Ben Gray brings careful insight and powerful revelation to his teaching and exhortation. Heaven’s Answer To Earth’s Dilemma is a passionate wake-up call to the church to embrace necessary change in order to come into all that God has planned for it at this moment of strategic opportunity. 
Rarely do I find such a complete account of the call of God upon His people to release His kingdom culture into every aspect of society. Ben Gray has … given us one of the most readable, challenging, authoritative, and exciting accounts I have ever read.
[Heaven's Answer] reveals how we might live and breathe in a real hope that goes beyond that of seeing the restoration of apostles, to, as Ben says, the release and deployment of an apostolic company (the church) of grace-filled believers to accomplish their God-given assignments in all of life. 
Ben Gray calls every believer in Christ in our day to recognize and fulfil their God-given vocational calling as kingdom people. I highly recommend Heaven’s Answer to Earth’s Dilemma. 
| Agitators – those pesky radicals |
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If you are a student of history or just a casual observer, you will have gathered from books and conversations this fact. Down throughout the history of the Christian church, most of its pioneers (new movement types), often labelled as pesky ‘radicals’ have been greatly used by God to goad and cajole the current church culture and dominant leadership paradigm into a new season. Martin Luther, for example, was a complex, brave and innovative shaker of the institution of church. Like many before and since, the result of all of these character traits (and more) has seen significant ‘Christian and societal reformation’ throughout history. It’s interesting to note that time and time again, a small and somewhat insignificant group of agitators can be seen drawing the body of Christ into a new era, a new season. Sometimes it has cost these pesky radicals great hardship, privations, ostracism, intimidation and alienation, and in some cases, even their very existence, to usher this new kingdom movement into the main stream of church life. They often espouse what it is to have courageous risk-taking faith. Ordinary men and women of all ages who are sold out to God, have a sense of God’s heart and prophetic revelation and who are willing to give up everything for the sake of that which God has called them to incarnate. They have sought to break church and ministry life free from excessive controls by man-made structures, or constructs, thereby allowing it to become more of what God intended – a relational movement, birthed in the person Christ. I am concerned about the church of Jesus Christ fulfilling its kingdom mandate to go into all creation and make disciples of every nation. I long more and more to see this wonderful Bride become all that it is meant to be for this fallen world. To this end, I believe we need the agitation, of these ‘pesky’ radicals and their challenge, to move us into a new kingdom dimension of life, work and worship. We need to see these ‘agitators’ as a sign of what has to come, rather than as an enemy of what exists at present. Why? Because their ranks are made up of people who love the body of Christ and want to see it fulfill the Father’s divine purpose. |