Whatever our "British" feelings about the Florida Outpouring we need to face up to the fact that it's coming to the United Kingdom! Trevor Baker - the leader of a church in Dudley - has already been to Lakeland and received an impartation of God. There has been some remarkable news from Dudley - they've been having meetings every night for 15 days. Gerald Coates and Ken Gott have both been to visit Dudley and have receieved awesome impartations of God. I am thrilled that senior national leaders are recognising that God is on the move and are seeking it out. So a couple of nights ago Trevor Baker was back in Florida while Bob Jones and Bobby Connors were present on the platform and gave a double impartation to Trevor Baker.
Here's what happened:
Bobby Connors prophesied;
"A FIRESTORM is coming to the United Kingdom! It's going to rage! We need to pray for the United Kingdom! It's going to come!!".
Are we ready for what's coming?
1 comment:
Oh and one final thing!!!!
Dan, I'll let you have the full Letter............
But first, When I was chucked out, one of the leader's wives had a graphic dream about
my change of state. This was truly the one thing that made sense
during all the horrible messages about me
being rebellious like
Miriam and Aaron, and they were speaking a
leprosy curse over me or something...spritually I guess.
I don't think they expected my hands to drop off.
Anyway, as Derek Prince used to say...these things
have power and the very next day I had a
head-on car collision allbeit a none too serious one.Never take curses lightly folks, even if they are wrong!!!!Use the Blood of Jesus.
I've never had anything like it.Someone turned across my path and they were just driving in the other direction towards me.
Now the dream is one of two brilliant pictures of where God is taking us. Ryan's is brilliant "More of You in all of me" (Notice it would be too dangerous to pray all of You in all of me!!!!)
The dream was of me getting out of a swimming pool and walking away.
Wow. That is so accurate. In the first level we are as Ern used to say "God's Frozen Chosen"...water but in ice form. Then in the 2nd level God warms us up a bit, but we are still contained in safety structures etc. A swimming pool.But in the third level God is birthing, the Church is stepping out of the pool!!!!We can go anywhere and will...as the prophets said "They will run to and fro throughout the Earth".
Loved this post!!! Have a great weekend.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This was written with all those in mind fro Michael Harper onto all the new churches birthed through ministries such as Ern.To Zerubbabel it will sound like cut and pasted Grubb. But in those days we couldn't!!!!Well I couldn't.
****************************
Letter to the Charismatic Movement 1990
The history of the world is God in action. God continuously moving,
hovering, incubating positives out of negatives. The cycle began in Genesis
and has continued ever since. What is often off-putting is that the positives
seem to be quickly swallowed up in the next series of negatives. That is
the nature of the FAITH GYMNASIUM in which we find ourselves. Take
it or leave it. It won't change a thing. We are stuck in it. So we had best
cooperate with God's Spirit and the whole direction of the universe.
God is faith, hope and love 1 Cor. 13:13 ... the greatest being love. God
is ever pouring Himself out for others in an endless stream of love, making
Himself available to the desperate cry, which is the birth of faith.
WHOEVER CALLS ON THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE SAVED
The universe runs on faith, hope and love and reveal themselves clearly
against a backdrop of the most incredible negatives. The negatives are
God's table display stand. God's podium, the foundation on which He can
display His incredible works.
Moses stretched out his rod and the Red Sea parted. But look again at the
context. Hemmed in on all sides, thousands of crack charioteers advancing
on them fully armed - a totally negative situation. But set up by The Lord
Himself using Pharaoh as the human agent to be the backdrop for one of
God's "classics", conceived by Himself before the foundation of the world.
How did Moses get in on it? He made himself available by faith hidden
away in a desert for 40 years.
Jesus faced the whole world system (Pilate) and the religious system (the
high Priest) and refused to back down on who He was. This engendered a
completely NEGATIVE SITUATION. But God was behind the whole
thing. THE WHOLE THING. Because it had all been written down
hundreds of years before, even down to casting lots for His clothing. Three
days later He is up out of it all, being mistaken for a gardener. And this is
the problem with some of God's greatest stuff .... it is so incredibly off the
wall everybody misses it. It is too wonderful to believe, after experiencing
all the bleakness of the negative.
Who would ever have expected the awaited Messiah to turn up in the womb
of a poor virgin girl? Off the wall! Who would have expected a king, THE
KING to make His appearance in a cow trough? Totally off the wall. No
wonder the Jews were confused. You would have been. And still are, as
God continues to turn up in odd humble circumstances, and you miss Him.
All this to remind us of the way He has been moving by His Spirit mightily
this century and particularly since the Fifties and Sixties to gather to Himself
a people worldwide who would believe into being and incubate the biggest
operation to date... the worldwide raising of a mature expression of the
people of God... a mature Church... what Paul saw and tried desperately to
communicate in letters such as Ephesians clutching wildly at any
superlatives he could lay his hands on: He chose us in Him before the
foundations of the world... He made known to us the mystery of His will...
according to His kind intention... with a view to an administration suitable
to the fullness of the times, that is the SUMMING UP OF ALL THINGS
IN CHRIST...
Well that was Paul. Peter said of him, "He says some things that are
difficult to understand." And you can understand why, because as it turns
out he was speaking two thousand years ahead of his time, and even now
some of it sounds totally O.T.T. (over the top) or OFF THE WALL.
We all laugh the laugh of unbelief like Sarah did with the Promise of Isaac.
But fortunately for us and the history of the world our laughter does not
change a thing where the unalterable Plan of God is concerned. Who would
ever have thought Israel would once more exist as a nation State? Who
could have foreseen the rapid changes in Europe over the last months? And
who could ever believe that God would call a bunch of nobodies like us,
and fill us with His Spirit to prepare the way?
Looking back, can you see the consummate skill with which apparently
haphazardly He has spoken an ever more defined picture by different chosen
vessels from all over the world into our midst?
To mention everybody involved the world over would be impossible, but a
certain progression in the Spirit's revelation is identifiable, and is by no
means limited to one group of individuals in any one country. This was
borne out by my German friend who visited some house-groups in Prague
back in 1977 while on a school visit to Czechoslovakia. They confirmed to
him that it was in 1967-8 that Jesus Christ, as in many places elsewhere
had filled many with the Holy Spirit, and this without contact with
Christians from other lands who were experiencing the same things For
instance "The Jesus People' movement in America, 'Revival' in Buenos Aires
the arrival of Don Basham in our home town near London. Michael Harper
m England, others in New Zealand from where most of our early praise
songs seemed to originate.
It was soon clear that God had not brought back the experience of His
precious Spirit to simply enliven our meetings. Graham Pulkingham and the
Fisherfolk were bringing the vision of the Body of Christ. Some of us
remember the awesomeness we felt as the Spirit told us WE ARE THE
BODY OF CHRIST ON EARTH. To many, this was blasphemy and many
left. We saw the absurdity of a divided Body of Christ. Everybody was
preaching John 17. "That they may be one."
Do any of you recall that prophecy after prophecy was given about God
doing a new thing in the earth? The true significance of the newness is only
beginning to be apparent twenty years on. God told us to set up landmarks
and signposts, Jer 31:21, to seek out the Way of the Lord, the Highway of
Holiness, to prepare the way of the Lord, but who had a clue of what He
meant?
Then simultaneously we were feeling drawn together, to live together and
work together. Juan Carlos Ortiz in Argentina and Em Baxter, Derek
Prince, Bob Mumford and others were sharing about DISCIPLESHIP As
Ortiz put in the preface of his book: he was sure people were going to abuse
the principles he was teaching, as strict methods and rigid laws. He couldn't
have been more right. It is difficult to reconcile the ensuing fiascos to do
with headship, submission and discipleship as having any planetary relation
to what these guys were originally sharing by the Spirit whatsoever Those
of us who were following the Spirit blindly were picking these doctrines up
by the Spirit as we went along and were experiencing much of the glory of
fsalm 133 Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell
together in unity". We are not cut out to live from the TREE OF THE
KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL, but from the TREE OF LIFE
Because most Christianity is still not established in the good of the
experience of the NEW COVENANT of Jer 31 as Ortiz was explaining in
Cry of the Human Heart', every time a leader comes down the mountain
with fresh revelation from God everybody feels they should read it up in a
book and then try to apply it willy nilly as some new law to tag onto their
overworked lives. Someone said Christianity is a very bookish religion.
What an inditement of the One who came to give us HIS LIFE!
How many remember the Bible weeks of the mid Seventies? Many of us
were nervous of going, the presence of the Lord seemed so strong. Many
of us sensed the angels, some even saw them. We knew we were caught up
in something much bigger than any of us could imagine.
We learned of God's order in the Church, moving through ministries of His
choosing: Apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists. How we have
diluted this to a carnal reliance on men - as it is written, "It is better to take
refuge in the Lord than to trust in man." Ps 118:8.
We learned of the threefold preparation of the Body of Christ prophetically
in these years... leaving Egypt, going through the wilderness and the years
of corporate training and testing as it was for the Israelites before entering
Canaan. We saw that now our corporate commission was nothing less than
the WHOLE WORLD.
Those who have taken praise and worship seriously now understand it as so
much more than getting some emotional high. It is God's ordained pattern
for us to enter into His presence, as an act of waiting upon Him, loving
Him, pouring out ourselves to Him, all primarily for His glory that He may
be satisfied, whether He grant us nice feelings or the very opposite is
irrelevant. Praise and worship has now become big business similar to the
money changers in the temple in Jesus' day. How different from Psalm 51
"A broken heart and contrite spirit you will not despise." This is our
safeguard. This is where God dwells. This is how we keep life in our
worship.
Ken Copeland, Harry Greenwood, Yongghi Cho have opened much to us
about the realm of faith, and so long as we keep these principles within the
overall context of the glory of God to be manifest among men, and away
from some Aladdin's lamp to be rubbed to fulfil our whims and fancies...
Anything you ask in My Name shall be done. The meaning of MY NAME
is so much clearer. How good to know the Blessings of The Book' ARE
INDEED OURS IN CHRIST. The Father really does want to bless us with
a pattern of life that we can hardly dare dream of. We've really only just
begun.
Yes, there are new dimensions on our doorstep but if we go higher, guess
where we also go - Lower. Made of no reputation. The hidden foundations
of the future are happening right now. Today's top-dogs won't necessarily
be a feature at all in tomorrow's church.
LIFE HAS MORE TO DO WITH SEEING THAN DOING!!
You argue but if you don't do, what good is seeing. Yes, but if you
REALLY see and there is any rational thought in your brain you will be
driven to action. For years we have sailed on quite happily polluting air and
water, killing rare plants and animals... basically doing our own thing... but
then people began to SEE and start the long haul of communicating what
they saw to all the rest of us proud ignoramuses. The problem with
ignorance is not that it is absence of knowledge, but that the space that
should be filled up with wisdom is almost invariably fill with pride,
reluctance and deafness - an unwillingness to hear! How many have tried
to explain a new Spirit revelation to an older person and been met with that
hard reply that means if I don't know it now it ain't worth knowing!
Just such a seeing needs to take place in the charismatic movement. Seeing
happens on the inside. This is more understandable to the East. Christianity
is a middle Eastern religion. To worship a God we aren't able to see is
MYSTICAL, like it or lump it. Finding God through books is OK, but at
some point we have to take a leap of faith into the arms of a REAL GOD
who can be trusted with our lives. As we read in the bizarre biographies of
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and all the others. God has
different ideas from us about what the best life experiences are for bringing
us forth as mature spirit beings. I wouldn't recommend my own personal
experiences, but for one thing - God showed up and He makes everything
more than worthwhile. (The charismatic movement used to bother me with
all these glowing testimonies of a flowing smooth spiritual life, until I read
about the O.T. saints... likewise all the divisions used to bother me, the
arguments etc., etc. But have you read of the birth of Israel and the sons of
Jacob recently?)
The stages of the Christian life are just depths of seeing what has already
been done for us on the Cross.
ME and Jesus stage
FIRST we see that the sacrifice Jesus paid means we can ask Him to forgive
our sins and we can go to heaven. Wow what a seeing that was. No more
rolling around the universe under a ten million ton weight making us even
in our best moments feel ill at ease. We've got an instant giant family of
fellow believers too.
JESUS and me stage
SECOND Oh I see, Jesus is Lord and He sends His Spirit to live His life
through me. Wow Miracles exist today, and He is letting me do some too.
Look at those meetings and the Presence of God. No more boring set
services. No-one knows what is happening next - but it just flows.
JESUS Stage
THIRD What a hopeless wreck I am... I AM POWERLESS AGAINST SIN.
What can I do? Oh I see, it never was 'just me'. It was Mr. Satan so
married to me that I thought it was just me, but it wasn't, it was him. That
evil helpless hopeless DELUSION of being a just me person died on the
cross with Jesus, and He came in as me. Wow, it is then normal that I live
a successful life, because it really is Him living my life through my
personality and my body. Oh I see, He is doing the same things He has
always done only through me... that is rescuing people, pouring out His life
for people. Wow. So that is why the Spirit was telling us about Isaiah 58
and the life of the fast to set the oppressed free and Psalm 110, "The people
shall pour themselves out willingly in the day of YOUR POWER," (the
second wind) and why, "Sacrifice... You have not desired but a Body you
have prepared for me..." US, vessels for Him to live His overcoming,
rescuing, loving life through and accomplish His original Word "subdue the
Earth," setting creation free from her groaning. (Romans 8.)
We have preached a substandard gospel. This is then to be the final
exposure of Satan's 6,000 year old lie, that we were independent beings, just
as he would have us believe he is. This is not true, since "In Him (God)
WE LIVE AND MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING" remains universally
true. Even Satan's life derives from God, though he had turned it in on
himself like a black hole. Me for Me... whereas God's true life is Self for
Others. This exposure makes us literally begin again. Having taken the log
out of our own eye, we can be bold to set about the task of removing other's
splinters.
Pentecostalism reintroduced us to the fact that God is still miraculously
healing folk. But what good is healing if the way we live our lives is
putting us right back in sickness? The Spirit has been nailing the way we
treat our bodies, the food we put in, the correct amount of sleep, a healthy
work life - He has nailed the bitternesses, the hatreds, the unforgiving
attitudes all of which promote the build up of acids and toxins in our bodies.
Digging still deeper, he hits the deep raw areas of our pasts, buried but far
from forgotten and so ever present, restricting us in our reactions to present
relationships and circumstances. Ephesians 2 describes our past darkness
where we were virtual automatons under Satan's tyranny of fear and lust.
The Spirit forbids us to react... but to ACT. We have to put off our former
manner of life and put on a new one, and it feels so unnatural making the
changeover. We often wonder if it will ever really work, and the devil is
ever present to assure us it won't, either through thoughts or other people,
who sound so knowledgeable. But you think that is bad, then the Spirit dies
still deeper!!!!! ' °
By this time, you've probably left your Christian community absolutely
convinced they are a load of nutters. BUT THE BIG QUESTION
REMAINS: Have you seen what God put you in there to see? Those that
remain have probably settled down to a nice compromise existence based
on a silent pact: I WON'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR LIFE IF
YOU DONT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT MINE. But one reassuring thing
about the universe is that whether you are in or out of a community God's
still going to get hold of your life unless you stubbornly persist in unbelief
and a hard heart.
The universe is not God-proof, because He is the ALL IN ALL, so you
can't escape... EVEN ON A THOMPSONS HOLIDAY!
But the idea behind the Spirit's supernatural gifts to us, and the frequent
gathering together of the saints in His Name, nay even the sharing of our
whole lives in community over the past years is to produce accelerated
growth. This was also the idea behind Israel's testings in the wilderness.
Both then as now, the success of these ventures depended on faith, on
maintaining a soft contrite heart. The Word sounds really great and sweet
to the taste in the mouth but when it hits our stomach, the Bible says it turns
this nasty taste of bitter! And in that day if we will not harden our hearts
but keep persisting then we shall have passed from death to life IN
PRACTISE AND NOT JUST IN FAITH PROCLAMATIONS MADE IN
A MEETING. What is actually taking place in those dark hours is described
in Hebrews 4. God's two-edged sword piercing as far as division of soul
and spirit. We are actually making a change of spirit, from darkness to
light. We are being bom again in another area of our life.... But WATCH
OUT CHRISTIAN, you will now cause ructions in the Christian community
at large, because the others are still in the old way of life.
It was patently obvious from early in the movement that some people 'had
it and some didn't'. They had a flavour about them that people would shyly
refer to as just them being special. Basilea Schlink, the books of Watchman
Nee, Dietnch Bonhoeffer, Madame Guyon and many others. Richard
Wurmbrand, Graham Pulkingham and the Fishertblk. It disturbed me that
I never heard anyone preach exactly like St. Paul. When he was in town
you knew it!
Charismatic meetings were one thing. Every day life for me and the others
was quite different. WHAT A RELIEF to realise that all the above names
weren't special, just mature!, to realise that when John wrote about three
levels of maturity: children, young men and fathers, he meant what he said
and that most of what we have experienced thus far can be put down to
immaturity and the first two levels. I remember thinking, well if this is it
what about all the things God had promised us?
The Spirit has been digging still deeper. Beyond the psychological hurts
beyond the demonic manifestations and holds in people's lives, and we are
grateful to those who have studied these things long and hard In 1987 a
key prophecy was brought by Derek Prince telling of the two Winds of the
Spirit, the first a devastating wind of holiness, shaking every Christian
structure and every facet of our lives. The second, the Kingdom Wind of
Power. In 1986 the Spirit showed a picture of some natives in a jungle
gazing skyward in awe at a metal bird. To us it is just a plane. The Spirit
was saying "What is the difference between the natives and those who
perhaps build the plane in America? Answer: 100 years of know-how in
flight. He was saying in the same way, up until now we have been involved
in praying in revivals, which have passed by us in a similar way, but never
understood how or quite why. This remained a mystery. But now the Spirit
wanted to take us into his confidence and give us know-how about what is
really going on.
One of the main operations Christ seems to be keen to carry out with all is
to expose the condition of those still remaining in the terrible independent
delusion. He forces people to confront the invariable botch up they are
making, which they do not want to look at. Looking straight at it is
tantamount to repentance, and rather than do that many will look away and
pretend everything is OK. They will get very angry, angry enough to kill
sometimes, since he who is the Murderer from the beginning does not want
his cover blown, and will at this point live his violence through the other
person.
Preaching the Word is to expose a person's condition to himself so he may
have the opportunity, at least, to repent and save his life. Exactly how jolly
a moment was it for the Jews on the Day of Pentecost when they asked what
all the noise was. Peter answered and then said "THIS JESUS WHOM YOU
CRUCIFIED... " and they had, it was not rhetoric.
In the same way, we preach to England just as Mother Theresa did last time
she came "What are you doing about all the homeless in your main cities?"
People hate prophets because they spoil the hunky-dory atmosphere with
unpleasant facts. But people with the Word of Christ are useful in the same
way that if a man pushed you rudely aside to avoid being hit by a brick
falling off a building, you would later see the sense in his apparent rudeness.
Or if you were on a railway line and didn't notice a train coming because
you had a Walkman on and you were again pushed roughly.
So many currently with the Word have been out of the existing set ups,
either forcibly or by gentle coercion. This is a shame, because the Eyes of
the Body have been effectively rendered inoperative. A prophet can see that
so far the charismatic scene has been like a sort of teenage Christianity, in
that it is exhibiting characteristics that are both adult then childish. People
in the movement are very like the man with the Walkman. They love the
praise, the music, the signs and miracles, but don't see the train about to
mow them down. The train is this world system that is building to a
glorious DEFIANCE against the TRUE ruler and inheritor of the Earth,
King Jesus. But we don't cease to be a part of this train until we have
fully heard the Word against us and our deluded concept of self-rulership.
Psalm 2's answer is to SERVE the Lord with fear and rejoice with
trembling, kiss the Son... No glib praise here.
Gentile Christians have proved as hard hearted as the Jew when it comes to
walking with the real risen Christ, but there is a glorious symmetry in all
this, in that God has shut the mouths of all, Romans 3:19, Gentiles and Jews
alike to prepare for the glorious unfettering of a true JESUS New Covenant
gospel which lays Satan's deception bare to the roots. For Jesus did say He
came to destroy the works of the Evil One, and I think you'd agree with me
that there is still room for a slightly more obvious manifestation of what
Jesus in fact accomplished for us on the Cross.
In this third level of understanding, Jew stands alongside Gentile all co-
heirs to this glorious faith life which we lost in the Fall. The birth of this
New Covenant in practise happens in the secret depth of our lives amidst
the most excruciating birth pains. Nothing comes easy in this universe.
Jer. 30:6-7 I say in practise, to make the distinction from two thousand
years of sitting on wooden pews taking bread and wine and believing the
coming Kingdom into being down on this Earth. I think it would be great
to openly honour a man who has helped open the way to a recovery of
Paul's gospel before he hitchhikes to heaven... and misses it... Norman
Grubb, now 95.
Chris Welch, July 1990.
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