I think I may have said this before, but it is tempting to believe that everything in the New Testament operates in a smooth continuum of the presentation of the gospel of the Kingdom to a people willing to listen, first by Jesus in the gospels and then by the 12 apostles and then Paul.
Ofcourse, Darkness being Darkness, and masquerading as Light all manner of wrangles are set up. It is part of establishing the Truth in a place. For it is not an intellectual Truth only, or else we would be told to put on the eyepatch of Truth, or the Mark Knopfler headband of Truth, but Ephesians 6 says we must gird our loins with Truth. Truth is more an innards thing which finds its expression....sometimes slowly as a clear articulation.
The clash of Kingdoms is in controversy. In Matthew we see this clash first of all in Jesus Ministry against the devil in the wilderness, and then against all manner of disease and affliction of the devil. Then as fast as Jesus is trying to withdraw to give special time for sharing with his disciples, people are turning up who, too, get healed, and despite being told to keep quiet, they blab it around their localities.
Then the controversies really begin with various individuals, and more specifically later the religious authorities. This IS the nature of Spirit Life invading a Kingdom of people who believe they are independent selves, independently controlled god-souls....but who are, once the false seeing of Adam and Eve is stripped away, simply containers for the alien spirit power of a usurping spirit....the one who has been a thief, liar and a murderer from the beginning.
Here are two of my run-ins over the weekend.
+++++++++++++++++++++
The first one is trying to get to the bottom of George's criticism of John Madden's material. And in the process learned still more of the connection between Jessie Penn Lewis, Keswick, Frank Buchman and Alcoholics Anonymous.
A Christian inventory reveals a new creation
20 September 2013 at 07:24
As we do our PERSONAL INVENTORY are we considering the effects of
Christs shed blood in our lives? The blood of Christ keeps our sins
washed away daily along with His death, burial, and resurrection. The
blood holds us up righteously and pure in the most adverse
circumstances. This inventory goes way beyond a mere change of
perspective. This inventory will immerse us in the reality of
redemption. By taking this inventory we will see that we can walk
through this life with righteousness. Why? Because we have righteousness
within! We do as Jesus siad we would do. That is eat His flesh and
drink His blood.Before we accepted Christ we were a pure "sinner". And we can still be! But once we have accepted Christ what we become has little to do with us. It’s our job to see ourselves standing in the Lord psychologically and socially, that is, in our stature and in our interactions with OTHERS. We can see this because this is what we are made into by the Lord. The origin of this reality has nothing to do with our opinion of ourselves. We have been baptized into Christ. Human reasoning has to be cast aside in light of the facts. We consider what God has done for us.
It is the Holy Spirit that guides us in our inventory and into the truth of it. God will reveal to us that we (the church body, the body of Christ) have been made a new creation. Our focus is to be on the finished work of Christ and how His victory TAKES precedence over our old ways. His shed blood actually seperates us from our sin. It is a continuing action. When you do your inventory see your complete dependency on what Christ did for you. Do not accept a different reality regarding who you are. Our attachment to His shed blood, His death, His resurrection, and His love within us is what defines us. We have consumed His blood we contain it. Let us factor this in to our inventory. We have the life of God.
Our character defects in the “psychosocial” are the terrible symptoms of a lack of faith. God must be fully considered when we look at these areas of our lives. He is right there within us making His blood effectiive. Have faith in what God has done in you upon His finished work. God within us is far different than what we were accustomed to before we became born again. God has miraculous capabilities that He has placed into your heart. As He once was in this world as Jesus Himself, you are! We must keep the following in mind; the Holy Spirit lives in us because the blood of Christ cleansed out a place for Him. His blood separates our sin from us. Can you see the separation ?
George McLauchlin 'The Centrality of the Cross,' 'The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life,' 'The Green Letters,' 'So Great Salvation,' 'Molded by the Cross,' The Book of Romans,' all these and many others that you have read explain this in a very simple way. That you make it so unclear and confusing when it is so plan should make you ask yourself, "what is motivating me to complicate what is so simple?"
Chris Welch If you look at the tabernacle which is after all only the blueprint plan of our Living relationship with God....there is an entrance area then two covered areas.
The entrance is very public, very simple, very all encompassing without much attention to detail. This is the area George is describing. We come to the Cross...the brazen altar...where verything past present and future is covered. We then meet the Laver which is like all the baptisms rolled into one including the revelation of God's Word, of His Presence, Himself within us.
This covers us for all time. It's a place of profound relief and release.
It is th entrance into God's love and His reality, where always before He was a far distant God that had nothing to do with me.
However this is the front door bell.
This is the welcome screen.
This is the induction in to the family.
This is the political manifesto of what God's plan of salvation will be.
In race terms, this is when the flag goes down.
Then comes the things John Madden talks about, which start getting inside our inner spaces, and inner seeing. The Holy Place. The covered place. Where we need God's Light because there is no natural light. This is the Holy Spirit searching out the inner parts. The bits we haven't really acknowledged to ourselves as covered by the Blood. THEY ARE ofcourse completely covered...but they are not covered in our experience yet, because we haven't properly applied the blood in those areas.
Ofcourse George's gospel seems simple.
It's the front door.
My Comment on this : Hmmm. I don't think I understood George's position at all at this point.
George McLauchlin Thanks for your comments, Christ. The Plymouth Brethren and the Keswick conferences after them taught, and Classic Pauline Dispensationalist of our time, Miles Stanford agreed with their teaching, that Romans Chapter Six had never been properly taught by the churches.
Romans 5 taught that we are justified by his blood. We were made right with him though his finished work on the cross:
Rom 5:9-11 “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. 10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. 11 And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. KJV
The great men and women of God who came to Keswick, inspired by the teachings of Hannah Whitall-Smith (The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life)* were not looking for salvation. They all, with hardly an exception knew they were saved, but like Mrs. Smith they had wondered why they still ‘struggled with sin.’ They thought being saved give them the power to overcome.
At Keswick they listened to 5 days off teaching. Day One was to show these Christian leaders that if they were not experiencing ‘power for service’ it was because the still had un-confessed sin in their lives. Day Two presented the 6th of Romans, as the cure for on-going sin:
Rom 6:3-11 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. NKJV
On Day Three attendees were asked to write down on paper all known sins and confess them to another participant. Day Five was the day where they planned to and began to make restitution for wrongs done. In later years Day Six was a day when these folks made a commitment for mission, and many went from Keswick to missionary work all over the world. They went because somewhere in the 5 day process, as they came to know their own wickedness and lostness, even as ministers of the gospel, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and were empowered to a new level of Christian service.
It was the teaching of Keswick that lit the flame of the Pentecostal Revival in Wales in 1904-5 and led to the Azusa St Revival in the US in 1906.
Frank Buchman, who led a group (the Oxford Group) that was the precursor to AA, attended the Keswick Conference in 1908. He heard Jessie Penn-Lewis preach the message of the Cross and it changed him because, for Mrs. Penn-Lewis, the message of the Cross was not just teaching, it was a real experience she had gone though by a daily confession of sin and a willingness to experience her death with Christ:
Phil 3:10-11 ‘That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. NKJV
Buchman adapted the 5 days of Keswick to the 5 things that an Oxford Group Member needed to do to, first of all, change himself and then to help promote change (conversion) in another. (His “World Changers” movement revitalized churches around the world. The saved got “sanctified”, filled with the spirit). AA took the 5 things and made them into 12 steps. AA is clearly effective in ‘changing drunks, and we do not criticize it that it does not have a vision for changing the world like Buchman was doing because they got away from a purely Christian way of talking about God to help drunks who hated God, take baby steps toward Him.
The distinction which Keswick made was the difference between being saved and being sanctified and the proof of the understanding of this truth was in the power to bring change to others.
The split that there exists between me and John, is that John is gifted to teach, but he is not particularly action oriented and is either un-willing or is unable to move (john is more cognitive and not kinetic - Romans 12 gifts) to the position that Keswick was setting forth. John is not aware that his teaching is trying to justify self. Keswick, the Oxford Group, and AA to an extent is focused on a process (action, steps) of humbling self which destroys self-centeredness. John seems to have fused together his own combination of justification and sanctification that I myself have never heard taught the way John teaches it.
John keeps arguing for the grace of God which makes him right with God. That is not the argument. John is a sanctified, holy man of God. He is just not dead buried and resurrected as much as he might claim that he is. If he were, I would expect to hear of his experience of being ‘yet not I’ Gal 2:20 ‘Glorying in the Cross of Christ My Savior” Gal 6:14. I only hear his concepts.
The world needs to hear the message of the Cross. Millions have heard that the blood has washed them clean, but they have walked away from our churches disillusioned because no one took them to the Cross and helped them stand in the place of death and their ‘after-salvation’ struggle with sin led them to believe that they were not really saved.
Many who came to Keswick in the 1800’s heard the message spoken but could not hear it clearly enough to stand in the position that Keswick advocated..
Since meeting John, I have tried to get him to shift his position; he was remained “in his head about all this,’ and tries to fuse together the blood and the Cross (confused). They are each beautiful aspects of the same new creation and should each be fully presented.
Finally, I tried another tack, by confronting him about several resentments he expressed, hoping he would see how resentment is stopping him from standing in the position and experiencing the power of the resurrected Lord. He claims to have no resentment and resents one who is trying to call him to a higher level.
Chris, I appreciate your comments.
All that I have said here is contained in my book Absolutely Sober
The Plymouth Brethren and the Keswick conferences after them taught, and Classic Pauline Dispensationalist of our time, Miles Stanford agreed with their teaching, that Romans Chapter Six had never been properly taught by the churches.
Romans 5 taught that we are justified by his blood. We were made right with him though his finished work on the cross:
Rom 5:9-11 “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. 10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. 11 And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. KJV
The great men and women of God who came to Keswick, inspired by the teachings of Hannah Whitall-Smith (The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life)* were not looking for salvation. They all, with hardly an exception knew they were saved, but like Mrs. Smith they had wondered why they still ‘struggled with sin.’ They thought being saved give them the power to overcome.
At Keswick they listened to 5 days off teaching. Day One was to show these Christian leaders that if they were not experiencing ‘power for service’ it was because the still had un-confessed sin in their lives. Day Two presented the 6th of Romans, as the cure for on-going sin:
Rom 6:3-11 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
NKJV
On Day Three attendees were asked to write down on paper all known sins and confess them to another participant. Day Five was the day where they planned to and began to make restitution for wrongs done. In later years Day Six was a day when these folks made a commitment for mission, and many went from Keswick to missionary work all over the world. They went because somewhere in the 5 day process, as they came to know their own wickedness and lostness, even as ministers of the gospel, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and were empowered to a new level of Christian service.
It was the teaching of Keswick that lit the flame of the Pentecostal Revival in Wales in 1904-5 and led to the Azusa St Revival in the US in 1906.
Frank Buchman, who led a group (the Oxford Group) that was the precursor to AA, attended the Keswick Conference in 1908. He heard Jessie Penn-Lewis preach the message of the Cross and it changed him because, for Mrs. Penn-Lewis, the message of the Cross was not just teaching, it was a real experience she had gone though by a daily confession of sin and a willingness to experience her death with Christ:
Phil 3:10-11 ‘That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. NKJV
Buchman adapted the 5 days of Keswick to the 5 things that an Oxford Group Member needed to do to, first of all, change himself and then to help promote change (conversion) in another. (His “World Changers” movement revitalized churches around the world. The saved got “sanctified”, filled with the spirit). AA took the 5 things and made them into 12 steps. AA is clearly effective in ‘changing drunks, and we do not criticize it that it does not have a vision for changing the world like Buchman was doing because they got away from a purely Christian way of talking about God to help drunks who hated God, take baby steps toward Him.
The distinction which Keswick made was the difference between being saved and being sanctified and the proof or understanding of this truth was in the power to bring change to others.
The split that there exists between me and John, is that John is gifted to teach, but he is not particularly action oriented and is either un-willing or is unable to move to the position that Keswick was setting forth. John is not aware that his teaching is trying to justify self. Keswick, the Oxford Group, and AA to an extent is focused on a process (action, steps) of humbling self which destroys self-centeredness. John seems to have fused together his own combination of justification and sanctification that I myself have never heard taught the way John teaches it.
John keeps arguing for the grace of God which makes him right with God. That is not the argument. John is a sanctified, holy man of God. He is just not dead buried and resurrected as much as he might claim that he is. If he were, I would expect to hear of his experience of being ‘yet not I’ Gal 2:20 ‘Glorying in the Cross of Christ My Savior” Gal 6:14. I only hear his concepts.
The world needs to hear the message of the Cross. Millions have heard that the blood has washed them clean, but they have walked away from our churches disillusioned because no one took them to the Cross and helped them stand in the place of death and their ‘after-salvation’ struggle with sin led them to believe that they were not really saved.
Many who came to Keswick in the 1800’s heard the message spoken but could not hear it clearly enough to stand in the position that Keswick advocated..
Since meting John, I have tried to get him to shift his position; he was remained “in his head about all this,’ and tries to fuse together the blood and the Cross (confused). They are each beautiful aspects of the same new creation and should each be fully presented.
Finally, I tried another tack, by confronting him about several resentments he expressed, hoping he would see how resentment is stopping him from standing in the position and experiencing the power of the resurrected Lord. He claims to have no resentment and resents one who is trying to call him to a higher level.
Once again, thank, Chris, .
All that I have said here is contained in my book Absolutely Sober https://www.createspace.com/3730731
You can find A Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life and The Centrality of the Cross, and Miles Stanford's 'Green Letters" free at:
http://www.thechurchofbrotherlylove.net/.../recread.htm The Church of Brotherly Love: Recommended Reading.
www.createspace.comAbsolutely Sober tells the story of the origins of Alcoholics Anonymous in 19th Century Evangelical Christianity. The subtitle is taken from a phrase written by AA co-founder Bill Wilson as he described the cost living a God-directed way of life in order to stay sober: Simple but not easy; a price h...
Chris Welch Why is this book above interesting? And what has this to do with Morris Cerullo's idea of a 3 or 5 Day Scool of Ministry? Well the roots are Keswick Convention's Holy Spirit initiated framework of communicating the real kernel of the Romans Gospel message over 5 days, which became the framework offered in the 12 step AA programme. In the background is again Jessie Penn Lewis. Jessie is the one used to communicate the message of Galations 2:20 as inner knowing to Norman Grubb. Her agenda wasn't even to do this. She wanted Norman to be baptised in the Spirit. So here we have further proof of the major fork that occurred because Norman, like many British people, are simply too damaged by the way they are raised in leftbrain over dependency to take the gospel at face value. "Repent,be baptised and receive the Holy Spirit." Since that time we have had two main houses in Christendom worldwide. Both valid. Both separate, when the true explosiveness of the gospel is when both are twinned, as in the coming move of God ...As Smith Wigglesworth prophesied ...a Move of Word and Spirit. But both Keswick and Morris Cerullo have both proved that major fruit can be detonated in just 5 days of meetings....SO WHAT HAPPENS SAINTS when both ingredients are put together????
My Comment : This last bit was a separate status I had written because I was so fascinated to learn of the Keswick framework.
George McLauchlin Two natures
I die a natural body, I am raised a spiritual body: 1 Cor 15:42-45
So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. 45 And so it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. NKJV
“I”, (the natural body, the body of sin) am (is) crucified with Christ, nevertheless, “I” (the spiritual body) live(s)….ek etai ego (yet not ego) (yet not ‘I”) Gal 2:20
When “I” takes the position that “I” is dead in Christ, “I” then stands in the place of crucifixion and “I” then, in faith, begin to experience the resurrection. “I” then is seated (sits – having entered my rest) in heavenly places with Christ:
Eph 2:4-7 4 “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”, NKJV
While I am dead buried and resurrected and seated in heavenly places, the old man is not yet dead, as I still have (has) a mortal body. The mortal body is the repository of the old Adamic life and I will need to daily allow the Cross to cut away the old man, (the circumcision made without hands, by daily confessing sin.) It is a nasty business, “I”(the old man) has been quite wicked. But if “I”(the new man) is willing to be fearless and thorough and stand in the certainty that ALL SIN has already been nailed to the Cross, “I” (the new man) can rejoice in my daily walk in the spirit for there is now no condemnation for those who walk after the flesh but after the spirit. “I” (is) am not trying to walk holy, but when “I” find(s) my SELF (the ole nature) backslidden (still with sin as I am sure to find), I simply confess, “this is sin.” and “I thank you Lord that this does not take you by surprise, because you knew what you were getting when you bought me.” (At first I may say, “I thought I was really a wonderful Christian because I was choosing to not smoke, drink, look at pornography etc. –self righteous) (but then I begin to learn) I am so glad that you are showing me not to try to walk in my own power, but in your spirit.
The best part of all is the Yet Not I.
Once I have stood in the position that I am the body that dies and I am the body that is raised from the dead, the duality that you spoke about, what begins to happen is the self, the old man, begins to shut up. The I…I…I…I…loses its ability to tell me what to do, or threaten or judge or condemn me. When it condemns me, I say, “You are right, I am a worthless bum. Thanks for helping me with my inventory. Let’s take this to the Cross. After a while it quits accusing me. (This is not the devil, the accuser of the brethren. This is self which acts on behalf of Satan, but has been dealt with at the Cross.)
"Yet not I" is that place of singleness of vision that you mentioned. But it is no longer “I” or put Paul's way “I” no longer live(s). Christ lives in me. (not left brain, not right brain)
This is my testimony: I am dead. I no longer live. Christ lives in me. I am Holy, and perfect in Him. I have entered my rest and eternity while still here in the world. I am the resurrected body of Christ. I am the Church. And if you are dead in Christ, then I am in you and you are in me, even as Jesus is in all of us and He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. We are the Body. I am the Body. Do I still sin? Yes, I am still in the body here on earth. But I am a paradox, a wicked evil man whom God has made Holy. A sinner saved by grace. A new creation.
- (I wrote this a bit too glibly because I had skim read this material and hadn't noticed the horrible phrase I noticed later upon rereading) I continue:
Our equipment is leftbrain and rightbrain and this is shorthand for stuff we are still finding out. Both can be in Christ. Both can be stuck seeing other than Christ.
The Keswick position is NOT CORRECT or else the Holy Spirit would not have had to raise up a totally fresh move of God beginning in the 20s and 30s with the Apostolic movement.
Keswick became this thing which is similar to many who follow Norman Grubb right down to this day, where they read all the teachings of God, their leftbrain becomes quite renewed, but they simply WILL NOT, they REFUSE POINT BLANK, THEY CUT JESUS CHRIST DEAD whenever He brings it up....
That we must lay the whole of our leftbrain, our conscious thiunking, our step by step mechanistic way of processing down at the Cross as part of the Adamic body of sin it is.
All this is returned in resurrection.
Loving is not leftbrain.
Visions are not leftbrain
Speaking in tongues is absolutely not leftbrain
the Fear of God as in His Presence of Fire is not leftbrain, though through the teachings of the Bible we can articulate some of it to others through the leftbrain
Only the understanding and articulation part of worship is leftbrain, like Love itself most of worship and adoration has nothing to do qwith the leftbrain
Meditation on the Word is absolutlrely not leftbrain , and is part of what made Jesus different when He talked doctrine to the position the Pharisees were taking.
Some measure of Keswick has adopted meditation, but usually with accompanying terror lest for one moment they should relinquish having control over their thoughts.
Miracles do NOT OCCUR through the leftbrain. To an evangelical they are rare and seemingly random because prayers for miracles are presented to God in a largely leftbrain form, so consequently Keswick people build the theology round their experience rather than round the Word....and come up with grand theories like
If it be thy will Lord heal such and such. Keswick people love this because if nothing happens, then they are let off the hook and God never meant to heal anyone anyway, and if He randoml;y does, then God must have meant it anyway. Superb game play that has kept them amused for nearly a century!
So no, keswick people have not joined the Holy Spirit in any of the main leadings of His over the last 60 to 7- years but have tagged along in the Body of Christ at a safe distance, like the multitude in the time of Jesus. - John Madden George, You are absolutely correct Romans does teach justification through the blood. However this passage in Romans is not the only passage that speaks of the blood. Peter, John and even Paul had more to say. Looking at the whole picture from Genesis to Revelation the shed blood of Christ and the crucified Body of Christ is nearly synonymous and can not be divided.
- John Madden I agree with being a paradox especially for the young Christian who is accustomed to eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As we grow we leave this tree behind and depend more and more on the tree of life. We become fathers to those who still eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Romans 6-8 is followed by Romans 9- 16
- Chris Welch Don't give up George because what we are relating here is the very feedback that has become leprous in the part of the Church that calls itself born again. It is foolish to believe the whole thing binding the Church worldwide can be sorted in one Facebook status.
I didn't pick up clearly on George's "fight with the Old Man" which is clearly the same as Watchman Nee's fight with the Black and White dogs...and who wins...the one I feed the most. All very shorthand truth but doesn't stack with the Word. - Chris Welch George writes above :While I am dead buried and resurrected and seated in heavenly places, the old man is not yet dead, as I still have (has) a mortal body. The mortal body is the repository of the old Adamic life and I will need to daily allow the Cross to cut away the old man,
This "LIGHT" which is fairly standard across evangelicalism is DARKNESS. Like Brer Rabbit and the tar baby it actually grounds a whole wing of the church from ever getting airborne.
We are spirit. We have a soul. We have a body. The white dog and blackdog picture is soulish. It says I'm a soul. It is because I am spirit that I now say I am born again. I get pulls. I slip. But I don't lose my identity and become unborn again - Chris Welch This is the big area of evangelicalism that never got sorted because they refused a living relationship with the Holy Spirit. How on earth can it ever be made real that we are spirit, if people refuse to have that identity proved in practice with a baptism in the Spirit?
- Chris Welch I find George's position absolutely fascinating. To me it's like someone has found a spiritual reality through the Word but then it gets filtered back in evangelicalese and "regrounded". Like spirit transactions are taking place but the mind has not quite caught up with what is going on. If John Madden's teachings are taken as a leftbrain learning course, or steps...I think George is correct that they too could become some "steps to justification"...but I don't pick that up from John's spirit as he teaches. And sure as sure George has walked with Galations 2:20 for so long it is part of his inner consciousness. One who has walked a time in this does pick up in younger ones a weaker "knowing"
- Chris Welch I absolutely had no idea that Keswick claimed a link this close to the Pentecostal Outpouring. Whether this is legitimate I really don't know. It could be like the Catholics claiming they are derived direct from the first church...which is surely akin to Hitler claiming he was the continuation of German rule. Perhaps it is correct. I know another huge strand was the stand made for healing in the Atonement pursued later by john G Lake and Smith Wigglesworth and George Jeffries. Some rattling of bones here! True rest is only found in the third level revelations of a Church settled into knowing Him who is from the Beginning in 1 John 2.
- George McLauchlin A great source for what I am saying is Steve Barabbas"s "So Great Salvation" Buy in the "Yet Not "i" bookstore. http://www.yetnoti.com.
www.yetnoti.com
The purpose of Yet Not I is to promote the teaching and the practice of the Cruc...See more - George McLauchlin This is not doctrine, but we sang it today in Church and seems to capture the spirit of what we are talking about here. A quick goggle search puts the song writer at Keswick. OH LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET ME GO...
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O light that foll’west all my way,
I yield my flick’ring torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.
George Mattheson, 1882
+++++++++++++++++
You can see George isn't your usual storm off in a cloud of dust person.
-------------------------------------
I really didn't like something his wife wrote a while back, and I have realised since then I really don't like what I call the South African gospel. This is not so much the gospel of say Rob Rufus who is now in Hong Kong, but it's a particular Calvinist Reformed swing against the rather glib "sign along the dotted line " evangelism of many evangelical and charismatic churches there in the last decades. Both aren't necessarily God....although God can use both positions...because He moves BEYOND our rather thin understandings.
I wrote on my status:
Chris Welch
Colin
Lagerwall writes "Exclusion is a word which proclaims the antithesis of
faith, for if 'I am' excluded from anything of God unless I have the
faith to believe......." My answer was : I think this is coming out of total
reaction to a leftbrain South African experience of "sign along the
dotted line evangelism". It's like trying to correct one leftbrain truth
with another opposite leftbrain truth.
If we are not in faith we are judged already. It's the John 3:18 dilemma He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the [f]only begotten Son of God.
God seeing the whole thing comes from outside the spider's web and invades it and corrects it, and you are shortcutting this in the global picture by saying see God loved us all along and did the whole thing all along...which is also true. But by declaring that big panorama too soon you actually cut across what Jesus spoke Himself, which is kinda rude. It's like you are afraid of the reality of the Darkness and have to call it Light all the time, even down here. I guess we can do that...but it robs people of their own right to their own faith. And this is one of the problems with trying to hold all of God's stuff simultaneously in a South African leftbrain.We need the whole Word . I guess a similar thing would be to just talk Isaac all the time and not to include the entire Abraham Isaac Jacob package. Isaac is a good example because he really represents us getting everything on a plate.
If we are not in faith we are judged already. It's the John 3:18 dilemma He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the [f]only begotten Son of God.
God seeing the whole thing comes from outside the spider's web and invades it and corrects it, and you are shortcutting this in the global picture by saying see God loved us all along and did the whole thing all along...which is also true. But by declaring that big panorama too soon you actually cut across what Jesus spoke Himself, which is kinda rude. It's like you are afraid of the reality of the Darkness and have to call it Light all the time, even down here. I guess we can do that...but it robs people of their own right to their own faith. And this is one of the problems with trying to hold all of God's stuff simultaneously in a South African leftbrain.We need the whole Word . I guess a similar thing would be to just talk Isaac all the time and not to include the entire Abraham Isaac Jacob package. Isaac is a good example because he really represents us getting everything on a plate.
No comments:
Post a Comment