BIRTH AND REBIRTH | A PLEA TO GOD FOR HIS LATTER RAIN

By Jill Roberts and Michael Canalé

 

Michael was speaking of how people’s lives are reborn and how there are seasons of this rebirth. This great truth of which Michael spoke, brought to my mind a powerful sermon which I recently watched on You Tube. It was preached by Bishop Kenneth Ulmer of Faithful Central Bible Church, and we will heavily draw from it in this week’s blog. The subject of the Bishop’s message was something entirely new to us, although it abounds in Scriptural references. It is the concept of the former rain and the latter rain.

At first blush, a mere agricultural term, it is multi-dimensional in Bishop Ulmer’s sermon, in the Bible and in this blog. It is, truly, as rich a topic as I have personally found in Scripture:

 

“…the LORD, our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season, he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.

(Jeremiah 5:24) KJV

 

“That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayst gather in thy corn, and thy wine and thine oil.”

(Deuteronomy 11:14) KJV

 

What, then, is a definition of these kinds of former and latter rains? In the physical, literal sense, the former rain is, as its name implies, the first rain of the season. It follows a dry time which has resulted in the earth being arid, even parched and hard. Nothing can grow in such soil until this former or first rain prepares and softens it for a time of planting the seeds into it. Typically, it deals with the topsoil. This is in preparation for what will follow, that is, the latter rain. It is this latter rain that, both in the soil of the earth and in the souls of mankind, is what Bishop Ulmer said we should pray for. It is a heavier rain, one that comes at its due hour in the season of farming and in life. This is the downpour of moisture and events which don’t just loosen and moisten the soil so that a seed can be sown. This is the rain thats purpose is to go down beneath the surface so that it reaches the very casing of the seed itself. When all the other conditions of the seed and a person’s soul journey are lined up and ready, it is this latter rain that comes and is absorbed by the seed cover, which then begins to swell and rupture, laying down spiritual and physical roots which, in Michael’s words, anchor the plant or the person. As the latter rain continues, so does growth. With a plant, “a stem emerges from the ground.” With the soul, growth translates into action. What started as a tiny seed, over time, becomes bushels of tomatoes or a redwood. (Thank you to Linda Ly for her article on plant growth.) With the soul, we also see fruit in the form of spiritual formation or maturation. With time and divine nurturing, there can be a Dallas Willard or a C.S. Lewis. But it all goes back to the latter rain down the years – the one that Scripture gives us as a guide.

 

In the New Testament, James sets forth further directions regarding birth and rebirth as Michael said. These verses suggest the attitude with which we are to approach receiving the rain and without which there can be no growth or rebirth.

 

“Be patient, therefore brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold the husbandman (farmer) waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he receives the early and latter rain.”

( James 5:7-8) KJV

 

In reading these verses, I think of my grandfather, J. Paul White, who was mentioned in an earlier blog. As a theologian/farmer, how this Scripture must have resonated with him. Like the patience required to see growth in his crops, he would have come to his own spiritual development in the same light. As to the crops, in those days, there were no alternative irrigation sources; it was the rain from God, upon which he depended. That same faith manifest itself in the growth of his soul, something he prioritized above all else. The memories of him reading his Bible are indelible in my mind.

 

In that Scripture, there are other ways that we grow, and this is through seasons of hardship. It is a form of the latter rain which can take us on a roller coaster ride of challenging events interspersed with respite from them. Maybe, no better example of this exists in the Bible than in the story of Joseph. What an ebb and flow of crisis and lull he experienced in order to, at the end, see God’s plan to provide spiritual and metaphorical latter rain which would grow abundance for his own people and for all of Egypt. Along the way, Joseph will have greatly grown himself.

 

In Genesis, Chapter 37, we initially find him, at seventeen years old, an immature young man who was favored by his father, Jacob, over all of his brothers. As a result of his being the favorite, Jacob gave Joseph a coat of many colors. To rub salt into his siblings already raw wounds, Joseph explained to them dreams he had where, symbolically, his parents, all of the brothers and, indeed, all of Israel would bow down to him. Infuriated, his brothers threw him DOWN into a pit, planning on leaving him there to die. Ultimately, however, they sold him into slavery in Egypt.

 

As Michael says, we often experience seasons in our growth and rebirth. This is never truer in the Bible than with what followed. Joseph was brought UP from the pit but DOWN to Egypt. (Genesis 39:1) KJV. Next, he was made a slave in wealthy Potiphar’s house and rose to become OVERSEER of his house and all that he had. (Genesis 39:4-5) KJV. Why? It was because Potiphar saw that God was with him and that everything he touched prospered. Then, Potiphar’s wife ordered Joseph to lie DOWN with her. When he refused, she sought revenge. She falsely accused him and he was sent DOWN, again – this time into prison. (Genesis 39:20) KJV. In a dizzying series of seasons, Joseph’s jail warden made him the keeper of the prison. Why? It was because God gave him favor in the eyes of the warden as he, also, saw everything prosper at the touch of Joseph’s hand. (Genesis 38:23)

 

In the prison, Joseph correctly interpreted dreams of two fellow prisoners. He had hoped that the Pharaoh’s chief baker, whose dream interpretation placed him back in the Pharaoh’s employ, would tell the Pharaoh that Joseph was wrongly incarcerated. This hope was dashed when the chief baker forgot all about Joseph. ( Genesis, Chapter 40) KJV.

 

Two years passed. One day, the Pharaoh had a dream that even his magicians could not interpret. Only then, did the Pharaoh’s chief baker remember Joseph. Brought UP “out of the dungeon,” (Genesis 41:14) KJV, Joseph shaved, dressed in clean clothes and came before the Pharaoh. By the power of God, Joseph correctly interpreted Pharaoh’s dream, predicting seven years of plenty to be followed by seven years of utter drought. (Genesis 41:25-31) KJV. Further, Joseph proposed a plan to remedy the pending catastrophe. They were to carefully store food from the seven years of plenty, so that when the seven years of drought came, there would be ample food in Egypt. The following was the Pharaoh’s reaction:

 

“And the thing was good in the eyes of the Pharaoh…and Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath shown thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art: Thou shalt be OVER my house…And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee OVER ALL the land of Egypt…And Joseph was thirty years old…” (emphasis added)

(Ge 41:37, 39-41, 46) KJV

 

In the past thirteen years, Joseph had GROWN from a prideful teenager with no sense of diplomacy in flaunting his dreams before his parents and brothers, to becoming a man who used his God-given powers of dream interpretation as stepping stones from the Pharaoh’s servants to the Pharaoh himself. His faith journey and the maturing of the seed of this God-bestowed gift, can only be described as God’s latter rain on his life. What an irony that this rain which produces spiritual abundance, solved the problem of a drought, a physical absence of rain, for seven years.

 

We can ask ourselves, could seventeen year old Joseph have summoned the poise and diplomacy evidenced in his meeting with the Pharaoh? I think that our unanimous answer would be, “No!” It was through the ups and downs of his times and of challenges that prepared him for a single moment, his appearance with the Pharaoh, the reason for all of the hardships and divine rescues of what Michael calls the seasons of birth and rebirth.

 

And what about Joseph’s fractured relationships with his brothers? Twenty-one years had passed from their selling him into slavery in Egypt until they themselves traveled from Canaan to Egypt, in search of food for their starving family, all but destroyed by the famine. Appearing before Joseph,

 

“Joseph’s brethren came and BOWED DOWN themselves before him with their faces to the earth.” (emphasis added)

(Genesis 42:6) KJV

 

Joseph’s dream at seventeen years old, had come to pass, but he did not approach them with it as he had in his immaturity. It was only later that he identified himself to them, as they had not recognized him. This spiritually mature Joseph,

 

“Said unto his brethren, ‘Come near to me, I pray you.’ And they came near. And he said, ‘I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me thither; for God did send me before you to preserve life…And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance…’

And he fell upon his brother’s Benjamin’s neck, and wept upon his neck. Moreover, he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them.”

(Genesis 45:4-5, 7, 14-15) KJV

 

A forgiving, magnanimous Joseph saved much more than Egypt. He saved his own people, the same family, with the same genealogy through which Jesus, the Messiah, would be born! (Matthew 1:1-16) NIV

 

Michael said, Let’s write about rebirth.” What develops this rebirth? How do we grow? Scripture answers this well.

 

“In the light of the king’s countenance is life; and his favour is as a cloud of the latter rain.”

(Proverbs 16:15) KJV

 

“Ask ye of the LORD in the time of the latter rain; so the LORD shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to everyone grass in the field.”

(Zechariah 10:1) KJV

 

Now, living not in a drought, but in a pandemic, let us do as Bishop Ulmer preached: Let us cry out to God for His latter rain, for His favor. Yes, like the life of Joseph, it may take us through the hills and valleys of this life. As Michael said, we will emerge from this stronger, wiser and better people. Again, in Bishop Ulmer’s words, “May we not miss the soaking, growth-inspiring, transformative latter rain!”