What about Christmas? Facebook Question

Pic: In these days where they are trying to get us to say "Winter festival", Is the whole idea of Christmas not really valid anyway? Hint: Do not ask this question anywhere near Jamie Weeks.

Elaine Waterfield
what I would like to know is, am I that nuts to not believe in Christmas. Since becoming a Christian in my spirit I have just felt less and less fond of this time and when I read about it its all based on pagan festivals,, Jesus wasnt even born at Ch...ristmas. Nor was there a scripture in the bible to do this, I also think that its a bit of an insult to celebrate the King of Kings birhday on the wrong day...I remember his birth and death every day and when I see all the debt people get themselves into I just wonder whats behind Christmas anyway. I am very much more for celebrating shabbatt, whats your opinions?Read more
22 minutes ago · Comment · Like / Unlike · See Wall-to-Wall

Chris Welch
This is the deal. Christmas is a spinoff. A good idea. A culture thing that is not necessarily bad for that. Like any church or nation that is around long enough experiences perhaps events that are meaningful enough to keep remembering together. For the States its Independence day and Thanksgiving day. It's of that order. And yes,Christmas now has veered right off into debt directions, when in actual fact the way we all used to celebrate it when we were growing up was a family time when all else was put aside to come together. This however is not the same as the Jewish festivals which are of a titanically different order, but also gather the families and people together in a lovely way. The Jewish feasts are a revelation from God, upon which the whole of history rests. Prophetically they are the hinge points of God's manifestation of Himself through flesh. They are the first, second and third levels of how He gets to live His life through us...in the same way that Jesus learned to live God the Father's life through Him. So what does that mean for you? Well many Christian groups do not celebrate Christmas. And many Christians do. You are right to question it all. What drives me nuts with English Christians and the Anglican church more specifically is they do away with the true revelation of the Bible, in order to focus on the invented myth of Christmas. ...Not entirely true though, since over the years they have sought to bring people back to a remembrance of Christ's incarnational arrival here, and for that we must bless them.

Supposing I jumped in with both feet ?

Supposing I jumped in with both feet?
No - really jumped in,
Would the water support me? Would I remain buoyant?

Would Jesus Christ be enough?

I go to church.
I don't go to church.
I cling to the side rails of my life.

I cling to the wellworn,welltried,openly accepted view

That to float would be a death to me
That swimming ultimately is
Not achievable
Not for a human
Here on Earth
In this pool
With these laws that govern us
Where the feet meet the ground of the accessible
The necessary
The important
The secure.

Would Jesus Christ be enough for me?
On my insides?
That I could still
Address life full-on
Majesterially
Judiciously
Doing life justice
For those around me?

Is too heavenly to be any earthly good
True?
Or just another
Legend of the Fall?

Or supposing I jumped in with both feet
And there really was a fundamental
Dis-
connect
between the real in me
and the real out there
where the world
laughs
mocks,scorns?

Or do you suppose
the water would catch me,
snuggle me up in its buoyancy,
would laugh its laugh of
I told you so
of
I would never leave you or forsake you!
How could you even think such a thing?

As I swim now
For the first real time in my life
Ever
I swim
at first tentatively
Then ever stronger
Finding the depths
Finding my depths
And chuckling
At the sheer stupidity
That I might have missed this
I might have missed this for the world!

For the clinging onto the sides
with the brave face
the broad smile
the mask face
that says I'm respectable
I'm happy
clinging to the sides and
"How about you?"
"Oh, you too? Thought so.
Oh, not for me this swimming business"

And still clinging on I would have missed
the diving
the looping
the exhileration
of knowing
I am kept
by a liquid
when I could have thought
that this was not possible
How can somebody be kept by a liquid
For when you run your hand through it
There is nearly nothing there ?

So
How does it happen
that I am buoyed up
By YOUR grace, YOUR love
Jesus
When there is nearly nothing there ?

How does it happen that
the creation itself which surrounds
is waiting for a bunch of people
who
jump in
on their insides.
For all creation is waiting on tiptoe just to see
The sons of God
Come into their own....

How does that work?
Surely there is a disconnection
between me
and the outside world.
This, everybody knows
Don't they?

I mean if the outside world was a feedback
a loudspeaker foldback into our soul
Where would everyone be?

Surely our whole thin veneer of culture
is based on the fact
That the two are unrelated
The outside
from the inside
Surely that's a given
In common parlance.

WHAT!!??
The whole of Creation, You say
Is waiting
For the sons of God
To come into their own....inheritance?

So all these millennia
we have wasted
at the side of the pool?

The waters rush on now
The river runs
The water of justice waiting to happen,
The river of joy
and cleansing,
Clean clean water
for drinking
for swimming in
rushing ever onward to achieve its goals.
Sweeping all with it
All that want to be swept
and not to cling
forever
at the side rails
of a life
that never has a chance
to know
to really know
Jesus in me,as me
the One who died
to free my purpose
On this Earth and in the one to come.

Chris Welch 5.30am 30th September 2009

"What about Me" may not always be selfish - Brian Coatney

This is an article made from a transcript of a talk by Brian Coatney as shared today by Nancy Gilmore on Facebook

Today at 06:40
Being a left-brain person, I’ve always loved little models and diagrams and things like that; and so, if you’ll just bear with me, I’ll try and walk through the thinking that caused me to develop this little scenario.
I want to start by identifying the participants in the game. They are the only three that matter to you or me initially. On one side of the ring, wearing the black robe, at 550 pounds, we have Satan.

And there is his nature, which I’ll go into later. And on the other side of the ring we have the Lamb, the one we know and love, our Lord Jesus Christ, and his character. And then we see ourselves in there, because eventually we must deal with the question, “What about me?”

That sounds like a selfish question; but it’s a question we have to answer. This is why Paul in Romans 7 is saying, “What about me?” When he came to know who he was in Christ, then in Romans 8 and on through the rest of his epistle (and this is always the pattern) his life took on a focus of being for others. I’ve heard it said before, and it’s true, that if I know who I am, then I know who you are. And I have also found it true that whenever I am doubting who I am in Christ, I start to sink inside myself.

>

The weight of the oppression is like that of an anvil or a millstone. It’s as if my eyes start to recede in their sockets, not physically, but life starts to go out of them. All of a sudden things seem hopeless, and the temptation is to give in to that. But once I’m affirming back who I am, then there’s the possibility of loving you. That’s why Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Now we live in a generation that, in a secular sense, is the “Who am I?” generation. I like to visit the Walden Bookstores, which are in most malls.

You go in and there’s every pop book under the sun about how to stroke yourself. And we’ve thought that’s selfish. And, from where they’re coming, it is. But they’re asking the right question. They’re just not coming from the right foundation.

So, who am I? I’ve seen it criticized in modern theological journals that this is the “me” generation. Well, it is the “me” generation. To question who I am is not wrong. It’s coming to the right conclusion about who we are that’s important.

SPIRIT MINDSET

Now I want to say a thing or two about Romans 8:6, because Paul makes an important contrast here. He says that the mind set on the spirit is life and peace, and the mind set on the flesh is death. Picture in your mind the “us” in the scenario, represented by members or flesh--soul and body. That’s where everything touches us and where we begin to learn everything. If our minds are always on how we think and how we feel, then the battle is lost. It’s not that it’s unimportant how we think or how we feel; it’s just that the only way to really come to enjoy and know ourselves freely in our souls and in our bodies is to have our minds set on the Spirit. So we have to go about this is an indirect way.

A mind set on the Spirit frees us then through our feelings, emotions, and thoughts, to be what we are meant to be. Looking at the scenario again we see that there are two natures competing to express themselves through our members: the first one is Christ who lives in us and is our life, if we’re Christians; and the other one is now on the outside of us, and is the usurper, the deceiver. When we were not born-again, this was reversed. It was then the usurper, the deceiver, who lives in us, and had owner ship over us. As Paul says in Eph. 2:2, we walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. we were all children of disobedience and controlled by the spirit of error.

It’s a strong thing to recognize that before we were Christians, no matter how good we felt-- and here’s how deceiving feelings can be for a non-Christian - or how good life seemed to be, or how moral or upright or proper, that our life was actually controlled by Satan.

He expressed his lusts by us, whether it was in a highly cultured and refined way or in a base, sensual, out and out reprobate way. In those days Jesus Christ was the one who was on the outside trying to tempt us toward Him, to woo us to want to exchange Satan for Him as inner Lord.


But now I want to talk about the Christian, the person who has been born again and knows Jesus Christ as his life.

GOD BECAME A MAN

We are a people who live in the flesh, and I don't mean flesh in a bad sense. We live in the flesh and experience life through our members. (ACW note- To believe the material realm is somehow bad, and our members are bad....when God finished His Creation "and saw that it was good"...is as John Crowder discusses in his book ...New Mystics" nothing other than gnosticism creeping back into the church)

The scripture says that no man has seen God at any time, but that the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared Him (John 1:18). So no one has ever really seen God, and no one really is ever going to see God. All we ever see of God is an expression of Him through somebody’s members.


Even in the Old Testament, Moses didn’t see God. He experienced a blinding flash - the backside of God passing by. But the disclosure of God was through something written on tablets of stone, from which men were to see through to the character and nature of God.

The New Testament revelation of God’s nature to us, which is the highest that anyone has seen and testified of, was God who became a man. What separates us from all other religions and theologies is that God became a man in Jesus Christ. He took on limitation and came to the earth in a particular form. And that was the difficult thing for people. “How can this be God?” Men could see him, touch him, feel him, hear him, and write down what he said. They could poke him and say, “Are you for real?” That was the thing that people threw off. How could a man be God? Thus we see the purpose of God really starting to become clear through the historical life of Jesus Christ. Here was an example of God living out life as a man in a total form. And his purpose since then has been to reproduce more of those forms. Jesus Christ’s life would have been a waste if he had just come to earth and said something like, “O.K. now, I’m showing you what God life lived out in a human body through members, through flesh, through soul and body. But you can never experience or know it for yourself.” That would have been terrible. The best that you would have been able to do would have been to say, “Well, the meaning of life, then, is that we all get in as close to Jesus Christ, in the body form, as we can.” So, the disciples would have been the lucky ones, and the people that didn’t live anywhere close to Palestine would have been the unluckiest ones of all. The whole goal of life would have been to get as close to the physical Jesus Christ as you could. and, obviously, where would that leave us today?

REPRODUCTION OF CHRIST

But His message to them, which He began to reveal more at the end of His life, was, “That’s not what I’m about. You don’t realize it, but I am going away (and that was terrifying to them), and will come to you again. And when I come to you again, you will know me like you have never known me before, because everything that I am will be inside of you. You will be inside of me and I in you and you will be as I am. I reproducing myself.” That’s why they began to call the believer Christians at Antioch: it means “little Christ.”


We have given lip service to it. But that’s the whole point of the message. Just as it was hard to look at Jesus and believe that God could be a man: that man, it’s frightening to us initially to look at ourselves and believe God could be a man: THIS man, you or I. Are we equating our human created selfhood with the eternal Godhead?

Sometimes people are afraid we are saying, “I am God,” and I know that was the thing that staggered me when I first heard this message. I wondered, “What are we coming to when somebody who’s a Christian is saying something like that?” But the point is that spirit entities, either God or Satan, are trying to reproduce their entire life quality through human members.

Now it took me a long time to begin to discern that these are the only two natures in the universe and that neither one of them derives from you or me in a created sense. Therefore, you don’t have a human nature of your own; your nature is the one you are married to in spirit. A Christian’s nature then, is Christ, though he can be tempted by Satan and fall into sin. A non-Christian’s nature is Satan, though Christ can woo him and perform some works of grace through him. But in neither case does the person have a human nature of his own.

Norman Grubb at Hour of Power

Norman Grubb excerpt from Hour of Power. Click to view. There are other excerpts here.

I don't want to make too big a thing of this, especially considering the era this was taken from. Perhaps enough years have passed to make the comment that I believe this is such a perfect example of the two religious realms.

Over on our side of the Pond, Robert Schuller sort of represents here everything we English do not like about American religion. This is not to say the guy was not sincere, and would have been totally unaware of how he was representing it. Just as the famous voices behind Pathe news from 50 - 60 years ago would be equally shocked to hear how we send them up now.
Robert is the suave American Media machine gloss finish to Norman's rather bumbling English eccentric Professor brainstorm. From a "finish" point of view, to use the word in a French polishing kind of way, Norman has none at all. But the complete lack of veneer and the evident bubbliness and ease of his relationship with God was really speaking to Robert here.
I would say, my generation...and I would include my friend Mike Thom, my German friend Martin Franke, Christine's Life-Joints before she met me, Terry and Eileen Rous...
we're all of an ilk. We want God even if that means being chucked out of slick network setups.
In fact the total irony of my life is that virtually the same leadership team who prophesied what follows over my life when I joined them, were the same to jettison me 10 years later for following this path. The Word that came was this " Put away the High-mindedness. Do not follow what appears to glitter. Here I will put your feet back in joint.....(and much more)"

Sooner or later we have to choose to be just us. If people don't like it, well that is their problem.
If I am not dynamic enough, well let God fill me with His Word and gift me with His anointing, but I definitely am not going to fake it. If my bearing and lack of suaveness is no good for an American TV studio, well like Rory and Wendy on God TV , I'll believe for my own studio, or go on theirs.
I believe if we bravely face our own lacks, and understand we are containers and can do no more than contain Him, while still meditating on the Promises in His Word, those words themselves become steel on our insides.

Hard to imagine from this clip isn't it that this 91 year old led people to God in the trenches of World War 1, set up the fore-runner to all University Christian Unions, set up Inter-Varsity press, helped pioneer and lead WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade), first in Congo, then its expansion to every continent,set up Christian literature Crusade, wrote the official Rees Howells Biography, and the CT Studd (WEC founder)biography, wrote and pioneered teachings on the clarity of Christ as Us in Our Form. Finished his final all summarising book "Yes I am" a few years before this broadcast, carried on a huge correspondence ministry sharing these truths with many high ranking individuals in the States and all over the world, and ended his life raising up a small group to share these things ahead of time, affecting the lives of such English ministries as Maurice Smith and Peter Parris and many many more.

In the end, what do you really want with your life on earth? Do you want to be known? Or do you want to be recognised in heaven for being somehow linked into the chain of events that populates half of heaven itself?

Make that Western Idols(UK included)

This is a timely word from Kingdom Power on the Street blog. It is the same subject area as my friend Michael Hammond wanted to cover in his next book on marriage. In the meantime his wife has sadly divorced him . You would have thought this would submerge the book and the subject completely. But here it is sprung up in a different form, written by a different evangelist. In short it probably only means that if Michael's book ever gets published it will have explosive resurrection power!
...Give you an example of Michael's life. Probably his lowest point. Right while the divorce proceedings are ongoing; skewed , I would say,in the wife's favour...he's lost immediate access to his kids, one of which is quite strong in God...
A Job -ian situation I'd say...

Well at this low point, with no money, apart from dole money, we met at a Rheinhardt Bonnke breakfast in London Central hall and talked and prayed.(Bonnke prayed over us and everyone present was anointed with oil- shortly afterwards this blog was born) And this is what Michael told me. He'd just been given the opportunity free of charge of having a run of programmes on Voice of Africa Radio in London. This is all fairly typical of Michael's walk in God. The extreme highs and lows of an evangelist. In the five minute walk from the station to the Havant Church conference, Michael had led three people to the Lord on the streets. Jose Ascua was so impressed he asked Michael to pray for him, and Jose sort of fell over backwards among the musicians while they were having lunch.

We are impressed from the Lord that it is the right time for Michael to reissue "Claiming The Promises"first, before the marriage book. So we are looking for dosh, or advance paid orders. This would be through the Christian Supplies Trust (UKregistered charity:1028509) that Christine and I run.

Meanwhile back to a synopsis of what Michael would have written on , but Ryan Lawson has written himself on his blog.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

American Idols – Part II


In my last article on this subject I went after two primary American Idols. And idol is something other than God that we put our trust in. The point I was making is that I have been to several different countries, many of them known for their idolatry. In these countries, the idolatry is obvious, with shrines and graven images being displayed all over the place. I have heard the condescension in the voices of “enlightened” people here in the West as they roll their eyes in disgust at the heinous idolatry of the people of India and their 300 million “gods” and goddesses”.
But are we just as idolatrous?
I believe that while we here in the “enlightened” west are in fact VERY idolatrous, our idols are just not as obvious. We serve gods (world rulers in fact) like Mammon & Self. We have placed our marriages, our families, our callings and eternal destinies on the altars of Mammon and aborted millions of innocent babies on the altar of Self. And we do so with the greatest of confessions. Many a family and marriage has been destroyed to the mantra of “I’m just trying to be a good provider, giving my family what they deserve”. Many a baby has been aborted to the mantra of “they wouldn’t have had a good life anyway, with their mom being so young/poor, etc.”
MAMMON (CONTINUED)
Concerning Money and Mammon, Jesus was very clear that our primary pursuit was NOT to be our personal welfare and the accumulation of material things but rather the pursuit of an invisible kingdom and the King Himself!
“But seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides.” Matthew 6:33
We were created to pursue a Kingdom and a King! That is our primary purpose, our ultimate pursuit. God knows how He made us and gave us strict marching orders to go after His Kingdom and His righteousness and NOT the necessities of life! Isn’t that bizarre? This isn’t license to the lazy to do nothing because the Bible goes on to say,
“For while we were yet with you, we gave you this rule and charge: If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.” II Thessalonians 3:10
No, this command of Jesus was for the type “A” personality, the go-getters and the “doers” of the Word. The Lord’s commandment to “seek FIRST the Kingdom and His righteousness” was more of a direction or marching orders for productive people. He’s aiming us in the right direction, telling us to go after Him FIRST. If we would pursue Jesus and His Kingdom FIRST, then the provision for our daily bread would manifest MUCH easier. Imagine the words of Wisdom and direction you would receive as you lingered in the Presence of the Lord before work in the morning. Imagine the peace and ease that you would carry into your workplace and career as you became more conscious of Him than your circumstances and limitations y spending time with Him every day. Sales would come easier, the pressure would be off and you would soar in your career, working and providing for you and your family without pressure, fear or guilt. Your priorities would be in order and you would rest well knowing that you are RIGHT.
People, our #1 priority is to pursue the King and His Kingdom. That means what it means. Seek God FIRST, not your paycheck. The same devotion that you pay towards your career, your education and the betterment of your financial standing, invest that in God. The promise is wonderful! IF we will seek Him FIRST, He will GIVE unto us ALL that we need!
PRACTICAL APPLICATION:
When we’re talking about seeking FIRST His Kingdom and His righteousness, what are we talking about? We’re talking about the actual pursuit of God, but FIRST! So, how do you pursue God first? Make Him your #1 priority of your everyday life by seeking Him FIRST! Complicated, isn’t it? Practically speaking this means that we spend time with the Lord in worship, prayer and the Word at the start of our day. I’m not advocating a “quiet time” where we give the Lord a small slice of our day and then ignore Him the rest of the day, but I am saying that we make Him a priority and pursue Him FIRST. Turn on the worship music, lay down on the couch or floor with your family and worship God together! Read the Bible and seek Him in the Word, feeding on His Presence and His words, they are life! (John 6:63)
SELF (CONTINUED)
Jesus came walking the earth preaching a foreign message to the self-absorbed inhabitants of this planet. He said things like,
“For whoever wants to save his [higher, spiritual, eternal] life, will lose it [the lower, natural, temporal life which is lived only on earth]; and whoever gives up his life [which is lived only on earth] for My sake and the Gospel's will save it [his higher, spiritual life in the eternal kingdom of God].” Mark 8:35
He told people that if you held on to preserve your own life you would be guaranteed to LOSE it! But more incredibly, the way He prescribes to save and preserve is to GIVE IT AWAY for His sake! This Kingdom is an upside down Kingdom! Save it and you lose it or lose it and you save it!
The problem with Christians is we simply don’t believe that. We are vainly attempting to preserve our lives, our families, our schedules and our money all with the hope of saving ourselves and the ones we love. Yet we are losing our marriages, losing our families and losing our fortunes. Our kids grow up and don’t serve the Lord. We’re disillusioned with church, in debt up to our eyes and bitter against our spouses. Why? Jesus told us why! He said that if you would seek to save your lives you WOULD LOSE IT! Yet we spend our entire Christian lives trying to prove Him wrong!
The answer to our American dilemma is VERY simple: count your lives as nothing and LOSE them for His sake and you will FIND them! Consistently, the happiest people I have ever met with the most solid marriages and families are the ones that have completely LOST their lives in service unto the Lord.
They have less money because they give what they have and sow into the Kingdom, yet somehow they are always a conduit through which blessing flows and they seem to have more than the person that withholds their fortunes and loses their life savings in investments or the stock market. Kingdom economics; give and it comes back!
They have less “free” time than their self-preserving friends, committing large portions of their lives to the work of the Gospel and laid down service unto others yet they have a superior “quality” of time, free of bickering, anger and animosity within their marriages and families. They might spend a good amount of time helping others through “crisis” but for themselves, they spend much less time on “crisis” control within their own homes.
Their marriages and families are stronger, yet they spend less time & money on them than their self-serving friends. Many of them have never seen the inside of a counselor’s office, yet daily walk in healthy marriage principles. Their kids are better behaved and well adjusted because Mom and Dad discipline according to what they read in the Bible! Their kids also stick with a Jesus they KNOW on a daily basis in the home and not just one they hear about every once in a blue moon at church.
Jesus is right folks! Give your lives away for His sake and you will TRULY find them.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION:
In the Kingdom you GIVE and it COMES BACK! That means that practically we have to give ourselves, our time, our money, our service and our lives for the sake of the Gospel.
Invest your wealth IN THE KINGDOM and not only in this world and its resources. Give to the poor, give to your church and really invest, expecting a return as you would a popular stock or investment scheme. The Kingdom is a good investment!
Invest your time IN THE KINGDOM and not only on your personal, vain pursuits and self interests. This means that you willingly GIVE your time to benefit others! Preach the Gospel, heal the sick and raise the dead! It is ALWAYS good time to preach the Gospel. Offer your lives as a living sacrifice to God as you lay down your life for your friends.
So we’ve just touched on two common American idols, but are there more?
You bet.

The One Cult

There are nearly as many groupings on this planet as people. Or perhaps there are more, because as individuals we have so many overlapping interests and beliefs.In the religious realm there are almost as many groups again. And that's before you get to Christianity.Once in this sphere you have all the main denominations and then a whole host of smaller groupings. All "Christian" groupings have fallen into mainly three divides: catholic, protestant and cult.How confusing to learn that in the Spirit there are only 2 realms.
Or perhaps this should not be confusing, but quite a well-received simplification. Spiritually speaking there is only cult.And there is only one true way.The one cult is run as a pyramid of power and fear with the Devil at the top of the pyramid. The true way is run as a Family, with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit at its centre, with wide open arms to all who are willing to fulfil the directives to once again be restored into its loving centre.Read "The Shack", a current bestseller.

You would have thought then that God's church was His representative on earth. But things only became more confusing about the time that Jesus painted a picture of how the Kingdom was going to run.

He the sower, or any of his servants who were sowing, put the seed into the field. After nightfall an enemy was going to sow secretly loads of weeds, tares and destructive plantseeds.Instead of doing much about it, the good sowers were going to leave the rubbish seeds to grow up alongside the actual crop. At the end of the age there was going to be a Divine sorting.

This is counterintuitive farming no? So the very thing the devil is using as a lever against the church in his negative PR ....is the very wisdom of God to bring about a mature bunch of Overcomers. Jesus knows the Church is in a mess, and sort of planned it that way.Why is the church in a mess? Well it contains both Kingdom seed and Cult members.All of us are in one or the other. And even if we are sure we have entered God's new Kingdom, we carry old Cult ways too.

EXTRA: Here is an example not posted in the original.
One of the most staggering things you will get from Jack Fortenberry's book, "Corinthian Elders" is this question.Where does it say that a pastor runs a church? Where? And you know what , it doesn't. It says there are elders who naturally form over a church by their wisdom, experience,anointing and age (not a young man,because of pride....but people's life expectancy was shorter then though!!) and it says there are pastors; people with a shepherding heart. But you produce me a verse that says a church has one pastor and he is in overall charge, This and other bombshells are in this book, and a limited amount are going to soon be available FREE on a firstcome first serve basis on this blog. BUT ONLY FOR UK LEADERS please.

So you begin to see that the concept of Rob Rufus sitting at the top of his pyramid as a pastor. Or Joel Osteen atop of his megachurch. Or Juan Carlos Ortiz being pulled into the glass Cathedral when Robert Schuller died....yup....sadly....what shape does that remind you of?





Does this mean that Rob Rufus and Joel Osteen are secretly Illuminati members?


Have we been misled in Havant all these years by John Wilbraham's humility. Secretly all along he has been in mobile contact with his upper liaison officers of the New World Order?


NO. Don't be stupid. But it is interesting how we pride ourselves of throwing the Pope aside only to keep buying into the same structures. Think of all the networks. Hillsongs. Salt and light. New Frontiers. They are all pyramids. But you must realise that this has been softened by presbyteries of elders surrounding these guys.


So what I'm saying is: In these days, don't do things because that's the way they have always been done. Because that is to import all our cultish ways back into the New Wineskins. Wait on God! Get the wineskins from him. But read Jack Fortenberry's timely book!

BACK TO THE POST.
How do we know what's what? Well God's given us a meter to read.










It's called the Good/Bad Fruitometer. It reads good and bad fruit. And that's how we tell. From the smell coming off the fruit! Poooooo!In the old Cult we were born into : the bigger dog generally gets the bone.It's survival of the fittest. Things are very political. And the politics are this:Exclude God from the scene.

By not already honouring the One True Federal Head of the Universe, by default, because there is no middle position, we serve the Usurping Cult Leader who is the devil.What we traditionally call cults have a standard set of traits. But these are just a more extreme set of the same traits that mark the whole of the One Cult.Here is one of them. It's hard to leave a cult. It is made difficult by fear, threats, social exclusion and general odd behaviour by the ones you are leaving. For this reason, when establishing His New Family Kingdom, Jesus said, "Unless you love Me more than your brother, sister,mother etc You are not worthy of Me" Setting your face in this way gives you the oomph needed to leave the ONLY ONE CULT.

This then is the blessing and problem of secularism: the freedom of choosing to be a part of it or no is a God given choice which is a holy freedom given to every inhabitant of earth.This is the blessing.The problem with secularism is the lie of its neutral ground, the untruth about its in between status.Jesus said "Whoever does not believe in Me is judged and condemned already."

This clearly shows there isn't some middleground while you are choosing. You have to choose to leave but IF YOU DON'T CHOOSE AT ALL, you have in fact still chosen! And you are still part of the ONE CULT you were born into.

This then has huge consequences when deciding how to structure things.Man was not left to his own devices and God was very specific in setting up the Garden in the beginning in Genesis. And He is also very specific about our surroundings now.Firstly, in the Garden there was a choice between the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Notice the choice was not between Life and say the Tree of Anarchy.This is just the same now.If we fail to choose the supernatural Life of Jesus, we still fall back into the arms of the Law of sin and death. So again, it is not a choice between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Anarchy.Law, it says in Romans is the school master that leads us to the real thing, which is Christ.

John and Carol Arnott describe it this way. By default we are in a realm of law and judgement.Cause and effect.Here we deserve what we get.... Probably more than we in fact get.But when we reach into the Kingdom realm, and John and Carol get people to act this out, we are pulling down out of heaven, out of a totally different realm.
In the heavenly realm the Law of Sin and Death and Judgment ceases to apply, because the price has been paid already.

These are some of the discoveries made by the Faith Movement. The reason why the faith movement is so maligned is a misunderstanding about this new realm.

THIS IS THE MISUNDERSTANDING . We are not just pulling new things and blessings out of heaven!Fast cars and big houses and loadsa dosh! We are pulling a new operator out of heaven! It's a NEW YOU entirely. Not patched up. Not a self-improved version. At your spirit centre there is not one bit of you that has anything in common with what you were before.
Your spirit was so bound up in darkness, so twisted up in it, so sick with it, I'm sorry to say a decision was made before you had anything to do with it. It was decided that your old spirit centre had to be annihilated. So it was totally, I mean totally destroyed at the Cross.Then your spirit was resurrected inextricably bound up with Christ. It is so tightly woven with Christ that (I'm afraid to say again, as you had no say in this,)at no point can you find the join between what is you and what is Him.

But your soul and body ofcourse are just the same, and they have to spend a while catching up with what just happened when you asked Jesus into your life. It's so radical they take a while to catch up. That's why you must must must allow yourself to be baptised in the Spirit. Not only to speed up this catch up reeducation programme, but also because it gives you power to extend the processes that are happening to you into other's lives.

So it's not an old creation version of you reaching into heaven to pull down Ferraris, an endless supply of mansions..etc etc it's a completely new being like Christ Himself who co operates with God to bring down out of heaven what is next on the Kingdom schedule.

If you want to read more about someone who was confused about how you use faith and the supernatural read about Jacob in Genesis. He , like many in the Faith movement, learned the faith tools, BEFORE learning about the change of PERSON. So God had to put him right with a little encounter at Peniel.

This then is the foundation describing the One Cult, and how we leave it. The next thing is to begin describing how the Cult operates and how it affects us. This cult that we inherited through Adam began in Genesis 3:5. If we would just reach out our hand and take of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, we would be gods in our own right, fully able to decide how to live our lives as "independent beings" from this information.What we were not told is that there is no such position of independence, and a false spirit entered into and fatally entwined itself around our spirit from that point.We became spiritually dead. Separated from God. And believing lots of lies about the goodness of God the Father. We became ashamed for the first time ever. And covered our shame pretty uselessly with figleaves. There are gaps in leaves and nakedness shows through!!! We entered a false cult with one overarching cultleader: the devil, who unknown to us, had just been invited to become "god of this world" by our disobedience.This spirit of disobedience is according to Rob Rufus, Mark Stibbe and Bill Johnson both a political spirit and a religious spirit, both having the same head, the devil.

Proverbs 3 verse 5 states the KINGDOM WAY of living "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and DO NOT RELY on your own insight."The ONE CULT says rely on your own insight first and if you have anything left over, believe a little in the Lord or some god or not, as you wish...but if you do, believe in your head, and certainly don't do any trusting in your heart.

This has the effect of shutting down the right use of our heart, our inner insight,our inner wisdom faculty,our intuition, our hunches,and making us quite Dalek like, or Cyberman like in our approach to life.We become hardened in heart. Cynical.Fearful.Putting our trust in the wrong places.We become linear thinkers primarily, hopelessly trying to reel in as many facts as possible with which to weigh our decisions. I say hopelessly...because who can possibly hope to have the measure of all possible facts concerning other people's future actions, and concerning future events with which we can make safe decisions.
It's not just difficult being gods. It's just plain stupid setting ourselves up in this way.

God had a lot to say to Job on the matter before finally restoring him. This experience of being "locked up" in our minds, our left-brain frontal lobes, while all the while being crippled with fear in our hearts causes us to submit easily to the POLITICAL SPIRIT and the RELIGIOUS SPIRIT of the ONE CULT.

THE POLITICAL SPIRIT.

Firstly the POLITICAL SPIRIT of the ONE CULT is not the same as the "spirit of politics". Christians in Kenya regaled me with the notion that a Christian in politics is a contradiction in terms. Try telling Bob and Rose Weiner who were certainly involved in getting American Christians into politics.No the POLITICAL SPIRIT has very little direct interest in fair and true politics. Its end is the furtherance and strengthening of its own cult leader's position. Ultimately it is aiming to present its own Christ..."the Christ in the place of" or Antichrist as world leader.In this context, you will find this proposed EU directive interesting

http://www.christianlegalcentre.com/view.php?id=848

The Directive ignores the necessity of providing protection in connection with conflicts inevitably arising out of:
Differences between those expressing religious tenets of one religion and the doctrines of another religion;
or Differences between those expressing religious tenets on sexual conduct and those professing a homosexual orientation.

Rather than make much comment on this, I want to highlight the problem of living from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and making impossible decisions between rival philosophies. The Bible talks about girding ourselves with the belt of truth. Truth , you notice, is positioned nowhere near your left-brain. It is something you get increasingly girding the innermost parts of you. When you speak from here, you speak from a realm of authority the political spirit hasn't a clue about, because the political spirit seeks to manipulate your left-brain. If you can shut down people's connection to God on their insides, you can easily manipulate their minds with a plausible set of arguments, having set it out clearly with a lawyer's skill. Or is that rather with a conman's skill?

The most intelligent nation that ever lived welcomed in Hitler, and willingly set up mass extermination concentration camps with consummate left-brain skill.One of the most intelligent diplomats of the Roman world, installed because of his skill in the most turbulent of cities , Jerusalem, still had no trouble in consigning God Himself to crucifixion.This is the political spirit. It relies on people living in their left-brains and disconnected from their hearts to survive and thrive.Proverbs 3:5 is one of the main antidotes. In Part 2 of The End Times and Christ In You I will expound further how easy it is for the devil to install the system described in Revelation by St John.

But you can see how easy it was for him already, in the Garden, in Jerusalem, and in Hitler's Germany.

THE RELIGIOUS SPIRIT

Once you see that there is only ONE CULT expressed through a RELIGIOUS SPIRIT and a POLITICAL SPIRIT you begin to see its skill working through history. Because the RELIGIOUS SPIRIT was allowed to infiltrate Christianity at the highest level, it was able to destroy Christianity's credibility in the Earth. You must understand this is only apparent failure.The failures were real, but they were not fruit of God's Spirit moving in the church, they are bad fruit emanating from the measure the Church has hooked back up with the ONE CULT in its religious guise.

It was like a pincer movement throughout history. You can imagine the devil's board meeting. "Right, you infiltrate the Church. make it a laughing stock. Then we'll get the political spirit to take over at the Enlightenment and install the POLITICAL SPIRIT of SECULARISM as a fair and just alternative. Everyone will fall for it. And then in 2007 we'll remind them in the book "God Delusion", in case they were forgetting.

Then it should be plainsailing right through to world victory when I install my Antichrist."

His plans have worked pretty well so far because a secular person, living in his head and not in inner wisdom, just does not have the discernment to tell the difference between a religious person, (who is still a member of the ONE CULT) and a true believer in Christ. And the sheer confusion is enough to keep most unbelievers away. But then God is not looking for people who are mildly interested in the Kingdom. He is looking for people who really want the Truth at all costs and are prepared to press right through until they see clearly.The first commandment was always:

Love the Lord Your God with ALL your heart, all your soul,(then and only then ALL your mind). In other words...Love God with a passion! Then you will begin to get somewhere.

Fundamentalism is not wrong because it is wrong...

Fundamentalism is not wrong because it is wrong.

It is wrong
because it is a left-brain brick
thrown at a spiritual disconnect: an alienation
we all feel
from our very own heavenly Father.
And
bricks
don't
work!
Chris Welch on Facebook 26.09.09

Life In the Order of Melchizedek VII : Lonnie Frisbee (1950-1993)

So far - Life In the Order of Melchizedek has been a rather airbrushed series. Much like the charismatic church at large. Much like my blog. The truth is some of the biggest breakthroughs occur in the "pinch" of some of the most terrible failures. So does that mean we go out bent on failing? Well you just try it!!! Is all I can say. Hell on Earth is a terrible place. If we go back to acting as vehicles for the devil, even if never again being outright containers, well the things we reap are real...because we are going back again to the old law of sin and death...it is only our faith in the finished work of Christ that kicks starts another dimension, to begin sowing another kind of reality...with fruit that the Bible says go on for a thousand generations.It is our faith which is a God birthed thing anyway, that literally draws the Kingdom out of heaven to make a landing on our patch of ground surrounding us, our families and neighbourhoods.



I remember the rather sniffy attitude someone in Salt and Light had to Todd Bentley's previous failures. Yeah right. But can you ever think of a revival, let alone a world revival, that was ever started by a Luke type character? Come on. Honestly? I suppose John Wesley was pretty erudite...but I don't think that was the sum of his character.

St Peter was fairly typical. Todd Bentley. Rob Rufus. Morris Cerullo. St Paul was a bit of an exception, (I mean he was learned)...but he was in the game because he was terribly bitten!! In what way? His snakebite if you will was that he had ordered the death of Stephen whose very face shone with the glory of God as he went down under a hail of chunky stones. That image burned on Paul's retina for the rest of his life.

God starts these things with people who will jump out of the boat, hold their nose, and hit the surface of the water running.... They are not the careful, studious, detail-oriented, Luke types.These go-for-it types just say "Well let's get on with the job then!"

Which has been the problem for the last 20 years in particular as the worldwide church has been wandering around the same charismatic mountain :Mount Hillsong. These rush out and do it all types, these gobs on sticks, as Gerald Coates used to describe himself, are too busy gobbing and miracling to pause long enough to realise that there's some quietly spoken Body ministries out there like George Warnock, Norman Grubb as was, Brian Coatney, Eldred Linden, Brett Burrowes ,coughing quietly and in a Lukian fashion saying....

"UM excuse me....um excuse me....I say there....um... would you mind listening? We're not finished yet. There's um...a third levelllllll......oh......Rob Rufus has just disappeared into the distance surrounded by a cloud of smoke along the great Wall of China.....Too late.... I'll er.... grab him as he comes off the plane in another 20 years."
I was pondering this today while tuning when suddenly I thought of Watchman Nee in jail for the second time. You don't suppose that the reason that God allowed the silly Chinese authorities to cut his tongue out, was not just because they do not value their prisoners....the real reason was something like this:
"Watchman?"
"Yes Lord".
"You know I've got you in here for my purposes?"
"Yes Lord...to evangelise and see the jail converted. And it's happening".
"Well actually that is not the whole reason. Um, you know you are a gob on a stick?"
"Yes Lord. That's what you have called us to be."
"Well to a certain extent. But I've got you here for a much bigger 3rd level plan?"
"What!! to convert the key authority figures over the jail?"
"No much bigger than that! I tell you what if I get them to cut your tongue out, can I have your undivided attention for about 10 months before you die having achieved your intercession?"
"OK Lord. That's a bit radical!"
" Yes, but it's the only way I know of getting you to sit down, and shutup long enough while I move through you."
"OK what's the project?"
"Are you sure you're ready for this?
" I'm listening"
"Well...it's to birth a whole new generation of Christian. A third level generation of Christian like it says in the psalms: who will volunteer freely and completely in THE DAY OF MY POWER."
"Sounds good. Where will it start?"
"The Jesus People Wave in America and later in Europe."
"What's the 3rd level Lord?"
"It's what you've been writing and preaching about all your life - except I'm going to raise up a whole tidal wave of new believers who find this level and operate in it."
"Um like evangelicals?"
"Sort of"
"Um like Pentecostals?"
"Sort of"
"You're not being very clear Lord"
"It's not really something you can conceive of....but I'll let you watch the results from heaven. How does that sound?"



Well this a non-airbrushed tale of a guy few have heard of over in the UK, but we are well aware of the resultant fruit of this particular Christ in his form kind of guy. He was Lonnie Frisbee. And this account comes from John Crowder's book : Miracleworkers,Reformers and The New Mystics.
John Crowder writes:
Lonnie Frisbee was about as"natural" as you can get, although he was an extreme miracle worker. Frisbee was the hippie evangelist of the Jesus People Movement who can almost single-handedly be credited for igniting three major moves of God.

Lonnie had long hair, a huge beard, and he preached in blue jeans. Before he helped start the Calvary Chapel move­ment, Lonnie and his wife had been members of a hippie commune called The House of Acts in California. When the Jesus Movement hit the media, Lonnie was often interviewed and photographed in major national magazines like Time. When he preached, miracles followed; people were often healed. They would regularly be filled with the Holy Spirit, falling to the floor, shaking, prophesying, speaking in tongues, and seeing visions.
Lonnie baptized people in the ocean. He did not have any reli­gious pretention. He was very "earthy." My in-laws remember seeing him at their hippie church in California, where he wore a clerical collar then ripped it off in the middle of the service to prove a point. Lonnie was a self-described "nudist-vegetarian-hippie when the Lord called me. I was going into the desert, taking off all of my clothes and I'm saying, 'God, if You're really real, reveal Yourself to me.' One afternoon the whole atmosphere of this canyon started to tingle and change. The Lord identified Himself to me and said, 'I'm Jesus. I build nations and I tear them clown. It is better for a nation to have never known Me than to have known Me and turned their back from Me' I thought all roads led to Rome, but He explained to me that He was the only way to know God.'"
Lonnie first worked alongside Chuck Smith as the primary evan­gelist to birth Calvary Chapel—today a multi-million dollar interna­tional denomination. Once the movement got structured and comfortable, Lonnie's power evangelism was too risque for Calvary, which distanced itself from him and his strong belief in spiritual gifts. But in the early days of Calvary, Lonnie was bringing in 1,000 converts a month, just in small churches.Frisbee then moved on with John Wimber to start the Vineyard movement, going so far as to suggest the name "Vineyard." Many would say his influence and the spiritual manifestations that accom­panied his preaching were the very catalyst that would later explode into the Toronto Blessing, a year after he died. In 1980, Lonnie said, "come Holy Spirit" on Mother's Day in the Yorba Linda Calvary Chapel—suddenly God stepped into the room and the Vineyard movement began. When you say "come Holy Spirit," you better get ready—He keeps coming and coming, because He never ends! It was later in January, 1994, just after his death, that Toronto was sparked—also out of the Vineyard. The very phrase "power evangelism" comes from Lonnie's ministry. He would later travel to South Africa with Wimber, where many more healings took place.
My wife was saved in one of Lonnie's altar calls as a child, and later as a teenager, he called her out by a word of knowledge at a home group meeting, where she was filled with the Holy Spirit and fell to the floor with her right hand shaking—a common manifesta­tion in his ministry.
But Lonnie's life was not without error. In the early 1970s, he and his wife divorced. He also struggled with homosexuality, which would later lead to his death from AIDS. Although Lonnie was repentant, the churches he helped establish were quick to snub his name from their histories. He was not the first or the last great power mystic to succumb to gross sin. As we will see, many great men of God made equally great errors. At Frisbee's death, he was portrayed as a Samson figure—one through whom God worked mightily, yet he was snared by his own weaknesses.
Lonnie was clearly ahead of his time, although a number of min­istries are now beginning to walk in the level of power that he once did. I believe that, in many ways, Lonnie's very life was a signpost of the available power and the struggles that are now facing our gen­eration. It is interesting that Lonnie believed youth culture would play a powerful part in God's latter day move, as prophesied by Joel.
Some would find it ironic that physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit were a part of Lonnie Frisbee's ministry, and he was a major catalyst for the Calvary Chapel movement and the Vineyard. While both of these backed away from the supernatural manifestationsin the Toronto renewal. Some of the biggest critics of Lonnie's style of power ministry came out of the same churches that he founded. This is why we need to understand our roots.
A friend of our family and a powerful minister, Jonathan Land, was close to Lonnie, and it is amazing how many major prophetic voices today were also influenced by him at some point in their walk—ministers including Marc Dupont, Jill Austin, and others. Land remembers a meeting where two troubled teenagers came in, unsaved and profane, and were sitting in front of him, mocking and laughing.The Lord told Land to pay attention to what was about to happen to these young men.
As Lonnie began to speak, the power of God began to move in the room. Here's Land's account of what happened:
"Just then the boys' heads started slowly wagging, in a few minutes their heads were jerking and slashing back and forth and sideways so fast and so violently that I actually felt some fear that they would be injured or even killed. The speed of the jerking heads was so extreme and so fast as to be impossible. They stood to their feet and their arms and hands started flapping rapidly and violently. It was just a demonstration of the power of God that was extreme. Remember that no one laid hands on these boys. Frisbee had merely asked them to stand when they began manifes­tations. As they flapped and jerked for what seemed like an eternity, they began to speak with tongues. Really, really loud.They became Christians that night by a direct interven­tion of the Holy Spirit. From mocking and laughing they began to worship and praise the name of Jesus."
It is said that Lonnie's greatest critics could not deny that God was with him. "I can say that in spite of the stupid things that Frisbee did, he probably impacted the planet more profoundly than is commonly realized. In many ways he was an invisible prophet. Wherever you see the Holy Spirit moving today, I can almost guar­antee that Frisbee had been there," said Land.
see also .....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Frisbee
http://www.lonniefrisbee.com/

The Believer as a Container for God's Presence

The Key to Everything by Norman Grubb
The whole text is here, as notified by Merrill Thompson on Facebook

PART I
The Believer as a Container
for God’s Presence
When I was in the British army in World War I, God very plainly called me, though I'd planned another career, to join a little independent missionary group just starting in Africa. I wasn't there very long before I deeply felt my inadequacy.
It wasn't that I was lukewarm for Jesus Christ; it wasn't that I had turned away from Him to some other interest. I was a servant of His, and my whole interest was set on introducing my brother Africans to Him.
The inadequacy I felt in myself first of all was the need of love. I deeply felt, when I got among them, that I just didn't have that love which bridges the gap. With that went the need of faith — and with that the need of power. All of these were linked together.
Response to the Christian message in Central Africa, like the United States, appears to be quite large. But I soon found there was much more profession than possession. I began saying to
myself, Are we bringing the Africans anything really worthwhile? Are we just bringing a code of
ethics? Or a liturgy, or historic faith? Have we got something genuinely transforming to transmit to others?
Then I made the question personal, "Have I?"
As I asked these questions, I discovered that when your ministry is disturbed, it tends also to disturb your personal life. I found myself, as my wife well knew, irritable at home in a way I hadn't been irritable — and critical of others to cover my own failures.
As I doubted, asked questions, and searched the Bible for some kind of an answer to my
inadequacies, I found some amazing answers. Some of them have shaken me considerably. They have changed my whole viewpoint — and my experience.
I can't call them revelations, because they are based on the revelation, witnessed to by the Spirit.
To begin with, my attitude was that God should improve me.
Well, I'm a servant of Jesus Christ, I thought. I've been redeemed by His grace, I belong to Him. I must ask God to make me a better servant of Jesus Christ.
I thought He should channel in some love into my heart, some faith, some power, some holiness — and improve me.
I had to learn sharply that self-improvement is both a sin and an impossibility. It came as a considerable shock.
But though my idea of how God should answer my problem was completely wrong, my sense of inadequacy was good. It sent me to the Bible. And my first discovery came as I read one famous verse in the first letter of John: "God is love."
Suddenly the is stuck out. What dawned on me went something like this: It doesn't say God has love, but God is love. If some body has a thing, it isn't he himself. It's something just attached to him, as if you've got a coat on or something in your pocket. You just have it, and you can share it. But the Bible doesn't say God has love, but God is love.

I Could Never Love!
Love, therefore, must not be a thing I can have. Love is exclusively a Person. God is love. Therefore, there is no other pure, self-giving love in the universe beyond Him Himself. Love is exclusively a characteristic of one Person only — and that's not Norman Grubb.
That was a deflation for me. I had thought I could have love imparted to me, channeled into me, and I'd be more loving. But I suddenly found God saying, "You'll never have one iota of love. I am love, and that's the end of it."
Love is a Person; one Person only loving — and that's not I, and that's not you. God is love and, therefore, love is God loving.
That set a new trend of thought going. I began to relate this to my other need of power. And I suddenly found a verse in the first chapter of I Corinthians where it says that Christ is the power of God. Not Christ has the power, but He is the power.
Once again, I had thought power was something which was given to me, and I'd be a powerful servant of Jesus Christ. I suddenly found that power, also, is a Person. And that person is not I but is exclusively Christ, Who is God; it doesn't matter whether you call Him Father, Son or Holy Spirit.
Then I came to the one thing every Christian claims to have. Every believing Christian accepts the fact that he has eternal life. He takes it that he has a life which will go on forever in Heaven. ("The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.")
But I suddenly found that eternal life is not something I can ever have — for Jesus did not say, "I have the life to give you" — but, "I am the life."
Once again I had found that something I had thought I had — eternal life — is one person only, and that's not I. Jesus Christ is that "eternal life."
But where did I fit into all this?
Finally I came to a statement which gathered all together and finished off my investigations by its absoluteness. The verse was Colossians 3:11, where it says of believers in Christ that "Christ is all and in all."
Christ is all, not Christ has all.
And if Christ is all, what's left for me? Not much by my mathematicsl
I had thought I was somebody, and something or could get something. I found God had taken the lot. Christ is all.
Then I got the link. Christ is all and in all.
Then I saw for the first time that the only reason for the existence of the entire creation is to contain the Creator! Not to be something, but to contain Someone.
So there dawned a very important truth. We humans naturally regard the human self as
important. But we've got the wrong ideas of the reason of the existence of the self.
An immense distortion has come into the very warp and woof of humanity. It's the distortion of the ego — of the self. Though we feel self to be important, all of this showed me that self is extremely unimportant.
There is only one Self in the universe who is really important. I would almost say there is only one Self.
Why? Because there's only one Person in the universe who ever said, "I Am."
God said that was His name thousands of years ago when Moses asked what he should say when people would ask, "What is the name of your God?" (Exodus 3:13, 14).
We are told that at the end of the history of the universe it is God Who will be all in all. God all in all! Then what's left? It's terrific.

Why We Exist
There is only one Person, and the human creation is brought into a living relation ship with this One, so that He can manifest Himself in His perfection of life and love through us.
The whole creation exists because Spirit must have a body in which to manifest Himself. As the Scriptures say, "The whole earth is full of His glory." They say that Christ ascended "that He might fill all things."
If He fills all things, all things are containers of Him. Here is both the height and the dangerous depth in humanity.
The height is simply this: the rest of creation can contain manifestations of God; we can contain God as a Person. A person cannot manifest himself as a person through anything else than a person. You can't fellowship with a dog or a stone. You can enjoy the marvels of the atom or of a precious stone, but you can't fellowship with it. But I can fellowship with you because we are of the same makeup.
God can manifest His marvels and His beauty through the flowers and trees. We can view them through the microscope and telescope, and marvel—but we do not say, "That's God."
The greatest marvel, the greatest height of personality, is when we can look at a human being and say, "God is there."
The depth, the dangers, of humanity are that personality means freedom. Intelligent choice is the essence of personality.
Therefore, God appeared to be on the horns of a dilemma when He created people. (Of course, He wasn't, for He knows His own business in the end.) But it appeared so because the people He created could turn around and say, "Thank you very much, I don't want You to live in me."
That's exactly what happened.
We make self our god, not God. We just naturally run our own lives. And that's our whole trouble.
There isn't a single problem in humanity except our self-reactions: not one.
The Devil is no trouble. He was dealt with 2,000 years ago.
Your neighbor is not your trouble.
Circumstances are not your trouble.
The only trouble is your reaction.
Distorted self, self out of gear, is our problem.
Once we know how to handle the human self and put it back where it belongs, we've found the key to life.
That's what we're going to examine.

Before you commit suicide watch this

Hebrews 4:12: Spirit,Soul, and Body by Brian Coatney/This hope that purifies by Chris Welch

Via Nancy Gilmore on facebook today

Hebrews 4:12: Spirit,Soul, and Body by Brian Coatney

Doesn't ordinary life also offer plenty of opportunities for daily dying as we discern between soul and spirit? We all we feel threatened or hurt, or on a body level we think that we cannot live without food, sex, or some kind of comfort. Hebrews 4:12 speaks of this dividing: "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." This means that the Spirit knows how to cut beneath our fears and affirm in us our real intentions, showing us how to walk by faith when our outer world is falling apart.Let's look more closely at this dividing work of the Holy Spirit that Hebrews 4:12 talks about. Some interpret the verse to mean that the writer mentions three pairs of synonyms-making soul and spirit the same, joints and marrow the same, and thoughts and intents the same. This interpretation sounds confusing and vague, leaving us to wonder what the word of God divides. The more natural reading of the passage connects soul, joints, and thoughts as a contrast to spirit, marrow, and intents.The context of the passage as a whole confirms this. Hebrews 4 tells us that the Israelites failed to enter God's rest in the wilderness because they majored on food, water, and escape from conflict, allowing lack on a soul and body level to turn them to unbelief. They insisted on physical provision and security at the expense of stepping into the unseen world of faith. The application to us is obvious: though the body is important and God's temple, we don't go around as body-fussers, but as see-throughers in the spirit. We live from the spirit of rest instead of the turmoil we feel on a soul/body level.There is no need to take condemnation for our negative thoughts and feelings, and we even use them as the opportunity to live in God's rest during our times of physical and emotional hardship. Sometimes those hardships come about from how others treat us. Intentionally or unintentionally, people always do things that irritate us, go against our will, and deny us what we want, even tempting us to think that we don't love them. If we reason according to soul, we will think that we really do resent others. If we reason according to God's fixed nature of love in us, we will say, "I feel like I hate that person, but Christ loves that person perfectly by me."Only the Spirit Himself can do this dividing. In conflict and turmoil, our best option is to slow down. We don't have to let our souls and bodies drive us on with their imperatives. Waiting on that still, small voice, we can say, "Lord, I'll end up deceived if You don't guide me, but thank You that You are guiding me." He sorts everything out as we wait and trust in Him. When contentment fails on a soul/body level, we count it all joy to affirm again that He is life-"When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory" (Col. 3:4 NASV).This kind of faith leaves God free in us to meet our emotional and physical needs through people and things, but it also leaves God free to meet our needs without people and things. It is He either way. Abraham and Sarah represent the walk of faith; they let go of their soul/body contradictions and believed the impossible. So do we!

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This hope that purifies- Chris Welch

There are verses in the Bible that should have notes attached to save people's sanity! One verse is Christ In You the Hope of Glory Colossians 1.27. The health warning should read "It is advisable that this verse not be read with the left-brain frontal lobe/the conscious mind. This type of verse should be SOAKED only by meditation and in God's felt Presence.

I am not doing this in a critical way. This guy William Barcley has done a noble left-brain attempt in his 1999 book....but I think you get my point.

What on earth does Christ in You the Hope of Glory mean to your surface mind, to your step by step thinking. The bit of you that can plan the sequence in which you make an omelette or change a tyre. But what on earth is Christ in You the Hope of glory on about?

That's why we need the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He comes to make the things of God understood. He comes to give us Light. He comes to make us feel this Christ burn His way into our soul, heart and spirit. He comes to show us on a daily basis that which we do that Christ just ain't doing! And conversely He comes to show us what Christ is doing through us...or the next thing that He wants to do through us...and sometimes giving us what Morris Cerullo calls "an advanced supernatural burst of revelation" of what He wants us to co operate in. This is not just for work life. This is not just for family life. For anything that we are doing. But also meetings together. This is how the Bible says they are run. Each one "hath" a gift or tongue, or word of preaching, or healing gift, or word of wisdom, or song or prophecy. The Bible is deliberately loose. But not THAT loose so that there is nothing left. And that saints is the problem in the bulk of the church. In reality meetings are not run in the Holy Spirit. Even among those who know the daily truth of Christ living his life out as them.

In the Bible the key men of God had to have last minute adjustments! They'd got Christ as you as a daily walk, learned over decades. They'd even known the supernatural in their own personal lives and in those around them. But they needed a last minute "slap down" just so they knew who they were serving, so they walked in the fear of the Lord, and so they were rightly representing the one True heavenly reality of the Tabernacle not made with hands...but nevertheless a heavenly eternal reality.

Jacob had faithed in speckled and striped sheep. He was some charismatic!

Moses had met God in a supernatural burning bush! And was now finally ready to storm down and meet the elders of his people and confront Pharoah.

Joshua had served Moses all these years before the great leader then died. Now he knew his job was to set his face to the Land promised by God.

So what happened. Jacob had an angel come up against him.

Moses had his wife warn him that he'd better get circumcised darned quick before that angel confronting him finished him off before he'd started.

Joshua meets an angel who he addresses with an either or question. Are you for us or against us? The angel bypasses the whole framework of the question which in an earthly way makes no sense. Except that Joshua was framing his question on top of a whole unholy attitude. So rather than give the top of the question even house room, the angel speaks piercingly and prophetically to the haughtiness underneath: No Joshua! I'm head of the show here! I have been sent as Commander of the heavenly Armies and you..just learn your place!

So that's where we are now. We've got some people who know about Christ as them in their form, but absolutely no idea about heavenly protocoll. About the supernatural way God wants to build His Body. About the dedicated time the Body is to have lavishing its love on the Bridegroom in a worship planned before time was begun, and to be celebrated now, long before we ever reach heaven, as a demonstration to principalities and powers of the glory and riches in the Church.

Then we've got the charismatic Jacob community, used to faithing in benefits and blessings, but still like Jacob, having no heavenly understanding as to who they are, who they really are, and how they must experience a NAME change like Jacob. And when he had his crisis encounter at Peniel, his name was changed to Israel. THEN history started accelerating!

That's where we are right now after 100 years of Pentecostalism and 50 years of Norman Grubb's teachings.

Christ IN YOU the hope of glory. Not just any Christ. THE Christ. The same Christ that has come to reside in every born again believer. So if your theology is not the same as their theology and it is the same Christ...either or both of your theologies are up the pole! Are not in Christ.You can have Christ in You but still have absolutely rubbish theology and still be convinced you are right.

Well that's why we have the supernatural. To put us straight on those still "iffy" areas . And they must be "iffy" or others who know Christ in them as them, who also move to a high level in the supernatural would also agree with you. If you know Christ in you as you but you have no sort of signs following you, then it can't be the same Christ that is in the Bible. Because the One in the Bible said "These signs shall follow after you".

And if you are Benny Hinn and Morris Cerullo storming around the world doing signs and wonders, but you in no way link in with what the Body of Christ is doing sovereignly in every nation on the earth...that is building itself up corporately, feeding itself, learning the full meaning of Christ in You the hope of glory in every day settings....away from church...away from praise...away from Bible readings and quiet times and conferences....and even God TV (sorry Rory and Wendy and I love you)...then I seriously have to question what it is you are building. You may just be building a separate organism that knows how to faith in speckled and striped sheep....but never becomes the Israel of God...the Body of Christ that has had a name change and is being caught up with the central Plan of God in the Earth

that out of the Twain, Jews and Gentiles, ONE NEW SUPERNATURAL MAN shall spring forth, who is a manifestation of that mystery hidden since before time began.

My section of this whole post comes out of reading "Miracleworkers, Reformers and New Mystics" by John Crowder this morning. This leapt out at me: "Getting Past the Mind. p85. The very word repentance implies a change of mind. Repentance, or metanoia does not just mean a turning from outward sin. Rather it means a shift of consciousness from self to God. It is is a type of inner transcendence. A change of focus. It is simply a change of mind, or better yet a change of heart. (We've tried to live our own life entirely relying on our own insight, our own left-brain,our own mental constructs..not Proverbs 3:5 in other words)

We must focus everything within us on Heaven. God does not call us to abandon the mind- far from it! He wants us to redirect it. God does not want a church full of idiots. He wants us to use our minds, to be leaders in science, medicine, technology and other areas....

(BUT) a man's spirit is the seat of his being: the mind is subsidiary.....We want to be led by the Spirit and the Word, and not by human wisdom.

Although we are making a strong case for supernatural encounters and godly wisdom in these chapters, we do not preach a "signs and wonders" gospel anymore than we preach an "intellectual gospel". We preach Christ crucified. that is our gospel. It is a gospel with signs following, and it also leads to wisdom. But the cross will always be an offense and a stumbling block to many."

Which brings us back to the positive of the Cross. Now it's Christ in us as us, Christ in me as me.

It's an anchor line straight into heaven which is pulling me in. I can't miss! Because my believing is pulling on this anchored line. And the other end which is anchored in Christ is not moving...so the only thing to move will be me as I'm dragged in! That is the truth behind the "shorthand" Spirit expression "the Hope of Glory". I can't miss. It's a dead cert. The aim is absolutely accurate. All I've got to do is keep believing and the payline is reeling me in.

What is the payline. The anchor. It's this bold statement in the context of the previous verse in 1 John 3:2 "what we will be has not been made known." John Crowder writes" I believe we are slowly coming into an awareness of that power and identity in this hour. John goes onto say in this (next)verse: "But we know that when we see Him we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

It's no fun seeing Him if all we sense is inferiority. But Jesus has arranged this mighty thing to happen as a result of the power exercised by the Hope within us. Total transformation.

1 John 3:3 "Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as He is pure.

Now without a Spirit revelation of Hope and its magnet - type propensities...drawing us supernaturally - morphing us from one degree of glory to another- although down here it looks pretty messy at times - but within we are preparing an eternal weight of glory....kind of our own internal Eternal weight of Glory Factory plant....

without any of this revelation we are going to think the words "purify himself" mean works activities like a definite amount of hours doing community service or reading the Bible to try and be spiritual....which is all missing the point that we are not independant selves, and it is Christ living His life out through us.

Just as the Father lived out His life through Christ on earth, and knew how to get Jesus from baby status to full grown Father status, reproducing life in the disciples...

so Jesus knows how to get us, from wherever we are in God...perhaps we have not even asked Him in yet.... to a place of maturity fulfilling what we were put on the Earth for.

I learned through John Clark (with Sam Fife and the Move) that we are "Called by the Will of God". Well that's obvious!

No, listen, it's better than that! When you want that sin. When there's no possible way that you think you will ever giving up loving that sin. When you've exhausted all possibilities! Guess what.

God takes out your "Will" pack and inserts His packet of "Will" instead. We are called by His will. We are drawn by His will. His shiny glorious amazingly clean righteous will glows and shimmers and calls to us, but more than that it seems to get inside us to change what we think we wanted to what we can entirely live without.

This is then some of the nature of this Hope that purifies us and has nothing to do with us working harder and wearing ourselves out getting nowhere.

Muse-Uprising

Paranoia is in bloom,
The PR transmissions will resume,
They'll try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down,
And hope that we will never see the truth around(So come on)
Another promise, another scene,
Another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed,
And all the green belts wrapped around our minds,
And endless red tape to keep the truth confined(So come on)

They will not force us, They will stop degrading us,
They will not control us, We will be victorious(So come on)

Interchanging mind control,
Come let the revolution take it's toll,
If you could flick a switch and open your third eye,
You'd see thatWe should never be afraid to die(So come on)

Rise up and take the power back,
It's time the fat cats had a heart attack,
You know that their time's coming to an end,
We have to unify and watch our flag ascend

They will not force us, They will stop degrading us,
They can not control us, We will be victorious

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No matter what is taught in schools. Remember Communist Russia taught atheism for 70 years. No matter what is PC at the time. In Hitler's Germany, what was PC was instead of cubs and scouts, there was the Hitler Youth. Well where is that now?

No matter what is deemed the "right "thing to do in the moneymarkets. Like buying "iffy" debt clothed in clever mathematical formulae, which has led to the recent global turmoil.

No matter that Richard Dawkins has just published "The God Delusion" wanting to step up secularism, not dismantle it. If the devil wasn't behind secularism, there has never been another system reappearing in so many forms, causing so many disasters throughout history that would be given any shred of a chance at being reissued. Look at it as a negative miracle, proving the existence of a real devil.

Well no matter all this stuff.....subliminal messages are being fed into our guts everyday of every year of every century and it's here in Psalm 19:

1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.

So there is this increase of knowledge going on quietly on our insides. Traditionally the ones who are most vocal about this are the poet/prophet/musician/ artist types. And when it runs counter to what is PC at the time, it lands them in trouble. So typically, thousands had to sneak out of Russia, and Hitler's Germany for example. Often Jewish. Whether they were personally God believers or just intellectuals who saw the larger picture.

Well from the instant I heard this song when it was first on Radio1, my hot buttons were pushed! What it is to have a 9 year old switching over from Radio2! Or Radio4! You have to wake up and face the real world eh? Stuff is going on out there!

A similar revolutionary feel was going on in the airwaves during the 60s. And I firmly believe everything works at two levels. Morris Cerullo says all truth is parallel. First in the Spirit , then in the natural. The wave of God's Spirit encircling the globe in the first real way since the 1906-8 international Pentecostal move, was echoed in a more secular clothing with Bob Dylan and John Lennon.

I read a prayer script a month ago from "Trumpet Call for Britain" decrying the "rebellion of the 60s". Well I don't quite agree with that. Because I can see a bigger picture. I wrote something to Stephanie Macentire about this. God is not nervously pacing heaven, looking over the parapets nervously wondering what his human family are going to get up to next. He planned this universe for us to experience a taste of hell for ourselves. He doesn't want us to fulfil the 10 commandments just because some vicar tells us we should. He wants righteousness flowing from the heart, because we love Him and because we have found in practice it's the only darned system that works. And more so in the Spirit realm, because me loving you by blessing you with Holy Spirit power is likely to get your Thalidomide limbs to grow. Whereas before in the Anglican church it meant a pat on the head..."There There..."

So we were not going to remain this goody goody generation pre the 60s that grimly did what we had to do...but when nobody was looking we were "having sex behind the hedge with someone". So this prim and proper stuff was only an illusion anyway. So yes....Bob Dylan and John Lennon were commandants leading an army forward into freedom....and yes...it was freedom to do good or bad....but is that not better than spending your whole life pew sitting in some ridiculous church, secretly wishing you could be doing stuff too! God does not really like robots. He likes having a love relationship with those who love Him back.

Well, I can feel another revolution going on. And I am sure the Kingdom one is a Kingdom revolution. Obviously in my terminology it's a third level revolution. It's "grown up " Christians refusing to be pushed around any more. It's Christians in whom the Word has so grown over these 40 years, that we begin to call the shots. But in the world it is felt as a roar from deep within against the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil...

spoonfed secularism since the 1790s Enlightenment uprising,

new sets of rules, control, Offsted (which was meant as a means of making sure every child was receiving decent tuition, but which in our Tree of Knowledge negative bias always warps en route into what became a kind of Victorian learning by rote mechanism again - ticking the boxes)

People who most feel at odds with living from control...living from endless tree of Knowledge lists of Good and Evil....which by the way change rapidly from decade to decade...

are the creative/prophet/artist muzo types. They always get frozen out.

So if you wanted to take a litmus test of how alive you are as a nation, there are two groups you have to look at.

Group 1:Widows and orphans and old and infirm.

And Group 2: the rather dishevelled, unorganised, inarticulate bunch called "artists". (Not just paintbrush types). If they were converted they would look like St John the gospel writer. You know the one they hive off into a separate category and invent a posh word round..."non-synoptic gospel writer". Yup. You got it. Freak!.

Every time, as the song above says, there is a spiritual revolution, these guys crawl out of the woodwork and you suddenly get step changes in history. Like the tremendous outpouring of art after the reformation revolution. Like the Beatles creativity at the vanguard of the 60s revolution.

So on the large level, every time we choose the safety and security of living from external rules, and in particular not Loving God with all our heart, soul and body, we end up with

guillotines

concentration camps

immoral imprisonment: see Shi Weihan post

dreadful dreadful denominational churches...which by the way are nothing more than "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" churches.(Handed down traditions and laws of what is proper and what is not proper..."This is the way we do it!" "Why?" "Because it is the tradition")

When the Catholic church was instituted and subsumed into the architecture of Roman State bureacracy, so many believers left and flooded out into the Desert to join the Desert hermits and fathers that the latter got really annoyed because they were looking for PEACE and QUIET! (read John Crowder "Miracle Workers,Reformers and New Mystics)

So for me this song is flicking my hot button, to yes carry on laying a new foundation of "there is no independent self", but also to both stand up as a Christian and say "There is a whole supernatural realm out there we are not even touching", along the vein of John Crowder ,Bill Johnson,and Rob Rufus, and here Peter Stott...

but secondly myself as a muzo/philosopher type to say:

Dr Challoners Grammar School

Britain in general, Cambridge and Oxford Unis and BBC in particular:

"You've had your secular little world long enough....It's now Kingdom artist time!"