BY FAITH THE CAMBRIDGE SEVEN WENT TO CHINA (05/11/14) Good morning dearly beloved, Thank God for eventually connecting to you. Do hope you are doing fine? I tried writing you few minutes before 3am today, but the light went off. I did few skeletal writings before shutting down my system. I will trust God to round up the study on Hebrew 11 by tomorrow, get to Owerri for a weekend program and resume by Tuesday with a new topic. As the age totters to its end, I will be trusting the LORD to take a deep studious look on the churchs mission on earth, focusing on the END TIME HARVEST. Hell cannot afford to distract the entire church from this. Towards the end of Christ earthly ministry, scripture recorded that he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). To do what? To pay the ultimate price of his earthly mission - to die for the entire human race. The right posture the church ought to take now is to be steadfastly minded about the Harvest and Heaven. As Jesus did that, one of his best friends, Peter, the arch-apostle rebuked him for that foolishness of going to die when things were getting better (Matt.16:21-23). Things were getting better that Peter came up with the bright idea of making three tabernacles in a high mountain (Matt.17:4). Mount of transfiguration basilicas. Jesus said no to that. Dearly beloved, we need to be wary of brethren rebuke against our steadfastness towards the end time missionary challenge. Let tabernacle builders build on, lets move on. Yesterday, I posted on my Facebook Timeline a picture of the One World Trade Center in New York. The phrase One World caught my attention reminding me of my eschatological notes. You know there will be a One World Government of the anti-Christ coming very soon. The one world trade center is the replacement for the twin tower world trade center that terrorists destroyed on September 11, 2001. Remember 9/11. Why did they not return the twin towers? What is the meaning of this one tower building called One World Trade Center? My thinking is that the 666 transaction thing will start there. When 9/11 happened 13 years ago I saw it as more than a terrorist thing. President Bush, a more spiritually discerning president than the evolutionist current one took some prophetic actions. Take it or leave it, the current age is running out its prophetic script. The chicks are coming to roost.Things must move on according to Gods word. But, let me begin to conclude the GLEANING THROUGH HEBREWS CHAPTER ELEVEN with message 46 this morning. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy), they wandered in deserts, and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise. God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect (Heb.11:37-40). My focus here today is on those who through faith took to an austere lifestyle if by that way the cause of the gospel will be advanced. They had the opportunity to live in affluence and opulence but they forsook all for Christ. Dr. Harold Scofield was for years a medical missionary to interior China. First class medical student at Oxford University, who at 29 years of age joined the China Inland Mission started by Hudson Taylor in 1866. At this time, Inland China presented a near perfect study of living in abject poverty and squalor. To leave the heaven of Oxford to come to the then interior China was a price too great. See, there is a level of poverty that makes a human being look sub-human. Do you know in the Sino-Japanese war of many years ago, the Japanese treated their captured prisoners of war as sub-humans. (Sino there represents Chinese). Indeed, there was nothing glamorous about missionary life in the interior of China then. The stench of dung, mingled with the stench of unwashed bodies was everywhere. Diseases filled everywhere. In fact Dr. Schofield eventually died of typhus. But he was a praying missionary according to the report I read. He prayed for years that God will touch bright and well educated young people to be stirred towards missionary work in China. The LORD answered the prayer of Dr. Schofield after his own death by getting to the Inter-Collegiate Christian Union of the University of Cambridge to raise these seven Christian brothers - C.T Studd, M. Beauchamp, S.P. Smith, A.T. Polhill-Turner, D.E. Hoste, C.H. Polhill-Turner and W.W. Cassel. All first class brains. Of course in those days, Oxford and Cambridge go for the best in their admission drives.....Permit me to give you a little picture on who one of them C.T. Studd was. His dad made a lot of wealth. He lived in complete opulence even as a student at Cambridge. He was a cricketer of the best category, captaining his Cambridge University team and later the Cricket captain of the whole of England. In those days Cricket was the leading sports in England like the football of today. Somebody described C.T Studd as the Micheal Jordan of Cricket. Micheal Jordan became a legendary basket ball player. Studd was a legend in Cricket playing like Pele and Maradona are to football. That was a man that forsook all to go to the dingy places of China to preach Jesus. He forsook fame and fortune to get the good report that comes through faith. These seven left beautiful England for China in those darkly days, arriving Shanghai on March 18,1885. The political scramble for Africa started in 1885. These seven had the training to join the scramble so as to become colonial officers in the colonies of Great Britain scattered all over the then world. It was during their farewell tours through the Universities of England and Scotland that somebody dubbed them the Cambridge Seven. And you know those farewell visits were farewell indeed. Some never saw England again. They died on the field. It was like signing for military service. Men of whom the world was not worthy. Studd later left China, came here to Africa and later went to India. By their University training at those famous Universities, they could have gotten all they wanted to get in worldly possession. In fact, I read that Studd sold all the fortune his fathers will gave him and committed it to missionary work in Africa and China. Wearing sheepskins and goatskins so as to extend the frontiers of Gods kingdom meant not much to them. Where are you today? Where are we today? Are we not keeping every of our possessions for ourselves? Somebody has worked it out that the monies made by a number of churches in Nigeria combined is more than 3 trillion naira every year. You need to know the paltry, miserable amount committed to missions while several ministers of the gospel live in well advertised opulence. If they do it quietly, it can be understandable, but they love showing off those things to make you believe they are doing well spiritually. Much material possession is now an indication that one is doing well spiritually. The Spirit in me finds that too difficult to agree with. We love showing off wealth. Nothing for true missionary work. Missionary work now is in building palatial cities of God. In Nigeria of today, churches are falling over themselves over who will build the best cities and cathedrals. All, to me are like spiritualized towers of babel. Fiddling with nonsense while Rome burns. We need to feel the heartbeat of God for the NOW. We need to know what we ought to be doing now, to do it and do it with passion. I know as a rural rugged evangelist in my youth service year, that the big churches who had the money to help treated us with much disdain like Nabal treated David. Anything not done in their denominational name is dismissed as not being of God. Please serve God with the mind of Christ and not the mind of men. Read this objectively, meditatively and prayerfully. Know Gods mind for missions and get involved. The church has no other business here than missions. Lets do it as our fathers in the faith did it. Check out for message 47 and the last of the series by tomorrow morning, God helping me. Shalom.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 08:43:11 +0000
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