THE SPRINGBOARD

THE SPRINGBOARD

                Today is the first day of our church wide 40 day fast, leading up to resurrection day. So last night (Sunday night) the church came together for prayer and for us, this has not been treated as a yearly ritual, or something nice to do. This year in our congregation there is a very strong sense that we have entered into uncharted territory in the situation of our world, of our nation and the church.

                Yesterday, one of our junior pastors James Basler gave a powerful sermon on the world situation and he used as an illustration the legend of Hernan Cortes who in 1519 came to the shores of the continent to conquer the Aztec Empire. His army was vastly outnumbered and so Cortes ordered the ships they had arrived on to be burned.

It is said that when one of his officers balked at doing this, he thrust him through with his sword and so the rest of the soldiers hastened to do as he had said. Cortes wanted his men to know that failure was not an option. It was either win or die.

                As Pastor James preached with great fervor, decrying the things that are tearing our nation, our communities and even our churches apart he repeated over and over again his true assessment of where we are in prophetic time. The ships are burning. There is nothing left to cling to but Jesus Christ Himself and for the true church of Jesus Christ failure is not an option. We will and we must win, but we are vastly outnumbered. The world is plunging into another no-win globalization and this time it will be like no other. It is time for the church to make a stand… to come out of Laodicea… to get out of the outer court and into the Holy Place of sanctification and power in the Holy Spirit.

                Last night Pastor Akers told of a Pastor in the Methodist Church who talked to him, asking if he thought that our church would accept him as a member. He said that depending upon the decision of its leadership either to join the politically correct crowd or to or to stick with the Bible he would either stay, or leave his denomination. Of course Pastor Akers said he would be welcomed with open arms.

                Friends, the sleeping church remains largely unaware of the issues that are presently tearing the Body of Christ apart… separating wheat from tares… sheep from goats as the church is being pressed into globalization and all that goes with it. Many Christian churches are currently surrendering to Luciferian doctrine. They are in the process of joining with the global church of the antichrist to worship the Beast and his image and many people do not understand the issues because they neither study their Bibles, nor believe them, nor do they have a clue as to Bible prophecy and where all of these global issues are headed.

                Yesterday our Sunday school teacher Judy (a powerful woman of God and a prayer warrior) told of a dream she had this last week. She dreamed that she was in a church that had two levels. The sanctuary was upstairs and there was a place for social gathering downstairs. In her dream Judy went upstairs to worship the Lord and discovered that the Lord was powerfully present in the sanctuary. So she went back downstairs. She said that there were two beautiful stairways descending to the lower level and as she came down one of them, she began to entreat the people to come up and to spend time with the Lord.

                In her dream, some of the people responded and headed up the stairs, but that many seemed happy just to stay in the lower room and to socialize. Then in her dream she saw the stairways beginning to narrow, making it more difficult for people to go up and in fact the stairways were getting so narrow that one had to squeeze tight to make it to the upper sanctuary.  Judy indicated that the way into God’s presence, the narrow way is becoming more narrow as we are being forced to make choices and to leave complacent Christianity behind and to seek the Lord with all of our hearts.

                Judy also runs a community woman’s Bible study and at their weekly meeting, another woman of God gave a prophetic word saying that the narrow way is closing in more and more so that people can only walk single file. We have individual choices to make that no one else can make for us… and they are life or death choices. The ships are burning and we are being pushed into a battle where we must either win or die. So in one week god gave a dream to one woman and He confirmed that dream through another woman through the gift of prophecy. This is how the Body of Christ is supposed to function.

                Shortly after we came to Clinton Tennessee and the Lord had led us to the church we now attend, Pastor Akers invited us to become members and so I told him that there were things I wanted to know and to understand before I would commit to membership. There are two things I wanted to know about the leadership and direction in which the church is going:

1.       Is the leadership of the church sticking with the Bible and with its declarations of faith, (such as I have been reviewing in my articles over the past couple of weeks, or are they going to go along with the demands of the politically correct crowd that is causing many churches to abandon solid biblical truth in order to conform to the coming global religion of the Beast?

2.       I wanted to know if our church leaders are going with hat in hand to Rome to join forces with Pope Francis and his one world religion.

                Thankfully our church and its leaders are among those who have taken a firm stand. Thy have voted to say only what the Bible says and to believe only what the Bible teaches, even if it means that they will eventually shut our doors.

                Like Pastor James said yesterday and just as Zach and I discussed it on our Saturday morning walk along the river… there is nothing left to cling to in this world other than Jesus Christ and His Word.

                Zach quoted the words of an old hymn to me saying “On Christ the solid Rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.” This is a choice that each of us must make. It goes far beyond simply attending the right church or having what we consider to be the right doctrine or interpretation. The question we must ask ourselves is” “Am I truly standing on the solid Rock of Jesus Christ? Is it personally something worth living for… worth dying for?

                There are things that take on new meaning when a situation changes. It would normally be seen as just a hole in the dirt, that no one would want to crawl into, but when bombs are going off all around you a fox hole suddenly looks like a desirable place to take shelter.

                We are entering into the battle of our lives and so our prayer meeting last night was not a nice and polite little round of prayers, but prayers that would rend the heavens and storm the gates of hell… for our church… for our youth… for our community… for our nation and its leaders. I dare say that very few churches or individuals know how to pray like they prayed last night.

                The ships are burning and those who hope to weather the storm must come together in one accord as on the day of Pentecost. And so we joined together in solidarity with our pastors and our leaders, who have taken a firm stand for the Bible and the Bible only. We will not compromise on God’s Word, nor will we conform to those who are falling away from the faith.

                The words of the Bible are very clear. We are not only to “get saved” but to grow… to be separate from the world… to be sanctified and set apart for His service… to live by His Spirit and not by our flesh… to live by His Word and not just by our opinions…the whole goal of which is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, God’s one and only Son, so that when He returns, we will be like Him.

                Make no mistake about it my friends: We have entered a new Dark Ages and this time it was not for lack of a printing press or that the Bible was chained up in a monastery  and unavailable to the public. This time it is because, being in full knowledge of the truth, we are now abandoning the Word of God and the Spirit of God in order to give homage to a counterfeit… to Satan Himself.

                Do you know what your church leadership is doing behind closed doors? Do you know if they are making compromises in order to keep the church doors open and to keep the tithes pouring in? Do you know whether or not they are capitulating with world leaders in order to fit into the coming New World Order or if they are taking a firm stand upon Jesus Christ and His Holy Word? 

                All of us need to do our homework, because the ships are burning. That which once provided safety and truth for us is sinking and enshrouded in flames. The road is narrowing to the point where we can only pass through single file. Each of us must make tough choices and as we make those tough choices then we must be a part of a church family that is united with us in those choices and then together as the Body of Christ we must come into unity to love and to support one another and to encourage one another and minister to one another and to pray for one another.

                As our pastors have pointed out… everyone has a calling. Everyone has a role to play in the Body of Christ. And as Paul points out in 1 Cor. 12:12—16 “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free; and we were all made to drink of one Spirit; for the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any less a part of the body.”

                Much of the church has become a stadium full of spectators rather than functioning members of a Body, but this is not what Jesus commanded for He told us to make disciples, not members. So it is time for every member in the body of Christ to hear from the Lord and to know what their calling is in the Body and to do it faithfully as unto the Lord. Today the spectator church leaves all ministries to the musicians and the pastors. America has gone to hell on our watch because we have ceased to be salt and light. Our statistics have become like the world’s statistics.

                So this 40 day period of fasting and prayer as a church has become our springboard into what we believe that the Lord is about to do for those who are taking their stand in Spirit and in Truth. He is about to pour out His Spirit upon us so that we can do the works of Christ in the world… not as in the past, but with humble and fervent hearts and with the focus of the times in which we now live. We can no longer go back to what was, but we must now move ahead into what must be. It is time for the harvest of both good and evil and we have chosen to the best of our ability to hold to that  which is good and holy in God’s sight.