Dr Dave Johnson

Monday, September 12, 2011

Reflections on a Visit to a 9/11 Memorial

Reflections From a Visit to a 9/11 Memorial

By Dr. Dave Johnson

Assemblies of God Missionary to the Philippines

http://www.daveanddebbiejohnson.com/

www.drdavejohnson.blogspot.com

What would they have written about me? Or you? On the evening of September 11, 2011, the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, my nephew, Tim, and I visited a memorial of that horrible day at the Cannonsburg Ski Area, just north of Grand Rapids, Michigan, my hometown. The skiing hill hosted 3,200 American flags, one for every person killed on that disaster. As we walked among the flags, we noticed that many of them had a card attached, giving the name and bio-data of someone who was killed on that day. The bio-data also included where they worked, things about which they were passionate, or, if they were young, what they looked forward to in the future.

Those cards reminded me that those who died were real people, with real jobs, real interests, and real dreams. They were just ordinary people going about life. Lives that were cut short like a movie that breaks in the middle of the plot leaving only a freeze frame of the last scene on the screen. Theirs were lives that, humanly speaking, were unfinished. Naturally questions arose in my mind of how a good God could allow such unspeakable horror, an issue that even the Reverend Billy Graham mentioned in his remarks at the memorial service at the National Cathedral just a few days later. He didn’t have the answer, and neither do I.

But the memorial did cause me to stop and ponder the reality that no one knows how long they will live. We may live a full life, but we may not. And Hebrews 9:27 is clear that we don’t get a second chance. What we do have, however, is the opportunity to live today. From my perspective, the question that must be raised is how should we live? Many would answer this question by saying, like the old beer commercial, “You only go around once in life, go for the gusto.” While I certainly agree that life should be lived to the fullest, the question then, is, for whom do I live or to what goal or purpose? The answer to this question depends on one’s worldview. If I have only one life to live and no guarantee as to how long that life will be, the thought of living only for me leaves me feeling cold.

I have two choices that I can make everyday. Will I live for myself or for God? Will I be hell bent or heaven bound? Will I be selfish or selfless? Will it be my path or God’s way? My dreams or his? And if I should suddenly die or be killed, what will others write about me? Or you?

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Friday, September 9, 2011

Daniel in the Palace Part I Overview

By Dr. Dave Johnson

Assemblies of God Missionary to the

Philippines

http://www.daveanddebbiejohnson.com/

www.drdavejohnson.blogspot.com

[This blog is the first in a series of blogs that will examine the book of Daniel. At the outset, I am uncertain as to whether I will cover the entire book or only the first six chapters.]

The book of Daniel is rich in history and cannot be understood apart from the cross currents of the events of his day. Daniel, the statesman-prophet, the author of the book that bears his name, was born circa 622 B.C., in the latter days of the southern kingdom. Palestine lies along the major trade routes of the Middle East. Not only did merchants travel along these routes, so did kings with their armies—and some that did so deeply affected the children of Israel.

Not only is the book of Daniel rich in history, it comes in time in which Israel had at least four other writing prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, and Haggai. On the broader world scene, Daniel was also a contemporary of three other significant religious figures Confucius, Buddha, and Zoroaster, the Persian religious reformer, although it is not likely that, with the possible exception of Zoroaster, Daniel would have been familiar with them.

The book of Daniel must also be understood within a certain theological framework. At this point in history, the Old Testament canon was not yet complete. Daniel was obviously familiar with the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Bible penned by Moses, the historical books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I and II Samuel and probably I and II Kings, the Wisdom Literature (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon), and some of the prophets. Isaiah predated Daniel by about a century. Daniel quotes from the book of Jeremiah and was probably also familiar with Lamentations. Since Ezekiel was a contemporary who lived among the exiles in Babylon, Daniel would surely have been familiar with his work. Among the “minor” prophets, he would have known of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk. Since Nahum may have been written late in the 7^th century B.C, he was mostly acquainted with it. Haggai was a younger contemporary of Daniel’s and his prophecy was recorded during the second year of Darius the Mede’s reign. Since it was recorded in Judah and Daniel, by this time, was an old man, there is a small possibility that he may not have known Haggai’s work, but since there was an obvious free flow of communication between Judah and Babylon, it is more likely that he did know it. He would not have known the books Esther, I and II Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, Zechariah, Malachi, as these were not written until after his death.

Seismic shifts also took place in the children of Israel’s religious practices during this time. By Nebuchadnezzar’s order, Solomon’s Temple was destroyed. Sacrifices and the Levitical priesthood were abolished. Even the Ark of the Covenant disappeared from the pages of history, most likely destroyed along with the temple. All of these were iconic aspects of Jewish worship. The beginnings of the synagogue can be traced to the time of the captivity as well as the birth of the Pharisees—the evangelical preachers of the day, who appear to have been a far cry from the Pharisees of Jesus’ day in terms of their attitudes. A positive result of the Babylonian exile was that the Israelites were forever cured of idol worship.

With this broad overview in place, we now proceed to a review a more detailed historical backdrop of Daniel’s day in the next post.

*All Scripture references are from the New King James Version unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

News From Dave and Debbie Johnson

Dave and Debbie Johnson

Assemblies of God Missionaries to the Philippines

www.daveanddebbiejohnson.com

http://www.drdavejohnson.blogspot.com/

dave.johnson@agmd.org

News from Dave and Debbie

Fall 2011 Edition

Packing and Parting

Our offices have been in chaos. Dave’s is worse than usual, if you can believe it. Why? It’s that time again as we are preparing for yet another move to the other side of the world. We’ve already shipped six huge boxes, and we will send another one or two before we leave. We will leave Grand Rapids in mid September and spend a couple of weeks with Debbie’s family in the Seattle area. Then, we will continue on to the

Philippines

near the end of the month.

Our first order of business in Legaspi will be to find a house and reestablish our relationships with our Filipino brothers and sisters. We will also take some time to assess our role the ministries we have left behind and get some direction from the Lord regarding where we fit in. These ministries have been handled well by Filipino leaders while we have been gone, so we want to approach our reintegration with great sensitivity and appreciation for the great leadership they have given. The evangelistic team continues to be ably led by Pastor Alan Esplana, a Filipino that has been working with Dave for fifteen years. The house church planting program that Debbie and the Filipino district leadership launched in 2007 has grown to fifteen church planting schools and at least 191 house churches! Praise the Lord!

While we are excited about being reunited with people we love in the Philippines, we dread leaving friends and family, especially our aging parents, here in America. In times like these, we just have to draw closer to Jesus.

Knee Benders

1. Please pray for both us and our families as we separate after more than two years at home.

2. Please pray for our reintegration to life in

the Philippines.

3. At the time of this writing, we still need $456.32 in monthly support and would appreciate your prayers. If you can help us please let us know. A pledge form can be downloaded from our website, www.daveanddebbiejohnson.com. Thank you!

Reflections on Itineration

Over fifteen months of itineration, we have visited around 150 churches and met with numerous pastors over lunch or coffee. Here are a few observations:

1. We are blessed to be part of such a wonderful fellowship with a deep commitment to missions for which we are grateful.

2. In 28 years of ministry, I (Dave) have never seen more bi-vocational pastors. The recession has affected our pastors deeply, but I never heard one complaint. Some have even taken jobs in order to avoid cutting their churches’ missions budget. This has humbled and touched us deeply.

3. We share the heartfelt burden of many of our churches that are on a plateau or in decline. On the other hand, we have seen some great revitalization of churches. The concept of a strong mother church sponsoring the renewal work seems to work quite well.

4. We have seen a great increase in the number of churches doing need oriented community evangelism, and we believe that this is a key to the growth in our churches in this generation. We also believe that is one antidote to the marginalization that Christianity has experienced in American culture.

5. In the last few months we have been in some new church plants in Michigan or met with pioneering pastors over lunch, and we are excited with what we have seen. In almost every case, the pastor was under forty years old and doing non-traditional things that are working!! I hope those of us “older” folks will make plenty of room for this younger generation to express the creative gifts that God has given them. They are the future.

Dave’s Blog

God has been doing some refreshing work in Dave’s life as a result of the healing God brought while we were on sabbatical. One of the results is fresh spiritual insights from a renewed passion for studying the word of God. He has been sharing many of them through blogging. He has done a series of blogs on Moses and the gods of Egypt, God and Abraham, the Tower of Babel and, most recently, the Inauguration of Jesus’ Ministry in Luke 4:16-30. His next series will be on understanding the book of Daniel in its historical context, and he is really excited about it.

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Thank you with all our hearts for all your prayers and support. We could never do this without you!

In His grace,

Dave and Debbie Johnson

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The Inauguration of Jesus' Ministry Part VI The Resistance

The Inauguration of Jesus’ Ministry Part VI The Resistance

(Luke 4:16-30)

By Dr. Dave Johnson

Assemblies of God Missionary to the Philippines

http://www.daveanddebbiejohnson.com/

www.drdavejohnson.blogspot.com

[To read the previous blogs in this series, please go to www.drdavejohnson.blogspot.com.]

“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” intoned Jesus in Luke 4:21. A more provocative statement and audacious claim has never been made and, as Jesus well understood, the proof was in the pudding. As Jesus surely expected, his hearers were not receptive to this statement. The question is what was it that so deeply irritated them? Was it that he claimed to be the Christ? Was it the way that he handled the passage from Isaiah?

To understand their response we need to remember that Nazareth in Jesus’ day was a hotbed of Jewish nationalism. They were looking for a Messiah who would lead a revolt against Rome, establish the kingdom of God on earth, and execute justice against their enemies. In their estimation, the son of a local carpenter, whose family they knew well, did not quite fill the bill, but this may not have been the deepest cause of their irritation? Kenneth Bailey (Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, 162ff) takes issue with the translation of Luke 4:22, saying that the people bore witness against Jesus, not for him. While Bailey’s thoughts fit the context well because they did turn against him, his implication that the Bible translators made such an egregious error is a bit difficult to swallow. But even if they were for him in the beginning, they quickly turned against him.

But what was it that rubbed them the wrong way? In Luke 4:19, Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:2 about proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord, but does not go on to complete the parallelism by stating that the day of God’s vengeance had also come. Bailey is excellent on this point. Instead of calling for rebellion against Rome, Jesus advocates compassion and mercy and cites the widow of Zarephath and Naaman, who were both foreigners, one of them being a sworn enemy of the Israelites. He is saying that if they would follow him as the Christ, they would need to love the Romans, not hate the—an announcement that didn’t exactly thrill his audience. This is one of many examples of how countercultural the gospel message really is. But there is more.

According to Bailey, the Jews of Jesus’ day believed that the Isaiah 61 passage from which Jesus quote promised material blessings to those who were believers. Jesus turns this expectation on its head in the verses that follow with the stories of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath and Elisha and Naaman. As Bailey notes, both the widow and Naaman responded in faith and that faith, not ancestry, was the key to following the Messiah. He would not be the Messiah for the Jews alone, but for whosoever believes in him. To the nationalists sitting before him, these statements were outrageous and blasphemous. With their anger at a fever pitch, they rioted and tried to throw him over a nearby cliff, but he eluded them.

But the question as to whether Jesus of Nazareth did in fact fulfill the claims of the Isaiah passage remains to be answered. For this we turn to a story in Matthew 11:1-6. John the Baptist, by now sitting in a Roman jail for labeling Herod as an adulterer, had some doubts about Jesus and sent some of his disciples to verify if Jesus really was the promised Christ or if they should wait for someone else. When John’s disciples asked Jesus about his Messianic claims, he replied in vv. 5-6: Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me. Sound familiar? In other words, Jesus was telling John that he had, in both word and deed, fulfilled the claims of the Messiah outlined in Isaiah 61:1-2.

*All Scripture references are from the New King James Version unless otherwise noted.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Monday Morning

Friends,

Yesterday we had our last missionary service at Central Family Worship Center in Coopersville, MI. We are looking forward to wrapping up itineration once our fundraising is complete. We still need $448.32 in monthly support and more in cash. We are praying that all of the pledges will be in by this Wednesday, our formal deadline, even though we can continue raising funds by phone and email after this date.

Today, I'm planning to pack a couple of large boxes for shipment to the Philippines. We don't leave Grand Rapids until September 15, but we are trying to avoid waiting until the last minute to get everything done. The harder we work now, the less we have to do in the last few days before departure. We will be in the Pacific Northwest (Bellevue, WA, with a few days in British Columbia) before leaving for Manila on September 29.

Talk to you soon!

Dave

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Update

Dear Friends,

I'm writing from Bloomington, IN, where I have been spending the last few days. Tonight is our next-to-the last missionary service before wrapping up itineration in Coopersville, MI, this Sunday. Debbie is working in our home office in Grand Rapids to help pave the way for a smooth transition back to the Philippines.

God has been moving and another $115.00 a month has been pledged since I wrote last. Only $686.32/month to go. We are confident that God will take care of this. If you can be a part of this miracle by picking us up for support or increasing your pledge, we would certainly be grateful. A pledge form can be dowloaded from our website, http://www.daveanddebbiejohnson.com/. It would help if you can act now.

Many thanks,

Dave and Debbie

Assemblies of God Missionaries to the Philippines

PS If you are interested in theology, missions, and spirituality, please check out http://www.drdavejohnson.blogspot.com/.

For a free chapter of my book, "Led By the Spirit: The History of the American Assemblies of God Missionaries in the Philippines," please visit http://www.daveanddebbiejohnson.com/ to read online or download.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Inauguration of Jesus' Ministry Part V: The Year of God's Favor (Luke 4:16-30)

The Inauguration of Jesus’ Ministry Part V: The Year of God’s Favor (Luke 4:16-30)

By Dr. Dave Johnson

Assemblies of God Missionary to the Philippines

http://www.daveanddebbiejohnson.com/

www.drdavejohnson.blogspot.com

[This blog is the fifth in its series. To read the first four, please visit www.drdavejohnson.blogspot.com.]

In this blog, we move to the fourth parallelism that Jesus quoted in Luke 4:19 from Isaiah 61:2, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Isaiah’s parallelism, however, does not end there. He goes on to say “And the day of vengeance of our God.” That Jesus did not quote this is significant.

The “acceptable” year of the Lord can also be translated as the year of the Lord’s favor. This phrase was understood by the Jews as a reference to the Year of Jubilee, which was set in place by God through Moses in Leviticus 25 and was to be held once every fifty years. Consistent with the theme of liberation that runs through the passage we are considering, the year of Jubilee called for rest, relief and release that had both economic and social implications. There were four requirements:

1. The land was to lie fallow for one year, giving the land a Sabbath rest. (Leviticus 25:11-12)

2. All debts were cancelled (Leviticus 25:31, 40-41, 54)

3. Any Israelite who had become an indentured servant to another Israelite was freed (Leviticus 25:40-41).

4. Ancestral lands that had been sold were returned to the original owner, serving as a reminder that the land was ultimately God’s (Leviticus 25:27-28) (m/gospel-jubilee-luke-4-19-bible-commentary-for-the-new-baptist-covenant-cms, accessed 15 August 2011.)

Practicing this would bring two positive results. One, poverty would be greatly alleviated, if not eliminated altogether as no family would lose their most valuable asset—their land. Two, all Israelites would live on approximately the same economic level, with no one having the economic leverage to oppress others. Like the other commands that God had given to the children of Israel, the Year of Jubilee had been forgotten or ignored over the years. Jesus’ statement in Luke 4:21 that this passage was being fulfilled strongly suggests that he was unilaterally instigating a Year of Jubilee as he spoke.

But what kind of Jubilee would it be? Jesus’ hearers certainly would have expected it to be a Jubilee much like the ones in the past of which they had heard. In order to enact a Jubilee, they would first have to get rid of the Romans and establish their government. That Jesus never lifted even a finger against Rome’s rule suggests he had another kind of Jubilee in mind.

The Jubilee Jesus had in mind involved the cancellation of sin’s penalty and power. Mankind would indeed be released from slavery—the slavery to sin. At the Cross, as the old hymn goes, “mercy there was great and grace was free, pardon there was multiplied to me.” By finishing the reading of the text here, he was emphasizing what the focus of his ministry would be. But there is a deeper reason why he did not finish the parallelism.

In I Peter 1:9-12, we learn that while the Old Testament prophets did understand part of their prophecies, they did not know the time or manner in which they would be fulfilled. This is especially true in regards to Messianic prophecies where the prophet could not tell the difference between the first coming of Christ and his second advent and would often mix the two in one prophecy. They saw the two advents of Christ like mountain peaks. From a distance the peaks appeared to be right next to each other. From the prophet’s vantage point, they could not see that there was a wide valley in between them.

The implications of this for all of Jesus’ followers in our generation should be abundantly clear. We are still living in the Jubilee, the time of God’s favor. Now is the season or day of salvation. Now is the time to redouble our efforts in taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. What we must do, we must do quickly, because judgment is coming. When Christ returns he will come as King of Kings and Judge over all the earth. Just as sure as he can the first time, he shall remain.

The fact that Jesus did not include the last part of this parallelism was undoubtedly part of what irked his listeners. Ardent nationalists that they were, they longed for the Messiah to come and throw off Rome’s oppressive rule. But this part of the story, as well as a summation of Jesus’ claim to be the expected Messiah, are still ahead of us.

*All Scripture references are from the New King James Version unless otherwise noted.