What Pulpit Do You Preach From?

Rome often persecuted the earliest Christians, yet God used the Pax Romana and the Roman roads to facilitate the spread of the Gospel. Chinese Communists also persecuted Christians, yet   Chairman Mao’s roads allowed Christian missionaries to reach distant Chinese mission fields far more easily than had ever been possible before.

Back in the 90s, the Internet was often referred to as the information superhighway. That was prophetic. Today God is using the Internet to spread the Gospel—especially in places like Israel, where most bookstores don’t carry Christian Bibles and Israelis who want to learn about Yeshua face persecution by anti-missionary activists. 

You may not like everything you see on the internet, but according to Erez Soref, President of One for Israel, in Israel “the street ministry today is not in the local square but online and with social media platforms.”

President Theodore Roosevelt referred to his office as a "bully pulpit."  Today, thanks to the Internet, we need to realize that all of us have a bully pulpit.  Go ye therefore and preach the gospel.

Margot Armer

May 12 Is Mother’s Day

My husband and I recently found ourselves behind a car whose bumper sticker read, “AS A FORMER FETUS, I OPPOSE ABORTION.” I hope all you former fetuses can say the same.

Writing about the early Christians, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said this: “Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated.’ By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.” Little did Dr. King know that in the 21st Century those two ancient evils would be with us again.  

Dr. King wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963, ten years before Roe v. Wade would legalize infanticide. As for gladiatorial contests (I’m thinking now of football) nobody knew back then exactly how dangerous football really was or that it would cause its heroes to suffer from CTE, which has symptoms including memory loss, confusion, depression, suicidal ideation and dementia. But as devastating as football-related CTE can be, the impact of CTE is nothing when you compare it to the infanticide of over 64 million babies since Roe v. Wade was passed.

I’ll close with this: (1) Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to play football and (2) Mammas, please let your babies grow up. 

May the Lord be with you in every decision that you make.

Margot Armer

God’s IF-THEN Statement

Any programmer would recognize 2 Chronicles 7:14 (WMB) as a simple If-Then statement: “IF my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, THEN I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 

God hasn’t healed our land as yet.  From this I deduce that God’s people haven’t done what God requires in His IF statement.  Yes, we’ve had lots of prayer meetings, but I suspect that for the most part we haven’t humbled ourselves, and I suspect that we also haven’t turned from our own wicked ways. What have we been binge watching? Do we really love our neighbors? Do we practice what we preach? Are we obeying the “greatest commandments” Jesus emphasized in Matthew 22:37-40? 

Many of us have been praying for revival for many years now.  What is God waiting for? Brothers and sisters--if you have already established a relationship with God, if you are already one of God’s people--then I suspect God is waiting on us.

Margot Armer

What Was Matthew Thinking?

Matthew 2:23 (NET) says, “He came to a town called Nazareth and lived there.  Then what had been spoken by the prophets was fulfilled, that Jesus would be called a Nazarene.” “Spoken by the prophets” can be interpreted two different ways.  It can either mean it was spoken by more than one prophet, or it can mean that the prophecy is recorded in a section of the Hebrew Bible known as “The Prophets.”  But the word Nazarene doesn’t appear in the Hebrew Bible.  So what prophecy was Matthew referring to? 

In the New Testament, Jesus’ contemporaries called Him a Nazarene. Calling Jesus a Nazarene didn’t just mean He lived in Nazareth. The residents of Nazareth were considered to be the lowest of the low.  “Philip found Nathanael and told him, ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and the prophets also wrote about – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ Nathanael replied, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’” (John 1:45-46a NET). 

To the literate Jews of Matthew’s day, calling someone a Nazarene was synonymous with calling them trash or riffraff or the scum of the earth, or (another Jewish insult) an am ha’aretz--a member of the unlearned rural masses. And that’s why Matthew saw being called a Nazarene as a fulfillment of Isaiah 53:3--“He was despised and rejected by people. . . people hid their faces from him; he was despised, and we considered him insignificant.” (NET)  Little did they know that the Nazarene they despised would one day be acknowledged as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords!

Margot Armer

The Fig Tree Generation

“The first way God uses Israel is this: Israel is God’s time clock to the nations. In other words, whether they know it or not, Israel is the means by which God declares to the nations exactly where we are in His program. There is no other way of knowing where we are in the program of God.”
Lance Lambert, 1988

Sometimes I just can’t help setting dates.  Please note that both dates set here are actually “on or before.”

The parable of the fig tree appears in all three of the synoptic gospels--in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. I believe we’re all living now in what could be called the fig tree generation. 

In Matthew, Jesus says:

Now from the fig tree learn this parable: When its branch has now become tender and produces its leaves, you know that the summer is near. Even so you also, when you see all these things, know that he is near, even at the doors. Most certainly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things are accomplished. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But no one knows of that day and hour, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only. (WMB Mt 24:32-36)

When will Jesus come again?
In Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32 Jesus tells us nobody knows the day and the hour of the Second Coming. However, I believe the parable of the fig tree does tell us the generation.  In order to interpret this parable correctly, we need to know three things: 1. What is the fig tree? 2. How long is a generation? and 3. When did the fig tree put forth its leaves?

What Is the Fig Tree?

We know what the fig tree is.  In Hosea 9:10, God said, “I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at its first season” (Hosea 9:10).  God sees individual Jewish people as figs. Figs grow on fig trees.  The fig tree is the place where God has chosen to plant His people. Today, that fig tree is planted once again in Israel.

How Long Is a Generation?

I don’t understand why so many people have gotten this so wrong, because the Bible actually tells us how long a generation is. In Genesis 15, God told  Abram:

“Know for sure that your offspring will live as foreigners in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them. They will afflict them four hundred years. I will also judge that nation, whom they will serve. Afterward they will come out with great wealth; but you will go to your fathers in peace. You will be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation they will come here again, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full. (WMB Genesis 15:13-16)

Do the math. If four generations are four hundred years, then one generation is one hundred years. 

When did the fig tree put forth its leaves?

This one is a little trickier. In Matthew 24:34 Jesus said the generation that would see the fig tree’s branch become tender and produce its leaves would be the generation that would not pass away “until all these things are accomplished.” 

We do know that we are now living in what I call the fig tree generation—the hundred year period in which Jesus will come again.  We know this because the fig tree—Israel—has already put forth its leaves, and it is already bearing fruit. The only question in my mind is when the fig tree generation started. We do know Israel’s date of birth:  Israel was born in a day on May 14, 1948. Since one generation is one hundred years, if we are counting from Israel’s date of birth then “all these things” will be accomplished on or before May 14, 2048, which will be a hundred years--one generation--from the day Israel was born.

On the other hand, if the fig tree was planted in 1948 but only put forth its leaves when the Temple Mount was captured and Jerusalem was reunited during the Six Day War, then the fig tree generation would have started on June 7, 1967 and “all these things” will be accomplished on or before June 6, 2067.

Please note that the dates above only apply to the last possible date for Jesus’ return (according to my calculations). But He could come at any time within the fig tree generation—the generation I believe we’re living in right now. So “Watch therefore, for you don’t know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming” (Mt 25:13 WMB).

Margot Armer