Becoming Like Your Teacher, Second Edition

Introduction

War – Hard apprenticeship of Freedom.

~ Edward Everett Hale

With the incarnation and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Kingdom of God has come! Christ Jesus has made a public spectacle of Satan, his minions, and all that the Kingdom of Darkness represents. He is God’s Champion and Commander of his heavenly hosts. At the same time the Kingdom is yet to come. We live in the age of the Church who presses forward in the expansion and advancement of the Kingdom of God. As C. S. Lewis stated, “Enemy-occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” You are following in the footsteps and calling of the first saboteurs, the Apostle Paul and Barnabas (Acts 11.25, 26, 30; 12.25; 13.1-3). Like them and the countless missionary saints after them, we all must enter into an apprentice phase until that time comes when the Spirit of the Lord, through the Elders, says, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Paul for the work to which I have called them.”

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