Posted: 10/26/2006 at 7:33pm | IP Logged

Dutch Author Reveals Why God is Seeking Entire Nations

by Steve Eastman, OpenHeaven.com TOP News

“The Nations Called” is a paradigm-shifting book.  First, it uncovers God’s covenant with the nations.  Second, it takes a fresh look at God-state and church-state relationships.  Third, it introduces corporate entities, which play a major role in the heavenlies and spiritual warfare.  The book’s author, Pieter Bos, is also an international prayer movement leader.  OpenHeaven.com spoke with him recently about subjects close to his heart.

Most of us are familiar with the concept of God’s covenant with the Jews from the Old Testament.  The Nations Called introduces the unheard of idea of God’s covenant with all the nations during the same time period.  How did God reveal this to you?

In 1990, I was invited to be one of the speakers at the conference of the International Fellowship of Intercessors in southern Germany.  When I arrived, I found I had forgotten my notes. The next morning the conference started with worship and then the chairman said, “Let’s all find a quiet corner and ask God for a fresh word just for this conference.” 

I asked, “Lord, give each one of us a fresh word and especially me, because I am the speaker tomorrow night.”  Nothing came.  I heard nothing.  So in the end I thought, “Never mind.  I’ll take the next chapter from my quiet time.” It was Zechariah 11, telling of God’s covenant with all the nations being broken, a covenant with the name, in English, “grace and beauty,” but in Dutch this very lovely term, “tender love.”  It exploded literally in my face, “God had a covenant with the all nations called ‘tender love.’  And it was proven!”

How was this received when you presented it the first time?

It was very well received.  That was God’s message for the conference.  It was a very international conference.  There were some beautiful testimonies. I remember especially from the Philippines, “That message changed us and our nation.”  Then I knew why God had me start writing this book.

Why is God concerned with nations, in addition to individuals?

I give 10 reasons in my book.  One of the reasons is God wants to be praised not just at the individual level but at the corporate level.  From the beginning He wanted partners in heaven.  He Himself is not individual, He is a triune God.  He wants humans at that level (corporate) to partner with Him.  He created these peoples, tongues and tribes in His own image just like individuals are created in His image. 

This brings us to your concept of corporate identity.  Could you explain it, please?

God is full of love and some nations are more relational.  God is a ruling God and other nations have this sense of justice.  In the beginning I was very afraid of these characteristics of nations, because there is a danger of stereotyping but there was a moment when God was so clear in revealing some of the corporate identities.  I decided I was going to write it down as a challenge, not to feed stereotypes but to teach us how to love other nations.

I believe the corporate identity of the United States is adventurous leaders.  An American can easily say, “Oh, I can set a man on the moon.”  They say to one another, “Go for it.”  The flip side of it is presumptuous leadership.  They think when an American has not done it, it is not done well. 

I had an anti-American feeling myself.  God confronted me.  I said, “I was wrong, I repent, but now You help me to love Americans.”  God showed me they are adventurous leaders.  That is where they are good.  That changed my mind. 

The Americans are very proud of themselves.  The Dutch are not.  They’re identity is prophet.  The flip side of prophet is criticism.  Holland is full of criticism in a very hurting way.  So the Dutch do not love themselves. 

So a corporate identity can be distorted by Adam’s fall?

Exactly.  It is distorted by the fall.  We so easily see the distorted, flip side of nations.  I’ve been called to advise Americans cooperating with Russians because they are very different.  The Americans look for leadership in a team setting.  The Russians go for leadership in a hierarchical setting.  It did not work.  I explained, “This is how God made you, but the distorted side is what you saw of one another, and then you clashed.”  That brought tears, repentance, openness and cooperation.

Does natural Israel have a unique place in God’s plan for the ages?

Absolutely.  Abram was called in order to bless all the nations because God saw the nations going their own way.  “The nations do not covenant with Me but with other gods.”  God appeals to the nations as His covenant partners.  God often says in the Old Testament “Virgin Daughter of Moab” and “Virgin Daughter of Babylon.”  “Virgin” means ready for covenant.  He appealed to the nations, through the prophets, to be His covenant partners.  Through Israel He wanted to show the nations Who God is. 

The Nations Called speaks about discipling the nations.  How do we do that?

It is the same as with a person.  You cannot disciple a person unless that person has committed himself to Jesus.  Without commitment, you would be putting a yoke on the person.  Unless a nation has been committed to God at a national, presidential or royal level, it cannot be discipled.  For a nation to be discipled it requires two moves to happen.  The bottom-up move is redeeming the marketplace, saturation church planting, doing miracles, having mercy ministries, in short: making God visible; this can start at any time.  The top-down move is the government of a state or nation endorsing all these Christian actions by covenanting the state or nation to God, through a public and documented act.  Even in a pluralistic society when Jesus is made visible and the government endorses what is good for the nation, including healing the sick, that nation is being discipled.

Matthew 25 talks about sheep nations (redeemed) and goat nations (unredeemed).  What happens to sheep individuals in goat nations and goat individuals in sheep nations?

That’s up to God but there are testimonies.  When Charles Finney evangelized New York, sometimes everybody was touched in a whole city or a whole region except for a few and they ran away.  Those who did not want to be converted – pimps, gamblers and bartenders -- ran out of the state or the region. I think if God did that a hundred years ago, He will do it again. 

Could you tell us about any nations in modern times that have made a covenant with God?

It’s very wonderful what God has been doing the last four years in Fiji.  Island after island and village after village is being saved at the leadership level.  There is so much immorality, abuse and sudden death.  There is such failure, there is only one hope – God.  A group called “Healing Land Team” comes to a village, island or tribe when they are desperate and do a two-week fast, confessing their personal sins.  They go from door to door with questions like, “Have you repented of all your sins?  Have you burned your marijuana plants?  Have you settled your accounts?”  After about 14 days they call the whole village together and ask, “Are you ready to covenant to God as a community?”  Several times after they’ve covenanted to God, the next day the land was healed, the crops were growing or the fish were back in the ocean. 

In Brazil just over 100 cities, at the municipal level, had publicly covenanted to God, some with enormous consequences.  One with which I was involved, saw a more than two-thirds reduction in its quarterly crime statistics.

How would you reply to concerns about separation of church and state?

Church and state, as entities, must be separated.  The church should not rule the state or vice versa.  That doesn’t mean that faith cannot be connected with politics. The activists, especially in the United States, make this mistake, but they do not separate faith and politics themselves. All politics is motivated by faith – Christian faith or Buddhist faith or new age faith or whatever. 

The church-state discussion is horizontal involving two more or less equal social-political entities.  We must grow to a vertical discussion from church-state to God-state.  I mean God, not God represented by the church, which clouds God.  God says, “Praise the Lord, all the nations.”  God says, “Nations, prepare for the judgment.”  God says, “Nations, I want to disciple you.  God says, “You, Virgin United States [or] Florida [or] Oklahoma [or] Holland [or] Peru, I love you.  I appeal to you.  I call you to repentance.”

The church is a third party, not representing God, but mediating between God and the state in three ways. The first is mercy ministries – healing the sick, delivering the possessed and raising the dead.  When the church starts to do miracles, the world can see there is a living God.  The second way is intercession.  Intercessors pray God’s prayers, not their long wish lists.  They were praying for transformation long before it actually took place.  The third way is prophecy.  Every now and then Elijah jumps out of the bush, points his finger at the king and says, “Are you the king?  Three years no more rain.  See you later.”  And he disappears.  Every now and then, when Elijah is ready, the church has a prophesy.  We should be a model nation in showing God, in interceding and in prophesying.

The body of Christ is very fragmented today.  Some churches are churches in name only.  Some denominations are very slow to cooperate with other groups.  Then there are the house churches which are difficult to track.  How does the Body of Christ come together in the few places where this has actually happened?

Through despair.  Our calling is to be responsible for our nation, city or region.  We have failed in this calling.  We have done only our own little things or our own institutional whatever.  We have no power.  We have no answers to prayer.  We have nothing to say.  There may come a despair, “Oh, Lord. Forgive us.  Can you use us again?” 

There was a coup in the nation of Fiji in the year 2000.  The country was in total collapse.  At last a group of pastors said, “Maybe we should pray together.”  They invited 14 pastors of the better off churches to come together. To their amazement, 70 pastors showed up.  There was complete brokenness.  That’s where the revival started. 

What one lesson from The Nations Called is most important for people to incorporate into their lives?

God made you an individual, part of a tribe, family or nation.  Through you and the church you are a part of, He wants to disciple that nation. 

To visit Pieter Bos’ website, click here.