If the JORDAN RIVER is represented by JORDAN Peterson from Canada in the North, that same river flowing to New Zealand in the south finds another namesake there…… James and Denise JORDAN.
One of the first gatherings we had here at Rivendell, was with Kiwis, James and Denise. I remember it well. We had about 100 people crammed into the Upper Room. At one point as we danced up and down ‘in synch’ someone burst in through the door shouting, “STOP!” He had been alarmed by the reverberations and shaking fixtures and doors throughout the main house!! Fortunately the floor did not give way with the resonance…… and we all lived to tell the story!
The Jordans were bringing the message of the Father’s Heart to Rivendell in 2002, the same year the ‘father figure’ of the movement, Jack Winter died. We were privileged to get to know Jack in his last years in his Minneapolis home.
On one of our early visits to New Zealand we met with James and Denise in their homeland. I remember being told if you draw a line from Jerusalem through the centre of the earth, the nearest city you would reach would be Christchurch, New Zealand. So from Jerusalem, it is literally at …….the end of the earth.
We hadn’t heard from them for many years until a few months ago when they sent an email. James wrote,
Years ago, when I realised that the Father had given Jesus a “Son-sized” assignment (the salvation of the world) I saw that for me to be a son appropriate to who our Father is, I needed a “son-sized” vision.
Therefore, to see this revelation of God’s Trinitarian Love go into every stream of Christianity, every culture, every country, and finally face to face with every person, is what we live for.
The above photograph of a lion and Zebra, natural enemies, drinking side by side from the same watering hole was part of their message.
Thus took me back to the week Hilary and I spent at the Bay of Islands, next to the Waitangi Treaty site. The Psalm we were due to read the first morning was Psalm 67.
Each subsequent morning Father checked us from moving on, and had us read again Psalm 67! I described how we were on the ground floor, our room opening out onto the hotel gardens. Well each morning as we read we noticed a new species of exotic bird would appear before us! We knew these represented different ethnic groups or nations and that it was a confirmation of God’s word in the psalm,
“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us; may your ways be known on earth, your salvation among ALL NATIONS.”
At the end of the week we flew from the North Island to Christchurch on the south island. Bible open on the tray table in front of me, I was pondering the psalm once again, when the man next to me asked what I was reading.
“Psalm 67.” I said.
He said,
“I have just left my successful engineering business in the North Island to return to a YWAM base in the South because God has been speaking to me about this being a time to devote to training people for the wave of evangelism that will go from here to the ends of the earth.”
Then he said.
“The psalm God used to speak this to me, was the one you are reading…..Psalm 67!”
The next time we were back in Ireland we were dining with friends on one occasion, when I was taken with the tablecloth which had a variety of different birds drawn on it. The material was particularly durable and so Hilary enquired where our friend had bought it.
The next day we went to the store to see if we could purchase the same cloth for our long table at Rivendell. As I sat waiting in the car, I noticed a simple young man walk by in front of me. He paused, gesturing at the license plate of the neighboring parked vehicle, and mouthing words. When he moved on, I got out to see what it was he could possibly have been describing.
The number plate read 67. EZ. This what he had been repeating to himself, “67,. EZ. 67 EZ….”
It was as if our Father was answering the question.
“Is Pealm 67 possible?…… Could the revelation of God’s love and his salvation pssibly go to every nation…. even to every person?”
The answer he said was……..“EASY!”
May THE RIVER of God’s Spirit revealing the love of the Father in the gift of the Son go forth from the NEW ‘ZEAL of the Lord’ LAND at ….the end of the earth
…….. To the ENDS of the EARTH.