Healing the Nations by John Loren Sandford

Author:John Loren Sandford
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441215246
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

They are fathers (or mothers) of religious movements or of ethnic or political nations.

They are people through whom God blesses others.

They are people God can trust to teach others—their own children and their spiritual sons and daughters.

They can be trusted to walk in the ways of righteousness and justice.

Where else in Scripture do we see human participation in heavenly councils?

Jeremiah spoke forcefully about councils of God that should have been attended by men.

“Who has stood in the council of the LORD, that he should see and hear His word? Who has given heed to His word and listened? . . . If they had stood in My council, then they would have announced My words to My people, and would have turned them back from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds.”

Jeremiah 23:18, 22

Jeremiah was not speaking merely of listening to God. Had that been the case, he would have said simply, “Who has heard God clearly?” In other verses in this chapter, Jeremiah scolded the prophets for hearing lying words and seeing lying visions. Here he referred specifically to standing in the council of God—and showing forth the power of that council to turn mankind from evil.

On the Mount of Transfiguration our Lord Jesus Christ held a council with Moses and Elijah—certainly two who met the qualifications of Genesis 18. Together they spoke about Jesus’ “departure which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31).

One might ask, since Jesus’ death was foretold from the beginning of time, why a council was necessary. The problem was to get to the cross. Jesus could and should have been stoned to death—the prescribed penalty for blasphemy, which the religious elite thought He had committed. I believe Jesus was strategizing with Moses and Elijah how to so infuriate the priesthood and disillusion the masses that simple death would not be enough. Jesus had to make them want desperately to crucify Him, both for the vengeance of it and because, being hanged on a tree, He would lose all favor in the people’s sight and become accursed, “[redeeming us] from the curse of the Law” (Galatians 3:13).

Although many events are predestined—for example, God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world . . . [and] predestined us to adoption as sons” (Ephesians 1:4–5)—there are always decisions to be made in the process of history. Nothing in God’s Kingdom is fatalistic or deterministic. If God knows the end of all things, He also knows how to manage the process that results in whatever was predicted, all the while respecting our free will. Councils are part of His process and providence.

In seeking to corroborate his own ministry to the Corinthians, Paul described a vision widely considered to be his own, but from which he did not feel permitted to share what he had heard:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a man was caught up to the third heaven.

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