Showing posts with label Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Show all posts
Wednesday, 11 May 2016
"Get Involved or be subjugated" Facebook Thread with Jeff Moore
Jeff Moore
4 hrs ·
It is obvious that the news distraction's the Obama organization is running are to hide the more sinister plans it has. Get involved or get subjugated. Your choice. Do your really think Zika virus was ever a threat? Who killed Ted Bundy? Do you think men in womens restroom is a threat? Who is killing the cancer doctors? Get your facts straight the media is bought and controlled by the Obama admin and the NWO. Your lives and wealth have already been cut in half because of the planned first economic failure. The second is coming what are you going to do but be sheep to the Government Mafia you created. God help us now!
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15Cheryl Harrison Lowry, Fran E. Vestal and 13 others
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Sylvia Dunn Mobley
Sylvia Dunn Mobley SELAH. YES, FATHER. heart emoticon
Like · Reply · 1 · 3 hrs
Saji Joseph
Saji Joseph I'm not fully sure I believe that getting involved necessarily keeps us from being subjugated.
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Jeff Moore
Jeff Moore Saji Joseph - The Republic needs help. We all can pray nad do what God shows us to do. Surely sitting down will lead to ruin.
Like · Reply · 4 · 3 hrs
Fran E. Vestal
Fran E. Vestal Read Bonhoeffer saja
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Fran E. Vestal
Fran E. Vestal So Jeff can you vote are you still Canadian I do love what you wrote is very thorough
Like · Reply · 1 · 3 hrs
Saji Joseph
Saji Joseph I have read Bonhoeffer. He was involved and subjugated. I didn't say we shouldn't get involved or pray, but that doesn't keep us from being subjugated.
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Fran E. Vestal
Fran E. Vestal He took a stand and lost his life
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Saji Joseph
Saji Joseph I deeply respect him and and believe his taking a stand was a good thing.I think maybe my post came across as someone who is waiting for everything to go to Ruin and then we must endure that bad place. I believe we should take a stand against evil. I really just have a hard time with the idea that scripture teaches us to rally around political issues. I don't see the early apostles standing in front of Rome asking it to change its political ways.. And how if they don't it's all going to pot. They just preached Christ.
Like · Reply · 1 · 3 hrs
Fran E. Vestal
Fran E. Vestal Saji Joseph I'm wondering if the scripture say that so much or how we're taught. In my opinion religion teaches us to be passive sheep the only people doing anything saying anything are n the pulpit I don't think that's biblical. Remember after the cross was house-to-house no platform. Background came against them was to scatter them and carry the gospel and not to be just in Jerusalem. So there was a purpose in the chaos. I do not see u.s. as that
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John McDonald
John McDonald BUT sheep are not stupid.
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Saji Joseph
Saji Joseph I guess I have a different reading on what should be pressing on the believer's mind. I am not a part of any religious structure, and have been a part of "house church no platform" since my salvation in Christ. I do not believe Christ calls us to be passive sheep about the kingdom, but He was an example to His disciple when He allowed Himself to be subjugated to the hands of men. He did not allow it until the proper time by telling them that they cannot follow Him yet but will eventually. To me that was a teaching and example of dark conspiracy happening between religious leaders and government to take down Jesus. He was very aware of what was happening and then let it happen like a passive, silent sheep. He tells us this will happen all over the world but to not worry. I am very aware that the lies are there, I'm just not sure how much we are called to be about all this stuff.
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Chris Welch
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Jeff Moore
Jeff Moore I am Canadian. Saji Joseph - Look deeper. It is not an intellectual thing. It is reality my friend. Just shouting out for all who can hear. smile emoticon
Like · Reply · 5 · 3 hrs
Saji Joseph
Saji Joseph I don't mean to squabble over things we may actually agree on. Maybe I am a bit hesitant to believe that the acknowledgement that there are sinister plans brings us any closer to seeing what those plans actually are and will keep us from being chained into those plans. I will follow Christ in the midst of adversity and hopefully in the midst of severe adversity.
Like · Reply · 1 · 3 hrs
Jimmie Donald Lewis
Jimmie Donald Lewis Come on Jeff get real, focus on the Bible, trust in it, not the Government. Psalm 22:28.
Like · Reply · 2 hrs
Toni Miles
Toni Miles First, I believe Jeff is getting "real" when he clearly said in his post, "it is reality my friend." Second, he focused on the Bible when he said, "we can pray and do what God shows us to do" (instructed by His word in the Bible) . Third, it is clear that he is trusting in God and not the government when in the last sentence of his original post he said, "God, help us now!" . . "The earth is the Lord's, the fullness thereof, the world and ALL those who dwell therein, " Psalm 24:1.
Like · Reply · 1 · 2 hrs
Fran E. Vestal
Fran E. Vestal How long have we had prayer Ministries it's praying for our country 24/7? It's time for people to be involved it's time for people to speak become a town crier where you live
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Chris Welch
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Jeff Moore
Jeff Moore Yes Jimmie my friend I trust God. But for reasons that God has told me I must speak out. I must give people the chance to change the direction. The civil war was not because of lack of prayer but lack of action of faith. God is not an American. He is who He is. The Lord almighty. You think perhaps He will spare the USA? What and apologize to Africa? I agree we must keep our head in the clouds but common sense still tells me I will reap what I sow. That includes ignorance. I hate deception of any kind. Love you my friend Jimmie.
Like · Reply · 1 · 1 hr
Jimmie Donald Lewis
Jimmie Donald Lewis Their is a sin of ignorance in our Bible. But I know He does not want us to be ignorant any more. I to love you brother. O, there is no dough about reaping what we sow, that's been proven many time, and a lot of it in Ministry.
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Jimmie Donald Lewis
Jimmie Donald Lewis If you come to joyful sound in June, we will see you there.
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Jeff Moore
Jeff Moore I am planning to see you!!!! grin emoticon
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Jimmie Donald Lewis
Jimmie Donald Lewis Great, we'll see you there Brother.
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Chris Welch
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Chris Welch
Chris Welch One of the mysteries of the gospel is as we preach against the bogus realm of the independent self we actually cross
ALL THE TRIP WIRES.
You can see the alarms being set off in increasing measure in the gospels by all that Jesus did and taught.
He led people in the Way of freedom which meant He was pulling them out of the Pyramid
He actively challenged all the high place speculations He came across.....all the circularities of thinking. A telltale sign was the way the religious slunk away.....because whatever they said would have incriminated them
And lastly His POWER was increasing, more resurrections from the dead. The Greater the supernatural the bigger the problem for Darkness, which relies on people feeling powerless. It simply cannot have people wandering around quoting Isaiah 61
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me.....to set people free etc!!!!!
So I kind of agree with both sides. We are not called to set up a new and improved form of PYRAMID.....
But we are called to speak as the Spirit gives utterance against every form of Satanically controlled existence that refuses to yield to any Lordship of Christ.
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Saturday, 2 May 2015
John 17- the Vision of the " Church Visible"
Basilia Schlink studied psychology at a very key time in Germany's history and world history. But precisely because she was a born again Lutheran espousing all aspects of evangelicalism including sharing Jesus on the streets she was immediately perceived in Europe as something close to a Southern States Bible thumper with no brain. This is the power of assumption and the great power with which the devil mind controls every man woman and child on earth. Here's some truth.
Like Bonhoeffer Nee and many other greats she was so.far into Christ's life she was way beyond anything in America. She openly taught similar to Norman Grubbs Romans 6 to 8 message in her community and created one of the first living communities to share life.together in that level of.belief. In the book Realities and my very own eyeballs you will see that they were actually materialising bits of early Romans 8 in their end of the Universe in Darmstadt. Here's a key....the Gates of Jerusalem, the book of Romans individually and the book.of Ephesians corporately are a cycle.If you conclude the cycle then you get reproduction and on a grand scale. The reason evangelists have such a hard time is two or threefold.....they only carry two-thirds of the gospel and are working with an Ishmael church that likewise never completes God's Word and is a half built Tower and thirdly hidden Masonic activity works ceaselessly to undermine everything they do and laugh mercilessly at the half built towers. If we conclude the cycle then like a lady fertilized in her ovulation cycle....pregnancy Just HAPPENS.....NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!!!Roll on the Word and Spirit Church prophesied by Wigglesworth .....one with all Jerusalem's 12 Gates up and running.
So precisely because of her psychology studies and her advanced spiritual revelation Mother Basilea Schlink was one of the first in the evangelical world to be aware of the broad outlline of mindcontrol over nations through media and locally through focus groups and methods such as Sensitivity training and Silva mind control formation. It was very hard for us 16 yearolds to stomach in 1974 but what she had already picked up in the Spirit was the yellow brick road of the masonic plan to take over every aspect of life. She would not have known Mengele and the rest were shipped to America by James Bonds Ian Fleming....ready to continue the mind control studies there as shown in Shutter Island (Dicaprio+Kingsley). She would have known some of the Nazi psychology professors by name and studied their more openly published material. Erin Rothschild actually knew Mengele as a father figure as did many of the psychic soldiers in the Montauk project. See Miles Johnstons Youtube Bases series.
Jesus called 12 disciples. HE DIDNT DO WHAT NORMAN GRUBB DID.....which was the evangelical notion of having a seminar once a year and then trying to work it all out individually.
He called forth His Church by the Spirit, spoke Light, and waited for the nuclear fallout between the disciples, when He then spoke more Word. That's why Jesus way of doing things takes 3 years and Norman's way of doing things takes 70 and counting. The church is the Woman that gives birth to the Manchild.
Who is the church? The new Jerusalem compacted together.then scattered when her time is come.
The Union message of people who have read Norman Grubb is OK but it isn't really a Union message.....why? Until it's a full-fledged John 17 or Full Body message it's like masturbation for beginners. The Church is what God is after and the Church reproducing according to the woman and the manchild of Revelation 12 is what He shall get......manifesting now to powers and principalities the manifold (as in full spectrum....visible and offvisible) wisdom of God.
God ignores Romans and jewish Chief Priests. They were the wrapping paper.
No Jesus FIRST CHURCH was the blueprint for all time.
Daily ministry and sharing of lives for a very short period then SCATTER packed with INNER WORD. Very similar to YWAM but with the third part of the gospel of 1 John 2 in which they ignore. People now are like rape victims.
Have you ever tried talking to a rape victim about marriage?
Well people are like this whenever you talk about Church.
Church ISN'T what you have in America. That is called a circus with a ringmaster.
Church isn't what we have in England. That is called a lecture in a mortuary.
So when I use the word Church or called out gathering of the saints according to Hebrews 13.11-13 I am talking of something like YWAM except with mature ministries. People compacted together BY THE LIVING PROPHETIC WORD...."the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy"
Why? If you are all going to be related to the HEAD continually...you'd better be joined up with the Head in the Melchizedek Order to begin with.
Peter's two main Words were....I will make you a fisher of men and upon THIS ROCK (a pun on Peter and His inward seeing of God come in the flesh in Jesus).
If you don't build on the apostolic and prophetic WORD for you, you end up building the disasters called churches in the States and the UK on every street corner and totally acceptable to every freemason Lodge in the world. You can sit there for hundreds of years. You can then sell your building off as a mosque or carpet shop....but one thing you will never have achieved is Revelation 12....and the Woman gave birth to a Manchild and was chased off into the wilderness.
IF YOU ARE A CHURCH RAPE VICTIM...GET HEALED>>>THEN STUDY WHAT JESUS ACTUALLY SAYS ABOUT HIS CHURCH in a locality.
The gospel is a CHURCH WORD.
Please don't read that in your leftbrain.
Here is the leftbrain meaning of that phrase.
The word gospel is a word only used in the context of Church.
No wash your ears out and i will begin again.
The Word of Christ in the gospel is ALWAYS in RELATION to Jesus BUILDING HIS BRIDE in the EARTH.
Any idiot can get saved.
Any idiot can press through Romans in his own life to find Jesus as HIS LIFE.
NO the real CATCH 22 is that there is ONLY ONE JESUS and HE IS A FAMILY JESUS who builds local reflections of
RICH POOR
ALL NATIONALITIES
ALL CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS
ALL AGE GROUPS SIMULTANEOUSLY
THOSE CLEVER IN THEIR LEFTBRAIN BEING MADE WISE IN THE SPIRIT as WELL AS THOSE WHO ARE THICK BEING EDUCATED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A BALANCED BRAIN WAY BY THE BEST TEACHER THERE IS.
These local reflections of the TRINITY AGAPE LOVE are called churches and unlike the ISHMAELS on the present streets...they are BORNE OF GOD'S WORD and are pressing into the fulness of 1 JOHN 2....all 3 stages of Growth spiritually and in corporate form as described in Ephesians. In short like nothing we have ever seen on earth in our lifetime.
Tuesday, 26 August 2014
Not Flinching
The founder of Lutheranism, credited with saying,
~
“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God
except
precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking,
I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.
Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. And to be steady on all the battlefields besides is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer versus the rise of Nazi Germany
January 1933 - Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany and later took control as dictator; he ordered the arrest and execution of several of the people who helped him gain power and further intensified persecution of Jews
April 1933 - Bonhoeffer's essay "The Church and the Jewish Question," was the first to address the new problems the church faced under the Nazi dictatorship; his defense of the Jews was marked by Christian supersessionism - the Christian belief that Christianity had superseded Judaism, in history and in the eyes of God; the real question, he argued, was how the church would judge and respond to the Nazi state's actions against the Jews; essay completed in the days following the April 1, 1933, boycott of Jewish businesses; some scholars believe Bonhoeffer was influenced on this issue by his close friendship at Union Seminary with his African American colleague, Frank Fisher, and his direct observation of Fisher's experiences under racism
Summer1933 - Many Protestants welcomed the rise of Nazism; a group called the Deutsche Christen ("German Christians") became the voice of Nazi ideology within the Evangelical Church, even advocating the removal of the Old Testament from the Bible; the Deutsche Christians cited the state Aryan laws that barred all "non-Aryans" from the civil service, they also proposed a church "Aryan paragraph" to prevent "non-Aryans" from becoming ministers or religious teachers; the Deutsche Christen claimed that Jews, as a "separate race," could not become members of an "Aryan" German church even through baptism � a clear repudiation of the validity of Gospel teachings
1933 (summer) - Bonhoeffer published final lecture courses at Berlin as Christ the Center - along with a seminar taught on the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel
September 1933 - Help to organize the Pastors' Emergency League; after which he assumed the pastorate of the German Evangelical Church, Sydenham, and the Reformed Church of St. Paul in London; during sojourn in England, he became a close friend and confidant of the influential Anglican Bishop, George Bell
Fall 1933 - The Deutsche Christen gained control of many Protestant church governments throughout Germany; their policy of excluding those with "Jewish blood" from the ministry was approved, September 1933, by the national church synod at Wittenberg.
May 1934 - The anti-Nazi Confessing Church was organized Barmen, Germany; Bonhoeffer bitterly opposed the Aryan paragraph, arguing that its ratification surrendered Christian precepts to political ideology; if "non-Aryans" were banned from the ministry, he argued, then their colleagues should resign in solidarity, even if this meant the establishment of a new church � a "confessing" church that would remain free of Nazi influence.
1934 - Became a member of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work
Apr. 26, 1935 - Establishes underground seminary for the anti-Nazi Confessing Church at Zingst by the Baltic Sea, which in June moves to Finkenwalde in Pomerania
Aug. 5, 1936 - Forbidden to lecture at the University of Berlin
1937 - Finkenwalde Seminary closed by Gestapo; 27 former Finkenwalde students imprisoned; out of the experiences at Finkenwalde emerged his two well-known books, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, as well as his lesser known writings on pastoral ministry such as Spiritual Care; continued to prepare pastors in the Confessing Church all the way to 1939
Feb. 1938 - Makes first contact with conspirators in connection with political resistance against Hitler
Jun. 2, 1939 - Leaves for New York City
Jul. 27, 1939 - Returns to Germany and joins the political resistance
Mar. 27, 1941 - Forbidden to print or publish
Sep. 1941 - Becomes part of Jewish rescue action (Operation 7)
Jan. 1943 - At age 36 engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer
Apr. 5, 1943 - At age 37 arrested and taken to Tegel Prison, Berlin; Dohnanyi and Dietrich's sister, Christine, also arrested
Feb. 7, 1945 - Moved to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Apr. 1945 - Discovery of Admiral Canaris' diary; Hitler orders annihilation of the Canaris group which includes Bonhoeffer
Apr. 9, 1945 - Bonhoeffer (age 39) hanged at Flossenburg; Dohnanyi killed at the Sachsenhausen Camp; one of four members of his immediate family to die at the hands of the Nazi regime for their participation in the small Protestant resistance movement - two sons (Dietrich and Klaus) and two sons-in-law (Hans von Dohnanyi and Rudiger Schleicher).
The letters he wrote during these final two years of his life were posthumously published by his student and friend, Eberhard Bethge, as Letters and Papers from Prison.
-------------------------
Gideon Surprises and Routs the MidianitesJudges Chapter7 Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the troops that were with him rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harod; and the camp of Midian was north of them, below[a] the hill of Moreh, in the valley.
2 The Lord said to Gideon, “The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’ 3 Now therefore proclaim this in the hearing of the troops, ‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home.’” Thus Gideon sifted them out;[b] twenty-two thousand returned, and ten thousand remained.
4 Then the Lord said to Gideon, “The troops are still too many; take them down to the water and I will sift them out for you there. When I say, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go with you; and when I say, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.” 5 So he brought the troops down to the water; and the Lord said to Gideon, “All those who lap the water with their tongues, as a dog laps, you shall put to one side; all those who kneel down to drink, putting their hands to their mouths,[c] you shall put to the other side.” 6 The number of those that lapped was three hundred; but all the rest of the troops knelt down to drink water. 7 Then the Lord said to Gideon, “With the three hundred that lapped I will deliver you, and give the Midianites into your hand. ***Let all the others go to their homes.” 8 So he took the jars of the troops from their hands,[d] and their trumpets; and he sent all the rest of Israel back to their own tents, but retained the three hundred. The camp of Midian was below him in the valley.
9 That same night the Lord said to him, “Get up, attack the camp; for I have given it into your hand. 10 But if you fear to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah; 11 and you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to attack the camp.” Then he went down with his servant Purah to the outposts of the armed men that were in the camp. 12 The Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the east lay along the valley as thick as locusts; and their camels were without number, countless as the sand on the seashore. 13 When Gideon arrived, there was a man telling a dream to his comrade; and he said, “I had a dream, and in it a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian, and came to the tent, and struck it so that it fell; it turned upside down, and the tent collapsed.” 14 And his comrade answered, “This is no other than the sword of Gideon son of Joash, a man of Israel; into his hand God has given Midian and all the army.”
15 When Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped; and he returned to the camp of Israel, and said, “Get up; for the Lord has given the army of Midian into your hand.” 16 After he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and put trumpets into the hands of all of them, and empty jars, with torches inside the jars, 17 he said to them, “Look at me, and do the same; when I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. 18 When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me, then you also blow the trumpets around the whole camp, and shout, ‘For the Lord and for Gideon!’”
19 So Gideon and the hundred who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, when they had just set the watch; and they blew the trumpets and smashed the jars that were in their hands. 20 So the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars, holding in their left hands the torches, and in their right hands the trumpets to blow; and they cried, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” 21 Every man stood in his place all around the camp, and all the men in camp ran; they cried out and fled. 22 When they blew the three hundred trumpets, the Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow and against all the army; and the army fled as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah,[e] as far as the border of Abel-meholah, by Tabbath. 23 And the men of Israel were called out from Naphtali and from Asher and from all Manasseh, and they pursued after the Midianites.
24 Then Gideon sent messengers throughout all the hill country of Ephraim, saying, “Come down against the Midianites and seize the waters against them, as far as Beth-barah, and also the Jordan.” So all the men of Ephraim were called out, and they seized the waters as far as Beth-barah, and also the Jordan. 25 They captured the two captains of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb; they killed Oreb at the rock of Oreb, and Zeeb they killed at the wine press of Zeeb, as they pursued the Midianites. They brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon beyond the Jordan.
***why those who lapped???
when you keep your face upright and bring the hand to the mouth you show the restraint of one who has trained his or her senses according to righteousness, ever being alert for the slightest twitch of the enemy in the bushes across the water. Most Christians are blind and see nothing...because they are not inwardly looking first...before outwardly observing.
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Grace has a cross in it.
Timothy Keller's Foreword To:
Bonhoeffer :Pastor Martyr Prophet Spy
It is impossible to understand Bonhoeffer's influence without becoming acquainted with the shocking capitulation of the German church to Hitler in the 1930s. How could the"church of Luther," that great teacher of the gospel, have ever come to such a place? The answer is that the true gospel, summed up by Bonhoeffer as costly grace, had been lost.
On the one hand, the church had become marked by formalism. That meant going to church and hearing that God just loves and forgives everyone, so it doesn't really matter much how you live. Bonhoeffer called this cheap grace. On the other hand, there was legalism, or salvation by law and good works. Legalism meant that God loves you because you have pulled yourself together and are trying to live a good, disciplined life.
Both of these impulses made it possible for Hitler to come to power. The formalists in Germany may have seen things that bothered them, but saw no need to sacrifice their safety to stand up to them. Legalists responded by having pharisaical attitudes toward other nations and races that approved of Hitler's
policies. But as one, Germany lost hold of the brilliant balance of the gospel that Luther so persistently expounded—"We are saved by faith alone, but not by faith which is alone." That is, we are saved, not by anything we do, but by grace. Yet if we have truly understood and believed the gospel, it will change what
we do and how we live. By the time of Hitler's ascension, much of the German church understood grace only as abstract acceptance—"God forgives; that's his job." But we know that true grace comes to us
by costly sacrifice. And if God was willing to go to the cross and endure such pain and absorb such a cost in order to save us, then we must live sacrificially as we serve others.
Anyonewho truly understands how God's grace comes to us will have a changed life.
That's the gospel, not salvation by law, or by cheap grace, but by costly grace. Costly grace
changes you from the inside out. Neither law nor cheap grace can do that.
This lapse couldn't happen to us, today, surely, could it? Certainly it could.
We still have a lot of legalism and moralism in our churches. In reaction to that, many Christians
want to talk only about God's love and acceptance. They don't like talking about Jesus' death on the cross to satisfy divine wrath and justice. Some even call it "divine child abuse."' Yet if they are not careful, they run the risk of falling into the belief in "cheap grace"—a noncostly love from a non-holy God who just loves and accepts us as we are. That will never change anyone's life. So it looks like we still need to listen to
Bonhoeffer and others who go deep in discussing the nature of the gospel.
Timothy Keller
Chris Welch continues:
"They don't like talking about Jesus' death on the cross to satisfy divine wrath and justice."
With such a revelation of God as Father,
and His Everlasting nature as love,as manifest in the openhearted embrace of the Father in the Prodigal son story -
people are writing against "satisfy divine wrath and justice."
Brad Jersak and Gary Sigler to name two.
Reading and talking doctrines of Divine Retribution in leftbrain speak, such as we have inherited from Augustine are missing out on other simultaneous truths in the Spirit.
To understand the doctrine of God we are not called to read more. To spend longer in university. To take our left-brain down the leftbrain gym until we can exercise with the best of them....Marx, Karl Barth, Schopenhauer. We are called to walk inwardly. To say yes to God in our life. To experience what He means in John 17:21 by
21That they all may be one, [just] as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, so that the world may believe and be convinced that You have sent Me.
The question of the Cross concerns Union. We were included in His death that He might raise us up in Himself to receive within us, a Unity of Person, that is God Himself.
We experience Two goats....one burnt up totally, which is the complete destruction upon the works of the flesh in our life. But the second goat that was sent way into the wilderness in the Old Testament symbolises the second deliverance at the Cross. That our former person was done away with. That spirit centre, who is our real identity, was forever linked to the sin spirit in union, and had to be left in hell.Our new identity is again a spirit union, Christ linked to our spirit, a totally new creation.
God doesn't see death as we do.He constructed this universe as a safe one, by inventing the second death. Any rebellion in heaven led to permanent separation, so a death within a death made it safer for us for bringing forth a race of co-sons.
Doctrine with Union in it, is very different from doctrine that was cobbled up while still in a false believing system of "separation". An angry "out there" God, that the devil would have us believe in since Genesis 3.
When God raised up first a generation of Pentecostals who believed in the Baptism of the Spirit in the 1900s, then brought home a second wave of such believers, of which i am a member, sweeping through the denominations with this Pentecostal revelation, ofcourse many saw this as a kind of Total Answer to the problems of sharing the gospel without power and signs.
But in actual fact it was to raise up a Jacob generation - a generation that would seek the Face of God as Jacob did,
to go down , down, further down,
to fully understand the nature of the problem since the Fall.
Like a whole generation of St Paul's in Arabia, not having, as did the first disciples, Jesus in His earthly form as Jesus of Nazareth to teach, we have relied on the Holy Spirit to lead and guide into all truth.
Solely proclaiming "The Kingdom of heaven is at hand" with signs and wonders following may have been what Pentecostals were called to do, and still do, and this complies with the activities of the early disciples while still learning, but the FIRST CHURCH itself was founded on a more permanent foundation. The disciples had had 3 years of exposure to Light regarding who they had thought they were and fully realising who they now were.
And this is the complete gospel which we now share.
A gospel of complete Union.
Shared by the power of the Holy Spirit.
With much more self-knowledge of how the Bible describes us, and how we work as human beings.
In a nutshell we have lived the opposite of Proverbs 3 5-6 which tells us to:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own insight.
In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths.
We have instead trusted wholly on our insight, which produces a "false seeing" with our soul as the centre of our universe. Not only is our soul not geared to being the centre of our universe. It is NOT either. For the falseness is brought about by the fact that we are spirit at our centre. This is who we really are. Our soul is just the way our spirit can manifest itself outwardly through our body. What we thought of as a self-powered soul was just a FRONT. Behind this cover, the actuality is Satan usurped our spirit as container for God's Presence, and now controls and energises all those who live according to their "own way".
So the "own way"...isn't entirely. How many times have you intended to go only so far in a direction, only to observe yourself careering downhill like a runaway train? How many people have been murdered as a result of a smaller tif?
How many babies have been born, when the original idea was a kiss and a cuddle?
How many, like a friend of mine, have gone to prison on someone's false evidence, because the other's story hardened and hardened and they wouldnt back down from their lie?
Christianity is the return of a human to his planned identity, the identity of one who is really spirit.Where we differ from Buddhism, or other Christian groups is that we see the need for a death on the Cross. We take up our Cross and follow Him.
We are like that seed which falls into the ground, breaks open, then reforms with a whole new fruit bearing identity. It is a miracle. It is NOT just meditation. It is meditation on Spirit fact. The death of us on a Cross, and the resurrection of us in Jesus Christ three days later.
Once in heaven Christ was anointed as King and Priest for an intercession to bring everything outside of Christ , manifestly INSIDE of Christ, and to return the whole done deal to the Father.
God then gave His anointed Son AGAIN for the second time as Head over the Church, that they as a kingdom of Priests functioning with Him in the Melchizedek order, would cooperate with Christ in His commission. For this purpose Christ has shared His anointing oil with His Bride in the form of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Any doctrine of grace in the Church has to comply with this self-giving commission Christ has placed upon us.It has to comply with all the descriptions the Bible makes about us in relation to God: Master/ Servant,Bridegroom/ Bride, Vine/ Branches, Divine Power in earthenware pot.....and so on
The means whereby this grace is transplanted in us complies with what Hebrews calls the Heavenly Tabernacle. So all the aspects that were made strictly according to pattern in the Old Testament, have heavenly realities in the Spirit that they describe. We see one notable one when the Veil was supernaturally rent in the Temple as Jesus own Body Temple of flesh was being torn on the Cross, and a totally New and Living Way was opened for us, instead of the mere ritual beforehand.
Apart from prayer and singing, it is interesting that the only rituals left in the Church are entirely to get our inner eyes focussed on who we now are....and the way we are made is to begin in the flesh! Baptism in water, and the bread and wine, remain just about the only outward form, while we impart Spirit to Spirit with one another.
Other groups of Christians , in rightly pointing out our access to God is complete now, because the veil has already been torn, dont realise there is also a growth process equally as real in order to "EXPORT" the total Holy of Holies reality of our born again spirits into the rest of our existence. All this occurs because of the very threefold action described in Revelation 12:
and they overcame him
By the Blood of the Lamb
By their Word of testimony...(based on this total victory of the Lamb)
And by loving their lives not unto death.
The first "loving our lives not" occurs as we experience the soul severing double edged sword of the Word piercing to the division of soul and spirit (Hebrews 4). This is Sooooooo painful. Do not not be kidded. You feel like you are dying on your insides. But it is the separation of our souls in practice from wrong misuse by Satan, to right use as a vessel for Jesus Christ.
The second " loving not our lives " results in our self giving of our new Christ identities for others, or in outpoured operations or commissions by the Spirit of God as we get into Word of faith commissions.
Simultaneous to this negative seeming process, is the outpouring of more grace upon us and through us, in our situations, and those we are commissioned to fight the fight of faith for.I dont like dwelling on the death side for two reasons.
It's the devil's plan to get Christians stuck there. When God's plan is resurrection experienced!
Secondly, as we see with Christ's death.....it was ONE DAY in 33 years folks, and 3 days later Jesus was up and out for ALL TIME. It's the devil's ruse to make us DEATH conscious.
It is spiritual circumcision. THAT's ALL.
I had a natural one....and the operation ended!!! I never talk about it. I dont regale friends with it. It didnt last months on end. It was one operation. Then I left hospital.
As we enter the realm of Spirit, we see in the Spirit. Clearer and clearer. We dont talk guff anymore. The Cross is real death and real resurrection. I dont entertain a lot of talk in my Havant Church regarding the Cross. It's just religion. I tend to just walk out now.
Real death doesn't take 30 years before a single member of the congregation feels he can go out and minister. That's religion. And as more people come through in the Spirit, we can take churches like Havant by the scruff of their neck to the real Cross and not just the religious one, so that soon they are ministering in power round the whole region.
Bonhoeffer :Pastor Martyr Prophet Spy
It is impossible to understand Bonhoeffer's influence without becoming acquainted with the shocking capitulation of the German church to Hitler in the 1930s. How could the"church of Luther," that great teacher of the gospel, have ever come to such a place? The answer is that the true gospel, summed up by Bonhoeffer as costly grace, had been lost.
On the one hand, the church had become marked by formalism. That meant going to church and hearing that God just loves and forgives everyone, so it doesn't really matter much how you live. Bonhoeffer called this cheap grace. On the other hand, there was legalism, or salvation by law and good works. Legalism meant that God loves you because you have pulled yourself together and are trying to live a good, disciplined life.
Both of these impulses made it possible for Hitler to come to power. The formalists in Germany may have seen things that bothered them, but saw no need to sacrifice their safety to stand up to them. Legalists responded by having pharisaical attitudes toward other nations and races that approved of Hitler's
policies. But as one, Germany lost hold of the brilliant balance of the gospel that Luther so persistently expounded—"We are saved by faith alone, but not by faith which is alone." That is, we are saved, not by anything we do, but by grace. Yet if we have truly understood and believed the gospel, it will change what
we do and how we live. By the time of Hitler's ascension, much of the German church understood grace only as abstract acceptance—"God forgives; that's his job." But we know that true grace comes to us
by costly sacrifice. And if God was willing to go to the cross and endure such pain and absorb such a cost in order to save us, then we must live sacrificially as we serve others.
Anyonewho truly understands how God's grace comes to us will have a changed life.
That's the gospel, not salvation by law, or by cheap grace, but by costly grace. Costly grace
changes you from the inside out. Neither law nor cheap grace can do that.
This lapse couldn't happen to us, today, surely, could it? Certainly it could.
We still have a lot of legalism and moralism in our churches. In reaction to that, many Christians
want to talk only about God's love and acceptance. They don't like talking about Jesus' death on the cross to satisfy divine wrath and justice. Some even call it "divine child abuse."' Yet if they are not careful, they run the risk of falling into the belief in "cheap grace"—a noncostly love from a non-holy God who just loves and accepts us as we are. That will never change anyone's life. So it looks like we still need to listen to
Bonhoeffer and others who go deep in discussing the nature of the gospel.
Timothy Keller
Chris Welch continues:
"They don't like talking about Jesus' death on the cross to satisfy divine wrath and justice."
With such a revelation of God as Father,
and His Everlasting nature as love,as manifest in the openhearted embrace of the Father in the Prodigal son story -
people are writing against "satisfy divine wrath and justice."
Brad Jersak and Gary Sigler to name two.
Reading and talking doctrines of Divine Retribution in leftbrain speak, such as we have inherited from Augustine are missing out on other simultaneous truths in the Spirit.
To understand the doctrine of God we are not called to read more. To spend longer in university. To take our left-brain down the leftbrain gym until we can exercise with the best of them....Marx, Karl Barth, Schopenhauer. We are called to walk inwardly. To say yes to God in our life. To experience what He means in John 17:21 by
21That they all may be one, [just] as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, so that the world may believe and be convinced that You have sent Me.
The question of the Cross concerns Union. We were included in His death that He might raise us up in Himself to receive within us, a Unity of Person, that is God Himself.
We experience Two goats....one burnt up totally, which is the complete destruction upon the works of the flesh in our life. But the second goat that was sent way into the wilderness in the Old Testament symbolises the second deliverance at the Cross. That our former person was done away with. That spirit centre, who is our real identity, was forever linked to the sin spirit in union, and had to be left in hell.Our new identity is again a spirit union, Christ linked to our spirit, a totally new creation.
God doesn't see death as we do.He constructed this universe as a safe one, by inventing the second death. Any rebellion in heaven led to permanent separation, so a death within a death made it safer for us for bringing forth a race of co-sons.
Doctrine with Union in it, is very different from doctrine that was cobbled up while still in a false believing system of "separation". An angry "out there" God, that the devil would have us believe in since Genesis 3.
When God raised up first a generation of Pentecostals who believed in the Baptism of the Spirit in the 1900s, then brought home a second wave of such believers, of which i am a member, sweeping through the denominations with this Pentecostal revelation, ofcourse many saw this as a kind of Total Answer to the problems of sharing the gospel without power and signs.
But in actual fact it was to raise up a Jacob generation - a generation that would seek the Face of God as Jacob did,
to go down , down, further down,
to fully understand the nature of the problem since the Fall.
Like a whole generation of St Paul's in Arabia, not having, as did the first disciples, Jesus in His earthly form as Jesus of Nazareth to teach, we have relied on the Holy Spirit to lead and guide into all truth.
Solely proclaiming "The Kingdom of heaven is at hand" with signs and wonders following may have been what Pentecostals were called to do, and still do, and this complies with the activities of the early disciples while still learning, but the FIRST CHURCH itself was founded on a more permanent foundation. The disciples had had 3 years of exposure to Light regarding who they had thought they were and fully realising who they now were.
And this is the complete gospel which we now share.
A gospel of complete Union.
Shared by the power of the Holy Spirit.
With much more self-knowledge of how the Bible describes us, and how we work as human beings.
In a nutshell we have lived the opposite of Proverbs 3 5-6 which tells us to:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own insight.
In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths.
We have instead trusted wholly on our insight, which produces a "false seeing" with our soul as the centre of our universe. Not only is our soul not geared to being the centre of our universe. It is NOT either. For the falseness is brought about by the fact that we are spirit at our centre. This is who we really are. Our soul is just the way our spirit can manifest itself outwardly through our body. What we thought of as a self-powered soul was just a FRONT. Behind this cover, the actuality is Satan usurped our spirit as container for God's Presence, and now controls and energises all those who live according to their "own way".
So the "own way"...isn't entirely. How many times have you intended to go only so far in a direction, only to observe yourself careering downhill like a runaway train? How many people have been murdered as a result of a smaller tif?
How many babies have been born, when the original idea was a kiss and a cuddle?
How many, like a friend of mine, have gone to prison on someone's false evidence, because the other's story hardened and hardened and they wouldnt back down from their lie?
Christianity is the return of a human to his planned identity, the identity of one who is really spirit.Where we differ from Buddhism, or other Christian groups is that we see the need for a death on the Cross. We take up our Cross and follow Him.
We are like that seed which falls into the ground, breaks open, then reforms with a whole new fruit bearing identity. It is a miracle. It is NOT just meditation. It is meditation on Spirit fact. The death of us on a Cross, and the resurrection of us in Jesus Christ three days later.
Once in heaven Christ was anointed as King and Priest for an intercession to bring everything outside of Christ , manifestly INSIDE of Christ, and to return the whole done deal to the Father.
God then gave His anointed Son AGAIN for the second time as Head over the Church, that they as a kingdom of Priests functioning with Him in the Melchizedek order, would cooperate with Christ in His commission. For this purpose Christ has shared His anointing oil with His Bride in the form of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Any doctrine of grace in the Church has to comply with this self-giving commission Christ has placed upon us.It has to comply with all the descriptions the Bible makes about us in relation to God: Master/ Servant,Bridegroom/ Bride, Vine/ Branches, Divine Power in earthenware pot.....and so on
The means whereby this grace is transplanted in us complies with what Hebrews calls the Heavenly Tabernacle. So all the aspects that were made strictly according to pattern in the Old Testament, have heavenly realities in the Spirit that they describe. We see one notable one when the Veil was supernaturally rent in the Temple as Jesus own Body Temple of flesh was being torn on the Cross, and a totally New and Living Way was opened for us, instead of the mere ritual beforehand.
Apart from prayer and singing, it is interesting that the only rituals left in the Church are entirely to get our inner eyes focussed on who we now are....and the way we are made is to begin in the flesh! Baptism in water, and the bread and wine, remain just about the only outward form, while we impart Spirit to Spirit with one another.
Other groups of Christians , in rightly pointing out our access to God is complete now, because the veil has already been torn, dont realise there is also a growth process equally as real in order to "EXPORT" the total Holy of Holies reality of our born again spirits into the rest of our existence. All this occurs because of the very threefold action described in Revelation 12:
and they overcame him
By the Blood of the Lamb
By their Word of testimony...(based on this total victory of the Lamb)
And by loving their lives not unto death.
The first "loving our lives not" occurs as we experience the soul severing double edged sword of the Word piercing to the division of soul and spirit (Hebrews 4). This is Sooooooo painful. Do not not be kidded. You feel like you are dying on your insides. But it is the separation of our souls in practice from wrong misuse by Satan, to right use as a vessel for Jesus Christ.
The second " loving not our lives " results in our self giving of our new Christ identities for others, or in outpoured operations or commissions by the Spirit of God as we get into Word of faith commissions.
Simultaneous to this negative seeming process, is the outpouring of more grace upon us and through us, in our situations, and those we are commissioned to fight the fight of faith for.I dont like dwelling on the death side for two reasons.
It's the devil's plan to get Christians stuck there. When God's plan is resurrection experienced!
Secondly, as we see with Christ's death.....it was ONE DAY in 33 years folks, and 3 days later Jesus was up and out for ALL TIME. It's the devil's ruse to make us DEATH conscious.
It is spiritual circumcision. THAT's ALL.
I had a natural one....and the operation ended!!! I never talk about it. I dont regale friends with it. It didnt last months on end. It was one operation. Then I left hospital.
As we enter the realm of Spirit, we see in the Spirit. Clearer and clearer. We dont talk guff anymore. The Cross is real death and real resurrection. I dont entertain a lot of talk in my Havant Church regarding the Cross. It's just religion. I tend to just walk out now.
Real death doesn't take 30 years before a single member of the congregation feels he can go out and minister. That's religion. And as more people come through in the Spirit, we can take churches like Havant by the scruff of their neck to the real Cross and not just the religious one, so that soon they are ministering in power round the whole region.
Friday, 11 March 2011
Frank Viola on Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Picture: Dietrich Bonhoeffer - weekend away with students
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Born 4 Feb 1906
Died 9 Apr 1945
Country Germany
Category Government
Contributor: C. Peter Chen
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born, with a twin sister Sabine, into an upper-class family in Breslau, Germany. His father, Karl Bonhoeffer, was a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Berlin and also the director of the psychiatric clinic at Charité Hospital, which was also in Berlin. His mother was Paula von Hase, daughter of Countess Klara von Hase. As a child, he was a gifted pianist, and it was thought that he would either become a musician or follow his father's footsteps and become a doctor. Surprising everyone in the family, at the age of 14, he chose to pursue a career in religion instead. He attended Tübingen University for a year, toured Rome, and then returned to Berlin in 1924 to enroll in the University of Berlin. He graduated from the University of Berlin in 1927 with a doctorate in theology. Between 1928 and 1931, he worked and studied in Spain, United States, Mexico, Libya, Cuba, and his home country of Germany. He was ordained on 15 Nov 1931 at the St. Matthew's Church in Berlin.
When the Nazi Party rose to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer became one of the first religious leaders to oppose Nazism. Two days after Adolf Hitler was made Chancellor, he delivered a radio address against him, and the radio address was cut short by a Nazi sympathizer, and he was unable to finish. He was also a prominent leader against the Nazi prejudice against Jews. Between 1934 and 1935, he was the pastor of two German-speaking churches, St. Paul's and Sydenham, in London, England, United Kingdom. In 1934, he was among those who organized the Confessing Church in Germany. As the Nazi regime continued to suppress the Confessing Church, his authorization to teach at the University of Berlin was reovked in Aug 1936. In Aug 1937, Heinrich Himmler declared it was illegal to teach the theology of the Confessing Church, and the church's underground seminary was shut down by the Gestapo in the following month, arresting 27 pastors of the church. One of his sisters, Christine, married Hans von Dohnanyi, a German politician who was also dissatisfied with the Nazi Regime. It was Dohnanyi who introduced Bonhoeffer to members of the Abwehr (German military intelligence) who plotted to overthrow Hitler. In Jun 1939, he traveled to the United States at the invitation of the Union Theological Seminary in New York, but returned to Germany shortly before the start of the European War.
In war-time Germany, Bonhoeffer was forbidden to speak in public by the Nazi German government, and by 1940 was required to regularly report his activities. In 1941, he was forbidden to publish. He joined the Abwehr, where he had already made contacts with like-minded anti-Nazi colleagues. He was active in the planning of assassination attempts against Hitler, and believed that he had sinned for such action, but he believed that he was sacrificing for the greater good for Germany. As an Abwehr personnel, he was able to work as a courier and diplomat for the resistance movement, visiting various contacts within Germany and aboard in Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. In May 1942, he made contact with Anglican Bishop George Bell, a member of the British House of Lords; a report was submitted to British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, but no further action was taken (Britain had similarly turned down many offers to help from various groups within Germany at this time).
On 6 Apr 1943, Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were arrested as the result of political struggles between the German SS and Abwehr organizations. Bonhoeffer was accussed of corruption, evading military service, and using his position to circumvent orders to cease church activities. He was imprisoned at the Tegel military prison in Berlin. During his 18-month imprisonment at Tegel, a sympathetic guard named Knobloch offered to help him escape, but Bonhoeffer rejected him in fear of retribution against his family. After the failed July Plot in 1944, which nearly succeeded in killing Hitler, a large effort to hunt down conspirators commenced, and connections were finally made between Bonhoeffer and other conspirators. He was transferred to the detention cellar of the Reich Security Head Office, then in Feb 1945 he was sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Some time later, he was moved to the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp. On 4 Apr 1945, the diaries of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Abwehr, was discovered; as Hitler read them, he condemned all Abwehr conspirators to death. On 8 Apr, SS judge Otto Thorbeck sentenced him to death per Hitler's orders, and he was executed by hanging on the next day.
Source: Wikipedia.
Frank Viola series of Four Blogposts
Take time over this one and follow the links into Frank Viola's blog and his books and other posts, for example : Kingdom Confusion
Blogging Through Bonhoeffer Part One
I’m a student of history. And the more I look at it, the more I recognize a certain pattern. God sends spiritual giants who change the course of church history in waves.
One wave was made evident around 1926 and continued through the 1940s. In three different countries.
Three choice vessels of God began publishing then. They had lots of similarities in the testimony they bore regarding the supremacy of Jesus Christ and His church.
Those three vessels were:
Watchman Nee in China.
T. Austin-Sparks in England.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany.
In the coming days, I’m going to be blogging through Bonhoeffer’s complete works.
Bonhoeffer was first and foremost a theologian. And as a theologian, he’s one of my favorites.
I’ll begin by recommending a recent biography written about him, which may be the best ever written on his life.
It’s called Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
If you like reading biographies, you’ll want to own this one. Click on the link above to see a movie trailer and read endorsements and reviews. I own the book and love it.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post: It’s called Advice for Christian Authors. It will contain advice for established authors, first-time authors, and those toying with the idea of writing a book
Blogging Through Bonhoeffer: Part II
Posted on 03/01/2011 by frankaviola 11
Last week I promised I’d begin blogging through Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s major works. I won’t do it every day, as we’ll need a break for lighter subjects. But I’ll resume until finished.
I will refer to Bonhoeffer henceforth as DB.
Some of DB’s works are highly academic. Others are prophetic, written in the context of Nazi Germany.
His academic works are dense and presuppose a fair knowledge of theology, philosophy, and history.
I began this series by starting with DB’s biography, which was the subject of my first post.
The rest of the series is based on the brand new, unabridged translations of his written legacy published in Dietrick Bonhoeffer Works (16 volumes when completed) by Fortress Press.
Let’s explore the first volume today: Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 1)
This was DB’s doctoral dissertation. It is an academic work. It’s considered brilliant and ground-breaking. Years after it was published, Karl Barth called it “a theological miracle.” This work informed all of DB’s work to come. So it was foundational to his life and message.
The explicit goal is to relate sociology with ecclesiology in the description of the Church. DB differentiated his theology both from the Liberalism of his German professors and the new and growing current of Barthian theology (a la, Karl Barth’s view of the Church).
While DB sided with Barth on some of the issues, he differed with him on others.
Ernst Troeltsch exemplified the Liberal approach when he described the Church entirely in terms of secular sociology. Troeltsch was contradicted by Karl Barth, who saw the Church entirely in terms of the response of individuals to God’s act of self-revelation in Christ.
Liberalism fails to maintain the truth of the extraordinary reality that makes the Church what God created her to be in reality. Liberalism reduces the Church to the level of a human religious fellowship. The Church as a spiritual reality is lost.
Barthianism fails also because it reduces the Church to an event that blinks in and out of existence depending on the event of revelation. The Church as a stable, practical reality is also lost.
DB avoids both Liberalism and Barthianism by describing the Church as “Christ existing as community.” And this is the view upheld by Scripture. (See From Eternity to Here for an analysis traced throughout the Biblical narrative.)
It is in the matrix of Christ as community that we become true human beings. We are joined together in the forgiveness of sins. We are gathererd together by the love of God for us and through us in Christ. We are part of Christ together as community under His lordship.
The continuation of the reality of divine revelation is found not in doctrine as such or in pious sentiments. It is found in the reality of the Church. One could paraphrase Bonhoeffer by saying that the real exposition of divine revelation is the Church.
Since the heart of divine revelation is Christ, and Christ is not separate from His Church, this is scripturally true.
Therefore, the Church cannot be reduced to or explained as an empirical community (thus everything that calls itself “Church” isn’t necessarily so). Neither does it exist other than as an empirical community (so DB would reject the post-church paradigm).
On this basis Bonhoeffer constructs a theology centered on the convergence of Christology and ecclesiology.
What I find amazing is that at the same time that DB penned this insightful Christocentric work on the Church, Watchman Nee was writing along the same lines in China and T. Austin-Sparks was doing the same in England. While DB was a high-church Lutheran, his theology of the Church was fundamentally the same as theirs.
Here are some excerpts:
“Christ personifies the new humanity, and the Christian community is about the restoration and consummation of the created sociality of humanity.”
“Paul repeatedly identifies Christ and the church-community. Where the body of Christ is, there Christ truly is. Christ is in the church-community, as the church-community is in Christ. To be in Christ is synonymous with to be in the church-community.”
“The church is the presence of Christ the same way that Christ is the presence of God.”
“In and through Christ the church is established in reality. It is not as if Christ could be abstracted from the church; rather, it is none other than Christ who is the church.”
My favorite part by far is Chapter 5. For an academic book on the reality of Christ and the Church, this is a priceless work.
Blogging Through Bonhoeffer : Part Three
Act and Being, 1931. This is volume 2 of Deitrich Bonhoeffer Works.
It was a dissertation that qualified DB to become a faculty member of the School of theology at the University of Berlin. It’s a heavy theological work that draws on a good bit of philosophy. Not light reading at all. I’ll give a summary, then make some practical application.
DB begins by presenting a view of theologians as belonging to either one of two schools of thought. There are advocates of a theology of Act and advocates of a theology of Being. Theologies of Act stress discontinuity, dualism, the moment of revelation, and decision. Theologies of Being stress continuity, unity, tradition, and cognition.
Karl Barth is the quintessential theologian of Act. The influence of Immanuel Kant’s transcendental philosophy is evident in Barthian thought.
The theology of being stands for the continuity of God and Christianity. Some of these theologians see God’s availability to us in terms of true doctrine. Others in terms of inner experiences. Still others in terms of the institution of the structures of the Church or a verbally inerrant Bible. But all of these not only make God available, they make Him manipulatable. God loses His sovereign freedom in all three cases. He can be pinned down and domesticated by us.
We can avoid losing God in the unknowability of the transcendent or trying to capture Him in forms that make Him just another object to manipulate by returning to the reality of Christ existing as community.
As those who are recreated into Christian community, we participate in the continuity of revelation as the life of the Church. God’s self-presentation in the proclaimed Word make it necessary that we reflect on that Word so that we can faithfully proclaim it. This reflection is called theology. Because theology reflects on the Truth of God, it participates in that Truth. Yet because theology is not itself that Truth, it always has a fragmentary, fragile, and partial grasp of the Truth. And thus it is always open to criticism, correction, and improvement.
Revelation has its being in the Church. Both preaching and theology are for the Church and in the Church. Act and Being are united in the Church.
Like DB’s first work, Christ and the Church lay at the center of his theology and philosophical outlook: “Christ existing as community.”
In Jesus Manifesto, there’s a chapter on the kingdom of God that takes a fresh look at the justice vs. justification debate. Some of that chapter is taken from these two articles where I talk about how some Christians view the kingdom simply as Act. While others view it simply as Being. But it’s both.
Kingdom Confusion: I
Kingdom Confusion: II
Here I stand with DB. In the Church we find the unity of Act and Being. Christ is both Act and Being and so is His kingdom.
If you want a more detailed analysis of this work, click here
Note that DB’s prophetic books are much more accessible.
Posted on 03/11/2011 by frankaviola 1
Creation and Fall (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 3)
This is DB’s exposition of Genesis 1-3 delivered as lectures at the University of Berlin in 1932-1933. It’s a difficult read, yet many of the points are powerful.
This is from the Editor’s Introduction, which I found both fascinating as well as encouraging:
Despite the impact Bonhoeffer’s lectures had on his students, systematic theologians at the time ignored their publication, and most biblical scholars scorned Bonhoeffer’s Barthian method of “theological exegesis.” Nevertheless this indifferent and critical reception, Creation and Fall provided “a first small literary success for Bonhoeffer.” One of the book’s readers was Karl Barth; indeed it was the only work by Bonhoeffer on which Barth was to express an opinion during the author’s lifetime. Barth’s influence on Bonhoeffer is clear in Creation and Fall, and Barth found it congenial and helpful for his own work (pp. 5-6).
In Creation and Fall, DB tells us that Genesis lets us know that everything has been created by God and is preserved by Him. This means that there are no purely “secular” or “natural” realities out there. Everything constantly depends on God for its existence.
In the midst of our existence there are the two trees. We were created to live our lives on the basis of knowing everything only in God. There are not two possibilities offered to Adam to live by. There is only God and not the possibility of good versus the possibility of evil.
When Adam chooses to know good and evil, he chooses to understand his life in terms of the two possibilities that he bears in himself rather than in terms of God. This sort of goodness is as far from God as evil. It is only in Christ, through the forgiveness of sins, that we can be brought back to living our lives on the basis of the one Reality of God in Christ rather than in terms our human potential for good and evil.
I expand on this very issue in a more accessible way in the chapter I wrote on living by the Tree of Life in Jesus Manifesto. DB’s treatment is very dense and academic.
According to DB, Christians know the Truth in terms of knowing the end which has dawned in Christ. This means that the beginning cannot be understood apart from the end. And the end is Christ. We therefore must understand Genesis in terms of Jesus Christ. DB’s exegesis of this book is intensely Christological. Following Barth, he uses theological interpretation to grasp the Old Testament.
For DB, the Bible is the book of the Church, and the Old Testament is the book of Christ at all times. He is correct on both points. As the Editor’s Introduction states, “For Bonhoeffer, the Old Testament was certainly the Hebrew Bible, but it was also part of the Christian canon. Therefore it had to be read in light of God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ” (p. 9).
Here’s a choice passage from the book:
Therefore it [the Church] reads the whole of Holy Scripture as the book of the end, of the new [vom Neuen], of Christ. Where Holy Scripture, upon which the church of Christ stands, speaks of creation, of the beginning, what else can it say other than that it is only from Christ that we can know what the beginning is? The Bible is after all nothing other than the book of the church. It is it this in its very essence, or it is nothing . . . In the church, therefore, the story of creation must be read in a way that begins with Christ and only then moves on toward him as its goal; indeed one can read it as a book that moves toward Christ only when one knows that Christ is the beginning, the new, the end of our whole world. Theological exposition takes the Bible as the book of the church and interprets it as such (p. 22).
Sunday, 12 October 2008
Books and Messages that have helped me

Dan Bowen on Life On Wings will help out with many older books of note. Lydia Joy, Dan and Julie, list or frequently mention new books, some of which we are wading through also. Books by Bill Johnson, Mark Stibbe, Joseph Prince. This list I realise contains some teachings in specific areas, but largely they are testimonies of the growth of faith in a believer, or describe the growth of the Life of Christ in a believer. Some of them describe lives lived on the cutting edge of God's purposes.....truly the Melchizedek order. This is a list to dip into , and reference for some time to come....not to get a hemorrhage over.
There is a balance between"Those who do not read, can have little to think, and far less to say...." Jane Austin andmy Christian friend who hardly reads a single Christian book, she is too busy hearing and obeying Christ in the minutiae of daily living, showing hospitality to the Body of Christ.If books are out of print, you can usually find them on the UK or USA http://www.alibris.com/ sites.Where possible get them in the same country. Or you may be paying twice as much for postage as the book itself!
The Holy Spirit.....
Dennis and Rita Bennet The Holy Spirit and You - Shawna says it now comes with 9 0 clock in the morning
Don Basham - Face up with a Miracle
Benny Hinn - Good Morning Holy Spirit, The Anointing
Claudio Friedzon - Holy Spirit I am Hungry for you
The Fatherhood of God.......
Dennis and Rita Bennet The Holy Spirit and You - Shawna says it now comes with 9 0 clock in the morning
Don Basham - Face up with a Miracle
Benny Hinn - Good Morning Holy Spirit, The Anointing
Claudio Friedzon - Holy Spirit I am Hungry for you
The Fatherhood of God.......
Floyd McClung: The Father Heart of God
William P Young: The Shack
Mark Stibbe :Orphans and Heirs
William P Young: The Shack
Mark Stibbe :Orphans and Heirs
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Ruth Heflin : Revival Glory.
Ruth Heflin : Revival Glory.
George Warnock:The Feast of Tabernacles
Juan Carlos Ortiz : The Call to Discipleship. (pub.Logos) written with Jamie Buckingham, the latter by the way was another man who only came to world prominance and effectiveness after a dizzying crash in his pastoral ministry through adultery. This was the book that described what was happening with us young people in Amersham, after the school revival had waned. It wasn't a text book for us.....it rather helped explain this new way of the Spirit that we were already on.Cry of the Human Heart is a brilliant evocation of the true meaning of the New Covenant. It is the forerunner of the current revelation to do with the outworking of grace in the Body of Christ. Both books are so important.
Dr Larry Lea: "Could you not Tarry One Hour"? Messages on the Our Father prayer and in mid 90s was used to break open the whole area of Shame, such that he even earnt a parody on The Simpsons.
Books by Spurgeon. 12 specially produced book on Spurgeon's sermons recently given to Morris Cerullo partners. That by the way is how I got to receive many useful books during the period of my exile from 2nd leveldom in the late 80s and most of the 90s. These Spurgeon books such as "Spiritual Warfare in a Believers Life" come in two 6 part series: Believer's Life series and Life of Christ Series. They are available from Emerald Books. If not Christianbook.com does others
Juan Carlos Ortiz : The Call to Discipleship. (pub.Logos) written with Jamie Buckingham, the latter by the way was another man who only came to world prominance and effectiveness after a dizzying crash in his pastoral ministry through adultery. This was the book that described what was happening with us young people in Amersham, after the school revival had waned. It wasn't a text book for us.....it rather helped explain this new way of the Spirit that we were already on.Cry of the Human Heart is a brilliant evocation of the true meaning of the New Covenant. It is the forerunner of the current revelation to do with the outworking of grace in the Body of Christ. Both books are so important.
Dr Larry Lea: "Could you not Tarry One Hour"? Messages on the Our Father prayer and in mid 90s was used to break open the whole area of Shame, such that he even earnt a parody on The Simpsons.
Books by Spurgeon. 12 specially produced book on Spurgeon's sermons recently given to Morris Cerullo partners. That by the way is how I got to receive many useful books during the period of my exile from 2nd leveldom in the late 80s and most of the 90s. These Spurgeon books such as "Spiritual Warfare in a Believers Life" come in two 6 part series: Believer's Life series and Life of Christ Series. They are available from Emerald Books. If not Christianbook.com does others
George Mueller: The Life of George Mueller His amazing life of faith .Free downloadable mp3s.
Larry Christenson: The Renewed Mind...Using Romanas12:2 as a spring off point
Watchman Nee: Normal Christian Life(Probably only superceded by Norman's book Yes I am),Release of the Spirit,Song of Songs, Sit,Walk,Stand, What shall thisMan Do?
Graham Pulkingham : Gathered For Power. The testimony of Church of The Redeemer,Houston. (Or how God starts to invade denominational churches.) They Left Their Nets. (Testimonies - plus contains one of my alltime favorite poems by Martha Keys)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship. As you have experienced ,a difficult read but you will look back and it will grow increasingly precious.Praise and worship...see also Ruth Heflin
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship. As you have experienced ,a difficult read but you will look back and it will grow increasingly precious.Praise and worship...see also Ruth Heflin
Ed Miller: Thy God Reigneth, The Flaming Flame. (Testimonies of Argentina)
Judson Cornwall:Let us Praise Greatly influenced by Ed Miller. Took my German friend Martin Franke around with him for a month in 1976. The real deal. See also a superb study on true faith, written in response to American 80s TV faith ...well the worse kind : Unfeigned Faith
Merlin Carruthers Praise series. Especially - Prison to Praise.
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Heaven and the Glory - People who have been there. The great thing about these testimonies is, like the gospels themselves, they are different enough to know they are not cloned, that they contain new information, but they tally enough with all the rest...and some contain such striking similarities...while all bear out the scriptures on heaven in our Bibles.Here's looking forward to what's in store Kings kids!!!!
Percy Collett: I walked in heaven with Jesus. 12 cassette series of a 3 day trip to heaven by an American missionary to South American indiginous peoples. Had prayed for decades to be able to see heaven (In my possession - pressed into my hands at Martin Franke's wedding by a little South Korean lady, who said she had prayed who to give this to.)
Roberts Liardon: We saw Heaven. Also 2 other extremely important items. Liardon's God's Generals series, which Jesus specifically commissioned him to complete when he went to heaven. Also Smith Wigglesworth : His Complete Life and Teachings.......a collection in the same vein as the John G Lake book.
Jesse Duplantis: Close Encounters of The God Kind 2 DVD set. Again an amazing testimony.
Ian Mc Cormack A Glimpse of Eternity - free download. You may want to donate a gift to his work
Judson Cornwall:Let us Praise Greatly influenced by Ed Miller. Took my German friend Martin Franke around with him for a month in 1976. The real deal. See also a superb study on true faith, written in response to American 80s TV faith ...well the worse kind : Unfeigned Faith
Merlin Carruthers Praise series. Especially - Prison to Praise.
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Heaven and the Glory - People who have been there. The great thing about these testimonies is, like the gospels themselves, they are different enough to know they are not cloned, that they contain new information, but they tally enough with all the rest...and some contain such striking similarities...while all bear out the scriptures on heaven in our Bibles.Here's looking forward to what's in store Kings kids!!!!
Percy Collett: I walked in heaven with Jesus. 12 cassette series of a 3 day trip to heaven by an American missionary to South American indiginous peoples. Had prayed for decades to be able to see heaven (In my possession - pressed into my hands at Martin Franke's wedding by a little South Korean lady, who said she had prayed who to give this to.)
Roberts Liardon: We saw Heaven. Also 2 other extremely important items. Liardon's God's Generals series, which Jesus specifically commissioned him to complete when he went to heaven. Also Smith Wigglesworth : His Complete Life and Teachings.......a collection in the same vein as the John G Lake book.
Jesse Duplantis: Close Encounters of The God Kind 2 DVD set. Again an amazing testimony.
Ian Mc Cormack A Glimpse of Eternity - free download. You may want to donate a gift to his work
Don Piper: 90 minutes in Heaven ISBN 1 84291 227 5Angels.....Charles and Frances Hunter : Angels on Assignment
HA Baker (Roland Baker's grandad) Visions Beyond The Veil
Terry Law :The Truth About Angels
Mother Basilea Schlink : Realities. (Describes Life on their Canaan Community - everything from walking in the Light together to how God blesses the very fruit and produce of the land)Repentance - The Joy - Filled Life, ( I'd now describe this as the secrets of living a life not hooked into the Devil, but hooked into Christ full-time), Those Who Love Him - (will inspire love for Jesus), Lo He Comes (an example of an earlier book heralding the sort of signs that indicate Jesus' soon Coming) She was Lutheran. Very Lutheran in style. Very very Lutheran! Be warned. But if you are listening in the Spirit you'll catch the heartbeat of God...and many of the Kingdom tricks that make Jesus life work in our lives, and in our Christian communities.
Mother Theresa : Transforming Love . An amazing and hard-hitting book which will show how a 3rd leveller goes into operation. In her case she spent some 40 years being established in her identity in Christ before she received her full call to go to India's slums. Great for Protestants to get their heads round. This is someone who takes the Eucharist in faith. She experiences the Presence of Christ in the Bread and the wine...in the same way that say, many experience the reality of the Holy Spirit's anointing going through a Fire Tunnel. You see once we've got the Realities of Jesus...Prots can start really communicating with Catholics...and if they still don't like us....well...it's not because we're not oozing Jesus....which let's face it ...is probably the main reason why the Northern Irish were beating each other up...in Jesus Name, by the way!!!
Jorge Pradas : Congregados Para Darle Gloria Spanish PDF download . Free. Use Google Alta vista to translate it...badly....or perhaps you speak Spanish. Apostle of the Vision of Living and worshipping as the Body of Christ...and being transformed in a step process into the image of Christ corporately. The vision was correct. Just needed a few 3rd level extras!!! Which we've now got hold of!!! His life message was also "Unity In the Body of Christ" mp3 Spanish message free download. You can hear his spirit of gentleness and firmness...even if you can't get the Spanish!!! I have very little time for 2nd level tunnel vision. Especially when I've had my spirit ripped open by the extremes of the Kingdom as expressed in this book and message list. The Corinthians had tunnel vision and Paul writes to them in a similar vein to Jorge's burden here.
Lee Strobel : The Case for Faith. The Case For A Creator. The Case For Christ. 3 books by this ex-legal journalist. Really absorbing fact-filled books....also introducing you to some of the main Christian intellects around the world today.
Sadhu Sundar Singh: A converted Sikh Sundar, wise holy man. His extraordinary story, his visions
Grant Jeffrey: Is a very prolific author providing much information on how the world is getting ever nearer to fulfilling the very prophecies they scorn and laugh about. Covers a whole variety of topics such as Jewish background, Prophetic fulfilment, how the Jews want to rebuild the Temple, even practical Christian issues of how to manage finance. Probably have received over 10 quite lengthy tomes through Morris Cerullo. Good to be informed on what secular media never tell you.
Bill Cooper: After The Flood. Tries to explore some of Biblical history outside of the territories delineated by the Bible itself. Why are so many of the geographical names derived from Hebrew names? How Israeli artefacts have turned up even in Japan. Some of England's pre Roman history. In a word, don't let the secularists snatch all the real details just cos it doesn't fit their worldview. Let's try and tease out real history.
Bert Ghezzi: The Angry Christian . Ann Arbor Michigan was the epicentre of Catholic Charismatic Renewal and produced some fine Bible teachers and worship music. Bert Ghezzi goes into this thorny area of the different ways unprocessed anger can seep out of a Christian's life, souring all those in his/her immediate environment. Often the Christian is absolutely blind to it. Probably similar to Griff Rees Jones' recent TV Programme. I had a baptism into this subject with the many related anger verses mentioned in Proverbs.
Colin Whitaker Rheinhard Bonnke: A Passion For the Gospel. One of the best biographies of the fellow-countryman the German's ignored for many years as he started to storm through Africa. Lessons in boldness! Like Morris Cerullo.
Maurice Smith - in particular..."20th Century Pilgrim". Why. Because although 5-5-55 and Amazing Grace detail his initial revelation of the Grace of God, this latter takes him further through a virtual breakdown, which was hugely worrying to many other key leaders in the UK, into an understanding of what I call the 3rd Level which Norman describes. I believe this is a fuller more accurate revelation than his previous writings which only went so far. I am biased because I experienced a similar breakdown in my more sheltered context. I was never a high profile conference speaker!!! Actually no kind of speaker at all.
Norman Grubb : Yes I am, (The most complete of all his books studying how Christ's life works in a believer ) CT Studd(How a top cricketer is turned into a fiery missionary), Rees Howells Intercessor, (Indepth biography describing God's training steps for a mighty national intercessor. I would call this 3rd Level Intercession. More on this later.)
HA Baker (Roland Baker's grandad) Visions Beyond The Veil
Terry Law :The Truth About Angels
Mother Basilea Schlink : Realities. (Describes Life on their Canaan Community - everything from walking in the Light together to how God blesses the very fruit and produce of the land)Repentance - The Joy - Filled Life, ( I'd now describe this as the secrets of living a life not hooked into the Devil, but hooked into Christ full-time), Those Who Love Him - (will inspire love for Jesus), Lo He Comes (an example of an earlier book heralding the sort of signs that indicate Jesus' soon Coming) She was Lutheran. Very Lutheran in style. Very very Lutheran! Be warned. But if you are listening in the Spirit you'll catch the heartbeat of God...and many of the Kingdom tricks that make Jesus life work in our lives, and in our Christian communities.
Mother Theresa : Transforming Love . An amazing and hard-hitting book which will show how a 3rd leveller goes into operation. In her case she spent some 40 years being established in her identity in Christ before she received her full call to go to India's slums. Great for Protestants to get their heads round. This is someone who takes the Eucharist in faith. She experiences the Presence of Christ in the Bread and the wine...in the same way that say, many experience the reality of the Holy Spirit's anointing going through a Fire Tunnel. You see once we've got the Realities of Jesus...Prots can start really communicating with Catholics...and if they still don't like us....well...it's not because we're not oozing Jesus....which let's face it ...is probably the main reason why the Northern Irish were beating each other up...in Jesus Name, by the way!!!
Jorge Pradas : Congregados Para Darle Gloria Spanish PDF download . Free. Use Google Alta vista to translate it...badly....or perhaps you speak Spanish. Apostle of the Vision of Living and worshipping as the Body of Christ...and being transformed in a step process into the image of Christ corporately. The vision was correct. Just needed a few 3rd level extras!!! Which we've now got hold of!!! His life message was also "Unity In the Body of Christ" mp3 Spanish message free download. You can hear his spirit of gentleness and firmness...even if you can't get the Spanish!!! I have very little time for 2nd level tunnel vision. Especially when I've had my spirit ripped open by the extremes of the Kingdom as expressed in this book and message list. The Corinthians had tunnel vision and Paul writes to them in a similar vein to Jorge's burden here.
Lee Strobel : The Case for Faith. The Case For A Creator. The Case For Christ. 3 books by this ex-legal journalist. Really absorbing fact-filled books....also introducing you to some of the main Christian intellects around the world today.
Sadhu Sundar Singh: A converted Sikh Sundar, wise holy man. His extraordinary story, his visions
Grant Jeffrey: Is a very prolific author providing much information on how the world is getting ever nearer to fulfilling the very prophecies they scorn and laugh about. Covers a whole variety of topics such as Jewish background, Prophetic fulfilment, how the Jews want to rebuild the Temple, even practical Christian issues of how to manage finance. Probably have received over 10 quite lengthy tomes through Morris Cerullo. Good to be informed on what secular media never tell you.
Bill Cooper: After The Flood. Tries to explore some of Biblical history outside of the territories delineated by the Bible itself. Why are so many of the geographical names derived from Hebrew names? How Israeli artefacts have turned up even in Japan. Some of England's pre Roman history. In a word, don't let the secularists snatch all the real details just cos it doesn't fit their worldview. Let's try and tease out real history.
Bert Ghezzi: The Angry Christian . Ann Arbor Michigan was the epicentre of Catholic Charismatic Renewal and produced some fine Bible teachers and worship music. Bert Ghezzi goes into this thorny area of the different ways unprocessed anger can seep out of a Christian's life, souring all those in his/her immediate environment. Often the Christian is absolutely blind to it. Probably similar to Griff Rees Jones' recent TV Programme. I had a baptism into this subject with the many related anger verses mentioned in Proverbs.
Colin Whitaker Rheinhard Bonnke: A Passion For the Gospel. One of the best biographies of the fellow-countryman the German's ignored for many years as he started to storm through Africa. Lessons in boldness! Like Morris Cerullo.
Maurice Smith - in particular..."20th Century Pilgrim". Why. Because although 5-5-55 and Amazing Grace detail his initial revelation of the Grace of God, this latter takes him further through a virtual breakdown, which was hugely worrying to many other key leaders in the UK, into an understanding of what I call the 3rd Level which Norman describes. I believe this is a fuller more accurate revelation than his previous writings which only went so far. I am biased because I experienced a similar breakdown in my more sheltered context. I was never a high profile conference speaker!!! Actually no kind of speaker at all.
Norman Grubb : Yes I am, (The most complete of all his books studying how Christ's life works in a believer ) CT Studd(How a top cricketer is turned into a fiery missionary), Rees Howells Intercessor, (Indepth biography describing God's training steps for a mighty national intercessor. I would call this 3rd Level Intercession. More on this later.)
Gene Edwards: writes on historical figures who have ploughed the furrow of the depths of Jesus Christ. Also the vision of Body Life,how the Church functions or doesn't....then also several novels on Bible events. Christian Classics Transcribed:100 Days in the Secret Place featuring Guyon ,Molinos and Fenelon, Practicing the Presence of God Brother Lawrence and Laubach in one volume by Edwards publishing name Christian Books,Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ (Teachings of Madame Guyon); Three Kings - had me in tears, about Saul,David and Absolom , Divine Romance (The Whole Bible as love story) , Our Mission - how to handle splits and disagreements in the Body.
Ern Baxter: Study Books :The Beginnings of Christian Life. The Beginnings of Church Life.His greatest influence on me has been his messages.
Dan's the man to sort you out on these. see also New Wine articles/ many other things.Key Messages
1975 series "The King and His army" On Saul and David.
"Going Into The Land "series on the people in the Wilderness.
Dales 1976.
"Thy Kingdom Come " Kansas City Shepherd's Conference 1975. Door opening Word on how the Church does the stuff now...not relegating everything to Jesus some time in the future.
"Jonathan and David" - Covenant Love - a vision for how we now should live in the Body of Christ. 1976 Capel Bible Week. Devastatingly moving. You will never live the same again.
Richard Wurmbrandt: "Christ on the Jewish Road" (restores the Jewish content in Jesus story )"Tortured for Christ" "Marx and Satan"0-89107-379-5 This latter book gives lots of background details that are hardly known, and together with the secular book on Mao by Jung Chang and others by Solzhenitsyn will help fill you in on how evil this spirit of so called "secular independence" that we hooked into in Genesis 3:5 really is when allowed free reign, manifesting in the form here of Communism. All this info should serve to wake you up to what according to The Book of Revelation., is around the corner, in the battle to see God's reign come to Earth. I lived in a second level Christian Community. Second levellers are not defined on who they are. They slide in and out of Christ dangerously. Like Peter, they will stab you in the back without thinking about it....until Christ has pinned them down and prepared them for 3rd Level living. Paul's decription of the Corinthians captures 2nd levellers perfectly. Unbroken saints in community together can be at times nearly as bad as any socialist/communist state... or maybe in extremis worse. Unfortunately we have to pass through the 2nd level to fully understand our need for the 3rd Level, and Christ's free and flowing grace.
Brother Andrew: "God's Smuggler", and "Light Force". It's not just what he is doing. It is about who he is, who God has made him. Hears God and gets on with it.Often a decade ahead of the general Body of Christ. Light Force is about his 90s Muslim work. If the Body had listened to him, if USA had listened to him, it is unlikely 7/11 could have happened in the way it did.
John G Lake : "His Life, His Ministry and Sermons" A collection of writings and sermon transcriptions. This man was a pioneer on every level. An apostolic breakthrough ministry in South Africa, then after returning to USA and to Spokane, Washington, is on record for making this town the healthiest in the nation...as a national statistic. He started sketching out many spiritual and Biblical principles which describe life in the Spirit....principles we are building on and seeking to fill out in many of today's writings and messages, including Bill Johnson and RobRufus.
Steve Lightle: "Exodus II". Life and ministry in the Melchizedek order.Probably the true value of this book will only be seen in the difficult years ahead.
Arthur Blessitt: "Turned onto Jesus". Evangelist to the Jesus People. This is a testimony book of these times...but important because He too had a real encounter one night with Jesus Himself.Preached in Trafalgar Square to us all in Summer 1972 at London Festival For Jesus.
Graham Cooke: Develop Your Prophetic Gifting
Sentinel Group Transformations I and II DVDs. Check for your area whether to order PAL or NTSC. If you've not seen these examples of how whole areas and regions can be released by the power of the gospel. Should be seen by every UK Town Council before planning anything.
Fasting and Intercession.....
Arthur Wallis God's Chosen Fast. Perhaps THE classic on this.
Derek Prince: Shaping history through Prayer and Fasting
Cindy Jacobs:Possessing The Gates of The Enemy. A training manual for Militant Intercession. I think this book is a great 2nd level book....but bet you anything you like it will all be revisited at a deeper level as the 3rd Level breaks out.
Lydia Prince: Appointment in Jerusalem Third Level intercession fore runner in the same vein as Rees Howells see Norman Grubb.
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Morris Cerullo : Just about any book is worth reading. A Fore runner general in the Body of Christ. I have supported him and his operations with thousands of pounds over the years. He is both the best of what there is, but alternately drives me nuts as well. Has brought a lot of stuff /paraphernalia from his conversion time (1950s America) with him to the present day. The closest I have seen him to the 3rd level message in print was (absolutely surprisingly for its subject) a recent booklet on Generational Curses. In general has great revelation on 60 whole years of subjects including for example "God's Covenant Anointing". "You can know How to Defeat Satan" Life testimony book "Son Build Me an Army". Has absolutely awesome authority in Christ, but probably needs a few other 3rd Levellers to tell him some truths. Probably surrounded by too many that are overawed by him. Americans are very pragmatic. I am called such and such. I have a ministry. Therefore my ministry is called "Kenneth Copeland Ministries, or Morris Cerullo Ministries, or Kenneth Hagin Ministries. They haven't a clue how offensive that is to the rest of the world....saints such as Mel Tari of the Indonesian Revival. Best things you can learn from reading Morris and watching him move: how revelation is an advanced burst of supernatural knowledge. He runs all his meetings and big operations on this principle. His God is a big God, so he expects the projects he undertakes to be on an absolutely massive scale. Has operated like this for 60 years!!!! His sons in the faith are legion and work on similarly massive scales.
Mel Tari : Like a Mighty Wind, and Gentle Breeze of Jesus. 2 books by this gentle forerunner ministry with the vision of the Body of Christ on the outbreak in the 60s in Indonesia.
John Rea: Mel's father in law. Great and exhaustive learned tome on "The Holy Spirit". American Professor does Holy Spirit studies. My Dad liked it when nothing else was learned enough. Very similar to Dr Heribert Muhlen's effect on Germany in the Paderborn seminary when I was with Martin Franke in Paderborn in 1977.
Bob and Rose Weiner studies. 1980s.Quick way to learn about Jewish subjects and end-time revelation in the Bible from a Holy Spirit perspective. Had to tone down their message for 20 years to wait for America to catch up. But contains a lot of 3rd Level details way ahead of time.Haven't wasted their interim years though, moving at very high levels with Harvard students and mobilising Christian political activism. Studies include: Overcoming Life parts 1 and 2. Bible Studies for the Preparation of the Bride - a study of the Song of Solomon.
Yonghi Cho -"The Fourth Dimension". And "Prayer:Key to Revival" The former is an attempt to describe through biographical testimony the actual practics of how faith works. This marries up with details in Norman Grubb's books about the use of faith, and the training that Rees Howells underwent. The annoying thing to an artist is it can seem a bit deluded in its conceit. Though if you read the terrible things that Cho experienced en route....you can see his way through to the Tree of Life was very much through the double-edged swords of the angels guarding nearby.(Genesis reference). Probably needs a bit of balancing with Judson Cornwall's book "Unfeigned Faith"
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Brad Jersak Can You Hear Me (developing listening prayer) Kissing the Leper (seeing jesus in the least of these. Both excellent. see blog Links section
Brad Jersak Can You Hear Me (developing listening prayer) Kissing the Leper (seeing jesus in the least of these. Both excellent. see blog Links section
Corrie Ten Boom The Hiding Place. Her wartime autobiography in a labour camp. Tramp For the Lord. Amazing Love. Was truly an apostle of Love.
Jessie Penn Lewis War on the Saints free. Awakening in Wales.(1906 revival) . Thy Hidden Ones (Song of Songs...influenced Watchman Nee's book) Life in the Spirit (Ephesians)
Israel......Basilea Schlink - Israel My Chosen People
Neal W May - A Biblical Tour of The Holy Land
Michele Guiness - A Child of the Covenant
Muslim subjects..........
Don Richardson - Secrets of The Koran
Bilquis Sheikh I dared to call Him Father
Doctrinal Struggles.....................
Using the example of predestination v freewill in this case, but could be anything.
The sort of destruction it can cause:
Roy Hattersley:A Brand from the Burning - The Life of John Wesley, and containing the struggles with Whitfield.
Roger T Forster and V Paul Marston - God's Strategy in Human History. More of an Armenian balance to the Calvinist tendency of Freezing solid into a Que Sera Sera attitude to the Church moving forward.
The Blood Of Jesus and Truths about what Covenant is........
Benny Hinn Power in the Blood
Andrew Murray The Power of the Blood of Jesus. (See all his other books too)
Kenneth Copeland The Blood Covenant
Copeland is half Cherokee and understands the old covenant rituals of blood covenant, which reflects on the absolute binding nature of Christ's Covenant. The CD message. If you can ever get to see the old 80s DVD message....you will be marked for life!!!!
Israel......Basilea Schlink - Israel My Chosen People
Neal W May - A Biblical Tour of The Holy Land
Michele Guiness - A Child of the Covenant
Muslim subjects..........
Don Richardson - Secrets of The Koran
Bilquis Sheikh I dared to call Him Father
Doctrinal Struggles.....................
Using the example of predestination v freewill in this case, but could be anything.
The sort of destruction it can cause:
Roy Hattersley:A Brand from the Burning - The Life of John Wesley, and containing the struggles with Whitfield.
Roger T Forster and V Paul Marston - God's Strategy in Human History. More of an Armenian balance to the Calvinist tendency of Freezing solid into a Que Sera Sera attitude to the Church moving forward.
The Blood Of Jesus and Truths about what Covenant is........
Benny Hinn Power in the Blood
Andrew Murray The Power of the Blood of Jesus. (See all his other books too)
Kenneth Copeland The Blood Covenant
Copeland is half Cherokee and understands the old covenant rituals of blood covenant, which reflects on the absolute binding nature of Christ's Covenant. The CD message. If you can ever get to see the old 80s DVD message....you will be marked for life!!!!
Two books on the secular shelves.............
M.Scott Peck The Different Drum . The one on everyone's shelves is "The Road Less Travelled". This guy is a respected Christian psychologist counsellor. But this book again helped shape my understanding of how we grow internally as we get older. The sort of transformations that we go through in our different growth stages, which help again re-define the growth stages listed in 1 John 2:12ff.
Jeffrey Satinover - The Truth Behind The Bible Code.0-283-06335-1 Grant Jeffrey also covered this subject, to do with the way that God seems to underline the inspiration of the Bible in the very warp and woof of its internal structure. Kaas is even more sceptical in his approach than Jeffrey....but at the time of writing he had become at least a believing Jew, and was noting how scores of high level Jewish mathematicians the world over have been converting back to Judaism or Messianic faith and were becoming increasingly excited by the mathematics in the scriptures. EW Bullinger, a Unitarian, and Bible Scholar has also researched scriptures along similar mathematical lines...as well as doing a treatise on the Gospel themes as written in the stars....basically God knew how the universe would look from our little old planet, so allowed constellation shapes to declare pictures of His Truth....like the Water Pourer for example. Jesus pouring out the Holy Spirit.
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Bonhoeffer says it!
In between making a Revell Star Wars "Y Wing Fighter" with Ben and reviewing a booklist I'm compiling, I came across Chapter 8 of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Cost of Discipleship". Another suss for Jamie.
In Hadron III I describe "the Willing Christ who wants to fulfil the Law through me." Chapter 8 is called the Righteousness of Christ and says the same stuff, in more traditional language and with greater eloquence..... But if you get your Holy Spirit XRay specs out, you should find it is exactly the same spirit underneath that I am wishing to convey. As I've said many times from Song of Solomon the real Truth is something like a "Dance between two armies". It is the picture of the suspended orb (3rd 07000INTUNEpost) The problem is you get both armies after you at once! Once you are firmly established in the 3rd Level, you can like Jesus, or Stephen,or Paul, with the Pharisees and Sadducees set the two onto each other, to remove the heat from yourself!!!!
But you'll find this with virtually every Bible Truth....Predestination/freewill. Grace/Law. Word/Spirit. The Truth who is a Living Person steps out from the shadows of 2 opposing Left-brain statues.
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The Righteousness of Christ - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, all things be accomplished. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5.17-20)
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had been abrogated, when Jesus made promises like this. For these
promises reversed all popular notions of right and wrong, and
pronounced a blessing on all that was accounted worthless. Jesus
spoke to his disciples and described them as men who now pos-
sessed all things through the sovereign grace of God, as heirs-
apparent of the kingdom of heaven. They enjoy perfect com-
munion with Christ, who had made all things new. They are the
salt, the light, the city set on the hill. The old life is dead and done
with. How tempting then to suppose that Jesus would give the
old order its coup de grace by repealing the law of the old covenant,
and pronounce his followers free to enjoy the liberty of the Son
of God! After all Jesus had said, the disciples might well have
thought like Marcion, who accused the Jews of tampering with
the text, and altered it to: 'Think ye that I am come to fulfil the
law and the prophets? I am not come to fulfil, but to destroy.'
Many others since Marcion have read and expounded this saying
of Jesus as if that were what he said. But Jesus says: 'You must not
imagine that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets....'
And so saying he vindicates the authority of the law of the old
covenant.How is this to be understood? We know that Jesus is speaking
to his own followers, to men who owe an exclusive allegiance to
himself. He had allowed no law to act as a barrier to his fellowship
with his disciples; we saw that when we were dealing with Luke
9.57 ff.Discipleship means adherence to Jesus Christ alone, and
immediately. But now comes the surprise - the disciples are bound
to the Old Testament law. This has a double significance. First, it
means that adherence to the law is something quite different from
the following of Christ, and, secondly, it means that any adherence
to his person that disregards the law is equally removed from the
following of him. It is, however, Jesus himself who points to the
law those to whom he has granted his whole promise and his
whole fellowship. Because it is their Lord who does this, they are
bound to acknowledge the law. The question inevitably arises,
Which is our final authority, Christ or the law? To which are we
bound? Christ had said that no law was to be allowed to come
between him and his disciples. Now he tells us that to abandon
the law would be to separate ourselves from him. What exactly
does he mean?
The law Jesus refers to is the law of the old covenant, not a new
law, but the same law which he quoted to the rich young man
and the lawyer when they wanted to know the revealed will of
God. It becomes a new law only because it is Christ who binds
his followers to it. For Christians, therefore, the law is not a
'better law' than that of the Pharisees, but one and the same; every
letter of it, every jot and tittle, must remain in force and be
observed until the end of the world. But there is a 'better right-
eousness' which is expected of Christians. Without it none can
enter into the kingdom of heaven, for it is the indispensable condi-
tion of discipleship. None can have this better righteousness but
those to whom Christ is speaking here, those whom he has called.
The call of Christ, in fact Christ himself, is the sine qua non of this
better righteousness.
Now we can see why up to now Jesus has said nothing about
himself in the Sermon on the Mount. Between the disciples and
the better righteousness demanded of them stands the Person of
Christ, who came to fulfil the law of the old covenant. This is the
fundamental presupposition of the whole Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus manifests his perfect union with the will of God as revealed
in the Old Testament law and prophets.
He has in fact nothing
to add to the commandments of God, except this,
that he keeps them.
He fulfils the law, and he tells us so himself, therefore it must be
true. He fulfils the law down to the last iota. But that means that
he must die, he alone understands the true nature of the law as
God's law: the law is not itself God, nor is God the law. It was
the error of Israel to put the law in God's place, to make the law
their God and their God a law. The disciples were confronted
with the opposite danger of denying the law its divinity altogether
and divorcing God from his law. Both errors lead to the same
result. By confounding God and the law, the Jews were trying to
use the law to exploit the Law-giver: He was swallowed up in the
law, and therefore no longer its Lord. By imagining that God
and the law could be divorced from one another, the disciples
were trying to exploit God by their possession of salvation. In
both cases, the gift was confounded with the Giver: God was
denied equally, whether it was with the help of the law, or with
the promise of salvation.
Confronted with these twin errors, Jesus vindicates the divine
authority of the law. God is its giver and its Lord, and only in
personal communion with God is the law fulfilled. There is no
fulfilment of the law apart from communion with God,
and no communion with God apart from fulfilment of
the law.
To forget the first condition was the mistake
of the Jews,
and to forget the second the temptation of the disciples.
Jesus, the Son of God, who alone lives in perfect communion
with him, vindicates the law of the old covenant by coming to
fulfil it. He was the only Man who ever fulfilled the law, and
therefore he alone can teach the law and its fulfilment
aright. Thedisciples would naturally grasp that as soon as he
told them, forthey knew who he was.
But the Jews could not grasp it as long
as they refused to believe in him. It was thus only to be expected
that they would reject his teaching on the law: to them it was
blasphemy against God, because it was blasphemy against his law.
Jesus, the champion of the true law, must suffer at the hands of
the champions of the false law. He dies on the cross as a blasphemer,
a transgressor of the law, because he has vindicated the true against
the false.
The only way for him to fulfil the law is by dying a sinner's
death on the cross. There he embodies in his person the perfect
fulfilment of the law.
That is to say, Jesus Christ and he alone fulfils the law, because
he alone lives in perfect communion with God. It is Jesus himself
who comes between the disciples and the law, not the law which
comes between Jesus and the disciples. They find their way to the
law through the cross of Christ, Thus by pointing his disciples to
the law which he alone fulfils, he forges a further bond between
himself and them. He must needs reject the notion that men can
cleave to him and be free from the law, for that spells enthusiasm,
and so far from leading to adherence to Jesus, means libertarianism.
But this allays the disciples' anxiety that adherence to the law
would sever them from Jesus. Such an anxiety could only spring
from that self-same error which cut off the Jews from God. Instead
the disciples now learn that genuine adherence to Christ also
means adherence to the law of God.
But if Jesus comes between the disciples and the law, he does so
not to release them from the duties it imposes, but to validate his
demand that they should fulfil it. Just because they are bound to
him, they must obey the law as he does. The fact that Jesus has
fulfilled the law down to the very last letter does not release them
from the same obedience. The law is fulfilled, that is all. But it is
precisely this which makes it properly valid for the first time.
That is why he who obeys and teaches the law will be great in the
kingdom of heaven. 'Do and teach': we are reminded that it is
possible to teach the law without fulfilling it, to teach it in such
a way that it cannot be fulfilled. That sort of teaching has no
warrant from Jesus. The law will be obeyed as certainly as he
obeyed it himself. If men cleave to him who fulfilled the law and
follow him, they will find themselves both teaching and fulfilling
the law. Only the doer of the law can remain in communion
with Jesus.
It is not the law which distinguishes the disciples from the Jews,
but the 'better righteousness'. The righteousness of the disciples,
we are told, exceeds that of the scribes. That is because it is some-
thing extraordinary and unusual. This is the first rime we meet
the word Trepiaaeveiv, which is so important in verse 47. We
must ask, how exactly does the righteousness of the Pharisees differ
from that of the disciples? Certainly the Pharisees never imagined
that the law must be taught but not obeyed: they knew their
Bibles better than that! No, it was rather their ambition to be
doers of the law. Their idea of righteousness was a direct, literal
and practical fulfilment of the commandment, their ideal was to
model their behaviour exactly on the demands of the law. Of
course they knew that they could never realize that ideal, there
was bound to be an excess which needed forgiveness of sins to
cover it. Their obedience was never more than imperfect. With
the disciple also righteousness could only take the form of obedi-
ence to the law. No one who failed to do the law could be
accounted righteous. But the disciple had the advantage over the
Pharisee in that his doing of the law is in fact perfect. How is such
a thing possible? Because between the disciples and the law stands
one who has perfectly fulfilled it, one with whom they live in
communion. They are faced not with a law which has never yet
been fulfilled, but with one whose demands have already been
satisfied. The righteousness it demands is already there, the right-
eousness of Jesus which submits to the cross because that is. what
the law demands. This righteousness is therefore not a duty owed,
but a perfect and truly personal communion with God, and Jesus
not only possesses this righteousness, but is himself the personal
embodiment of it. He is the righteousness of the disciples. By
calling them he has admitted them to partnership with himself,
and made them partakers of his righteousness in its fulness. That is
what Jesus means when he prefaces his teaching on the 'better
righteousness' with reference to his own fulfilment of the law.
Of course the righteousness of the disciples can never be a
personal achievement;it is always a gift, which they
received when theywere called to follow him.
In fact their righteousness consists
precisely in their following him, and in the beatitudes the reward
of the kingdom of heaven has been promised to it. It is a righteous-
ness under the cross, it belongs only to the poor, the tempted, the
hungry, the meek, the peacemakers, the persecuted - who endure
their lot for the sake of Jesus; it is the visible righteousness of
those who for the sake of Jesus are the light of the world and the
city set on the hill. This is where the righteousness of the disciple
exceeds that of the Pharisees; it is grounded solely upon the call
to fellowship with him who alone fulfils the law. Their righteous-
ness is righteousness indeed, for from henceforth they do the will
of God and fulfil the law themselves. Again, it is not enough to
teach the law of Christ, it must be done, otherwise it is no better
than the old law. In what follows the disciples are told how to
practise this righteousness of Christ. In a word, it means following
him. It is the real and active faith in the righteousness of Christ.
It is the new law, the law of Christ.
from Memoir at the beginning of the book:" We know that Dietrich Bonhoeffer,who was never tried (by the Nazis) went steadfastly on his way to be hanged, and died with admirable calmness and dignity
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