Andrew Strom
As many of you know, a major 7.1 Richter earthquake struck the New Zealand city of Christchurch in the early hours of Saturday morning. We had only been in the country for a few days, but we were quite a distance away. Amazingly, nobody was killed - which is seen as a complete miracle. Earthquakes this size have been known to kill hundreds of thousands of people. So we are very thankful to God. Of course, a lot of buildings are quite seriously damaged. And a lot of people are pretty traumatized. (My heart truly goes out to them, because I have ministered to disaster victims before). But at least nobody is dead!
I don't know about you, but I cannot help but see God speaking to the church in the loudest possible terms through this earthquake. The fact that it happened to the only major city called "Christchurch" in the Western world. The fact that it has been prophesied for years that the church will be greatly "shaken". The fact that a whole lot of older "structures" were wrecked or brought down - but the people themselves survived intact.
And I also see that God is speaking to us personally through this disaster. As you know, the "Shaking" of the church is something we have been speaking about for years. In fact, the last article that I wrote before being turned away from the US border two weeks ago was "THE SHAKING is GROWING." It seems to me (and I cannot see it any other way) that God spun us around and forced us back to New Zealand so we would be here in time for this disaster. We were meant to be here when this "great shaking" came to Christ-church. It simply does not seem credible to me that this can be a co-incidence.
Not only that, but Christchurch is the most "prophesied-over" city in New Zealand. Going back decades there are prophecies(some of which we published years ago) that speak about Revival and Reformation coming to that city - or spreading out from there.
Of course, these "Christchurch - Shaking" links have been noticed by many around the world. Sometimes people take things to be a "sign" that can be a little dubious. But you can hardly say that about this one! To me, this has
"Sign From God" written in neon lights all over it!
On our Facebook page, several commented on this. Mary LaRue wrote: "I believe this physical earthquake is an outward showing of what God is about to do spiritually in the House (His Body). A great shaking is coming. It is no accident that the place it hit was Christchurch!" And Maree Crawford wrote: "The earthquake struck when most were asleep and unaware in Christchurch... Next a spiritual earthquake in Christ's Church which will catch many that are asleep, and unaware. I reread the prophecy this afternoon from February about
'Earthquake in the Church' (Phil Buck). I agree..."
This event has already changed our own plans. It is certainly not something we can ignore. We had begun to receive invitations to minister in Australia, but I am going to have to put those back while we see what God would have us do here in New Zealand.
It seems likely that God may want us to do something like what we did after Hurricane Katrina (bringing teams down, etc). Obviously if we head for Christchurch we are going to have to be very sensitive to the trauma that these people have gone through. But the great thing is that everyone recognizes what a miracle it is that nobody was killed. I believe my Katrina experience may stand me in good stead again here. What an opportunity for the Christians to show forth the love of Jesus to a lost and dying world.
Please pray for us, my friends, as God's specific plans start to fall into place.
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