Mike Oliver's Messages

I have shared this before of how I saw below a cross many dead and naked people, so many I could not count. It looked like they had been, like Jesus, on the cross but had fallen and lay lifeless below it. They were not entombed but just laid upon one another uncorrupted. Jesus then came into the scene and took me to another rise in which was driven a stake and He faced me with His hands on my shoulders and gestured to the dead saying, “All this is yours.” Just like our parable Sid the Seed is the state of many Christians today in the kingdom of God as we should see from Jesus’ testimony Luke 7:28, “Among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he.” And Luke 16:16b “Since that time [of John] the Kingdom of God has been preached and everyone is pressing into it.” John the Baptist was an extraordinary prophet; there was none greater said Jesus yet those who enter into the Kingdom of God, even t...

Jesus preached the word to them. A seemingly innocent little statement that non-the-less caught my eye. It’s not mentioned in the Matthew version but here it is in the less expansive gospel of Mark. It doesn’t say what was preached as if it were common knowledge and we should already know. Jesus preached the word to them seems as though it might be a sermon but somehow not significant to register in content. I asked myself what I would have said if so many came near that they couldn’t even get near the door – maybe I’d say, “The kingdom of God is close to you.” Jesus himself sent the 72 out to preach “the kingdom of God is at hand.” Perhaps that is what Jesus said but it’s hardly a preaching in itself. But then four men came to Jesus carrying a paralytic and had to lower him through the roof to get near. It must have been bedlam. So Jesus says something audacious, He says, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” Talk about radical theology – so what’s going on here? The scribes are enra...