The Testimony of Jesus Is The Spirit of Prophecy

The cries of God's people for salvation have been heard, says the prophet. As they cried out, "Hallelu-Jah" (LORD save us), salvation has come. He has judged Rome (Babylon), "the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality and has avenged on her the blood of his servants" (Rev. 19:2). So they cry out again, "Hallelu-Jah! The smoke from Babylon goes up forever and ever."

This chapter is filled with praise, "For the LORD our God the Almighty reigns." This is the reason the Bride rejoices. The marriage feast is coming. The Bride of Christ has made herself ready, for she is given fine linen, bright and pure. These are the righteous deeds of the saints and in these she is clothed.

As I write news comes that persecution of the saints continues on the earth. On Easter Sunday of this year (2016) 70 people were indiscriminately killed by the Taliban. In the previous year two Christian churches in LaHore were attacked. 17 people were killed. Another 85 were killed when a suicide bomber targeted a church in Peshawar in 2013. So the cry continues, "Hallelu-Jah!" LORD, save us. By faith we join the multitude revealed in Rev. 19:2-10, as we join them as guests invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

And how can we be certain that "these are the true words of God"? The answer stands in the rebuke of the angel who spoke about the invitation: "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." At the very center of all that is proclaimed in the Bible and in all true teaching is "the testimony of Jesus." What do we proclaim? We proclaim Jesus! He was to come. So said all the prophets. And so He came. He lived and taught. He healed and walked throughout the land. Thousands upon thousands rejoiced at His coming, even as the harsh and evil-minded Pharisees and rulers rejected Him and condemned Him to death upon the cross. But what was the result of all their wickedness. He destroyed the power of sin and death and He rose from the dead! This is the message of Easter. Jesus lives! And because He lives, we shall live also. Death has been conquered. His kingdom is eternal and we are invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb.

This is the great message of the season of Easter. This is the "testimony of Jesus" the angel speaks about. Jesus, our LORD, sits upon a white horse! He is Faithful and True, and in righteousness he

Jesus My Lord

judges and makes war upon the evil of this world.

His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. - Rev 19:12-15 ESV

He speaks and His word is a sharp sword, for what He says comes true, even as He lives and has conquered death. So He will "rule them with a rod of iron and tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty" (Isa. 11:4).

So we believe. So we rejoice, not in what is now visible, but in what is to come. And how may we be certain of this prophecy? Our confidence rests in "the testimony of Jesus," the witness we all bear to His glorious resurrection. He is not dead. He lives! Hallelujah!

Christians, Fools Who Believe In The Resurrection

Yesterday we Christians began our 50-day celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To call oneself a Christian usually means you believe Jesus to be God's Son who was crucified, died and raised on the third day. Of all the world's religions, Christians are by far the largest with some 2.18 billion Christians of all ages around the world. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a lengthy report a couple years ago indicating that Christians make up nearly a third of the world's population of an estimated 6.9 billion. The Roman Catholic Church claims half of the Christians. Brazil has the world's largest number of Catholics (134 million).

Last week I read a piece about the art historian Thomas de Wesselow who is convinced that the Shroud of Turin is real and did indeed touch Christ's body. But he also insists that the image on the cloth fooled the Apostles and others into believing Christ had come back to life, and the Resurrection was in fact an optical illusion. In his 2012 book (The Sign) he says that St. Paul himself wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians that the "resurrection is not about flesh and blood."

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. - 1 Cor 15:50 ESV

Of course there have been and always will be those who claim that our belief in the resurrection of the body is an illusion. So the billions of us who believe in the risen Christ are all fooling ourselves. As Paul wrote, we are a pitiful bunch if it is true that the dead are not really raised. There is nothing beyond this life. Grab what pleasure you can in the here and now for tomorrow you die.

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. - 1 Cor 15:13-19 ESV 

This week I invite you to join me as I continue to look at what it means to see Jesus. We'll begin with taking another look at the Apostles' response to the claim that Jesus did not rise from the dead and therefore there is no hope beyond this life. Tomorrow I start with a detailed look at what Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians.

Happy Easter / New Year

I love springtime and prefer to view it as the beginning of a new year. I never felt dark, cold January was the time of new beginnings. And neither does the Bible (Exodus 12:1). For the Children of Israel the Passover marked the beginning of months, the first month of the year since it commemorated God delivering them from their bondage in Egypt.

We Christians are intimately linked to the annual Passover celebration. That's why the date our Easter celebration keeps moving. We are tied into the marking of the new year based upon the lunar months. Note, for instance, the peculiar KJV translation of Acts 12:4—". . .intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people." Every other English version has Passover. The point: Jesus was crucified during the Passover celebration and rose from the dead on the first day after that week's Sabbath.  For reasons unknown to me the King James translators used Easter at that point to translate the Greek Pascha or Passover. 

In any event, it is Eastertide and I invite you to join me in this new year with a new heart of hope. To mark that new beginning I am shifting the focus of this Blog and of the Reclaiming Our Heritage website linked to it. During this new year two things will now change:

1. The monthly newsletter or ezine with the various articles connected to it will now cease. We will retain earlier articles in the Reclaiming Our Heritage archives and you will still be able to search for them. However, starting with this new month, the month of the Passover and Easter, we will no longer publish monthly ezines. 
2. Instead of the ezines I will post several new blogs each week. These blogs will appear on the front page of the website, will be archived there and will be discoverable through a search.

If you wish to contribute to the ROH Blog send me an email with your copy attached. I will continue to serve as the editor and will post it as a Blog after we have discussed the content. In some cases longer articles will be posted in serial form over a number of days.

One more thing. If you would like to receive the Blog postings, use the RSS feed either on the Blog page or on the front of the ROH website.

As always, dear friends, the contributors to ROH and I thank you for your continued support and prayer.

—Al Franzmeier, editor and Blogger

The Great Shout

Surely you have heard that Joshua won the battle of Jericho . . . and the walls came tumbling down. But do you know the Biblical word for the Great Shout they all gave after marching around the city for seven times on the seventh day? The word in Hebrew is Teruwah! If you know no Hebrew the word means nothing to you, but in the Bible this Great Shout occurs again and again. Often it was   accompanied by loud blasts from trumpets and rams' horns.

• On the Day of Atonement — Leviticus 23:24 and 25:9. 
• When Israel set out to war — Numbers 31:6
• Before Jericho's walls — Joshua 6:20
• When Israel foolishly brought the Ark of the Covenant into camp — 1 Samuel 4:5
• When David led his people to bring the Ark into Jerusalem — 2 Samuel 6:15
• When the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt under Ezra and Nehemiah — Ezra 3:11

Ethan the Ezrahite writes of this Great Shout in Psalm 89:15 - "Blessed are the people who know the Great Shout, who walk, O LORD, in the light of your face, who exult in your name all the day."

In but a few days the Great Shout will be heard again around the world as Christians gather to celebrate the Great Feast, the Festival of the Resurrection. On that day wherever they gather believers will shout "Christ is Risen!" And all will respond, "He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!" 

I pray that you and I will be among that festal crowd as we again hear our Lord proclaim on Good Friday of this most Holy of weeks, "It is finished!" He has made atonement for the sins of us all and now we await the Good News of the Easter celebration. Blow the trumpets and let all the people loudly proclaim the return of our King from the dead. Now He leads us in triumph into the eternal Jerusalem where we shall celebrate forever (Revelation 21:9-27). We join now in the Great Shout, the Teruwah—"Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!"  

Our New Year Began Weeks Ago

This year I'm not involved with preparing a New Year's Eve worship service and I am thankful. I've always found New Year's Eve to be a strange time, especially because my New Year has already begun. Let me explain with an emphasis upon that which is new.

For our spiritual ancestors, the Israelites, the Passover marked the beginning of that which is new. It was always celebrated in the Spring, when new life was beginning, somewhere toward the end of March and the beginning of April. Passover was marked by the phases of the moon and the vernal equinoxt; hence the indefinite date.

The event they celebrated year after year was their unexpected yet longed for deliverance from slavery (Exodus 12:2 and Exodus 13:4, etc.). But it was more than that. It was a celebration of freedom and of God's unmerited grace.

This wonderful annual celebration also marked the time when the Lord Jesus gathered His disciples and brought them a new reason for celebrating. During the Passover immediately prior to His crucifixion He told them He would not eat it again nor would He drink of the fruit of the vine until the Passover was fulfilled in the kingdom of God (Revelation 19:6-9). During the meal He took the unleavened bread, broke it and declared, "This is My Body, which is given for you." At the end of the meal, as the final cup of wine was about to be passed among them, He said, "Drink of this, all of you. This cup is the New Covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:14-23; Matthew 26:26-29).

Because the promises of the Passover were fulfilled in the death of the Lamb of God (John 1:29-34), most of us Christians gather weekly, especially on the first day of the seven-day week to celebrate His resurrection and to share the Supper He initiated on that final Passover. In Jesus we have a New Covenant. In His Supper we begin each week anew, with our sins forgiven and our hope strengthened. This is also why we mark the Feast of the Resurrection (Easter) as our first and greatest celebration. This is why each Sunday is another Easter for us.

Of course, we also celebrate the start of another new year, but not on December 31. Our annual celebrations are marked by three great events: the Father's gift of His Son, the Son's gift of His life and the Holy Spirit's outpouring of His presence—Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. So our new year of rejoicing and celebration already began several weeks ago as we marked Jesus' first coming, His coming among us in His Supper and His certain promise of returning to raise us up to glory—the season we call Advent.

All this is why I'm not very excited about all the hoopla the unbelieving world wraps around December 31. Oh, I suppose I'll join my fellow believers for a quiet time of prayer and meditation upon God's Word, but I'll then go to bed early and let the others stay up to drink champagne and dance.

Happy New Year—in Jesus!

Leave, Cleave and Weave

Beverly and Max

Last weekend I was privileged to help Beverly and Max renew their marriage vows on the occasion of their 40th anniversary. Some of their dear friends and family members joined Sylvia and me to celebrate the occasion.

This happy time brought back memories of the many couples whose weddings I blessed with the Word of God and prayer. It has long been my custom to counsel with these couples before the actual ceremony. Our discussions in those pre-marital sessions revolve around three Biblical concepts from Genesis 2: Leave - Cleave - Weave.

Leave - A man leaves behind his childhood to move into the mature responsibility of being a husband. A woman leaves the protection and care of her family to come under the loving care of her husband. Of course it isn't always quite that simple; many scenarios precede any given marriage. The point, however, is that the man and the woman are leaving the past behind and moving forward to something new.

Cleave - I have learned to use that word to describe the next step in this wonderful process in its earlier, secondary meaning: adhere to, hold to, abide by, be loyal to, be faithful to. This is what marriage is all about. For the remainder of their lives these two will cleave to one another to the exclusion of all others. That leads to the next and related process.

Weave - They spend their lives becoming one. This is where the challenges arise, particularly because of our human natures. A husband and a wife remain separate individuals who must struggle to overcome their self-centered sinfulness. Failure to do this leads in all too many cases to adultery and divorce. But, as in the case of Max and Beverly, when couples learn to accept, forgive and love one another, the weaving leads to celebration and happiness.

It is fascinating that the Apostle Paul interrupts his instructions about marriage with these words: "This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church." What could he possibly mean?

The mystery revealed is indeed profound. Our heavenly Father loved this broken, adulterous and fallen world of men, women and families. This is why He sent His Son. Jesus came, leaving behind His glory and majesty to become one with us in our sin. He loved us and sought us out in a love far beyond that of any husband. He bound Himself to us by His life and His death upon the cross. Our griefs and sorrows became His. He was separated from His God for us. And now we are about to celebrate again His victory and the marriage feast of the Lamb of God. In a week a large portion of our world will share anew the news: "Christ is Risen! Alleluia!"

We who are His Bride, the Church, will spend eternity weaving our lives with and into His. This has already begun as He lives in us and we in Him in a relationship far deeper and more wondrous than any human marriage.

Beverly did not know what Max and their son were planning. The celebration was a complete surprise to her. And that is indeed what we who learn to know about the love and mercy of Jesus experience as well. How could He have such love for us? But He does and that is indeed something to celebrate--forever!