When Birgitta and I dwelt in Jerusalem between 2001 to 2005 we met people to all the circles
and Catholics and Charismatic.
Catholics, of which there are over 100 million in the world today, and that's not bad.
During those three years in Israel, step by step, my view of the Catholic Church changed.
It underwent a change.
had realized I'd never earlier really met Catholics.
I had not had any fellowship with them.
I'd not conversed with them.
I lived in another world.
I don't know if you and I lived in the same world, however I had a whole lot of inherited views about them.
I'd read one or two obscure books which criticized them strongly,
but had not read their own writings or listened to how they themselves explained their faith.
I was too far from them for that.
In other words, I was...
as many here in the Protestant North quite without knowledge and really rather with my
preconceived ideas.
I'd heard second hand about them and got little snippets of negative judgments often built
upon fears.
Fears, my brothers and sisters, are the gigantic mountains that stand in the wave, stopping
us seeing the open, beautiful landscape the Lord wants to show us.
Our fears and our prejudices must always be overcome.
In Israel, this happened and I received this word from the Lord, the Lord said,
don't call anything dead.
Several times I've told you how we went in the Gemini Valley, in Karim, in Jerusalem.
I've told you how the Lord pointed
at an old olive tree and he looked at it and he said,
isn't that, he kind of pointed at it, that's dead, isn't it? And I just
cast a bit of a lazy eye upon it and said, yes it is, I agreed.
And then suddenly he said, what?
look closer. I discovered that on that ancient olive tree
which I just cast a glance at it and thinking it was dead, I discovered
tiny little green buds and all those little branches
and right down the trunk
It looked rotten, it was actually hollow, it looked dead, but then plainly in my heart
I will, something happened so that I will never forget it, never call anything dead
ever again.
He said it very plainly and it talked about my attitude to the traditional churches and
there and then I asked
the Lord for forgiveness that I had called some of them dead. I was ashamed and since
then I have been very careful.
not to call other traditions for dead.
It was a shocking
experience for me and became the start for
a closer fellowship and meeting
with these other churches and not least
our loving Catholic brethren around the world.
This has taught me so very much indeed and I also think that Birgit and I have felt and
noticed that these experiences they've had and amongst our own words we've
had the grace from God that we've shared this with people who've understood it and appreciated it
and actually received this news. So what then was, what did we discover step by step?
Let me give you this in a space of a few minutes. As I mentioned earlier, we discovered that our
attitudes...
to the Catholic Church have been
marked by lack of knowledge, ignorance and our negative preconceived ideas mixed with some fears.
There I've had to repent and turn. Also, we've seen that, talking of genuine unity,
you have to go where your fears hold you back.
truth and in love when all members of the body of Christ need each other.
It's not that others need us at Leave It Sword. Well, but that is true,
but we also need the others.
We are in need of them and it's often our own pride and our deeply, deeply entrenched
fears that stop us from seeing them or reaching out to our brothers and sisters.
We who are members in the body of Christ, we have never received a command of God to
attack each other.
Our various Commandments from God or
We've been busy with and therefore we haven't understood that one another genuine unity
Actually does include differences. It isn't on a momentary sense or a
Motion not built there. It does not also minimize
theological differences
but
But it means you have to maintain an open heart in attempting to understand the others
and even listening to their points of view and not being too self assured that you know
it all yourself.
When you get used to these brothers and sisters, you focus on the central themes, that is,
on Jesus and the cross, not the peripheral issues, which seem to separate us, but first
and foremost, that which we have in common.
We discovered, Bagitta and I, more and more, that...
that we have very much in common with the Catholic Church. There is so much more that unites than divides us.
Genuine unity is not the same as a wishy-washy
ecumenicalism or some kind of administrative tools to get everything together under one hat.
No, genuine unity is really a work of the Holy Spirit. It's He who draws us together
And that comes at the depth of our Lord Jesus Christ heart and it was He who died not only
for the people but also to unite for and gather together the spread, the children of God who
are spread abroad.
We have considered this to be an important part of our lives.
continued to discover and appreciate these things and to approach them
in more and more ways.
A deep longing then began to arise within us to unite.
It's like watching those lovely cream buns outside the shop window, but not actually
go in and get that
that cream bun. So what have we seen?
Certain important things. What have we seen?
We've seen how real and genuine
the love of Jesus is in
these Catholic members.
living their truth and faith is in Jesus. We do not have a monopoly on personal faith
and it's important to see that personal faith can be expressed in many ways. Also,
how biblically anchored the Catholic Church is in its classical doctrines.
And everywhere in their writings, they refer to the scriptures, and in their services they use the scriptures more than we do.
The biblical faith.
expect the Lord to
intervene in our world today, not only in our own lives, they actually believe
in the virgin birth, Jesus' divinity
that he went about doing good of his real and genuine physical
resurrection from the dead and much such like which our modern theology nearly
denies today. Another thing we've seen is the ethics
and moral ground on which they stand, and they stand against the world's secular agenda.
One of these is the view of abortion, marriage between one man and one woman,
and that is the deep involvement they have among the poor.
So this has been a journey of discovery where we've recognized ourselves time and time again.
Well, this is what we believe too.
Also their view of wonders and signs where we have much in common, that is a strong belief
in the supernatural and God's supernatural interventions.
The historical Protestant churches today, often with much liberal theology, often either avoid or denounce.
And I realize today, more and more, there's power in the Gospel, but not only the truth in these things,
they go back to the Acts of the Apostles.
which is what we normally refer to but the order and the structure even goes back to
those time.
So we don't always have to reinvent the wheel is every century but nevertheless faith must
be made personal in every generation and our spiritual life.
must be renewed. So the Catholic Church has also had many powerful renewal
movements down the years step-by-step then. We've seen that we do not need to
contest with the Catholic Church. We charismatics often
do a bit of fighting. God himself came in a form and when the word became flesh,
we found that he was born by his body, in his body. Now there are certain forms
given by God to us for our help and this is for our church and that in which we
may grow and we can be upheld by these not being bound by these and then I saw
how life-giving the sacramental life is. I'm not going to list all these now, for we're
heading to the end of the time of my message, but let me tell you the steps. It's taken
us ten years to see all these things. It's important to, impossible to gather all this
together in one thing. Basically,
We can say that in the Church, the Catholic Church, we found a continuity that goes right back to the Apostles and Jesus himself with a strength and a stability which the gates of Hell have not prevailed against.
We believe this power.
and these routes are necessary for the future and we're talking about the
survival of the Christian world in a cruel future world and we believe that God wants to
unite us as one. So finally, Begeta and I saw that there is a reason why we begun
to discover all these things. It wasn't that we should be a little bit more
generally educated on ecumenism, but God's Spirit was actually drawing us and
urging us to join.
in earnest with the Catholic Church, we saw plainly that it was Him leading our steps.
And as you can understand, this meant an inner conflict in my mind, not least in doctrinally.
But I thought about you and us, our Church.
We have considered and reflected and contemplated all the things we did together
in our loving and relationship, so the breaks were on.
But while I had them on, I began to discover...
how it was burning under my feet, we've had words from God, but here I must confess my
own reluctance and unreadiness to take this final step which I'm talking to you about
today.
Two in the morning I awoke, they were very clear thoughts.
I sensed that the Lord was reminding me saying there are two ways to land it to
get into water one is like Apostle Peter who responded to the word of Jesus come
And when he heard that word, he stepped out of the boat onto the water.
The other way of getting to the water is the way of prophet Jonah, who also heard the word of God,
but fled and took a boat, went to Tarsus, instead of Nineveh,
but then he was thrown out of the boat by the sea men and he also landed in the water.
Now this was two o'clock in the morning, it's clear as day and the Lord said to me,
you can choose in which way you get in you land in the water. Now please let me
Because I've come to that point in my life when I saw and the Lord speaks to me about
something.
It's really him, as long as I don't know it's another thing.
But when I realize it's him speaking, and I don't want to do it, but I've got the breaks
and I'm reluctant or I'm running, I end up getting a situation which is not very nice.
And I realized...
That's now I
When Jesus has now said to us, come, we've got the knowledge, the experience we need,
but still got the brakes on it, didn't want to act.
I now realized it's time with my heart without reservation obey the command of the Lord and
take the next step.
So to step out into the water.
take more steps in faith. So for us, and this is important, it was truly not about in a wrong way,
take a step of distance from word of life. You are our continued beloved friends. We sense that
God has called us to something, not from something. The
The history of our church is powerful and glorious.
We've seen the Lord do wonderful things down the years.
Beginner and I sense now that the way we are called to
is a clear calling and or a deepening of a calling
we have had down the years.
And we believe that in the future,
we have a job yet to be done.
We continue.
To see, to be the servants of the Lord in a beginner is continuing with Indian children
through great blessing, therefore we are not turning our back on you, truly we are not.
Even though we are physically moving and serving the Lord in other contexts, you, yourselves,
are deeply in our hearts and as our friends and beloved in the Lord.
We have a fantastic story together which we never, ever will forget and we sense ourselves
as pioneers and founders of and participant in yet today.
We love and respect this work. Personally, this is not a non-recognition of you brothers and sisters
in the faith. We ourselves are taking a step into something new in which we feel ourselves
personally called to and that calling we must obey. I also think it is a testimony of the necessity
of a deeper unity. We must
live, practice what we preach and take the consequences of our personal convictions. We
love you. We cannot express that enough. All our friends are here.
30 years together, you've made a deep and abiding impression upon us, now our work is
completed here, and that is what the Lord said. Your work is completed here, but our
friendship remains. Your work completed, friendship remains.