Ascension Day and Hope

By David Field @ http://davidpfield.blogspot.com

• The risen Lord Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth and has been made head over all things for the Church.
• He is the ruler of the kings of the earth and he is currently putting his enemies beneath his feet.
• He has presumably asked the Father for the nations as his inheritance and the ends of the earth as his possession - and so he will receive them.
• All nations will bow to him and all kings will serve him and his kingdom will grow to become the largest plant in the garden with the nation-birds finding rest in its branches.
• That kingdom is the stone which crushed the kingdoms of men in Daniel 2 and which is growing to become a mountain-empire which fills the whole earth.
• Jesus is the firstborn from among the dead and therefore it is right that in all things he has the first place. He has been highly exalted and not only will every knee bow to him but every knee should bow to him.

We simply do not live that way. We do not live like the risen Lord Jesus is ruling from heaven, but consider our current situation in the world.

• It took 1400 years for 1% of the world’s population to become Christians.
• For that to double to 2% took the next 360 years.
• It was then 170 years for that to grow from 2% to 4%.
• Then, between 1960 and 1990 the proportion of the world’s population who are Bible-believing Christians rose from 4% to 8%.
• Now in 2007 one third of the world’s population confesses that Jesus is Lord and 11% of the world’s population are “evangelical” Christians.
• The evangelical church is growing twice as fast as Islam and three times as fast as the world’s population.
• South America is turning Protestant faster than Continental Europe did in the sixteenth century. South Koreans reckon that they can evangelize the whole of North Korea within five years once that country opens up.
• And then there’s the Chinese church. Tens of millions of Christians who’ve learned to pray, who have confidence in Scripture, who know about spiritual warfare, have been schooled in suffering and are qualified to rule. One day in the next century that Church - tens of millions of Christians trained to die - will be released into global mission and our prayers for the fall of Islam will be answered.