Friday Evening – Meal together followed by everyone ‘chillin’ in the hallway relating tales of the funny side of community life.

Saturday – Work morning around the Farmhouse and its grounds followed by lunch and a walk in Salcey Forest – then tea – then evening get together – laid back and powerful

Sunday – Meeting in Jesus Centre – dinner back at the Farm - ’chillin’ again then evening meeting.

All in all a great weekend.

Hello my name is Nathan – thank you for letting me speak

Looking around here at all the people camping out on this protest, I am amazed at the sacrifice that many of us have been prepared to give in order to make a stand for what we believe in. I hear of some who have taken time from jobs and sacrificed their holiday days to come here. Others have sacrificed time away from family and friends. I see stalls of food and drinks that many have also sacrificed in order that we all can make a stand here against those people who are greedy and not prepared to sacrifice for the greater good.

I, like you, am just one man, one voice, in a sea of many. As one person I cannot make much of a difference. But we are many, and we are growing. As a united body we can make a difference. We can stand up and say ‘there is another way, we don’t have to be greedy, and we don’t need to be’. By our sacrifice here today we are showing that we stand with the millions of people worldwide that are discontented with this current system.

As we speak people in Wall Street are having to endure the backlash from the authorities there. All around the world we have seen a move by people who are willing to sacrifice time, money, and effort to stand up for what they believe. Some sacrifice even to the point of losing their own lives. People who are willing to lose their own lives so that others may benefit. What greater sacrifice is there than to give ones life so that your fellow man can benefit.

I am privileged to be able to stand here today and say that for the past 10 years I have lived in a community of over 600 people who share all we have and all are equal. I am standing here as a witness to the fact that we don’t have to live in a greed driven society. There is an alternative. Like you here today we have sacrificed to achieve this – it has not been easy – but it has been rewarding and it works. So I applaud you all for your sacrifice and endurance.

Again thank you for letting me speak.

Image an empty room. There is absolutely nothing in this room at all. Not even time exists.
Now just for a moment imagine that you are in this room.
Suddenly you sense an energy approaching. As it gets nearer to the room the intensity of the power of this energy gets stronger and stronger. It feels mighty and powerful, like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. As it gets close to the room it seems as though something is going to explode.
It is God.
Now how would you expect God to come into the room?
Do you think that He would sneak in unannounced? or knock on the door and ask if He could come in?
NO – He would burst in with an almighty BIG BANG. Stars would fly from Him and fly off in every direction in the room. The room itself would have to rapidly expand to contain them.
The scientists are right. God has entered this world with a BIG BANG.
HOW ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT IT TO HAVE HAPPENED?

Last week Danny encouraged me to continue to seek into the deeper things of God but then to make sure i speak them out for everyone elses benefit as it gives them life. So Ian A you’d better keep a check on what i’m about to say.

Firstly let me pick up where Freddie left off last sunday morning in his bible teaching – he spoke about the two disciples who were walking on the road to Emmaus – and Jesus came and walked with them but they did not recognise Him and after a while he expounded from the scriptures all that was to become to the Messiah. They eventually recognised Him when they were about to eat and Jesus broke bread. Jesus then disappeared from their sight. They then go back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples what has happened only to find that Peter has seen a vision of angels at the tomb who said that Jesus had risen from the dead. Whilst they were all discussing these things in the room Jesus came and stood amongst them. Don’t ask me how, He may have just appeared or could of come through the wall, but imagine first you’re sitting there about to have dinner and Jesus disappears before your eyes. Now He reappears! At first they don’t recognise Him again but He shows them His hands and feet bearing the marks of the cross. Then He has a bit of fish to eat just to prove that He really does have a body and is not just a ghost. Then if thats not enough to amaze them He gives them a study from the scriptures all about the Christ. So see giving bible studies is scriptural!

So heres my little bible study.

O dear its about geneologies. Now when you mention that word some think ‘o no we’re not supposed to get involved in those’, well thats not quite true and i only want to make a basic point, but also a very fascinating one.

If you look at the two geneologies in Matthew and Luke they differ from each other. They both are going along explaining the geneology of Jesus (the ancestral line), but when they both get to King David, Matthew goes off down the line of his son Solomon whereas Luke goes down the line of Davids son Nathan. I was fascinated by this. Matthews line end up with Joseph whereas Lukes account ends with Mary. Matthew was keen to show that Jesus was truly a King. His gospel often mentions the term ‘the kingdom of God’. Matthew was showing that Jesus was a King by going down King David eldest son Solomon and so on, down to Joseph. (Actually the geneology also shows that He was a prophet and priest too). But the geneology in Luke, which goes down the Nathan line ends with Mary. Luke was keen to show that Jesus was of the womens seed. When God way back in Genesis pronounced a judgement on the Devil, He said that the womens seed would bruise his (the devils) head, in other words Satan would be defeated by a son of Eves. Luke was keen to show that Jesus was that son. Jesus was the one to defeat Satan.

That is it.

Love will hate anything that opposes it. It will hate that which comes against it. Hate is a powerful emotion that used rightly defends love and all that is good. Used wrongly, hate can lead to hatred and murder.

You cannot have ‘love’ without ‘hate’.

You cannot have ‘good’ without ‘evil’.

That is why you cannot have ‘Heaven’ without ‘Hell’.

Imagine a father caring for his family, when someone comes up and attacks one of his children. The father immediately is enraged with anger and will seek to protect his child.

As for the attacker, would you invite him back to your house if he didn’t see the error of his ways and ask your forgiveness. You would banish him from ever coming near you or your family if he remained unchanged. You might try and help him but you would be wary of him until he showed that he had changed.

Some people, for whatever reason, seem never to change. They refuse to. In the end you would give up trying to help them. You would only invite into your house those people that you knew wanted to be good.

Why do we think that everyone will go to Heaven?

We need ‘Hell’ for those people who refuse help.

“If there is anything that you don’t know – don’t worry, we have a teenager that knows everything”.

One of the mistakes that we Christians make is to give the impression that we know the answers to everything. Well we don’t.

We do know that the politicians don’t know the answers.

The celebrities don’t know the answers.

The wealthy don’t know the answers.

Even the cleverest minds on this planet don’t know all the answers.

Life is not about knowing all the answers. It’s about asking the questions.

The important thing is not to stop questioning – Albert Einstein

He who asks a question is a fool for 5 minutes but he who doesn’t ask a question remains a fool for ever – Chinese proverb.

Better to ask twice than lose your way once – Danish proverb

Everywhere children are being taught how to answer questions but rarely are they taught to ask them – Bob Dylan.

 It’s only by asking questions that we can find the answers. The more questions we ask the more answers we’re likely to find.

When Jesus was found in the temple at the age of 12, it says; that He was asking the religious men questions.

When Jesus was asked a question by His disciples later in His life, He didn’t give an answer. He answered it by asking them a question. They asked Him if He was the son of God and He replied “Who do you say I am?” He wasn’t going to tell them the answer He wanted them to find the answer.

He was asking them ‘who do you say that I am?’ and he is still asking that question today. “Who do you say that I am?” – Not who does the minister say that He is, or who I say that He is or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Pope, (not that I put myself in the same category as them), but who do you say that He is.

Now the fact is that for those of us that have come to know God, it doesn’t mean we know all the answers. We have asked some of the questions and found some of the answers. But life is a journey of asking more questions and trying to find more answers. In fact if we give up asking questions and accept the meaningless of life, our lives become meaningless. We have to keep asking the questions.

If we keep asking the questions we might find some of the answers. We might even find the answer to Jesus’ question “who do you say that I am?”

I was recently reading about Jonathan, King Saul’s son in the Old Testament. Jonathan, as we know, was a close friend of David. So close that David said he was like a brother to him and likened his love for him as closer than that of any woman.

King Saul had lost favour with God through his own pride and rebellion, and the part I was reading was when Saul’s enemies, the Philistines, came up against Israel to fight against them. I guess there would have been thousands of them. Saul tried to seek God to know what to do but having lost God’s honour got no answer. He consequently consulted a medium and the end result was that Saul went into battle without God’s honour and he and his three sons, including Jonathan were killed. Here was a father whose pride and rebellion got his three innocent sons killed. How many of us have deserted our commitment to God only to see our children lost to this world? This should be a frightening warning, not just to us natural fathers, but also to all leaders who have ‘sons’ in the faith.

Don’t go into a battle without the honour of God. Don’t renege on your covenant and face the world alone or you will see your son’s lost.

Years ago I was a leader in a cell group that had seen 14 youngsters baptised in just 1 year. I got into difficulty and went back on my commitment. I was one of the fortunate backsliders that have returned, but none of those 14 youngsters are with us now.

Saul could have avoided the defeat. He could have averted the slaughter. He could have repented. But to do that he would have had to recognise David as God’s anointed and made David King and submitted himself to David’s rulership, but his pride wouldn’t let him. He stubbornly carried on and his own refusal to change caused the death of his sons. The thing that so many of us Christian leaders face is having to lose our own prides and opinions and submit to the apostolic directive in order to go into the battle as a team, with God’s honour and not lose our son’s. It is hard for a leader to submit and hand his son over to another leader who has gained God’s honour but that’s the only way we will avoid our son’s from being lost to this world. Saul would have had to see his son come under David’s rule but his pride wouldn’t allow him and he lost both his own life and his son’s.

Back in the days of the Hippies at the height of their fame in the sixties there was a song that came out of that movement that repeated used the phrase ‘and we got to get ourselves back to the garden’. The garden of Eden was seen to be where everything was perfect and mankind lived in harmony and we’ve got to get back there. It sounded good and it sounded right. But how wrong they were!

The bible starts off with a ‘Garden’ (In Genesis) but ends with a ‘City’ (in Revelation). We are meant to be in a city. We are meant to be together. We always have been. If you look at the city at the end of Revelation it says all will dwell in the city and God will dwell with them.

You know there are some Christians who think ‘yea I will go up into the mountains to seek God amongst the wonder of creation. Hmmm not sure that they have got it quite right. I believe God is found in the people of God – that’s where you’re more likely to get God speak to you – in the people of God – because we were meant to be together. I’m not even sure God made the mountains anyway  – I think natural forces and erosion made the mountains, not God – it’s not Gods creation. God’s not really that interested in the mountains, He’s interested in having a people. A people together, not scattered, but in a city.

If Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned and kept on reproducing perfect people to fill the earth as was their instruction. They would have eventually lived in cities, because they would want to be together. Now I can understand why people don’t want to live in the cities of our current world because they are full of violence and crime, are full of selfishness and inequality. But if Adam descendants were perfect the cities would have been perfect.

The city in Revelation is (according to the NIV) 1,440 miles long and 1,440 miles wide. That’s the size of the city – it is huge. (The writer of Revelation was using symbolic numbering to show that the size of the city was going to be large enough).  It will have to be –  as all of redeemed mankind will be living there. Living there together. With God.

The current population of the earth is approximately 7 billion people. All of those 7 billion people, if they were standing up would fit into Northamptonshire. Northamptonshire is 2,364sq miles.  If everyone who has ever lived, approximately 42 billion people according to the experts, they would quite comfortably fit into England which is 244,000 square miles. The city in Revelation will be over 2 million sq miles. It is huge, so no worries about not having enough space. But it is a city where we all live together.

In terms of this current age shouldn’t Christians live according to how they will eventual live. Or at least attempt to be as close as we possibly can be to that final way. A bit like trying to be like Jesus now because we will all be like Jesus in the future. Surely it follows that we should live now as we are to live then! “For you have come to mount Zion, the city of the living God….” (Heb 11). Community, how ever we can live it now according to the times and culture we live in, should be the way we live, because God wants a people. A people together in a city. We were meant to be together in a city.