A New Pentecost

About seven years ago, long before I had heard about Reclaiming the Seven Mountains of Culture, the Holy Spirit was speaking to me about this in a slightly different way. In fact, I wrote a poem titled, “A New Pentecost”.

No longer language we first utter,

Human tones and dialects.

Nor words that kinsman use to clutter

Stories that do not reflect,

The special journey of the Spirit,

Unfolding bright where there was dim.

Illuminating with light’s laughter

Exploits of Christ’s mighty Chrism.

Tongues now familiar being gifted,

Fall upon apostles new.

Dialects of art and science

Humanities, the chosen view.

Speak of those things that are not

Transporting them to other planes

To become the things that always were

A rendezvous is what yet remains.

Artists speaking to musicians,

Poets with technologists.

Mathematicians going over

Possibilities with the physicists.

The message given is collective,

Clergy and economist can now relate

To our modern global problems

With purposeful development.

Some will nay-say as they will

“All are drunk, this cannot be!

There is no hope of life eternal

Apart from man’s own majesty.”

Apostles rise within the Kingdom

Full of hope for the New Day

Confident of God’s sure leading

By the path known as The Way.

We can see here how God conspired in the Biblically recorded Pentecost to get the word out about Himself; We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. In the new Pentecost, the message has not changed, nor has the agent: the great Holy Spirit. What have changed are the languages that the message is going forth in. No longer native tongues, but familiar tongues such as art, science, literature, physics, mathematics, industry, technology, economics; the language of humanities!

Today, God wants people of every familiar tongue to spread His word in that familiar tongue, that all may understand and believe. He also wants cross-cultural sharing; artists speaking to musicians, mathematicians talking to physicists, industrialists speaking with economists, poets interacting with technologists, etc. Once the cross-cultural communication begins, it will be evident to those involved that other segments of the humanities family has the same message and a coming together for purposeful development will occur.

There will be the nay-sayers that claim all are drunk and try to derail the move of God. It will take those of us who, like Peter, are willing to stand and set the record straight.

A New Way of Thinking

I believe 2011 will be looked back upon as a pivotal year for the church of Jesus Christ in America. The fervor of mid-term elections is over in our country and I feel like our attention needs to be turned from the temporal to the eternal, from our earthly affairs to His spiritual mandate. There is certainly a time and mandate to be political and do all we can to elect Godly leaders and continue to pray for those in authority, that we may lead quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty (1 Tim 2:2). But there is also a time, and that time is now, that God’s people must be prophetical, being used as Kingdom ambassadors to usher in the rule of God into every situation we have influence in and others we have up to this time ignored. But in order that His kingdom be established through us, it must first be established in us.

You see, salvation is the door into the kingdom, but the establishment of the kingdom is a process within us. In the New Testament, we first hear of the kingdom in Matthew 3:1,2 and 4:17. It’s interesting that the last of the Old Testament prophets as well as the One of whom they prophesied connect repentance with the kingdom of heaven in the present tense; at hand. We have for a long time forgotten what the meaning of repentance is. We seem to rally around the point that repentance is a change of behavior. What we forget is that without a change of mind, an action can only be modified for a time; a definite change only comes with a new paradigm to support it. Repentance in the Greek is metanoeō-to think differently or afterwards, that is, reconsider.

So the kingdom comes now only with a change of mind that brings a new attitude which affects our actions. What John and the prophets of old were saying, what Jesus and the New Testament apostles were saying, what the Spirit of God is now saying to the Church is, we’ve got to change our mind on some things. What things? Anything that is keeping us separated from God's purposes to use us in the building of His kingdom.

The Times They Are a Changin'

I realize the office of an apostle is misunderstood or flatly rejected by much of the church. Jesus gave the gift to the body of Christ, but much of the church has failed to open it. Denominationalism, in many cases, has reinforced the splintering of the body, and has replaced the maturing unity that the apostle is called to contribute to within the fullness of the fivefold ministry (Eph 4:11-16). But times, they are a changin’. The prophetic ministry is now sounding an ever persistent alarm both within and outside the church to hear what the Spirit is saying concerning the apostolic office. Prophets of God are breaking up the fallow ground and planting seed that will bring forth the much needed acknowledgment and acceptance of the apostle as a resource to the church.

Practically speaking, this means that many apostolic ministries are made to function outside the gates of the city for which they are called to be an integral part of. I have talked to other apostolic ministries and this seems to be a common occurrence with regards to functioning within a local church body. We are held at bay or allowed very little space, if any, in which to minister. This is why I feel some parachurch ministries are apostolic ministries which have found it more effective to “carry out their mission usually independent of church oversight.” Sometimes, an apostle has to do what an apostle has to do, not out of rebellion, but in order that the job get done. If the reformer’s message won’t be heard within the church, their thesis will certainly be posted on its doors.