What is the difference between fun and joy? The first is temporary emotions the second is a permanent state of mind.

Christian joy comes from the firm conviction that our Father in heaven is bringing about a renewal of the face of the earth. Our joyful hope is not an emotion, it is a response to the fact that this is true.

Our wonder proceeds from the realisation that the Father has sent his Son to earth in order to bring the restoration about. As we come to know Jesus our amazement just keeps growing.

We are so blessed!

While the world is full of negative let-downs, and noisy disagreements, we Christians have been undergoing a process of correction and renewal from our roots upwards. We have found this challenging and painful, but our Father has directed it in order to prepare us for the next stage of expansion of his Kingdom. It is almost complete and the time of growth is beginning.

Some might say we are not ready in the West because of the shrinking of religion, but it is when we own up to our weakness that God is most able to show his strength. Look at the few insignificant individuals praying in the upper room on the eve of Pentecost. What God did in the next 24 hours with them was the definitive beginning of the final age of humanity. It is in the West that the greatest cleansing of the Church has been focused, because it is in the West that the new stage of Christianity is being born.

At the same time that God has been cleansing his Church, he has, in the West, been revealing wonderful potential for human development through scientific progress. This has inflated a huge balloon of human self-satisfaction, but through various crises he has allowed that to be well and truly punctured. He has caused people to become disillusioned in order for them to turn to him; then we will be able to use the great richness he has blessed us with to make a better world than we have had before.

Now people in the West have begun to search for real meaning. Zechariah (8: 23) prophesied: "Yahweh Sabaoth says this. In those days, ten men of nations of every language will take a Jew by the sleeve and say, 'We want to go with you, since we have learned that God is with you.'" The place of the Jews in God’s plan has now been given to all who believe in Christ. That’s us. Are we ready?

This book is our attempt to help you deepen your understanding of what God is doing in our day, and to throw light on how you are crucially involved.

We are putting it on our website as it is developing so that your comments can help us complete it.