moved to new premises

I have now moved my blog over to http://marcustutt.wordpress.com/ where there is already a new post. I have really enjoyed using eblogger to find my blogging feet. It's a great service but I needed one or two extra features that were not available here. I am however missing the BlogList widget and one or two other things. I am keeping my bible blog (which I must post to soon) on eblogger as I think it works better for that project http://marcusbible.blogspot.com/.

Testimony of supernatural healing

Just finished a packed weekend. I had the privilege of marrying an excellent couple on Saturday. Preached in the morning on two sites, then had lunch with the amazing Kings Care team. I felt warn out but happy to have done what God wanted me to do. Since I physically put myself in the places he had designated for me, and did my best to serve those around me, I trust that he used me. My natural inclination is always to come away thinking "I could have done so much better" so it's soo good to know God's "well done" in my spirit. I am so grateful to be co-working with Jesus and be included in his Father's approval of him.

I was preaching on Acts 3:1-21 and decide late last night that I had too much material. I always get two thirds of the way through a preach and have to rush the rest so I decided to only do two out of my seven points and leave lots of time for prayer at the end. As it was I only got through one and a half of them and was my usual 40 minutes. Oh well. My plan was to preach through the healing miracles in Acts but it seems as if I could do the whole series on this one passage!

The passage is about Peter healing a man who can't walk and coincidently I have been flowing Delia Knox's unfolding testimony at the Bay of the Holy Spirit Revival for the last week or so. Basically she was in a car accident some 22 years ago and was left paralysed from the waist down with no feeling in her legs. As she was prayed for last week she got some feeling back, then stood up and with a lot of help walked around for a bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjM4xrw1ds&feature=related

Delia Knox

What you are watching happened right in front of me at the Bay of the Holy Spirit Revival on August 27, 2010. Many of us here in Mobile, AL have known Bishop Levy Knox and his wife Delia for many years. Delia was injured in a car accident on Christmas Day, 1987, and was paralyzed from the waist down. She has had absolutely no feeling in her legs for 23 years. Until now. If you have never seen Jesus make the lame to walk... get ready. pastormarkDLF  August 27, 2010

Same thing here I think:
http://www.nogodhere.com/jesus-heals-the-bishops-wife-lady-delia-knox/

On subsequent nights she improved still further until in the last few days she has walked unaided. That is amazing!!! I'm trying to be as sure as I can that it's for real but so far not a hint for any foul play! Its really encouraging!

Here she seems to have more strength and need less hlep:
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/09/delia_knox_revival.html
http://videos.al.com/mobile-press-register/2010/09/delia_knox_speaks_of_the_god_t.html
Sept. 3, 2010

And in this most recent one she is walking unaided at times!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpWSptjG8eQ
 September 04, 2010

And here's another version taken on a phone by the look of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpj0zv6QS4E&feature=related

Everyone is saying she was totally paralyzed for 22 years below the waist and now she is walking! Wow. And I am speaking on Peter and John healing a man crippled form birth who could not walk. A more serious condition I grant you, and one that was healed much quicker (he is jumping around a few minutes after being healed) but this is never the less the most amazing testimony I have seen! I'll keep following it.

(Others links
http://healingherald.org/2010/08/delia-walks/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Daphne-AL/Church-of-His-Presence/10150108683740422
http://www.3dwoman.org/Networking_Chapters.html
)

moving home

I am moving this blog to http://marcustutt.wordpress.com/ as I think the facilities there are better. I wanted to be able to group series like my "2000 years of Charismatic Christianity" notes and tag blogs etc. It should make the blog easier to read and use. If you have subscribed to receive email updates then please unsubscribe from tjhis one and subscribe to the new one. If you are reading this in an email now then simply click the "unsubscribe now" link at the bottom of the email. Then goto  http://marcustutt.wordpress.com/ and scroll down till you see

Email Subscription and click "sign me up". I hope you enjoy the new site! 

It's not about me, or Wally!

Last week I blogged about my struggle to press through the fog of moralism that sometimes clouds the truth in God's word to find Jesus. The story of Abraham and Lot, I felt, was not there to show me about me and about what I must do but to tell me about God and what he has done. http://marcusbible.blogspot.com/2010/08/genesis-13-and-14-thinking-little-about.html 

Then I watched this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkNa6tLWrqk&feature=player_embedded#!
When I say "I couldn't have put it better myself" I really mean it. I didn't!  but this short video sums up something of what I was  groping for in my blog. The bible is  basically about Jesus and if I don't get that then everything I think the bible says about me will be rather distorted.

In the video Tim Keller asks:

Tim Keller

"Is the bible basically about you and what you should do or about Jesus and what he has done?...Is David and Goliath basically about you and how you can be like David and Goliath, or about him, the one who really  took on the only giants that can kill us. And his victory is imputed to us.

Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden (his garden, a much tougher garden) and whose obedience is imputed to us.

Jesus is the  true and better Abel who though innocently slain has blood that cries out not for our condemnation but for our equital

Jesus is the  true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go into the void not knowing wither he went.

Jesus is the  true and better Isaac who was not just sacrificed by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us all. God said to Abraham now I know tyou love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love from me . Now, we at the foot of the cross, can say to God, now we know that you love me because you did not with hold your son, your  only son whom you love from me.

Jesus is the  true and better Jacob, who wrestled and took the blow of Justice we deserve so we like Jacob only receive the wound  of grace to wake us up and discipline us.

Jesus is the  true and better Joseph who is at the right had of the king and forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his power to save them.

Jesus is the  true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and mediates a new and better covenent

Jesus is the  true and better Rock of Moses who struck with the rod of God's justice, now gives us water in the dessert

Jesus is the  true and better Job. He is the truly innocent sufferer who then intercedes for and  save his friends.

Jesus is the  true and better David whose victory becomes his peoples victory though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves. 

Jesus is the  true and better Ester who didn't just risk loosing an earthly palace but lost the ultimate heavenly one. Who didn't just risk his life but gave his life. Who didn't just say "if I perish, I'll perish" but "when I perish I'll perish for them so save my people"

Jesus is the  true and better Jonah who was cast out in the storm so that we could be brought in.

He's the real Passover lamb, he's the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true lamb, the true light the true bread.

The bibles not about you!

  
Great stuff (Oh I've just found it transcribed on the internet so I didn't need to copy it
 all out! Still, really enjoyable to have listened to it several times). It was in Jared C. Wilson's blog written last year where he points out that it has been attributed to others like Lloyd Jones as well as Keller.  http://firstthings.com/blogs/evangel/2009/10/a-christian-instinct-not-typology/. Here's a couple of quotes from it:

"I remember when it was cool to see Jesus in The Matrix. When that five minutes was over, and even your father in law was reading up in 2 Kings to figure out the significance of Neo’s spaceship, the whole thing was a joke. " 

Doh! I've just written an article that mentions the matrix, all be it along with the more recent Inception and the timeless classic Star Wars. Anyway, the blog went on to highlight the difference between mechanical typology that looks for Jesus in the OT and Spirit awakened instinct that delights in coming across him. My experience of seeing Jesus in the OT is more and more the latter. It's like opening the door and seeing a dearly loved friend standing there. I cry out with surprise and delight, embrace them and, as I recover, invite them in.

The blog goes on really helpfully:

"I think this is one reason why, for all my appreciation (and utilization) of good scholarship, when a blogger goes academic about the Christian life and ministry, my eyes glaze over. It is why something John Piper said at the last Gospel Coalition Conference resonated with me so strongly: “Commentaries can be sermon killers. No commentary has the word Oh! in it.”

This is why I keep telling myself that my bible blog is not a commentary. I keep having to steer it away from being that and make sure it's a genuine account of my reaction to seeing Jesus in the bible. Eight months ago I set out on a journey to blog the whole bible in order to climb higher and get a clearer view of Jesus. I am at Melchizedek right now. I'm on very safe ground in seeing a link to Jesus there as the NT has already joined the dots for me (Heb 6:20). No one can accuse me of playing "Wares Wally" with the bible on this one. I recon though that its right and good to go beyond the specific examples of the NTs use of the old in pointing to Jesus. Jesus said it's all about him (Luke 24:27, John 5:39, Acts 17:2, Acts 18:28, ...) and spent a lot of time explaining that to his disciples. Everything should therefore point to him in some way. I remember Lex Loizides play a game at a conference where he got people to give him random bible verses (and people dually obliged with some very random ones) and he showed how each pointed to Jesus and the gospel.

The "Where's Wally" analogy for looking for Jesus in the OT is a pretty unflattering one. I prefer to think of it as holding up a jewel to the light and turning it slowly in my hand. With each new orientation prismic sparkles dance on its surface in a unique and wonderful way pointing back to their source. The Lord Jesus. (Rev 10:1-2)

I find more and more that I don't just see Jesus in the bible; films and even newspaper articles remind me of him. That's not surprising as he is the truth and any spec of truth points to him . Even falsehood and injustice remind me of Jesus, both the one appointed to judge sin the one who came to be it for us.

   

PS also found text here on a more recent posting.
http://chipanderson.blogspot.com/2007/06/jesus-is-true-and-better.html
Great to find a fellow Dyslexic blogging. His blog carries a warning " I am dyslexic. I am sure we will have that with fun." Perhaps mine should too. There should be a universally recognised sign for it.

Happy Blogday!

Birthdays are significant. I recently got to 40 and it changed my thinking quite a bit. I've had  a good warm up, now I want to make the next 40 years count. I decided to make it a "give away birthday" and really enjoyed giving away the gifts that came my way. It wasn't really a hardship or as generous as it sounds since God has given me everything I want and the joy in being able to give to the things that He has put on my heart was just amazing.

I realised recently that I have another birthday to celebrate. Looking at the date of my first blog it turns out that today is my BlogDay! That's right, today I have been blogging for an entire year. Here is my first blog on Moving mountains http://marcustutt.blogspot.com/2009/09/moving-mountains.html By the look of my analogies I had just been to see the Transformers movie. I hope over the last year that  I have become less of a "ford focus" Christian and more of a devastating killer robot. God transform me please! There is a long way to go but things have changed this year. I have begun pressing forward in believing God for healing and have seen some pretty big molehills move. Now for the mountains!

More recently, I really enjoyed having the time to blog more on sabbatical and my resolve to continue was strengthened when I realised that a prophetic word I had been given talked about me journaling stuff and making it available in a database. Journaling + database = blogging (well almost!). I am finding that writing stuff down really helps me think about things a lot more. I currently have almost a dozen things I want to think and blog on but not enough time! I also want to press on with my bible blog (http://marcusbible.blogspot.com) but I have more pressing commitments and responsibilities right now (I'd better finish this blog soon so I can get on with them!).

To help celebrate and mark the day I have decided to move my blog over to wordpress. It's still under construction but you can take a look if you like http://marcustutt.wordpress.com/. It's much easier to organise blogs with key words and series and things (although some features of eblogger like BlogLists are missing and moving pictures about was easier in eblogger too) so I will eventually just blog there. I have also just given my bible blog a new domain name  http://thebibleblog.co.uk/. It's not ideal but it will do for now and help me suss out how domain names and forwarding works. I will keep it on eblogger for now as it's such a big job to move over and doesn't need all the facilities of wordpress.

Looking ahead I'm posting my first set of videos this month as well as my Old Testament bible cards so stay tuned. Here's to another 12 months of happy blogging!

Finally, on the subject of birthdays, just read another excellent blog form Phil Moore http://blog.philmoorebooks.com/ and watched a video that he talks about.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=kWlMV-UmueM

Wow.  I've had 40 birthday celebrations so far but I there are many who haven't even  had one. I wonder if we can find ways of extravagantly celebrating the birthdays of some of the guys we are getting to know through our kings care drop in.  

Visiting yet another great church

I visited Longton Community Church on holiday recently. I had a great time worshiping to some familiar songs. I think they must have been Hillsongs or Jesus Culture or David Crowder because I recognized them from my iTunes worship collections but had not had the chance before to worship publicly with them. Brilliant.

The Preach was on Holy Moments, looking at the blind man and the mud (John 9:6), and Moses and the burning bush (Ex 3). The main points that I took home were that holy moments are:

1) hard at the front end (having mud smeared on your eyes, being asked to challenge Pharaoh).

2) involve a call to go (go to the pool and wash off the mud, go to Pharaoh and say...).

3) require trust ie knowing God in a way that allows us to walk into the unknown.

I want to approach the next difficulty that comes my way with an expectation of it being a holy moment. Not with the feeling of walking into a mine field but exploring a diamond mine.  

The people were very friendly and  made us feel very welcome plus the youth had just been at a great event were they had obviously had lots of fun. The meeting ended with well over 30 of them doing a fun dance. Then back home to relatives house for Sunday lunch. mmmm 

Timelines for Dummies

When I go on holiday I like to take a number of books with me but usually end up focusing on only one. I never know which that is going to be when I'm packing, it all depends on how I feel when I get there, so 5 or 6 books end up being transported around the country or across the world without ever being opened. On my last holiday I took Bruce Ware's "God's Greater Glory", "Forgotten God" by Francis Chan, "Supernatural Lifestyle" by Kris Vallotton, "The Dancing Hand of God" by James Maloney and "The Bible for Dummies". Which do you think turned out to be "the one"? It was the last one, "The Bible for Dummies". I actually really like this book. Reading it gives away that I don't know as much as I should. I may swallow my pride and recommend it to the students at the UEA CU in a couple of months time when I talk about "How to read the bible". It may just be me but I find it gives a really helpful overview of the whole bible in a way that is clear, interesting and informative. I'll share here my notes from what I read.

The first things that captured my attention was the chapter about the major prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. (They are called major prophets simply because their books are bigger than the minor prophets in the Bible).

Isaiah prophesies to the southern kingdom between 742 BC and 700 BC during which time the Northern Kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians in 721 BC. In 701 BC Hezekiah was persuaded by Isaiah to repent and an angel of the Lord killed 185,000 of Sennacherib's soldiers who were besieging Jerusalem.

Jeremiah prophesied between 626 BC and 580 BC during which time the southern kingdom was carried off into exile by the Babylonians (first wave in 605BC) and the temple and Jerusalem was destroyed (586 BC). Ezekiel was carried off to Babylon in the first wave 10 years before the destruction of Jerusalem and was the prophet to the exiles there. After 25 years in exile he sees an elaborate vision of the temple being rebuilt and the nation of Israel reunited (573BC). 

The second chapter I read was about was the events surrounding the rebuilding of Jerusalem. In 538 BC, after almost 70 years of exile, Cyrus, the great Persian King, overthrew the Babylonians and encouraged people to return to their own homelands. In Ezra 1:24 he says that "the LORD, the God of heaven...has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem..whoever is among you of all his people...let him go to Jerusalem.. and rebuild the house of the LORD." Some Israelites go but many choose to stay (the Babylonian Jews later wrote the Babylonian Talmud, a important collection of Jewish laws and stories, in the 3rd-5th century BC).

Sheshbazzar leads the first wave of Jews back to Jerusalem and they start rebuilding the foundations of what is termed "the second temple". For some reason they don't complete it and 18 years later, in 520 BC, Zerubbabel leads another band of Israelites in finishing the alter and then the foundations. Some are happy, while others weep as it's not a big as Solomon's first glorious temple.

The Samaritans get the hump because they aren't allowed to help rebuild the temple and persuade the local Persian authorities that the Jews will rebel. After looking into it and confirming that the Jews do in fact have a habit of doing just that, they order the work to stop.

God sends Zachariah and Haggai to encourage the Jews to start again. Zachariah takes the role of "good cop" giving encouraging prophecies of the future while Haggai takes the role of "bad cop" telling the people off for sorting out their own homes while neglecting God's house.

When the Israelites start building again, the local authorities check the situation with Darius, the new Persian king, who upholds Cyrus' decree and provides money to make it happen.

In 515 BC the temple is completed and the Passover is celebrated with sacrifices for the first time in 70 years. 

In 458BC Another Persian king Artaxerxes (According to the Rose Book of Bible and Christian History Time Lines, the order of Kings is Cyrus the great 559-530, Cambysees 529-522, Darius I 522-486, Pericles 500-429, Xerxes I (Ahasuerus) 485-465), Artaxerxes I 464-424, Darius II 423-405, Artaxerxes II 404-359, Artaxerxes III 358-337) sends an expert in Jewish law, called Ezra, with money to see how things are progressing in Jerusalem and help them along. Ezra leads the people, ushering in a long period of priestly rule that was still in place in Jesus' day. Ezra gets the Israelites to divorce their foreign wives.

In 445 BC Nehemiah, the cupbearer (the royal official in charge of food preparation) to the Persian king Artaxerxes learns that the walls of Jerusalem are in ruins. The King grants him permission to go to Jerusalem and sends him off with protection and resources to rebuild the walls. (These Persian kings seem really determined to rebuild Jerusalem. I am reminded of Proverb 21:1: The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.).     

Nehemiah organizes people to work on the walls near their own homes. The Samaritans are out to cause trouble again but the Jews finish the wall with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other in 52 days (Neh 6:15).

Ezra then reads the law to the people while others walk about helping them to understand it. The next day they discover its the holiday of Booths or Sukkot so they pitch tents and celebrate the desert wanderings.  

So if I can summaries all that on a short time line:

742 BC            Isaiah start to prophecy to Judah

721BC             Northern Kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians

701 BC            Hezekiah repents and Angel wipes out Assyrians besieging Jerusalem

700 BC            Isaiah stops prophesying BC.

626 BC            Jeremiah starts prophesying

605BC             First wave of Jews carried off into Babylonians exile inc. Ezekiel

586 BC            Temple and Jerusalem destroyed

580 BC            Jeremiah stops prophesying

573BC             Ezekiel's vision of the temple being rebuilt and nation reunited. 

538 BC            Cyrus overthrows the Babylonians and decrees Jews can return home and rebuild. Sheshbazzar leads the first wave of Jews back to Jerusalem to start

520 BC            Zerubbable leads another band of Israelites back and finish the altar and then the foundations. It's a bitter sweet time.  

The Samaritans get the hump and persuade the local Persian authorities to stop building.

Zachariah and Haggai encourage Jews to start again.

Persian King Darius who upholds Cyrus' decree and provides more money

515 BC            Temple completed and Passover celebrated with sacrifices

458BC             Artaxerxes sends Ezra, with money to continue rebuilding homeland.

                        Ezra gets the Israelites to divorce their foreign wives.

445 BC            Nehemiah sent by Artaxerxes to rebuild the walls who takes 52 days to do it.

Ezra the reads the law and they celebrate Booths.


And my first attempt at it in picture form:

All in all a very informative holiday.