reality if we learned how to see differently (mirror views?) we would be better prepared. [Maybe if I understood the formula in the image above the title that would have helped me? Or more likely if I learned how to be more reflective I might learn a bit quicker?] So here we are, soon to come to 2022, so a few reflections on this day, reflections that look forward.

A challenging end of year. I have been asked recently on a number of occasions to repeat, clarify or expand what I had suggested regarding the coming year. So here goes!

I suggested that a) 2021 would be a year when there would be some wiping of brows and a response of ‘we’re through that and at last we can get things back to where they were’, but that would prove to be a false hope and leave people disappointed just when they thought we were out the other side of the difficulties. And with regard to b) 2022 that we would encounter a number of setbacks that might not in themselves be enormous and manageable but stacked up they would prove to be of a greater challenge than the (COVID related) pressures of 2021.

A few notes first:

Although I do not believe God is outside of time, s/he does not turn the calendar over month by month. Nevertheless because we live with a sense of ‘new day’, ‘new month’, ‘new year’ God communicates into our world, hence there is validity in talking of ‘2021’, ‘2022’ etc.
Perhaps though we are better to see a group of months or years belonging to a season, and perhaps it is better to grasp these years as part of a season, rather than splitting them up to tightly.
Individuals might experience something very different to someone else, in the words of Scripture there can be no rain across the area but rain comes to one field in spite of the drought (or vice versa).
Nothing communicated concerning the future is to be a straight-jacket or taken as deterministic. Great trauma was predicted for Israel by Jesus, but he called his disciples to lift their eyes and avoid being embroiled in the trouble themselves.
And finally, the somewhat tongue-in-cheek yet serious post I wrote on there being a broad way that leads to life indicates that we should not think of only one narrow option being there before us. Is there a right way? Probably a way that is more right than the others, but God goes where we go, our task is the relationship with God and the trust that God is with us. We can miss opportunities but the other side of our choice we continue with a God who is there to maximise what can come out of that choice.

I find the end of this year interesting. Throughout the COVID there have always been words such as ‘reset’, with the emphasis on a global reset. I hope some things have been reset but there are also many aspects, particularly in the economic realm that have accelerated in the direction they were moving in before. [And economics is the barometer of spiritual shift.] Maybe there is a continuation of what has come through COVID as we have not really responded to the reset? Or maybe enough has been reset that we can continue with the changes?

And who is the ‘we’? Well for me the body of Christ is responsible for the world, so there might be a big bad ‘we’ out there, but there is often an irresponsible ‘we’ in here… and inside that ‘we’ there is an ‘I’… so moving along very quickly!

I see the end of the year like a door that we pass through, and it is not too pleasant, with some of the greatest growth in daily infections being recorded, with the threat of lockdowns and increased restrictions. The door kind of indicates that what is the other side is not without its serious threat… but!

I still see a major battle concerning how we are going to be oriented. If we hold on to a hope that the past will simply return and we can get back to normal this will certainly not contribute to the future coming into place with ease, but will only prolong the delay and the trouble. Within it for those who, even without knowing what to do practically, have been inwardly asking and desiring whatever alignments to come into place, will find amazing heavenly help to take them there.

Some of the signs for the fresh alignments will have been / will be that there will not simply be new alignments but ones from the past will come back round but in a new setting; and that those alignments will in some way be a tool to open the ancient pathways. Ancient trade routes, ancient practices, ancient values, practices and wisdom, seem to be necessary to be uncovered.

And the future will also be signed there… situations that press their uncomfortable presence right inside the boundaries of one’s beliefs, one’s comfort zone… pressing in without our prior invite! The future cannot be seen through projection, it will be seen first distorted / mirror imaged before being seen clearly. It though has to be welcomed, the mess of it before it it understood. I am not talking about naively receiving whatever, but what has been / will be pressing right in on pre-set boundaries seems to be one of the main marking elements that this belongs to the future. (For some time I have been suggesting that the future is breaking in and it is messy. It is not coming with agreement by one and all, so consensus will not help us as an arbitrator in this.)

2022 then I see as coming in announcing itself with disruptions to the normal. The first few months being bumpy then with, at first a number of rumours that seem (phew!) to go away but (false phew earlier!) only for either what was rumoured or something akin to those rumours beginning to align, with the result that corporate bodies do not know quite how to respond. In the economic world incredible swings in very short periods. We are told to pray for governing authorities but we are not told to put our faith in them! That certainly would never have been the case in Paul’s days, with many of the apparent positive things stated being incredibly ironic statements…

The big corporate world of government / finance is not, for most of us, our companion, so what about 2022 and ourselves personally?

I guess I see it swinging in two directions. End of year door is here. I like doorways for how we go through them kinda determines what we step into. If we continue with the hope and prayer that we get a return to normal I consider we are on a wrong trajectory. Although chronologically we enter the future from where we are, I think the future arrives rather than we enter it, it comes to us… if we welcome it, make space for it; otherwise time is simply cyclical, reflective of dear Mr Ecclesiastes and ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ perspective. There are new things… new things to enter my life, and indeed to enter the world.

Yes the end of the year is an annoyance. ‘Here we go again’ with shutdown threats etc., new variant(s)… back to where we were, but not back to where I want it!

However, I am optimistic. For those who are allowing the inconvenient pressures to encroach and even ride rough shod over their nicely drawn boundaries I do believe a year ahead is one of opportunities. Doors, not one but multiple opening. No need to panic as to which to go through. If they present themselves simultaneously choose one. The others are not about to disappear and be lost. Even if they disappear for you they will remain open to someone else. Partnering, laughing together.

Quick answers to new burdens. I see an acceleration in responses. There is an unlocking of blockages to the river of life, and we should expect the waters of life to be flowing into areas where we thought the river does not go. ‘Wherever it goes it brings life’. Mirror imaging gives us sight also backwards… I have been struck by the invisibility of God when trudging forward. But looking back? God left Eden – that is a backward view. Only seen much later by the couple on the road to Emmaus. In one sense God has always been where we will discover his / her Presence to be but we have to go there to discover that.

A year of frustration, and year of ‘no not more of this’ and a year of opportunity, through entering the messy path that is the other side of this door. A walk in the mud is not too bad! There is a lot to see on the path.

No need to understand the formulas. The formulas might predict what could / should happen. Formulas are not enough.

More on the ‘r’ word

Posted on 2nd October, 20211st October, 2021
by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

This is the second chat with Michele on ‘revival’. Enjoy!!

If I get time I will try and put a post up in the next few days reflecting on the ‘r’ word from these videos. If I get time? We have just moved back to Madrid… after almost a year and half not being here. Time pressure is not a time pressure. Love to walk the city and to pray so that for the next few weeks is the time focus.

A carrot for the donkey, please

Posted on 30th August, 202130th August, 2021
by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

We all known the proverbial carrot and donkey analogy. The promise is always there but never actually reachable. Beginning of month and beginning of year prophecies can act like that. ‘May is the month of breakthrough’ – yippee I have been needing a breakthrough. ‘July is the double blessing month, money will be found on the money tree, and it will grow in your garden’ – great though I live in an apartment and don’t know if the money tree can grow in a flower pot. OK, although the examples were not real ones (or were they?) you get the gist.

Those kind of prophecies do give me a few problems. Though before I go into that I also believe at a personal level there can be incredible fruit. June 1997 I received one such prophecy. It went roughly along the lines of ‘great favour coming to you and to your household and this will include financial blessing, and it begins in August’. June to August, only two months, only two months to hold on. Not too big a test that one. So along comes August… nothing. Ah, I think, I have been there before, expectation had it nailed (2 months) but which year? So another 12 months to wait… along comes the next August and expectation up… nothing. I think I might have looked again the following year but soon put the word on one side. In February 2005 Sue passed away. In August 2005, I can remember exactly where I was when out of the blue as I was minding my own business I suddenly heard a voice as clear as any audible voice could be, I heard, ‘this was the August I was speaking of’. I had a choice to make – agreement or not. I agreed… ‘if that is what you are saying I receive it’. So there certainly are ‘this is the month when…’ type words.

So how do we respond to the ‘July is the month of unprecedented breakthrough…’ kind of words?

With many of them a healthy dose of cynicism. Words have to be confirmed within, and unless there is a rise of faith (not simply a consolation of hope) we should simply not get too excited. And adding ‘believe the prophets and you will prosper’ is adding the stick to the carrot.

But let’s try to find something a little more positive in the response, and to do that we need to take a step back.

Revelation connects with expectation and then we are off on a journey that will not lead anywhere too productive. ‘You are the Messiah’ led to ‘but no way will you be the crucified Messiah’ which prompted a response from Jesus of ‘I might have called you Peter, you rock-man, but for now I will rename you as Satan… the enemy’. Expectation so messes us up and enables us to miss what could have been, indeed expectation can take genuine revelation and as a result resist the very revelation being fulfilled. Maybe there is the same word for every month and every year cos we miss it each month and each year? And at the start of the month God says – OK how about this month, this year – ready to give it a go (again)?

Now let’s try and work out what kind of things go wrong.

Not understanding what it means to be alive. That might just be an issue. Defining life for Adam was pretty straightforward. What was happening in him. He eats, drinks, walks, talks… a living being. Life for Jesus, and for those who are in the resurrected Jesus though life is not defined that way. Life is what happens to others.

You will be a millionaire… more likely means you will see a million (and more) go out from you to others – and if you get good at it it does not need to go anywhere near your pocket nor wallet. Gayle and I try to learn a bit about this. But that is not practical we can retort with, thus revealing that we think the prophetic can only work in the ‘practical’ realm! In that period of time when things began to unfold (August 2005), I visited a bank I had been with since 1977, so had a good track record there. I had a mortgage with another company at the time and I was planning on changing it to the bank I had been with all those years. They went through all my figures and said – sorry we cannot offer you a mortgage of any amount, you had better stay with the company where you are. Interesting I thought. I went away rejoicing for in that period we (I include Sue) had just enabled two people to purchase property through our help. I am not sure how it happened and the bank certainly did not understand how.

Now let me interject with a word… This month is the month when the Lord wants to teach about new levels of handling finances, indeed he wants to clue us in on alternative economies that are based on faith, not resulting in more money available to you but to others. And the word for October will be pretty much the same as this is a journey that might start at the beginning of a month but certainly will not end at the end of that month.

We have to understand life. Life is not what happens to us, it is the effect of how we respond to heaven so that others get the benefit of it. (I kind of thought that was the gospel?)

Another pitfall is when We have a view of God that is transactional and is about to reward us for our good behaviour.

God is always toward us, working all things together. Does not mean s/he orchestrates all things, but is involved in the nitty-gritty pulling out of it something that would not have been there if there was no God. It does not mean that nothing bad happens to those who love God and are called according to God’s purposes. As the wisdom sayer says ‘sh** happens’. Oh yes it does. I have two friends currently undergoing treatment for cancer. Did God initiate the cancer? No way (and sovereignty answers don’t cut it the way that Scripture cuts it)… my prayer for them is that something will be the other side of the journey that is remarkable, that God will indeed work something out of this. That does not mean that the cancer is ‘sanctified’ but the journey becomes holy.

‘This is the month…’ but it is the journey that is holy. The events might be pretty rough. Maybe the month of breakthrough will be full of the not so good stuff, but maybe our eyes will be open in a new way to see God with us. That would be a true breakthrough. Maybe the thief giving back might not be the restoration of what we assessed was stolen, but some far larger issues, such as an ability to forgive, to empathise, to live simpler.

I am sure that we need to see a new level of the prophetic. I have been impacted, and been privileged to see others impacted, through prophetic words. Words that release faith. I am far from cynical about the prophetic, but we need to get beyond the donkey and the carrot (and stick), the tantalising bless you words, to digging deeper. God has much to say, but far beyond the making a nation great (again!!), or a person the most blessed person. There are transforming words to be given, and those transformations are far more focused on my neighbour than me, on Afghanistan than…

Time to grow up. Time to embrace the journey that is involved in responding to God. Time for the multiplication of millionaires for example, of ones who have moved finances / healing / new opportunities where it was needed. And this does not mean that there won’t be visible, tangible blessing for those who do so, but the effects of the ‘month of breakthrough’ will be so much more visible elsewhere.

Prophecy… we could go on. I was with Gayle in Brazil on the eve of the last election and I gave a word as to who was going to win. The people were on the edge of their seats… and then I released it. ‘The one who gets the majority of the votes’. Apparently did not satisfy the hunger… and now with the way that democracy is decaying I am not sure that we will be able to continue to say the one with the greater number of votes will win. Read the signs. Democracy has been decaying for decades in the west so it should have been no surprise that in a recent election that a huge question was raised over the numbers, indeed the one who had the most votes was proclaimed by some as having not won! Even some prominent prophecy sites have the previous incumbent as the leader to pray for… I might not agree with how the text ‘all leaders are appointed by God’ is taken, but certainly find it interesting that that Scripture is quoted and used until God has not appointed the leader!! A semblance of democracy might remain for a while, leaving behind the democratic process shell, but there comes a day when that too will disappear unless a journey of self-centredness is brought to an end.

The answer my friend is not blowing at the centre of government, but there are answers blowing in the wind, and the trouble is we have used the wind as a metaphor of the Holy Spirit. Jesus used it somewhat differently. The month of breakthrough on offer to the body of Christ is always at hand, but the kind of breakthrough on offer is apparently not that attractive to some!

Anyway September starts real soon. It is the month of breakthrough, breakthrough like I have never had, breaking me out of ‘me-ness’. If I don’t rise in faith I guess God will offer October as the month of breakthrough.

Preparing

Get ready for what? Now and there

Posted on 12th August, 202112th August, 2021
by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

Once a year I have had an event on the same date in August. (Kind of repetitive?) I’ve had quite a few so maybe I will move to an every-other year marker. Why not? Anyway… I kind of enjoy it as it is always a time for a few reflections, and also realisations. I have enjoyed getting older, and also realising that it is fairly irrelevant that I am a slow learner, some people might just enter the second half of life at an appropriate time, but I am certainly not ready for that yet. Too much to kick, and simply glad that God works with our attitude of ‘give that a good old kick’; seemingly well able to sort it out. The future of the world does not depend on my maturity!

Anyway been some good days. The presence of God – always present – but ‘felt’ presence is always wonderful, and in that presence there often comes sight.

Nothing new in what I am writing but the sense of ‘preparing to inhabit the future landscape‘ is what is on my mind and heart. To inhabit is to live in it comfortably, not challenge-free, but also not reluctantly. (By landscape I am more indicating the ‘spiritual’ reality than the climate issue of landscape… with wild-fires and record temperatures we certainly face a challenge and a verdict of neglectful stewardship.)

Change… the image on this post is of a river. The philosophers raised the question – can one step into the same river twice, or has it changed since the last time? This was responded to with a further question, ‘can one step into the same river once?’ Constant change!

In writing about change there is always a proviso. Much continues as before when change is announced. Saul’s kingdom ended ‘this day’ but he was still king the next day, and the next, and the next year… and the next decade. Nothing changed, but everything changed that day. I am not about to announce that all has changed ‘this’ day, but in this season (marked by COVID) all is / has changed.

I had some very profitable Zoom calls yesterday. One into a city in the UK where there is a battle on for a redefining of identity and direction (those two are related). I have prophesied there concerning innovation in the University, and that the clock that had been stopped is no longer stopped, yet in spite of that there are delays – that was the nature of the call yesterday. As we talked it became evident that the issue was for a healing of the corporate memory. The ‘stones’ are crying out we can’t go with change! (Land being the reservoir of the corporate memory.) Memory is a wonderful gift, and an amazing terrorising captor – in equal proportions. We see this with God instructing people ‘not to forget’ and to ‘remember’, while also telling them (in the context of radical hope for change) ‘do not remember the former things’.

Memory can inspire us to rise again. Or can become the ruts that prevent a new direction. This is certainly one of the great danger with a rehearsal of ‘revival’ history; the memory can dictate what the future expectation is. The only common factor between past and future is ‘God’, ‘who is, and who was and who is to come’. The order of the three time related phrases seem important, and the change of phraseology, thus indicating direction in the last of the three phrases seem important. The connection between past and future is God, not that of a repeated event. God might (reluctantly) allow a repeated event; we might jump up and down… God might sigh.

Memory is tied to the past, we do not arrive at the future from the past alone. If we try to do that we simply continue to live in a ‘rutted’ present. There has to be a journey first into the future so that it can then enter the present. Thankfully there are catalysts that come our way to facilitate that.

Change is constant, but not all change takes place at a constant rate. There are accelerated times of change, such as we are experiencing now. Those changes are going to affect politics and economics. They have to be affected as those are the ‘sign realms’ whenever there is a major shift spiritually.

How do we prepare?

I saw this year as (falsely) bringing things back to normal, and expected that to be the case in the latter half of this year. I still anticipate that with economic pick up, measure of travel restored and some ‘best trading year yet’ reports. I wrote ‘falsely’ not because the reports or the figures are not accurate, but because the report is based on what can be seen, not what is unseen.

I don’t know how hard 2022 will hit, but it will certainly signal that we are not out of this crisis.

How do we prepare?

I have always found that any shift external has to be initiated at a shift internally; and gladly that what we do, for example, with what is in our pocket affects the big purse out there – after all the context of the widow who put the two coins in the treasury Jesus seemed to tie to the demise of the grandioseness of the Temple edifice, certainly Luke, the observant writer on economics, seems to make that connection.

Here then are a few areas where maybe we will need to give attention:

Memory and the aspects that have rutted us into an expectation.
Money. ‘Losing’ money strategically will be… strategic! In other words it will be a strategy to unlock our personal economics (unlocking does not necessarily mean ‘increase’ but certainly means liberating of us) and if so to release something wider that will unlock a flow related to justice. I strongly suggest, particularly in new areas to keep one’s eyes open for where we deliberately do not profit from what might have been possible, that which was our ‘right’. Entry to the land was marked by this (Jericho, Achan etc.)
Politics. Yes I vote, but the party leanings that I have are not an endorsement of their kingdom alignment. God is not ‘party political’ aligned! But politics is simply to do with shape of society (polis: Greek city / city state). Eyes outward. How far? To the neighbour. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is a question we have to answer. Amidst political extremes we are to be political, a love for our neighbour.
Health. Yet there is something bigger than health that gets threatened. It is that of whether we choose life. I have just completed one more calendar year on planet earth, and have worked out that I am probably(!!) more than half way through my life. The higher call is not to live in health but to live, to choose life. To choose life we do not orientate ourselves in trying to avoid death. Avoiding death is never the instruction. The kingdom of God does not orientate itself around the negatives (there are some) but the orientation is around the positives – eat of all the trees was the first instruction. Life is never defined (unless Adam is the model) by what happens inside, but by what happens externally, as ‘felt’ by the neighbour.

I picked out those four elements (memory, money, politics and health) as there are very real corporate threats around those. The external (big world) is related to the choices made in the small world (my life).

We are in a phase where things can be confusing. Where is God?, not in the sense that s/he can’t be seen, but sometimes s/he is being seen where we did not expect to see God, and sometimes not seen where we expected to see God. Maybe the question is not ‘where is God?’, but ‘why is God present there?’ and ‘why in reality is God absent here?’.

We are truly in the (to you, your children)… and to ‘those who are afar off‘. This will result in mixed responses. God is there (great)… oh no it does not fit my box.

The future is messy… and not just for a short period of time.

The small world is the key.

If we are worried about where is Jesus in all this mess out there, there is an internal question to be asked, that question being far more important than the external question.

In this mess, there is a new bumper (Gayle’s current sense) environment. All it is asking for is for those to walk in the mess there with Jesus. Encounters with Jesus are to take place there.

Many years ago I had a word that God was going to give some people two homes. I am not talking of a nice holiday home, or two luxury pads. A home in Scripture is not first (nor last) implying a building, though a building can be home. A home is a place where there has been a reconciliation, it is the return of the prodigal; it is a place where heaven and earth meet. Money might say to some, ‘OK’ it is easy to have two or more houses… but it is not easy to have two ‘homes’. That requires faith and grace. I now see a further element. Two homes. Home in the ‘clean’ place, where no-one swears (as if!) and a home in the ‘dirty’ place. HOME. In both places where there is a reconciliation of heaven and earth.

The bumper time is here. Explosions. But there not here. I probably should not bother with another August event for the next 8 years. That is the season that is here now / the season that is there now. The timing is consistent (now) the place is not (there).

The last day of the feast

Come drink water

Posted on 19th June, 202118th June, 2021
by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

Our water is back on!! Not sure how much damage to our Madrid apartment yet, but certainly nothing comparable to war-torn scenarios… The Scriptures in John 7:37-39 came strongly to Gayle with regard to the two-fold greeting we received last weekend that ‘all your water was pouring out’.

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ ” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

The festival referred to is the feat of Tabernacles and is set in the context of Jerusalem. The wider section in John has Jesus being rejected in Jerusalem – he is labelled a sinner, demonised, not the Messiah. It ends in John 10:39 with the summary response:

Then they tried to arrest him again, but he escaped from their hands.

Anxiety meets Christian faith

Certainty or a Person?

Posted on 13th June, 202113th June, 2021
by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

Quite frightening being an expert. Some years back I took part in a few days on the enneagram, so now am quite an expert on that. How many books have a I read on it, I hear you ask… well that depends on whether you mean ‘read’ as in content, or read as in read the title on the cover. Assuming the latter – I can answer ‘3’, so I pretty much now know everything I need to know. And now that Gayle is working with Authentic Lives, I of course know so much more (core process, future self… see I have totally grasped two concepts). I am fast tracking myself on being an expert, and in the process my insights are indeed quite amazing, nay frightening. So I am sure with my credentials laid out you are ready to read on.

Fear. Fearful over the future. Unsure, so not ready to ask the question that might disturb my security. There are people like that. (And pulling on my enneagrammic background, that is not putting people into a box, it is simply helping you / me identify the box we are in.) Hold that thought.

I am increasingly seeing as I read Scripture that it does not give us all the answers, indeed within the pages there is some significant debate (not to mention some cheeky words that seem to be put in God’s mouth – how did that stuff in Deuteronomy get in about the king, when God was not too keen on the idea of a king?) Anyway makes Bible reading harder, but so much more is required. The more being essentially, ‘so what about you Martin, how do you line up and why?’

It seems then that the Christian faith is the way to go if we are ready to embark on a journey where we do not have all the answers, where inner rest in God (I would probably instinctively write ‘Jesus’ cos I am not that good as a well-balanced Trinitarian) is exactly that – a resting place – that clams anxieties, soothes stress, that gives a deep assurance that all will be well, because of that Passover / first Easter.

Christian faith meets fear. Now what?… Depends some on what we consider the Christian faith consists of. If it is one of certainty, and one that clearly has a world view that everything outside of my context is ‘evil’ (after all the whole world is in the hands of the evil one) we will quickly find a way to trust wherever there teachings of certainty are being propagated. We might even gravitate toward a Christian community where the leadership have a developed world view (not to mention eschatology!!!) that explains everything, assures us that our fears are indeed justified, but encourages us to stick in with them and we will come out all right – certainly in the end even if persecution is already here. That persecution is not yet putting us in prison, but is evident in the censorship of free speech, and the narrowing of acceptable opinion in the name of tolerance. It leaves me free to live, but I can see that the persecution is everywhere (except my home, phew!!!), and all the while I know where things are headed, these are the signs of the times. Welcome to the world of the Christian sect (not cult) that in the more developed end also has cult-like leaders. (Developed also can be spelt ‘charismatic’. And I write as one who is definitely at home with the label charismatic.) The Christian world being remarkably similar to the world that saw the development of the sects of the New Testament… and the early Christian faith was viewed as yet another (deviant) Jewish sect, so I am not using the word too pejoratively. (Those sects seemed to find fertile ground when Israel was more separated from the world… post-Exile, blah de blah.)

Oh yes… Back to my expertise. There are groups who are made up of a leadership who more or less are of a certain enneagrammic personality. And the people who are part of those movements are more-or-less part of another enneagrammic personality. A ‘union made in heaven’. Well not actually in heaven, and very much a union made on earth.

Fear meets Christian faith… Or, if we, with all our uncertainties, meet a Christian faith that says Jesus is our security (I should have used a Trinitarian term there, but am working on that) and will be with us beyond the end of the age (slight adjustment to Matthew’s pre-70AD rendition), what a journey we can embark on. A ‘I don’t know about…’ response to so much, but a ‘presence of God with me’.

Fear… meets certainties. Or fear meets a Person to journey with. Now what will I choose? I suspect the path I choose will determine who I embrace.

And given it is Sunday morning and you are begging for more to read, here is an article I read this morning. I found the description of the ‘fourth generation’ of warfare very insightful.

https://www.salon.com/2021/06/12/trumps-army-of-god-doug-mastriano-and-the-christian-nationalist-attack-on-democracy/

Roman religion

Christendom is that religion

Posted on 14th March, 202114th March, 2021
by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

No, not a post on the ‘what did the Romans ever do for us…’ but I have just come off another interview with Stephen Hill (I will put a video up here when it is available). He has a way of asking questions that provoke thought and today was no exception. First though a dream.

A few weeks ago I had a dream (short version here) where I went to a city that I knew well. I walked past a big church building that had been built when church-going was at its highest. I almost walked past it as I did not recognise it, the whole place – outside and inside – had been changed beyond recognition. I went down the hill to where I knew there was a cathedral. I went inside it and the inside (formerly impressive but not personal) was transformed. Carpeted, arm chairs, sofas. It felt as homely as any home could be. I am looking at this when someone comes past me that I recognise. This person was from a ‘new church’ background and was working inside the cathedral, absolutely buzzing with the responses of the people. I was very positive in my response, but said, ‘This is not for me I am off to get involved in what I have to do.’ I knew somehow that the transformation was not simply surface but deeply interior, and that it was connected to a decision taken some 30 years before that ‘christendom is over’, and to live in the light of it. (More to it – short version.)

Back now to Rome. ‘Peace on earth and goodwill to all’ – a message from angels or from Rome? Pax Romana, peace on earth, and in the light of it goodwill to all… just imagine and experience the quality of life as a result of this peace. Let us be grateful and offer up our sacrifice to the god of peace. So we make our way past / through the field dedicated to Mars and on to the temple. (Mars – the god of war.) Of course there is peace, there are no enemies, all comply willingly, unwillingly, or are removed – and that included a certain young Jew from Galilee.

Christendom is the result of the ways of Rome. Christianity became the state religion, so it is no surprise that Christendom is peace through war. Our Temple is built on the mountain of war. (The so-called ‘religious’ mountain is exactly that, and the idea that Christianity / the church is to be the top of the mountain speaks volumes… Christendom is long-since over but the war to see it re-established is far from over, though in its last crazy stage, comparable to the many prophets inside Jerusalem in the closing days of the end of Jerusalem – 70AD. God will act as he always has, he is the God of the ‘red sea’; yes another exodus, but this one is a Jesus’ exodus.)

Peace on earth… what happened to the enemies? We saw them differently, we saw them no longer according to the flesh. The contrast of the two ‘gospels’ is absolute.

Only an embrace of the end of christendom can bring about a change to the interior. Embrace, not reluctant acceptance. And an embrace of ‘new creation’, for that is all that counts says Paul.

[A sidenote – the speech on Mars Hill, Athens, by Paul is very instructive. War centralises and controls and unifies through elimination. There on Mars Hill Paul speaks of distribution, freedom and expansion.]

Beyond constant change

Posted on 6th February, 20216th February, 2021
by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

‘Constant change is here to stay’ was a catchphrase from years back. True… but we are stepping beyond the ‘constant change’ right at this time. I wrote a little yesterday from Pope Francis ‘change of era’ statement, and today I received an email… but a little background first.

Two days ago as I was walking the dog, and I know exactly where I was, I was thinking about Bob Mumford. Truth be out, I have not thought of, nor prayed for him in decades. I do not know the last time I heard his name. Bob was well known in many circles connected to the New Church Movement, and was one of the writers in the influential New Wine magazine of the 1970s / 80s. He moved away from the ‘heavy shepherding’ tendency and as far as I know was always seeking to be on the cutting edge. So into my heart comes his name… I hesitated to pray for him as I was not sure if he would still be alive or not (I now know he is 90 and still focused!!) but one aspect of his deposit spoke into my situation. Anyway… today comes an email from Chris Larkin and in a line that said ‘One of these friends in the US yesterday [the day Bob’s name came to me] sent me a booklet by Bob Mumford…’

[Here is a link to the booklet
https://lifechangers.org/teachings/stepping-across-the-threshold/]

I find it interesting that I come across Pope Francis 2015 speech a few days ago (yesterday’s post) and then Bob and his article a few days later. Both are coming from a more conservative end of things than I do but both are saying in their contexts ‘change of era’. Here is an extract from the article I give the link to above:

I am deeply convicted that this present threshold is the transition out of a 500-year season in Church history. Much of what has been embraced as “the Scriptural norm” within the Church is being challenged and modified. In 1994 I locked myself up with sixteen books on Church History with the determination to understand the pattern of its progress from Pentecost to our present day. I discovered that since its birth the Church has gone through a major and often convulsive transition approximately every 500 years. Somewhat surprisingly, I discovered that much of society was often sharing in the same spasms of transition.

It so resonates. I still hold that we will see some tangible relief this year to the current pandemic, with a sigh of relief and proclamations of ‘back to normal’. Next year though will show us clearly that there is no going back, as difficulties bite at a deeper societal level. The era change will become even more visible. As I wrote yesterday I have no idea if into the crises we will witness the (always) soon return of the Lord, or we have thousands of more years. If the latter it becomes clear that it cannot be a thousand more years of exploitation, ‘for in the time you eat from that tree you / we will surely die’. The unsustainability of life-styles that has developed over the past centuries cannot be projected into the future.

Let’s come back to how all this might affect those who have been touched by the Spirit of God (‘they received the Spirit just as we did’ being a major continual criterion) and seek to follow the path of their Saviour (a political term related to the inhabited world). Pope Francis is not suggesting the end of the Roman Catholic church, but for something very different to come out and through it; Mumford is not suggesting the end of charismatic church, but suggesting something very different come out and through it. I do not have any issue with either institution, though am not identified with either. I have no issue because I have no spare energy to work out if I should have an issue – my energies are focused on what I should be involved in, what I should be doing (maybe a little bit of ‘what has that to do with you’ as Jesus said to Peter concerning his colleague John?).

For some years I have been saying that the future is connected to

The multiplicity of the small, and
the richness of diversity.

One size does not fit all. I am very exercised by Paul’s work in the Imperial world, what I consider he thought was filling up what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ. He understood his global world, the one-world government situation, the engagement of the ekklesia as the means of keeping everything aligned to Rome, so was very busy in seeking to see in every polis another ekklesia, this one being the ekklesia of Jesus Christ. Deeply political, with no alignment to the right nor the left, but to heaven’s values, with a work to be done. A challenging work, without any coercion or top-down legislation, seeking to align each polis to heaven. I consider what we have focused on – church (ekklesia) is not lining up too favourably with Paul’s work, and our focus on individual salvation falls short of the strongly political message of Paul (imagine for a moment what was the content of the daily lectures that lasted two years in Ephesus). So in that sense, uncritically, I suggest we are so pre-Pauline.

The situation has shifted. One might say we are in a global scenario, heading toward a one-world government. But that would be to miss some huge elements. The Bible teaches there has always been since the Garden a one-world government system. It simply calls it the ‘world’, controlled by ‘the devil’. No need, and hugely blinding, to shout about the ‘deep state’. It is also to miss the point that we are not only being globalised but also tribalised at the same time. This means we cannot do what Paul did (where is the ekklesia and polis today? things have changed since the first century) but we must work for the same apostolic vision, and with the same apostolic element of ‘with great patience’.

Diversity. It is here. The stranglehold of Reformed theology is coming to an end. The use of the Bible to limit us within fictional boundaries is coming to an end. The mess of reducing the clarity of in / out based on belief systems is here. The growing importance of ortho-praxy as being an element in the Gospel being Pauline or just ‘another gospel’ is here. New monastic movements that develop rhythms, some with common purses, connecting into the oppressed situations that they find in their contexts, many with wonderful testimonies of healing will arise (reminds of numerous times I prophesied this during the ‘Sowing seeds’ era!). Believers who are more connected to those without faith than those with faith will arise, yet deeply connected to a few believers… moving away from the weekly synagogue rhythm (an exilic development to protect faith) and more to the three-times a year connection is here. And if it is going to move us forward and not simply side-ways a deep feminisation, for as I suggest in one of the books (go on you will have to buy it now!!) ‘if anyone is in Christ there is a [feminised] new creation. This we really have to discover what that will entail, and some of the keys will be discovered in hearing what is rising in the town square, for that is where wisdom is crying out.

What will arise in the Catholic world? What will arise in the Charismatic institutional world? What will come through from the Orthodox or Coptic traditions? I don’t know.

Just a part

Posted on 8th January, 20218th January, 2021
by Martin Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

I have been involved in a number of settings where I have been invited to bring a prophetic word to a situation in these past months, and given that it is into the current re- situation (re-jig; re-invent; re-new; or re-surrection… i.e. death and loss – only God provides the re- part after this) it can be very challenging indeed. God speaks to encourage and provoke us to embrace the path of life… for sure. But the current climate makes it more difficult to truly see. As I have mentioned before (COVID simply as a sign of things to come) might indicate that we have entered a storm. If so then simply bunker down it will be over soon. If ‘winter’ is a better analogy, then make sure we have enough supplies in place, maybe a candle or two should there be a power cut, etc. But if this, along with what is to come, is an ice age, there will be a before and an after, but something permanent will change and it might not be too clear what the change looks like for a while to come. [I suspect it is somewhere between a winter and an ice age.]

We prophesy in part.

I have understood (and still do) that short phrase to mean we don’t have the whole picture, and it certainly means that. It might even mean (and does practically!!) ‘be a little humble, part of what you prophesy will be from heaven and some from your little preconceived ideas’. But…

Today I am also seeing that it means that if we are truly wrestling with the big question, ‘what does this mean?’ there will be more in our spirits than we can prophesy. More there that we cannot yet articulate. That I find provocative and encouraging. Provocative… don’t stop now… don’t add the full stop…

We can be so quick to move from question #1 to question #2 (‘what are we to do?’) with the assumption we have understood ‘what does this mean?’. (The two questions come from the Day of Pentecost and also from the description of the ‘men of Issachar.) We might have to make a preliminary response related to action (what we need to do), but if there is more sight on the meaning that we are wrestling with the what we are to do can only be a temporary response.

Certainly provocative, and also encouraging. There is more. It is probably OK to make a temporary response. But it will not prove fruitful to conclude it is enough.

Set in sight

Posted on 15th December, 202015th December, 2020
by Gayle Scott
Posted in Prophetic Perspectives

Its me again, I get the green font which I do love. Green is life!

I’m not a stickler for traditions (!) And I know it’s traditional to reflect back on a year and tease out a word for the new one however, just this once, I’m feeling like conforming! So, to stick to a tradition, I’d like to mark time.

2020 vision. We definitely have seen a lot this year. We’ve had to look closely at ourselves, what we’re doing and how, who matters and what really motivates us. We’ve looked at our priorities and as society we’ve realised that our nurses and doctors and shop workers are far more important than the billionaires and the stock brokers. Our football heroes were idle and useless and the nameless were acknowledged (hopefully not fleetingly) for their real value.

In the last days of this sight-filled year I think we need to cast our eyes far forward. As though on a mountaintop, we have a moment now to look forward and to reset our direction. A moment to spy destination and to set the compass with a long term goal, think 10 years. The smallest of reset now, the slightest change of position, in ten years will place us in a very different place. I’m talking personally but I think the same moment is there for bodies of people, organisations and businesses where there is a niggling feeling that the traditional way forward won’t cut it.

2021 I think, won’t be so clear, down off the mountaintop and into the clouds below and the valleys but I think with direction set and with courage, we will find ourselves stumbling a bit, but making progress towards that new destination, finding new companions on the way, some unexpected delights and a whole lot of joy.

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