Imperial Valley Christian Center

We Christians have authority on the earth. We have authority over devils and demons, we have authority over sickness and disease, we have authority over storms and mountains. Most Christians don't realize that they have authority and as a result we put up with things we should be putting a stop to. We sit around wondering why God won't do something when he has given us the authority.

I believe that the exercising of this authority is integral to God accomplishing his plans upon the earth. I don't think God can do it without us. Or to put it in more theologically correct language, I don't think God intends to do it without us.

We have authority through the name of Jesus. Our examples should be the 70 disciples that Jesus sent forth in Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10:1  After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come. 2 Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest… 8 And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you: 9 And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.

After what things? The things described in chapter 9. It says he appointed other seventy also. So who were the others? Who were the ones he had also appointed? They're the one he sends out in Chapter 9.

Luke 9:1 Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. 2 And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.

Now I went through that step by step to suggest this: Jesus gave the seventy disciples basically the same instructions he gave the twelve. He probably said something similar to them to the effect that he had given the seventy power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases. It's certain that he gave them power to heal and cast out diseases because he told them to heal the sick. My point is the 70 weren't any different than the 12 and I believe the 70 are no different than any of Jesus' modern day disciples.

How did Jesus give them this power and authority? Did he give them a special magic wand or something? Did he lay hands and transmit some sort of power to them? (I believe in the laying on of hands but there is no indication he did anything like that here.) The returning disciples tell us how Jesus gave them this power and authority:

Luke 10:17 “17 And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.

It was through his name that they had power over unclean spirits and to heal diseases. Jesus had given them a permit to use his name to exercise his authority, to act in his place and he has given all of his disciples that same permission.

Look here:

John 14:12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. 13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

Jesus says that those who believe on him will do the works that he has done. It doesn't say the specially sent ones but it says the ones who have faith in Jesus. How will they do these works of Jesus and these even greater works?

Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do…

This is essentially a repetition of what happened with the 12 and the seventy in chapters 9 and 10 of Luke. Jesus is giving a permit, permission, license, authority to use his name in the doing of the works of Jesus. That's just what you would expect a disciple to do, i.e. to copy his master, to duplicate his master. That's the whole point of having disciples.

This same scene is essentially repeated again in Mark 16:

Mark 16:15-18 “15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. 17  And these signs shall follow them that believe;In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

Jesus has given us the right, the privilege, the permission to use his name so that we can do his works on the earth.

This is the Sunday, April 23 service, it last about 40 minutes.

Audio: MP3    Large (Good for burning your own CD)    Small (Good just for listening.)

I heard Tony Cooke read this poem as part of a sermon years ago and was quite moved by it, but I was never able to discover its name or find it anywhere. The other day I accidently ran across its name and then I found it here on Holy Joe's site, he has a long archive of nice poems here. So here it is:

The Race
(attributed to Dr. D.H. "Dee" Groberg)

Whenever I start to hang my head in front of failure’s face,
    my downward fall is broken by the memory of a race.
A children’s race, young boys, young men; how I remember well,
    excitement sure, but also fear, it wasn’t hard to tell.
They all lined up so full of hope, each thought to win that race
    or tie for first, or if not that, at least take second place.
Their parents watched from off the side, each cheering for their son,
    and each boy hoped to show his folks that he would be the one.

The whistle blew and off they flew, like chariots of fire,

(Wow. It's taken me over a month to get this tape posted. Sorry about that. The first couple minutes were left off but it starts at a good spot.)

This is the first lesson in the series, The Believer's Authority.

Why did Jesus come? What was his purpose? Why did God have to send Jesus? What's the story of Christianity? The story of Christianity is the story of the struggle for the dominion over the world and mankind. On the one had we have Satan whom the Bible calls, "The prince of this world." and "The God of this World." On the other we have Jesus who came preaching about another kingdom and who said about his mission:

John 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

We can see this war for the kingdom of the world played out in the following passage from the book of Revelation. But before we get there you need to understand a couple of things: First, everything in the Book of Revelation does not take place in the future, somethings had already happened at the time the book was written, somethings were contemporaneous with the book and somethings had yet to happen. Second, the Bible uses the word Heaven in four different ways, heaven the place where God lives, the heaven where the stars are what we call the universe or the galaxy, the heavens above us what we call the atmosphere, and finally as a circumlocution for God.

The following passage briefly depicts the story of the war for the kingdom and speaks of something which had already happened at the time of the writing of the book of revelation, but at the same time depicts the ongoing warfare between Satan and the followers of Christ for the kingdom.

Revelation 12:7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, 8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. 10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. 11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

The Story of Christianity. This is the Sunday, April 16th, Easter Sunday service. It last about 35 minutes.
Audio MP3:    Large (Good for burning a CD)    Small (Good just for listening.)

(Had meant to post this sometime back but it got away from me.) The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) has posted an original recording of C.S. Lewis. Lewis's most famous book, Mere Christianity, actually started out as a talk on the radio during World War 2. The BBC had asked Lewis to make these broadcasts as an encouragement to the English during the war. The Beeb has apparently found one of the original broadcasts and posted it on the Internet. The broadcast is entitled, Beyond Personality:The New Men. It's kind of cool to here C.S. Lewis's voice and he has some good things to say. The recording last about 14 minutes and you'll need the Real Player application which can be accessed through this page.

Here's a few shots from the party in the park this past Friday.

You'll need the Flash Player application to see the pictures. The Flash Player is extremely common on the internet if you don't have it you should get it. You may download a free version for Windows here and a version for Mac OS 10 here.

I meant to post this last month or so but forgot. Here's a website with some really interesting maps of the world. The maps are distorted to reflect different statistics. The first map is of the worlds land area. It's a little different than maps we usually see, notice how huge Africa is how small Europe?

The second map is distorted to show the populations of the different countries. China and India have become huge. But look at Canada and Australia. Where did Russia go? Africa has gotten quite a bit smaller because it has a huge land area but realtively small population, 840 million.

Mexico is bigger in this map, population 106 million.

This map shows how many children, 15 years and under, live in each country. Mexico has gotten even bigger which  means that a large proportion of their population, (50%?) is under the age of 15. Europe has gotten smaller, it is an ageing continent, as is Japan.

Here's the link, they have many more of these maps.

If you like those exhibitions where people line up dominoes and then start a chain reaction by pushing one of the dominoes down, you'll love this link that Ms. Connie sent over. It's the domino chain reaction thing with parts from a Honda. One note, when the windshield on this new Honda gets wet it automatically starts the windshield wipers, that will make sense after you watch the video. On the kewl scale of 1-10 this is a definite 10.

Here's the photos from the men's shotgun blast in a new format I wanted to try out.

For those of us who love nothing better than a PC war Apple has come out with some really funny commercials comparing Mac's to PC's. Here's my favorite: iLife. The one called Restarting is almost too mean to be funny, almost. Here's a page with the rest of them. (Quicktime may be required, a free download of Quicktime including iTunes for Window's users is available here.)