Here it is: The Gospel

He who is Lord over all, Jesus Christ, was sent by God, and came into the world in flesh and blood, loved by God as His own dear Son. By believing this, His death on the cross tells me God is for us; for us so much! His resurrection to life (eternal life) shows us God's life-giving power in Christ; so much power! For those hoping in Christ, He is now our access to the Father with whom He is our Great High Priest. The hope we have is of His gift of righteousness - to become truly righteous, cleansed by Him, by His own precious, holy blood shed for us. All this is for the glory of God's name. To partake in Christ we have to keep hold of this hope steadfastly to the end. As a foretaste of the glory to come, He gives His Holy, life-giving Spirit to those who believe and are baptised (baptism binding them to Jesus Christ who died and rose for them).

The Temple

What a mess His temple seems to be in! "Build the temple", I was told. I guess I should understand that to mean "build in the temple" because The Lord God Himself, The Lord Jesus Himself and the Blessed Holy Spirit are the True, Archetypal Builders of the Temple of The True and Living God. What a blessed Truth that is. But I seem to be faced with a scattering of piles of stones which somehow need a lot of bringing and building together to be considered any kind of building, let alone a temple. Here where I live there is one group following one leader, another group just across the road following another organisation of leaders. Then just down the road again more groups, more leaders, more organisations. Perhaps some leaders don't add their own teachings to God's but some undoubtably do ("to draw away disciples unto themselves", as a great New Testament writer and Apostle put it). Some groups look more like they are being "built up into Christ" than others. Some don't even seem to realise that Christ is still to be followed as That Great Shepherd of The Sheep, but they follow human leaders instead. Not that following an earthly leader is wrong, unless that leader leads them away from the True Path of course. How on earth to make any positive contribution to help these scattered stones adhere to the living Christ? To the ancient prophet of Israel, the Spirit of God said "prophesy to these dry bones" so that the dry bones would live. He did, they did, and there was a great army formed. So it remains: "Prophesy!", "What shall I prophesy?", "All flesh is grass and all its glory as the grass of the field. The grass withers ... because the Spirit of God breathes on it." Oh dear, a lot of grass is going to wither, then, and a lot of beauty will be destroyed. But may the dry bones yet live and the temple yet be built to be the Glory of God in His Blessed Holy Son established by Him to the joyful glory of His Holy Name. I want to attend these groups and see what the Spirit gives me to prophesy but two problems: one - I get most certainty in what I say when it is an interpretation of spiritual 'tongues' but hardly any real spiritual tongues which are to be interpreted by spiritual power from the Holy Spirit seem to be 'out there' and two - when I attend I get forced into the very sins such as deceit from which the Lord has been setting me free as people mislead everyone around them to say things they do not really know to be true (and I'm too weak to not get led astray with everyone else). On account of the latter I can only echo the many leaders of God's people in the past who have warned about causing God's people to sin - it ends in severe judgement (because when people sin against the Lord like this there is nobody to intercede with the Lord who is Himself the intercessor against whom they have sinned). I'll just to to keep looking for a flock where believers truly speak in tongues and hope I can still be obedient in using my gift for the benefit of the Church. And besides: Living by the spirit rather than the 'flesh' is the way to avoid the 'sins of the flesh'.

Prophesies

Ages ago - I mean something like 3,000 years ago - an ancient king decided he wanted to build his God a temple. Nothing unusual there, except this king's God was the awesome God of Israel. The king was the incredibly famous King David, second earthly king of Israel. And God took issue with this. No, He hadn't said to King David anything about David building Him a temple, no. He was not OK with it because David had had a reign of bloodshed (though all in obedience to God) and besides, God, the true and living God, didn't make a habit of living in temples, not man-made ones anyway. Something better by far would be coming in the future, God promised it: But yes, it would still be by way of one of King David descendants, as an extreme favour to David. There was a promise made to David that was to affect the whole course of history: There would be one who would come and would reign as a true Son of the living God, never out of favour with God, chastised but never abandoned, and this One would reign forever over all who God made His own. Hence, from then on there was the belief in the Messiah, the Christ, the Prince of Peace.

Even more ages ago - this time something like getting on for 5,000 years ago - a Sumerian tribal leader walked with God and saw visions, dreams and revelations beyond anyone before or since (with perhaps just a few exceptions). This visionary, seventh descendant from the ancient person believed by Sumerians to have been the first ever human on Earth, was taken into the heavens above the Earth and given angelic lessons in all things (perhaps resulting in the first rendition of the earthly calendar) and at this time he saw someone awesome called The Son of Man. The prophesies about the Son of Man were to persist over the following centuries until one Jesus of Nazareth was to pick them up and clearly use them to identify Himself (as seen over and over in Matthew's account, the 'Gospel of Matthew').

At the time Jesus taught in Isreal (then Judea, under Roman occupation), some two thousand years ago, He asked His disciples who people said the Son of Man was (as He did when speaking about Himself). One disciple said "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God", identifying Jesus with both of the above people of prophesy: the promised Messiah who would be treated as a beloved Son by God, and accepting Jesus' identification of Himself with the Son of Man seen in the ancient prophet's great visions and revelations.

Some four thousand years ago there was a righteous man chosen by God to be the root of righteousness for all the nations. God made him a promise that he would father many nations. God renamed him Abraham. Two thousand years ago Jesus, after His crucifixion, resurrection and ascension into heaven, called a Jew named Saul to be His Apostle to the Gentiles (non-Jews), changing his name to Paul and He revealed to Paul that the promise to Abraham had not just been fulfilled in the descendants of his by blood-line, the Jews, but also was to include all who believed in God as Abraham had done.

And so we have today the temple which is the Messiah and all His body of people who believe in God through Him, both Gentile and Jew.