Revelation 7:9-10 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.
Have you ever heard how the Karen people of Burma were prepared for the gospel? This unique people’s history reveals how the Lord had sovereignly preserved, in their traditions, their yearning for the one true God.
For centuries, the Karen people rejected the teachings of Buddhism and spiritism and clung to their ancient understanding of the true God, whom they called “Y’wa”, suggesting the influence of the Hebrew, “Yahweh”. Karen traditions also point to Adam and Eve and their fall, in the garden of Eden. According to the tradition, because of transgressions, they fell from grace. An ancient poem powerfully expresses their hope and expectation of redemption:
“O children and grandchildren! If we repent of our sins, and cease to do evil–restraining our passions–and pray to Y’wa, he will have mercy on us again. If Y’wa does not have mercy on us, there is no other one who can. He who saves us is the only one – Y’wa.”
Their stories relate how they negligently lost the ancient books of Y’wa, and were now anxiously awaiting the “white men”, who would restore the ancient books to them.
Another Karen poem is virtually “prophetic”:
“The sons of Y’wa, the white foreigners, obtained the words of Y’wa. The white foreigners, the children of Y’wa, obtained the words of Y’wa anciently.”
In the late 1800’s Christian missionaries arrived in Burma bringing the gospel of Jesus. Their message was overwhelmingly received! Today a majority of the Karen people are believers, because God had prepared their hearts to receive the message over hundreds of years. The Karen waited expectantly for the “white man’s” message of redemption from “Y’wa”, and “Y’wa” proved faithful to reach and redeem these Burmese tribes, in His time.
As we continue to share the good news, let’s remember that the Lord initiates the work of redemption — and that we need to stay focused on the job at hand, and continue to labor in the harvest fields. The seed we’ve planted in patience, will soon bear fruit; so let us not grow weary in well doing, for we shall reap if we faint not!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Revivals, that is, genuine Divinely ordained seasons of the activity of God among men, have a universally unusual character. Normal activities and behaviors give way to the tangible influence of God’s Holy Spirit, whose inspiration brings a freedom of expression, emotion, conviction, worship, and other variations from normal experience.
During the Catholic inquisitions, as millions of Christians were being killed by the Jesuit Priests for apostasy, throughout Europe, Christians were fleeing. In Bohemia alone, there were an estimated 4,000,000 Christians before the Jesuit inquisition, and ten years later, only 800,000 people remained in Bohemia – all of whom were Catholic. These terrible events prepared the ground for one of the greatest moves of God that have ever been recorded, the Moravian Revival, which lasted for over 100 years. Gustav Warneck, the German Historian of Protestant Missions, testified, “This small church in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”
I love to study past revivals and in studying them, there are two recurring themes that stand out:
First, that He has often used obscure and unknown individuals to lead revivals, and that even these men whom He used so powerfully never considered themselves to be “special”, but often wanted to stay out of the limelight.
During the Great Depression, poverty swept across America like a whirling tornado, ripping up dreams and scattering hopes to the wind. One such poverty twister hit a small part of Texas where a man named Yates ran a sheep ranch. Struggling even to keep food on the table, Yates and his wife did all they could to survive. Finally, they had to accept a government subsidy or lose their home and land to the creditors.
When Joseph was thrown into prison, his life was thought to be over. How could anyone escape an Egyptian prison? But then, in one day, according to God’s perfect timing, he was instantly promoted to reign over all Egypt with only the Pharoah, (“god on earth”) as his Lord…
As we continue our study of Mashiach ben Yosef, we observe that both Joseph and Yeshua (Jesus) were chosen or ‘anointed’ for a special task. When Jacob gifted his son Joseph with a coat of many colors, lifting him up above his brothers, he reflected Joseph’s calling by the Lord for a life work as a leader.
Joseph interpreted dreams and revealed their meaning to those around him, and so Pharaoh gave him the name, Tsofnat Paneach (Zaphnathpaaneah) which means the “Decipherer or Revealer of Secrets”. Yeshua, (Jesus) at his first advent as “Mashiach ben Yosef” also came revealing secrets; not as an interpreter of dreams, but as one who disclosed the secrets of men…