Life on Wings - A Tribute to Dr Ern Baxter

"The Church! The Hope of the World!".

Just a short entry because I've just worked a night and my bed is calling! I've still been reading "God's Agenda" by Dr Ern Baxter and have been so blown away by the doctrinal revelation there - of his view of the 'bigness' of God and of the People of God - His Bride, the Glorious Church! It was quite a blessed night because in tandem with that I was listening to that awesome DVD of interviews with Terry Virgo - so my two favourite giants of the faith both speaking at the same time! (By the way I do keep my eye on the kids as well!) This is the kind of business that I needed to be on, to ensure me that this most remarkable amazing weekend, where God has so powerfully invaded my life does not become just an emotional blip - but a solid on-going leap in my love for the Church and relationship with it. I'm on my way out of the wilderness!

One of the things that most impressed me was the foreword written by Ritch Carlton - Ern's Administrator. It reads as quite a testimony to a man obsessed with the Church:

"This is the carefully thought out, studied out and prayed out understanding by a man who had seen the results of most wild-eyed ideas as they came and went. He walked through the squalor of Christianity as it has been demonstrated in the twentieth century. He was a witness to Christianity's divisions - from the inside and the outside.

With disappointment he cried, "Where is the Church?". He knew that the Church is God's instrument in the earth to declare His glory and righteousness. He loved the Church. At this stage in his life, Ern Baxter was now looking at things from the other side. He was looking for the "Church" at the end of his life and felt he had found very little of its biblical definition in function or what it was meant to be.

Above all else Ern still believed that God had a purpose for the Church in the earth that would be realised in ultimate and complete victory".