Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS
AWAKE O ZION!
God come with power (Mark 9:1). It came! At Pentecost it
came! In the power of the Spirit it came! Look at Acts 2 and
4. Here is a nation born in a day! Here is the new Israel. Here
is the kingdom!’
Noel paused and leaned forward, as if to impart some secret.
‘We who believe in Christ, as Paul says, are now the true
“Jews” and the spiritual “circumcision” (Rom 2:29; Phil 3:3).
These are now the “Israel of God” (Gal 6:15,16). We need to
stop behaving as if we were the world’s people. We are not!
We are God’s people. God’s Zion.
‘“See, I lay a stone in Zion...” the apostle quotes — let’s
turn to it in 1 Peter 2. “As you come to him, the living Stone...
you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual
house to be a holy priesthood...” (1 Pet 2:6, 4-5).
‘Brothers and sisters, we give ourselves to the perfecting
of this Zion. We have barely skimmed the surface. Zion is
holy. Zion is distinctive. Zion is beautiful because it is magnificent
with God’s presence and power.
‘This is the good news we are seeing. Personal salvation?
Yes! But with it the gospel of a new kingdom. Leaders like
Ern Baxter and Arthur Wallis are now proclaiming this. You
see, the church is to inherit the promises. She is to herald the
ultimate kingdom. In our brotherhood, in our distinctiveness,
in our freedom, we are prophesying a new order. Zion is a
foretaste of the new earth.’
The atmosphere was charged. We sensed something of awe
and destiny in it all. Noel was fired with a vision and we were
catching hold of the prophetic word.
He spoke of the maturity of such a Zion; her simplicity and
peace and the beauty of her strength and righteousness. Zion,
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