Lynn Green

Category: Current Events

  • The Dead are Raised and the Chinese are One

    The Dead are Raised and the Chinese are One

    Photo by Alan Cabello from Pexels

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

     

    Some of our experiences this past month

    I would like to recount one extra story to you and then the remainder of this report can be about our unprecedented meetings in Hong Kong.  Marti and I were at a youth prayer event in East Sussex for a day and met a man I had heard of but never met. Dennis was mentored by my dear friend, Guenther Krallmann, who lived with us at Highfield Oval for many years.  Dennis’s story of recent events was amongst the most encouraging we have heard.

    He was on a trip abroad with a group when he began to feel very unwell and steadily weaker.  He went to a doctor and after tests was told he had a ruptured appendix and would not be able to fly home the next day as scheduled.  Though that was the diagnosis, he felt strongly that he should fly home anyway.

    Three days later he was back in London and feeling weaker, so was taken to A and E.  He is the pastor of a praying church of about a thousand people in North London and the congregation were in prayer for his healing, but he declined and died.  He was certified dead, but the praying church cried out to God that they would not accept his death—that he MUST live!  As they redoubled their prayer, his body roused, he took a deep breath and shouted,

    “I will not die, I will live!”

     

    The shocked hospital staff opened his abdomen, cleaned up the infection as best they could and put him in an induced coma for five days.  When he regained consciousness, he was surprised and a little embarrassed to hear himself preaching.  As the hours passed, he discovered that he had preached a lot during the five days and that hospital staff and patients had been deeply impacted.

    He went on to tell me how so many of the people in his part of London were aware of his illness and now know the whole story.  But, he explained, “The thing I like the most is talking to the poor and marginalized on the streets where I am not known.  That is where God is moving the most!”  I am looking forward to more fellowship with Dennis.

    Hong Kong

    Our week in Hong Kong started in the same vein. We met a humble evangelist (I’ll call him Ahmed) working in some of the most closed countries in the Middle East.  He trained as a priest, but it was just a job to him until he met Jesus and was filled with the Holy Spirit and power.  He had to flee his country on the sub-continent because powerful people were seeking to kill him.  Life was very difficult for an exile in M.E. countries where the Christian faith cannot be freely proclaimed.

    At 2 a.m. one morning his phone rang and a man on the other end demanded, “Who are you!”  Ahmed, confused, asked the same question of his caller.  Eventually, the man explained that he was in a state of desperation and had suddenly seen a telephone number written in lights on the ceiling above his bed, so he called the number.  The caller demanded that Ahmed should come to him immediately, but Ahmed had no car and no way of getting there, so the man sent his driver the next morning.  That was the first of many miracles that opened a door to the most influential families in the region and many members of those families have become followers of Jesus.  They have even given him a large piece of property so he can train more people to be like him.

    Ahmed pastors a church of several hundred now.  One night he received a phone call from a desperate member of his church who was in a morgue.  A friend of his was very ill, had died and was taken to the morgue, but this man had a deep faith that, even though a death certificate had been issued and he was holding a copy of it, his friend was not meant to die.  Ahmed was still waking up and didn’t know what to do, but heard himself saying, “Lay your phone on your friend!”  He began to pray and rebuke the spirit of death.  After a short time, the friend who had died began to shrug her shoulders.  She went on to regain full health and is alive today.  That was one of three people recently resurrected.  (This report would be a lot longer if I told the details of those stories.)

    There is no doubt that “the harvest is ripe” in some parts of the world that we used to think were the hardest to reach.  The work of the Holy Spirit, often in signs and wonders cuts right through all the usual arguments and objections to the Good News.

    Mainly about the Chinese

    After a couple of days of preliminary meetings, we moved to the Asia World-Expo centre near the HK airport and were joined by nearly 10,000 Chinese.  The great majority were from the mainland, but others were from Chinese majority and Chinese minority nations around East Asia. The cultures, political views and values vary a lot between these nations and the tensions between Hong Kong and China was particularly acute.  (We were near or passing through demonstrations at both locations but never felt at risk.)

    Oneness

    The theme was around the prayer of Jesus in John 17, that we may be one as He and the Father are one.  I was so deeply impressed that the political differences could be openly discussed but without any heart division.  The mainland Chinese could explain that political dissent and demonstrations would never enter their minds.  Their approach to the Kingdom of God does not include political action.  After very honest discussions, they simply committed themselves to stand together, though that might mean arrest or even death.  It’s one thing to be prepared to suffer for our own convictions, but something much deeper to be prepared to suffer for convictions we do not share.  They have a deep understanding of the importance of oneness.  Those of us from Western nations were deeply challenged, as we so often are by the Chinese.

    I was WRONG

    That brings me to my confession.  In 2012, an American with the reputation of a prophet conducted a prophetic act at the same Expo centre.  He gave Chinese leaders a very large decorative key and proclaimed that the anointing for leadership was passing from American hands to Chinese hands.  When I watched a recording of that, I was unhappy.  There were a several reasons for my reaction, but my main thought was about nationalism.

    Christian leadership has often been skewed by nationalism.  In fact, we were at the Expo again in 2013 to offer our apology and express remorse for British nationalism which led to the opium wars of the 19th century. The loyalty of some missionaries to the British Empire damaged the purity of the gospel for two centuries. I have seen damage done all over the world when British, or Dutch, or French or American nationalism and superiority were packaged with the Good News.

    To view that ceremony of apology and the emotional responses of Chinese people (video bellow)

    There is no doubt that Chinese nationalism is generally on the rise.  It is very common to hear Chinese people say that they used to be ashamed of being Chinese, but now they are proud of their growing power and achievements.  But for the past six years we have been in close fellowship with many senior leaders of Chinese church networks—some of which number in the millions.  We love and admire and joyfully submit to their extraordinary love, gentleness and power in the Holy Spirit.

    Yes, I believe an anointing for global leadership in the Body of Christ is on the Chinese.  But it is not the kind of leadership that some Western nations have exercised.  These are humble servant leaders who are easy to underestimate.  They often don’t lead from the front, they lead in prayer and spiritual authority.  They do not push themselves forward, but they eagerly serve when needed.

    Oneness Equals Authority

    There were no guest speakers to draw the crowds to this event and there were few plans for the sessions.  We met for three and four-hour sessions to worship and see what God would do.  We expected that He would bring about deeper unity in the global Chinese family and that’s exactly what happened.  It occurred through brokenness, worship, celebration, weeping, joy and bold proclamations.

    From the Scriptures, especially John 17 and Ephesians 1-3, we know that we are meant to have great authority on the earth, but we also know there are conditions. The foremost condition, and the hardest one, is that we might be one.  Anyone who has lived the Christian life for very long knows that the oneness of John 17 is impossible in human terms.  Now we have witnessed that the Holy Spirit can impart that oneness, doing what is not possible for human beings.

    Help Needed!

    From the beginning of the events in Hong Kong, some of us Brits and other Europeans felt that we wanted to ask the Chinese to come and help us.  By the end of the event, we were desperate for their help.  When I expressed that need to one of the senior leaders whom I know best, she beamed her welcoming smile back to me and said;

    “We have wanted to do that for a long time!”

    Where to from here?

    There were about 20 Brits in the Hong Kong meetings and we are not the kind of leaders who can announce a meeting and get everyone to come.  How do we proceed?  We are asking God to show us.  What we do know is that God is not finished with Britain, the rest of Europe or other Western nations.  He wants to do a redemptive work in our nations too.  Join us in prayer that we will move in unison with the will and purposes of God!

    Lynn Green.

  • Boris and Brexit—An Opinion

    Boris and Brexit—An Opinion

    Photo by Slyzyy from Pexels

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

     

    Boris and Brexit—An Opinion

    Thirty-six years ago, the United Kingdom joined a free trade zone, the European Economic Community. Prominent Christians were among the founding fathers of that community and it seemed like an obvious good move—and so it proved to be for many years.  The entire area prospered and economic activity between the member nations increased the wealth of their citizens.

    From Free Trade towards a Federal Government

    There is, however, a tendency for people with power to do their best to gain more power. The free trade zone evolved into a supra-national state taking more and more authority over the member nations, creating courts that sat in judgment over the national courts, establishing a parliament that passed volumes of legislation that bound all members states, controlling immigration, admitting nation states that did not meet the membership criteria with subsequent economic chaos and mass people movements within the area, and then creating one super-currency with a European Central Bank. That step was a step too far for the UK.  We kept our currency.  The next planned step is one military for all of Europe.  The EEC had become the EU in its journey from a free trade area to the United States of Europe.

    Unwilling to Acknowledge the role of Christian Faith

    To my mind, the most important issue was the steady momentum away from its Christian foundations towards a self-proclaimed humanism.  Angel Merkel, German Chancellor, publicly stated that she wanted a direct reference to Christianity in the Lisbon Treaty, but her efforts were unsuccessful.  There is no reference whatsoever to God or Christian values in the current documents of the EU.

    Many citizens of the European Union, chafe under the growing bureaucracy, taxation and wealth redistribution from Brussels, but is it possible to leave?  For those who had abandoned their own currency and adopted the Euro, the answer was almost certainly, “No.”  The United Kingdom, though, with the Pound Sterling still in place, might just pull it off.  When the Conservative Government of David Cameron put the question to the general population three years ago, nearly all the media pundits predicted that, despite the ceaseless griping about Brussels, the people would choose to remain in the EU just to avoid the risk of an economic down-turn.  The results shocked both the main-stream media and the political establishment.  The people of the UK voted to leave—though by a small margin.

    A Clear Vote

    The margin, however, wasn’t so small when seen in the context of representative government.

    We have 650 members of the House of Commons.  Each one represents a voting district and they are normally the voice of the majority of their voters.  That was not so when it came to the question of leaving the EU.

    408 Constituencies voted to leave.

    Only 160 MPs have voted to leave.

    There is a clear gulf between the politicians and the people they are meant to represent.  To compound that, our Prime Minister for the past couple of years, Theresa May, wanted us to remain and the government she formed had few members who wanted to leave.  Those facts are at the heart of the last three years of confusion.

    Brexit Without Leaving?

    The PM and her team attempted to negotiate a deal, but their hearts weren’t in it.  Worse than that, though, was the determination of Brussels to make it very hard to leave and to punish the UK if it succeeded in its efforts to leave.  (If they were cooperative, more nations would head for the exit.)  Theresa May returned from her many trips to Brussels with a deal that she presented as leaving the EU, but kept the UK captive to the regulations and judicial system of the EU and prevented the UK from negotiating any trade deals with other countries. The big thing that would have changed under her agreement was that the UK would lose voting rights as one of the 28 member states.

    Finally, after months of no progress in Parliament, Mrs May announced her intention to resign and the conservative party initiated a process of choosing a new leader. The final step, a vote by the 160,000 members of the party, resulted in a two-thirds majority for Boris Johnson. So, who is he?

    A British version of Trump?

    The BBC and more liberal press will continue to caricature him as a “British Donald Trump”.  But he is different in many respects.  That caricature is no doubt because of his firm conservative political beliefs.  He had the privilege of very good schooling followed by university at Oxford where he studied Classics and was President of the Union..  He was a political columnist for the Daily Telegraph, a successful mayor of London and was also the author of a biography of Winston Churchill–and it’s a good read.  There is no doubt that Churchill is his hero and that he would like to be known as a Churchill-like figure.

    What he has in common with Churchill is an optimistic outlook in uncertain times. He has a quick wit, a superb command of language (definitely not Trump-like) and a good sense of humor. He has been characterized as impulsive, and insufficiently detailed, but those who know him well, including one of his professors at Oxford, counter that claim by pointing to his record as a student, as a journalist and as Mayor of London. In that sense, he is more of a Ronald Reagan than a Jimmy Carter. Carter probably had a higher IQ than Reagan, but got lost in the details, while Reagan was a big picture man who surrounded himself with competent people whom he trusted.

    Far from Ideal

    He is not, however, a good role model for aspiring young people.  He left, and is divorcing, his second wife.  He has four children by his two marriages and at least one other child from an affair.  His current girlfriend, 31 years old, will be moving with him into the Prime Minister’s residence, Number 10 Downing Street.  That fact attracts almost as much media attention as his politics.  He is known to be antagonistic to the Church, by that I mean the Church of England. Whether or not he is also an adversary of Christian faith in general is not yet clear.

    Some Signs of Hope

    In these early days of his overall national leadership he has given us some reason to hope.  His cabinet and the wider government he formed have demonstrated that he is serious about delivering Brexit.  He has also put some very strong characters in position to streamline government. Interestingly, their pay will be related to how much wasteful expenditure they eliminate.  His speeches have been very well received by the public.  I have to say that the BBC has been consistently downbeat and negative about him and our national outlook.  I am hoping that he will have the courage to do away with the TV license fee (£150 per household!) and make them stand on their own commercial success.  They have demonstrated a strong left-wing bias for the past couple of decades.

    To my mind, his most significant appointment thus far has been to make Jacob Rees-Mogg the leader of the House of Commons. Marti and I admire him and I often listen to his videos just for entertainment.  There are several short YouTube clips that show his ability to speak clearly and avoid the pitfalls. Here is one of them:

    Of all politicians, he has been the most articulate proponent of Brexit.

    Finally, I am glad this has happened during the Trump presidency. President Obama visited here a few years ago and famously stated that if the UK left the EU, they would be at the “back of the line” for any trade negotiations. Trump has said that the UK is at the front of line and, just yesterday, I read that Boris has plans to visit DC three times in the next few months.

    Many pundits say he cannot succeed, and others focus on the innumerable and very difficult obstacles, but a few think he will deliver Brexit. That is my hope.

    Lynn Green.

  • Reconciliation Walk

    Reconciliation Walk

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

     

    Tre Sheppard helped me make this video in 1995.  He did a great job of putting it together and I am grateful to the people at ywam.tv for digitizing it recently.  It is still a relevant subject for a few reasons.

    It is very important that Christians in the western nations should understand how many Muslims, and Jews, see Christianity.  There are reasons for their feelings of enmity and we should humbly acknowledge that.  As everyone knows, history shapes the present and if we do not make efforts to address historical sins, there is little hope that the consequences will fade.  This video is a brief summary of the events of the first Crusade and their impact on Muslims, Jews and Eastern Christians—all of whom were victims of religiously inspired violence under the banner of the Cross of Jesus.

    The following year, hundreds of Christians from Western nations journeyed to Turkey to convey a message of apology face-to-face. That initiative continued for over three years, through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank.  It culminated in Jerusalem on July 15, 1999, exactly 900 years after the Crusaders breached the walls of Jerusalem and slaughtered all its citizens.  In the context of the twisted understanding of the Roman Church at the time, their actions were thought to be “evangelism”.

    Let us walk in humility!

    Defusing the bitter legacy of the Crusades. Lynn Green retraces the history of the first Crusade and proposes an appropriate Christian response for today. The Reconciliation Walk was an independent initiative led by Lynn Green, an American who has been living in England for 25 years.

    About 3,000 walkers participated over the 3-year period, with people coming and going in small groups, from many different denominations and nations. It began in the spring of 1996, as teams of walkers entered Cologne, Germany, where the Crusades were launched in March-April 1096, led by Peter the Hermit.

    The 2,000-mile three-year walk across Europe and through the Balkans, Turkey, and Syria ended in Jerusalem on July 15, 1999, the nine-hundredth anniversary of a Crusade massacre of Jews and Arabs. Recorded in 1996, by Procla-Media, and captured from VHS in 2019.

    resource: UofN Legacy

  • Understanding China

    Understanding China

    Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels.

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

     

    Marti and I are back in Hong Kong for a Gathering of the wider Chinese family. As I write, there are massive demonstrations against the Beijing government. Some Hong Kong citizens, especially young people, are angry, feeling that their democratic freedoms are being steadily lost to the mainland government. Others in Hong Kong feel strongly that it is best to not stir up trouble with the Chinese Communist Party.

    These political divisions have created differences of opinion between Christians here in Hong Kong and between mainland believers and HK Christians. We are back at the Expo centre, expecting thousands again, and trusting the Holy Spirit to bring oneness.

    To some extent these complexities and divisions can be traced to the history of troubled relationships between China and Western nations. The events of the 19th century still occupy a central place in the way history is taught to Chinese children. They understand that western powers, in their greed for Chinese goods, forced China to take opium in exchange for tea, porcelain, fine art and other Chinese products. Their history lessons point out that China was forced into poverty for a century, until the Chinese Communist Party began to bring freedom and prosperity.

    In light of these deeply held beliefs, we read out a message of reconciliation to the 20,000+ Chinese who gathered here at the All-Asia Expo in 2013. That message is still relevant and very important today. This is what we read:

    Reconciliation Message as read to the All Asia Gathering, Hong Kong July 2013

    We are Christian leaders from the Body of Christ in the nations that formed the Eight-Nations Alliance and from various other nations that engaged in corrupt trade practices and military aggression against China.  Our nations, beginning with the Dutch, nearly four centuries ago, coveted Chinese goods and conspired to pay for them with opium.

    European nations, along with the United States of America prospered as a result of God’s grace through the availability and application of His Word in our laws and governments, but we often turned His blessing into a curse on other nations.  Great Britain was especially blessed with revival and social transformation as Christians took a lead in society but turned its prosperity into military might which it used to colonize many nations and against China to force open its ports and then its inland regions.

    The widespread addiction to opium and the cost of the two opium wars and the penalties forced on China in the Unequal Treaties helped impoverish generations of Chinese.

    Many Christian missionaries gave their lives and the lives of their families to China, often making great sacrifices.  Yet, they gained access as a result of warfare and unjust treaties.  They too rarely spoke against these acts of injustice and lethal force.  Therefore, the Gospel message was seen as a European religion associated with foreign domination.  As a result, those Chinese who gave their lives to Christ and were willing to suffer for Him, suffered unjustly for being associated with the greed and pride and aggression of our nations.   Generations of our Chinese brothers and sisters in Christ have suffered, not only for the sake of Christ, but for the sins of our forefathers. 

    Though Christians in our government mounted a successful campaign to stop slavery, their voices were silent or faint about the lethal trade in opium and the military aggression to support it.

    THEREFORE, as Christian brothers, speaking to our brothers and sisters in Christ, we identify with the sins of our forefathers and repent of their sins and ours—serving mammon rather than God, polluting the Gospel by mixing it with injustice and lethal force.

    We repent that we assumed that God’s blessing on our nations was as a result of some intrinsic superiority.  So we imposed ourselves on many other nations exploiting and oppressing them.

    We repent of our selfishness and greed that led directly to much greater suffering—even to this day—amongst our Family in Christ Jesus.

    We repent of our nationalism and pride that put the benefit of our nation and empire before the blessing of our Family in Christ.

    We humble ourselves before you, knowing that these words and this act cannot undo the untold damage, but we pray that they might lead toward forgiveness, healing and unbreakable love between us.