For Such a Time

You are here on this site not by accident. The Lord of the Universe has sent you here to learn and be part of what He has planned. God is raising up individual believers to prepare the peoples of the earth for Jesus Christ's soon return. We have a solemn obligation to pass on to others the way to God through Jesus, so each person on earth may choose (if they will) to have a relationship with Him also.

Our purpose, according to Focus on The Family host Dr. James Dobson is to know and glorify God and then share Him with those around us.

Now is the time. Jesus said the fields (of people) are already white (ready) for harvesting but the laborers are few. (Luke 10:2 Amplified Bible). God is calling you!

1. Why you were born

The Bible states that God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1 AMP)

And God said...

God's highest and best creation were human beings. How can we tell humans are his highest creation? He made us in his image. He made us like him in many ways. Then he gave humans dominion over it all that it be used in the service of God and man.

"Earth" in the Hebrew of the Old Testament of the Bible is "adama." God created "Adam" from the dust of the ground. Today we might call him Dusty or Earthling. God wasn't done until he breathed into Adam the breath of life only after which Adam became a living being.

While Adam slept God created Woman (taken out of a man). Adam screamed for joy realizing God gave him a mate just like himself (not like the animals he had just named).

God instructed Adam and Woman to multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over it. God even made it clear that a man is to leave his mother and father and become one flesh to his wife. (Genesis 2:24 AMP)

Adam and Eve [life-spring], the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20 AMP), had children. Eventually, you were born!

2. Why you were born again

Adam and the Woman (even before they bore children) divorced themselves from God's presence. God gave them dominion over the earth and they very quickly gave it up to the serpent by deciding to believe and act on what the serpent said was true rather than believe and act on what God said was true. God was very kind in his response in a way that would not lock in their disobedience forever. God had breathed his own nature into Adam and the Woman but now they were now spiritually dead.

Moving very quickly through history, after thousands of years of preparation God sent his own Son, Jesus Christ, to take upon himself on the cross, the death Adam and the Woman procured for us.

Jesus died for you

We had no choice when we were born and we had no choice to accept what Adam and the Woman got us into. But we do have the choice to receive what Jesus did for us and to be born from above (from God), again receiving the breath of life which this time will last forever.

The apostle Paul summed it up when he said, "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Corinthians 15:22 AMP) "The first man Adam became a living being (an individual personality); the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving Spirit [restoring the dead to life]." (1 Corinthians 15:45 compare with Genesis 2:7 AMP) "The first man [was] from out of the earth, made of dust (earthly-minded); the second Man [is] the Lord from out of heaven." (I Corinthians 15:47 AMP)

"We were buried therefore with Him by the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious [power] of the Father, so we too might [habitually] live and behave in newness of life." (Romans 6:4 AMP) "Because we know that Christ (the Anointed One), being once raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has power over Him. For by the death He died, He died to sin [ending His relation to it] once for all; and the life that He lives, He is living to God [living in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus." (Romans 6:9-10 AMP)

The baton of history has passed the sin of Adam and the Woman to Jesus Christ, the last Adam, who allowed himself to be nailed to the Cross, where the sin ended forever for whosoever will take this into their life.

You were born again because God wanted you back and he took the measures he had to in order to make this possible for you, if you only will receive it.

If you were not born again, your relationship with the first Adam is strong and fearful.

3. Your call

Your call exists on two levels.

One is to have fellowship with God, to experience his love for you first, then to respond to him with grateful love. Jesus would have died for you if you were the only person on earth. You are to be in fellowship with God forever. You are to take over where Adam and the Woman left off. In so far as it depends on you enjoy God and what he has made talking with him as the first couple did in the Garden of Eden (delight). Delight in the Lord.

I don't need a phone

The second level of your call reflects that this is not the Garden of Eden. The serpent now has dominion. Satan or the Devil has blinded many to the love of God. He has distracted them into trying to earn their way to God if they care about God at all. Once you have come to God you are to become a co-laborer with him on this earth. Those of us who know him are part of his body, the church (people, not a building). We are called to relate to the world in such a way that others find Christ and through them still others find Christ. We are to take the talents that we were given and use them. We are to risk our reputation to take on the reputation of Jesus Christ.

We all need Jesus

4. Your call is not negotiable

You are either in the Garden or out of the Garden. (Garden = fellowship with God)

You are either out of the Garden with the first Adam made from the dust of the ground or back in the Garden with the last Adam who is God come from heaven to put you back into fellowship with God your father.

Yes, I believe...

5. Get going

Frances Hunter was born in 1916 and weighed only 2 pounds. In 1965 at age 49 she became a Christian after being blinded in one eye after a car crash. She was baptized in the Holy Spirit in 1971. She immediately had a desire to lay hands on the sick and pray for their healing. She said to God, "Let me show you what I can do for you." With her new husband Charles (both widowed) Healing Explosions were started and much more. She proved that the Holy Spirit can take an ordinary person and do extraordinary things through that one.

Powered by Jesus...

If you are reading this on a PC or a device that can handle video, click on this link in which Frances speaks: (31 minutes)

What are you going to do? As soon as you know it, you should proceed. There are times in our lives when nothing seems to be happening and times we are devastated and seem unable to do anything. These times don't last. Sometimes you can just get going even in the hard times. Live the life God meant you to live!

6. Your reward

The Lord told me in 1985, "Go to Israel and it's not negotiable." I prepared to go with no assurance that I would ever return. But I did have to think about what would happen if I did not go. I finally decided "For the wages which sin pays is death, but the [bountiful] free gift of God is eternal life through (in union with) Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23 AMP)

For me sin would be not to go and the wages of sin is death would be a boring life. I wouldn't be struck with lightning but my life might be boring if I missed what God had for me. So I went.

Beside the people that came to Christ during that time, God took my dream list, which now might be called my bucket list, and I was able to do each item on that list and more. I had wanted to live on a kibbutz. I lived on two kibbutzim. One works 4-8 hours a day 6 days a week in exchange for room and board doing whatever job is next to your name the night before! I wanted to learn Hebrew. I took Hebrew classes 3 hours a day 6 days a week for 10 months at these same kibbutzim.

I wanted to take a Mediterranean swimming vacation. My first kibbutz was on the Mediterranean and after my second kibbutz I learned to scuba dive (in Hebrew) in the Red Sea. I spent a month on the Mediterranean in Greece. I had wanted to go on an archaeological dig. I did this on the Mediterranean for a month in Israel.

I remember making our way through the rock pools in southern Israel, climbing up and down ropes, swimming across cold pools holding cameras above water. I rode camels in the wilderness and was entertained Bedouin style at a camp. I sympathize with the accidental border crossings as in the north of Israel I hiked where there were signs in Hebrew and English warning that this was the border, this was the frontier. I knew not to cross. It was not on my list but I got to go to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. I also got to be at the Garden Tomb Easter morning. 13 years before I had purchased Bibles in Jerusalem to take into then Communist countries. I now got to be a tourist in some of those places, traveling by bus from Amsterdam to Athens. I got to go parasailing on a Greek Island which was on my list. I got to dance and break dishes in a gazebo setting by the Mediterranean. I slept 3 days on the deck of a ferry between Greece and Israel several times. Possibly the most fun time was a boat trip to a Greek island. On the way back I was listening to Greek music with head phones. Someone motioned to put the cassette into the boom box. I did so and there was an instant party, an instant joy of the moment. Dolphins jumped long the boat; there was much dancing with a full moon. The captain could not locate the port. I could somehow and we got back safely. The last day of my 18 month adventure I was on a small boat coming back from Moorea to Tahiti in the South Pacific with my hair flying in the wind with the moon in the sky. God sure has his ways. When I think back, God delighted me. Some people came to Christ in Israel in 1985 and 1986. This was over 30 years ago. Assuming multiplication of faith in Christ to other people, there must be some wonderful increase though the start was small. Plus I got to be kind to God's people and he said he would reward that.

You may think I must have had access to money in order to do all of this. It was actually the opposite. I prayed while in Greece, "Lord, which country is it better to have no money in, Greece or Israel?" The Lord told me to go back to Israel a week earlier than planned. Nellie, a delightful young lady from India, offered to purchase for me a one month bus pass for Israel and pay my room and board if I would be her guide for 8 days. Nellie committed her life to Christ at the Garden Tomb* and left from the Tel Aviv "bus station" for Haifa to take a ship back north to fly back to India. Right at the moment I hugged her goodbye, I heard my name called. The Lord said to me, "If you use the bathroom now, you will miss your bus." I got on the bus where I heard my name called. The person who called me allowed me to bunk at an apartment in Tel Aviv for as long as I needed.

And this is the way it was, start to finish. I don't look back on this time as the best time of my life. I look back that God did something foundational for the rest of my life. I have some health restrictions that would make a similar trip more challenging. I still may go but now I am going via the Internet and via cell phone networks.

Want real adventure?...

*I had asked God at the Kotel (Western Wall or Wailing Wall) to show Nellie the power of the resurrection at the Garden Tomb. When we got to the Garden Tomb I saw a pastor with an eye patch over one eye walking around. He was often there. I imagine he way praying for Jesus to be revealed. Nellie said to me, "Oh Beth, do you feel it?" "Feel what?" She said, "Put your hand here." It was possibly 20 feet from the tomb. I stretched out my hand and I immediately felt power although I saw nothing. I pulled my hand out, then back in multiple times and the power was always there. Nellie said, "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that this is where he was raised from the dead." I responded with, "Sounds like a confession of salvation to me." (Romans 10:9 AMP) I had asked Nellie what she wanted me to show her. She had said anything I wanted to. So we stayed in Christian hostels where I knew she would be exposed to different testimonies. This was the culmination of it all.

Last updated: 05/10/2017

Background Music: Jubilate