The Return of the Glorious Gospel in Power

By Gary Amirault
(This work is dedicated to my darling wife, Michelle.)

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6

Would it shock you to learn that 99.9 percent of the world's population since man first began to walk this planet has never heard of the one name under heaven in which man must be saved? Would it shock you to discover that even less than 99.9 percent of the world's population have ever read a single portion of Scripture from the Christian Bible? Did you know that even today over 2,000 languages of the world do not have even a shred of Scripture in their own language. Most Christians are shocked to find this out, or they simply don't believe those statistics, but they are true nevertheless. The reason they don't want to believe them is because that would make the God of Christianity look like a very careless God. After all, how can one believe in the only name under heaven by which one can be saved unless they hear the name, unless they hear the gospel, the "Good News to all mankind." How can it be good news to all mankind unless they actually hear it? Wouldn't God be very negligent if He created a situation whereby salvation comes only by trusting Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior and then forgets to create a way to tell everybody this? And yet, a plain and honest review of the history of mankind makes it abundantly clear that this is indeed the situation.

Six Days

According to the best we can ascertain about Biblical chronology, the story of God dealing with man is about 6,000 years old. For illustration purposes, let's treat each thousand years as a day. Now let us track the history of mankind and the introduction of the "Good News" to reveal how little of the world has ever heard of such a thing as the Gospel.

In the first day, Adam and Eve had a face to face relationship with God. They messed up, were removed from the garden of Eden "for their sake," and were consigned to wander the earth. Quickly the whole earth became utterly evil and at the end of that first day (1,000) years, God destroyed every single human beings save eight. We find no Bible, no written Holy Scriptures, and no name by which mankind must be saved during the first day. On the second day, the earth is repopulated, and again mankind becomes corrupt and not a trace of Scripture.

On the beginning of the third day, about 2,000 years after Adam, God finds a man named Abram who heard God. God changes his name to Abraham. Abraham and his family and tribe grow to perhaps a few thousand people in the land of Canaan and then God sends them down to Egypt to be turned into slaves. During this time, Abraham's offspring grow to perhaps a few million people. During this entire time, there is not a trace of Scripture. Four hundred or so years pass, God raised up a deliverer named Moses who took this tiny nation named Israel and let them back to Canaan. At this time, God gave Moses the first five books of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Most scholars acknowledge that scribes after Moses' day added some parts to Moses ' work. For example, Exodus 34:6 tells us that no one knows where Moses was buried. Moses himself could not have written that.

Two and a half days from Adam and we finally see a portion of Scripture in the earth -- five books of the Bible written in Hebrew, a language only a small handful of people could read, and only one or two copies of it, one which remained with the Ark of the Covenant and the other I suppose was for the priests to read. These books were called the Torah or the Pentateuch. They were a covenant between Yahweh and the tiny nation of Israel. Israel never made copies of these documents to send all over the world letting people know that God actually wrote down some rules to follow to avoid going to Hell. They were a covenant between Yahweh and a specific group of people. This covenant dealt with THIS life, not the afterlife. If Israel obeyed these laws, this covenant, Yahweh would bless them; if they disobeyed these laws, Yahweh would curse them.

Over the next thousand years (approximately 1500 B.C. to 500 B.C), another 17 writings would be added to the collection of sacred Hebrew writings. (In the Christian Bible, actually 34 more writings. Jews break up the writings differently than Christians. We do not know when many of them were written or how they were authorized to be sacred. Some were composite writings written by more than one person. Most were written in Hebrew although a couple of the works contained a little Aramaic, a sister Semitic language to Hebrew.

Some time after the middle of the fourth day, the Hebrews began to make more copies of the Scriptures to be passed around among the priesthood. Near the end of the fourth day (100 to 250 B.C.) some Jews in Alexandria, Egypt translated these Hebrew writings into Greek. These writings are very different in many places with the Hebrew text we use today to make our Old Testaments. They also added about 14 additional books written by Jews near the end of the fourth day (apocryphal writings, first and second century B.C.).

So after 4 full days of this seven day week of seven thousand years of mankind's history, we only have a handful of handwritten scriptures given to a small nation that did not reproduce these scriptures and pass them onto the world. These Scriptures do NOT tell the world that they must believe in Jesus the Messiah or be tortured throughout all eternity. Nor do these Scriptures declare such a thing to the Jews who preserved these writings. Furthermore, these very people who became the guardians of these Scriptures became, according to a Jewish priest/historian, the most corrupt people on the face of the earth. He said that the generation of Jews prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. behaved as if all the demons in the world had entered them.

Into this wicked generation of God's own chosen people, the guardians of the Scriptures assembled so far, the Messiah, Yeshua appears. Up to this point in time, no one has heard the message of salvation nor the name under heaven in which one must be saved. If we are to believe the majority of the modern church, all those born prior to this time period cannot possibly be saved because they did not believe in the one name under heaven in which man must be saved. Even the Jews who tried to keep the Mosaic Law as well as possible could not have been saved because "by the law shall no one be justified." (Gal. 3:11; Rom. 3:28)

Almost as soon as the Word of God, Jesus Christ shows up on the scene, He immediately leaves. He didn't visit any of the nations around the world who up to this point never read any of the Old Testament Scriptures. He said He came only for the "lost sheep of the house of Israel." For one to four years (depending upon which scholar one reads) Jesus preached to the poor, healed the sick and cast out demons in this tiny nation who were the guardians of the Scriptures which were in existence at that time. He did not write a single sentence of Scripture. He wrote a few words in the sand one time, but we don't know what He wrote. He said He came to save the world, to die for the sin of the world — He died — rose from the dead and then left stating He would not leave us as orphans, that He would send another, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth Who would lead us into all truth.

During the early part of the fifth day (40 A.D. to approximately 200 A.D. many people wrote different accounts as to what Jesus said and did. There were no "New Testament" Scriptures like we see in our Protestant Biblestoday. Different parts of the church used different writings to find out about what Christianity was all about. Some churches believed writings like "Shepherd of Hermes," "Revelation of Peter, "Didache" were Scriptures, others did not. Some regions of Christianity rejected books like Hebrews, Revelation, 2 and 3 John, and 2 Peter as Scripture. There were many different gospels besides the ones in our modern day Bibles floating around. (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Barnabas, etc.) During these formative years, written Scriptures were very hard to come by — no printing press, everything was hand written and the majority of the people, especially the poor and slaves (which made up a lot of the early church) couldn't read these Scriptures even if they could afford to have someone make copies for them.

History of Scriptures

The more I study the manners and customs of the Biblical period and seek to know more about the original languages of the Bible, the more I realize how far short the "best-selling" English translations fall from the purity and power of the original Hebrew and Greek. The end of this article will give a couple illustrations of how radically different future translations of the Christian Scriptures will be, but first a brief history of the Scriptures, it's purity and availability to the world.

Most people, including Christians, are unfamiliar with how what we call today "the Bible" came into being. We generally believe what we have been fed in our denomination's Sunday School. Perhaps we've decided to education ourselves and read a couple books on Christian apologetics like "More than a Carpenter" or "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" both by Josh McDowell. But works like these are simplistic at best and plain falsehood at worst.

It seems as if the earliest English translators incorporated much of the Dark Age mentality and traditions into their translations--translations which came out of the corrupted Latin Vulgate. (I don't think it is an accident that Latin is today a "dead language.") The first common language Bible translations (German and English) came from the Latin. While they were better than no Bible at all, they were still greatly lacking. Even those translations of the Reformation, which supposedly relied more on the Greek and Hebrew, were still heavily tainted by a Dark Age mindset. In a relatively short amount of time Christianity became filled with thousands of traditions, rituals and doctrines which it had accumulated from the nations which it conquered with military might.

(I may as well warn the reader at this point that some of the thoughts contained herein will bring offense to some minds. Surely, I do not mean to bring offense. Over the last 500 years, thousands of men and women have broken away from the Dark Age Church whose legs were predominately the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. Each of these men and women saw some aspects of the Dark Age Church which were not based upon Scripture. They had the courage to take the steps to disassociate themselves with the traditions and teachings of what many of them came to call Mystery Babylon. Those who had the courage to break from the Dark Age system gathered men and women around them who shared their beliefs. This is how the various denominations of Christendom were formed -- by men and women rejecting some part of the teachings of the Dark Age Church. But rejecting a few teachings or traditions of a church that is utterly corrupt does NOT bring one into the fullness of truth; it merely forms another system built upon error, maybe not quite as corrupt as the Mother Church, but still far from the truth.

After major denominations became established based upon the teachings of men like John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Knox, etc., others within these denominations either discovered errors in these new denominations, uncovered new revelations or simply wanted power for themselves and drew disciples after themselves who eventually formed more denominations. The first denomination would brand the splinter as divisive heretics: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us" (1 John 2:19)

Every new denomination has had these words of John thrown at them as they attempted to establish a new movement based upon their understanding of the Scriptures.

Each denomination persecuted those who came out of them and branded them as heretics. Many denominations formulated articles of faith to define the truth as they saw it. These creeds attempted to define a true Christian and the true Church which became the grounds on which members could fellowship with each other.

I have a copy of a cartoon which tells the story better than thousands of words. In the cartoon is a very large fish with its mouth wide open about to eat a smaller fish which is about to eat a smaller fish than itself which is about to eat even a smaller fish, etc. The largest fish is labeled "Roman Catholicism, the next Lutheranism, the next Anabaptist, the next Puritan, the next Methodism (Wesleyanism), the next Pentecostalism, the next Charismatic, and the last one is labeled "New Things." Most of us who consider ourselves Christian, if we study our doctrines and denominational history carefully, will discover that our denomination or movement was formed by a few individuals who came out of some other denomination because they felt the old denomination was not built upon the truth. This is how all the 30,000 plus denominations of Christianity have been formed. Paul warned what would happen when we base our Christian fellowship upon the teachings of men:

"When one says, 'I am of Paul,' and another, "I am of Apollos,' are you not carnal?" (1 Cor. 1:11-13; 3:1-11)

Ouch! How do you feel when another Christian calls you fleshly or earthly minded? If Paul were to write this letter today, it would say,

"When one says, 'I am of the Pope,' and another says, 'I am of Luther,' and another says, 'I am of Calvin,' and another says, "I am of Wesley,' and another says, 'I am of Ellen White,' and another says, 'I am of Kenneth Copeland,' and another says, 'I am of John MacArthur,' etc., etc., etc., ARE YOU NOT ALL CARNAL?"

When someone calls us carnal because we fellowship in a denomination built upon the teachings of men, we get offended, don't we? We quickly offer up a host of excuses defending our carnality, get a little hot under our collar, grind our teeth a little and then write off THAT brother or sister for being divisive instead of acknowledging the fact that we, ourselves, through defending our institutions, are actually dividing the body of Christ. So then, if the reader finds their blood pressure rising a bit as they read about the negative effects OUR denominationalism has caused regarding being a true witness to the Truth in the demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit, please bare your soul to the workings of the Holy Spirit and allow Him to reveal the source of your discomfort. If we find ourselves offended about anything, we had better first check in with the Holy Spirit and the Bible to see if perhaps it is our flesh that is offended by the truth. Again, I truly mean no offense.)

It wasn't until the end of the nineteenth century that major strides were taken to break the Bible free from the corruption into which the scriptures had fallen. The scholars who gave us the first revision of the King James Bible at the end of the nineteenth century (Revised Version and American Version) were severely condemned by those who wanted to maintain the traditions of the church which were forged during the darkest period of European history -- a time in which the Scriptures were all but abandoned. While the most recent wave of new Bible translations have made great strides in restoring the true meaning of the original texts, we still have a long way to go. Keep in mind that most of the problems in our English Bible translations (not all) are in the TRANSLATING of the inspired Hebrew and Greek texts, not the texts themselves. Translations are NOT inspired. A careful comparison of major English translations of the Bible reveal some major differences among them even in important doctrines -- proof that translations are NOT inspired. (For proof regarding this, write the author of this article asking for "Comparison of Bible Translations.")

On the horizon are new translations which will incorporate what we have learned about the Bible and its people through modern sciences like archaeology, paleography, and philology (study of language through culture). We are rediscovering many things which have been lost to the body of Christ. Jesus and the apostles warned us 2,000 years ago that wolves would come into the church and lead many astray. Many antichrists, false apostles, Judaisers, Gnostics, etc. who would preach false Jesuses and false gospels would come and draw many disciples after themselves. (Gal. 5:7-12; 1 John 2:18-20, 26, 27; 2 Tim. 1:13-15, 2:15-18, 4:9-16; Acts 20:26-31; Gal. 3:1-3;
Eph. 4:11-14; 1 Tim. 6:20, 21; 1 Cor. 1:10-15; 2 Pet. 3:15-18; 2 Cor. 11:1-23; Titus 1:7-16; Rev. 2:2,3, 2:14-16, 20-26, 3:1-4, 8, 9, 15-19, etc.) While many Christians have been taught those verses speak of our days, the apostles made it plain that it was already happening in THEIR time. The church was quickly seduced by the "traditions of men" and the "doctrines of demons," and fell from grace. It exchanged the power of the Holy Spirit for the power of politics and material wealth which would ultimately plunge every place where this church was established in Europe into what we call today "the Dark Ages." It would employ a mighty army with which it would wreak great havoc upon the world. It would send explorers around the world and in the name of Christ would plunder the nations of the world. The atrocities the church inflicted upon the Jews, the Moslems, Philippinos, and North and South American Indians etc., all for their riches made the name of Christ a curse word among many of the civilizations of the world. How could the church, which during its earliest years gave to the poor, become such a vicious and greedy beast?

It all began within a few centuries after the departure of the apostles when the Bible was taken away from the people. The Bible remained locked up in the 'dead" language of Latin for many centuries. Christians were actually killed by the church if they attempted to translate the Hebrew and Greek into the languages of the people. That is how far into darkness the church went. Truly God's people "perished for lack of knowledge." (Hosea 4:6) Religion replaced a living relationship with a living, loving God. The Holy Spirit was treated as nothing but a theological term instead of the very power of God Himself.

The Light Begins to Shine

Let me give a few short examples of improvements in translating we can expect in the Bible translations of the near future; improvements which will restore an understanding and power to the body of Christ that it lost when it was plunged into darkness many centuries ago. The body of Christ is just beginning to come out of the darkness of the Dark Ages. The Reformation was really only baby steps out of darkness. We will see great strides into His marvelous light in the very near future. Let us taste of the power and the goodness which is about to come upon us. I realize there are many voices in Christendom preaching that doom and gloom is about to cover the earth. I don't agree. I think those voices are mere echoes of the Dark Age Church. As Bible translations become more pure in the very near future, I see glorious things about to happen in this world. The body of Christ will manifest in a glory that has never been seen before. As the Bible and Christ's body gets stripped of the filth of the Dark Ages, we will see a world full of glory, which will leave us utterly astonished. Wondrous things are about up break upon us. Let us take a look at a few Scriptures and get a few glimmerings of the glorious truths which are in store for us in the very near future:

The King James Bible renders Philippians 2:12, 13 in the following manner:

"Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Phil. 2:12, 13, KJV)

The New International Version (which is currently the best selling English Bible translation) renders it very much like the KJV:

"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed -- not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence -- continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." (Phil. 2:12, 13, NIV)

I cannot tell the reader how many times I have heard the Pharisaic spirit disguised as a minister of the gospel use this verse to instill fear into people warning them that this verse means that one can lose their salvation--that they had better walk a tight rope lest they fall into the fiery unending flames of hell.

When these darlings of darkness quoted this verse to instill fear in me, I always wondered why one should fear God if in fact God was in me to work out His will in me. Why should I fear? Was He not going to turn all things to my good? I would think that I should actually jump up and down in excitement that the very creator of the universe chose to take up residence in me to bring about something for me that was for my very own good! I should be dancing, not trembling in fear. The translator of the delightful "New Testament in Modern English," J.B. Phillips as well as other recent Bible translators apparently came to the same conclusion. They sought to solve
this seeming contradiction. In his book, "Ring of Truth," J.B. Phillips writes on pages 62 and 63:

"I had for some time been worried about the expression "fear and trembling." It did not seem likely to me that Paul in writing to the Philippians could have meant literally that they were to work out their salvation in a condition of anxiety and nervousness. We all know that fear destroys love and spoils relationships, and a great deal of the New Testament is taken up with getting rid of the old ideas of fear and substituting the new ideas of love and trust. I realized that the Greek word translated 'fear' can equally well mean 'reverence' or 'awe' or even 'respect,' but I was bothered about the 'trembling.' Surely the same Spirit who inspired Paul to write to Timothy that 'God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love and of a sound mind' could not also have meant us to live our entire lives in a state of nervous terror. I came to the conclusion, a little reluctantly, that the expression 'in fear and trembling' had become a bit of a cliche', even as it has in some circles today. As I went on translating I found that this must be the case. For when Paul wrote to the Corinthians and reported that Titus had been encouraged and refreshed by their reception of him, he then went on to say that the Corinthian Christians received him with 'fear and trembling'! (2 Cor. 7:15) Now this makes nonsense, unless it is a purely conventional verbal form implying proper respect. For, little as we know of Titus, we cannot imagine any real Christian minister being encouraged and refreshed by a display of nervous anxiety."-End quote

Based upon the above information, J.B. Phillips translated the verse as follows:

"…so now that I am far away be keener than ever to work out the salvation that God has given you with a proper awe and responsibility. For it is God who is at work within you, giving you the will and power to achieve his purpose." (Phil 2:12, 13, New Testament in Modern English)

Now this translation makes me want to jump up and down with excitement and joy, not tremble with fear. Other recent translations have followed suit. Edgar J. Goodspeed's "The New Testament: An American Translation" uses "reverence and awe." So does Charles Williams' in his New Testament. Weymouth's New Testament in Modern Speech has "labour earnestly."

In many verses where the older and more archaic English translations like the King James Bible and the Geneva Bible taught us to "fear the Lord," more accurate translations in more contemporary English are now telling us that we should be "revering the Lord." (Compare the NIV and KJV at Deut. 8:6) In one of the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls, a verse which in the traditional Masoritic read "fear the Lord" was found to read "LOVE the  Lord." The scroll is named 4Qdeutn, and is over a thousand years older than the Masoritic texts that have traditionally been relied on as the source for the Old Testament text. (Source: "The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible", Harper SanFrancisco, 1999). I believe the next generation of translations will bring us from "revering the Lord" to actually loving Him.

It seems Isaiah was far more prophetic than we realize when he wrote: "...this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and THEIR FEAR TOWARD ME IS TAUGHT BY THE PRECEPT OF MEN." (Isaiah 29:13)

Jeremiah, the prophet, tried to warn us about what the elders of Judaism and the leaders of the church would do to draw men away from God towards themselves:

"How can you say, 'We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,' when actually the lying pen ofthe scribes has handled it falsely?" (Jeremiah 8:8, NIV)

I believe that future translations of the Bible will remove the tarnish that the lying pens of Jewish and Christian scribes have heaped upon the image of God, the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. When this happens, I believe that the Holy Spirit will once again fall upon His people in such power as to change the world forever. Let me give you another example of what I mean.

"Moved With Compassion"

In the New Testament, particularly in the gospels, in reference to Jesus we come across a Greek verb rendered by the best-selling English translations as "to have compassion, mercy, or pity." It is the verb "splagchnizomai." Here is what the "Theological Dictionary of the New Testament" says about this verb:

G4697  splagchnizomai  {splangkh-nid'-zom-ahee} middle voice from 4698; DNT  - 7:548,1067; v AV - have compassion 7, be  moved with compassion 5; 2 ¤ 1) to be moved  as to one's bowels, hence to be moved with compassion, have compassion (for  the bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity).

The noun of this verb is:

G4698  splagchnon {splangkh'-non} probably strengthened from splen (the "spleen"); TDNT -  7:548,1067; n n AV - bowels 9, inward affection 1, tender mercy + 1656 1; 11 ¤ 1) bowels, intestines, (the heart, lungs, liver, etc.) 1a) bowels 1b) the bowels were regarded as the seat of the more violent passions, such as  anger and love; but by the  Hebrews as the seat of the tenderer affections, esp. kindness, benevolence, compassion; hence our heart (tender mercies, affections, etc.) 1c) a heart in which mercy resides.

The spleen is an organ found in most human beings about 5 inches long, 4 inches wide, and about an inch and a half thick in the average adult male. The spleen is "an integral part of the lymphatic and vascular systems. The spleen occupies a unique position that allows it to remove disease-producing organisms and worn-out red blood cells from the bloodstream. It removes the iron from the hemoglobin of red blood cells for later use in the body; it also removes such waste materials as bile pigments for excretion as bile by the liver. The spleen produces antibodies against various disease organisms and manufactures a variety of blood cells." (Funk and Wagnall's New
Encyclopedia, 1971)

Karl Barth, the renowned German theologian, says of this word:

"The term (splagchnizomai) obviously defies adequate translation. What it means is that the suffering and sin and abandonment and peril of these men not merely went to the heart of Jesus, but right into His heart, into Himself, so that their whole plight was now His own, and as such He saw and suffered it far more keenly than they did.  Splagchnizomai means that He took their misery upon Himself, taking it away from them and making it His own."

Let us see the context of how the verb form of this word is used in the Scriptures. Perhaps we can glean something from the breaking open of this word which we could not gain from the way most Bible translations render it.

We find the verb form in Matt. 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; 18:27; 20:34; Mark 1:41; 6:34; 8:2; 9:22; Luke 7:13; 10:33; 15:20. I will concentrate on those verses which reference Jesus. We first encounter the word in the ninth chapter of Matthew:

"And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was MOVED WITH COMPASSION on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest." (Matt. 9:35-38)

In Matthew 14:14, Jesus saw a great multitude, was MOVED WITH COMPASSION and healed the sick. In Matt. 15:32, again a great multitude was with Him, He taught them and had GREAT COMPASSION on them because they were hungry. He fed them all with seven loaves of bread and a few fish. In Jericho, again a great multitude followed him. Two blind men asked Jesus to have compassion on them. He was MOVED WITH COMPASSION, touched their eyes and they were
healed. (Matt. 20:34) In Mark 1:41, a leper told Jesus He could heal him if He was willing. Jesus was MOVED WITH COMPASSION, touched him and he was healed. In Mark 6:34, again He SAW a great multitude without a shepherd; He had COMPASSION on them and began to teach them. Then He fed them miraculously. In the ninth chapter of Mark we find a man who had a demon-possessed boy. The father asked to Jesus have compassion on his son. Jesus told the father that all things are possible to those that believe. The father said, "I believe, only help my unbelief." Jesus had COMPASSION on the man and his son and healed the boy. In the city of Nain, in the seventh chapter of Luke, there was again a large group of people. There was a widow whose only son had just died who was in great tears. Telling her not to weep, He had COMPASSION on her and raised her son from the dead.

In John chapter 11, when Jesus saw Mary weeping along with some other Jews over the death of Lazarus, the Scriptures say that Jesus "groaned in the spirit, and was troubled" and then "Jesus wept." As He approached the grave, Jesus was "groaning in Himself" and then raised Lazarus from the dead. While we do not find that same verb in this account in John, we can see that we are seeing the same thing -- a depth of travail much deeper than what we would normally call compassion or pity. Look at what mountains Jesus "moved" when He "moved his bowels," when He entered into the gut tearing dimension of intercession which this Greek word "splagchnizomai" speaks of. He healed the sick, miraculously fed the multitudes, and cast out demons. He taught
them and spoke like no man ever spoke, and He even raised the dead. He took the sicknesses, ignorance, diseases, sins, and poverty upon Himself and carried them away.

"As He is, so are we in the world." (1 John 4:17)

"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12, NIV)

Karl Barth said that to "splagchnizomai," to "move with compassion" means to take their misery upon ourselves, take it away from them and make it our own. Are we willing? How do we enter such a "movement?"

James tells us in the fourth chapter of his book that "we have not because we ask not." (James 4:2)

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." (Hosea 4:6)

Our Bible translations have prevented us from seeing Him as He truly is AND have "destroyed us" for lack of knowledge. This gut wrenching travail of the soul which Jesus exhibited every time He moved in the super miraculous is available to His body today. It is a gut-wrenching travail of intercession which breaks open the very heavens and causes them to pour out into this world the riches of the kingdom of God. It is time for us to bring heaven to earth. It is time for our Lord's prayer to be fulfilled, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

"…the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. (Rom. 8:26, 27)

The institutionalization of the people of God has caused us to move so far away from God's heart that many people are preparing to fly away expecting that God will pour out His wrath upon the very people Jesus came to save. Those for whom Jesus MOVED WITH COMPASSION are the same ones the religious consider unfit to be among. We have swallowed teachings which cause us to act just like the self-righteous whom Jesus rebuked for their lack of compassion, yet we can't see it. Jesus' own disciples wanted to call fire upon the Samaritans heads because they didn't accept Jesus as the Messiah. Did Jesus agree with them? No! He told His own disciples that they didn't
know what manner of spirit they were of. "The Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives but to save them." (Luke 9:51-56)

If we study Jesus' miracles carefully, they were not done among those who thought they were very pious. Who was healed? Gentiles, whom the religious Jews considered dogs, Samaritans whom they considered enemies, the sinners, the sick and the diseased whom the religious considered unclean and therefore would not allow into their assemblies nor into the city of Jerusalem. The poor, the sick and lame were kept "outside the gates" of the city Jerusalem, the city of peace.

Has the church not followed the ways of the Pharisees and religious leadership of Jesus' day? It most certainly has! And we wonder why the miraculous powers of the early believers do not seem to be available to us today in the measure they were available to the early church. Oh, yes, some quarters of Christendom boast of mighty miracles. But when carefully scrutinized, we find more hype and outright fraud in these movements than we find the truly miraculous power of the Holy Spirit. We do not find many miracle workers "moved with compassion" like Jesus was for the poor and sick. We find them "moved for money"! We don't find them giving to the poor, we find them squeezing the very last cent from the pockets of poor people. The merchandizing and manipulation that goes on in the Pentecostal and Charismatic "movements" and Catholic healing shrines makes the methods of the moneychangers whom Jesus chased out of the temple look like child's play. The Father's house has once again become a "den of thieves." The God of Mammon is alive and well in hundreds of thousands of churches around the world. The "movement of compassion" which stirred Jesus and His disciples to do those mighty works will NOT come to churches whose focus is money to build extravagant buildings and make their leaders millionaires. These charlatans do not manifest the splagchnizomai that moved Jesus to do the works of God--they give placebos, hype, hypnosis, and the "miracles" of the world of magic. Most of the "power" in these movements is the power to seduce, to manipulate, and to deceive. Too many of their healings are illusions. When independent investigators follow up on the advertised miracle healings of the modern faith-healers, they often find no miracles at all. We find plain old fraud. These merchandisers of the Good News are moved by money, not by splagchnizomai. But we must be careful NOT to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There were people in the first century who wanted the power of the Holy Spirit for profit also. Nothing has changed.

As I said earlier in this article, our English translations have prevented us from seeing God as He truly is. God will be revealed as MUCH more powerful, MUCH more loving, MUCH more compassionate as we strip away the Dark Age traditions which still cloud our vision. Our image of who we are in Him will also greatly change. When we get a true view of Who Jesus and His Father really are and a full understanding of the power of His Holy Spirit which He seeks to fill us with, then this world will lack nothing. The body of Christ will heal it. "As He is so are we in this world."

Matt. 13:58 tells us that Jesus did not do many miracles in his own home town because of their unbelief. In Mark 8:23, Jesus led a man out of town to heal him. It appears there is great power in unbelief to inhibit the workings of the Holy Spirit. I believe that the Bible translations of the future will greatly increase our faith to do the things the early church did and even greater things. I believe that the body of Christ will come out of the spirit of denominationalism and become one even as the Father and the Son are one. The best is indeed yet to come! The best wine came at the end of the wedding feast, not at the beginning.

Please pray with your whole heart with me: Lord, strip away our unbelief. Raise up a new generation of Bible translators who will NOT use the "lying pen" of scribes who seek to chain us to the "traditions of men which make the word of God of no effect." (Matt. 15:6-9)

"Father, let us, your people, who have been perishing for lack of understanding and power, receive the fullness of your Spirit that we, your body in the earth, might be moved in our innermost being even as Jesus was moved when He saw the multitudes in great need. Remove from us this lying impulse to want to fly away from the very people you came to save and heal. Move us, Father, into the movement of the Holy Spirit we see in Jesus and His disciples in the Gospels and the book of Acts. Take us out of denominational movements built upon the traditions of men and doctrines of demons. Make us one, even as You and Jesus are one.

"Fill our innermost being with splagchnizomai. Cause us to stir up the gifts within us which will bring healing to the poor, the sick, the diseased and the outcasts of this world. Cause us to "rightly divide the word of truth." Give us the courage to examine ourselves to see if we are indeed in your truth or if we are merely perpetuating another movement of man. Restore to us a clean heart and a right Spirit. Cause us to hear and heed your Holy Spirit instead of the spirits of dead men and women. Break us free from those forces that would bind us to carnal ways. Give us the courage to overcome our fear of man, and also deliver us from our inclination to worshipping men and women by putting them on a pedestal thereby being drawn away from You. Give us the courage to walk away from institutions that would enslave us to thoughts that keep us from manifesting the Truth in the power of the Holy Spirit.

"Cause us to worship only You IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH. Let us and the earth be filled with the knowledge of Your glory even as the waters cover the seas. (Hab. 2:14) Amen.