Life on Wings - A Tribute to Dr Ern Baxter

Cessationism = Careful or Quenching?

2009-11-26T18:38:00.003Z

Any who step across the portals of this blog will know I do not have a high opinion of the cessationist position. I have no shame in stating I passionately believe that all gifts of the Holy Spirit are given and distributed "as He will" today and are for the building up and edifying of the risen Lord's church. It was useful to be reminded by Stanley Jebb's recent blog post however that some cessationists don't like the claim that they are skeptical and guilty of quenching the Spirit;

"Christians who hold to a cessationist position are not skeptics nor unbelievers but are generally concerned conservative or reformed evangelical Christians who hold certain views about miracles, signs and wonders".

Traditionally the expectation has been on charismatic Christians to explain why they believe gifts should and do happen today. I think the environment has now changed - thanks to theologians such as D A Carson and Wayne Grudem and my favourite - Gordon Fee - along with others who have argued rationally and intellectually that there is NO Biblical statement that suggests the gifts of the Holy Spirit have passed away or ceased. Therefore I believe that that it is now upto cessationists to prove themselves.

If Stanley Jebb is correct in stating that cessationists are neither skeptics nor unbelievers but simply "concerned" Christians who hold to the supremacy of the Word of God then they need to argue consistently from Scripture - and not resort to scaremongering or citing examples of excess such as the "tortilla lady" that so upset John MacArthur. Cessationists claim to stand for orthodoxy. Stanley Jebb calls cessationists; "Concerned conservative or reformed evangelical Christians" - so the question we are left with is; "Is orthodoxy enough?".

Dr Martyn Ll0yd-Jones would think not;

"It is becoming clear to everybody - at least it should be - that the Christian church today is failing and failing lamentably. It is not enough even to be orthodox ... people want a word of authority ... We need authority and we need authentication. It is not enough merely that we state these things and demonstrate them and put them logically. Is it not clear that we are living in an age when we need some special authentication - in other words we need revival".

During the sermon Dr Lloyd-Jones then goes on to speak about cessationism. He begins by working carefully through the New Testament passages that demonstrate the gifts of the Spirit never ceased and summarises;

"It is perfectly clear in the New Testament times, the gospel was authenticated in this way by signs, wonders and miracles of various characters and descriptions. And you cannot begin to understand the New Testament, the epistles as well as the book of Acts without holding that fact in your mind".

One of the things that really irks me about cessationism is that they have divorced signs and wonders and gifts of the Spirit from the gospel - the spreading flame. The New Testament shows clearly that unbelievers are to come into the midst of believers "standing and prophesying" and the result is that they will be convicted, will fall down and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Spiritual gifts should impress and attract the world!

To distort the Word of God to claim these have ceased has stunted and robbed unbelievers of a means by which God intended to reveal Himself to them.

Let us be clear! 1 Corinthians 14:24 does NOT state (in this instance) that unbelievers come in and hear the "preaching". It speaks of them coming in and hearing the "prophesying" - the inspired, instant, Spirit-inspired utterances of the gathered church! Orthodoxy? What is "cautious" orthodoxy doing to save the lost masses in London, Birmingham, Bombay, Calcutta and of course China? Caution? Dr Lloyd-Jones summarises this cessationist argument as;

"We have got the truth so you do not need anything miraculous or supernatural".

His answer?

"The Scriptures never anywhere say that these things were only temporary - never! There is no such statement anywhere! "

This post is not the place for a careful work through of the Scriptures cessationists like to use to claim the charismatic gifts have ceased (such as 1 Corinthians 13). My question is - are cessationists justified in claiming they are not trying to quench the Spirit but are rather "cautious" orthodox evangelicals. We must state the obvious - I don't believe ANY Christian would deliberately (at least I hope not) quench the Holy Spirit. Sadly they do. But I think the jury must remain out. All I see still of cessationist arguments are a people who are gripped by a spirit of self-control. They do not like being subject to the Holy Spirit and His designs and plans for advancing His church.

My personal experience and childhood is vastly different. I remember a glorious childhood growing up in a charismatic (yet never out of control) church. I remember what seemed like hours of heavenly worship standing with my parents watching and learning as they seemed "lost in wonder, love and praise". Sometimes someone would speak out in a strange tongue - and it didn't seem odd. It seemed fascinating. I remember even some of the elders bringing carefully weighed prophecies (rarely "silly remarks" that I remember as Stanley Jebb claims) that lifted even our hearts as children to God.

Then I remember the environment changing very definately. People eager to share prophecies would go up to the platform and speak with the elders and be sent down to their seats without being allowed to share (we would call it the "walk of shame"). Choruses and love songs were sung less and less and painfully tuneless hymns were sung more and more. Non-Christian friends of the family who would visit with us would ask; "Why have you lot become so miserable?".

Caution is okay - but it is a fine balance to walk before caution becomes quenching of the Holy Spirit. Let Dr Lloyd-Jones have the last word;

"This to me is one of the most urgent matters at this hour. With the church as she is and the world as it is, the greatest need today is the power of God through His Spirit in the church that we may testify not only to the power of the Spirit but to the glory and praise of the one and only Saviour - Jesus Christ our Lord".

This is for ME!!!

2009-11-25T20:33:00.003Z

My favourite song of the moment is a beautiful song recently written by Lex Loizides and the chorus goes;

"This is for me - this blood of Christ - washing all my stains, breaking all my chains;

This is for me - this death He died, taking all my sins and giving me a chance to live again".

Christian's aren't traditionally very good at what they see as "selfishness" in the Christian life. But there is a massive element of the good things God has for us that we will and do miss out as legalistic Christians if we cling to pious "humility" and not enjoy all He has for us. I've been thinking and writing a lot about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the Charismatic Movement these last few posts - this was sparked by Stanley Jebb's recent blog (who again has written a post on cessationism not arguing from Scripture but from bad examples of excess).

My concern is that the baptism of the Holy Spirit has so become masked in debate that we have forgotten the pleasures that God has for us in this empowerment from on high. I want to quote some passages from church history (taken from Dr Martyn Ll0yd-Jones; "Joy Unspeakable") that reflect what happens to people in this encounter with God. Stanley Jebb cites excess as a reason as to why the genuine can't exist. Here are accounts of the genuine. Dr Lloyd-Jones explains why quoting from the past is of use;

"I want to show you that this is something which has been taught and recognised in the Christian church throughout the centuries and by men belonging to various and varied theological schools. This is what to me is so interesting and glorious about all of this. That it cuts right across the various theological distinctions such as Arminianism and Calvinism and so on".

Dr Ll0yd-Jones first quotes John Owen;

"When He so sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts and so fills them with gladness by an immediate act and operation ... then doth the soul even from hence raise itself to a consideration of the love of God ... filling it (the soul) with gladness, exultations and sometimes with unspeakable raptures of the mind".

He then quotes Thomas Goodwin;

"There is a light that cometh and overpowereth a man's soul and assureth him that God is his and he is God's and that God loveth him from everlasting ... it is a light beyond the light of ordinary faith".

He then quotes another Puritan - John Flavel;

"His thoughts (speaking of himself) began to swell and rise higher and higher till at last they became an overwhelming flood. Such the ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such the full assurance of his interest therein that he utterly lost all sight and sense of the world ... still the joy of the Lord overflowed him and he seemed to be an inhabitant of the other world, he many years after called that day one of the days of heaven".

There was a wonderful song sang at Stoneleigh Bible Week during the Toronto blessing years called; "Days of heaven". I never really understood it but I think reading this I do. The sealing or baptism of the Spirit is a foretaste of heaven - so much so that it is as if heaven has come to earth!

And finally Dr Ll0yd-Jones quoted from one of my heroes - Jonathan Edwards;

"As I rode out into the woods ... I had a view that was for me extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God ... which continued as near as I can judge about an hour; such as to keep me in a greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be full of Christ alone, to love Him with a holy and pure love, to trust in Him, to live upon Him".

Charles Simeon states; "To many, alas the sealing of the Spirit (or baptism of the Spirit) is mere foolishness but those who account it so speak evil of things they do not understand. Let us seek to experience it ourselves instead of censuring those who do".

I think that is suitably wise advice and a rebuke to those who seem to perpetuate a ministry of being "against everything". Yes there is error and yes there is excess. Yes people make mistakes and yes people fail. But that DOES NOT and CANNOT excuse abandoning and ignoring the very good gifts of God. They are real and they are genuine and free by grace. When was the last time you or I really enjoyed God? If you have to think then it's been a while and too long - particularly when it is His will and good pleasure to bless DAILY!

Empowerment from on High!!

2009-11-23T16:46:00.001Z

Reading "Joy Unspeakable" (Dr Lloyd-Jones's sermons on John 1:26, 33) is making me think much about the baptism of the Holy Spirit along with a consideration of the past and my childhood growing up in the charismatic movement. David Rolles - a fellow ex-New Covenant Church member - made mention of a small booklet that was circulated widely at that time. We never realised it but it was quite famous among charismatic churches. Terry Virgo told a group of us at Stoneleigh that many churches used the booklet to great effect. It was called; "The Baptism in the Holy Spirit". I still have a treasured copy and quote it here - it defines the baptism of the Spirit as:

"The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is enduement with power from on high (Luke 24:49), it is the fulfillment of the promise of the Father (Acts 1:4, 5) and the Son (Acts 1:8). It is the provision of power for service, for we cannot serve in our own strength (Zech 4:6). It is a definite experience so that we should know whether we have had it or not (Acts 19:2). However it is not a once-for-all experience, in that we need to go on being filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4, 4:8, 31; 13:9, Eph 5:18).

One of the loveliest results of this experience is a deeper love for the Lord and for one another, and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon believers results in greater unity among believers".

As believers have fought, argued and lost the element to this empowerment from on high - so the life of the charismatic movement has ebbed and dwindled. One of the most exciting books Terry Virgo has ever brought out was called; "The Tide is Turning". Mark Heath reviewed this book a while back and summarised it excellent;

"Essentially the title can be thought of as a prophecy that the decline of the church is slowing and a new wave of vibrant biblical Christianity is coming".

Do we need a new approach or a new tactic to achieve this turning of the tide? Of course there is nothing wrong with being culturally relevant. God surely gets no glory by the church stubbornly remaining out of date. But I fail to see that the Bible gives any other option for the turning of the tide other than empowerment from on high. And of course the folly of the church is that it is HERE, it is AVAILABLE, and it is FREE BY GRACE!!

As the early booklet on the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" noted - one of the most precious effects of this empowerment from on high is a greater and deeper love for the Lord Jesus. It is here that I bring together two insights - one from Dr Ern Baxter and one from Dr Martyn Ll0yd-Jones who both have the same insight. Dr Ll0yd-Jones wrote in "Joy Unspeakable";

"We have seen that it was only after the apostles had been baptized with the Holy Spirit that they really came to understand the meaning of what had happened to their Lord and Master".

In his monumental sermon on the "Robe of the Ephod" - Dr Ern Baxter drew attention to the golden bells that surrounded the high priest's robe. He said;

"As the high priest moved around in the Holy of Holies offering his sacrifice, the people could hear the golden bells on the hem of his robe and they knew that their sacrifice had been accepted. They knew the high priest was alive ... When the disciples gathered together in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost, they heard a sound from heaven.

What happened? They heard the bells of the High Priest in heaven offering His acceptable sacrifice in the Presence of God ... I believe that the reason why the baptism of the Holy Spirit and indeed the whole matter of the Holy Spirit has been so fiercely contested is because the Holy Spirit is the communication of God to men concerning the work of Jesus Christ in God's Presence.

Every child of God has the right to the evidence of the golden bells of the baptism of the Holy Spirit in his life to give him experiential knowledge in his own experience that Jesus Christ is alive and well in the Presence of God and He accomplished the work He was sent to do".

What is that work? One of the most glorious verses in the whole Bible (if that's possible) - 2 Corinthians 5:19:

"That God was in Christ reconciling the world (not just the church!) to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them".

We gain nothing by exalting one part of Christ's redemptive work above another. It is all gloriously intertwined like a golden thread running through a robe. The work that Christ did on the Cross has been accomplished once and for all - our sins are gone - never to return! But God did not expect us to take this on face value alone. He has sent empowerment from on high - He has poured out His Holy Spirit to baptise believers with experiential knowledge that we can hear the bells of heaven ringing in our hearts. See a down-trodden, depressed, faithless, negative, legalistic church? Rest assured that it's one and only need is a baptism of power from on high.

Don't Forget the Past!!

2009-11-22T13:35:00.002Z

One of the most impacting sermons I've ever heard (and there are a few!) was by David Holden at Stoneleigh Bible Week 2000. He preached on the past, present and future and showed how each must be held responsibly in tension. He warned against living sentimentally in the past but not forgetting it. This sermon was even more impacting because a large group of us had come to Stoneleigh for the first time fresh from the dramatic changes at our home church in Dunstable. The eldership was relentlessly taking the church where they wanted it to go - into conservative reformed evangelicalism with no room for the Holy Spirit.

One of the most upsetting and concerning things to me was a decision the eldership made to erase the entire audio ministry of the church prior to 1991. Essentially everything that had a hint of the charismatic movement about it. I suggested to them (perhaps not very sensitively) that this reminded me of Nazi Germany and moves made to erase the past there. It didn't go down well! But it didn't change the decision. I decided then and there that I would devote my life to refusing to allow the past to be forgotten.

Much of my flat (and my extended library in my friend Pete Day's office) reflects this - books, magazines, audio tapes and now CD's - that speak of the great things that God has done in the past. Heeding Dave Holden's warning I don't want this to be a sentimental memory but an impetus to expect even greater things for the future. I don't want to go "back" to the charismatic days of Dunstable and the Anglia and Dales Bible Weeks (awesome though they were). I want so much more - I want everything the Bible promises! Promises of the nations flowing to Zion! Promises of Zion being a light to the world! Promises of the latter house being FAR greater than the former!

One of the framed pictures in my home is posted below - it reminds me not to forget how God can use great men and women to great purpose;

A Small Word with a BIG Impact

2009-11-19T18:32:00.003Z

I am re-reading Dr Martyn Ll0yd-Jones' marvellous "Joy Unspeakable" at the moment - his sermons on John 1:26, 33 covering the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Stanley Jebb's recent post got me re-visiting those past years and it was the change of direction on the baptism of the Holy Spirit that marked the church's progression to functional cessationism and reformed evangelicalism. So I was stirred to re-visit Dr Lloyd-Jones amazing sermons and why this topic is so important.

I read one quote on the bus this morning that just completely seized me. Goosebumps ran up and down me. My hair stood on end ... oh wait, it was my hair gel. But I hope the point is clear. Before I write what I read - I want to post a couple of more general quotes on Dr Lloyd-Jones and the vital relationship between the baptism of the Spirit and the health of the church.

"We are living, let us remind ourselves in an age hopelessly below the New Testament pattern - content with a neat little religion. We need the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We have already seen that this is not something that takes place at conversion, it is something that happens to us and is clear and unmistakable".

We are entitled to ask "why?". Why will the baptism of the Holy Spirit change the church? Dr Ll0yd-Jones briefly summarises the "purpose" of this inheritance from on high;

"The purpose - the main function of the baptism with the Holy Spirit is to witness, to enable God's people to witness in such a manner that it becomes a phenomenon and people are arrested and are attracted".

We want to get the world to come to the church? Of COURSE we do! We don't need huge evangelistic campaigns or clever tactics or techniques. Yes they may work and may add some lost to the church. But to see the millions pour into the church that we long for - there is ONE NEED. And here I come to the quote that stopped me short on the bus.

Dr Lloyd-Jones was quoting Blaise Pascal and an entry in his diary. Here it is;

"This day of Grace - 1654.

From about half past ten at night to about half after midnight;

Fire".

That word just sums it all up! Our every need! The need of the hour! The need of the Church! The need of every Christian! If the fire of God would visit His Church - if the Holy Spirit would fall upon His people then all would change. We would see that our petty arguments, disagreements and our legalistic traditions of men are NOTHING. God in His revealed manifest Presence - oh how I long for it! I found myself praying that I would enter the same in my diary. "Fire". Fire visited me. Fire came upon me. The fire of God changed my life and the world began to sit up and take notice!

Fire!

What IS the Church's Problem with Failure and Excess?

2009-11-15T21:16:00.006Z

I want to ask a question - and it's been on my mind for years. Yesterday's blog post has simply sparked it off - for those who haven't read it, I responded to a post that stated a whole church was taken out of the charismatic movement because of moral failure. In my 30 years of church life I have watched aghast as church pastors have publicly destroyed people's lives with little or no obvious compassion - simply because of failure. Why is this? Surely it may be a bit simplistic - but shouldn't the church be the "safest place on earth"? Or to put it another way; "The happiest place on earth"?

But this isn't an unusal situation. This of course happened in the New Testament. John 8:3 follows the well-known account when the teachers of the Law dragged a woman caught in prostitution to Him. They quoted the Law to Him to see His reaction. But what caught my attention was the verse after this;

"They began to go out one by one beginning with the older ones".

What does this mean? Does it mean that the older ones were convicted first that they were not without sin and so left first? Or does it mean that the older ones left first because they were outraged and frustrated that Jesus would not apply the letter of the Law to this hideous, sinful and disgusting woman? I wonder ... The commentaries I checked said this;

"The older ones either had more sins for which they were answerable or else had more sense than to make an impossible profession of righteousness".

Would anything change in the church today? I can honestly say that I have seen churches metaphorically "drag people before Jesus and demand they be stoned". Do we not all know that we sin? So surely why is it that Rob Rufus has to say of the church;

"If you are bleeding - don't swim with the sharks".

Tragically this isn't just theory. Why else do so many Christians persist in struggling secretly with sin terrified that they may be found out? Have we ever considered that very few people jump straight to the "big" sins? Few Christians will fall into moral failure - adultery or homosexual practice. It all begins with thoughts and temptations and how sad - if the church was really that safe then maybe this could be dealt with. But it isn't.

Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones had a great deal to say about the "fear of excess". Moral failure was the first thing mentioned that dragged my home church into functional cessationism. Fear of excess was the other. The Toronto Blessing was something that was made to be terrifying to us. We were shown video after video of people howling and cackling with laughter and it genuinely scared us. "This" is what may happen if you stay charismatic - we were told.

Here is what Dr Martyn Ll0yd-Jones had to say;

"Certain people by nature are afraid of the supernatural, of the unusual, of disorder, so concerned about discipline and decorum and control, that you become guilty of what the Scripture calls "quenching the Spirit"; and there is no question in my mind that there has been a great deal of this"

I have little hesitation in saying that many "anti-charismatics" seem to fall into this category. I don't know whether they mean to. But the fear of excess seems to drive this. And again I wonder why. What's so scary about going over the top? The world does it all the time through drugs, alcohol and so on. You pay good money to do that. Why is the church so scared of it?

"People are so afraid of what they call enthusiasm and some are so afraid of fanaticism that in order to avoid those they go right over to the other side without facing what is offered in the New Testament".

Dr Martyn Ll0yd-Jones sums the problem up exactly. How I long, wish, agonise and regret that my home church couldn't have simply sat back and said; "Well there is some excess here and there - but we don't have to go that way. We have the Word of God, yet we see that we can have the life without going crazy!". Sadly Dr Ern Baxter pleaded exactly this in his last visit to Dunstable in a sermon called; "The Spirit and the Word". Dr Lloyd-Jones goes on (and here is my favourite quote that I often cite);

"Look at the New Testament Christian, look at the New Testament church and you see it vibrant with spiritual life, and of course it is always life that tends to lead to excesses. There is no problem of discipline in a graveyard; there is no problem very much in a formal church. The problems arise when there is life".

Vibrant with spiritual life! So if we are to take Dr Lloyd-Jones counsel to heart then we could almost say that if you can't remember when there was a loving discipline of a church member for doing something crazy, then your church may be pretty formal. But if you cannot remember the last time something untoward happened in a church service - you must ask, does my church resemble something of a graveyard where you know exactly what will happen?

"Problems are created by life and by vigour and the problems of the early church were spiritual problems, problems arising because of the danger of going to excess in the spiritual realms".

Oh that we would have these problems again! Of course I don't mean we should hunger for excess and failure. But I DO mean that I think formality, deadness and legalism is a more deadly problem at present that excess. These quotes of Dr Ll0yd-Jones were from my favourite book; "Joy Unspeakable" and Terry Virgo wrote a commendation on this edition. He said;

"This is no age to advocate restraint; the church today does not need to be restrained but to be aroused, to be awakened and to be filled with the Spirit of glory".

Do it again Lord. Bring life back to Your church!

A Charismatic Baby in a Bath of Excess

2009-11-14T18:17:00.003Z

I consider myself fortunate to have been in a rather unique position in my church experience. Many grow up in one denomination or another and know little else. My experience (and that of some of my blogging friends) is slightly different.

1. I grew up in a reformed charismatic church called "New Covenant Church".

2. I then watched it change into a cessationist reformed church called "West Street Baptist Church".

3. I went to back into charismatic circles in the "Newfrontiers" family (again reformed and charismatic).

4. I spent 2 years in reformed evangelicalism in "Sovereign Grace Ministries".

5. I am now happily back in charismatic circles particularly enjoying fellowship with Rob and Glenda Rufus's church in Hong Kong called "City Church International" that has taught me about the grace of God for the first time.

So why is this so fortunate? I have experienced both charismatic and cessationist life. My former senior pastor Dr Stanley Jebb wrote a post yesterday called; "Why I Left the Charismatic Movement". The reasons were no secret but this is the first time he has really written them down. Let me say that Dr Jebb is a man I hold in the absolute highest esteem. I possess several hundred audio tapes of his ministry (both pre and post charismatic) and love listening to them still. I love his insight into the Word of God and his relationship with God. My respect for him is unchanged over his decision. It doesn't mean I agree with it.

So there's a reason why I see no need to leave the charismatic movement.

Dr Jebb's main reason is this;

"One of which is the number of charismatic leaders that have fallen morally. Yes I know that Reformed and Evangelical leaders have fallen also. But there is this difference: charismatics claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Furthermore they claim to manifest spiritual gifts such as prophecy which can reveal what is in a person's heart".

This premise would work only if reformed and evangelical leaders do NOT claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit (and they do - only they argue they get it "all" at conversion). Secondly this premise would only work if it could be proved that being filled with the Holy Spirit eradicated sin - such as the Holiness movement used to teach. And it doesn't. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is the most glorious and wonderful encounter with God - if anything it exposes brings an added degree of spiritual warfare and temptation.

Was the charismatic movement perfect? No - far from it. There was excess and moral falls. But any church historian worth their salt knows that this is always the case when God by His Spirit is at work. The devil doesn't want the church alive or full of life. Dr Jebb tried to bring a word of balance by saying;

"Many churches and ministers who are sound in doctrine, orthodox in theology also give the appearance of being lifeless if not dead".

With that I do agree. I suggest the devil is not particularly bothered by lifeless and dead-looking churches because they are unnoticable to the community around them. Such churches fill every stereotype the world expects - dull and dreary hymns in dusty pews with long monotonous preaching. But when the Holy Spirit brings life to His church then things happen! The world notices! For example I remember as a child at church;

1. Doing a "March For Jesus" through our home town along crowded streets.

2. Holding a prayer meeting for rain up the hills around our town during a drought - with the result that rain did come.

3. Praying for the closure of a night club in our town that caused increased crime - with the result (I believe) that it closed.

4. Praying for the capture of a serial rapist around our town (known as "The Fox") - with the result that he was captured and arrested by a policeman who attended our church (among others).

And those are just the examples of life I remember! I am not trying to say that the moral fall of charismatic leaders is not and was not serious. It is always heart-breaking and I am sure particularly for Dr Jebb who knew many of them personally. But I do not and will not agree that the counterfeit actions and temptations of the devil is worth throwing the life and power of God out.

There is much more I could have said about Dr Jebb's dismission of spiritual gifts but I think that is unncecessary. Most will know my attitude towards spiritual gifts - that yes there may be a degree of "pretended" revelations. But my life has been changed by prophecies that "exposed the secrets of my heart" (not to condemn and reveal 'sin' as Dr Jebb suggests) but to "exhort, edify and encourage" (as 1 Corinthians suggests). I am eternally grateful for the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit and suggest that instead of seeking;

" ... earnest, fervent, believing-prayer ... (instead of) ... pseudo-gifts, carnal excitement and pretended revelations"

We should see earnest, fervent, believing prayer AND the genuine powerful spiritual gifts, the excitement and thrill of the Presence of God and genuine, real revelations from the Word of God. Why have to choose one or the other when both is freely available?

Many Thanks to a Friend of Ern Baxter!!

2009-10-31T16:34:00.006Z

I was absolutely thrilled to get an email from a man called Jerome "Jerry" Lukas. He worked with Ern Baxter and the brothers back in the days when "New Wine Magazine" was being produced and ran, and has come across this blog - as a tribute to Ern himself.

Jerome wrote some very gracious words of encouragement which meant a lot to both Pete Day (my fellow blogger and accountability friend - should I stray into heresy) and myself. Blogging is an unusal form of communication - it has the scope and the potential to reach so many but unless they leave comments, I am always of the opinion that no one is reading it!

But he has also kindly re-designed the mast-head for this blog and sent a unique pencil drawing of Ern he did which I have put here and you will see are now in place on the blog.

Vintage Terry Virgo!!

2009-10-31T11:20:00.004Z

There is nothing more thrilling and exciting to me to have true living heroes of the faith. Of course I've got numerous heroes who are now in glory - Ern Baxter, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, C H Spurgeon, John G Lake, John Owen ... the list is endless. But living heroes are so important to me also and Terry Virgo is firmly near the top of that list.

I've had heroes in the past who have been men of Word and Spirit and have fallen into law or cessationism and the respectability of men. So to see elders in the faith who still firmly believe in a living God who encounters His people and is passionate about them - as well as not straying into excess or weirdness - is glorious and a true blessing from Him.

Terry's latest blog was just ... awesome. He is a man who has lived through decades of church life and yet still is prepared for change - for upset - for a coming God. He writes;

"Jesus came as the ultimate table-turner! He upset everything! What if He should come to His church today? What tables need to be overturned in modern evangelicalism?".

As you may expect - I've got plenty of tables in mind that need to be overturned in modern evangelicalism! But this is Terry's blog and he goes on;

"Reformation was not a matter of keeping up with the changing times but conforming to God-inspired prophets and their writings. What about today? Tables must be overturned if we are to return to authentic Biblical Christianity. Human traditions - unknown in Scripture - have become foundational in many churches".

Oh there is so much I could say! Human tradition - WHY do humans so quickly respond to a genuine move of God through His Spirit and settle down into traditions? Why do humans see a gifted and anointed man who has been singularly used and seek to reproduce the anointing on that individual by copying what they think are the secrets of their success? And yet know nothing of the secrets of the God who gave that anointing in the first place?

Terry makes a point that is quite personal to me;

"What point is there calling for private, personal obedience from individual believers if churches blatently ignore the Biblical instruction regarding church life?".

I have heard church leaders order me to do something yet I have seen them stand up in church on Sundays and without shame quench the Holy Spirit - or worse teach something that is contrary to the Word of God. I'm not trying to use Terry's comment as an excuse for disobeying church leadership - I long and love submitting to genuine, spirit-filled authority when it is clothed and soaked in grace. But what point is there?

I love his conclusion;

"Ultimately God's purpose is not merely to overturn church life but to turn the world itself upside down ... We follow a table-turning Saviour - let's not be status quo disciples".

GLUTTING on God!!

2009-10-30T19:16:00.004Z

This term isn't one I invented. I actually read it many years ago in Sam Storm's excellent book; "Pleasures Evermore: Life-changing Power of Enjoying God". I brought it at Stoneleigh Bible Week and read it and I don't think I could quite "get" the phrase. I liked it. Just couldn't allow myself to get over how "selfish" it sounded.

I remember once some of us tried to introduce the beautiful song; "My Jesus - My Saviour" at my home church in Dunstable when it was fully into it's functional cessationism. The answer from the elders was; "No - it's too "me" centred". Hymns were promoted as being "Him-centred". I know that certain church circles still promote such a view and ban beautiful songs such as "Draw Me Close to You" in favour of more liturgical hymns (who can drearily forget the Charles Colson row?!). I was amused to listen on my IPOD to a Grapevine live worship interpretation of "O for a thousand tongues to sing". A wonderful hymn and a glorious live atmosphere. But for a "theological hymn" - it says "me" quite a bit too ...

Anyway - that's beside the point. I don't see why the two have to be split. I love gloriously, well-sung hymns and I love short, emotive songs of worship and intimacy. Why have to have one without the other? My point is this:

Unless we first and foremost enjoy God through glorious encounters with Him then we will never effectively reach the lost.

I know - there are so many caveats to that. God is sovereign etc etc. But look at salesmen. The most effective salesman is one who actually personally enjoys and believes in his or her product. You can tell the sales pitches that just don't quite ring true. Why should Christians be any different? I know the analogy falls down drastically. We are not selling a product - we are witnesses to a glorious living Person. But how can we be "witnesses" to Someone we have never personally encountered or Someone we are passionate about enjoying and living with?

Marriage is a glorious picture of Christ and His Bride. I believe that with all my heart. But how disgusted we would be with a husband who speaks unenthusiastically and rather bored with his wife just after their honeymoon. We would decide they are heading for divorce rapidly! I love nothing more than hearing Rob Rufus speak about his wife Glenda. I don't know why - it just thrills me. They've been married for 30 years and yet Rob is besotted with Glenda. Just so - I loved seeing Terry Virgo dance with Wendy at "Together on a Mission" in 2007 when I was last there. To see couples who have been married for years and adore each other still is a true testament to what we should be like with God.

I want to re-state my love for Lex Loizides beautiful song; "It is for me". I was running on the treadmill listening to the glorious lyrics;

"This is for ME - this blood of Christ, washing all MY stains,

Breaking all MY chains - this is for ME, this death He died,

Taking all my sins and giving ME a chance to live again!".

And what is wrong with allowing that truth to thrill? That before time and eternity God the Trinity decided that you and I would be created and born - and that God the Son would willingly lay aside His majesty and go to the Cross to suffer and die that we might be reconciled to Him! That we might "boldly approach the eternal throne"!?

Mark Heath wrote a post recently called; "False Dilemmas - Discipline vs Delight". I liked Mark's conclusions but while I was running I felt I heard God speak and say how much He actually despises "duty". John Piper uses his famous example frequently saying how utterly insulting it would be to deliver flowers to his wife and say; "I did it because it's my duty". Any husband who says that to his wife DESERVES the slap she should rightly give him.

So how DARE, DARE, DARE the church proudly and self-righteously exalt in it's "duties". How DARE Christians parade around recounting how they adhere to the spiritual disciplines? How DARE Christians even assume that God is pleased with this? Anything that does not stem from delight and adoration in God surely is nothing but blasphemy. Jesus Christ Himself said it most accurately and succinctly; "I wish that you were cold" ... rather than lukewarm.

How do we become passionate for God? Well - again back to the marriage analogy. How do you become passionate about someone you love? You spend time with them. You think about them. You fantasise about them. You speak to them. You enjoy their presence. You buy them gifts because of how it makes YOU feel good! John Piper said;

"The way to become white-hot for God is to draw near to a white-hot heart for God - and there is none hotter than God Himself".

So my prayer is; "Draw me close to you - never let me go!".

Thoughts on Mission and the Advancing Flame!!

2009-10-27T20:15:00.003Z

I wrote a post called "Forgotten Restorationism?" on the 4th October sharing my feelings and thoughts on how the promises of a glorious end-time church thrill me and excite me like nothing else. And I made a statement;

"If you don't truly believe in restoration then you can't properly truly passionate about the Great Commission".

My point was this - how can we truly go out and evangelise with confidence and passion if we believe that hell is going to be populated more than heaven? How can we walk out into the world and share the gospel with the lost if we believe that "great is the darkness that covers the earth" and that is it? How can we go and take a gospel accompanied by signs, wonders and miracles if we are simply waiting for Jesus Christ to return and end this present world?

I was interested therefore to read an email from John Piper's "Desiring God" ministries that sketched out something of the challenge before us.

1. At the beginning of the 20th century, about 71% of professing Christians in the world lived in Europe. By the end of the 20th century that number had shrunk to 28%. 43% of the Christians now live in Latin America and Africa.

2. In 1900 Africa had 10 million Christians which was about 10% of the population. By 2000 the number of Christians was 360 million - about half the population of the continent. This is probably the largest shift in religious affiliation that has ever occured.

3. There are 17 million baptized members of the Anglican church in Nigeria compared to 2.8 million in the USA.

4. This past Sunday more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda than did Anglicans in Great Britain and Canada and Episcopalians in the USA combined.

5. The number of practicing Christians in China is approaching the number in the USA.

6. Last Sunday more Christians believers attended church in China than in the whole of so-called "Christian" Europe.

7. Kenya has more people in Christian churches on Sunday than Canada.

And this final point particularly affected me - because it is my homeland.

8. This past week in Great Britain at least fifteen thousand Christian foreign missionaries were hard at work evangelising the locals. Most of these missionairies are from Africa and Asia.

Lydia asked an important question in my last post regarding the tangible Presence of the Holy Spirit. She spoke about that which is "in us". And that is right and true - we were indeed "baptised by one Spirit into one body". But Dr Martyn Ll0yd-Jones answered some critics who claimed "we have it all" at conversion. He said;

"Got it all?! Got it all?! Well if you have it "all" then where, in the Name of God is "it"?".

Church history will stand as testament that we will begin to advance mission in an accelerated fashion when the Presence of God - the Holy Spirit - falls upon His church in tangible power and glory. That is why Africa and Asia and the so-called "3rd world" is now directing the missions of the world. That is why Europe and the USA no longer have ANY cause to be arrogant in our theological expertise and knowledge.

Revival isn't a choice - a subject - an interest. The very life of the Western church depends on it!

How Do We Nullify Negativity in Our Lives?

2009-10-25T19:06:00.004Z

Rob Rufus spoke recently on the danger of negative thinking in our lives. He made a hugely important point - and it's one I've been thinking about a lot recently. In "days of small things" - or in days when nothing much seems to be tangibly happening in the spiritual realm, how do we respond? How do we react? Do we stick to methodically preaching and expounding? Or do we continue hungering and thirsting after God Himself? Rob said:

"How do we position ourselves to let that wonderful miracle take place? I have come to the conclusion after 30 years of being a pastor that nothing in the Kingdom transacts or happens unless you come under the hovering, moving, manifestation of supernatural Holy Spirit. Nothing can happen unless Holy Spirit's manifest power comes tangibly over your life - for the Kingdom is in the Holy Spirit".

Sermon: "How Do We Nullify the Negative Things in Our Lives?" - City Church International, Hong Kong - 11th October 2009.

When was the last time you felt His tangible, manifest Presence? It was never meant to be a "special" or "unique" thing. Experiencing Him is meant to be a normal, supernatural part of every day life. Oh for more, so much more of Him!

A New Vocabulary: "Resilience"

2009-10-20T10:53:00.005+01:00

I've been on a fast-tracking learning new terms in my new job preparing for a potential surge in pandemic flu. One of the words that interested me was the term; "Resilience". It means;

" ... the ability of a material to recover from a shock, insult, or disturbance".

You could exchange "material" for "organisation" or even "church". One of the frustrations of my job is planning for something you don't quite know when it will come. I was walking and praying and thinking about my longing for an unsurpassed move of God - for revival itself - and I found God directing my thoughts to my job. To the job of my boss - the "Emergency Resilience Planning Manager". My boss spends his entire working week planning for something that he doesn't quite know when will come. And even IF it will come! Yet he plans and makes the hospital as ready as he can.

And I found God asking me what the "resilience" of the church is like. Are we actually READY for a "disturbance" of heavenly proportions?

My last post was one of Ern Baxter's classic long sermons from the Dales Bible Week 1976. I made a comment that Ern wasn't listened to. He brought a prophetic/apostolic wake-up call to the church - to the Charismatic Movement - and pleaded with them not to rest where they were and enjoy the experiences but take it to a waiting and desperate world. Pastor/teachers went home with their churches and carried on as if life had never changed. And within a decade the Charismatic Movement was on the wane. The effects are still felt today for which we thank God. But the spiritual life and vitality of renewal has all but gone.

One of Ern Baxter's comments during the sermon was this;

"The people that are most vigorously opposed to the newest move of the cloud, are the people who moved with the cloud last. And you may be that people tomorrow".

I've learnt in planning for pandemic flu that there is only so much you can plan for. There are so many policies that you can write. Only so many exercises you can practice. After that - you have to wait for the unknown! I think that's one of the most important lessons that we need to absorb into our planning and preparation and "digging ditches" for any supernatural move of God. That we don't know what's coming. We don't know what God will do. We don't know how God will do it. But we know He IS God and we know He IS amazingly good.

But another point in our planning - is that church history makes it clear that when the church is revived - the nations WILL come. The problem is - I don't think that a lot of churches actually WANT the nations to come. During the Welsh Revival 0f 1900-1902 a lot of drunk miners were saved and I am willing to bet that they didn't change over night. I'm sure they started going to church - a lot of people weren't very happy with the way they were. I wonder how long it was before the church started to try and mold them into becoming "respectable".

THIS is why the grace revolution that men such as Rob Rufus, Bill Johnson and others are teaching is so crucial. Because God isn't satisfied anymore with the lost being saved and being transformed into "religion". Being saved and being transformed into a legalistic poor counterfeit. It makes my blood boil seeing passionate new converts who came into the church so full of fire - and you look at them now and they are "talking the lingo" and buying the required books and quite possibly vying for the pastor's approval and maybe - if they are lucky and related by marriage - a place in the required college of their denomination to get ahead.

What on EARTH has that got to do with the real and glorious Church? "Resilience" means that the church can cope with any disturbance that heaven brings. And I am persuaded that resilience can be taught and learnt from the gospel of true and glorious grace alone - the facts of the matter. That God in Christ Jesus has reconciled us to Himself and has given us the only gift of righteousness we need - His and His alone. Only grace will prepare us for the glory of His coming.

Ern Baxter - Dales Bible Week 1976 - Session 3

2009-10-18T20:29:00.004+01:00

Many thanks to my friend from Dunstable - Andrew Norman - for this outstanding transcript. It is Session 3 from Ern Baxter's memorable series; "Where Are We Going?" at the Dales Bible Week 1976. I still am persuaded that if the pastor/teachers had heard and put into practice this teaching then the future of the United Kingdom could have been changed. Unfortunately it seems a lot didn't and many of our churches remained stuck in the wilderness - where we remain still.

That is why this teaching is so utterly key to be heard again. Because who knows when our "Kadesh Crisis" may be coming again and our chance to enter the Promised Land and knock over giants?!

"Repetition is an integral part of pedagogy, which means if you’re going to teach something you say it over and over and over again, until we get it. Most of what we are saying this week revolves around three prepositions, ‘out’, ‘through’, and ‘into’. And God has used the Old Testament covenant nation of Israel as a type, as an ensample, as a warning and an admonition for us upon who the ends of the ages have come. They are a great school for us from which we learn. And what God intended for them, he intends for us, as we will find out but on a larger, vaster scale. The tragedy is that they failed.

The glory of what is happening is that we will not fail. This is the significance of the word ‘my’ in Jesus’ declaration concerning the building of his church. He said, ‘I will build my church’. And we’ve made much of church, but that didn’t mean a great deal to the men he was talking to, they understood the meaning of church, it just meant congregation. The Greek word ‘ecclesia’ is the word that is translated ‘congregation’ in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament scriptures, the Greek translation. And when he said to his disciples, ‘I will build my ecclesia’ he was simply saying, ‘I will build my congregation’. So ‘congregation’ wasn’t the exciting word to them. The exciting word to them was ‘my’ and that stood in contrast to somebody else’s. And the only other congregation there had ever been was Moses’ congregation. Jesus said, ‘I’m going to build my congregation.’ Moses built his and it didn’t make it. I’m going to build mine and it’s going to kick the gates of hell in! He said, ‘That’s the difference.’ Amen, just so we know where we’re going.

Now, this morning we dealt with coming out of Egypt, and pointed out that there is a specific, designated way in which people arrive at the ‘crisis beginning, and if you’re taking notes, I know that this board doesn’t do anything for many of you a long way off, but I try to explain it as I go along and it helps me a bit. We’ve got Egypt and the wilderness and the land, and we’ve got ‘out’ under Egypt, ‘through’ the wilderness, and ‘into’ the land. Egypt is the ‘crisis beginning’. Now coming out of Egypt involves the blood of the Passover, baptism unto Moses, and I didn’t enlarge on that this morning, we just hit the fact of baptism fairly firmly. But I’d like you to notice what baptism infers among other things. While I’m not making a sales pitch, I see that my little book is out there:

'The Beginnings of Christian Life'. Don’t pass it by. I mean that, there are things in there on baptism that need to be said. Baptism is probably one of the most neglected, and yet one of the most involved in the New Testament, subjects that there is. If you understand baptism you’ll find it all through the New Testament. When the apostle Paul wants to refer to the beginning of the Christian life, he says, ‘Know ye not that so many of us as raised our hands in an evangelistic meeting... Know ye not that so many of us went forward to the altar call…’ No, he says, ‘know ye not that so many of us were baptised into Christ…’ You see, a New Testament body doesn’t have an altar. There I’ve done it! In a New Testament body, a building is not important. In fact you don’t read about buildings in church history until about the third or fourth century. I recall the first time, I was so excited, I was invited to dedicate a church building. Oh, I thought, this is tremendous, just a young minister, going to dedicate a church building, and I thought, I’ll find out how Jesus did it! [laughter] So I went to the Bible to see how Jesus did it, and Jesus didn’t dedicate them he tore them down! So I didn’t get any help from him! But I was sure that Paul, my hero, he surely had dedicated some!

And I didn’t find that he dedicated any either. I found that he went in and got a bunch of people out of the synagogue, and then went up the street and rented a hall. So I wasn’t getting any… I knew that there were sermons to dedicate church buildings, because I’d attended them, and I knew there were… then I remembered that in my library I had a book entitled ‘Sermons for Special Occasions’. And in desperation I went to this book and sure enough, there was a section on dedicating churches. So I turned to this section, and there were all kinds of outlines, and I said, ‘Hallelujah, I’ve arrived!’ But the thing I noticed was that all of these sermons were from the Old Testament. The dedication of the Tabernacle, the dedication of Solomon’s Temple, the dedication of the Zerubbabel’s Temple, all from the Old Testament, nothing from the New, and I said there’s something here. Then I discovered that the material buildings of the Old Testament were fulfilled in the spiritual building of the New Testament, and that the New Testament building is composed of living stones, redeemed human beings, who are built together to become an habitation of God through the Spirit. And the only use that we have for a building is to keep the rain and the snow off the house. We are the house. We are the people of God. This is the building. We are the building. Alright?

Now, I don’t remember how I got into that, and I’m wondering how to get out of it! [laughter] Well, I’ll just go back and talk about what I wanted to talk about, and that is baptism. They were baptised unto Moses, now among other things… oh yeah, back to the altar, I knew it would come! These are the signs of ageing! In the New Testament redeemed community, the only piece of furniture, literal, physical, feel-able furniture that is authorised by the New Testament is the table. There is no altar in the New Testament here on earth, our altar is in Heaven. The blood covered body of the Lord Jesus Christ is our altar before the Father. We don’t have an altar. I’m sorry about that, I know that this runs right smash bang into some of the most sacrosanct, nostalgic traditional things that many of us have held. The altar has been the sacred place, but when you come to the New Testament you don’t find an altar. An altar in the Old Testament was for offering, for sacrifice, but Jesus Christ was offered once for all, and we have an altar, the Bible says, which they who served the Tabernacle had no right to attend.

If men are still attending earthly altars and offering up earthly sacrifices, they have no right to our altar, because our altar is the permanent altar of the body of Christ before the Father, with the fresh, ever efficacious blood of his sacrifice upon it, and when I come to the Father, I come to the Father through Jesus Christ, my heavenly altar, and the only piece of furniture I have down here is the table, with simply set upon it a loaf, and a cup. And I meet at a table, and that table can be in the middle of a field, there’s nothing in the New Testament about pews, nothing in the New Testament about a pulpit, nothing in the New Testament about a platform. All of the things that we have made so important are not there, and the thing that is important is the thing that we haven’t majored on and that’s people. God is not concerned with places, he’s concerned with people in places. And we are the people of God. That’s why I have no problem with this, this is great, hallelujah! When I listened to you worship tonight, I was just so thrilled, because that is where it’s all at, that’s the content of it, that’s the whole of it. Glory to God, I’d rather be in an old barn with a bunch of people worshipping God than be in a cathedral with a bunch of mummies that are dead! [laughter] I don’t wish to be offensive, but I don’t wish to be inoffensive either! I’m getting just a little fed up, on people sacrificing Jesus Christ and his truth, for musty, nostalgic, death-dealing traditionalism. It’s high time we kicked up our heels and took our hinds’ feet and went for the mountains, hallelujah!

Now, one of the things about baptism is that they were baptised unto Moses. What does that mean? That means that they were baptised coming under the authority of Moses, as God’s sovereignly delegated ruler over his people in the earth. Ever man who followed Moses through the Red Sea said in essence, by that act, ‘Moses, I will hear you as I hear God!’ That’s why Moses stands both in contrast and comparison with Christ. And he said, ‘A prophet like unto me shall the Lord thy God raise up and him shall ye hear. And whosoever heareth him not shall be cut off from among the people.’ Who is the prophet like unto him? Our Lord Jesus Christ! Moses had his church! Moses was the typical saviour of the redeemed community of the Old Testament. It was he who took them through the Red Sea, and they followed him through the sea of death, and he brought them out on the other side of resurrection, and the water closed in behind and covered up their enemies, and they stood on resurrection ground! Miriam was about ninety-eight years old at the time, she grabbed a tambourine, God oiled her old bones and she led the sisters in a resurrection dance on the banks of resurrection.

‘Now,’ you say, ‘why are you going over this again?’

Because, the beginning of a matter is very important. And I am more and more convinced as I travel and as I counsel, although I counsel less and less, and I’ll probably deal with that before the week is out, I am finding that Christians are having problems because they had bad beginnings. The beginning, the foundation of a building determines the nature and the permanence of the superstructure. If you haven’t got a right beginning, you’re not going to have a right ongoing. And I really feel that this is important, and that’s why I wrote the two books that I did. I did it under divine direction as I saw so many people, who when you asked them what constituted being a Christian, they had no idea.

And the Lord instructed me to write a very simple study manual on the beginnings of Christian life, and then one on the beginnings of church life, and a third one that is in formation now, the beginnings of ministry life. These are three areas that are important to the whole ongoing of what God is doing, and yet they’re being neglected. But we are coming, beloved, to the crunch. The charismatic honeymoon is over. And now people who have been charismatically blessed for five, six, eight, ten years are beginning to say, ‘What’s this all about? What is intended by this? Where are we going? Surely this is not the end of the matter?’ Of course it’s not, it’s the beginning of the matter! Repentance, trust in the blood, water baptism, being filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, all of this is simply the introduction into the training! Many people treat it as having arrived. You haven’t arrived, you’ve just started! The journey’s only begun. On the day of Pentecost, when Peter said, ‘Repent and be baptised and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost’, he didn’t say ‘and having done this you shall have arrived at maturity’! He said this is initiation! This is getting into it! And so it’s very important that we understand ‘crisis beginning’.

Now when they crossed the Red Sea, they came out into the wilderness. And out in the wilderness, they entered into the training process to get them ready for going into their permanent vocation which is the land. Now let me just anticipate one point, and that is that as I said last night, when I began to study the land… In fact it’s interesting, I remember taking a course in hermeneutics in a Bible college in America years’ ago, and I was expected to follow a text, and the hermeneutical principle in this textbook was that the land was heaven. And I recall that when I wrote my paper on it, I said, ‘I know that the textbook says the land is heaven, but I am having some problems with this.’ I said, ‘I find in the land that there are giants,’ and I said, ‘and I have hope that when I get to Heaven that I wouldn’t have to fuss with giants.’ And I got my paper back, and the professor wrote on the bottom, ‘Please stay with the text.’ And I’ve found that is rather the nature of crystallised religion, ‘stay with the text’. ‘Don’t rock the boat.’ ‘Don’t shake the tree.’ ‘Don’t upset the status-quo.’ Everything is comfortable, just like a graveyard. [laughter] I hadn’t thought of that until tonight, you know, that class that I had. But when I eventually came to study the land, I found that the land was the place of permanent vocation, and it is not the coming of the Lord, it is not heaven, it is something in the now situation, and that we’ve got to first have a crisis beginning, where we get out of Egypt.

Then we’ve got to be trained to go in to our permanent vocation, and at the end of this conference, I want you to know what our permanent vocation is. One parenthesis that’s very important, and it is this: that the history of Christian revivals has been that the people who come into the revival move on to some form of maturity, but in moving onto maturity themselves, they forget that there is an ongoing process where babies are to be born and trained. So that while I’m talking to you as though we are now a people in this convention, who are all travelling together towards the land, in actuality this is going on all the time. And one of the dangers of those of us who think we are mature is that we become a bit snobbish about having babies born, and this is why churches die. We get everything all nice and mature, and we have our cosy little meetings for deep truth teaching. And if a baby is born, we don’t want him to upset things, because babies don’t understand mature protocol. Babies have a kind of an innocent vulgarity. You know they just don’t pay attention to the niceties of the social atmosphere. They attend to the exigencies of life right in the middle of a polite conversation. [laughter] I tried to put that as nicely as I could! Now I have actually seen churches of very fine Christians who resented new converts! You can’t do that! No matter how mature, I tell you, wake up! And realise that one of the joys of being a Christian and going on to maturity is to see other people coming into it. And the older you get, every age has its compensations, and you reach the grandfather stage, you become a grandparent, and that has its compensations.

When you’re a parent, you have to look after your own kids. But when you’re a grandparent, you can play with the kids of your kids and when they fuss you give them back! [laughter] You see I’m a grandparent now, don’t tell them back in Lauderdale because they tried to lay that on Derek Prince and me, to say, ‘You’re the grandfather figures.’ We said ‘We’re not grandfathers, we can beat the bunch of you!’ But, you know time-wise we are, and one of the privileges of a grandfather is that we go round saying to elders, ‘How are the children doing?’ And so they hand us the children, and we play with the children, and when the children get a little bad we say, ‘Here, take care of your kids!’ I go to visit my daughters, I’ve eight grandchildren, and my daughter has a kind of a sense that when the children have climbed all over me, and anointed me in various places, she’ll take a look at me and she’ll say, ‘Daddy’s ready to go back to the motel for a rest’, and Daddy is! And Daddy kisses the dear little things goodbye, and goes back to the motel. You see every age has its compensations. Now what am I saying? Don’t ever get so old and mature that you don’t get excited at the birth of a baby. Just thank God you don’t have to look after it! [laughter]

I think this needs to be said because we’re always going to have children born into the family of God, so that this is an ongoing process. They’ll come in and they’ll upset your meeting. They’ll talk in tongues when they shouldn’t. They’ll have to be taught how to behave. And they’ll burp when they shouldn’t. Is that what you call it over here, burp? You know when you’re mature you do it politely. [laughter] But the baby doesn’t know enough about it, so it BURPS! Everybody gets a little embarrassed and says, ‘Well, he’s just a baby’. But I tell you, if he’s twenty-one and he does it, you’ve got trouble. You see, Paul’s problem with the Corinthians was they were as babes. He didn’t say they were babes, he said they were ‘as babes’. And the two parallel books in the New Testament are Corinthians and Hebrews and there are parallel passages, and in both of them he chides the people for having been converted so long and acting like children. The whole world loves a baby, they’re not really embarrassed when a baby does all of those things that babies do. He’s a baby. But if at twenty-one he’s still sitting on your knee and you’re feeding him, that’s a bit disgusting. So babies are supposed to grow up, but while they’re babies, enjoy them! I enjoy young people. I think young people are tremendous, and I find that to be among Christian young people just infuses me with life. And I identify with them and I’m thrilled about them, because they’re the ones that are really going to go into the land in actuality. For when we come to the land the Bible says, ‘there remaineth a rest for the people of God.’ There is a generation that is going to go in. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the generation. And there’s Calebs and Joshuas that go in with the new generation. So when you kids are going in, then look around for an old Caleb! [laughter]

Now the purpose is to get through the wilderness. You don’t want to stay in school forever. Get it over with, and so the name given by the Jews to all places which were not cultivated was wilderness. It’s an uncultivated place, not a place where you stay. God took them deliberately into the wilderness, cut them off from Egypt, no supply lines, no jet planes bringing in food, completely cut off. Three million people totally dependent on God. No conduits to Egypt. Out in the middle of a howling wilderness. Three million! Brother, you talk about authority. You talk about discipline. You’re talking about people, people have wondered why the laws of God were so stringent on the community of Israel, why a son who came against his father had to be stoned. Somebody said, ‘That’s cruel!’ You don’t understand! Three million people out in the middle of a wilderness, if you didn’t strike that rebellion at its root it would spread throughout! And that’s why they had hygienic laws, they had social laws, they had moral laws, they had dietetic laws, they had no Frigidaires. The law of God for Israel was very practical, it was to tell a people three million strong how to live in the midst of a howling wilderness, and how to get along! That’s why when anybody came in and started a divide, or sinned against the community, God dealt with them because it was important that the community should not be disrupted, for its very existence depended on its unity and its relationship and it staying together, and everybody knowing their place and staying in their place!

Now when you come into the wilderness it’s full of the miraculous. When you come into the land the miraculous diminishes. You say, ‘Well, I don’t understand that. I would think that the miraculous would increase as you grew older as a Christian.’

Well, you don’t need the miraculous! I don’t need a miracle tonight. I believe God, I don’t have to have a miracle to prove God. I don’t have to have a prodigy of power to prove God’s going to look after me. When they came into the land they had matured to the point where they understood that God was the God of the whole earth, and he sent the rain in its season, and he dealt with them through natural means, because they had matured now to understand that they didn’t need to have special visitations of God, like a little child has to have, special little pats on the head to say, ‘I love you, dear.’ Now some of you have missed that, but we’ll pick it up again because it’s important, for I find Christians all over the world that say, ‘It’s not like it was’. Of course it’s not like it was! When I was a boy, my Dad paid the rent, paid my school tuition, bought my bike, gave me my allowance. That was terrific! It was just a series of happy miracles! And then I got married and became a father and somebody else got the miracles. Now when they came into the wilderness, one of the first things that happened to them was they had supernatural healing. Let’s have a look at some of these things now, Exodus chapter 15.

Now this is maybe going to upset you a bit. But that’s my ministry. As you probably have already discovered! And so let us look at verse 23. ‘Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went out into the wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water, and when they came to Marah they could not drink the water of Marah for they were bitter. And therefore it was named Marah. So the people grumbled at Moses saying, “what shall we drink?” Then he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, and he threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet. There he made for them a statute and regulation, and there he tested them.’

Now, I’m going to stop right there, and I’m going to say to you that when you hear sermons on healing, or you talk to one another about healing, you will say to one another, or the preacher will preach a fervent eloquent sermon on, ‘I am the Lord that healeth thee.’ And the whole idea is left that God just heals you when you get sick. When you get sick God heals you, that’s it. You’re sick, God heals you. ‘I am the Lord that healeth you.’ Now we do this with so many texts, we take them out of their context and they become a pretext. Now when you leave this text in its context, it doesn’t say that at all Notice what it says. ‘And he said,’ verse 26, ‘if’. ‘And he said,’ verse 26, ‘if’. ‘And he said if’! How many know he said ‘if’? Alright? ‘If you will believe that healing is in the atonement, and come forward I will pray for you! And you will get healed because you believe that healing is in the atonement.’ Is that what he said? No, he said, ‘If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians, for I the Lord am your healer.’ ‘If.’ ‘I am your healer if. I am your healer if.’ ‘If!’

Now thousands of people have been preached at about Jesus as the healer, and it’s a kind of a straightforward offer without any provisos, without any demands or requirements. ‘The Lord will heal you brother.’

And some of you may know that I travelled for many years with the late William Branham. And in the beginning of those meetings, when we were packing the largest auditoriums across the world, I believe there’s a lady here from South Africa who can remember the service we had in Durban at the racetrack, where the press reported 200,000 people attended. In those days we would have as many as five to ten thousand people come through a healing line each night. And I’d see people coming through the healing line that I knew as Christians, good devout people who loved God – I had no reason to believe otherwise. And Brother Brahman would lay hands on them and nothing would happen. Some fellow would come through, obviously didn’t know God, in fact you’d hear people saying they were coming for a treatment, and this fellow would come through the line, Brother Brahman would lay hands on him, he’d throw his crutches in the air and go screaming down the aisle, and I said to … ‘Whoa, whoa, there’s something wrong here! This nice sweet saint doesn’t get anything, and that old sinner gets the whole thing! There is something wrong! Why is that Christian not healed?’

The Lord said, ‘You’d better go find out.’ So I went to the word of God and I found at least ten reasons why Christians are not healed. Now when you come to Christ in the crisis beginning, one of the things that should accompany this is a strong healing emphasis. That is, men come in to Christ, they get a blanket deal. God will save you, forgive you, heal you, start you off on the right foot, but now you’re in the family of God and you come under the rules and regulations of the household. And no longer is it a matter of, ‘Come to Jesus Christ and give him your life, and he will cleanse you and heal you and the whole thing.’ Now, your healing is dependent as was the covenant nation of Israel, after they had come out of Egypt, their healing was dependent upon their relating to the authority of Moses! I’m going to give you one illustration. In the great communion passage, in fact I think I dealt with this in London last year, in the great communion passage, Paul says, ‘For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep.’ ‘For this cause’ - what cause? Somebody says, ‘Well if you’re sick, it’s the devil!’ Well in this case it wasn’t the devil. In this case, it was the fact that there were people in the Corinthian church who were disobeying the statutes of Christ’s law, or Christ’s commandments. And they were dividing the body of Christ. And for this cause, many of them were physically weak, and they were sick, and some were prematurely dying. Because when you get too bad for earth God takes you home to heaven. And just put that in the back burner and let it slowly simmer.

In the Corinthian church was the gifts of healings and the gifts of miracles and the elders with oil. But the elders could anoint that man with oil and he wouldn’t get healed. The gift of healing could come by and he wouldn’t get healed. The gifts of miracles could come through and they wouldn’t get helped. There was only one way that that man could get healed in the Corinthian church, and that was by correcting the thing that was causing the sickness. And the thing that was causing the sickness was that he was divisive in the body of the church. And no amount of laying on of hands, anointing with oil, gifts of healings were going to heal him! He had to straighten out his relationship.

Now it is my firm conviction that one of the great things that is up ahead for us is a massive visitation of God’s healing upon our bodies. Once we get the body together, there will be such a flow of divine life through the related members of the body, that sickness will just automatically go because we’ve got it together. Our divisions are making not only God sick, they’re making us sick. How many understand what I’ve said now? Alright.

Now that’s just one reason, I could give you nine more in the Bible, where sickness has got nothing to do with your believing.

For instance, when I was travelling with Brother Brahman I’d have great large Bible studies in the afternoon, five, eight, ten thousand. And I’d say to them quite often, ‘How many here believe in divine healing?’ And every hand would go up. ‘How many here need divine healing?’ Every hand would go up. I’d say somewhere between your believing and your getting there’s a short circuit. Now they thought if they could get to Brother Brahman they’d get healed. But when I began to see these things, I went to Brother Brahman and I said, ‘Look, I’m seeing these things, is it alright if I minister them?’ He said, ‘Brother Ern, I am so tired, I can only minister to so many.’ He said, ‘We send thousands home every night, and we never touch them.’ He said, ‘If you’ve got something that can reach them where they are, go ahead!’ So I started to minister these things. And I said, for instance, ‘Healing for some of you tonight is not at the hands of Brother Brahman with his gift. Nor is it at the hands of your elders with their oil. Healing for you is as close as the nearest phone.’ And people would go out and they’d long distance back home, to their farmer neighbour. To patch up a difference, and come back to announce that God had healed them.

Many of us tonight are sick physically. We’ve been prayed for by everybody that’s come along, we’ve been prophesied over, there have been barrels of oil poured over our heads, hands laid on us. We’ve been shaken and jerked and jumped and pushed and pulled, and prodded and preached at, and we’re still sick! Because you see, we rise or fall together. And the whole body is sick. Because it’s separated from its members. There are parts of the body missing. And so there are parts of the body not functioning, and the body is sick. Now that’s just one emphasis. Now what God had to teach Israel out in the wilderness was, ‘Look, you’ve got no doctors here, they’re all back in Egypt. I’m going to be your doctor, but I will only heal you if you will walk in my statutes.’ Now do you honestly believe, dear child of God, that you or I have a right to come to God because we hold a correct doctrine on healing presumably, and say, ‘God, I want you to know that I took a correspondence course on divine healing, and I believe in divine healing, and I wish to be healed please, because I hold correct views.’ The Lord says, ‘How are you behaving?’

‘Well what’s that got to do with it, I believe!’ Well, if you believe you will obey, for faith and obedience are synonymous! To say you believe and don’t obey, means you don’t believe. All you’re doing is believing in your belief! Many people believe in their beliefs, sing to their songs, pray to their prayers.

God is saying, ‘I have entered into a covenant of healing with you. Have you read the covenant? Have you read the fine print? Have you read the bottom line? Or did you sign it without reading it?’ You can’t tear up the body of Christ brother, without having it reflected in your physical condition. You cannot grumble against God without getting a literal belly-ache, the Bible says. There are ten things at least that I know of in the covenantal relationship of God with his people which preclude healing from a Christian, no matter how accurately he may hold the doctrines of healing. And actually he doesn’t hold them accurately, if he doesn’t understand that wrapped up with being healed as a Christian, is obedience to the covenant. So when you’re in training for going into the land, one of the things you must learn out here is that God will deal with you through your body. Did you ever notice how we quote that Thessalonian passage? ‘Body soul and spirit’. How does the Bible quote it? How? See a great many of you don’t know! How many of you when you talk about it say ‘Body soul and spirit’? Now be honest! Come on be honest, get it up, get it up! Alright. In the Bible it’s, ‘spirit, soul and body’! Why? Because that’s the order of importance to God. Spirit, soul, body. What’s the order of importance to me? Body, soul, (whatever it is). Now you go to the average clinical psychiatrist, he’s got a body and a psyche. But when you come into the word of God you’ve got a body, and a psyche, and a spirit! And the most important to God is the spirit! But I’m all concerned with my body. I want my body to be well, I want my body to look good, I feed my body, I want to bath my body. I want to fix my body up, I want to quaff my body! This is where we’ve got in trouble with modern permissive love. My body falls in love with your body. We’re so body conscious that everything is the body. Clothes for the body, meats for the belly, the belly for meats, everything is for the body. God says I know how to get at him. [laughter] Amen?

So the minute something happens to our body we say, ‘Pastor, will you pray for me?’
Pastor says, ‘How you getting along?’

‘Just pray for me!’

‘Er, how are things going?’

‘Well I just want you to pray for me! My body hurts!’

Body conscious. And the Lord is really poking you in the body to get at your spirit. And all you want, dear old Dr Bosworth, he was such a gentle soul, he wasn’t like me! He was so gentle, and he would say kind of apologetically, he’d say, ‘You know dear people, I sometimes think that many of you just want your bodies to be healed so that you can serve the devil better.’

And I think that’s the truth. The Lord says, ‘That child of mine down there, he’s carnal.’ And so he does a little work on the body, and you say, ‘Lord I want my body healed.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘do you?’ Could we talk about some other things!’
‘Well, Lord, it was really just my body I wanted attended to. Maybe later on we could get around to … I have a number of important things to do Lord, would you mind healing my body?’

Are you hearing me? Are you alive? Say, ‘Hallelujah!’ Good, I was beginning to think you’d all gone up in a private rapture. Alright. [laughter] Now I’m sure that some of you here tonight heard something for the first time! And you’ve wondered why you weren’t getting healed. Because you believe healing is in the atonement and you believe that if you’re anointed, or whatever, you should be healed. And you never before understood that God gets at your soul and your spirit through your body, because that’s the thing that you’re most conscious of. So he speaks to you through your body. So one of the first things that Israel had to learn out in the wilderness, was that if they were to keep their bodies well, and if God was going to supernaturally heal them, they had to walk in obedience! That was the first piece of training! And many of them got miraculously healed, because they obeyed the Lord. Now, while I’m busy in this business of debunking things, lets have a whack at another one!

Somebody says, ‘It was marvellous, because when they came out of Egypt there was not a feeble one among them!’ That’s right, there was not a feeble one among them because all the feeble ones got killed off. [laughter] The Bible says that as they came out into the wilderness, some of them straggled. It doesn’t mean there were necessarily weak or sick, it means they were stragglers. And they straggled behind, and the Amalakites came up on their flank, and shot them off. And the reason that there were no feeble ones in the congregation was all the feeble ones got shot! By Amalakites. And the simple lesson in that, is that if you don’t want to get an Amalakite’s arrow in your back, stay with the pack! [laughter] Oh I am mischievous tonight! But how many casualties are there among these independent, straggling, lazy people, who don’t want to go through the risk of being vulnerable to the congregation, and so they decide to walk along in holy pride as they straggle along, just keeping in sight of the congregation. And then suddenly pooooosh! ‘Anybody seen brother Joe lately?’ [laughter] Brother, you want to stay healthy, you stay with the body! Alright. Let’s go on to something else.

Anybody here got some catching up to do? Maybe when you go back home you’ll want to join yourself. It’s awful lonely out there, and you’re terribly vulnerable. If there is one thing in this renewal, in this revival that’s going on, that I thank God for, it’s relationships. When I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to come over with Bob, the first thing was a sinking feeling in my stomach, until I remembered, Bryn. And the other brothers over here. When I phoned Bryn to tell him Bob couldn’t come, I said, ‘Bryn, I’m sorry about it, but I feel comfortable, because I’ll be with you.’ I think if there had been no related body of men here, I wouldn’t have come either! I refuse to be alone. It’s not good for a man to be alone. That not only has to do with marriage, brother, that has to do with ministry. That’s why Jesus sent them out two by two. Because the Bible says, ‘Two are better than one. Because if one falls down the other one will lift him up, and if one gets cold the other one will keep him war.’ Snuggle up saints! Hallelujah! God doesn’t want you to be out in the cold, and the only way you can keep warm is get up close! Alright.

Now another miracle that they had out in the wilderness, remember all of these miracles were in the wilderness, was the miracle of the manna. Back in Egypt they got their allocation of leeks and onions, but now they’re out in the wilderness and there are no leeks and onions! And you can’t grow anything in the wilderness. And here’s three million people, and not a grocery store in sight.

And they said, ‘We’re hungry!’

Moses said, ‘They’re hungry!’

God says, ‘I’ll take care of it!’

Moses said, ‘God’ll take care of it!’

The people said, ‘Good!’

Moses said, ‘Good! How are you going to do it?’ [laughter]

‘Well,’ he said, ‘tomorrow morning, tell the people when they get up to go out and I will have delivered their groceries. And they’ll just collect them after the dew has gone up, and it’ll be all nice and moist.’ Because there’s nothing worse than dry manna. [laughter] So they were all excited, they didn’t know what to expect, but then the next morning they all went out of their tents and there it lay, like hoar frost, all over the wilderness, and they looked at it, and they said, ‘What is it? What is it? It’s good. Tastes like honey. But what is it?’ And that’s where the manna got its name, because that’s the meaning of manna, ‘what is it?’ [laughter] So every morning they went out and collected their ‘what is it’. [laughter] One sister said to another, ‘How are you going to fix the “what is it” today? [laughter] Have you any new recipes for “what is it”?’ [laughter] Which leaves the question yet unanswered, what was it? [laughter]

The Bible says it was angels’ food, so all night long the angelic bake ovens…[laughter] And in the morning by special delivery, hosts of angels came down the avenues of the stars and deposited Israel’s groceries all over the sand. Isn’t that beautiful? I never cease to marvel at the miracle of three million people in the middle of a wilderness, dependent on God for everything, under a lesser covenant than ours. You know something, this is just me talking, I believe that before this age ends, when economic, political and religious Babylon has collapsed, that we will enter into a dimension in God, where we will probably also go out and collect our manna. Now maybe not literally, but God will supernaturally provide. I am not dependent on the world’s economic situation to be looked after. If God sent a raven to the prophet, I’m sure he’ll take care of me, so let Babylon fall! Ker-plonk! [laughter]

Something really thrilled me when I was at Capel, and I notice you’re doing it here, and it’s beautiful in my eyes, when I went back to America that hasn’t entered into this dimension yet. Down at Capel they got up and very simply, ‘We need so many thousand pounds.’ There was no pulling, it was just stated, and at the end of the conference they had all expenses paid, they paid my fare, they gave me an honorarium, they took care of all the help, and they had money left over, and I said to Gerald Coates, I said to him, ‘Brother, what do you do about the inflation? What do you do about it?’ And oh, I thought his answer was classic, because it was what I had been preaching, and now I was seeing it. He said, ‘We ignore it.’ [laughter] That’s beautiful. That is beautiful. We haven’t yet reached the point where we ignore it. I haven’t heard any Christians in this country lamenting what is happening economically. Now you, some of you may do, but I’m simply saying I’ve not heard it.

And I think you are already entering into a dimension of end time reality that has hit other parts of the world but hasn’t certainly hit America. Because if you and I are dependent on Egypt in any way for our survival, we’re sunk. Because when I came through the Red Sea, I said I trust in a covenant God, who will send down free trainloads of manna every morning to feed three million people. ‘Ah,’ somebody says, ‘surely Baxter you’re sufficiently knowledgeable to know that that’s just a myth? Why, it wasn’t that way at all. Don’t you understand that science has researched the whole matter, and that on the desert there is a plant, and it has a fruit, and what they did, they went out every morning and they just collected the fruit off of those little branches.’ But that puts a greater strain on my credulity than the miracle. [laughter] That means that that little old plant has got to grow a new crop of fruit every night. [laughter] And what is more, it would be a miracle in the whole world of growth, because every weekend it would have to grow a double crop! [laughter] I think I’ll just stick with the miracle, [laughter] eh?

You know it’s like this whole evolution thing, that you and I are here by a fortuitous concurrence of atoms. You know what that means? We just happened. And so in Darwin’s Origin of Species, some 2,800 times he says, ‘Let us assume… that in the beginning there was matter and force.’ Three cheers. [laughter] That’s exactly what we believe. But we believe that the force was God, and we believe that the matter was what God by creative genius brought to pass. And we are not left in the barren wastes of speculative evolutionary philosophy, which says that some little piece of protoplasm that came from somewhere, floated on some primeval waters sometimes and the sun shone upon it, and it just happened to evolve – thank God it evolved with such symmetry and order. It would have been terrible had it evolved with a nose in the middle of the back and an ear sticking out of the top of your head. [laughter] I think I’ll stick with the miracle. I find the miracles much easier to believe than the brilliant apologetics that embarrassed, unregenerate men make for the Bible. The Bible doesn’t need any help. Man stands on the rim of the universe, and he cries, ‘What’s out there?’ And there’s no answer, because his radar, his receiving set is broken. But a Christian stands and says, ‘Who’s there?’ And the answer comes back loud and clear. ‘In the beginning God…’ The Christian says, ‘Hallelujah!’ And the sinner said, ‘Did you hear something?’ [laughter]

Well, they were not only hungry, they were thirsty. God teaches us. They were thirsty.

They said, ‘We’re thirsty.’

Moses says, ‘God, they’re thirsty.’

God says, ‘Well, give them water.’

Moses said, ‘God, we’re in a desert – how?’

He said, ‘Out of a rock.’

‘Out of a what?’ [laughter]

You know, we need to hear this people, in our technological age where we press a button, or pull a little goo-gaa, where everything is ... We need to hear, because already, already we are starting to cancel out our brilliance with its results. Already we are in ecological trouble. Already this globe is enveloped in a thin envelope of smut and muck and pollution that has come out of our brilliant technological discoveries, and it is threatening to keep from us the life sustaining rays of the Sun. And you and I need to hear that when we can no longer use a lot of our technological things, and we start to journey back to God and primitive beauty, we’re going to have to learn to know that God can provide, apart from all this brilliant unrestrained genius of unregenerate men. Water out of rock? So Moses smote a rock and out came water. And the people drank. Water out of a rock?

You say, ‘How is God going to do it?’ I don’t know how he’s going to do it, I just know he’s going to do it. All he asks you and me to do is walk in covenant. You say, ‘How will he heal me?’ I don’t know, but I’ll tell you something, people, I’ve watched a little blue baby, and you know that it takes all the genius of medical science, with long hours of surgery to even try to correct the heart condition that produces a blue baby. I’ve watched a little blue baby, kept my eyes open as prayer was made in Jesus’ name, and in seconds some strange, mysterious hand has reached down, and done instantaneous surgery on that little heart, changed the whole bloodstream, and instead of that ghastly purple, there’s a healthy, rosy hue. How did he do it? I don’t know. He did it. He did it. I don’t ever want, I don’t care how mature I get, I don’t ever want to get away from the miracle of my God, who is able to do anything, but who will not do it promiscuously, but who will do it in relation to my growth and maturation. God will not do things for you just to satisfy your curiosity. He will do things for you as you walk in covenant relationship with him.

One more thing. When they came out into the wilderness, God gave them a cloud, a special cloud. By day it was a pillar of smoke, and by night it was a pillar of fire. They had their own mobile electrical system. And when they were to move they followed the cloud. And when the cloud would begin to shimmer and shake, a cry would go out, and they’d all start to break camp. And the mothers would get the kids ready, and the pots and pans all wrapped up, and Dad would take down the tents and the Levites would start to take the Tabernacle apart, and then they’d cover all the sacred vessels, and they’d all get ready to march, and then the cloud would start out.

Now can you imagine three million people going across the wild, howling desert following a cloud? And you can see all the nomadic tribes out in the desert looking over the sand dunes. [laughter] And the word got around that there is a group of people going round the wilderness who have their own private cloud. [laughter] What was God teaching them? He was teaching them the obedience of divine guidance, and he said to Moses, ‘If the cloud settles for a week, you stay for a week. If it settles for a month, you stay for a month. If it settles for a year, you stay for a year. But when that cloud moves, you move. Can’t you imagine some people in the revival – the cloud revival – ‘Hallelujah, we’re in the cloud revival! We’ve made three moves already. Glory to God! But I think this is the last one.’

Somebody said, ‘Have you heard, the cloud is moving?’

‘No, not again. [laughter] Well I think I’ve gone as far as I’m going to go. I’m going to stay here.’

Now they were in the cloud revival. They’re not in it now. Are you hearing me? Because I’m trying to say something to you, and I’m trying to keep it fairly light tonight, because you it’s been a long day. But still I’m saying some very serious things to you, that God reserves the right to disturb your religious comfort at his will. And many came into the charismatic thing, and they said, ‘Are you in the charismatic revival?’

‘Oh hallelujah, I’m in it.’

And then the cloud moved, and somebody said, ‘What’s happening?’ Somebody said, ‘Well, the cloud’s moving.’ [laughter]

Somebody said, ‘I liked it when the cloud was here.’ [laughter] ‘But if anybody thinks I’m going to go to the cloud there.’

'Well, you can stay here without a cloud. I’m going there with a cloud. I don’t know where the cloud’s going to take me. Wherever the cloud goes, that’s where I’m going.’

Somebody said, ‘Where are you going today?’

‘I’m going with the cloud.’

‘Where’s the cloud going?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ [laughter]

Somebody says, ‘What in the world have I got into?’ The cloud revival. You know that the cloud is not going to stop until it brings you right up to the border of the land. And when the cloud gets you into the land, you’ll need no more cloud, because in the land each man will sit under his own vine and fig tree. Let me just finish tonight by saying this. I keep saying I don’t want to be unkind, and I don’t, I really don’t, but I realise I have to be disturbing. My Jewish friend Art Katz says regularly, he says every time God calls me, he calls me to inconvenience. There is an inconvenience in moving with God, because you never know what he’s going to do next, or where he’s going to take you, and the constant danger you face is saying, ‘I’ve gone as far as I’m going to go.’ And listen, dear people.

The people that are most vigorously opposed to the newest move of the cloud, are the people who moved with the cloud last. And you may be that people tomorrow.

Because I want you to know the cloud has not stopped moving, and I don’t know if you’ve caught the inference of what I’m saying, but I am saying that we as a people are still in the wilderness. We’re on our way to the land, and by the end of this series, when I tell you what the land really is, you’ll know that we’re still in the wilderness. But right now we’re following the cloud. And as long as the cloud didn’t inconvenience us overmuch, we were all for the cloud, but when the cloud started to take us on out into the wilderness, further and further, we didn’t know where it was taking us, then we said, ‘We want security. That last oasis, where the cloud left us, we like that. And so the Christian centuries are filled with oases where people have said, ‘I’ll stay here, thank you, you can go on with the cloud.’ And it won’t be long until there will be charismatic oases where people decided to stay. The congregation is moving on. I don’t know what you call where you are tonight, but it’s not permanent. There is new light to break from God’s word. There is new territory to take. We’re on our way to the land, we’re on our way to ‘permanent vocation’, we’re on our way to kingship, we’re on our way to authority, we’re on our way to a place where God is going to manifest his glory in a mature people, that will make the world wonder at the grace and glory of God manifest through mortal men. How can mortal men be mature, how can they do that? It’s because they followed the cloud into the land.

We’ll try to get through the wilderness tomorrow night, but we’re in training tonight. Is God testing some of you in the matter of relationships? Is he testing you through your body perhaps? Is God testing you in the matter of economic provision? Are you concerned tonight about what’s going on in the world? Do you think it’s rough in Great Britain? Let me tell you that the world economy is in such serious condition, that world economists, who have studied the science of world economy, are no longer able to give advice on world economy. A friend of mine in Kansas City who is the president of a large stock brokerage firm told me one day, as we were driving down the city, he said, ‘Ern, we have two groups of people that we turn to for professional advice in this business. One is a group of men who advise us on the trends in the market, and advise us what stocks are good to buy, and which stocks are good to sell, and so on.’ Then he said, ‘We have a scientific group that advise us on the nature of world economy, based on economic laws.’ He said, ‘Two years’ ago,’ – that would be about four years’ ago now – he said, ‘Two years’ ago, they advised us that they could no longer give us readings on the world economy, because something had come into the world economy that they could not scientifically define.’

Now I sat besides this hard-headed businessman, and I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, and he was driving straight ahead, and I said to him, ‘Are you saying to me what I think you’re saying to me?’ He said, ‘Yes, I believe you know what I’m saying.’ Then I said, ‘Let me articulate it. You are saying to me that there is a supernatural something, that has come into the world economy, that has so disrupted it, that all the scientific economic laws are no longer valid, and they cannot define what is happening.’ And he said, ‘That’s right.’ I went to Duke University to speak at a seminar there, and I mentioned this, and a young man came up to me after I had mentioned it, and he said, ‘I am a Business Major in Harvard University.’ He said, ‘I just want to confirm what you’ve said, our professors have categorically stated to us that something has come into the world economy that they can no longer scientifically grapple with.’

I’m not an economist. I don’t understand all of that stuff, but there was one thing that quickly came to my mind. ‘Alas, alas, for Babylon the great is fallen.’ I believe there’s a supernatural hand in world economy. I believe there’s a supernatural hand in world politics. I believe there’s a supernatural hand in the religion of the world, because those are the three definitions of Babylon in the book of Revelation, and God’s going to bring them all down. He’s going to bring down economic Babylon, he’s going to bring down political Babylon, he’s going to bring down religious Babylon, and he’s going to raise up the church of the holy city, and there is going to come into focus the people of God,

That are going to offer the world an alternative to what they’ve got, a counter culture, an alternate society, where we’ve got it together, according to the laws of the kingdom of God, and the kingdoms of this world are going to become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ.

Indescribable!!

2009-10-18T18:17:00.002+01:00

The video says it all! This is another awesome worship video from Grapevine Bible Week held in Lincoln, UK. It makes me so utterly hungry for such worship!

On Reading C H Spurgeon and Sermons ...

2009-10-12T20:59:00.004+01:00

I'm not a very patient Christian bookshopper. Many go into a Wesley Owen or a CLC and browse happily and slowly. I rush in like a whirlwind and sweep the shelves and usually leave without buying anything. I don't have much patience for the majority of Christian books - to me they tend to be either rubbishy Christian novels or dry, dead theology (a misnomer surely). I lament spending lunch hour after lunch hour scanning the shelves and leaving empty-handed.

I think that partly explains why I invest so much time in transcribing sermons. My thought is that there is no point in moaning about a lack of quality Christian books if you don't write your own.

But that's an aside. I was thrilled last week to find a treasure in CLC which I duly brought. Day One Publications have brought out a volume; "C H Spurgeon's Sermons Beyond Volume 63". I'm an avid collector of the "Metropolitan Tabernacle" volumes and have about 20 or so to go. This volume has produced 45 "forgotten" sermons that have been transcribed and edited. Phil Johnson wrote the foreword and made a valuable point;

"Years ago a student just entering seminary visited my office and noticed that two large shelves behind my desk are filled with the New Park Street Pulpit and Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit collections, which he had never seen in their entirety. He was fascinated by the set. Thumbing through a random volume, he observed out loud what almost everyone nowadays would notice first of all; by today's standards the books are very thick, the type quite small and the paragraphs surprisingly long.

The student looked up from the book he was holding and asked whether I had read every sermon in all sixty three volumes. I told him I had not (and still haven't) and that reading Spurgeon is a pleasure I expect to savour with care and patience, sermon by sermon for the rest of my life ... I explained that I don't read Spurgeon chronologically. I select sermons to read based on whatever passage of Scripture I am studying at any given time. I wouldn't think of preaching on a passage until I have seen what Spurgeon had to say about it ... He almost never fails to shine a bright light into some dark corner of the text showing me things I would not have seen otherwise".

I know that not everyone is a Spurgeon fan but a few thoughts occured to me;

1. In the Christian book saturated market - have we abandoned the use of "books of sermons"?

2. If you are a pastor/teacher/preacher - have you considered how your ministry will outlive you? It's unlikely that CD's or sermon tapes will do. Do not hide behind the facade of "humility". God gave you a gift for a purpose - do you really believe that only your generation is meant to be exposed to your gift? If you are not then you are robbing future generations. Are you writing? Are you commissioning some to transcribe your sermons?

3. We all know the "classic" books of sermons. C H Spurgeon of course being one of them. John Calvin is another. James Montgomery Boice is a more modern classic. But what about the gifted and modern preachers of today that God is using? Greg Haslam listed his favourite preachers in a recent interview;

"But I regularly try to hear sermons by A W Tozer (a true prophet for today, who died in 1963), Tim Keller (a church-planter in New York, and evangelistic pastor-teacher par excellence), Mark Driscoll (a modern-day Spurgeon!), Terry Virgo, David Pawson (prophetic teachers), past greats like Lloyd-Jones, Eric Alexander and John Stott (great expositors), as well as some people you may not have heard of like Rick Godwin and Ern Baxter".

Ern Baxter for example does not have much in print of his sermons - that is exactly the reason why I try to transcribe the sermons of his that I have. Just the same for Rob and Ryan Rufus.

Let's not forget sermons! They can accomplish much in opening to us the gospel of glory and grace!

I'm Frustrated, and Angry ... !!!

2009-10-10T22:40:00.001+01:00

My job is in a very bizarre place at the moment. My official title is "Pandemic Influenza Nurse" and one of my key roles is to visit the Emergancy Department every day and count up how many children they saw with flu. This data is crucial for deciding how quickly a potential "second wave" of swine flu is coming. Words like "surge" and "second wave" are used a lot in this part of health care. And it is quite a weird feeling. I've been puzzling as to why the job has been frustrating me because although the numbers are growing steadily, they aren't showing the signs of an imminent peak approaching in pandemic influenza ... yet.

I walked home from work today and was "venting" at God. I don't know if that's allowed but I did. I was thinking about how so much of life is made up of hoping. Hoping for ... more. 2006/2007 were very key years for me in my spiritual life. There were such exciting promises that God was going to visit the country in glory and power and things would never be the same again. I had dreams personally. I heard some such exciting sermons particularly at "Together on a Mission" in Brighton. And I'm not quite sure what happened.

This year has been one of the most challenging of my life. But what I've noticed is that the strategies of the enemy have changed! Earlier in the year I dealt with bullying at Acorns Childrens Hospice and the resulting stress of that with lying management - and the experience of being on anti-depressants. Now things are different! I love my job and find it rewarding and challenging. But I'm so bored and frustrated waiting for "something" to happen in life! As Rob Rufus puts it, I find myself eating food, passing it through my body and taking up space in life. And that is NOT good for someone with my temperament!

So my walk home ...

I was pondering about frustrations and promises of God that haven't been fulfilled and I think that the church generally reacts in a couple of ways - two are wrong and only one is RIGHT:

1. Disheartened.

The Old Testament says that unfulfilled promises make the heart sick. I have seen again and again church leaders especially so full of hope in the Charismatic Movement during the 1970's and 80's - and I have audio-tape after audio-tape of their preaching hope and vision. And yet you look at where they are today and they are embittered and disappointed. They have looked and hoped for revival and for world-change and haven't seen it.

Rather than holding on and trusting in the promises of God some have embraced functional cessationism and declared that if God will not reveal Himself then clearly He never intended to pour out His Spirit or give His gifts in the first place. They retreat to the relative safety of the Word of God (conviniently ignoring the fact that the Word of God NEVER EVER says that God has stopped anything) and adhere to doctrine and theology. And death.

2. Distracted.

The other option is that some churches don't lose their hope but they become impatient waiting for God to move and devoting time to praying and seeking Him. So they become distracted. They begin looking around the world to see "success stories". Looking to churches and church leaders who seem to be seeing a measure of numerical growth. Those churches and church leaders then become famous and are invited on tour around the world to speak at conferences to give their "tips".

The churches attending those conferences hear those "tips" and mistake them for the anointing of God and thus try and integrate those "tips" in their churches. Now this may work to a degree. People may come into those churches. But it will never, ever produce a Pentecostal revival where the glory of God hovers over cities and nations and we can watch and see MILLIONS swept into the Kingdom of God.

So what do we do?

We remind ourselves of the promises of God and we remember that some are yet to be fulfilled. We don't give up hoping and praying and watching for them. We remember that God is more passionate than we are to fulfill those promises and waiting for a people who are content to wait for His perfect timing. Here are my two favourite UNFULFILLED promises. That means that a day is rapidly coming when we will see them come to pass.

A. Numbers 14:21: "but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the LORD".

This is probably my most favourite promise in the Word of God. It got a lot of coverage in the 1970's at the Bible Weeks. It was even sung after one of Ern Baxter's monumental sermons at the Dales Bible Week. It HASN'T been fulfilled yet. But it is GOING to be! One day - Isaiah 60 will be fulfilled as well and all nations will come to the dawning of the light! One day all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord!

B. Acts 2:17: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams".

If Numbers 14:21 was my favourite promise in the Word of God then this surely must be the second. I read this and am staggered at how so-called "teachers of the Bible" can hold to a cessationist point of view. How Christians can proudly despise "experience" and claim they are "doctrinal". This promise is an outpouring of unparalelled proportions. To be sure - the Day of Pentecost was the "beginning of that fulfillment" (as F F Bruce writes in his commentary). But it's not been done yet.

So as I was turning the corner almost home - I got back to thinking about swine flu and the possible "second wave". I earnestly believe that swine flu or pandemic influenza is a demonic counterfeit. The whole health service is waiting planned and ready for whatever the future may hold and dreading it. Whereas the church should be poised, ready and waiting looking like Elijah to the skies waiting for a cloud to appear. This isn't the time to get distracted or disappointed! This is the time to fix our eyes on the horizon and wait for the glimmer of glory that says the tidal wave of glory is coming.

Because I truly believe that the tectonic plates of hell's strongholds are shaking and moving and when they do - a massive tsnuami will result. God has promised on HIS Name that all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. So bring it on! We're waiting!

The Flight of the Eagle

2009-10-05T22:18:00.004+01:00

I want to apologise for a somewhat cranky last post. That'll teach me to write a blog post just after having got home from work after a rubbish day. I was gently chastised by a friend asking if I was back into "swiping at SGM-mode" and I can assure everyone I'm not. My family are still very much involved in SGM as are some people I care deeply about. I think my frustration comes from seeing a people who used to believe in restoration and in the Holy Spirit and His power and His work - and now seem so different, so reformed and so theology-focused. That's not an excuse for being cranky!

My main annoyance was that my grouching may have distracted from my key point about a positive eschatology and evangelism! How ironic is that - I'm pleading for a more optimistic end-time world view and writing very grumpily. Anyhow - that being said I want to share a frequent dream/vision I have at times when I'm sleeping. It comes frequently especially after reading Isaiah 60; "Arise shine for your light has come ... nations will come to your light". I keep seeing myself flying in my dreams over country and cities and everywhere I fly - people are worshipping exuberantly crying out; "He is good and His love endures forever!".

I've looked on You-Tube and the closest I can come is this to what I see in my dreams;

It's so easy in day-day life to get bogged down in the trials of what life brings. But look at the eagle! He glides above and beyond and he sees so much more than we do. Can he see the nations coming to the dawning of the light of the Bride? I think he can! So, so much more than we can! We can so easily ge depressed and down-cast by life. The eagle doesn't get down-cast. He soars high above the clouds near to the sun.

There's a reason why "Life on Wings" is the name of this blog and the name of my favourite sermon of Ern Baxter's. It embodies everything that the Christian should be!

Forgotten Restoration?!

2009-10-04T11:30:00.000+01:00

I was quite humiliated at the gym today. I was running on the treadmill and have put together a playlist on my IPOD for the half-marathon I'm running in Birmingham on Sunday 11th October. I put a couple of surprise tracks on the playlist from "Salvations Song" - the Together on a Mission live worship album from last year. One of my favourite songs on that is by Louise Fellingham called; "From The Rising Of The Sun". I love it. I love, love, love, love, LOVE it!

Here's the lyrics;

FROM THE RISING OF THE SUN

To the place it sets again

All can know that You alone are God

You have shown the sweetest grace

Not forgetting those You've made

Saving all who turn to You in faith

Heaven rain down

Bring salvation to this place

From the ends of the earth

The nations will come

Every knee bowing down

To the Holy One

Creation will give You praise

The Name that's above all names

There's a people You have called

And You're drawing them to come

This Your church is growing day by day

Only one way You have made

It's through Jesus, God the Son

sent to carry all our sin and shame

Heaven rain down

Shower righteousness and grace

Why did I humiliate myself? Because I started getting very excited. So excited that tears started rolling down my face. I think I probably hid it well among sweat! But some thoughts began occuring to me. But what excited me so much was the thought of nations coming to the light of the church - as the Bible promises. Here's what I thought;

If you don't believe truly in restoration then you can't properly get truly passionate about the Great Commission.

Before we get distracted by terms let me quote the passage of Scripture from which this beautiful song comes;

Isaiah 60:1-7; "Arise, shine; for your light has come, And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you ... But the Lord will rise upon you - And His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes round about and see; They all gather together, they come to you. Your sons will come from afar, And your daughters will be carried in the arms ... The wealth of the nations will come to you ... And I shall glorify My glorious house".

So with this glorious promise there in the Word of God, why is the church so darkly pessimistic about it's future? Of course we all know we're going to heaven - that's assured. But it's the bit in-between that seems to flag up some questions. Much of religion that I have experienced tends to take the analogy of a medieval castle. We raise the drawbridge - post a few "prayer" archers on the roof and hope that the devil and the powers of darkness don't scale the walls. Or even worse - that sinners come knocking trying to come in and get saved.

It seems crazy to me! Jesus said "I will build My Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it!". That's not a defensive promise! Ern Baxter always asked the question, since when did you see a pair of gates jump off their hinges and chase a screaming church down the street?! No! This promise is Jesus Christ promising His church - there is not one stronghold that is able to stand against My advancing church! Not even hell itself!

Now - back to restorationism for a minute. Lots of Christians pray for revival. Two examples: My former senior pastor Dr Stanley Jebb commented on it in a recent blog, yet I have a tape where he spoke very strongly against restoration in our old church in Dunstable - after decades of believing in restoration passionately, singing wonderful choruses about it (Does anyone remember "I hear the sound of rustling"??!) and of course going to the glorious Dales Bible Weeks to hear Ern Baxter preach on it!

A former friend of mine - ex-blogger Jesse Phillips used to talk about revival a lot (he may still believe in it - I'm not sure). But Sovereign Grace Ministries would not be classed as having a positive end-time eschatology as I understand it from their resident theologian/'apostle' Jeff Purswell. So I confess myself a bit confused - what is the point of praying for or hoping for revival if there is no active expectation that the Church is destined to grow gloriously to a degree that not only the nations will "flow to it" but also that the nation of Israel will be wonderfully provoked to come in?

Church history is almost united in the understanding that revival means a "re-viving" of the church. The Holy Spirit being poured out in unprecedented power so that the church is corporately affected. I like Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones definition that it is "a corporate baptism of the Holy Spirit". The result of course is that the world cannot help but come. But it all begins with the church! It must all begin with the church!

My point - let me state again:

If you don't believe truly in restoration then you can't properly get truly passionate about the Great Commission.

Perhaps a bit controversial and I'm ready to stand corrected! But let me ask what mentality you have when you go out to witness and spread the Gospel. Do you really believe that we are saving them "one by one" and any convert is a bonus (which of course is true) but we are really working to a rapidly coming deadline and hell is going to be more full than heaven anyway? Or do you walk out of your house daily KNOWING that we are on the winning side and that God is more capable of saving millions through one outpouring of revival than we are with our evangelism techniques and "crack squads" or "hit teams" imported from the USA (or whatever they are called) or maybe adopting Mark Driscoll-esque techniques in your church and uttering the odd profanity or crude joke from the pulpit?!

I believe that a positive eschatology can absolutely transform your life. It can affect how you go to work, it can affect your worship at church - singing celebratory songs of triumph rather than bleeding heart ballads hoping God might show. It can most definately affect your evangelism in ways we can't even dream of! When we are simply "hoping for the best" - I suspect our evangelism cache will only spread to white, middle-class "safe" people. We will leave the "dangerous" lost to the few evangelists who dare to go into prisons etc. But if we really believe that we are on the winning side and that the principalities and powers REALLY were bound at the Cross and disarmed - and we KNOW that we have a glorious message to take - that God is reconciling the world to Himself not counting men's sins against them, then we will surely want EVERYONE to hear!

Let me get really practical for a minute. As a children's nurse there is no horror I hate worse that paedophilia. If there was still the death penalty, I probably would be tempted to call for it for this alone. The thought of children being hurt or damaged breaks my heart. But can I deny them the gospel of grace? That God wants to reconcile THEM to Himself and is not holding their sins against them? There are two incidents that make this more than just theory.

A paedophile who used to work for my old hospice - Acorns in Birmingham - is awaiting trial. Now it doesn't surprise me that this happened. I experienced enough at Acorns to know that the management is entirely ineffective with archaic screening processes who waste more time and money on "investigations" such as they used to bully me for months, than to ensure that their standards are upto scratch. But that's an aside - he was there. And he did this. But he needs the gospel! And the arms of Jesus Christ stretch to him! And you know what? If I really allow the glory of restoration to sink in - I can see him coming into the church.

Or the paedophile ring that were caught in the UK just this week. This one upsets me just as much as the man at Acorns. That a woman can work at a nursery and misuse her position like this - just staggers me. But she and they need the gospel too! And are we really going to leave it to a prison chaplain (who may or may not believe the gospel anyway!) or some evangelists? No! A restored church is the only hope! As Lex Loizides wonderful song went;

"It is the Church! The hope of the world!".

And I am sorry - but at the moment, it looks rather like the world has no hope. When someone like C J Mahaney puts the onus for an effective pastoral ministry on the church by stating:

"The effectiveness of pastoral ministry is dependent upon a proper response TO pastoral ministry".

It just seems a recipe for disaster, condemnation and legalism to me. Not to say completely unbiblical. The apostle Paul had one of the most effective New Testament ministries short of our Lord Jesus Christ. He not only was completely full of grace in his doctrine but he performed signs, wonders and miracles. Yet can we say that the Corinthian church were completely supportive of his ministry? They gossiped and criticised him and it seems didn't even give him any monetary support (2 Corinthians 11:8-9). They thought they were more spiritual than he was. Did that affect the effectiveness of his ministry? Not in the least. So it's another Mahaney-typical "catchy" summary - and a gift he is very good at. But it's not Biblical.

Again - another digression. But my heart and my passion in this is to call for a bit of optimism. I've spent so much time over the last few months typing up Rob Rufus's sermons and anyone who has read them will know he is grace-obsessed. But without a positive eschatology to set that doctrine ablaze, I find myself wondering what the point is. Fortunately I know Rob Rufus's eschatology is ENTIRELY positive!

Maybe you shrink back from the term "restoration" and can't quite get the "post-millenial" eschatology that I am pleading for here. But if I can at least make you re-consider some of the glorious promises in the Bible - particularly in Isaiah 60 - then I think we will find our hearts full of hope and our prayers for revival come alive!

Come Lord Jesus! Pour out Your Spirit we pray!

An Endorsement from Joshua Mills!!

2009-09-28T06:32:00.003+01:00

I've been mentioning Ryan Rufus's latest book "Sanctification by Grace" recently - and loving posting them out to people. I can't emphasise how much this book is working in my life and tearing down strongholds of legalism that have locked me in condemnation and in fear for so long. So it's always a thrill to find out what other people think about the book.

Ryan sent me a few reviews done by some other people. One is by the well-known and very awesome Joshua Mills of New Wine Ministries. Joshua was a guest speaker at the latest "Glory and Grace Conference" in Hong Kong. While he was speaking he stopped and gave a very specific address - which turned out to be that of Fini and Isi de Gersigny, who he had never met before. He went on to bring them a very encouraging prophecy.

Here's what he says;

“Ryan Rufus is a champion in the kingdom of God. His revelation and ministry of grace is setting the captives free, healing broken lives and releasing joy in the goodness of God’s glory. Through Ryan’s teachings you will be challenged and empowered to accomplish all that God has called you to be!”

Here's a few other reviews of what people thought of this incredible book of Ryan's;

"I had some fantastic feedback from folk in our church who read your book. I’m looking forward to reading it myself ... … I read your book yesterday - a masterpiece! Well done!! By far the best book I have ever read on the subject. I would highly recommend this book as compulsory reading for anyone serious about understanding how to work out their salvation"

Steve Wheeler
Lead elder.
Highway Christian Community, Natal, South Africa.

"There has been a lot of misunderstanding in the body of Christ over the years concerning this topic. It's so refreshing to read a book that focuses on Gods role in sanctification, rather than my performance or efforts at holiness. Seeing God's involvement in our lives will cause us to run to God and embrace His work in and through us. Ryan helped me fall in love with Sanctification, rather than be afraid or intimidated by it. I love being sanctified!"

Wayne Duncan
Lead elder
Coastlands Christian Church, Port Edward, South Africa

"Love the Church: Lyrics of love" - Dave Bish

2009-09-26T13:46:00.003+01:00

Following on from yesterday's Spurgeon sermon, I was thrilled to hear from Dave Bish - the well-known Bluefish blogger. He and I have shared thoughts on the Song of Solomon for some time now and he's encouraged me many times on his insights on this beautiful book of the Bible.

Dave spoke on the Song of Songs to his UCCF team recently. Here is the link to the notes from the session:

"Love the Church - Lyrics of Love".

Dave accurately sums up the two positions on how to view the Song;

"There are two broad camps of understanding about The Song. Those who say it is about marriage – as it appears at first reading, and those who say it is about Christ and the church, as I’m going to argue. Of course it is both, but which we give priority really effects how we proceed".

That last point is key to my whole understand of this book. I don't have a problem with married couples reading and learning from the love expressed in the Song of Solomon. What a better model to follow? But I do believe that if Christ and His church is isolated from this book (as per Driscoll/Mahaney etc) then a substandard love will result both for Christ in worship and indeed in marriage. As Dave says - what we give priority to will effect how we proceed.

Dave responds to Mark Driscoll's "icky" dislike of seeing corporate love in the Book by reminding us:

"Driscoll’s key argument is that it’s just too icky if this is about “Jesus and me”, I agree but whilst its true that Jesus gave himself up in love for me, we also know “Jesus gave himself up for the church” – and that a corporate reading is more the norm in Scripture. The bride is not individual believers but the church as a whole. Us not me, our husband not my husband".

He then splits the Song of Solomon up very helpfully by "tracks" of lyrics;

Track 1 (1:1-2:7) - Delights.

Track 2 (2:8-3:5) – Desire.

Track 3 (3:6-5:1) – Wedding.

"I find myself thinking – if he loves the church like this I want to know that love, to be found in the church and feel this love by the Spirit. To know his love as Ruth experiences the LORD’s love through Boaz. That means being found among God’s people not being alone. I am not his bride, the church is – it is the church whom he loves like this".

Track 4. The fourth song (5:2-6:1) – Loss

Track 5 (6:2-8:4) – Grace

Track 6. (8:5-8:14)- Home

Dave concludes wonderfully;

"This brief overview is designed not entirely to convince you to read the Song as about Christ and the church but to tug on your heart to love the bigger story of Christ and the church. To want to be found in her to know his love for her, and to grow with the church to love him as she does".

A Spurgeon Sermon on the Song of Solomon

2009-09-25T20:59:00.003+01:00

Many know by now that the Song of Solomon is become an "issue" to me. The modern teaching popularised by Mark Driscoll or C J Mahaney has bothered me, and I've made no secret of that. But I was challenged recently that it's no good being "anti" everything without examining what I DO believe. So I am writing my own commentary of sorts on the Song of Songs - and reading everything I can lay my hands on.

C H Spurgeon preached a great number of amazing sermons on the Song of Solomon but this one in particular caught my eye. It wasn't just the way he touched on this wonderful book but it was his teaching on the Presence and glory of God that thrilled me. C H Spurgeon is popular among evangelicals - mainly for his gospel-centred preaching. Maybe this one was overlooked.

Sermon: "The Real Presence, the Great Want of the Church".

Text: Song of Solomon 3:4-5 -

"It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please."

Brethren, if a church be without the Spirit of God in it, it may have a name to live, but it is dead, and, you know, that after death there follows corruption, corruption which breeds foulness and disease. Hence, those churches which have turned aside unto error, have not only lost all power to do good, but they have become obnoxious and the causes of great evil in the midst of the world.

Let the Spirit of God be in the church, then there is power given to all her ministries; whether they be ministries of public testimony in the preaching of the word, or ministries of holy love amongst the brethren, or ministries of individual earnestness to the outside world, they will all be clothed with energy, in the fullness of the power of the Lord Jesus. Then her ordinances become truly profitable, then baptism is burial with the Lord, and the sacred supper is a feast of love; then the communion of the brethren in their solemn prayer and praise becomes deep and joyful, and their whole life and walk are bright with the glow of heaven.

In the presence of the Lord the graces of the saints are developed; the church grows rich in all spiritual gifts; her warfare becomes victorious, and her continual worship sweet as the incense of the golden censor.

I. And first, we learn from the text that before ever we can bring the Well-Beloved into our mother's house, the church, WE MUST FIND HIM PERSONALLY FOR OURSELVES.

I am not now about to speak of the need of conversion; we all know that no spiritual act can be performed until we become spiritual men; but I am now speaking about something higher than bare conversion. If we would bless the church, we must ourselves occupy a higher platform than that of being merely saved; we must be believers, walking in fellowship with Christ, and having, in that respect, found him whom our soul loveth.

There are many believers who have only just enough grace to enable us to hope that they are alive; they have no strength with which to work for God's cause, they have not an arm to lend to the help of others, neither can they even see that which would comfort others, for they are blind, and cannot see afar off, they want all their sight, and all their strength, for themselves. Those who are to bring the Well-Beloved into our mother's house, must be of another kind. They must get beyond the feebleness which is full of doubting and fearing, into the assurance which grasps the Savior, and the fellowship which lives in daily communion with him.

Pray ye for Laodicea in her lukewarmness, and Sardis in her spiritual death; but you will only prevail in proportion as your inmost soul loves the Redeemer and abides in his love.

In seeking our Lord we must use all ministries. The spouse enquired of the watchmen. We are not to despise God's servants, for he is usually pleased to bless us through them, and it would be ungrateful both to him and to them to pass them by as useless.

But, while we use the ministries, we must go beyond them. The spouse did not find her Lord through the watchmen.

But she says, "it was but a little that I passed from them, that I found him whom my soul loveth." I charge you, my dear hearers, never rest content with listening to me. Do not imagine that hearing the truth preached simply and earnestly will of itself be a blessing to your souls. Far, far beyond the servant, pass to the Master.

Oh, for more Enochs, men who walk with God, whose habitual spirit is that of close communion with Jesus, meditating upon him, yea, more than that, sympathizing with him, drinking into his spirit, changed into his likeness, living over again his life, because he is in them the monarch of their souls. O that we had a chosen band of elect spirits of this race, for surely the whole church would be revived through their influence.

II. This brings us to the second point of the subject. If we would be a blessing to the church, and have already found Christ, WE MUST TAKE CARE TO RETAIN HIM.

To come to Christ, and to sit down at his feet, is a simple thing enough for believers, and many of us have attained to it; but to sit day after day at the Master's feet is quite another matter. Oh, could I always be as I sometimes am! Could I not only rise above but remain there! But, alas, our spiritual nature is too much like this weather—it is balmy to-day; one would think that spring or summer had come; but, perhaps, to-night we may be chilled with frost and tomorrow drenched with rain. Ah, how fickle are our spirits. We are walking with Christ, rejoicing, leaping for joy; and anon the cold frosts of worldliness come over us, and we depart from him.

Mark, that according to the text, it is very apparent that Jesus will go away if he is not held. "I held him and I would not let him go;" as if he would have gone if he had not been firmly retained.

But note, next, he is very willing to be held. Who could hold him if he were not? He is the omnipotent Savior, and if he willed to withdraw he could do so: let us hold him as we might. But, mark his condescension. When his spouse said, "I held him, and I would not let him go," he did not go, he could not go, for his love held him as well as her hands. Christ is willing to be held.

He loves that sacred violence which takes him by force, that holy diligence which leaves not a gap open by which he may escape, but shuts every door, bars every bolt, and saith, "I have thee now and I will take care that if I lose thee it shall be through no fault of mine." Jesus is willing enough to be retained by hearts which are full of his love.

III. It appears from the text that, after the spouse had thus found Christ for herself and held him, SHE BROUGHT HIM INTO THE CHURCH—"I brought him to my mother's house."

IV. This leads me to the last point, which is this, to CHARGE THE CHURCH THAT SHE BE CAREFUL NOT TO DISTURB THE LORD'S REPOSE, if we have been enabled by divine grace to bring the Lord into the chambers of our mother's house.

May you stand as a sparkling pile of precious gems, inhabited by the eternal Spirit, to the praise and the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved. Amen.

True Godly Greatness!

2009-09-24T06:45:00.004+01:00

A quote from Rob Rufus's new book "Invading the Impossible";

"We were never called to be mediocre. We were called to be great men and women of God! The Bible does not call great - "perfect". The Bible reveals great men and women whose imperfections and failures were clearly recorded. I sometimes think "God aren't You ashamed of the things we do?". No! God does not call greatness, "perfection". Men and women's imperfections are recorded but instead of disqualifying them, it instead reveals God's greatness and perfection through them.

Don't measure your greatness by people's responses to you. Some people are so preoccupied with smallness that they cannot even see you are on a journey to greatness. All they see is your history because they are over familiar with you. You have heard God tell you about your greatness! If you haven't, it isn't because He hasn't spoken, because He is speaking to every believer about "greatness" and every - includes YOU!".

Let's do something "great" (as God understands it) today!

A Box FULL of Glory!!

2009-09-22T21:27:00.001+01:00

It was a thrill to come home from work today and find the postman had delivered a box full of Rob Rufus's latest book; "Invading the Impossible!" - direct from Hong Kong!

As with Ryan's two books - if you live in the United Kingdom and would like to get hold of one of these three awesome books then please do drop me an email and I would be thrilled to ship one or any of them to you.

The "Invading the Impossible" series was a particularly significant and life-changing series for me. Rob preached it in the early part of 2008 at City Church International and it was put into book format. Rob Rufus deals with these issues in this book:

1. Enjoying the Benefits of the Resurrection Power of Jesus.

2. The Designer's Original.

3. The Revolution has Begun - Overthrowing the Spirit of Control!

4. Lifting the Limitations - a Mirror Mentality vs a Window View.

5. No Regrets!

6. Dealing with Disappointment.

7. Authority to Invade.

8. Invading by Reigning.

9. Let God Impress You - (a powerful prophecy to Rob).

I can't urge you enough! Read this book! Listen to the sermon series! It is dangerous!

The ULTIMATE Church Discipline

2009-09-19T20:09:00.004+01:00

It's about time to lay another one to rest. It is my conviction that the ultimate church discipline wielded by church leaders is taken from 1 Corinthians where Paul says;

" ... hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord".

Do I think that the church is more in danger of license and immoral behaviour or do I think the church is more in danger of legalistic overuse of verses like this to control God's people? Let Rob Rufus answer that one - he was speaking at the "Increasing Glory" conference in South Africa;

"But if the first question elders ask after getting the message of grace is; “What leverage have we got now if this is true?” – it shows how that they have been seduced by a spirit of witchcraft and are thinking themselves as moral policeman and are making the people behave with threats of withdrawal of favours, of ignoring them".

That to me is the litmus test. If church leaders hear the message of grace and their first question is this - then the problem is clear. And one piece of leverage that must be removed is the threat of handing "church members over to Satan". I have experienced it myself - and it is the most devastating thing that can ever be spoken to anyone. So what does it actually mean?

Well I am indebted to City Church International for taking the time to answer questions such as this. Here's what Rob and Ryan Rufus had to write about this Scripture and it's implications:

"Handing someone over to Satan - 1 Cor 5:

Handing a brother over to Satan is actually a very encouraging scripture, because it shows that even this brother who was involved in a terrible sin was born again and once his flesh was destroyed (once he dies) he will then go on to be with the Lord as any born again person does!

I don't believe it means Satan plays a part in getting the guy saved. What kind of gospel would that be? There's no precedent for that in scripture. I believe it means the guy is already saved. I think handing him over to Satan means just withdrawing any prayer support and covering over him. Basically giving up on him!

I really don't think we should practice this kind of thing to hastily as there's not enough scripture to build a strong enough case for us to do this and it's really not written to us but for a specific situation and I believe is the only reference to this kind of thing.

Any way later on we see that this guy repents and Paul says they should embrace him again. We really don't know what exactly happened to this guy to make him repent. We can speculate but the details are so vague and it would be very dangerous to try and build and promote a formula out of this situation.

Churches that are quick to try and practice these sorts of things will end up treating people with a judgmental pharisaical spirit. We need to be very wise about how we treat people. And slow to judge. Are they struggling with a sin or are they overtaken in a sin and influencing others to partake in it and teaching that actually there's nothing wrong with it?

So many people are quick to associate someone with the people that Jude talks about. To make anyone equal to the people Jude talks about is a very very serious accusation. Those people Jude talks of are very evil! I don't know many people if any like them. Most times when Paul, or Peter or even Jesus seem to come across harsh to people I don't believe they are attacking brothers and sisters and being ungracious, but are attacking a spirit- a religious spirit and a spirit that opposes faith in Jesus and anything that mixes the gospel with other things.

Handing someone over to Satan? I can't say I've personally done it or know anyone who has! Not sure if I would ever do it. Not sure if I'd even build a theology around it. Why? Because it seems like such an extreme thing to do and yet the scriptures don't give us a clear method or definition or urging to do it. To start developing a church discipline method for doing this could get you into some dangerous territory.

We need to be very careful with Corinthian scriptures as they are written to a specific people for a specific time that we don't totally understand. Some of it we can learn from but some of it is not for us. It was written for us but not to us.

1 Corinthians 5 about handing someone over to Satan is a very serious thing that we just don't have enough scripture to build a solid doctrine on. To form a practice or a standard for Church on this one scripture I believe is dangerous and will just end up in lots of judging going on in the church. Where do we draw the line between one persons sin and another’s? All sin is bad so why don't we just hand everyone over to Satan who just commits one sin?

I believe Paul warned them possibly, to not eat with 'such' people, because they were so weak and struggling with sin and would be so easily influenced. Like an alcoholic - I would suggest that they never go to bars even if they were going to drink a coke! It would be bad for them. Also they are obviously people who have come under deception and now just living in sin. They're not pursuing the gospel anymore and it's not helpful to hang around those people, but we mustn't write them off with pious self righteous judgment. Even handing them over to Satan seemed like a drastic but loving act towards them.

If our interpretation of scripture causes us to become self righteous and judgmental it usually means we are misinterpreting it and are putting law back into it. There should be such a liberating sense of grace about the scriptures that empowers people into freedom and cause people to get their eyes off themselves an onto Jesus and to put their faith and hope in Jesus not themselves".

To summarise - is it right to build a church discipline on one verse? Can we argue from context that this action was only applied (not even by Paul - but from the Corinthian church) in a situation where the sinner was unrepentant and influencing others? If even the apostle Paul gave this advice in a "last resort" situation then what business does a church pastor/elders have doing this quickly, judgementally and angrily? Any thoughts?