BACK FROM THE CONFERENCE

BACK FROM THE CONFERENCE

                The conference ended Tuesday night at around 10:00 PM and we worked at tearing everything down until about 1 AM. Then Wednesday morning we loaded sound equipment and gear and headed back to our church in Clinton, Tennessee. The conference had been held in a resort at Pigeon Forge at the foot of the Smokies.

               

                The two guest speakers were powerful and I found myself wishing that the men of our church could hear their messages as well. One of the speakers (Jamie) spoke along the lines of the things I write about, decrying the fact that much of the church in America is falling for and embracing the ways of the world… adopting a world view on many issues and that true Christians cannot and will not go there. We need to live by the Spirit of God and the Word of God and we cannot compromise with the world.

                Fundamental Christianity is largely being lost in America and in fact it is being hated and despised, not only by the world, but by much of the church. Many churches have long since abandoned the functioning power of the Holy Spirit that came to us at Pentecost as the promise of the Father. The Holy Spirit no longer guides the agenda, nor anoints and animates the preachers. Many sermons no longer come from the unction of God, but only from the thoughts of men and because of it, the church is drifting right into the global attitudes and doctrines of demons that are driving all people to worship the Beast and His image.

                So there is much to cry out to God for when people get together and pray for unprecedented revival. We need more than good feelings and charismatic party favors. We need more than messages about prosperity. They talked about the fact that miracles and signs and wonders are often touted and claimed, but in fact they are rare because God cannot pour out His Spirit upon an unclean and worldly church. So the woman spent a lot of time crying out to God for the kind of purity that He is looking for in His people.

                There is a harvest to bring in that can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit through clean vessels. One speaker even talked about learning to live by divine appointment even as Jesus lived by divine appointment. The American church has become a large body of spectators with only a small percentage being the actual functioning organs of the Body. In truth we were never called to be spectators, but disciples and disciples are to be trained under the tutelage of Jesus Christ and His Word and His servants and empowered by His Holy Spirit. God never intended for there to be second hand Christians.

                The roots of false religion go all the way back to Mt. Sinai when Israel refused to hear the voice of God, and asked Moses to go up for them. So Moses went up into the cloud and the fire of God and he was sanctified and empowered, but instead of bringing that glory to Israel he placed a veil over his face and brought them instead a law written on stone. Right there religion became mediated by man… something that Jesus remedied by becoming our High Priest and our Mediator of the New Covenant.

                Today we tend to revere the Law written on stone, rather than entering into the fire and the glory on the mountain to receive the living power of God. We want it handed to us in ways that flesh can cope with and deal with intellectually. We don’t want to purify our lives by going up with Moses into the fire of God’s presence. So the church largely has a form of godliness, while denying the power.

                We need to remember that the Day of Pentecost is the day that celebrates the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. The Jews to this day celebrate the giving of the Law on Pentecost, but they worship the Law on stone, rather than the fire of God that brought it. And we must notice the fact that on the Day of Pentecost, the promise of the Father came in tongues of fire as the people were baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire. This was the fire on the mountain that Moses encountered, rather than the Law on stone that resulted from their refusal to hear god’s voice.

                Pentecost was the beginning of the church and yet today, most churches operate without the fire and without the Holy Spirit borne gifts that were poured out on that day. They neither cry out for them, nor operate in them… and neither do they cry out for the kind of purity of heart that is needed in order for God to dwell in these human vessels. The presence of God is a consuming fire, so that even as we claim to be temples of the Holy Spirit, we have to ask ourselves how we can live complacent and careless lives if Christ is really in us.

                Jesus has already told us that He cannot tolerate lukewarmness. How can He function through lukewarm vessels that are not even seeking Him, or crying out to Him, or allowing His holy fire to cleanse them? Do we really think that having the right doctrines is enough. It wasn’t doctrine that Jesus poured out on the day of Pentecost. It was His Holy Spirit… the same Holy Spirit that empowered Him for His ministry on earth. If we are not operating by that same power, then can we really claim to be followers of Jesus?

                Our nation is languishing and falling away even as the church falls away from the power of the Gospel that is contained in the Holy Spirit of Pentecost and found in the fundamentals of the Gospel. The cross of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, the Word of Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus and repentance and the New Birth that Jesus promised are largely being abandoned and replaced with self- help and new age concepts and philosophies, or in many cases, traditions and rituals. Faith has been replaced with positive thinking and true prosperity has been replaced with a desire for money and things. Jesus demonstrated true prosperity and that prosperity was in living by divine appointment and having every need met for the occasion. It was about having our daily bread, not about having a yacht or a multi- million dollar jet .

                In having mega churches in which there are mostly spectators and very few disciples, the church has been driven to focus on money rather than Holy Spirit power and membership rather than discipleship. And so in order to hang onto all of its members, it must preach a message that does not offend them. So the church begins to be led by false prophets that say what the people want to hear, instead of bringing the message that God wants them to bring.

                The Law of Moses only served to point forward to that which Jesus would bring, for John said, “I baptize you with water, but one is coming who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Mt. 3:11, but in spite of this major paradigm change most churches today prefer the baptism of John over the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. The Holy spirit doesn’t often follow the church bulletin as He should, nor does He countenance complacency and nominal Christianity and so we abandon Him for the more convenient agenda of a man driven church.

                As Christians we don’t realize how far we have fallen from the patterns of ministry that Jesus established, or the power that He poured out upon us in order to operate within those patterns. Everything Jesus did was supernatural… not just the miracles, but Hise direct connection with His Father in doing only what He saw the Father doing and saying only what He heard the Father saying. There was not a moment of His life in which He wasn’t living in the supernatural and to maintain that He often spent entire nights in prayer.

                Is it too much then for us to have a yearly retreat in which laying aside all human dignity and propriety we bare ourselves before God and cry out to give birth to something largely lost to the church? Is it too much to ask the Holy Spirit to invade our world and to accomplish in us that which Jesus wants to accomplish?

                Pentecostal meetings can tend to get a bit messy and even emotional in ways that may offend the intellectual and stoical minds, but what will happen to America if the church stops crying out to God for that which will bring the Holy Spirit back into our midst? What will happen if no one cries out to God for the kind of purity and power that the final harvest will require? Do we honestly think that God is going to use man’s agenda and man’s power to bring in the final harvest of souls? How has that been working so far?

                In America the church is actually shrinking and being overtaken by every form of occult and idolatry and cult known to man and the true church is being despised today, not for its power but for its weakness. We have compromised with the world so much that we have lost our relevance. We think that we are accommodating the needs of sinners, when in fact we have become prostitutes that cater to the lusts of the world rather than standing for the purity and power of the Gospel.

                By all means then we need to cry out to God for something that we are not seeing in the church today. We need to go back to Pentecost and to the baptism of fire that Jesus promised and we need to start there and to rebuild upon the Word of God and the Spirit of God. For just as Jesus said:  “God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in Truth.” John 4:23