Thursday, 28 November 2019

Profound and Deep Unity

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The people of God will come into profound and deep unity leading to cooperation in cities, regions, nations and international. Or simply, we can say that the second pillar is that the people of God see the fulfillment of Yeshua's prayer for unity. There must be revival to overcome disunity, but there must be some in unity seeking and praying for revival for that unity to be attained. This is why often revival movements produce a new unity crossing old boundaries among those who enter into it, but at the same time, provokes opposition by those who do not enter into it. The center of this eschatological hope for unity is the prayer of Yeshua in John 17. Some commentaries do title it the great eschatological prayer of Jesus. It is the great final prayer of Yeshua before his crucifixion. The prayer and its implications are astonishing and wonderful. Yeshua first prays for his immediate disciples to be in unity but then in v. 20 expands his prayer to those who believe through their word and implies all future disciples.

The unity of the Church in partial ways does make witnesses more effective and evidences greater power. The ultimate unity for which Yeshua prayed leads to the nations believing and then our being with Him where He is. This is parallel to the promise of being caught up to meet him at the end of the Age and includes in other passages the resurrection from the dead. We are then with Him where He is. Therefore we are all called to join our prayers to Yeshua and to pray for this unity, seek to work for it, and give ourselves in cooperative relationship.

Ephesians 4 also gives us a picture of the people of God attaining to unity and maturity. The key to this unity is leadership that does the right kind of equipping or aligning. Here we read of five kinds of leadership giftings that will equip or align the saints for "the building up the body of Messiah." (4:12) This will continue until we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge Ben Elohim - to mature adulthood, to the measure of the stature of Messiah's fullness. (4:13)

In other words, there is coming a day when this description of unity and maturity will characterize the Body of the Messiah. Equipping leaders will continue to do their work until this point. This will happen; unity and maturity will be attained. This adds information to John 17. What happens after the "until." When this is attained, then the world will believe and we will be with him where he is.

This excerpt was taken from my article.